The Memoirs of Irene Adler: The Irene Adler Trilogy

by San Cassimally

  ‘Tell us now what happened once you were in the dinghy,’ I urged. They all stuck to what to me sounded suspiciously like a carefully rehearsed statement. They all spoke of their readiness to follow the captain’s lead in everything, regarding the rationing of the water and the turnips. They talked about how disciplined they were. No one mentioned the unfortunate Richard Bowles. I was pleased they did not. I said thank you, gentlemen, that is all, and their eyes twinkled with short-lived relief, before I added, ‘for the moment.’

  A dark cloud never appeared in the sky with such celerity. At precisely this point there was a commotion outside and a constable appeared and whispered something in Laverty’s ears. He looked at me and nodded in a complicit manner. I left and attended to the delivery and installation in another room of what was to prove to be our pièce de résistance. I then went back and asked Captain Bromwich to come with me into the other room, where a wooden dinghy not very different from the one in which the survivors had managed to escape had been placed in the middle of the room. Laverty instructed two constables to keep Waters and Hawkins company and joined me. I noticed the shocked expression on the captain’s face when he saw the craft.

  ‘I think you will agree, Captain Bromwich, that this boat is not too dissimilar to the one to which you owe your life.’ He nodded vigorously. I left him standing near the stern of the dinghy and took position at the bow, facing him, but with nothing in my manner showing the slightest hostility. Laverty stood on the port side halfway between the two of us in a way that allowed free vision of both parties.

  ‘Captain, if you will be so kind as to tell me about the cabin boy Bowles.’ I was near enough to see his face change colour.

  ‘As sweet and good-natured a young fellow as anyone could hope to meet,’ he said, looking at me in the eyes.

  ‘Yes, right. Tell me, Captain, about the events which led to his drowning. It happened on the third day after the shipwreck, am I right?’ Bromwich hesitated, ‘Th ... third day, yes, that’s right. Poor devil.’

  ‘Do you have clear recall of the incidents leading to the unfortunate drowning.’

  ‘As clear as daylight, sir.’

  ‘Then please will you climb on board … Will you now kindly place these wooden chairs I have marked Hawkins, Waters and Bowles with chalk, where, to the best of your recollection, your companions were.’ Bromwich began to blink and did not move.

  ‘You did say you had clear recall...’

  ‘Yes, yes, of course,’ he said, still blinking. He placed Hawkins on a starboard position, Waters on the port side and Bowles at the stern. He sat himself at the transom or stern side. Once he was seated I asked him if he was sure and he nodded again. Did I detect a slight hesitation this time, or was it my imagination?

  ‘Now Captain Bromwich, take us through the events just minutes before the unfortunate boy threw himself into the sea.’

  They were all parched and the bucket of water was nearly empty, he said, looking away from me. He had dispensed one ladleful of water to each every day. The bucket would be empty in another day, with not one cloud visible in the sky.

  The poor lad had found it the hardest and had been moaning, begging for just one more drop of water. He felt for the wretched boy, but he had to tell him firmly that the next ration was not due until the next day.

  ‘And how did Bowles react?’ asked Laverty.

  ‘He started wailing, went on his knees, put his hands together like this.’ He raised his hands and clasped them in a theatrical manner.

  ‘And?’

  ’And big tears dripped down his cheeks.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘It was then he threatened to throw himself overboard unless I gave him just one ladleful. I shook my head and he turned his back on me, wailing in the most heart-rending manner.’

  ‘Where did he go? I mean on the boat.’

  ‘He directed his steps towards the bow and stood there looking at the waves.’ Bromwich went on to explain that he had not believed that the boy would carry out his threat. I had one more question before dismissing him.

  ‘How did you survive without water for so long yourselves?’ The man started blinking and his face turned crimson. He stayed silent, obviously trying to put some order in his thoughts and some words together.

  ‘It rained the next day,’ he said turning away.

  ‘But you said...’ began Laverty, but seeing the frown on my face he dried up. There followed a lull and, Cadan bent towards me. ‘Shall I get Constable Riley to take him to the waiting room?’ he asked. Bromwich caught his drift and breathed deeply in readiness for his exit. I let him leave the boat and by a hand signal directed him to move towards the wall on its starboard side.

  ‘No,’ I said without lowering my voice, ‘I’d like the captain to stay here. Please send for the other men.’

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘Both men,’ I said. Cadan frowned and by dint of a nod in the direction of the constable communicated the order and the young constable left. I instructed a young messenger boy to remove the chairs. I asked him to scrub the name of Waters from one chair and re-write the word ‘Captain’ on it.

  When the two men came in they threw an apprehensive glance in the direction of the captain. As I expected, the sight of the dinghy seemed to arouse instant consternation.

  ‘Now, Mr Waters can I ask you to step into the craft please. I’ll pass you the chair bearing the name of the captain and ask you to cast your mind back to the events following the shipwreck. You told me that you had clear recall of everything.’ Waters was unable to hide the fact that he was shaking. The captain looked at him in a manner half-way between disgust and admonition. The poor fellow cast a glance at his erstwhile master, noticed the stern expression on his face and moved his eyes away.

  ‘Why, I ain’t so sure no more,’ said Waters.

  ‘You at least remember the day poor Bowles drowned himself?’

  ‘You must remember in what position you were seated.’ Waters nodded and pointed to the stern. Captain Bromwich winced.

  ‘Aye, I do...’ I signalled Constable Riley with my hand to pass on a chair to Waters.

  ‘The chair has a name written on it, can you read it?’

  ‘Eh... it says cap... capta... captain, sir.’

  ‘Indeed. Will you now have the kindness to place it where, to your best recollection, Captain Bromwich was, in the dinghy, in the moments preceding Bowles’ desperate act.’ Waters took the chair and stared at it as if he was expecting it to answer the question for him. The chair remained mute. Waters looked at the captain who was blinking and had changed colour. Suddenly, with determined steps, he made for the stern and deposited it there. The captain put his hands on his face and shook his head, and I changed tack.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ I said in the most sympathetic tone I could muster, ‘that you have been sorely tried, there can be no doubt. I commiserate with your bad luck. We commiserate with your bad luck, Inspector Laverty and I. It was not your fault that the owners of the yacht sold a decrepit craft destined to be taken to the other side of the world. This man is clearly the guiltiest party in this sad affair. It was your misfortune that you had so little water and only a few cans of turnips. But what you did to the cabin boy was criminal and you deserve to be tried for it.’ I paused and noticed that the three men had somehow collected themselves together, clearly in search of support and reassurance in the eyes of each other.

  ‘Let us assume that the matter is dropped. Can you be sure that you will be able to forget the episode and lead a quiet Christian life, grow old in serenity and on your death bed, smile and say, may the Lord have mercy on my soul, I have led an honest life?’ I noticed that the two younger men were in tears.

  ‘I cannot swear what is going to happen to you, but I have consulted with some people in a position of power and they have assured me... no, they have expressed the hope that you cannot be sentenced to... they’re not going to hang you. It’s a chance, but one which I would take. Public
opinion will not tolerate the ultimate penalty, I will personally get my friends in the press to campaign on your behalf. But you must accept what you did and show genuine repentance and atone.’

  I allowed them to consult in private and went in the veranda and smoked a pipe in the company of Cadan.

  We gave the men fifteen minutes and when we came back, the captain said that he had been chosen to make a statement. We adjourned to a corner of the room and invited the three men to sit in an arc round the desk behind which Cadan and I were seated.

  ‘You see, Mr Lernière, it was not the hunger as such, but two days with scarcely anything to drink under the punishing sun…eh… that can warp your thinking, there seemed to be no alternative...’ Unable to finish, he burst into tears. Hawkins took over.

  ‘It was my idea sir ... the blood... to quench our thirst ...’ he paused for a few seconds unable to continue.

  ‘Take your time,’ Cadan said.

  ‘Yes sir, the boy was plump and healthy ... a good supply of blood ... I grabbed him from the back,’ Waters confessed. ‘I held my knife to his throat’

  ‘We hadn’t planned anything, it was a spur of the moment thing,’ Captain Bromwich interrupted. ‘It was then that we began talking about what we could do.’

  ‘Our decision was unanimous,’ ventured Waters. The three men broke down and I thought that shedding some tears would do them some good.

  ‘As captain, it was my job to carry out the act. I signalled to Walters to pass the knife over to me. Hawkins held the bucket... Poor Bowles might have put up a fight, he was a strong lad. He was a lovely boy too, always smiling, although he wasn’t smiling then. He tightened his muscles but made no attempt to free himself.’

  ‘ “Can I make a prayer,” he said, and... and...’ The captain was again unable to continue and allowed more tears to trickle down.

  ‘I will never understand what possessed me, but I said no,’ exploded Captain Bromwich. ‘That was a crime far worse than slitting his throat and collecting his blood in the bucket. You see a monster before you.’ The silence that ensued was more powerful than any peal of thunder that I have ever heard.

  ‘The captain had feared that if he allowed the boy to kneel down, he would jump overboard,’ Hawkins offered as an explanation.

  ‘I don’t know what I was thinking,’ Bromwich said, ‘I was shocked, confused.’

  ‘We’ve talked, we’re all agreed that we should pay for our crime,’ Waters said, and the others nodded.

  Cadan prepared a statement which they duly signed before they were locked up and I went back to London.

  On his return Chief Constable Trelawney was livid when he heard what had happened. He threatened Cadan with dismissal for insubordination, but he quickly realised that he had no option but to act upon our findings. Cannily he ended up by commending his underling for showing initiative.

  The three men were taken to London for trial. To their surprise, wherever the crowd saw them, they cheered and treated them as victims (which according to me they were), if not heroes. The Home Secretary was concerned that the trial was going to be a waste of time as the jury was unlikely to find the men guilty (we owe this information to Mycroft). As a result, he instructed that the men be tried by a five judge tribunal presided by Lord Chief Justice Coleridge. Bromwich increased his credit in the eyes of the public by maintaining that as captain he was the one who was responsible and that the two others should be set free.

  Mrs Bowles said in an interview to the Reynolds’ News that she had not instigated her action as an act of revenge upon the three men. Not having been in their skins, she could not find it in herself to condemn them. They had been cast into a situation not of their making. She just wanted to preserve the memory of her son, who she knew was not a coward.

  Lord Coleridge, however, took a stern view of the matter. He prefaced his opinion by suggesting that according to him a situation of necessity had not truly existed. ‘The accused might possibly have been picked up the next day by a passing ship,’ he opined. Or they might possibly not have been picked up at all. In either case it is obvious that the killing of Bowles would have been an unnecessary and profitless act. ‘Even if the necessity existed,’ he went on, ‘that could never justify the killing of another human being. Self-preservation is no justification.’

  ‘To preserve one’s life is generally speaking a duty,’ he granted, ‘but it may be the plainest and the highest duty to sacrifice it. War is full of instances in which it is a man’s duty not to live, but to die. The duty in case of shipwreck, of a captain to his crew, of the crew to the passengers, of soldiers to women and children in war—these duties impose on men the moral necessity, not of preservation, but of their sacrifice of their lives for others. It is not correct, therefore, to say there is any absolute or unqualified necessity to preserve one’s life.’

  He ended his summing up by pronouncing the three men guilty of wilful murder and passed the death sentence. The public outside the court showed their outrage by reacting angrily, clamouring and chanting and had to be dispersed by strong armed tactics by the police. But it was not the end of the matter. Shortly after, as we had hoped, the Home Secretary commuted the penalty to long-term imprisonment and when everybody seemed to have forgotten the sad episode the three men were quietly released for good conduct.

  Cadan had become very unpopular for having brought the men to book and I felt that it was my duty to encourage my dear twin sister to go to Falmouth to comfort him.