The Bedlam Detective

“No, Owain,” I said then. “You can’t take them with you. We’re not yet halfway home. There’s no dignity in what a few days in this heat on the river will make of them. Do I need to explain?”

“What’s my alternative?”

“You’ll have to bury them here.”

“No!”

“If the very idea is too painful then you can leave it to others.”

“I won’t leave them in the dirt of some foreign land.”

“Then they’ll rot in your arms. Is that what they’d want?”

It was harsh, but it did the trick. He closed his eyes, and all the fight seemed to go out of him.

“No,” he said. “I can’t leave it to others. This is my family. I shall be the one to deal with it.”

He got to his feet. He took a deep breath and he straightened his back. Then he turned and walked back toward the camp, calling everyone together.

He stood before us all, and made a speech.

“I’ve decided that we shall continue downriver,” he said, “as soon as my wife and child have received a fit and proper burial, as befits good Christians in a heathen land. I trust no one considers this unreasonable.”

All eyed the way that he hefted his hunting rifle, and agreed that, despite dwindling supplies, creeping sickness, uncharted hazards, and invisible beasts, this was not at all unreasonable.

“Good,” he said. “I shall begin my design for the tomb.”

He had the surveyors looking for the best site. He had it cleared of vegetation, and set our camaradas to dig the hole. Wherever they dug, after a foot or two the hole would fill up with water. The second choice of site was no better. The men worked, wanting to be done with this and on their way.

Meanwhile, Sir Owain had our Indians hauling flat stones out of the river, including one so heavy that it took all of them working together. Once it was on the bank, he had them hammer in wedges to split it. With a charcoal stick, he drew his funereal designs on each flat surface and set them to chipping away at the rock, flaking it down so that his designs slowly rose up in relief.

I managed to catch him alone for a moment. I said, “Owain, I’m concerned. Someone’s moved our supplies.”

He seemed unworried. “No one’s taking more than his share,” he said. “I’ve made sure of that.”

“It was you?”

He’d a gleam in his eye when he looked at me.

“If they can’t find the food,” he said, “they can’t desert me. I hired these men fair and square. In the time that I’m paying for, I expect them to do whatever I require of them.”

I watched in dismay as, over the next few days, order steadily broke down. A few hours for a funeral was one matter; the construction of some mockery of a Highgate-style sepulchre, with control of the food supply as a means to compel obedience, was something else altogether.

The Indians responded by feeding themselves. They cut open flowering bamboo stalks and ate the grubs to be found inside. Work all but stopped on the stone carving after that, as the Indians lay around and were of little use. I guessed that there was more in the grubs than mere nourishment.

The camaradas roasted monkeys when they could get them and eyed Sir Owain murderously, but made no direct approach to him. He was armed at all times, and, more intimidating to our Portuguese-speaking labor force, he showed repeated signs of an increasing mental unbalance.

The bodies of his wife and son remained in the tent, sewn into canvas but getting riper and riper. At night, when he wasn’t searching for beasts, Sir Owain sat with them, a handkerchief tied to cover his mouth and nose. I could hear him talking to them. Well, not so much talking. Raving.

The next morning, we found that one of the boats was missing. Five of the men had taken to the river and gone, taking their chances without any food, no doubt hoping for more plentiful and less wary monkeys downriver. There was almost a rebellion after the discovery was made, with Sir Owain firing into the air to restore order.

The European contingent held a secretive meeting and tried to persuade me to distract Sir Owain while they seized his gun and restrained him. They seemed to think I was the only person in the company that he trusted. I could not imagine how they’d reached this conclusion.

I agreed that grief and duress had affected his reason, but argued that we faced enough dangers without adding to them.

At the end of that day, we found that Sir Owain had somehow hidden the remaining boats.

Sir Owain asked me to perform a burial service. The tomb had been completed late that afternoon, and sunset approached. By now there was good reason not to keep the bodies from their final resting place for one hour longer than was necessary. I borrowed a Bible, chose a few readings, and concocted a service of sorts. I’d thought that it might be difficult to find bearers to fetch the bodies from the tent, but there was no shortage of volunteers. The sooner it was done, the sooner we’d be on our way.

The tomb-what can I say about the tomb? Think of those great stone monuments of our Victorian fathers. Picture the most Gothic of them, and then strain it rough-hewn through a madman’s nightmare. It had four solid sides and a great slab to top it. But its angles were all wrong, its proportions strange, its decoration of urns and columns a strange mix of the primitive and the classical. A temple of skulls and bones, a pirate’s tomb. And yet, entirely recognizable as what it was meant to be.

After my piece we sang “Abide with Me” and the Indians hummed and Sir Owain made a rambling, but touching speech. Mad though he was, his heart was truly breaking. He ended with a promise that our journey would resume in the morning, and revealed where he’d hidden the food. The daylight was all but gone as the camaradas dragged the top slab into place and we all dispersed.

Sir Owain sat alone in his empty tent, by the flickering light of a monkey-fat candle. I let him be for a while and then-cautiously, for he’d not set down his hunting rifle at any point during the service-made my way in to join him.

He acknowledged my presence. I produced my rum flask. Even a madman deserves a wake.

I said, “A sad day in a week of sad days. My condolences, Owain.” I unscrewed the cap and offered the flask.

He looked at the ground, and sighed. Then he accepted the flask and took a hefty swig. He made a face as the rum went down. “You were right to be hard on me,” he said, offering it back. “I should never have brought them here. What was I thinking?”

“You were thinking that all the world must be tameable,” I said, waving the flask away, “because you’d already succeeded in taming so much of what you could reach.”

“No,” he said. “I truly believe there’s a malevolence at work. They were taken. This jungle took them.”

“Yes, Owain,” I said, because there’s no arguing with the deluded. “And nothing can bring them back. So now we have to look to the welfare of the survivors. Tell me. How did you manage to hide the boats?”

“I didn’t,” he said.

“Oh, come on,” I said. “For boats that aren’t hidden, you concealed them very well. Some of the men have been sneaking off and scouring the riverbank for as far as they could walk. Not one of them’s found a sign.”

Sir Owain just sat there looking at me, and offered no explanation. Suddenly I understood. Or believed I did.

“You sank them, didn’t you?” I said. “They’re sitting out there on the riverbed waiting to be raised and refloated. You crafty dog.”

But I saw nothing in Sir Owain’s eyes.

“Well?” I prompted.

He said, “I untied the lines, and shoved the boats out into the river where they were carried off.”

Was he joking? Surely he was joking.

He was not.

“They’re gone?” I said.

He shrugged. “I wish I’d thought of your bottom-of-the-river trick,” he said, and tilted his head back with the flask tipped high, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he downed the rum like so much water.

I persisted.