A Burial at Sea

Billings went pale. “You think I might have been a target, you’re saying? The shot wasn’t rolled anywhere near toward where I was standing!”

“If it’s simply a message, that wouldn’t matter a great deal.”

“Why would they bother sending a message? They didn’t send one to Halifax.”

“Not that we know of, you’re correct. But who knows what might happen in a deranged mind? At any rate it’s only a suggestion. Keep your eyes peeled.”

Billings nodded. “I will. Thank you.”

Mitchell’s reaction was less gracious, and his dark complexion brightened red. “Why on earth would it have been directed at me!” he half shouted.

“I don’t say that it was, only that—”

“I’m perfectly capable of looking after myself, Mr. Lenox. Thank you.”

He turned away, back toward a group of men awaiting orders.

Lenox decided that he might as well speak to the purser, now that he had spoken to Quirke. Pettegree was in a very small study near the fore of the ship, hunched over a supply list. As Lenox’s first impression had suggested, the purser had a slightly embittered air, pinched, ungracious, to go along with a businesslike deportment. It might have been a life spent balancing debits and credits, or it might have been something no speculation could reveal— from childhood, say, or adolescence. Lenox noted it.

“May I ask where you were when Halifax died?” he said after greeting Pettegree.

“Asleep.”

“It’s inconvenient that everyone was asleep at the time.”

“In particular for Lieutenant Halifax, I would have thought.”

Lenox grimaced. “Yes, of course. Now, confidentially … is there anyone in the wardroom you believe capable of violence?”

“All of them—they’re men of the navy, after all. Each one of them, however gentle he might seem, has killed a pirate or an Indian.”

“Nobody in particular, however.”

Pettegree shrugged. “The code of the navy would suggest I hold my tongue, but since you ask—since there is a murderer loose aboard this ship—I would say that I have seen a great temper in two of the men.”

“Who?”

“Mitchell and the captain. For the rest, they are calm enough men.”

“The captain has a temper?”

“Oh, yes—a formidable one. But that may be in the usual course of these things, a condition of his position.”

“Do you have a temper?”

“No, and what’s more I didn’t kill Halifax. If I had wanted to I couldn’t have done it face-to-face. I’m not a large man.”

Almost jokingly, Lenox said, “But the element of surprise—”

Pettegree shook his head. “The point is academic.”

“To be sure. And Lieutenant Carrow?”

“He seems to be bearing up under some internal pressure, from time to time—but I have never seen an example of his violence, so I cannot add him to my list, no.”

“Tell me, what does your instinct say? Who did it?”

An expansive sigh. “I’ve been going it over in my mind, in fact. If I had to say I would point to the sailors. They’re a brutal species of man, I promise you. They have their own code, their own way of living. They’re no closer to civility than the orangutans of Gibraltar, I sometimes think.”

It was the opposite of what he had wished to hear, but some truth rang in the statement nonetheless. “Yes. I see. Incidentally, nothing peculiar has happened with regard to the ship’s stores?”

Pettegree frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Has anything gone missing? Been stolen? Might Halifax have discovered a theft?”

“I don’t think so. The storm washed out a certain percentage of our dry goods, as storms will. Otherwise the stores are intact.”

“You’re sure.”

“I’m planning to check again in the morning—shall I tell you what I find?”

“I would take it most kindly,” said Lenox.

“Very well. If there’s nothing further, then—”

“No. Have a good afternoon.”

“And you.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Supper that evening was again a somber affair. Only the chaplain drank more than one glass of wine, and the only toast was to the Queen. Martin dined alone.

Lenox returned to his cabin and wrote a letter to Lady Jane, full of misgivings and self-doubt. When he was close to signing it he realized with a start that it was more journal entry than letter, and after ripping the densely scrawled pages in half shoved them through his porthole. When this was done he asked McEwan for a glass of warm brandy—it was cooler than usual, that evening—and took up The Voyage of the Beagle, where he lost himself for several hours, long enough for three glasses of the brandy Graham had packed him. He could hear as he read the sound of orders being given and executed, sails being furled and let out, watches changing. The usual business of the ship. None of it sounded like mutiny. But then, he supposed, perhaps it never did.

The next morning he woke with a foggy head. It was his fifth day aboard the Lucy now, and he felt helpless. His tin cup of coffee went cold in his hand as he surveyed the rolling ocean from the quarterdeck. At ten or so there was a quick, thin rain, which he waited through before going back down below deck.

He decided to seek out his nephew.

Teddy was still resting in his hammock, strung up outside the gun room, but not quite asleep.

“Oh, hello, Uncle Charles,” he said.

“The middle watch?”

“Yes, and it was jolly well cold.”

“Why don’t you come along to my cabin and have some breakfast? Jane packed a bit of cold bacon for me, and McEwan would be happy to do you some toast.”

“Oh, rather!” he said, and nearly upset his hammock for rising out of it so quickly.

They sat in Lenox’s cabin, he in his chair, Teddy on a stool dragged in from the galley, the latter munching happily away, pausing only for occasional sips of hot tea.

“Thank you again for inviting me to the gun room. I enjoyed it immensely.”

Teddy merely grunted, his mouth rather fuller than would be deemed acceptable in the best society, but his nod was enthusiastic. When he finally swallowed he said, rather hoarsely, “Oh, the other fellows liked you very much.”

“You seem to be happy there.”

“Yes.”

Though Teddy didn’t say it Lenox could see that the boy had been worried, and that his worries were now appeased by their days at sea. He fit in well. It was worth writing Edmund with that news alone.

“When your father and I were boys, we once had to go to a great hunt on our own. Just the two of us. I suppose we must have been, oh, twelve and ten, thereabouts. Not much younger than you—or rather, I was quite a bit younger than you are now, but your father was nearly your present age.”

“Why did you have to go alone?”

“Our father was in London, an emergency session of Parliament, and our mother was taken poorly.”

“Just like my father.”