A Burial at Sea

“On the contrary, I found them most civilized.”

“Well, and perhaps they grown up, in all this time.”

“Perhaps. Good night, McEwan.”

“G’night, sir.”

Lenox poured himself a glass of wine and rocked back in his chair, looking out through his porthole. The scent of the still sea blew lightly into the cabin, and above it the sky had just begun to lighten from black to pale purple. In the half-light there was a melancholy to the lightless gray of the water, a solitude in it, and he felt something stir inside him: a feeling that reminded him again of homesickness.

He thought of Jane, sitting on her rose-colored sofa, writing letters at her morning desk, moving through the house, setting small things aright. How did these men tolerate lives at sea, always abroad, always a thousand miles from home! But then, perhaps they weren’t as happy by their hearths as he was by his.

It had been only a week after Edmund had asked Charles to go to Egypt that Jane had begun to act strangely. For two days she had spoken very little and spent much time closeted with her close friend the Duchess of Marchmain—Duch, for short—and refusing all invitations.

Lenox had too much delicacy to ask her what was the matter, but he had gone and sat with her at unusual times, running home during breaks from Parliament, hoping to invite her confidence.

It was on the third day that he finally received it. He had been reading on the sofa by the fire—there was still a winter chill in the air, halfway through March—and eating an edge of toast, when Jane spoke.

“Tell me,” she said, “how old was your mother when you were born?”

He put his book facedown beside him. “Nearly twenty-four, I think.”

“Twenty-one when Edmund was born, then?”

“Yes.”

Jane smiled. “I wish she had lived longer. She was such a kind woman.”

“Yes,” he said, and felt a lump in his throat. It was something he tried never to think about.

“I’m fearfully old,” she said.

“You’re not!”

“I am, I am. Too old to be a mother.”

Since their marriage Lenox had been hoping that she might consent to have a child with him, and now with a start he realized that perhaps the opportunity was being taken from him. “McConnell and every other doctor you’ve seen have told you you’re not,” he said.

She laughed, a kind of choked laugh. “I suppose they were right!”

He stood up. “Jane?”

“I’m going to have a child, anyhow,” she said, and burst into tears.

What had he felt in that moment? It was impossible to describe the jumble inside him: pride mixed up with fear mixed up with a great surge of excitement mixed up with a million questions mixed up with concern for his wife mixed up with … with everything, anything a human could feel.

“My goodness,” was all he said. His hands were in his pockets and he rocked back on his feet, staring at a spot on the ground.

“Is that what you have to say?”

His face broke into a great grin, and he went and took her by the hands. “No. I have much more to say. Only I don’t know where to begin. At first I thought I would thank you for marrying me, which still surprises me every day, though it happened years ago, and then I thought I would say how happy I felt, but you were crying. So I thought I would stand there and be silent.”

She had stopped crying, but her face was still wet with tears. “Oh, Charles,” she said.

“When did you know?”

“I’ve suspected it for some while, but I went to the doctor with Duch yesterday. He confirmed it.”

Lenox frowned. “The doctor, there’s a point. Do you have the best man? McConnell knows all of them in Harley Street—we’ll ask him—and of course we must be sure to speak—”

“No, no—this habit you have of solving problems that don’t exist! I have an excellent doctor. Toto used him too.”

Lenox sat down beside her and put an arm around her shoulder. In a quick voice he said, “You have made me happy beyond measure, Jane—really, you have.”

She tilted her head up and kissed his cheek then. “I’m so relieved to tell you.”

“Were you anxious?”

“I don’t know, quite. My head was all in a muddle.”

And then she did something that Lenox could almost feel in his cabin, so far from London: she took his hand and put it in hers, and they sat, companionably silent for the most part, occasionally bursting into little exchanges about this or that—which room would the nursery be! If it were a boy he must be put down for Harrow immediately!—until deep in the morning.

There was a feeling of nervous elation bound up in having so much happiness, he had found. Every time he thought of his child, growing strong within Jane, he had a fizzy feeling in his head and had to remind himself to behave normally, not to run around telling strangers.

Outside of his cabin the sky was pale white now, and soon, he knew, it would flash into goldenness. Really he must rest.

But not for twenty minutes, he decided; he would write his wife first, and tell her how much he missed her, and how very much he loved her.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Butterworth knows something, the note from Evers had said.

Lenox woke up late the next morning with a foggy head, but the phrase popped straight into his thoughts. As he ate breakfast and sipped his coffee, he considered the little he knew of Billings’s valet. Butterworth was jaundiced yellow, some harmless seafarer’s disease, Billings had mentioned, and too tall by several inches for the low ceilings on board a ship, which meant he always seemed slightly stooped.

Billings himself was in the wardroom, writing a letter, when Lenox put his head out. Seated alongside him was Mitchell, who was whittling down a piece of light-colored spruce into what appeared to be a finely detailed model of the Lucy.

It was a minor piece of information that Lenox registered almost automatically: Mitchell must be used to having a knife in his hands …

“D’you know,” the detective said in a conversational tone, “I almost feel guilty, asking McEwan to fetch me more coffee. He possesses such surpassing grace amidships that it seems he ought to be there.”

Billings looked up, smiling; Mitchell looked up too, but without the smile. “Oh, he’s landed where he wants to be,” said Billings. “It’s no bad job.”

“Have you had your own stewards long? How were they chosen?”

“Butterworth came to sea with me—my father’s servant.”

“He must be trustworthy, in that case.”

“Oh, very. Mitchell, did your chap come along with you?”

“He and I have been together on several voyages now, but all on the Lucy,” said Mitchell, still whittling. “We met when I was a midshipman in the Challenger, and when I had my step up I brought him along as my steward. Excellent fellow.”

“It’s common, then, for a steward to follow an officer from assignment to assignment?”

“Oh, yes,” said Mitchell. “In fact many of them act as butlers when their gentlemen are ashore. A bit rough, as butlers go, but nobody can keep a house clean like a steward.”

“It’s true that I have been amazed at the amount of time McEwan spends tidying.”

For the first time in their acquaintance, Mitchell smiled at him, albeit thinly. “Such is life afloat, Mr. Lenox.”

Billings took a last mouthful of egg and stood up. “I think I’ll take a turn on the quarterdeck,” he said. “Last night’s wine has given me a morning head, I’m afraid.”