A Burial at Sea

“I’ll come with you,” said Mitchell.

“Mr. Lenox?” Billings asked.

“I’ll stay here, if it’s all the same to you.”

After they had gone Lenox rose and went to the closed door behind which lay Billings’s cabin, and the tiny nook where Butterworth slept. He knocked on the door, but nobody answered. As he began to push it open, a heavy voice behind him said, “Oy! Who’s that?”

Lenox turned. It was Butterworth himself. “Just the man I was looking for.”

“Me?”

“Yes. I have a few questions for you.”

“About what?” said Butterworth, his face suspicious.

“About Lieutenant Halifax.”

“Oh?”

“I was curious where you were during the middle of the night, when Halifax died.”

“I was fast asleep, leastways until Mr. Carrow came down to fetch my master.”

“You didn’t leave this cabin?”

“Not after supper, no.”

“Did Mr. Billings?”

“No! And if you’re implying—if you think—”

Lenox waved a hand. “Save your outrage, please. I only wanted to know if one of you might have seen something.”

Indignantly, Butterworth said, “Which and if we had, don’t you think we would have told? ”

“Sometimes we may see things without seeing them.”

“I don’t understand riddles, Mr. Lennots, and I won’t answer ’em.”

“Tell me this, anyway—on the day of the voyage, did you notice anything peculiar?”

“No,” said Butterworth stoutly.

“Nothing?”

“Maybe excepting yourself.”

“You’re dangerously close to rudeness, Mr. Butterworth.”

Butterworth rolled his eyes, and then with a sullen bow of his head, said, “Apology.”

McEwan came out into the wardroom, munching on what looked as if it might be the toast Lenox had left uneaten on his plate, and, though it didn’t sound very good, whistling through the crumbs.

“Will you give us a moment?” said Lenox to him.

“Oh! Sorry, sir. I was coming to ask permission to polish your toast rack, the one with the letters in it?” Then he added, whispering, “It’s silver.”

“Yes, go on,” said Lenox. “But go!”

“I’m vanished, I’m positively vanished already, sir,” said McEwan, and as proof put a finger up to his crumb- covered lips.

When they were alone again, Butterworth said, “If that will be all—”

“No, it won’t. I asked you if you saw anything unusual on the day before Mr. Halifax was murdered. You say you didn’t. I ask you to consider again—did you see anyone unusual around Mr. Billings’s cabin? Anyone who might have stolen something from your master?”

Butterworth looked uneasy now, and Lenox saw he had struck a nerve. “No,” was all the man said, however.

“You did—I can see it on your face. Who was in Lieutenant Billings’s cabin?”

“Nobody, sir.”

“It’s ‘sir’ now, is it? You must tell me—a man is dead.”

“But it doesn’t mean anything!” said Butterworth.

“What doesn’t?”

The steward looked at Lenox for a long moment and then relented. “The captain. He insisted on looking through all the cabins in the wardroom on his own, the day of the trip.”

“The captain did? Is that usual?”

Butterworth shook his head. “No.”

“Did he give a reason?”

“He’s the captain. He don’t need no reason. But he wouldn’t have killed Halifax—it’s not possible.” This came out in a low moan. “Please, though, you mustn’t think he did anything! Mr. Billings idolizes him.”

“Be calm—I agree with you. It’s not possible. You may go, now—thank you.”

Lenox had told an outright lie. It was certainly possible that Martin had killed Halifax. First the whisky, and now the plain opportunity to have stolen both Carrow’s medallion and Billings’s pocketknife. The baffling absence of motive was all that held Lenox back from fully believing that Martin was the murderer.

Soon it was noon, and the daily ritual took place again, Lenox on the gleaming, swabbed, and holystoned quarterdeck to observe it. The midshipman called Pimples, under the supervision of Lee and Martin, took a sighting of the sun.

“Our latitude is thirty-five degrees north, and our longitude is six degrees west,” he said.

“You’ll see African soil soon, then,” Lee answered. “We’re close to passing through the strait between Morocco and Spain.”

All hands were piped to the midday meal, then, and the naval schedule continued apace.

It was two hours later that this routine was interrupted by the unthinkable.

It was Teddy Lenox who rushed to his uncle’s cabin, his face pale and his breath short. “It’s happened again!” he said. “Again!”

Lenox’s stomach fell. “Another murder?”

“Yes!”

“Who? Was it another lieutenant?”

Teddy could barely speak, but he managed to croak it out. “No,” he said, “the captain. Captain Martin is dead.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

There was a tremendous lurch somewhere deep in Lenox’s spirit. I failed, he thought to himself. What business did I have trying to play detective again? The contrapuntal voice that rose in his mind—Who else was there to do it?—he smothered quickly.

“Where?”

“In his cabin.”

“What does the body—are the wounds the same?”

“I don’t know.”

“Who found him?”

“Lieutenant Carrow.”

“I must go to the body.”

Lenox rose, and then, about to leave in a rush, stopped himself and looked his nephew in the eye.

He saw a frightened boy.

“Teddy, you’ll be safe, I swear,” he said.

“Who’s doing this, Uncle Charles?”

“I don’t know. But it doesn’t mean you’re in danger, or that I am.”

“I remember when I was at school I used to tell my friends about my uncle, the great detective.”

Lenox knew the boy wasn’t trying to be hurtful. “Listen, stay here in my cabin, would you? If you like, have one of those biscuits. I’ll come back in a few moments.”

Obediently, Teddy sat at Lenox’s desk.