Dead water

Parlor, setting the enormous japanned tray down. “I don't know where Mr. Weems was the whole of that time, sir, but I met him on the upper starboard promenade, outside the gentlemen's staterooms, just after ten o'clock. He was standing outside a stateroom, trying to unlock the door, I thought. I spoke to him, not meaning disrespect, but thinking he'd mistaken the room, for his stateroom is the first one at the bow end of the boat, and he was trying to unlock one down at the stern end. But he turned away fast and went off down the promenade to the stern without speaking.”

“You're sure it was he?”

The steward nodded gravely. “I saw his face clear in the light of the lantern he carried, though it was black foggy.”

Davis frowned. “Now, why would he have mistaken which end of the boat his stateroom was on? Unless he was intoxicated, and I have never seen him so—though of course if he was, it might explain his falling accidentally over the rail.”

“A man would have to be more intoxicated than liquor could make him,” mused January, “to go over the railings of either the upper deck or the lower . . . sir,” he remembered to add, hoping Davis wasn't a stickler for servants not speaking unless and until spoken to. And when the planter only furrowed his brow inquiringly, he went on. “Those railings are nearly elbow-high, and the upper-deck promenades are narrow—three feet, I think, from the wall to the railing. A man falling backwards against the rail might flip over it if he hit it with sufficient force, but his feet would almost certainly strike the wall and catch him.

“And the fact is, sir, though I don't know why Weems was trying to get into one of the staterooms at the stern end of the promenade, I think he tried to get into more than one.” And he recounted the attempted intrusion into Hannibal's stateroom, ending with: “That was just about at eleven, because I heard the leadsmen calling out as the boat was coming up to the bar.”

Davis glanced sharply at Thucydides—who very properly kept his eyes lowered from the white man's gaze— then at January. “And where is your master's stateroom in relation to the stern end of the promenade?”

“Third from the end,” said January. “Sir.”

“The last four are Mr. Lundy's, Mr. Sefton's, Mr. Cain's, and Mr. Molloy's, sir,” provided Thu.

“I expect the lock-faces would bear some sign of it,” said Hannibal as the steward left the Saloon with his enormous tea-tray in hand, “if the locks of those staterooms had been picked or forced, unless Mr. Weems was extremely adept at what he was doing.” With considerable deliberation he poured the rest of his sherry-and- laudanum back into the flask and worked the cork back in. “Even if my protestations of innocence are out of order —and I do bear letters from Vice-President Hubert Granville of the Bank of Louisiana on the subject of Mr. Weems's theft of quite a substantial sum of the Bank's specie—I wonder if perhaps my man here could take a look at the body? He used to work for a surgeon—I think he's probably the best-trained medical observer on board.”

“Is he, indeed?” The Colonel's pale gaze raked up and down January as if comparing his height and size with his hands—which did not have the knotted tendons and swollen joints of a field-worker's—and his air of calm self- confidence. Then, “So you do admit to being sent by the Bank of Louisiana?”

“I was, yes, sir,” replied Hannibal. “To recover the Bank's specie—which I have no proof whatsoever that Weems took. But Weems's actions—and those of the woman he's been pretending not to know for the past week and who now claims herself as his fiancee—aren't those of a man with a clear conscience.”

“No. But they may be those of a man who knows himself to be unjustly persecuted. Mr. Tredgold?” Davis turned to beckon the Silver Moon's owner. Tredgold had returned to the card-table and was pouring a shot of brandy into his coffee with the air of a man who really needs it. “Will you accompany us to view the body?”

“Er . . . please,” replied Tredgold, fumbling a key-ring from his coat-pocket and selecting from it a stateroom key. He looked pale around the mouth beneath his drooping mustache. “I leave the matter entirely in your hands.”

With a gratified air young Colonel Davis strode from the Saloon, January and Hannibal trailing at his heels.

The door to Weems's stateroom was closed, but when Davis fitted the key into the lock, January heard sharp movement inside, followed at once by Diana Fischer's unmistakable voice. “Who's there . . . ?”

Davis opened the door to reveal the woman kneeling beside the bunk. The soaked bedclothes were dragged back and the thin mattress wrenched awry. Weems's body lay on the floor in the corner, bundled awkwardly on one side with its unbuttoned clothing half pulled off it.

Mrs. Fischer scrambled to her feet, her face first pale, then flushing red. “What is the meaning of this outrage?” She strode toward Davis like an avenging harpy, and seized him by his lapels. “I come here to pay a final farewell, to sit for a time beside my poor beloved's body, to look once more into his poor face. . . .”

Her voice caught in a sob, though her eyes bore no sign of either tears or swelling and her nose was decidedly un-red. “And what do I find? Those animals, those vile murderers have been in here! Look at what they have done!” She released Davis's lapel long enough to sweep her hand at Hannibal, and at January, who was taking note of the fact that the front of her dress was splotched with dampness across the hips, where she would have levered a sodden body off the bed.

“I'm afraid you must hold us excused, m'am.” Hannibal politely removed his hat. “Since your affianced husband was brought here, my man and I were either in the presence of Colonel Davis, or that of some of the deck- passengers—”

“That yellow hussy?” She spat the words in her contempt.

Davis said nothing.

“Then there is more happening aboard this accursed vessel than meets the eye!” She pressed the back of her hand to her forehead, with the appearance of a woman about to crumple in a faint. “For when I came into this room it was as you see it, desecrated! Well might you imagine my horror, my outrage . . .”

While she trumpted her horror and outrage, January looked around the tiny stateroom. Under Weems's half- stripped body the straw matting of the floor was rumpled and twisted, as if it, too, had been taken hastily up, section by section. The dead bank manager's portmanteau and valise were open and their contents hastily jammed back or lying strewn around. Davis's eyes narrowed and his tic twitched again. “The room has been searched,” he said.