Dead water

“There's a great deal of money at stake, sir,” said January. “Men speak a great deal about women being worse than men, if they decide to take to crime, but I suspect that's because crime is one of the few ways a woman can get her own money, and need not rely on a man. But it's curious, isn't it, that both ladies are acting as if what they're looking for is small enough to be easily palmed, or concealed in a pocket—either mine or hers. So Miss Skippen doesn't seem to think there's six hundred pounds of gold, or several trunks full of securities, hidden in here.”

He knelt beside Molloy's body on the narrow bunk, turned the head gently, and withdrew a bullet-probe from his small medical kit. The pilot's closed eyes had begun to settle back into his head; blood and brain matter leaking from the wound had soaked the pillow, and in spite of the closed door the room was droning with flies. January inserted first the probe, then a pair of long-nosed bullet forceps into the channel cut by the bullet, which had cracked the skull on the other side.

Davis, after a rapid search of Molloy's portmanteau and the few drawers in the tiny dresser, came over to January's side, looking down over his shoulder as he withdrew the bullet from the wound. “That's no pistol-ball,” he said at once. “I loaded those pistols. That ball wouldn't have gone down the barrel.”

“I'm glad to hear you say it, sir.” January dropped the bullet into the nearest vessel, in this case the saucer under an empty coffee-cup that had been on the cabin's single chair. “In fact, I didn't expect it to be. You can tell from the angle of the wound that it wasn't made from the front, but from about twenty degrees to Molloy's left— that is, from the little rise at the head of the chute. The only thing Hannibal had to do with Molloy's death was to unknowingly lure him out on the riverbank, where someone could take a clear shot at him . . . and blame the death on Hannibal.”

“Well . . . I'll be dipped,” murmured Colonel Davis. “Who would have done such a thing?”

“I can think of four, right off-hand.” January covered the dead man's face with the sheet, then went to the washstand and poured water to wash his hands and the probe and forceps. “Unfortunately, three of them were within sight of half a dozen people at the moment of the shooting . . . and the fourth, as far as I can figure out, had no way of knowing that Molloy would be on the bank, involved in a duel, at dawn today.” He fetched the bullet and washed it in the basin as well, then held it up.

It was a .45-caliber, the same as the Leman rifles handed out to the guards.

“Anything in the drawers, sir?” He remembered to modify his tone into one of humble inquiry.

Behind them the door rattled peremptorily. Mrs. Fischer demanded, “Open this immediately!” and Mrs. Tredgold and Miss Skippen chimed in as a sort of operatic chorus, mezzo, contralto, and soprano.

Davis shook his head.

“In the portmanteau? A letter? Or tools of some kind—hammer, nails, pry-bar?”

“Nothing. Only a couple of empty tins.”

“Tins, sir?”

“Such as they sell candy in.” Davis held one up—English, gaudy reds and golds, flat and square and slightly larger than January's enormous palm.

“Open this door immediately!” shouted Mrs. Tredgold. If her tone of voice was any indication of her attitude in dealing with Mr. Lundy, January despaired of ever getting to Memphis.

“I will go to the purser's office,” Davis said, “and ascertain if any of the rifles is missing, or if one has been fired recently.”

“Missing is more likely,” said January as Davis unlocked the door and the two men stepped out, letting the three women push past them into the small cabin. “It could simply have been thrown in the chute afterward—it's what I'd do.” Behind them in the cabin three shrill voices rose, quarreling already over who had the right to be there.

“But if the man who pulled the trigger came off this boat,” said Davis worriedly, “how did he come back on? While you were ashore, Mr. Tredgold and Thucydides counted most assiduously to make sure that no one was inadvertently left behind. Every deck-hand and passenger is accounted for, even to the slaves who went ashore with Mr. Cain. And if the man who pulled the trigger didn't come off this boat, why would his accomplice on the vessel need to smuggle him a rifle? Surely such a man as that would have his own weapons? And why in any case would they wish to kill Mr. Molloy, who is, as far as we know, the only one who knew where Weems had hidden his loot . . . if indeed the loot exists at all?”

January shook his head, and glanced up to see Souter coming down the steps from the hurricane deck. Tredgold followed him: January caught a snatch of their speculation about where the nearest wood-yard was and whether the Silver Moon could make it there or would have to stop yet again for the deck-hands—and the hard-worked slaves—to cut enough trees to keep the fires going.

Down below, the half-submerged forest of snags and towheads closer to the bank was finally being left behind. So Lundy had apparently agreed to stay, when any other pilot would have stomped down to the Saloon and left poor old Tredgold at the wheel himself.

Any other pilot who didn't have such an overwhelming desire to be on the Silver Moon . . . To pilot the Silver Moon.

There's a pattern here somewhere, thought January as he walked along the promenade to Hannibal's room, the rifle-ball in his hand. At least, he thought, his friend would be grateful to learn that he hadn't killed a man, even a man he despised and who was trying to take his life.

Or he'd be grateful when he woke out of the opiated stupor into which he'd almost certainly drunk himself in reaction to the thought that he was a murderer.

Will all great Neptune's ocean

Wash this blood clean from my hand . . . ?

And anger burned up in him at the thought that someone would have used an innocent and morbidly sensitive soul like Hannibal as their cat's-paw.

The stateroom door stood open. Coming closer, even above the faint, terrible reek from Weems's closed room, he could smell vomit.

He sighed, not much surprised. Hannibal no longer got blazing drunk several times a week, and had nearly killed himself trying to get opium out of his system. January had encountered men who were able to cut down their drinking in the face of necessity, but had never found one who could break free of opium.

And even those who turned away from alcohol often turned back.