Martin, too, was still on deck, and he came to the detective after fifteen minutes, looking pale and unshaven but as happy as everyone else aboard the Lucy.
“The storm has passed.”
“So I had observed,” said the captain. “The crew came through it beautifully.”
“But what of the purser?”
Martin frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Mr. Carrow told me that these pursers dislike storms.”
Now Martin laughed. “Oh, yes—well, I daresay he lost some dry biscuit, and he won’t be happy that I’ve ordered double rations of grog for the men when they have their dinners at midday. Nevertheless they deserve it.”
“I congratulate you,” said Lenox. “No injuries?”
“Oh, a host of them! Tradescant has been up all night—eight or twelve of them down there, every kind of scrape and contusion and concussion you can imagine. Still, we may count ourselves lucky in such a storm that nobody died.”
“Will you go to sleep now?”
A stern look. “No. Not until the last man has gone off duty, and all have rested. There is work to be done—bilging, repair work—and of course we are fearfully off course, and must make up time. My steward should be bringing me coffee, however.”
The steward appeared as if on cue, carrying a tin mug letting off fragrant steam from the top. Martin took it down in three gulps and then set off for the orlop. As for Lenox, he went down to fetch a cup of coffee, too, and drank it as he gazed over the becalmed sea.
When the captain passed the quarterdeck again, Lenox waved him down.
“Yes?” said Martin.
“I need to interview Amos Lee, your fourth lieutenant. And I might as well have a word with the warrant officers, too.”
“Lee will be awake in an hour, I daresay—could you leave him to then? He put in a hard shift overnight. In fact I must think of raising up one of the oldsters to acting lieutenant, just for this voyage.” This put more to himself than his interlocutor.
“Oh, of course,” said Lenox.
“Who do you think killed Halifax?”
“I don’t know. But there are enough clues that it shouldn’t be long before I do, I hope. I simply need a more complete picture of the suspects.”
“The suspects?”
Lenox described his suspicion that someone living in the wardroom had done the murder, enhanced now by the theft of the medallion. For a common bluejacket to be wandering around the wardroom would have been uncommon in the extreme, Martin agreed.
A steely look came into his eye. “When he is found out there will be no mercy, you may be sure of that,” he said. “A four-bag and a hanging.”
Lenox had to find out some minutes later from McEwan, who was eating about six breakfasts, that a four-bag meant forty-eight lashes on the back.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Amos Lee was almost completely different than Mitchell, his fellow officer: tall and fair where the other was small and dark, placid where the other bristled, of excellent manners where the other was rude. Of course Lenox had watched men who had seemed the gentlest of souls in his acquaintance swing from the gallows, for crimes that would have made thugs from the East End widen their eyes.
They spoke in the wardroom. Lee had an accent that Lenox had noticed among the younger generation of aristocratic public school graduates, which elongated every vowel, so that the word rather sounded like “raaawther” and London had about six o’s in it. The accent seemed to match Lee’s somewhat tired, heavy-lidded eyes. There was an air of boredom to him despite his polite attention to Lenox’s questions.
“How did you discover that Halifax was dead?”
“Mr. Mitchell told me the following morning.”
“May I ask how long you’ve been on the ship?”
“Certainly. I think it’s twenty-six months now, or thereabouts.”
“You must have been friends with Halifax, then.”
“Friendly, to be sure—there’s no way around that in the wardroom.”
“Do you have any inkling of who might have killed him?”
“No. I wish I had. Perhaps it was one of his men?” Lee ventured.
“I had heard he was quite popular among them?”
“It may be so, he and I carry—carried—different watches. He seemed perfectly competent from what I did observe of him, however.”
“Do you know anyone aboard ship who has a…” Lenox paused, searching for the right word. “A morbid air? Anyone who seems a little too cold-blooded?”
He thought for a moment. “I don’t think so.”
“Among the officers, perhaps?”
Lee looked troubled now. “I wouldn’t like to say.”
“Please, it might be important.”
“Well, if it is in the strictest confidence—”
“That goes without saying.”
“Lieutenant Carrow has always struck me as a cold fish. An able officer, exceedingly able, but not endowed too plentifully with warmth or happiness.”
Lenox had observed Carrow’s demeanor now more than once, and agreed. Then there was the medallion. “It may simply be reserve,” he said.
Hastily Lee agreed. “I’ve no doubt of it. I wouldn’t for a second accuse him of killing poor Halifax. But you asked me.”
“I did—thank you for answering. May I ask, have any of the stewards struck you similarly?”
Again Lee thought. “I suppose Mr. Butterworth is never overly friendly. I don’t know that I would call him cold-blooded, however.”
“You surprise me—Lieutenant Billings being so amiable.”
“Yes, I know. They seem like a mismatch.”
Lenox paused, and then said, “How often have you borrowed Billings’s penknife?”
“Sorry?”
He decided to lie. “His penknife—he said you had borrowed it now and then.”
“I shouldn’t like to call him a liar, but I can’t remember ever seeing the thing, much less borrowing it.”
“I must have misheard. Thank you, Mr. Lee.”
“Of course.”
A thought occurred to Lenox now and he went to the surgery to speak to Tradescant, who was treating the casualties of the storm. One sailor had a particularly nasty blue and green bruise across half of his face. Tradescant ordered a cold salt compress for it, and then stepped into the galley with Lenox.
“I wondered in passing,” said Lenox, “whether either of your assistants in surgery strikes you as a likely suspect? The cuts on Halifax seem surgical, don’t they?”
“I suppose they do, and yet I should sooner believe that you had done it, or the captain. My first assistant would have been on duty here in the surgery, Wilcox. I suppose he might have left to do it, but it would have been a strange risk—his presence on deck being so much less usual than anyone else’s, and there being a whole empty room, the surgery itself, to which he might have invited Halifax.”
“What to do with the body, then?”
“True; and yet Wilcox doesn’t have that in him, I swear to you. The second assistant I have is little more than a simpleton, Majors he’s called, good for fetching things, lifting things. No more knowledge of surgery than a dog has.”
Lenox sighed. “It was a shot in the dark, I know.”
The problem was the preponderance of suspects. It was strange to think so, given that his cases in the old days had usually taken place in London, with its millions of men and women flung into every corner of every building. Now two hundred and twenty seemed an impossibly large number. Was it a random sailor whose face, much less whose name, Lenox didn’t know? Was it an officer, or an officer’s steward? The definite clues he had—the penknife, the medallion, the strange nature of Halifax’s wounds—seemed to point in every different direction.