“Yes, Captain,” said Carrow.
When these two men were alone in the room, blood not far from them on the carpet, Carrow let out a tremendous exhale. Lenox looked at him inquisitively. “Does something trouble you?”
“Only that it is the worst situation I have ever experienced afloat, and that I fear for our lives every moment.”
“Yes.”
Carrow sat at Martin’s desk, his habitual frown etched on his face, and took a bag of tobacco from his jacket sleeve. “Would you like to fill your pipe?” he asked. “It’s the worst, blackest sort of shag—only stuff I smoke.”
“No, I thank you.”
“I’m amazed you don’t need it, to steady yourself.”
Lenox paced toward a porthole. “You have found both bodies, Mr. Carrow.”
“So I have. The first in the company of your nephew, the second not fifteen feet from the captain’s galley, where Mr. Slaton was putting tea together. What of it?”
“Mr. Slaton admitted you?”
“No.”
“Then he had no way of knowing how long you had been in here.”
To Lenox’s surprise, Carrow laughed. “That’s true enough, sir. But if you think I killed either of these men, you’re a bigger fool than I took you for.”
“You understand that everyone on board the Lucy is a suspect.”
“Yes. But I have the good fortune of knowing, infallibly, that I did not murder Faxxie, nor Captain Martin.” He lit his pipe. “My god,” he muttered, less constrained than Lenox had ever seen him. “Both of them dead. Think of it. I shudder to imagine the newspapers. The navy scarcely needs the negative exposure.”
“Yes.”
Carrow puffed on his pipe, and blew the smoke through an open porthole. It was a bright, sparkling day now, light shimmering on the quick water. “The worst of it is the manner of the death. The brutality.”
It was this that had occupied Lenox’s mind, too. “If mutiny is the motive for these murders, I suppose such brutality sends a message. Yet neither man was bludgeoned, which is the sort of death one sees committed in the heat of anger most often.”
“No.”
Lenox paused, then spoke. “Who do you think murdered them, Mr. Carrow?”
“I wish I could say.”
“Do you know anything more than you’ve told me?”
“A great deal more, I don’t doubt. Sadly, I don’t know what it is.” He rose. “If you don’t need me, the ship is badly shorthanded of officers now. I’ll go.”
“As you wish.”
But Carrow didn’t move. “Mr. Lenox?”
“Yes?”
“The captain—Captain Billings—wants this room sealed. We should leave.”
“Ridiculous. I need ten minutes here.”
“I don’t expect you to understand naval conduct, sir, but I would ask you to leave.”
Unhappily, Lenox followed Carrow out of the room, glancing back once, long enough to see that half-empty bottle of whisky that still stood on Martin’s desk. With a pang in his heart he thought of the warm, comradely spirit that he had felt upon the American ship—and felt half a traitor for wishing himself in that atmosphere again, rather than this one.
He went on deck now, to think for a moment before he visited Tradescant in the surgery. He had the quarterdeck to himself. From it he could observe the ship’s activity, and it was clear to him word had spread. Men were murmuring to each other as they passed; there was a tension, a tangible anxiety, that had flooded the decks.
It reminded him that he had left Teddy, anxious himself, down below deck, and when he remembered Lenox went down.
Teddy was no longer in the cabin. Lenox flew to the gun room and to his immense relief found the boy there, whispering with his friends.
Pimples stood up and smiled wanly. “Is he really gone?” he asked.
“Yes. I’m afraid he is.”
“It’s the worst damned thing I’ve ever heard,” Cresswell said with an ardent bark to his voice. “Hanging is too good for the bastard who did it.”
“Will you find him, Uncle?” said Teddy.
“We’re not far now,” said Lenox. “Please excuse me.”
They weren’t far—and yet he couldn’t imagine that they were close, either. Which of these men was capable of it? Billings? Carrow? Mitchell? Lee? Perhaps the surgeon, Tradescant—though Lenox wouldn’t believe that—or the bitter purser, Pettegree? One of the stewards, perhaps Butterworth? One of the men, bent on mutiny? A midshipman, even. Anything was possible. Which was what made it such a hopeless muddle.
Yet he felt his brain closing in on the answer. If he could just take his eye off of the question, it would come to him. He had answered Teddy honestly. It wasn’t far now, the answer to the question of who was responsible for these fearful killings.
The surgery, often one of the dimmest parts of the ship, was brilliant now with a half-dozen hanging lanterns. Lenox saw their light before he turned into the room and saw Martin’s corpse, laid out on the table where Halifax’s had been.
“Mr. Lenox,” said the surgeon coolly, looking to the doorway, “please, come in.”
“Thank you, Mr. Tradescant. What have you found?”
“Nothing, yet, I’m afraid. Or rather, I have discovered the means of death, but there was no great mystery to that, sadly.”
“Not the same as the last?”
“No. Halifax was stabbed with a penknife, but the captain has been throttled with a thin string, and then sliced open from navel to sternum, and the skin pulled back to reveal a rough rectangle.”
“Have you looked for … souvenirs?” This word Lenox said with a grimace.
“Among the organs, none, and I have looked very thoroughly.”
“As a very great favor to me, might you look once more?”
“Of course.”
The body was scrubbed of blood and looked as clean as it conceivably could, under the circumstances. “Is there anything else? Any odor?”
“As before, an odor of whisky is on the belly.”
“Have you looked at his hands? Did he fight?”
Tradescant turned over the hand closest to him and motioned for his assistant to turn the other, so that the palms were faced down toward the table. He leaned over and examined them with a magnifying glass that hung from a gold chain on his neck. But it was an unnecessarily methodical act; Lenox could see with his naked eyes that only old scars were on the back of the captain’s hands.
“These white lines are not new, of course,” said Tradescant, still leaned over. “I see nothing under the fingernails. No, I don’t think he fought.”
“It was a surprise again, then,” said Lenox, and felt his brain quickening. “And someone he would have admitted to his cabin, in all likelihood, without scruple—an officer.”
“A bluejacket might have entered without Captain Martin raising his fists.”
“Or his voice? I heard no report of shouting from Mr. Slaton.”
The steward, in the corner, shook his old head. “No shouting.”
“Call it inconclusive, but leading,” said Lenox. “Like everything else in this damnable business.”
“A captain murdered on his own vessel,” said Tradescant, shaking his head. “It’s hard to know what to believe in.”
“And mutiny in the bargain,” said Lenox.
“Spare my heart and keep that word quiet, Mr. Lenox,” said the surgeon, and with careful fingers shut Jacob Martin’s eyes forever.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
A mood of claustrophobia grew now. Men eyed each other as they passed on deck; officers began to snap out their orders more sharply.
The ship would reach Egypt in three or perhaps four days and when she did, no doubt some pressure valve would release, and the tension of this cursed voyage would dissipate. In the meantime they were in open water with a murderer, and possibly with a mutinous gang of sailors.