“See for yourself,” said McKenzie, and pulled a curtain at the far side of the room. He extracted precisely what I had been hoping for — a wooden ladder, quite long enough to reach the hook from which Eliza Logan’s body had hung.
As I climbed up, my black silk skirt caught on one of the rungs, but it was worth it. On the top pantry shelf stood two bottles of good brandy. But there was space for two more.
He had needed the ladder to obtain his provisions. He had taken it from the after-cabin. Brought it back here to the pantry, where he knew it belonged. Climbed up and supplied himself with brandy.
And now, I was almost certain, Captain Dayton Logan was still somewhere aboard the China Star, living on brandy and fine Virginia ham.
When I stopped to unsnag my best gown from the slivered rung of the pantry ladder, I found caught in the splintered wood a small, three-cornered fragment of blue-flowered calico. Eliza’s wrapper had caught there just as my skirt had done. But had she climbed up the ladder by choice? Or had she been carried there — drugged asleep, perhaps, or unconscious?
I put the scrap of fabric carefully away with my notes, and said nothing to Philip of it, nor of my suspicions concerning Logan. Next day at noon, we made port at Gabinea, and my cousin went off with Andrew McKenzie to inform whatever authorities they could find.
If he was still aboard, Logan might try to make his escape now that we were in port. But something in me doubted he would bother to attempt it. His last hope was gone. Eliza was under the sea.
Feeling almost overwhelmed by all I had seen in those last few days, I went ashore myself that morning, needing the solidity of simple earth beneath my feet — or at least the solid boards of Gabinea docks. I was fending off a seller of palm-leaf fans when I heard a little girl’s voice cry out very near me.
“Bet you won’t!”
“Betcher I will!” This time, a boy, somewhat older by the sound of him.
“Won’t!”
“Will!”
“Won’t neither! I will, though!”
A chubby girl of around four years, with a head of carrot-colored hair so thick she appeared to be wearing a fur hat with braids hanging from it, came dashing out from behind a pile of barrels on the dock, put a small, sticky hand into mine, walked two or three steps with me, then laughed and ran away again.
“Ma!” shouted the boy. “’Ropa’s a-making advances again!”
“Europa Lavinia Thomas!” cried a woman’s voice in an East London accent. “Don’t you go a-rollickin’ innocent gentlefolk like that! Why, the lady’ll take you for a wild sawwage!”
The two children ran off after a man selling monkeys, and “Ma” came laboring down the gangplank with two smaller offspring clinging on to her skirts. She was plump and pleasant-faced, with hair of a less startling red than her children’s. She laughed and dusted her floury hands on her apron, whitening a baby at either side.
“I’m that sorry, ma’am,” she said. “Did she dirty yer glove? If you care to come aboard, I’m sure to have somink’ll clean it.”
“Oh, there’s no harm done,” I said, glancing down at the name of the ship on the berthing card. “I beg your pardon, but — are you Mrs. Captain Thomas?”
I had stumbled on — or been overwhelmed by — the mother hen of the Nancy Bright.
“I knowed as that poor lamb would come to grief,” she said, wiping her eyes. “And such a dreadful way to go. A-hangin’ there as if she was some turrible willain.”
We sat at tea in the after-cabin of the Nancy. It was a warm, cluttered room, full of hobbyhorses, one-armed dollies, alphabet blocks, darning eggs, issues of The Ladies’ Companion, ships-in-bottles, and music books.
She followed my gaze. “Them’s for the melodeon,” she said. “It’s somewheres under them quilt blocks.” She sighed. “I do love a melo-deon. Can’t play it, not a scrap. But it’s ever such a comfort at sea.”
“Eliza seemed very fond of her spinet,” I said.
“Ah, but it weren’t hers, not rightly. That’s how all the trouble come betwixt ’em. If I’d ever ’a thought it would end as it done—” She shuddered, and put another dollop of honey in her willowware cup. “But somebody ’ad to tell ’er. She were owed that, poor mite. No, that there pianer was Lucy’s. Logan’s other wife.”
I gulped some tea and said nothing.
“That fancy bed was ’ers, too,” Mrs. Thomas continued. “And the carpet. And the sewing machine. All ’ers. Had money, Lucy did. That’s ’ow Logan come by his share of the Star.”
“How did she die?” I said.
“Didn’t,” she replied, and took a sip of tea.
“You mean — she was murdered?”
“Oh no, my dear. Left him. Didn’t know her own mind when she married him, that’s my belief. Thought sea captains was romantic, I don’t doubt. ’igh-strung, Lucy were. I thank the Lord I ain’t strung at all. I’m kneaded like a good penny loaf, and so’s Cap’n T., and we likes it that way.”
“Where is Lucy now? Do you know?”
“Lives someplace tony. Inland. Vienner, I believe. Ships don’t dock at Vienner.”
“But they do in Maine.”
Mrs. Thomas cradled her teacup in her two hands. “Poor Eliza. Poor little mite. She never knowed Logan more’n a fortnight afore they was wed. But sixteen, she were, and a great ache in her to get out of her pa’s house. Logan took her to Boston for a week, and she said he was handsome, then, with his grey whiskers and his uniform, and he didn’t seem old to her at all. Well, I expect he felt young with her. And he’s a decent man at heart, and that lonesome all these years, you wouldn’t believe it. A clean start and a new life, that’ll be what he wanted. But it weren’t clean, were it? Couldn’t be, not with Lucy still wed to ’im. I did pity him, miss. Though, mind you, he needed horsewhippin’ for misleadin’ that poor mite like he done, and so I told him, and Cap’n T. told him, too.”
“Could he not divorce this Lucy?”
“A lady like ’er, with an uppity fambly, as everybody knowed every whisper of? They’d keep ’im in the courts a hundred years, tryin’ to get back her dowry. And he’d spent it, you see, buyin’ into the Star.”
“So. He’d have lost his ship if they divorced. And he was locked out of all normal living. No wonder he couldn’t bear to tell Eliza. He’d have lost her as well.”
Mrs. T. nodded. “Thought better of it after they was wed, that’s my belief. Takes her back to that sour old grinder of a father of hers, he does, and off he sails in the Star for a three years’ voyage. Thought she’d dreamed her marriage, that’s what she told me.”
“So when Logan returned at last,” I said, “she begged to sail with him, as you do with your husband.”
“Wanted to start a fambly. Asked me how I keeps the little ‘uns from flyin’ outa their hammocks in rough seas. But in that museum of Lucy’s—” Mrs. Thomas paused. “Perhaps I didn’t ought to say this, Miss Harriet, you bein’ unmarried. But once Eliza’d shipped out with him — Well, Logan hardly touched her in the married way after they come aboard. It was Lucy’s place, do you see, and everything put him in mind of ’er, I expect. Eliza come to me that day at Tacoya and wept, poor little rabbit.” Great tears rolled down her own face now. “God forgive me for a meddlin’ old biddy. I should never’ve told her the truth.”
I knew I ought to reassure her, ought to mouth the conventional wisdom and tell her that knowing the truth is always best. But when the illusion of loving is all there is to save you, and all there will ever be, then truth may snap you in two like a cheap necklace. Mrs. Thomas was right. She should never have told Eliza Logan the truth.