‘Are you aware, Dr Patron, that because of your crass incompetence you have endangered the proving of an undoubted crime?’ he said, his voice jagged in his rage.
‘I do not accept incompetence,’ said Patron, in matching anger. ‘I carried out the accepted tests upon the material with which I was supplied and reached a negative finding.’
‘Didn’t it occur to you that I might seek a second opinion?’
‘There would have been little point. The conclusion would have been that which I reached.’
‘You compound your incompetence by arrogance!’ said Flood, voice loud again. ‘How can you say what someone else might have found using methods different from those which you chose to employ?’
‘I am confident of my report,’ insisted Patron, pointing to the paper which lay as he had put it upon the Attorney-General’s desk.
The complete awareness of how the analyst had damaged the case he was attempting to pursue swept through the Attorney-General. So, too, did the feeling of impotence at his inability to correct it.
‘I could have you arraigned before the enquiry to answer for this,’ he said vehemently. But he wouldn’t take such a course, he accepted, even as he made the threat. Because it would provide an escape route for all those whose guilt he now had to prove by other methods.
‘I will not be threatened,’ said the other man. ‘I carried out the task entrusted to me to the best of my ability. It is not my fault it failed to register positively.’
‘It is precisely your fault, Dr Patron,’ said Flood.
‘This is the very first occasion upon which my professional ability has been challenged,’ said Patron.
And it would be the last, determined Flood. He would never again employ Patron upon any experiment. And he’d make damned sure that few others did, either.
Anxious now to end the encounter, Patron took a diary from his briefcase, opening it officiously.
‘I’d appreciate some indication of when you’d like me to appear,’ he said stiffly.
Flood frowned at him. ‘What?’
‘A date for me to give evidence at the enquiry.’
Flood experienced another surge of rage, this time at the thought of how eagerly the other lawyers would seize and twist the analyst’s evidence.
‘I am undecided if that will be necessary, in view of the negative nature of the results,’ said Flood. Seeing the look of surprise upon the man’s face, he added heavily: ‘I would imagine that questions about the missing exhibits might become a little invidious.’
‘I devoted a great deal of time and attention to the tests, believing them to be important,’ said Patron.
‘A pity that even more time was not invested,’ said Flood. He moved from his desk, as anxious as the doctor to end the interview. The man was an irritating fool.
The pretence of civility was difficult, but Flood personally accompanied the analyst to the door. A fresh thought halted him just inside: the advantage to the other advocates, if they became aware of the inconclusive evidence. He seized Patron’s arm:
‘You appreciate, of course, that even though it has not been officially produced, your report remains a court document, commissioned as it was by me?’
‘I don’t understand,’ said the man doubtfully.
‘It’s contents are sub judice, to be discussed with no one,’ said the Attorney-General.
‘Oh.’
‘In fact, it could be construed as a punishable offence to reveal your findings unless so permitted by the judge.’
‘I see,’ said the doctor.
‘To no one,’ emphasised the Attorney-General.
‘No one,’ agreed Dr Patron.
Flood stood at the door, watching the man enter his carriage, then turned back into the house. Unthinkingly, he walked back to the verandah and sat where he had done before the man’s arrival, gazing out over the bay.
Again he was swept by the nauseous sensation of falling into emptiness. He clenched his hands together, fighting against the feeling. On the Peak all those years ago there had been friends aware of his difficulty. This time he had no one to guide him back to safety.
Benjamin Briggs was not an unemotional man: in the privacy of their bedroom or night cabin, Sarah found him a considerate but still passionate lover. In his public conduct, however, he was a self-contained, very controlled man. It was not an attitude of shyness. Nor did it come from a lack of outspokenness. The very opposite, in fact. He simply regarded the charades in which people frequently indulged to convey their moods to be unnecessary posturing; a sign of immaturity, even. If Briggs had something to say, he said it. But never with rudeness or malice or without good cause, so that people were rarely offended. And if they were, then Briggs, who was not unfeeling either, considered it unfortunate but unavoidable. He had to be accepted as he was, someone without artifice or affectation.
He stood at the rail of the Mary Celeste, staring back at the vague skyline of New York from which they had so recently departed. There were many captains who would have indulged in some after-deck ranting at being beaten back by a head wind within an hour of leaving Pier 50 the previous day and being forced to anchor off Staten Island.
But it would have achieved nothing, except perhaps polite smiles from the crew. He had experienced a moment of passing irritation and then he had dismissed it, just as he had dismissed the initial, fleeting thought of not turning back, but sailing on against the weather. Having Sarah and the baby aboard had not influenced his decision to heave to. It would have been bad seamanship to have gone out into the dirty weather obviously confronting him when there was protective anchorage so close to hand. And Briggs was not a poor seaman.
He was aware that the crew whom he still had to come to know would recognise it as the decision of good captaincy. Briggs was no more interested in impressing them than he was in earning their sycophantic smiles, but he had never forgotten a long-ago lesson from his father on the importance of a captain’s achieving the confidence of his men. A confident crew was a good crew. Even more important, an obedient one.
Briggs did not regard it, therefore, as a completely pointless delay, but as time put to some purpose, psychological rather than practical though it might be.
He heard movement behind him and turned as Richardson emerged from the main hatch, followed by the German brothers Volkert and Boz Lorensen.
‘Wherever we thought it necessary, we’ve double-lashed the barrels against movement,’ said the first mate.
Briggs gazed beyond the man, out to sea. Although little after midday, the weather was so black that it was impossible to detect the horizon.
‘It’ll doubtless be a precaution we’ll need,’ agreed Briggs. The man’s initiative pleased him; his order had merely been to check the cargo.
‘If it remains like this,’ said the first mate, looking in the same direction as the captain, ‘there’ll be few days when we’re not awash.’
‘Best double batten the hatches,’ said the captain.
‘There’s already a smell down there,’ said Richardson, nodding towards the still-open hold.
‘There’ll be opportunity to ventilate,’ said Briggs confidently.