‘I can’t see anything that can upset it, can you?’
‘No,’ he said, ‘I can’t.’
‘Then don’t be such a pessimist,’ she protested.
‘Better if one of us keeps a sound head,’ he said, in mock seriousness.
She gazed up at him, her smile became an expression of affection.
‘I feel so very secure with you, Benjamin,’ she said. ‘When I’m with you I never think any harm could befall me.’
He became truly serious.
‘I’ll see it never does,’ he promised.
‘Me! Me!’
They turned. Sophia was standing at the end of the line, arms outstretched and face twisted into the beginning of tears at being completely ignored.
Briggs went to her, unclipped the line and took her into his arms.
‘You too,’ he said, nuzzling the child’s hair with his face. ‘I’ll keep you safe, too.’
‘That’s great comfort to me,’ Sarah said.
He looked at her, not understanding.
‘Knowing how well the children would be cared for if anything happened to me,’ enlarged the woman.
He looked over the child’s shoulder as Richardson moved back along the deck.
‘Getting better,’ said the first mate, looking out to sea.
‘Aye,’ said Briggs. ‘Prepare to sail.’
Frederick Flood decided it would have taken someone far more astute than any at the enquiry to notice a difference in his demeanour. That there was a difference he accepted readily enough, for just as he had earlier recognised his confidence, he now made a conscious effort to be honest with himself. It was his confidence that had suffered from Dr Patron’s visit to his home the previous evening. But just his confidence; certainly not his conviction that crime was at the root of the Mary Celeste mystery. The analyst was an incompetent fool who had clearly carried out the wrong experiments. The Attorney-General had had no scientific training but he had gained a passing knowledge during his long career. Solvents rather than water would have proved the particles to be what they unquestionably were, blood. It would have been impossible to take up the samples without taking metal scrapings at the same time. And of course those minute metal pieces would have rusted, submerged, as the man had conceded, for nearly a day in water. Once he had identified carbonate of iron, the idiot had considered his search over.
Flood frowned, hunched over his papers. Had he not kept Patron’s examination absolutely secret, Flood would have suspected him of collusion with either Winchester or Morehouse and accused him of something far graver than incompetence.
He sighed. A realist, he accepted that nothing was to be achieved by recrimination. The evidence — the damning, clinching evidence which he had this day intended to announce to the enquiry and shatter all these carefully rehearsed accounts of derelict ships on the high seas — had been destroyed. It merely made his job harder; harder, but not impossible.
He shifted his attention, to where a scrap of cloth at the top of his bench covered against casual examination the exhibits he intended introducing. The now useless sword was there; and something else, which might have as upsetting an effect upon today’s witness as he had hoped the weapon would do.
His gaze continued on to where Oliver Deveau, first mate of the Dei Gratia, was moving to the end of his evidence-in-chief, guided by the lawyer Pisani. Without the positive identification of blood, which would have shown the man’s evidence to be nothing more than perjury, there was only one course left open to Flood. By the expertise and cleverness of his cross-examination he would have to make the court aware of the utter impossibility of what the Dei Gratia crew were claiming. And if such an admission could be obtained, this was the man from whom it should come. By his own evidence, Deveau had conceded that it had been he who first stepped aboard the Mary Celeste on December 5. If heinous work had been done that day, then Deveau had been actively involved.
No one had noticed his slight lessening in confidence, realised Flood, as Pisani sat down and Cochrane invited him to take up the questioning. Deveau was clearly ill at ease; more frightened than Morehouse had been the previous day. Occasionally the man’s hand strayed up to his beard in a vague, combing motion and he felt his hair several times, as if assuring himself that it was not disarranged.
The inability to attack immediately with positive proof of bloodstaining was monstrous, decided Flood, as he stood up. It would have caused the witness’s immediate collapse.
‘It was a little after three o’clock in the afternoon when you set out for what you believed to be an abandoned vessel?’ said Flood.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘What were the sea conditions?’
‘There was a tolerably heavy sea running.’
‘Describe how you first saw the Mary Celeste ’
Deveau hesitated, composing his recollection. ‘Her head was westward when we first saw her. She was on starboard tack. With her foresail set, she would come up to the wind and fall off again. The wind was north, not much then, though blowing heavily in the morning. With the sails she had when I first saw her, she might come up and fall away a little, but not much. She would always keep those sails full. The sheet was fast on the port side. She was found on the starboard tack.’
‘So from a rowing boat you had to board a vessel under sail in some wind.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Is it easy to do such a thing, unless the crew of the sailed vessel heaves to?’
Deveau frowned. ‘There was no one aboard the Mary Celeste, sir,’ he said, as if he thought the Attorney-General had misunderstood his earlier evidence.
‘Exactly,’ said Flood. ‘So I will repeat the question. Is it not difficult to close to a sailed vessel in a rowing boat and then board?’
‘The wind had slackened, as I said. The Mary Celeste had virtually no way on when we crossed to her.’
‘So by the strength of your arms, you were able to row over and get aboard?’
The disbelief was pitched perfectly in Flood’s voice.
‘Yes, sir.’
Flood said nothing, letting the silence build up as if he expected Deveau to continue.
‘How many of you were there in this rowing boat?’ demanded Flood, when he considered Deveau sufficiently uncomfortable.
Before Deveau could respond, Pisani was on his feet, addressing the judge.
‘Can there be any purpose whatsoever,’ he said, ‘in going point by point over everything that this man has already recounted in great detail and clarity in his evidence-in-chief, protracting this enquiry far beyond the time necessary?’
‘I shall decide the time necessary for the conduct of this hearing, Mr Pisani,’ rebutted Cochrane immediately. ‘What need is there for haste?’
‘I was not urging haste, sir,’ said Pisani, aware he had antagonised the judge by a badly worded protest. ‘I was suggesting that the time of this enquiry is being wilfully wasted.’
‘Mr Attorney-General?’ Cochrane asked.
Flood half-turned, away from Deveau and towards Pisani.
‘My learned friend seems anxious for a conclusion,’ he said, ‘whereas I am anxious for the truth. Fractious for him though the search may be, I can only plead for his patience.’
Pisani refused to be overwhelmed by the sarcasm.
‘Like my learned friend,’ he said, ‘I, too, am anxious that we should arrive at the truth of the matter. And I am equally anxious that it should be the real truth and that it will not be obscured for reasons that some of us present find difficult to comprehend.’
‘I am experiencing no difficulty in comprehending the Attorney-General’s questioning,’ intruded Cochrane.
‘Nor I, sir,’ said Pisani immediately. ‘It’s the point of such questioning that is perhaps a little more difficult to ascertain.’
‘Then I must repeat what I said to my learned friend not five minutes ago,’ said Flood. ‘If he has patience, then it all may become clear.’
‘In which case,’ intervened the judge again, anxious to end the dispute between the two advocates, ‘I think we should continue.’