‘The instrument that killed him was much larger than a mere knife. But its… appearance in the shipmaster’s cabin was the merest chance. A thousand-to-one chance. No, ten-thousand-to-one. If only my brother had not opened the casement to get rid of the smell of pipe smoke… Yes, he might have survived if the window had remained shut. But he left it open as he prepared for bed.’
‘What in God’s name happened?’ I said.
‘It would have been like threading a needle. A fine operation, requiring a sharp eye and a steady hand. Except that this needle was being threaded on the waters of the Thames and there was no eye or hand involved.’
‘Are you losing your mind, Colin?’ said Henry Tallman. ‘Why all this talk of needles and eyes and hands?’
‘There is your murder weapon,’ said the shipmaster. ‘Behold.’
As one we turned to watch the herring buss, the Draco, swing away from the Gravesend wharf, eased off by the staves of the herring fishers and turning with the tide. The boat sat much lower in the water than the Argo so that we peered down on to her deck with its canvas-covered hoops. A couple of the mariners glanced up and raised their fists at us, half salute, half insult. The end of the bowsprit was itself surmounted with an extension that glinted in the sun. The bowsprit was made of stout wood, but its tip was sheathed in metal.
And then I realized what Colin Case was talking about. Or thought I did.
‘Your brother had the ill luck to be standing with his back to the open casement,’ I said.
‘He should not have been up so late,’ said Colin. ‘I expect he could not sleep in his greedy excitement. He was examining his precious sky-stone, cradling it in his hands, working out his profit, oblivious to what was happening behind his back beyond the still-open casement…’
‘That boat there, the herring buss, floated straight towards the Argo in the night-’
Colin Case nodded. I could have sworn that he was smiling, but he was standing against the sun and it was hard to be sure. I went on.
‘-and the tip of the bowsprit entered through the aperture provided by the window like… like the point of a giant foil-’
‘-a closed window would have shattered, even provided some defence,’ added Tallman.
‘I understand the talk about needles now,’ said Jack.
‘Jonathan was struck by the tip of the bowsprit. The jib boom, if we want to be precise. It delivered a great blow with the whole mass of the vessel behind it. The tip ripped into his back and flung him up so his head hit the roof. Almost at once the other vessel was fended off from doing further damage. No one on board was aware of more than a violent jarring or jolting while all this was going on. The Draco slipped back and the bowsprit — or the very end of the thing — withdrew from the cabin as neatly as it had entered while its tip withdrew from my brother’s body, yes, like a sword’s point. It did some slight damage to the frame of the cabin window, but not one of us was aware that it left a dead man in its wake.’
Nicholas Tallman performed a priestly act at this point. He lowered his head and crossed himself. The rest of us stood silent, dumfounded by Colin Case’s explanation. Yet it was surely correct.
I watched as the herring buss manoeuvred itself nearer the centre of the stream. Then, with sails hoist so as to catch the gentle wind, it set off with the outgoing tide to find fish.
Jack and I left the boat at Gravesend. We sailed on the long ferry back to London, and that journey took us another day, so we missed two days’ work and were fined and berated accordingly. We preferred to pretend that we had been playing truant — the kind of misbehaviour which is not unknown among players — rather than recount the strange tale of the travellers on the Argo and death by bowsprit.
Colin Case must have managed to square things with his friendly local justice, for the boat soon sailed on for France. The death of Dr Jonathan was presented as the peculiar accident which it was, and it has to be said that nobody much mourned the passing of this unpleasant individual. Nicholas Tallman, I assume, reached the safety of a friendlier country, while Thomas served under the tutelage of his kindlier cousin, Colin Case.
As for what happened to the sky-stone I remain ignorant. Ignorant whether it found its way to Maitre Renard in St-Malo or whether Henry Tallman returned it to London to the ‘important foreigner’. Or perhaps kept it for himself. After all, he had been eager to show it to his friend Dr Dee. I don’t know, though. Some things are destined to remain mysteries.
And there is another mystery, too. It was only when Jack and I discussed it later that we realized how willingly both of us had accepted Colin Case’s story of the death of his brother. That it was an accident disguised as a murder. It was hardly surprising we’d leaped to the conclusion of murder. The unlamented physician was the victim of a violent, bloody assault, and there were several individuals on board with the motive and opportunity to kill him. We were just as quick to seize hold of the comforting notion that Jonathan Case’s death was a freakish chance. But what if it wasn’t? What if it was not the bowsprit of the Draco which had done the damage after all but — say — one of those vicious, hooked implements the mariners made so free with on deck?
Perhaps it had been the other way about, a murder disguised as an accident. If so, Colin Case’s story was a brilliant piece of improvisation to cover himself… or to cover someone else… just a story.
Epilogue
London, 2010
Greg edged his hand along the rim of the crater. The profile was ragged and unclear, but he reckoned he could make out a distinct circular shape. In fact, he was sure he could see a central peak indicative of the crater floor rebounding from the compressional shock of an impact. This is what was so exciting about scrambling over a new crater. Checking his coordinates, he noted them down on the pad he carried with him. 61 10N: 45 25W. Scanning across it, he estimated the diameter of the crater to be over two kilometres. Big enough to be a medium-size meteorite impact on this part of Greenland. He would have to measure it more accurately later. But for now visual observation was enough to get his pulse racing.
He looked south to the airstrip at Narsarsuaq, where other research team members could make their landing if he was right about the crater. No terrestrial impact craters had so far been identified on the surface of Greenland, covered as it mostly was with snow and ice. But the nearby landmass of continental North America was peppered with them. He ached to be the first person to identify a genuine impact crater on Greenland. He scanned across the deep blue fjord to the tiny settlement of Qassiarsuk hanging on to the small strip of green below the snowfields and glaciers. He thought he could just make out the site of Brattahli? the ancient Viking settlement at the head of the fjord. It was a sheltered location almost a hundred kilometres from the ocean, and no one knew exactly why it had been abandoned. Some scientists simply reckoned the weather had got worse, and the settlers had retreated from the encroaching ice and snow. Other people, more inclined to believe the old legends, said some evil had taken place there, driving the settlers out. Greg was a sceptic when it came to the supernatural, preferring hard facts and common sense to the unspeakable and the unprovable. Once more he returned his gaze to the impact crater and looked across the far rim towards the whiteness of the mountains that angled away from him. The sudden and insistent burble of his landline cut across his excitement.
He sighed and flicked the knob situated under his right hand in order to turn the motorized wheelchair to the left. The hum of the electric motor, which he hardly noticed normally, seemed like the angry buzzing of a cloud of bees. He felt as though a dull, leaden weight was filling his chest, which was ironic. As a T2 paraplegic, he had no feeling at all from somewhere just above his nipple line. When the accident had first happened, and he was lying in hospital, he had been told by an inexperienced doctor that he was lucky because he still had full use of his arms and hands. Greg had sworn at the poor man with all the vehemence he could muster. He sure as hell didn’t feel lucky just at that moment.