A Burial at Sea

by Charles Finch

  “No, sir. He’s on duty.”

  “I didn’t see him on the quarterdeck.”

  “Indeed, sir? He should be off shortly.”

  “I’ll check back.”

  Lenox returned to his own cabin and made a provisional list of clues, simply to organize his own mind: the penknife, the surgical incisions in Halifax’s torso, the missing blue shirt, the unusual fact that Halifax was not on duty but nevertheless on deck, and finally the medallion.

  This he pulled from the handkerchief he had been keeping it in. (Pockets might be unloved within the navy, but Lenox retained his own.)

  “McEwan, could you bring me a basin of warm water here at my desk?” he called out.

  The warm water came, McEwan trotting it to Lenox. With a bit of rag and a sliver of grayish hand soap, Lenox set about cleaning the medallion.

  It was, as the captain had initially observed, roughly the size of a large coin, a crown, say, but made entirely of sterling silver. When the blood was gone from the object’s surface it sparkled again as if newly polished, which perhaps it recently had been, in particular if it were a treasured element of one officer’s formal dress.

  Lenox pulled out the magnifying glass to look at the object more closely. (This magnifying glass was one of his favorite objects, a present from his friend Lord Cabot, which had an ivory handle and gold rim, small enough to fit into a breast pocket.) Just as he was about to do so, however, there were footsteps in the wardroom and he abandoned the medallion and the magnifying glass to discover whose they were.

  It was Billings, as he had hoped.

  “Hello, Mr. Lenox,” said the lieutenant.

  Lenox scanned the man’s face for guilt, an action that he had never found particularly edifying, given the variety of men’s demeanors and the basic inscrutableness of the brains behind them, but nonetheless performed out of habit.

  “I hoped it would be someone I might ask a favor of. Lieutenant, do you carry a penknife, or a pocketknife, about your person?”

  Billings’s reaction, which Lenox carefully watched, was one of seemingly legitimate surprise. “No,” he said, “aboard ship I only have a compass and a short telescope with me, in general, as you may see.”

  He motioned to where these two objects, the second a brass tube no bigger than a half-burned candle, hung from a cord around his waist. Now that he thought of it Lenox perceived that both were worn as Martin wore his, perhaps in imitation.

  “Ah, of course.”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Do you have a penknife at all?”

  “I do, in my cabin.”

  “Could I borrow it, by any chance?”

  Billings frowned. “You may, of course—but is it possible that you don’t carry one, or that McEwan doesn’t?”

  “Oh, yes,” said Lenox, rather lamely. It was a barefaced lie. “And just when I want to shave my pen down, to write a letter home, you know.”

  “Come into my cabin and I’ll fetch it for you.”

  They went into Billings’s roomy cabin, which was unadorned to the point of austerity. On the desk, set in a slight circular depression in the wood so that it wouldn’t rock, was a silver christening cup, much battered and dented but lovingly polished. Poking up from it was a quill and a short length of string spilled over the side.

  “Should be in here,” said the officer, and started to root around in the cup. When he didn’t find it he actually picked the cup up and turned it over on his desk, fluttering chits of paper and old bits of rubber out with the quill and the string.

  “Mr. Billings?” said Lenox.

  “How strange. It doesn’t seem to be here. I say, Butterworth!” he cried out toward the galley.

  Lenox opened his palm and extended it out. “Lieutenant, is this it?”

  “Why—and so it is! Where did you find it?”

  “This was the weapon that killed Lieutenant Halifax.”

  Billings was struck silent by this information. Only after a moment did he manage to ask if Lenox could repeat what he had said.

  “This was the weapon that killed Halifax, I’m afraid. Tradescant believes it to be such, at any rate, and his reasoning is sound so far as I can see.”

  “That cannot be.”

  “It was in the corpse, underneath the stomach.”

  Billings, who had been close to vomiting when they inspected Halfax’s body, inhaled sharply as if to steady himself, and for good measure took two deep breaths. “I suppose it might have been stolen from my cabin,” he said.

  “Who would have had the opportunity?”

  “Sailors are in here occasionally, on errands. Any officer, of course, and their servants, might have slipped into any of the wardroom cabins.”

  “The purser’s mate, for instance, or the surgeon’s?”

  “Yes. Our cook. There must be twenty people, thirty. More.” Now something occurred to Billings. “But look here—why did you go through that foolery of asking whether I had a penknife?”

  “It was a shabby trick, and I apologize. Will you shake my hand?” Lenox asked. “In my profession—I suppose I should say my former profession—it is necessary occasionally to be deceitful. I didn’t believe that you killed Halifax, but I wanted to judge your reaction.”

  Billings was perhaps too honest to make a diplomatic reply, but he shook hands and said, “Yes, I see.”

  “If you don’t mind, I’ll just keep the knife—not for long.”

  “It was given me by my father,” said Billings, “when I first sailed. I hold a great attachment to the object, foolish though that may be.”

  “I shall take good care of it.”

  “Well, if the situation requires it, I can scarcely refuse.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Am I a suspect?”

  “Everyone must be,” said Lenox. “But I don’t think you killed Halifax, no. Nor do I suspect Carrow, for he was on watch, and among men. Nor the surgeon, nor the captain if it comes to it. Everyone else is fair game at the moment.”

  “What will you do?”

  “Begin interviewing people.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  In his mind Lenox was all but persuaded that someone of the wardroom—a neighbor of his, in other words—had committed this deed. He was open to the possibility that a sailor had murdered Halifax, but didn’t the theft of Billings’s penknife at least suggest proximity to his cabin? Moreover, didn’t Halifax’s midnight rendezvous with his murderer suggest an equal, rather than a subordinate relationship—in other words a gentleman of the wardroom, who might reasonably have asked a second lieutenant to meet him in secret?

  For this reason Lenox decided to begin his interviews with the two lieutenants whose names he did not know—now the third and fourth lieutenants, with Carrow assuming Halifax’s role as second, at any rate for the duration of the Lucy’s present voyage. One of them, a lad not past twenty named Amos Lee, was on duty, so with Martin’s permission Lenox asked the other one if they might meet. The wardroom being occupied, in these daylight hours, in much the way a gentleman’s club on Pall Mall might have been, with the master sprawled in a chair reading and the purser whittling with his boots up on the table, Lenox decided that they might meet more discreetly if they sat in the quiet area at the aft of the Lucy.

  The fourth lieutenant was called Mitchell, a very short, very sturdy chap, rather dark-complected, and possibly even surlier than Carrow. He had been quiet at both of the officers’ dinners Lenox had attended.

  He met Lenox by the long, hip-high taffrail that curved off the back of the ship, where one could lean on one’s arms and watch the ship’s wake furl back white and die again into its metallic blue. “The captain said you wanted to see me, Mr. Lenox?”

  “Yes, thank you. I hope I didn’t interrupt your rest.”

  “No,” said the lieutenant, his intonation terse.

  “I was wondering what you might tell me about this murder.”

  “Nothing, I’m afraid.”

&n
bsp; “Where were you at the time?”

  “Asleep in my cabin. I didn’t hear anything about it until the morning.”

  “Only Carrow was awake, among you officers?”

  “And Halifax.”

  “Yes, of course. But you and Lieutenant Lee kip together, I understand?”

  “Yes, we have bunks in the same cabin.”

  “Was he asleep?”

  “As far as I know. I didn’t observe it firsthand because, as I may have mentioned, I myself was asleep.”

  Lenox paused. “Is this conversation a matter of inconvenience to you, Mr. Mitchell?”

  “Yes, as a matter of fact.”

  “You don’t care to help discover who murdered Halifax?”

  “Oh, the murderer ought to be caught.”

  “Is your issue with me, then?”

  Mitchell was silent.

  “Well?” said Lenox.

  “May I speak freely?”

  “I should hope you would.”

  “It’s a ridiculous use of a good ship, hauling you to Egypt.”

  “I understood that the ship was bound for Egypt already.”

  “Faugh!”

  In other circumstances Lenox might have tried to conciliate him, but the truth was that whether he recognized it or not his time in Parliament—in power—had, perhaps inevitably, made him less tolerant of disrespect, less quick to amicability. Besides, it was worth seeing if this Mitchell had a bad temper.

  “And you think you know enough of state, enough of our position in the world, enough of Her Majesty’s government, to pass judgment on what I plan to do in Egypt?”

  “No, sir,” said Mitchell—not removing his gaze from Lenox’s, however.

  “Then who do you think you are?”

  “I asked if I might speak freely, sir.”

  “Given which I hope you don’t mind that I shall, too. Your judgments are a fool’s, taken in haste and for clumsy pride’s sake not withdrawn. I would scarcely inform you of how to set a spinnaker, and I advise you that your ignorance of politics is as severe as mine of sailing. Now, answer my questions before I’m forced to see the captain about you—how long had you known Halifax?”

  Mitchell’s face was venomous, but he choked out a reply. “Only a few weeks. I was called into the Lucy while she was in dry dock. The captain is a friend of my father’s. Sir,” he spat out.

  “Did you kill Halifax?”

  This knocked Mitchell down. “No!” he said. “What—no!”

  “The newest man on board must be a suspect, of course.”

  “I didn’t do it, and I resent the question.”

  “It’s shabby to go around stealing penknives, too.”

  Mitchell looked genuinely baffled at that. “Excuse me?” he said.

  “Never mind. Tell me, what do you think happened?”

  “I don’t know. I suppose one of the sailors got angry and took his revenge. They’re a coarse lot—devils on land.”

  “Why not kill him in Plymouth?” said Lenox. “Why wait until they were on board the ship?”

  “I can’t say, sir.”

  Lenox stared at the younger man for a moment. “Thank you,” he said, and turned on his heel abruptly to walk away.

  “I didn’t do it,” Mitchell called after him.

  Lenox wanted to speak to more of the wardroom officers now, but before he did he stopped into his own cabin: it was time to inspect this medallion once and for all.

  To his astonishment, however, his desk was empty. The medallion was gone.

  “McEwan!” he shouted.

  The steward lumbered in, not surprisingly working a bit of food in his jaw. The whole cabin smelled like cinnamon toast, and Lenox felt a pang of hunger in his stomach.

  “Did you take away the basin that was on my desk?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Then you have the medallion that I was cleaning? The one that was in the basin?”

  “No, sir. The basin was empty—even the water had been thrown out the porthole, sir.”

  “The porthole was open?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Lenox felt sick—how amateurish of him to be distracted from a tangible clue. No doubt the water and the medallion had been splashed through the porthole together. By the murderer.

  “Lord.”

  McEwan looked confused. “I figgered you’d come back and took it away, so I cleaned the basin.”

  “This damn naval obsession with cleaning. Listen to me now: Did you look at the medallion, when I left it here earlier? I know you must have been in to sweep.”

  McEwan gulped. “No.”

  “Deal honestly with me and I won’t be angry.” Lenox paused. “I’m sorry to have spoken sharply, but it’s important.”

  “Well, I may have glanced at it, is all, sir, to make sure it didn’t need … cleaning, or polishing, I suppose, the way things do, which is only right,” he concluded, rather lamely.

  “Yes, I’m sure. Tell me, then—what did it say?”

  “It was a medal given out for service in the Second Opium War. On the front was a picture of the HMS Chesapeake as well as the date, and on the back was the name of the midshipman who received it. And a very little nipper he must have been, too, not past ten or eleven.”

  “Who was it?”

  “Lieutenant Carrow, sir.”

  “Carrow!”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Lenox went deep into thought for a moment, as McEwan looked anxiously on.

  Something strange was happening now; inside and near the body of a murdered lieutenant had been objects that belonged to two of his fellow officers, both presumably stolen, neither there, it would seem, for any particular reason. After all, another knife would have killed Halifax just as well, and in all probability with more efficiency. As for the medallion, it wouldn’t have been torn from Carrow’s breast in a struggle—Lenox’s first thought—because he wouldn’t have worn it on deck.

  He would have to have a word with Carrow, to be sure.

  “Interesting,” Lenox said at length. “Well, keep it to yourself, please, no talk of it to that Evers chap.”

  “No, sir.”

  “And don’t look at my things again, please. I know it’s your job to tidy my cabin, but there must be some proper expectation of privacy.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Lenox paused. “Incidentally, could you go to the galley and sort me out a piece of that cinnamon toast? And maybe a cup of that Chinese tea I brought, the dark stuff?”

  “Oh, of course, sir.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The body of Lieutenant Thomas St. James Halifax having been thoroughly examined and, of course, confirmed dead, that night the men of the Lucy made preparation for its burial at sea.

  As the hour of the ceremony marched closer—all men on board knew from their superiors, down to the purser’s third assistant, that it was to be at half past five—a deep melancholy took hold of the ship. The men were quiet in their preparations. Lenox observed them, two sailors letting the starboard gangway out, a group of others clearing the main deck and furling the mainmast’s sails tight around it, four more bringing a long mess table onto the deck and setting it beside the open gangway.

  Martin himself supervised them, and also ordered the sails set in counterpoise to each other, so that the ship would be as perfectly still as possible. Then he called out, “Top gallant yards, acock bill,” an order that sent men scurrying up the rigging.

  As soon as the gangway was folded out and the Lucy was as near motionless as the rocking of the ocean would permit, men began to head below deck, the officers, the warrant officers, the midshipmen, the bluejackets, the marines, all in a great drove, to change into their best dress.

  Lenox, already in a black suit, stayed above, and found himself nearly the only person there.

  Downstairs, he knew from Tradescant, the sailmaker was sewing Halifax’s body into a snow-white sheet, with two cannonballs at his feet to weigh him down. The last
stitch would go through his nose, by old naval custom, as a final confirmation that he was dead.

  At five fifteen the men began to assemble on deck in long, tidy rows, all dressed in their white duck trousers, blue shirts, and blue caps. Usually a gathering of this variety on ship was loud, but nobody spoke now. Then the officers came on board; each, Lenox saw, was carrying a white flower.

  “You will stand with us, Mr. Lenox?” said Martin, coming up from behind him with his tricorn hat tucked under his arm.

  “I should be honored.”

  When several minutes later they were all assembled and the body in its white sailcloth had been hauled onto the deck and laid out on the long mess table, the bosun—a sort of head sailor, in charge of various small crews of seamen, generally the soundest naval mind at a captain’s disposal—piped, and then called out “Ship’s company, off hats!” in a loud voice that seemed to carry unnaturally in that great void of ocean.

  The men removed their hats.

  The chaplain stepped forward before the men and began to speak. In their short acquaintance he had been a figure of fun, of comedy, to Lenox, but in his vestments now he looked terribly grave, and his booming voice seemed free of the slur it took when he drank spirits.

  “We come here today to bury at sea a good and God-fearing man, Lieutenant Thomas Halifax. May he rest in peace.

  “I shall read from the book of Job, and from the book of John.” The chaplain sighed heavily, and then spoke. “‘He brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out. The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.’”

  “Blessed be the name of the Lord,” the ship’s company chanted back.

  The chaplain went on. “‘I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.’ Amen.”

  “Amen.”

  Now the chaplain began to read from Lamentations, following them with two psalms, the thirtieth and the ninetieth. Lenox listened to them more as music than as words, and found himself staring into the soft golden twilight, the birds wheeling through it, the ocean mapping the light, the sky clear and more white than blue. A great hollow feeling came into his chest, almost like tears, of something inarticulate and enormous, something he only vaguely understood.