Deadly Shoals

by Joan Druett

  “You sound as if you know them well.” Captain Coffin’s tone was accusing.

  “They are two of the sealers we rescued from their sinking ship, three months back, and I had to cross-examine them during a murder investigation.”

  “Murder?”

  “Aye.”

  “Did you catch the killer?”

  “Aye. Did Boyd make a habit of smacking the cadets about?” Wiki asked, because it would explain why his father had been so anxious to get rid of the two men.

  To Wiki’s surprise, his father blushed. He mumbled, “Boyd pestered them all the time—in an unnatural kind of way. He seemed fascinated by their youth. The boys—they’re healthy young scoundrels, and they laughed at him, I think. Then he cornered the lad while he was working in the hold by himself, and a fight developed. Mr. Seward heard the ruckus, went down, and settled it.”

  “With a belaying pin?”

  “He felled Boyd with a punch to the jaw.”

  “Knocked him out?”

  “Stretched him senseless on the deck.”

  So the mate had been in a towering rage—a passion that had lent him unnatural strength, Wiki thought. While Mr. Seward looked athletic enough, he was much more lightly built than Boyd.

  Again, he was reminded of George’s remark about Alf Seward’s strange possessiveness, and said slowly, “I think the real reason you don’t carry a second mate is that Mr. Seward doesn’t want to share the ship with another officer. And that’s the reason he doesn’t like me on board, too.”

  His father flushed again, this time with anger. “I’ve already told you that he rules the roost around here. You make it obvious that you don’t like it, Wiki, but it isn’t any of your business. You’re here because Wilkes ordered you to get that affidavit from Stackpole, and the sooner you do it, the sooner you can get back to the fleet. So why don’t you do your job, instead of trying to tell me how to run my ship?”

  “You’re right,” said Wiki, and stood up and left the cabin.

  Thirteen

  The fog was thicker than ever, hanging in great gray billows about the masts and rigging, and it was impossible to see the bowsprit from the poop. Wiki paused as the bell by the wheel rang four times for the end of the first dogwatch—just six in the evening, but because of the gloom cast by the fog it seemed dusk already. On the Swallow, the second tot of rum of the day would have been issued. Here, Wiki thought, it might be the same, as he heard sounds of jollity from the foredeck, along with the merry scraping of a fiddle and the chorus of a hearty song. Obviously, the visiting whalemen were being well entertained.

  Mr. Seward was on the starboard side of the quarterdeck, his oilskins glistening in the light of the cresset lantern, which also shone on his damp blond hair, but he paid Wiki no attention. Stackpole was standing at the rail amidships, looking seaward, and glaring at the billowing mists. As soon as Wiki came up alongside, he grabbed his arm, and hissed in his ear, “William Coffin is your father?”

  Wiki was surprised. “Didn’t you know?”

  “Never guessed. Not that there ain’t a resemblance,” the whaleman added.

  “Is there? Good heavens,” said Wiki without expression.

  “And this ship is a floating antique!”

  “Launched in 1813, but looked antique even then, I imagine,” Wiki agreed. “She was built according to my father’s instructions. He had romantic ideas and almost unlimited funds.”

  Stackpole paused, but obviously couldn’t resist asking, “Family funds?”

  “Personally acquired riches. At the start of the war for free trade and sailors’ rights he was given the command of the fastest American ship afloat, and within a few months had accumulated enough prize money to have the Osprey built.”

  “He was a privateer?”

  “And a lucky one, too. The ship he commanded could make thirteen knots with a crew of one hundred and fifty and all her stores, cannon, boats, and bulwarks aboard, and because of her speed he could outrun British frigates with ease. Not only did he capture a large consignment of military supplies intended for Cornwallis, and deliver them to Washington with a flourish, but he took six prizes worth one hundred and sixty thousand dollars, in total. Not bad for a man who was not quite twenty-two years old at the time, don’t you think? You should ask him about it.”

  “Not me,” said Stackpole, and shook his head for emphasis.

  Obviously, he’d heard enough tales spun for one day. Wiki laughed, and then sobered. He said, “Do you know a Río Negro river pilot by the name of Harden?”

  “The only river pilots I know are the Englishman and the Frenchman who live in that pilothouse. Why?”

  “This one is American, and he’s joined the exploring expedition.”

  There was a pause while the fog swirled slowly, and then Stackpole said, “Well, you can’t blame any American for seizing an excuse to escape from trying to make a living out of piloting the Río Negro.”

  Escape? Wiki remembered what Forsythe had said: If he’s got such a grand mission for revolution, why would he want to leave the Río Negro?

  He said, “Manuel Bernantio told me he’s a revolutionary.”

  “Oh, you mean that Harden,” said Stackpole, enlightened. “I’ve surely heard of him. I didn’t know he was a pilot. I thought he was just a goddamned rascal of a desperado.”

  “Have you met him?”

  “Never, to my knowledge.”

  “But you’ve obviously heard sensational things.”

  “According to the governor of El Carmen, he supplies arms to the rebels.”

  “So why doesn’t the governor do something about it?” Wiki queried. “He’s got plenty of troops.”

  “Why the hell should he? He owes no debt to the de Rosas government. Truth be told, he probably hates de Rosas as much as the rebels do. Is that why Wilkes sent you in search of me? To tell you what I know about Harden?”

  “As I’ve already told you, Captain Wilkes wants you to write an affidavit.”

  Stackpole looked away, his expression evasive again. Instead of answering, he demanded, “So why are you asking about Harden?”

  “Because I’m curious about Benjamin Harden. Captain Wilkes, by contrast, is curious about Caleb Adams.”

  “Adams? Why?”

  “He wants to know what kind of man Adams was.”

  “You saw the corpse, just as I did.”

  “That skull was too bare to tell me much,” Wiki pointed out.

  “But you saw the body, right? A tough, sinewy, slender man—though I guess you couldn’t tell that he was a lot stronger than he looked. Many a time I watched him heave up a great sack of grain, swing it onto his back, and then carry it into the store as if it were filled with nothin’ more than feathers. I doubt I could have lifted one of those sacks alone.”

  Wiki paused, finding this interesting. Then he said, “Captain Wilkes wondered what the deceased’s nature was like.”

  “His what?”

  “His character. What kind of man he was.”

  Looking thoughtful, the whaling master groped about in a pocket and hauled out his pipe. He took his time about lighting it, while Wiki waited. Finally, he let out a judicious puff, and said, “Angry.”

  “Angry at what?”

  “Everything and everybody, just about. Caleb Adams was chewed up with anger, as if it ate at his insides. He wasn’t too bad when I first got to know him, on account of trade was going so well. Then it fell off, and his temper got foul. The only thing that cheered him up,” Stackpole said bitterly, “was selling me that bloody schooner.”

  He puffed so furiously that Wiki took a long step backward to get away from the stinging cloud of tobacco smoke, which mingled revoltingly with the mixed aroma of whale oil, trysmoke, and brandy that surrounded Stackpole already.

  Then he observed, “But at least Adams was honest about that.”

  “Honest?” Stackpole cried.

  “The deed of sale proved that the transaction really did take
place.”

  “Are you sure of that?”

  Wiki frowned. “What do you mean?”

  Stackpole silenced. Captain Coffin had come on deck, his figure so insubstantial that Wiki realized that the fog had got even more dense. Through the mist he saw his father go to Mr. Seward, and engage in talk. Both men were looking curiously at him and Stackpole, he noticed, but after the conversation was over Captain Coffin merely went to the wheel, checked the compass, looked up at the dripping sails, said a few words to the helmsman, and then returned below.

  The instant his tall figure vanished, Stackpole muttered, “You don’t need that affidavit.”

  Wiki looked at him. “What?”

  “I’ve got it.”

  Silence, while the rigging dripped with a deathwatch sound. Then Wiki said, “I’ve not a notion what you’re talking about.”

  “The deed of sale. I’ve got it.”

  Wiki stared, too stunned for speech, and the whaling master’s tone became defensive. “I got it when I went back into the store for the poncho. I reckoned I was the legal owner of the deed, so I asked him for it.”

  “Him? You mean Gomes?”

  “Aye. The clerk.”

  “He gave it to you—just like that?”

  “My name was on it! It proved that the schooner is mine!”

  “He didn’t make any objection?”

  Captain Stackpole said angrily, “Yes, he did object. He was bloody difficult about it, as it happens. I had to show him my fist. And now you’re wondering if I stabbed him.”

  Stackpole had certainly had the opportunity for murder, Wiki thought, remembering the time lapse before he had rejoined the gaucho party on the riverside path to the salt dunes. At the time, he hadn’t paid much attention, because he had been watching Bernantio study the tracks.

  He didn’t have a chance to speak, however, because Stackpole carried on. “When I went back into the store my only intention was to buy that poncho, just the way I said I would after you told me that we were likely to be out all night. All the time, though, I was thinking about that bill of sale, because it proved that Adams really had purchased the Grim Reaper on my behalf—that I wasn’t the fool you reckoned. So I thought I should have it, and told the clerk to give it to me. He argued, but he couldn’t deny that my name was on it, and so he finally handed it over.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me this earlier?”

  “Once I realized that schooner was well and truly gone, I didn’t think the deed of sale was all that important. Then, when we found the corpse of the clerk, I kept my mouth shut because I knew damn well that you’d jump to conclusions and arrest me.”

  “So that’s why you didn’t report to Captain Wilkes,” Wiki realized. At last, he thought, he had found a reason for Stackpole’s strange evasiveness.

  “Once he realized I’d had both motive and opportunity for murder, he would’ve clapped me in the brig, for sure,” Stackpole moodily confirmed.

  “But it’s obvious you didn’t kill the clerk!”

  Contrary as ever, the whaling master declined to look relieved. Instead, he blinked suspiciously, and demanded, “What makes you so sure?”

  “Because the front door was locked and the key was in the clerk’s pocket.” His listener looked blank, so Wiki explained, “Dead men don’t get up to lock doors.”

  Silence, broken only by the slow creak of the hull as the brigantine wallowed on the fog-swathed swell. Then Stackpole said with abrupt understanding, “So who locked the door after the clerk was dead?”

  Wiki shrugged. “His killer, presumably.”

  “And he couldn’t have used the clerk’s key and then put it back in his pocket, because he had to lock the door behind him after he let himself out.”

  “Exactly.”

  “So he had his own key.”

  “Or had found a key. When we searched Adams’s corpse, the pockets were empty, remember. It’s logical that Adams had a key to the store, and the killer took it, along with everything else.”

  Stackpole paused, thinking this over, and then said reluctantly, “Are you sure we did a proper search?”

  Wiki had had the same doubts. At the time, dark had been falling, and they had been too spooked by the sudden detachment of the grinning skull to heave the corpse right out of the trench. Despite its apparent good state of preservation, it had been too easy to imagine the entire skeleton breaking up if they lifted the body too roughly, so instead they had felt through his clothes.

  Nevertheless, Wiki said firmly, “I’m sure of it, just as I’m certain that the man who murdered him took away all the contents of his pockets—including his key, which he used to lock the door behind him after the clerk was killed.”

  “So you reckon that whoever killed Adams killed the clerk, too?”

  “It seems logical.”

  Another long silence. Then Stackpole said slowly, “I agree that it seems likely that whoever killed Adams found the key in his clothes, and pocketed it for future use. But instead of getting clear of the Río Negro while he had the chance, he waited around for quite a few days before he got around to breaking into the store and committing the second murder, which sounds kinda bizarre to me. Why didn’t he go with the Grim Reaper when she sailed? What’s your explanation for that? And why did he kill the clerk at all?”

  “I assume he wanted to get hold of the deed of sale.”

  “Then I foiled him, didn’t I,” said the whaleman sardonically.

  “You certainly did. Just like everyone else, including me,” Wiki dryly returned, “he had no idea that you’d taken it off the clerk.”

  Stackpole had the grace to look sheepish, but his tone was as assertive as ever as he demanded, “And what about that other door—the outside door to the surgery that Ducatel opened?”

  “It seems much more likely that the killer used the key to the front door.”

  “I meant, what if the killer had a key to the surgery already?”

  Wiki was puzzled. “What are you trying to say?”

  “That Ducatel looks like the prime suspect to me!”

  Captain Stackpole’s voice had risen, and Wiki touched his arm, noticing that Alf Seward had looked in their direction. More quietly, the whaling master went on, “We all know that Ducatel’s on his beam ends, financially.”

  “Is he? I thought he’d done rather well out of marrying the daughter of a landowner. He looked prosperous enough to me.”

  “But he attended Captain Hallett at his deathbed, remember—and I reckon he was lying in his teeth when he said that Caleb Adams never came to the ranch. And I reckon that Adams was in on the plot, too.”

  “What plot?” said Wiki, more confused than ever.

  “To seize the schooner, and get away with my thousand dollars! But in order to cover up the crime that quack of a surgeon had to steal that deed, and so he headed for the store and killed the clerk when he wouldn’t hand it over.”

  “What about Adams? Surely you don’t think Dr. Ducatel killed him?”

  “Oh, Ducatel intended to double-cross him all along, and as you said, it’s logical that the same man murdered both Adams and the clerk. Yup,” said the whaleman, patently happy with his conclusions. “He lied to us about Adams goin’ to the ranch, and then Hallett died—Ducatel might have had a hand in that, too, by thunder! And so the money and the schooner fell into his hands, only the schooner was up at the salt dunes. He followed Caleb Adams to the schooner, but for some reason Adams had headed to the Gualichú tree, and so he killed him there. It must have been a shock to find that Adams didn’t have the deed on him, as Ducatel needed it to make the ownership of the schooner look legal, but finally he worked out that it must be somewhere at the store, and that’s how the clerk got killed.”

  “But why kill the clerk at all?”

  “What?”

  “Ducatel had his own key to the store, and no one would have thought it curious if the doctor had been seen going into his surgery, even if he hadn’t been there f
or a while. He could have easily searched for the deed when the clerk wasn’t there—after dark, for instance.”

  “Mebbe he just plain wanted to get rid of him.”

  “Out of plain bad temper?” Wiki dryly queried.

  “Why not?” The whaleman’s tone was more aggressive than ever. “It sure looked to me as if someone hacked down the old man in a murderous rage.”

  It had looked like that to Wiki, too. He said, “I’d like to know how you got the idea that Ducatel and Adams were together in a plot to rob you.”

  “Of both my money and my schooner,” Stackpole confirmed, nodding energetically.

  “But the deed proves that the sale really happened. Caleb Adams could have been acting honestly.”

  “He was another innocent victim, you reckon?” The whaling master’s tone was cynical.

  “It’s possible.”

  “Because of the deed of sale?”

  “Aye.” Wishing to end this pointless argument, Wiki said on a practical note, “Give it to me, and I’ll get it to Captain Wilkes as soon as this fog lifts. It’s lucky in a way that the wind died, as the Vin is still close by. You’ll come with me?”

  He expected Stackpole to shake his head, as without doubt he wouldn’t be anxious to try to explain to the short-tempered expedition commodore why he had held the deed for so many days without telling anyone about it. Instead, however, the whaling master looked around, his expression back to being shifty.

  Lowering his voice still further, he confided, “There’s something very odd about that deed.”

  “Odd?” echoed Wiki.

  “That’s why I was making for the Swallow when this goddamned fog came down.”

  “The Swallow?”

  “Aye. I wanted to see you, and consult. I took a while to notice it, and now, no matter how hard I think, I can’t see an answer to the puzzle.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Take a look for yourself.”

  Glancing around again to make sure they weren’t observed, the whaling master reached into the back pocket of his trousers, and pried out a folded document. He didn’t bother to check it. Instead, he thrust it at Wiki.

  It was the deed of sale. After he had unfolded it, Wiki looked at it for a long time. Adams’s signature, like the script that filled the blank spaces on the form, was clear enough, but, just as remembered, the signature in the space for Hallett’s name was a messy, indecipherable scrawl.