by Joan Druett
“You wouldn’t be talking about Mister Green, by any chance?”
Wiki blinked with surprise, but said firmly, “That’s the man.”
Strangely, the atmosphere of barely controlled rage fled, to be replaced by an air of caution. Hammond and Hunt glanced at each other, and then looked around as if Mr. Green might materialize out of the draperies covering the tent frame.
Joel Hammond said, “He sleeps here, but I don’t know where he is most times.”
“Why isn’t he on the crew list?”
“Because he’s the goddamned supercargo, why else? He was Captain Reed’s agent—the man in charge of trade. As I told you, he’s Mister Green. He came on board at Rio, and he ain’t nothing to do with me.”
My God, thought Wiki. Suddenly a great deal was coming clear. He said slowly, “So Captain Reed decided to bring the Annawan to Shark Island after he picked up Mr. Green in Rio? After he’d heard what Green had to tell him about the wreck of the Hero?”
Again, Joel Hammond looked at Hunt, who shrugged and shook his head. “Who knows? Mr. Green was the supercargo of the Hero, true. Why don’t you ask his widow?”
“Why not?” said Wiki softly, and left the tent.
Then he stood still, his eyes scanning the beach again. There was no sign at all of Alphabet Green—he’d vanished as if he’d never existed. George Rochester was down at the edge of the surf—Wiki could hear him issuing orders. The cutter was still floating close to the beach, but when Wiki looked in the direction of Annabelle’s tent, to his alarm Forsythe was there. Annabelle was standing in the opening of the flap, and he was gesticulating angrily.
He crossed the space swiftly and touched Forsythe’s shoulder, then danced out of range as the southerner whirled around, his fists up and his face suffused with rage.
“She’s sticking to that goddamned story!” he yelled.
Annabelle was on the verge of tears. “I swear I saw someone on the quarterdeck!” she protested. “And it was you, I swear it was you!”
“Do you believe her?” Forsythe demanded.
“She certainly saw someone,” Wiki said bleakly. He looked at Annabelle and demanded, “Who was in the galley just before Ezekiel was killed?”
“What?” She trembled visibly.
“You called out to someone. Tell me the truth! Was it Robert Festin?”
“No! Why would I call out to him?”
“He wasn’t in the galley?”
“No! I don’t know where he was.”
Forsythe shouted, “What the hell does this mean?”
Wiki said grimly, “It means that there was no one at all in the galley—and that it would be a very good idea to search her tent.”
“What?” Annabelle cringed, going white and then red as horrified emotions chased each other across her face. “Search my things? But why? Wiki, how can you do this to me? I’ve done nothing wrong!”
“One of the murder weapons is lost. It could be hidden here.”
“What? C’est impossible!”
Wiki wanted to hold her—to shake her. He couldn’t, of course, but his voice shook as he demanded, “Do you want to risk the knife being used against you?”
Numbly, she shook her head, and shrank away as they both pushed past her into the tent, to be enfolded by her scent of perfume and dusting powder. Clothes were strewn everywhere, piled on the lady chair, the dresser, and the mattress. Forsythe went straight to the barrel of weapons and tipped it over on the one bare patch of floor with a great thump and much crashing. Then he made more noise as he sorted roughly through the pistols, knives, muskets, and clubs, throwing them back one by one.
Annabelle, her face paper white, was no help at all with searching her baskets and trunks, so Wiki went through them himself, feeling extremely uncomfortable about it. As always, he was amazed at the unyielding weight of corset stays, and wondered why women tortured their delicate flesh into strange and difficult shapes. Petticoats and gowns shimmered and rustled and sagged in his hands. One of the boxes was entirely filled with hats, and another with shoes, but there was no sign of the knife. A search of the drawers of the one dressing table was equally fruitless, though it turned up two loaded pistols, plus, very oddly, a leather belt with two attached holsters for the pistols. Obviously, he thought, it had belonged to Ezekiel, but he couldn’t imagine why it was stowed with her things.
Then, right at the back of the tent, behind the dresser, he found a large and sturdy trunk. He looked at the folded clothes it held—and froze.
“My God,” he whispered.
“What is it?” Forsythe’s voice said in his ear, and then whispered harshly, “Wa-al, by all the little gods, look what we’ve got here.”
At the top was a small pile of blue and white shirts in a distinctive style, each with a band at the neck instead of a collar—a band that was secured with a single large deer-horn button.
Thirty-four
As one, Wiki and Forsythe leapt into the cutter, while Forsythe barked at the crew to get back to the brig. Then, when they were under way, he turned to Wiki and said grimly, “You’d better tell me what this is all about.”
“It was Alphabet Green.”
“Who?”
“Annabelle Reed’s cousin.”
“Who?”
“The man who escorted Annabelle to the wake. You told me about that yourself.”
Forsythe’s mouth opened and shut, and then he said thoughtfully, “That man, huh?”
“Aye.” Then Wiki frowned, remembering that Alphabet had taken Annabelle back to the after house once the prayers were over—which meant that he hadn’t been present when Forsythe’s knife had been stolen from his belt at the time of the spree.
Nevertheless, he persevered, saying, “He must have been the one who stole your knife—not once, but twice. Did you notice him getting close to you when you were working on the Annawan?”
Forsythe’s mouth compressed, and he bit out, “I didn’t notice anyone. I put the knife down and plain forgot about it—the same as I did just before the wake, the same night that Zack was killed.”
“What!”
“When you asked me today where I was when I saw it last, I not only remembered where I put it down on the Annawan yesterday afternoon, but at the same time I damn well remembered that when I lost it on the night of the wake, I’d seen it last in the captain’s cabin.”
“You left it in the captain’s cabin before you went off to the prayers?” Wiki echoed incredulously. My God, he thought, so that’s how Alphabet got hold of the knife that night!
“Annabelle Reed asked me to cut a lashing around one of her trunks, and I hauled it out, and put it down, and…”
And left without remembering to pick it up again. Wiki finished the sentence in his mind. The confession, he saw, made Forsythe very angry, as if he were looking for someone else to blame for his lapse.
Wiki said grimly, “I wish you’d remembered that earlier.”
“Well, I bloody well didn’t, did I? I had enough on my mind!”
“I knew Alphabet spent the night of the wake in the after house—he told me himself that he slept in Captain Reed’s stateroom because Annabelle was scared to be alone. Because he left the deck as soon as the prayers were over, I didn’t think he’d had a chance to steal your knife. If I’d known that you’d left it in the cabin, it would’ve been a different matter.”
“It’s not my goddamned fault!” Forsythe sounded at the end of his tether. “I’ve only just remembered, as I said—she’s a witch of a bitch, as you should bloody know—she stops a man from thinking straight in his head. And Zack was making sheep’s eyes at her, too, which made me wild. Then I found that Zack had been cheating those bloody sheep of seamen, and I had to shake him around to get him to give their money back. Then we got drunk, so I have trouble remembering what happened. So, for God’s sake, stop getting at me—I had enough on my mind! And I blame myself worse than you can ever blame me,” he muttered.
The cutte
r arrived at the side of the brig, and Wiki scrambled up to deck with Forsythe close behind. Sua and Tana were there, but otherwise the brig was apparently deserted.
Forsythe shouted, “What are you two black bastards looking at?”
The two Samoans disappeared rapidly into the forecastle. Forsythe swerved round at Wiki, and snapped, “So what next?”
“Festin—I have to talk to Festin.” Wiki lifted his voice, and shouted, “Robert!”
“What? But Annabelle Reed said that he wasn’t in the galley—so what the hell d’you reckon he could’ve seen? The only other place he could’ve been was the pantry—and the pantry is out of sight and sound of the deck, as you keep on pointing out.”
“But was the galley empty when he left it? That’s what I’d like to know!” And Wiki shouted again, “Robert!” Still, there was no reply. The deck planks echoed as he strode over to the galley and looked in the door, It was empty. Frowning, he looked around, and said, “So where the hell is he?”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” said Forsythe impatiently, and ran to the companionway door. Wiki could hear his boots thundering down the stairs as he hollered, “Festin! Festin! Come out from wherever you are, you sogerin’ bugger!”
The echoes faded into silence. Wiki looked around, beset by the same sense of oncoming calamity he’d felt when his instincts had been trying to warn him that there was a shark in the water. Then he turned into the galley, looking for some hint of where Festin had gone. The fire was still hot, and there were chunks of salt meat simmering in two great caldrons on top of the stove. It was as if the Acadian had just stepped out the door.
Because of that instinctive sense of impending doom, Wiki reached up, plucked his taiaha off the two hooks where it rested, and then turned, looking out the doorway. Out of habit, he held the weapon at a slight diagonal across his body, the pointed tongue downward, and the killing blade uppermost. There was a slight sound from behind him—or behind the galley shed. He turned, and something in the grate caught his eye—scorched wood, and the dull gleam of hot metal. He hunkered down, putting his taiaha on the floor, and gingerly hauled it out of the embers. It was a skinning knife—and he was almost sure that it was the same long knife that he had plucked out of Kingman’s dead thigh.
The memory of that awful moment when he had bent to cut the rope that held Kingman to the bottom of the sea and the shark had bulleted past was so vivid that the rush of brutal movement from behind seemed almost inevitable. A hard arm hooked around his neck, dragging back his chin, and he glimpsed the flash of a knife from the corner of his eye. Wiki felt just a touch of searing pain under his left ear before his knees flexed powerfully, straightening his legs. With one violent movement he threw himself backward on top of his assailant.
As the blade left his neck he rolled over, frantically grabbing about the floor for his taiaha. Meantime, his attacker came to his feet faster than seemed possible, both arms wide, one hand holding Forsythe’s knife, the other gripping the knife Wiki had plucked from the grate. It was hot—Wiki could see the skin of Alphabet Green’s hand whitening and crinkling where he held it, but Alphabet didn’t seem to notice the pain. Instead, his glare was fixed on Wiki’s face. Not a word was said. He charged at Wiki again, and again Wiki rolled away from the long knife, still groping for his taiaha but forced by another attack to roll away from it.
Then he was on his feet, crouched and weaponless. Green was between him and the doorway, his expression set in vicious triumph. He made another lunge with the long skinning knife. Wiki threw himself to one side, crashing against a wall. A huge fry pan fell down, distracting Alphabet for a critical instant, and Wiki flung himself the other way, snatching at his taiaha. The power of Tumatauenga surged into him with the touch of the wood.
Although he did not know it, Wiki’s eyes were bulging from his head with fury, and he was grunting wordlessly, “Ha! Ha! Ha!” His tongue lolled out in contempt and defiance, matching the arero, the carved tongue of the taiaha. Alphabet’s own eyes widened. The long knife slashed down hard. If it lodged in the wood, it could tear the taiaha out of Wiki’s grip. He parried desperately, forced to hold the pole short. The blade slid down the toughened shaft almost all the way to his hands, then back again as he flipped and whisked it.
He jabbed again with the pointed end, hoping to force Alphabet out into the open air. Instead, Green stayed in front of the doorway, keeping him trapped in the limited space. He was thrusting at Wiki with the long skinning knife, while his other hand brandished Forsythe’s blade ready for use. Wiki’s only defense was to keep on the move. Dancing back and forth as far as the space would allow, he constantly jabbed with the tongued end of his weapon, hoping to trick Alphabet into the same mistake that Rochester had made the first time they had jousted—the assumption that the point was the lethal part of the weapon. Wiki had the advantage of height already—what he had to do was to fool Green into ducking under the business end.
He jerked the tongue upward, flicking the collar of hair and feathers across Alphabet’s face. Green swayed back, and laughed aloud as he lunged forward and up. Wiki skipped back, wincing as he came up hard against the hot stove. To Green, he must have looked trapped. Wiki saw the gleam of satisfaction in his eyes. He jabbed again at Green’s face, his movements deliberately desperate. Snarling triumph, Green ducked under the point and lunged forward. Wiki sidestepped smartly, whisked the taiaha around, and crashed the rau, the striking blade, on Alphabet Green’s lowered head.
For a long instant Green teetered. Wiki saw his staring eyes roll up until only the whites showed. Then, as the knives clattered loose, Green crashed to the floor like a poleaxed beast.
Forsythe emerged from the companionway door just as Wiki staggered out onto the deck. “There’s no one down there,” he said. “Festin and Stoker must have gone on shore.” Tana and Sua had come on deck, too, but it was Forsythe who inquired, “What the hell was all that racket?”
“Alphabet—Alphabet Green. He must have come with the boat that fetched the breakfast, and stayed behind when they left,” Wiki gasped. He hadn’t realized that the deadly battle had taken such a short time, or that he was panting with exertion. Sweat poured off him. He was trembling like a leaf. All at once he was aware of bleeding from his neck, but when he put up a shaking hand it was to find it was nothing life-threatening, just a deep nick.
“What?” Forsythe strode quickly to the galley and went in. After a short moment he came out again without saying a word.
Wiki took three steps to the rail and sucked in three huge breaths of fresh air. Then he turned and said more calmly, “He was lying in wait for me—behind the galley, I think. He’d already found the skinning knife—the one that … that was in Zachary Kingman’s body—and had thrown it into the galley fire. Then, when I was hunkered down getting it out of the grate, he rushed me from behind, and damn near cut my throat with your knife.”
Forsythe scowled. “My knife?”
“Aye. If he’d killed me with that—that knife, your knife, and managed to get to shore before my body was found—with your knife, that knife—you would have been blamed, for sure.”
From Green’s point of view it had been a perfect setup, Wiki thought. Forsythe had been shouting obscenities when he’d come on board, and was obviously in a savage mood. At any kind of trial Tana and Sua and the cutter’s men would have testified that he’d been in the throes of one of his rages. His derisive opinion of Wiki was known throughout the fleet. Forsythe could have swung for his murder, and probably the other killings as well.
Wiki said grimly, “He was the unlisted seventeenth member of the complement of the Annawan—the unknown fifth man who was still on board the schooner when Captain Reed was knifed. I’d believed all along that Alphabet Green had been one of those who came to the Swallow when we first arrived in the bay—that he was just an ordinary member of the crew. Once I knew that he wasn’t, it was obvious he was the killer.”
“But how the devil did he do it?”
“He was the man in the galley. I think we’ll find when we ask Annabelle that that’s why she went to the galley so often—it was their private meeting place. He was probably there when she left to take the bottle of brandy to her husband—but we’ll have to ask her to make sure of that, too. Then, when Captain Reed threw her out of the cabin, she ran back to the galley because she expected him to be there still—but he was gone. He’d dropped through the hatchway to the steerage, and had made his way between decks to the after hatch. He was the man Annabelle and Pedro da Silva glimpsed on the quarterdeck, broad enough in the shoulders to be mistaken for you.”
“But what about Festin?” Forsythe demanded. “Where the hell was he? According to him, he was the one in the goddamned galley.”
“He was in the pantry. Boyd said he wasn’t there, but it turns out that Boyd is very deaf. Alphabet Green forced Festin to say he was in the galley to give himself an alibi, and put me off the track.” Alphabet had browbeaten Festin right before his very own eyes, Wiki thought ruefully, and yet he hadn’t noticed.
“And poor Zack?” Forsythe’s voice rose. His eyes had gone flat and blank, just the way they had when he’d first heard that Zachary Kingman was dead. “Green killed Zack too?”
“Aye. Zachary Kingman made a fatal mistake by staggering to the after house, and Green grabbed his opportunity. He had your knife ready to hand, so it was a perfect chance to eliminate your alibi for Captain Reed’s murder, and at the same time lay the blame for both killings on you. He was wearing one of Reed’s shirts already, so his own clothes were saved from being spattered. When he put the bloodied shirt in the galley fire, he also went to the bo’sun’s locker and exchanged your knife—the one he’d used to kill Zachary Kingman—for the knife that Joel Hammond had left there. At the same time, he took one of the grindstones and a length of rope, then carried them to the after house, tied the stone to Zachary Kingman’s ankles, and dropped him overboard.”
Forsythe demanded, “But why did he kill Captain Reed in the first place?”