The Wreck of the Mary Deare

by Hammond Innes

  Higgins hesitated. ‘Well, we ’appened ter meet, as you might say, an’ ’e was short of a second officer an’ I wanted a berth, an’ that’s all there was to it.’

  ‘Where did you meet?’

  ‘Some bar da’n by the waterfront. Don’t remember the name of it.’

  ‘By arrangement?’

  Higgins’s face was reddening, the muscles on his neck swelling. ‘Yes, by arrangement.’ He said it angrily as though challenging Sir Lionel to make something of it.

  But Sir Lionel only said, ‘Thank you. That was what I wanted to know.’ And sat down. He had established two things: that, if the Dellimare Company were planning to wreck the Mary Deare, the vital shift of cargo was a possibility, and that Higgins could have been the instrument of their choice. But he had nothing definite against Higgins and that, he admitted to Hal long afterwards, was the real trouble. To justify his clients in withholding payment of the insurance claim he had to have something more positive.

  It was the evidence of the other survivors that finally decided him, and the most damaging evidence was that of the helmsman, Yules, who had been on the bridge with Higgins when the fire broke out. He was timid and he gave his evidence with a slight stutter. He wasn’t a very strong witness, but he clung to his statement that Patch had given the order to stand by to abandon ship with unshakeable obstinacy. He even had the words off pat, and though Patch’s counsel rose to the occasion and had him so terrified that he kept on looking to Higgins for support, he never budged.

  He was the last witness before lunch and I didn’t need Hal to tell me that Patch would have a bad time of it when he took the stand for examination by the various counsel. The Court hadn’t begun to get at the truth yet. But what was the truth? Hal asked me that over lunch and all I could say was, ‘God knows.’

  ‘Dellimare couldn’t have started that fire in the hold,’ he said, and I agreed. Dellimare was dead by then. It had to be Higgins. Evidently Bowen-Lodge had also considered this possibility over his lunch, for, when the Court reassembled, he had Yules recalled and questioned him closely about the movements of the officer of the watch. And Yules swore that Higgins had been on the bridge from 20.00 hours and hadn’t once left it. Later, Burrows, the chief engineer officer, testified that Higgins had been playing poker with him and two members of the crew who had been drowned, from 17.00 hours to 20.00 hours with only a brief break for food.

  One after the other the survivors went into the witness box, each from his different angle corroborating what had gone before—the certainty that the ship was jinxed, that she carried explosives and that she was destined to go to the bottom. It was the story of men carrying within themselves the seeds of inevitable tragedy.

  And then at last Holland called ‘Gideon Patch’ and he was standing there in the witness box again, slightly stooped, his hands gripping the rail, knuckles as white as the pallor of his face. He looked worried sick and the twitch was there at the corner of his mouth.

  Bowen-Lodge questioned him first—questioned him in minute detail about the orders he had given after the fire broke out. He had him go through the whole thing again from the moment Rice had rushed into his cabin to report the outbreak. Then, when Patch had told it exactly as he’d told it before, Bowen-Lodge gave a little shrug and Holland took up the questioning again. And all the time it was obvious that something was being kept back. You could sense it in the way the man stood there with that hunted look on his face and his body all tense and trembling. And the questions went back and forth with nobody making any sense out of it and Patch sticking to his statement that he had been knocked out and that the fire had been started deliberately.

  ‘Yes, but by whom?’ Bowen-Lodge demanded.

  And Patch had answered in a flat, colourless voice, ‘That is for the Court to decide.’

  After that the ball had been tossed to the counsel representing the interested parties and they hounded him with questions about Taggart and Dellimare, about his handling of the crew, about the seaworthiness of the ship, and then finally the counsel for the Marine Officers’ Association was on his feet, going back once again over the orders he’d given the night the ship was abandoned, and Bowen-Lodge was beginning to glance at the clock.

  At last Sir Lionel rose, and his questions were all about the cargo. If Patch could have said that those cases were empty or contained something other than aero-engines, that would have been that and Sir Lionel would have been satisfied. But he couldn’t say it and the questions went on and on until Sir Lionel had exhausted all the possibilities. He paused then and seemed on the point of sitting down. He was bending forward, peering at some notes and he looked up over his reading glasses and said, ‘Perhaps, Mr Learned Chairman, you would ask the witness to tell me how he came to be on the Mary Deare.’

  The question was put and Patch answered, quite unsuspecting, that he thought he had already explained that he had replaced Mr Adams who had been taken to hospital suffering from jaundice.

  ‘Yes, yes, quite,’ Sir Lionel said impatiently. ‘What I meant was, who signed you on—Captain Taggart or Mr Dellimare?’

  ‘Captain Taggart.’

  ‘He came ashore and made the choice himself?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Who did come ashore then and make the choice?’ Sir Lionel’s voice still sounded bored. He gave the impression that he was dealing with a small routine point.

  ‘Mr Dellimare.’

  ‘Mr Dellimare?’ Sir Lionel’s face was suddenly expressive of surprise. ‘I see. And was it done privately, a meeting in some bar—by arrangement?’ His tone carried the bite of sarcasm in it.

  ‘No. We met at the agents’.’

  ‘At the agents’? Then there were probably other unemployed officers there?’

  ‘Yes. Two.’

  ‘Why didn’t Mr Dellimare choose one of them? Why did he choose you?’

  ‘The others withdrew when they heard that the vacancy was for the Mary Deare.’

  ‘But you did not withdraw. Why?’ And when Patch didn’t answer, Sir Lionel said, ‘I want to know why?’

  ‘Because I needed the berth.’

  ‘How long had you been without a ship?’

  ‘Eleven months.’

  ‘And before that you hadn’t been able to get anything better than the job of second mate on a miserable little Italian steamer called the Apollo working the coastal ports of East Africa. Didn’t you think it strange that a man with your record should suddenly find himself first officer of a 6,000 ton ocean-going ship?’ And when Patch didn’t say anything, Sir Lionel repeated, ‘Didn’t you think it strange?’

  And all Patch could say, with the eyes of the whole court on him, was, ‘I never considered it.’

  ‘You—never—considered it!’ Sir Lionel stared at him—the tone of his voice, the carriage of his head all indicating that he thought him a liar. And then he turned to Bowen-Lodge. ‘Perhaps, Mr Learned Chairman, you would ask the witness to give a brief resumé of the events that occurred on the night of 3rd/4th February nine years ago in the region of Singapore?’

  Patch’s grip on the rail in front of him tightened. His face looked ghastly—trapped. The courtroom stirred as though the first breath of storm had rustled through it. Bowen-Lodge looked down at the questioner. ‘The Belle Isle?’ he enquired. And then, still in the same whisper of an aside, ‘Do you consider that necessary, Sir Lionel?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ was the firm and categorical reply.

  Bowen-Lodge glanced up at the clock again and then he put the question to Patch. And Patch, rigid, and tight-lipped, said, ‘There was a report issued at the time, sir.’

  Bowen-Lodge looked across at Sir Lionel, a mute question to discover whether he wished to pursue the matter. It was obvious that he did. You could see it in the stillness with which he watched the man in the witness box, his small head thrust forward as though about to strike. ‘I am well aware that there is a report available,’ he said in a cold, icy voice. ‘Nevertheless, I
think it right that the Court should hear the story from your own lips.’

  ‘It’s not for me to give my views on it when a Court has already pronounced judgment,’ Patch said in a tight, restrained voice.

  ‘I was not asking for your views. I was asking for a resumé of the facts.’

  Patch’s hand hit the rail involuntarily. ‘I cannot see that it has any bearing on the loss of the Mary Deare.’ His voice was louder, harsher.

  ‘That is not for you to say,’ Sir Lionel snapped. And then—needling him—‘There are certain similarities.’

  ‘Similarities!’ Patch stared at him. And then, beating with his hand on the rail, he burst out: ‘By God, there are.’ He turned to face the Chairman—still angry, goaded beyond the limits of what a man will stand. ‘You want the sordid details. Very well. I was drunk. Dead drunk. That’s what Craven said in evidence, anyway. It was hot like the inside of an oven that day in Singapore.’ He was still staring at the Chairman, but not seeing him any more, seeing only Singapore on the day he’d smashed up his career. ‘Damp, sweaty, torrid heat,’ he murmured. ‘I remember that and I remember taking the Belle Isle out. And after that I don’t remember a thing.’

  ‘And you were drunk?’ Bowen-Lodge asked. His voice was modulated, almost gentle.

  ‘Yes, I suppose so . . . in a sense. I’d had a few drinks. But not enough,’ Patch added violently. ‘Not enough to put me out like a light.’ And then, after a pause, he added, ‘They ran her aground on the Anambas Islands at 02.23 hours in the morning with a thundering surf running and she broke her back.’

  ‘You are aware,’ Sir Lionel said quietly, ‘that there has been a lot of talk since . . . suggesting that you did it for the insurance.’

  Patch rounded on him. ‘I could hardly be unaware of it,’ he said with wild sarcasm, ‘seeing that all these years I’ve barely been able to scratch a living in my own chosen profession.’ He turned back to the Chairman, gripping hold of the rail. ‘They said I ordered the course and they had the log to prove it. It was there in my own handwriting. Craven—he was the second officer—swore that he’d been down to my cabin to query it and that I’d bawled him out. Later he took a fix and then came down to my cabin to warn me again, but I was in a drunken stupor—those were his words—and when he couldn’t wake me, he went back to the bridge and altered course on his own responsibility. By then, of course, it was too late. That was his story, and he stuck to it so well that everybody believed him, even my own counsel.’ He turned his head and was looking across the courtroom at Higgins. ‘By God,’ he repeated, ‘there are similarities.’

  ‘What similarities?’ Sir Lionel asked in a light tone of disbelief.

  Patch turned to face him. It was pitiful to see how easily he was goaded. ‘Just this,’ he almost shouted. ‘Craven was a liar. The log entry was forged. The Belle Isle was owned by a bunch of Greek crooks in Glasgow. They were on the verge of bankruptcy. The insurance money just about saved them. It was all in the papers six months later. That was when the rumours started.’

  ‘And you had nothing to do with it, I suppose?’ Sir Lionel asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘And this man Craven had slipped a micky into your drink. Is that what you’re suggesting?’

  It took away from him and destroyed his defence. His muttered ‘Yes’ was painful anti-climax. Bowen-Lodge intervened then. ‘Are you suggesting a similarity between this Greek company and the Dellimare Trading and Shipping Company?’ he asked.

  And Patch, fighting back, cried, ‘Yes. Yes, that’s exactly what I am suggesting.’

  It brought the Dellimare Company’s counsel on to his feet, protesting that it was a monstrous allegation, an unwarranted aspersion on a man who was dead at the time the fire broke out in the hold. And Bowen-Lodge nodded and said, ‘Quite, Mr Smiles—unless there is some justification.’ He turned to Patch then and said, ‘Have you any reason for making such an allegation?’

  Now, I thought—now he must tell them about Dellimare’s offer. Whether he had evidence to support it, or not, it was the only thing for him to do. But, instead, he drove home his accusation on the basis of motive and opportunity; the Company in liquidation and the only people who would benefit by the loss of the ship. ‘Why else should the owner have been on board?’ he demanded. A voyage of almost five months! It was a ridiculous waste of a director’s time, unless there was a reason for his being on the ship. ‘And I say there was,’ he declared.

  Smiles jumped to his feet again, but Bowen-Lodge forestalled him. ‘You seem to be forgetting the cause of the ship being abandoned and finally lost. Are you accusing Mr Dellimare of causing the fire in that after hold?’

  It brought Patch up with a jolt. ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘He was dead by then?’

  ‘Yes.’ Patch’s voice had dropped to a whisper.

  And then Smiles, still on his feet, asked what possible motive the Company could have in destroying the ship. ‘She was bound for the scrap yards and in the figures Mr Gundersen has given you, Mr Learned Chairman, you will find that the scrap value was fixed at a little over £15,000. She was insured for £30,000. Is the witness suggesting that a mere £15,000 was sufficient motive to induce a company to endanger the lives of a whole ship’s crew?’

  ‘The question of motive,’ Bowen-Lodge said, ‘does not come within the scope of this Investigation. We are concerned solely with the facts.’ He glanced towards Sir Lionel as though expecting something further from him.

  ‘I think at this stage, Mr Learned Chairman,’ Sir Lionel said, ‘I should ask you to put this very serious question to the witness—Did he, or did he not, on the night of March 18, set fire to Number Three hold of the Mary Deare, or cause it to be set on fire?’ A sort of gasp like an eager shudder ran through the courtroom.

  The eyes of the two men, Counsel and Chairman, remained fixed on each other for a moment, and then Bowen-Lodge nodded slowly and turned to face the witness. Looking down on him and speaking quietly, but with great distinctness, he said, ‘I think it my duty to tell you that in my opinion this whole matter of the loss of the Mary Deare will be the subject of a case in another Court and to advise you that you need not answer this very direct question if you do not wish to. Having so advised you, I will now put the question.’ And he repeated it.

  ‘No, I did not,’ Patch declared, and his voice was clear and firm. And then he added, turning to face Sir Lionel Falcett, ‘If I’d set fire to the ship, why should I go to the trouble of putting it out?’

  It was a good point, but Sir Lionel only shrugged. ‘We have to consider that she might have gone aground on the nearby reefs, perhaps the coast of France, only partially burned out. The evidence would be better sunk in twenty fathoms of water. There was a gale coming up and then you had Mr Sands’s arrival to consider—’

  Bowen-Lodge gave a discreet little warning cough and Sir Lionel murmured his apologies. The Chairman looked up at the clock again and then leaned over and conferred with his assessors. Finally he adjourned the Court. ‘Until ten-thirty tomorrow, gentlemen.’

  Nobody moved for a moment, and even when they did, I sat there, stunned and angry at the injustice of it. To take a man’s record and fling it in his face like that, to damn him without a shred of evidence . . . and there was Patch still standing stiff and rigid in the witness box—and Sir Lionel, picking up his papers and smiling at some little joke made by one of the other lawyers.

  Patch was moving now, crossing the floor of the court. Without thinking I started forward to meet him, but Hal put his hand on my arm. ‘Better leave him now,’ he said. ‘He needs to think it out, poor devil.’

  ‘Think what out?’ I asked angrily. I was still wrought up by the injustice of it.

  ‘What he’s going to say tomorrow,’ Hal answered. And then he added, ‘He hasn’t told the whole story yet and Lione Falcett knows it. He can tell it tomorrow, or he can tell it in the criminal courts! But he’s got to tell it some time.’

  The criminal
courts. ‘Yes, I suppose it will come to that,’ I murmured. But before that, the truth had to be uncovered. And the truth, whatever it was, lay out on the Minkies. ‘I must have a word with him,’ I said. I had suddenly made up my mind and was forcing my way through the crowd towards Patch.

  He didn’t hear me when I called to him. He seemed oblivious to everything but the need to get out of the place. I caught hold of him, and he turned abruptly with a nervous start. ‘Oh, it’s you.’ He was trembling. ‘Well, what is it?’

  I stared at him, horrified by the haggard, hunted look in his face. There were beads of sweat still on his forehead. ‘Why in God’s name didn’t you tell them?’ I said.

  ‘Tell them what?’ His eyes had suddenly gone blank of all expression.

  ‘About Dellimare,’ I said. ‘Why didn’t you tell them?’

  His eyes flickered and slid away from me. ‘How could I?’ he breathed. And then, as I started to tell him that the Court had a right to the truth, he said, ‘Leave it at that, can’t you? Just leave it at that.’ And he turned on his heel and walked quickly away towards the exit.

  I went after him then. I couldn’t leave it like that. I had to give him the chance he’d asked for. I pushed through a little knot of the Mary Deare’s crew and caught him up in the corridor outside. ‘Listen,’ I said. ‘I’ll take you out there—as soon as the Enquiry is over.’

  He shook his head, still walking towards the freedom of the main doors. ‘It’s too late now,’ he said.

  His attitude exasperated me and I caught hold of his arm, checking him. ‘Don’t you understand? I’m offering you my boat,’ I said. ‘Sea Witch is lying in Lulworth Cove. We could be over there in twenty-four hours.’

  He rounded on me then. ‘I tell you it’s too late.’ He almost snarled the words at me. And then his eyes slid past me, narrowing suddenly and blazing with anger. I felt his muscles tense, and then he had freed himself from me and was walking away. I turned to find Higgins standing there. He had Yules with him and they were both staring after Patch walking down the corridor, fascinated by the thought that he might be guilty of sending a lot of men to their death.