by Steve Goble
Hob shrugged. “I don’t know.”
Spider grinned. “Our thief is someone who can’t line up for meals,” he said. “Someone not of our crew, and not a passenger, not a paid passenger, anyway.”
“A stowaway.” Odin reached for the pipe, and Spider gave it to him.
“Aye,” Spider said, “one desperate to sail to Boston, I think, and one who does not hold our cap’n in high esteem. One who might hide in tight places—might still be hiding—where another man might not fit. I believe I know where to find him. You two keep an eye on the cabin, make sure no one comes out. He’ll likely stay hid in there until dark. I can’t get in there now with everyone about. So you keep a weather eye.”
“And what will you be doing, Spider John?”
“I am going to talk with Mister Chambers, Hob. He was aloft when the cap’n was shot, if I recall the roll properly, and he might have seen something. You can see a great deal from up there.”
9
Spider found Edward Chambers atop the forecastle. The man was eating his dumplings and fish, his gnarled and calloused hand clutching a knife he used to spear the morsels. He had one of those faces that wore a permanent scowl, and sun and salt air had rendered it hard and dark. A gold earring, shining bright against the tanned skin, was the only bright thing about him.
Chambers was alone, leaning against the rail. Spider strode toward him, peered across the sea, and sighed deeply. “Better view up top, I dare say.”
Chambers grunted. “Main t’gallant, aye, full and by or haulinDevil’s Winds, better than scrapin’ with holystone.” He swallowed the bite of fish he’d talked around and snatched another morsel.
“You have a great view from up there. You were up there this morning, weren’t you?”
The only reply was a pause in chewing and a hard stare, as though Spider had asked Chambers if his mother liked to blow sailors. After an excruciating wait, Chambers swallowed his food. “What the bloody hell is it to you?”
Spider grinned and held his hands up in supplication. “I am just trying to have a friendly talk.”
“I have friendly talks with my foretop mates,” Chambers said. “I don’t bloody know you.”
“I am John Coombs, ship’s carpenter.”
“I know that much,” Chambers growled. “Don’t know why you think I need to answer fool questions.”
Spider, taken aback, smiled in an effort to salvage the situation. “I am just jealous, is all. You were in the lookout this morning, with a view of the sea and the sunrise that anyone on God’s earth would envy.”
The creases around Chambers’s permanent scowl deepened to such a degree that Spider wondered if sunshine could ever reach into their depths. “Yes,” he finally said after long thought. “The view is fine. That is why we post the lookouts up there, aye. Is that all you need to know? Go hand over fist and take a peep yourself, next time.”
Spider nodded and glanced out over the ocean. He counted ten breaths, pondered whether there was any point at all in interviewing such a deeply suspicious man, then decided a deep and direct thrust might yield more than any number of circumspect questions. “Did you see anything strange when the cap’n died? Anyone dangling a rope from the poop deck or climbing about on the hull, maybe toward the stern gallery, or any such thing?”
Spider peered directly into Chambers’s cold gray eyes and had to blink when the man spat fish and dumplings in his face.
“Stow that! I did not see any such goddamned thing!” Chambers growled. “And I will not tolerate your foolishness any longer. Poke your nose elsewhere or I’ll cut it off you.” He hurled his almost empty bowl overboard and stalked off. Chambers did not bother with the ladder. He leapt directly from the forecastle to the weather deck.
“Well, then,” Spider said to the empty space Chambers had vacated. “I suppose I shall leave you be.”
Spider wiped food from his beard and flipped bits of it into the sea. He looked next for Thomas Ames, who had been at the helm when the fatal shot was fired.
There he was, sitting plump on the ratlines between the mainmast shrouds. His cheeks were red with wind or grog, and he squinted into an empty leather jack inverted above his head while his tongue dangled below it in hopes of one more precious drop.
Spider hoped that meant his luck might change. A drinking man is a talking man, and he had at least exchanged pleasantries a time or two with Ames while Redemption was being fitted for her northward journey.
“Ho,” Spider said. “I think you got it all, mate.”
Ames sighed and lowered the jack. “Seems so.” The man, still squinting, looked at Spider.
Spider climbed up beside Ames. The hull kicked up salty, cooling spray around them. “Damn sorry thing about cap’n,” Spider ventured.
Ames belched. “Aye.” The fumes from the man’s breath promised an easier interview than the Chambers ordeal.
“You were up on the tiller, weren’t you? Must have been a hell of a thing, that shot sounded right below you.”
Eyes widening, Ames nodded. “It was. Frightening loud.”
“Did you take a look below?”
“What?”
“Over the taffrail, down to the stern gallery. Thought maybe you saw something.”
The scarlet cheeks darkened. “Saw what?”
“I don’t know, maybe someone down there.”
“Outside the cap’n’s cabin?”
“Yes.” Spider made it a conspiratorial whisper. “You heard the girl, right? She doesn’t think her father took his own life.”
The man’s eyes went wider still, and he took up whispering, too. “Murder?”
“Maybe. Look.” Spider turned his head to look back over his shoulder. The fluyt widened below the weather deck, so that an object dropped straight down over the gunwale would glance off the hull before bouncing into the sea. For a nimble killer, that would be an advantage. “A little rope hung or dangled in the right spots, it would not be so difficult to climb. Pop out of a porthole, work over to the stern gallery, fire a shot . . .”
Ames shook his head slowly. His jaw quivered. “Who would do that? Who hated the cap’n enough to do that?”
“I don’t know,” Spider answered. “Maybe I am wrong. But it could be done. You were up on the poop when it happened. Did you hear anything other than a shot? Someone scrambling around? Cabin doors opening and closing? Cap’n talking to someone?”
Ames just kept shaking his head, and his ruddy cheeks were now pale. “No. Who would hate the cap’n enough to do that? Who?”
He dropped to the weather deck, his drinking vessel falling from his hands. “No.” He ran off, shaking his head, leaving the empty jack behind. He looked to and fro and a couple of times paused to stare confusedly at Spider.
Spider scratched his chin, then swung down from the ratlines. There had been one other fellow up by the tiller at the time of the murder. Nicholas Wright had gone up there, only to rush down immediately upon hearing the deadly shot. Wright was carrying much weight on his shoulders now, so Spider decided to wait before asking him if he had seen or heard anything suspicious. For now, the light was low and the shadows were long. It was time for Spider to hunt for clues.
Abigail Brentwood stood in his path. “A moment, sir?”
Spider nodded and shuffled his feet.
“Your young friend, Hob, tells me there was a murder aboard your last vessel.”
Why the hell would Hob talk about that damned journey? “Hob told you things, miss?” Spider stood closer, so he could whisper. She noticed his unease and lowered her own voice.
“He was trying to ease my mind, I believe,” she said. “You know I do not think my father took his own life.” She almost choked on the words. “Hob tells me a man got killed on a ship you and he sailed on and that you quite cleverly figured it all out.”
“I think Hob likes to embellish . . .”
“He said you were quite clever, that if anyone could determine just how my father was murd
ered, it would be you.” Her eyes were wide, staring, pleading.
“Miss Brentwood, I do not confirm anything Hob might have told you, but I already have reason to trust you are correct about your father.”
She clasped her hands together. “I knew it.”
“I will try to reckon it all out. It had to be a tricky . . .” Her lips on his cheek halted his thoughts.
“Thank you, John.” She swirled away.
Spider touched his just-kissed cheek. I reckon I had better solve this thing, then.
10
“I fucking say German cheese is better than French cheese! Ha!”
It was not exactly the kind of clever distraction Spider had asked for, once he’d finished berating Hob for talking too much to pretty ladies, but Odin’s loud declaration drew the attention of Redemption’s crew.
“German? The French make food into fucking art, you old bastard! And I thought you didn’t like Germans.” Hob’s speech was unnatural, halting, as though he was rummaging about in a sack for each word. His wild gestures seemed equally odd, and he smacked his hand against a mainsail stay so hard Spider suspected the boy would have a welt. Hob would never be an actor. No matter, so long as everyone paid attention to Odin and Hob and not to Spider.
Still running the awkward interviews with Chambers and Ames through his mind, Spider glanced about, assured himself no one was paying attention to him, then slipped into the captain’s cabin. Shattered wood, still hanging from the hinges, tore at his sleeve as he passed through the entrance. He would have to tend to that later.
The captain’s quarters had been scrubbed clean with vinegar, and Mister Wright had removed the ship’s log, important charts, and any other papers of consequence to his own quarters belowdecks, saying he could not bear to use the captain’s quarters himself, though he now had the right.
The captain, wrapped in sailcloth doused in vinegar in a rather vain attempt to mask the death odor in the tropical heat, was in his hammock on the starboard side of the cabin.
The sunlight was very low now, but Spider had dared not take a lantern within, for he wished to draw no attention to himself. As carpenter, though, he had done much work in here, restoring the doors and putting a smooth finish on the captain’s desk. Spider knew this chamber well, and low light would give him little trouble.
Blood-red sunlight oozed between the slats in the stern gallery doors, spilling across the room and painting orange streaks on the bulkheads. Spider could see no holes in the doors, or anywhere else, that someone could shoot through, and the slats themselves would not open wide enough to admit a gun. They opened just enough to allow some light and air, but the spaces between were narrow to keep out sea and salt. Spider could not imagine anyone, not even Sam Smoke, shooting a ball between them without leaving a mess.
The gallery doors were latched tight now, but that meant nothing. Abigail and Anne had been in to tend to the body, and crewmen had been in to scrub the blood, brains, bone, and hair from the walls, and those fellows had certainly opened the cabin to the sea air. But Spider was damned certain the doors had been closed tight and latched when they had all rushed in immediately after the shooting, and that was the key point.
Spider opened the stern gallery doors, allowing sunset light and sea breeze into the cabin.
He glanced at the captain’s remains. They had cleaned him up, but even so blood had seeped through the cloth around his head. That would get a fresh wrap in the morning when the captain’s body would be consigned to the deep. Spider muttered a silent prayer, then went on with his work.
Spider closed his eyes and remembered the splatters of blood everywhere. The captain must have been standing and must have spun in his death throes. Blood had flown in all directions. Spider could almost see it—the gun against the head, the shot, the swirling tumble to the deck, the blood flinging everywhere.
If he was murdered, Spider thought, the killer must have been sprayed with gore. There is no way around that fact.
Spider opened his eyes and crossed toward the door, where he’d seen the hole in the bulkhead. He dug with his knife and fished out the bloody, misshapen ball. He glanced at the grating above, the spot where the captain had been found, and then at the ball. There was no way the shot could have come from above, unless someone had devised a way for a ball to change course mid-flight.
Could the hatch have been an escape route? Not with the preachers up there as witnesses, Spider reckoned. And the man at the tiller, above on the poop deck, would have been a likely witness, too. The grating should have been latched down tight from above, as well.
Spider turned and glanced at the shattered cabin door and at its intact mate on the other side of the mizzenmast. Unless the culprit had been able to walk invisibly, like a ghost, the killer could not have left that way without being seen, and if Spider had surmised correctly, the culprit could not go anywhere on board without being immediately recognized and clapped in irons.
So Spider leaned harder toward another possibility, that the killer had hidden within the cabin and escaped later. There was one other option, however.
Perhaps the bastard is still in here.
Had the cabin been empty for even a moment since the captain’s death, giving the killer a chance to exit by way of the stern gallery? Possibly, but it would not have been an easy escape.
Spider stared at the wardrobe along the port bulkhead. It would be a squeeze, what with the captain’s coats and shirts and britches hanging within, but a man might hide there. Spider gripped his French throwing knife, ready to stab if necessary, and flung the wardrobe open.
It held nothing but clothes and small chests stacked below those, leaving no room for anyone to hide within.
Spider sighed quietly. There still was one more place to look.
He turned to the great case clock. When the thing had been brought aboard, Spider had suggested wrapping the gorgeous creation in sailcloth to protect it from salt air and spray during the voyage, but Captain Brentwood had insisted the clock could give him little joy if its beauty was hidden. That, Spider thought, is not the attitude of a man about to kill himself, now is it?
So there the clock stood, all of its splendid woodwork and carvings there to see.
In five steps, Spider closed the distance. He held the knife at ready.
A great hart at the top of the case stared back at him, a thin rope wrapped around its body and lashing the clock to the bulkhead as a guard against the rolling of the ship. The clock was likewise bound at its feet, but the main body of the case itself was not bound by the ropes and could still be opened.
Spider examined the door that opened on the works, or rather, the place where the works would be had they not been removed and stored away. A window showed the empty space within, but it did not expose the bottom of the case. Oak panels hid whatever might be down there, and so that was where the killer had to be.
An ordinary man could not have curled into such a tiny space of concealment, Spider knew. But the man he sought could.
Knife raised in his right hand, Spider took a deep breath, held it, then opened the door with his left hand.
Little Bob Higgins was not hiding within the empty case clock.
“Fuck and bugger,” Spider whispered, returning the knife to his belt. He spun around slowly but could not discern any other place within the cabin where Little Bob might be hiding.
“Damn.”
Spider pondered. He went toward the stern gallery, intending to step outside, but a fucking gull squawked and Spider froze.
A dozen or so of the damn things floated behind Redemption, hovering over the ship’s wake for reasons only birds knew. That didn’t bother Spider too much; he was used to seeing birds gather around ships. But one of the gulls—all claws and beak and beady eyes—perched on the rail, and Spider could not step out on the stern gallery as long as it was there. He could not bring himself to approach that unholy combination of speed and weapons.
“Damn,” he muttered.
Instinct told him to shout at the gull, but he did not want anyone on the ship to know he was snooping around in here. Nor did he want to abandon his investigation just because of a fucking bird. He knew his fear of the feathered beasts was irrational—but that did not make it go away.
He considered just stepping out into the open air and shooing the bird with a wave of his arms, but that would mean actually getting close to the damned thing. There was no way to know how a bird would react to a man rushing at it, and Spider suddenly imagined himself cringing on the deck with bleeding holes where his eyes used to be while the gull carried the blood-soaked orbs to show off to its friends.
Spider took three deep breaths. Captain Brentwood had been murdered. Of that, Spider was certain. Gull or no gull, Spider had promised the man’s daughter he would try to figure out who had done it. The daughter needed that.
Her face appeared in his mind suddenly, and guilt stabbed at him. Em is waiting in Nantucket, he reminded himself. Solve the murder for this girl because you said you would. No other reason.
Spider inhaled sharply. He looked about, rummaged through the captain’s desk, and found a granite paperweight. He nodded, turned to face the gull, and hurled the stone as hard as he could.
His aim with a paperweight was not so true as his aim with a knife, but it was good enough. The bird, untouched, lifted into the air with a shrill, mocking cry and joined its brothers and sisters hanging in the wind.
Spider paused to close the desk drawer and spotted the captain’s key ring. He recognized the cabin key, for Captain Brentwood had entrusted it to him briefly during the renovations. The sight of that key brought Wright’s missing key back into Spider’s mind. As far as he knew, Wright’s key was the only other one that could open the captain’s quarters—and that key was missing.
“Damn,” Spider muttered. Even with a key to lock the door behind him, the killer could not have gone out that way. We all were on the bloody deck, right outside the cabin. If the killer was not hiding in this cabin, the stern gallery had to have been the means of escape. So how had the doors been latched?