The Devil's Wind

by Steve Goble

“Little Bob did not kill him,” Spider said. “Bob’s a hateful, spiteful wretch, but he isn’t clever enough to have murdered your father. He’s dull as a turtle, can barely remember how to shit.”

  “It required no special cleverness, I should think,” Fox said tersely. “Bob hid in the cabin. Perhaps in the clock, or in an empty trunk. He was a small man, could hide almost anywhere. He fired the fatal shot; then he hid and snuck out later.”

  “That’s a clever thought,” Spider said, looking Fox in the eyes. “And I considered it, too. Eyed the cabin myself, looked at the clock. I opened it up, too, fully expecting to find Little Bob Higgins hiding inside. He wasn’t.”

  Fox objected. “Perhaps you looked too late.”

  “Perhaps,” Spider said. “But I do not think so. It is not easy sneaking about on the deck of a ship, men everywhere, and Little Bob could not blend into a crowd. He was a very small fellow, and we all knew him. He’d stand out, wouldn’t he? It’d be like a tuna in a pile of squid.”

  “Stilts,” Fox said.

  Spider laughed, despite the tension. “Stilts?”

  “Indeed,” Fox said, his brow creasing and his head weaving about as he thought. “I have seen them at circuses; they make a man double or triple in height, perhaps more. Bob might have used such to blend in. A long coat, I dare say, and he could appear to be a man of a normal stature.”

  The Reverend Down stood next to Fox, looking dubious. “I believe that wretch Higgins killed the captain, Mister Fox, but this . . . this theory of yours, it sounds as preposterous as your views on the epistles. Stilts? I do not believe it would work. A long coat, for instance, in this climate? I think that should have drawn attention. And stilts on a rolling deck, I think, would be very difficult, even for a veteran sailor.” The preacher smirked, appearing to enjoy having the upper hand against Fox in a debate on any topic.

  “Nor do I think stilts were involved,” said Spider.

  “Little Bob could not walk from the mainmast to the forecastle without starting a fight with someone,” Hob declared.

  “That’s gospel, Hob.” Spider drew hard on the pipe, then blew out a long stream of smoke. “No, sorry, Mister Fox. I worked with Little Bob long enough to know he isn’t so smart, nor so agile, as all that. You will not convince me he managed it, not if you swear on a Bible.”

  Fox grinned nervously and spread his hands. “Well . . .”

  “You are a clever man, sir, and you can’t help but try to figure out how things work and how to solve problems.” Spider took a couple of steps toward Fox. “Tell me this. The cap’n was killed in his locked cabin. We all heard a shot, rushed in, and found him dead. We even found a wee bit of a note he’d written, an apology. But I am dead certain he did not kill himself. He had been sad, yes, but he was showing interest in things. Sailing again. The ship. His daughter’s future. That clock. Even that damned poor mouser of a cat, Thomas. Cap’n Brentwood was not a man about to shoot himself in the head, no matter how he missed his wife. And I know by other signs, too, more certain ones, that he was killed. Tell me now, Mister Fox, how would you go about it? How would you kill a man in a locked cabin?”

  Fox was flustered. “Do you think, John, that I would . . . ?”

  Spider continued. “Think on it, Mister Fox. Suppose you want to kill a man. You want everyone to believe he killed himself. How would you go about it?”

  “I would not contemplate such!” Fox’s face was bright crimson now, like a good tomato. “He was my friend! And it is not man’s place to take a life! That sad task belongs to God!”

  “You have said we are here to do God’s work,” the Reverend Down said softly. “Your friend was suffering, despondent. You even mentioned, in private moments, that Captain Brentwood had considered taking his own life not so long ago. Did you act as God’s agent, Mister Fox? Did you help the captain do what he lacked the courage to do himself?” The pastor’s expression left no doubt whatsoever that he dearly hoped Rufus Fox was a murderer.

  Abigail gasped. “That is not possible.”

  “I apologize, Miss Brentwood,” the reverend said. “These things, perhaps, are not for you to hear.”

  “I will know the truth,” she said quietly, her gaze locked on Fox.

  “Then know that I helped your father by reminding him how much he had to live for,” Fox said through tightly clenched teeth. “Our time is measured to us, and I would not dare presume to overrule the Maker on such a thing.”

  Spider turned quickly to Abigail. “You are a lovely girl,” he declared. “Suitors aplenty, I reckon?”

  She stammered, gawked, and scrunched up her brow in confusion. “What’s this? I have had suitors. I do not understand why you ask.”

  Fox huffed loudly. “You press too far, John.”

  Spider shrugged. “I pry with purpose.” Indeed, he planned to fire questions now in rapid succession, a full broadside. Keep them off balance, leave them no time to think, see who rattles and breaks. “Did you and your father discuss a suit from Mister Fox?”

  “What? No!” She clearly considered the idea preposterous. Wright’s expression said he, too, thought it a ludicrous notion.

  “John!” Fox spat the word. “How dare you? No such thing was discussed!”

  “I believe you,” Spider answered. “I believe him,” he added, this time directly to Abigail. “Your father discussed suitors with you, I reckon?”

  “Yes, but never a suit from Mister Fox.” She looked at the man, not unkindly, but he did not notice. Fox stared at the ground, his face a sunset red.

  “Hadley! He loves the girl!” That came from Lazare, the cook. “And the captain, he would never condone such a union, with a black man!”

  Hadley took two long strides toward the cook, knife raised. Hob jumped into his path, pointing a gun, and growling low. “And you had a key to the cabin, you bastard.”

  Hadley froze.

  Spider looked the young man in the eye. “Hadley.”

  The man gulped and stared at Hob’s gun. “Yes, John?”

  “I never once thought you killed him. Not for a second.”

  Hadley lifted his gaze from Hob’s gun. “I didn’t.”

  “I know.”

  Hadley nodded at Hob, then stepped back.

  “He had the key in his chest, Spider John.” Hob shot a glance at Spider, then returned his attention to Hadley. “Do not forget that!”

  “I do not forget, Hob. Do not shoot Hadley just yet, though.”

  Hob lowered his gun reluctantly.

  “I did think, like Anne did, that Mister Fox killed him, though,” Spider said. “It was a clever murder, and I thought Mister Fox might be the only person aboard smart enough to plot it, and I thought maybe he had desires your father had thwarted, Miss Brentwood.”

  Spider turned his attention back to Fox. “I am sorry, sir. You are a good man, but a clever one, and I did suspect you. But I was wrong.”

  Fox sucked in a huge amount of air and glared at Spider. “Yes. Yes, sir. You were very wrong.”

  “Aye,” Spider said. “But think on it. How would you have committed this murder? It was a damned clever thing.”

  Fox shook his head and spread his arms wide. “I do not know; we all heard the shot. . . .”

  “We all heard a shot,” Spider John said. “But it was not the fatal shot.”

  Fox stared at Spider blankly.

  “What we heard was not the shot that killed Cap’n Brentwood,” Spider said again. “He was already dead by then.”

  Fox’s face lit up. “Already dead . . .”

  “Aye, shot earlier,” Spider said. “Remember Thomas? Where was that blasted cat when we heard the shot?”

  Abigail spoke up. “Sitting by my father’s cabin door.”

  “Aye, Miss Brentwood. And where was that damned cat every other morning?”

  She scrunched her face up in thought, then nodded slowly. “In the cabin, with my father. Father would not sleep without Thomas!”

  “Aye,”
Spider answered. “I should have seen that right off, but it was a rough morning.” He decided not to mention how much rum he’d had the night before. “Any other morning, that cat is in there with the cap’n until the cap’n comes out himself. Not that morning. That morning, Thomas was out and about, because your father had not let him in the night before. He could not let the cat in. Because he was already dead.”

  Mutters and whispers whizzed back and forth, and people looked about them, wondering who the killer might be.

  “We all heard a shot,” Spider continued, “and we all were supposed to hear a shot, by God, but it was not the shot that killed him. Cap’n Brentwood was already dead.”

  “How the blazes . . . ?” Hob scratched his head.

  “The blood on the cabin walls,” Spider said. “It was already thick, already run its course to the deck by the time we got in there. Not flowing like a goddamned river the way Sam Smoke’s blood did when Odin shot his fucking head off.”

  “Aye,” Odin said. “Ha!”

  Spider went on. “The blood, already sticky on the bulkheads. It should have been flowing, trickling down. But it wasn’t, was it? It was thickened already, sticky, not oozing. It had already been there a while.”

  Heads around him nodded.

  “And there were other clues, too. Where was the gunpowder cloud? If the cap’n had just shot himself, as we all were supposed to believe, the cabin should have been heavy with it. We all should have choked on it and coughed on it in that tiny space. But it wasn’t there. I smelled blood, but not gunpowder.”

  He could see the dawn breaking in many faces around him. Spider wiped sweat from his brow and continued. He plucked the pipe from his mouth and pointed it at the Reverend Down. “The cap’n was killed the previous evening.”

  “You accuse me?” The dour man gawked, and Spider grinned inwardly.

  “I have not accused anyone, Reverend Down. Not yet, anyway.”

  “Enough!” Abigail covered her face with her shaking hands. “John, or Spider John, or whoever the hell you are, you act as though you know. Who killed my father? And why?” She wiped away a steady stream of tears, but her blue eyes burned with cold fire.

  Spider softened his voice. “Miss Brentwood, how did you know about your father’s love of this island?”

  “Nicholas told me of it.”

  “Nicholas? Not your father?”

  “No. It was not something he ever mentioned to me. Perhaps to Mother, but . . .”

  “I remember Cap’n Wright mentioning an island to you, a place your father told him of, before we sailed,” Spider said. “I overheard that. You did not seem to know of the island. Odd, is it not, that your father would mention an island to Wright but never to you? Did anyone else aboard speak of this island? Did anyone else talk to you about it?”

  She frowned.

  Spider pressed. “Anyone else aboard Redemption ever mention it?”

  “Why, no.”

  “Wait,” said Lazare, the cook. “If the captain was killed the evening before, we would have heard the shot.”

  Spider turned toward the man, ready to hurl a curse, but he was interrupted.

  “We heard a lot of shots!” Fox clapped his hands together. “A great deal of shooting, in fact!” Enlightenment dawned on him, and the man’s natural curiosity overwhelmed his earlier embarrassment and anger.

  Spider nodded. “Aye, sir. Sam Smoke was up on the poop, blasting away at a sorry piece of wood afloat behind us, and a lot of other fellows were shooting at it, too. That is when the murder happened. Plenty of noise to cover the shot that actually killed the cap’n.”

  “Then Sam Smoke killed my father?” Abigail ran a hand through what used to be long, beautiful hair. “How could he . . . ?”

  “He couldn’t,” Spider said. “He was above, the whole time, when the murder happened. But he was providing cover for the person who shot your father. A great deal of shooting and blasting and gun smoke to conceal the bloody deed. Sam Smoke was up there raising an unholy ruckus of gunfire so a coconspirator could kill Cap’n Brentwood. No one would notice one lone shot in the cabin amid all the other shooting. It was like hiding a goddamned herring in a whole school of herrings.”

  “But what was it we heard the next morning, if it was not the shot that killed the captain?” Lazare’s eyebrows danced, and his gaze darted about. “We all heard it.”

  “Aye, and we were supposed to hear it.” Spider was waving an index finger now. “I suspect what we heard was a bag of powder, set off with a slow fuse, from the stern gallery. And it was set off when we were all gathered for the Sunday service and the cap’n was locked in his cabin, so we would all assume he had shot himself.”

  “Some sort of timer, a clockwork?” Fox rubbed his chin.

  “Simpler than that, I reckon,” Spider said. “Although, I must admit, I thought of that, and that made me suspect you. No. I reckon it was lit on the poop deck, with a fuse, then dropped to the stern gallery, where it exploded. Right behind the cap’n’s cabin. To us on the deck, it sounded like it came from within, and when we found the cap’n, we thought he’d committed suicide. But he hadn’t killed himself. Once I figured out the timing, I went out to the stern gallery. I found black smudges on the deck, where the powder bag exploded.”

  “Brilliant,” Anne Bonny said.

  Odin uncrossed his arms and held his guns level. Eyes in the crowd shifted. Abigail looked at Fox, at the Reverend Down, at Odin, at Spider. “This is . . . this is what must have happened!”

  “Aye,” said Spider. “Tell us the truth of it, Cap’n Wright.”

  Abigail gasped, rose, took three steps, glared at Spider, then glared at Wright. “Nicholas?”

  Wright stared at him blankly. “This is all ridiculous,” he said. He started to rise but sat back down when Odin aimed two pistols at him.

  “You were up on the poop when the shot we all heard went off. You had a pipe going, too.” Spider narrowed his eyes. “Easy enough to light a slow fuse with a good pipe going. I reckon you had a bag of powder and a fuse under your shirt and lit your little bomb with the pipe. You stood behind the helmsman, lit your fuse, dropped your bomb onto the stern gallery, and waited for the blast.”

  “You do me wrong, carpenter,” Wright snarled.

  “No. It was you.”

  “You lie,” Wright said. “And your lad there, he said Hadley had a key! Aye? Why should Hadley have a key? He stole my key, so he could kill the captain!”

  “No,” Spider said. “You tossed your key into Hadley’s chest. Miss Brentwood started talking about how her father couldn’t have been suicide, aye? And there was that handsome lieutenant, Price, being all gallant. Suppose he started taking Miss Brentwood’s idea of a murder seriously? Started poking about more. He might have figured out it wasn’t all as simple as it seemed. So you needed another plan and put a key in Hadley’s trunk. Planned to make him your scapegoat, no doubt. He was a potential rival for the girl’s attentions, aye? But Hadley had no reason to kill the cap’n. Hadley would not ever do a thing that would hurt Miss Brentwood. Not ever.”

  Spider sighed. “No, you killed him, Wright. I did not want to believe it, because I actually thought you a good man. But I was wrong, more than once. I thought you acted foolishly in coming here to this island, doing a goddamned reckless thing out of love for Miss Brentwood. Then for a while I thought maybe Miss Bonny here had used her charm on you, convinced you to steer here, so she could take care of her own business, set Redemption on course for her vengeance. But I have talked to the woman with weapons in hands, looked her in the eye, and . . . no. She might have rounded up some men; hell, Hob would have followed her lead in a heartbeat, and I don’t think it would take her long to win some fellows over. She could have taken over the ship and headed here. It would have been easier and a more sure plan than this sneaky murder and convincing you to deceive Miss Brentwood just to get us here. So why didn’t she do that? Because she didn’t know Ned and Wicked Pete would be h
ere. She was just following Sam Smoke, thinking he’d lead her to her prey.”

  Anne took a theatrical bow.

  “But if Anne did not know of the island rendezvous, and if the only one who knew about this island was you, Wright, then . . . it had to be you that killed him. Once the cap’n was killed, you could steer the ship anywhere you wanted. The cap’n never loved this island, did he? Maybe never even saw it. That’s why his daughter never heard tell of it before you mentioned it to her. It was a lie so you could send this ship westward toward Ned Low.”

  “Listen, John, everyone, this is madness.” Wright started to rise, saw Odin leering behind a pair of guns, and sat again.

  “It was you who ordered me to make that stupid target for Sam Smoke, a key part of your plot, to provide cover for the killing,” Spider said. “And I don’t recall you being around for the shooting contest up on the poop, although it’s the kind of thing you normally would wager on. You weren’t on the weather deck or forecastle at the time either, near as I can recall.”

  “I was there,” Fox said. “I shot with Sam, and you did not rule me out as the killer.”

  “You left before Sam’s ruckus ended.” Spider shrugged. “A clever man might have wanted to be seen up on the poop, shooting, so he could persuade people later he could not have been in the cabin shooting the cap’n. Sorry, Mister Fox, but you are a clever man, and I had to think of such notions. Hell, you even had a goddamned blanket about you, and I thought maybe you left the poop, snuck in and killed the cap’n, and let that blanket catch all the blood spraying, and then you chucked it overboard. That was the very thing that first got my eye on you, sir, the blanket. I really thought you had worked it all out. In an odd way, it’s a sign of respect. I really figured you smart enough to have planned this all out.”

  “The blanket? It is still in my bunk.” Fox scratched his chin. “But would not Nicholas have been covered in blood, if he killed the captain?”

  “Anyone would have.” Spider nodded. “I don’t see how the killer could have escaped that. But shortly after the murder Hob went chasing after Miss Bonny while she was talking to Mister Wright. Not far from the cap’n’s quarters, by the way, and not long after the murder had to have happened, if I am right. And Mister Wright swung a duffel or sack at Hob. Remember that, Hob?”