"Where was that?"
"I dinna ken."
Mr. McTavish departed to rejoice in being freed of his dubious debt and to send in Blenkiron and Fallowes. The mids shortly appeared in the door, jostled to see who must go first, and finally stood before him.
"Be seated, young gentlemen," Hoare whispered. "Which of you is which?"
"I'm Fallowes, sir," said the taller lad. Fallowes might have been twelve. His wavy blond hair kept falling into his eyes, and he kept brushing it back like a nervous girl.
"I'm Blenkiron, sir. I'm senior, if you please, sir," he added. Blenkiron's voice was still uncertain whether to sing tenor or treble.
"Tell me about Mr. Tregallen," Hoare whispered.
Blenkiron's face turned white.
"He was worse than Mr. Barnard and the sawbones. And he was quartered here, too, right with us."
"No escape for a poor snotty."
"Shut up, you ass."
There was another pause. "What do you mean by that?" Hoare asked.
"Nothing, sir," came in chorus, and neither young gentleman would be moved further.
"What did you do ashore?" Hoare asked at last. The two looked at each other.
"Well, we met these two ladies…" began Fallowes.
They admitted to having awakened the next day in a strange, smelly bed with their pockets to let. They had not seen Tregallen.
There being no more to do aboard Severn, Hoare decided, he betook himself ashore. For the gig's return to the Sally Port in the growing dusk, he left the tiller to its rightful coxswain and took the time to review the meager results of his amateur questioning.
Could the two mids have killed their persecutor? Certainly the ill will was evident, but so was manifest fear. Even combined, the two would have been mice to Tregallen's cat. Forget the mids.
Grimes had been wandering about inland. He could have killed Tregallen. But why?
Dunworthy must be innocent, for he had had no real need to call for Hoare's help to move his "corpus."
McTavish was badly in debt to the master, so he would have had a reason to kill him. He claimed that somewhere in the Dorsetshire countryside he had gone adrift-an oxymoron if there ever was one; might the village where he awoke have been Bishops Waltham?
As for Gamage the purser, he had stayed in Portsmouth-he had said-all the time he was ashore and could not have gotten the body to Bishops Waltham.
Hoare considered the tasks he must perform ashore.
"When is tomorrow's first flood tide?" he asked the coxswain.
"That 'ud be four bells of the mornin' watch, sir. Ten o'clock."
The cox's voice, and his condescending translation of the time for this lubberly officer, showed more than a trace of scorn; any real seaman, he clearly thought, would always have the state of the tide in his bones.
Eighteen hours. Hoare had no more than that before Severn and all his suspects save one would be effectively out of his reach. Not a minute was to be lost. He would be left with that single suspect, one portly, middle-aged doctor whose motive for the murder was a feeble thing indeed.
Nevertheless he owed it to the common law to persuade the civilian authorities of Hampshire to arrest Dr. Dunworthy as suspect of murder. While doing so, he must comb through all the almost infinite number of haunts that Tregallen might have frequented.
This nightmarish tangle was only getting worse as he yanked at it. A corpus with its throat cut; the tracks so plain in the mud under the bridge but so obscure to interpret; the peculiar scrotal purse; two frightened, sullen midshipmen; an embittered marine; two medicos — Dunworthy the body-snatching doctor and Grimes the top cock in his own cockpit; an oddly deceptive message about a "corpus." Hoare felt that all he could do was jerk feebly and hopelessly at his tangle until his time ran out, Severn made her offing behind the Foreland, and he must face his merciless admiral, charged with having failed to do his utmost.
He plodded first to the Town Hall, where he put his case for arresting Dr. Dunworthy before a bored functionary. At last the man scribbled on a form and called a minion-a bailey? a shreeve? — to go to Durley Street by Bishops Waltham and seize the portly physician. Then he plodded on. At the Bunch of Grapes, where Tregallen had been seen and which he had saved for last, no one answered his hammering at the door.
His own quarters at the Swallowed Anchor lay not far away. Wearily, Hoare made use of his key to enter the sleeping inn and fell on his bed fully clothed, telling himself to awaken at sunrise.
The morning sun in Hoare's eyes woke him with a start. God, it must be gone eight bells-and Severn due to catch the flood. Dashing ice-cold water into his face, he raced below. "No time, Susan, no time," he whispered to the pink girl who bore his breakfast of bread and brawn. "Was there a ship's master in the inn two nights ago, or three?"
"I don't think so, sir. Pa! Mr. Hoare wants to know 'as there been a ship's master in the inn these past two nights?"
"Nay, lass, no master, not last night," came the answer from the kitchen.
Hoare departed at a near-run for the Bunch of Grapes. If he failed there, he was left with inquiring at a few down-at-heel shebeens where no self-respecting ship's master would have set foot-and he had no time, no time.
Mr. Greenleaf of the Bunch had just opened his doors and was sweeping out last night's trash. Yes, he remembered seeing Mr. Tregallen; he knew him well. He had sat at that table in the back, and another man had joined him. Hoare's heart lifted; the tangle was about to come unraveled after all, and nearly an hour remained before flood tide.
Mr. Greenleaf could say for certain that Tregallen's companion was tall, but he had been that moithered; a tussle had come up among some of the other patrons, and by the time he had taken care of the matter the stranger had gone.
Mr. Tregallen had paid the reckoning for himself and his friend and left. It was then that the inn's own horse and chaise, which Mr. Greenleaf had rented out to another patron, had disappeared, leaving both the patron and Mr. Greenleaf bereft. In fact, were it not for a friend of Greenleaf s boy, it would have been the last of his horse and chaise because yesterday morning the friend came to tell the boy he had glimpsed the equipage standing just off the Sally Port, unattended and all bespraggled with blood.
Hoare's heart sank again. Yes, Tregallen had met a friend, but who had he been? He started out the inn door and nearly collided with a barefoot girl-child who ran athwart his hawse in hot pursuit of a kitten.
"You, Jenny!" came a woman's voice from within. "You coom back 'ere, or I'll tell yer da and 'e'll wup yer little arse off!"
Within seconds the child trotted back again, triumphantly lugging her kitten. "You tell me da, an' I'll cut yer into pieces when I grow up, that I will!" she shrilled. Child and pet vanished into the darkness of the inn.
For what seemed like an eternity Hoare stood transfixed, the chance words ringing through his head. The tangle in his mind was suddenly gone-cut into pieces.
He returned to the Hard on the run. The gig he had used before was at leisure, but another officer was approaching, looking eager. Hoare pulled out the boatswain's pipe he used in emergencies and, nearly breathless, blew the "Still." Instinct stopped the other officer in his tracks; by mere feet Hoare got to the gig first and boarded it, disregarding the other's outraged howl. "Severn again, lads! And pull for all you're worth!" he croaked. His throat exploded in agony, and he collapsed, coughing, in the stern sheets while the oarsmen bent to their work as if rowing for the Head of the Fleet prize.
As Hoare came up to Severn, all hands and the cook were heaving the capstan round to the squeal of a fiddle. Her main topsail and headsails were already beginning to draw, her boarding ladder hauled in. Hoare wasted no time trying to hail for it to be put overside again but gave a huge leap. Catching the chain-plates of her starboard main shrouds, he pulled himself aboard, shredding the knees of his breeches on the channel as he went and leaving two red-stained patches of white nankeen behind. Captain Drysdale and his first lieu
tenant stared down from the frigate's quarterdeck.
"Damn you, sir!" Barnard exploded, "keep your damned blood off my bloody deck! What is it now?"
"'Vast weighing!" Hoare croaked. "I've found your master's killer, and he's aboard Severn!"
With this, his damned throat gave out, and he bent over, supporting himself with his hands on his knees and coughing, coughing.
"Explain yourself, sir," the captain said.
"Grimes, sir," Hoare coughed. "Your surgeon."
"What about him?"
"The master was blackmail-cough-blackmailing him. Grimes cut his throat, took the body inland, and left it-cough-to a local doctor to anatomize. To cut into pieces."
Spoken more or less out loud, here on Severn's quarterdeck, Hoare's words sounded fantastic.
"You have some explaining to do, Mr. Hoare," the captain said. "Mr. McTavish!"
"Sah!"
"Take a man, put the surgeon under arrest, and deliver him to my cabin."
"Sah!"
"Come below, if you please, Mr. Hoare, and let us get to the bottom of this once for all. Pray accompany us, Mr. Barnard."
"Signal from Admiralty House, sir," Blenkiron said, taking his eye from a telescope. "Reads: 'Why are you still at anchor?' "
"Make 'Submit explanation forthcoming directly,' " sighed Captain Drysdale. "Belay getting under way, Mr. Barnard. I see we must make our excuses to Admiral Hardcastle."
"Ava-a-ast heaving!" Barnard bellowed. Here was one more reason to envy the other officer; he could bellow.
Below, the captain seated himself at his desk. He looked at Hoare. "Now, sir, kindly justify your accusation."
By now Hoare had recovered from his coughing fit. There was no time to explain, no time. Yet, he thought wildly, Captain Drysdale, unwitting, might have a simple, clinching piece of evidence in his possession. He would chance it.
"I can do so immediately, sir," he croaked, "and explain in detail later, if you but have a sample of Mr. Grimes's handwriting."
"I do not, but my clerk will. Morse!"
A door to one side opened, and a pallid man appeared. "Sir?"
"A sample of Mr. Grimes's handwriting, if you please. One of his sick-and-injured reports will do."
There were sounds of struggle outside. The pallid man was replaced by Mr. Grimes, flanked by two marine guards. From the surgeon's appearance he had, Hoare saw, not come along willingly.
"I demand to know, sir… " Grimes began.
"Silence, you," said McTavish.
"Mr. Hoare here bears an accusation against you, Mr. Grimes," the captain said, "of murder. What have you to say?"
"Absurd. The man's mad. Or drunk."
The pallid Morse returned with a paper in hand. "Mr. Grimes's report, sir," he said. "Casualties resulting from our encounter with Corse."
"Pray give it to Mr. Hoare here."
Hoare took the paper eagerly. He reached into his pocket for the message Dr. Dunworthy had given him.
"By your leave, sir." Hoare placed the two papers on Captain Drysdale's desk. Good fortune stared back at him. "Kindly look here, sir, at these two words." He placed one finger on each of the papers.
Grimes wrenched himself from his guards' grip and stood erect, or rather attempted to do so. His head struck the frigate's overhead a stunning blow, and he collapsed to the deck as if poleaxed. The surgeon might have been at sea for some time, Hoare thought, but not during his formative years. He had not learned to keep his head down when below-decks, come what may.
"Pick him up and sit him down, McTavish," the captain said. "I won't have him bleeding all over my Turkey carpet." He returned to the papers at which Hoare still pointed. " 'I've a corpus for you,'" he read from one, " 'if you come to the place marked on the map. Bring the usual.' "
"And this sentence, sir, from the casualty report?"
"'The corpus of our only casualty, Dimmick, foretopman, was committed… ' Corpus. The same word, by Jove, and in the same hand. How the devil did you know, Hoare?"
"I think we shall find that Tregallen was blackmailing three different shipmates-Gamage the purser, McTavish the lobster, Grimes the surgeon," Hoare whispered. "We know that all three were ashore when he was killed. The first two as much as admitted to me that they were being blackmailed, a thing they would never have done had either been the one who disposed of his blackmailer. Grimes made no such admission."
Hoare paused again for breath and another mad guess. "I am certain Dr. Dunworthy of Durley Street will recognize your surgeon as having attended his lecture the other night. The rest, sir, you just observed yourself."
Captain Drysdale shifted his gaze from the papers to his surgeon.
"What have you to say for yourself, Mr. Grimes?" he said.
The surgeon mopped the blood from his forehead. "Mr. Hoare has me to rights, sir," he said. "The master had turned the tables on me; he was bleeding me white. He was buggering me. I had no choice."
Despite all questioning he refused to state the event or events that the late Mr. Tregallen had threatened to reveal.
"It would do no one any good, sir, and could wreak great harm," he said at last.
His captain directed the others to follow him onto the quarterdeck, where he summoned Blenkiron.
"Make to Admiralty House: 'Surgeon murdered master. Submit convene court-martial forthwith, this ship.' And to the port surgeon: 'Request replacement surgeon forthwith.'"
Mr. Blenkiron stared at Hoare. Behind the midshipman's astonishment, Hoare sensed, lay a profound relief.
Septimus Grimes's court-martial took place in Severn's cabin with Dr. Dunworthy the principal witness. The verdict was a foregone conclusion. As a mere warrant officer, the surgeon was not to be accorded the courtesy generally granted to commissioned officers, of being shot; instead, he was sentenced to dangle and strangle at Severn's yardarm.
"You knew Dr. Dunworthy, then," Hoare said as he kept Grimes company during the surgeon's last hours.
"I did not precisely know him, sir. I learned of the medical meeting in Bishops Waltham and attended his absurd lecture on the interrelationship of various glands in the human body. I had no difficulty in concluding that he was an active anatomizer, and his sponsor had announced his domicile upon introducing him.
"As you can imagine, my mind was already attuned to the question of silencing my persecutor. How to do it presented no problem; I am deft enough and strong enough, and of course the weapon-one of my scalpels-was ready to hand.
"The principal problem was how to dispose of the body. I had to do the deed now; I could not wait until we were at sea and simply put the man overboard one night after cutting his throat. He was far too experienced a seaman for that.
"So when at last I put anatomization together with my crying need, it became obvious. What better way of disposing of my blackmailer than handing him over to be dissected by a respected if eccentric physician? It would be he who must bury the inconvenient evidence with a prayer-after, mind you, having cut it into pieces in the course of his research so that, if found, it could not be identified. A far better solution than simply heaving Tregallen into the harbor, just to float ashore in a day or so.
"It was easy enough to entice the man into the inn's chaise the next night with promises of gold. Then all I need do was slit his throat, drive the corpus to Bishops Waltham, strip it for Dunworthy, drag it under the bridge, and leave a message under the doctor's door as I returned.
"Had you not boarded us," Grimes concluded, "Severn would have been at sea within minutes, and I would have been out of your reach. I planned to leave the ship at Gibraltar and go to ground in Spain."
"And the subject of the blackmail?"
"I shall go to my grave, sir-a watery one, I fear-without revealing that. Bearing a suggestive name like yours, you must know the burden the slightest open sign of sexual impropriety imposes on any officer, or warrant officer. I will not burden others in that way; there is enough on my conscience already. Now sir: How did you
come to lay the deed at my door?"
"You must blame an errant kitten, Mr. Grimes."
An hour later, Hoare stood on Severn's quarterdeck to see her crew run her surgeon aloft, long legs kicking wildly, to her main yardarm.
"We are still shy our master, sir," Mr. Barnard reminded his captain when the legs had ceased their hopeless reach for the ground and the officers resumed their hats.
"Well, we shall have to make shift without, you and I. Or perhaps Mr. Hoare himself would stoop…"
Hoare's heart leapt. Step down though it would be, he would gladly accept the post and sacrifice his belongings ashore to boot if it would get him to sea again.
"He can't talk, sir." Barnard spoke across Hoare as if he were deaf as well as mute.
"Of course. Pity."
The captain turned away and joined his lieutenant in the ritual of putting to sea. Left unceremoniously alone, Hoare once again damned the Frenchman who had killed his voice and his career at sea.
As he turned to clamber down into the waiting gig, he espied Dr. Dunworthy standing at the rail and offered him a lift ashore. The physician looked at him strangely, then followed him down the boarding ladder.
"I am happy to have had a part in clearing you, sir," Hoare said.
"And equally happy, I doubt not, sir," Dunworthy said bitterly, "to leave me bereft of my reputation in my community and in my profession.
"Do you imagine that the medical society will listen to a paper given by a suspected murderer? Do you imagine that word of my disgrace will not have already filled the neighborhood? Henceforth, thanks to your meddling, I shall see nothing of my former patients except their backs. I shall have to beg for my breakfast in the streets. Or go to sea as a surgeon. At my age and in my condition. Thanks to you. A dirty road to you, sir, and a slow journey. And take your damned happiness with you."
For the rest of the row across the harbor, the two passengers ignored each other.
Hoare turned to see Severn slowly gather way.
"'Come cheer up, my lads,'" he recited to himself, "''tis to glory we steer!'"
To glory, indeed. But he, Bartholomew Hoare, must remain behind and watch them go.
Hoare and the Passed Master (captain bartholomew hoare) Page 3