by Joan Druett
Forsythe said uneasily, “Why, what did Tweedie say?”
Nothing about the disease you once consulted him for, e hoa, Wiki thought with amusement. He said aloud, “The analyst testified that the bottle of bismuth mixture was adulterated with strychnine—which raises a lot of questions, including some I want to ask you myself.”
“It was the medicine what poisoned Grimes?”
“That’s what he said.”
“I thought all along that that po-faced steward was to blame,” said Forsythe with satisfaction, and toasted himself with a draft from the jug. “I’d reckoned it was those top two fish he put somethin’ nasty on, though, and nothin’ worse than a heavy dose of salts. He put strychnine into the medicine, huh?”
“That’s not what the court heard. Instead, Dr. Tweedie calmly stood up and confessed it was his fault the strychnine got into the medicine.”
“What!”
“Apparently he has one mortar for grinding poisons, and another for medicines, and the two mortars got mixed up. He used the poisoned one to grind up something that went into the bismuth preparation.”
“Christ! That’s the last bloody time I’ll buy anything from him!”
“I should imagine a lot of people feel the same way, which makes his candor impressive as well as surprising,” Wiki said dryly.
“So how did they get mixed up?”
“An hour or so before you came in with Dr. Olliver, someone had called for strychnine to kill mice, he said. The jar was empty, so he had to grind some up, and then he left his son to clean the mortar and put it away after the customer had gone. Apparently, instead of cleaning it, the boy put it on the wrong shelf.”
“Wa’al, there’s one bloody lie, for a start. When we arrived the woman who was after the strychnine for mice was still in the store.”
Staring at him very thoughtfully, indeed, Wiki ate a second banana, and then finished off his coffee. When he set down the mug he said, “Why do you think Tweedie got it wrong?”
“Maybe she had been there an hour, on account of she was the gossipy sort. She was natterin’ away to Tweedie’s boy when we arrived, and then latched on to old Olliver like he was a long-lost friend; told him all about her problems with her mice and her poor bastard of a husband.”
“In English, or Portuguese?”
“English. Her name’s Dixon. Tweedie’s place is in the quinta at Botafogo, and it’s a proper little outpost of old Europe, there.”
“Is that so?” said Wiki meditatively. So there had been a lot to distract Dr. Tweedie while he was getting his ingredients and pestle and mortar together, he thought, and asked, “Did you see Tweedie’s son pick up a mortar and shift it somewhere else?”
“Nope.”
“How about Tweedie himself?”
“He hurried into the shop, and talked to Dr. Olliver about what he wanted. Then he turned around to work at his bench. After he’d finished, he turned round again, handed the bottle and other stuff over, and took the money for it. Then we left. We was in a rush, remember.”
So the apothecary had had his back to them while he made up the medicine, Wiki mused. “Was Tweedie’s son in the courtroom?”
“Not that I saw. His father had to leave someone in charge, as he’d be too tight to shut it up and lose custom while he was attending the inquest—which is bloody pointless, anyway, because the shop is bound to be closed down.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Tweedie’s confessed to goddamned manslaughter, hasn’t he?”
“Not according to the coroner.”
“What! You mean he ain’t been charged, not even with goddamned carelessness? After all, he caused a man’s death!”
“Dr. Vieira de Castro was so impressed with Dr. Tweedie’s candor and honesty that he broke into Portuguese to tell the whole court about it,” Wiki informed him, going on in an ironic tone, “He trembled to think what would have happened if Dr. Tweedie had not come forward. He admitted that some authorities might think that the gross negligence he had committed merited a charge of manslaughter, but in his own opinion Dr. Tweedie’s frankness deserved both acknowledgment and credit, he said, and completely absolved him of blame.”
“But that’s a crock-up!”
“There’s certainly something very wrong,” said Wiki soberly. The words Dr. Gilchrist had exclaimed when he had first seen Grimes convulsing—“This man has been poisoned!”—kept on echoing in his head, and he wished for the hundredth time that he had been able to see the surgeon’s face when the verdict was pronounced.
“So how did the case end?”
“The coroner banged his gavel, and issued a verdict of death by natural causes exacerbated by misadventure. The case is now closed, and no one is suspected of murder.”
“So Jack Winter got away with it,” the lieutenant said in disgust. He picked up the jug to wash the nasty thought out of his mouth, only to find it empty. He shook it disbelievingly, peered inside, came up for air, and opened his mouth to yell for another.
Wiki said, “You’ve had enough.”
“What the hell—”
“It’s time we left.”
“The devil it is. Order some more to drink, and forget those bloody bananas. When you eat them in your hands like that it makes you look more like a goddamned savage than ever.”
Wiki cast him an impatient glance, and said, “I want you to take me to Tweedie’s shop.”
“Why, for God’s sake?”
“To talk to Tweedie’s son.”
“Oh, Jesus Christ,” said Forsythe in utter disgust. “What can you prove by talking to him? Look at the bright side—Robert Festin is a free man!—or until that woman drags him to the altar, anyway. I don’t like the idea of Jack Winter getting away with it, but what’s the point in stirring up trouble?”
“Because I was there when Grimes died—and whoever did that to him should not get away with it,” said Wiki, and pushed himself to his feet.
However, after he finally persuaded the big Virginian to stand up, getting out of the taberna was not nearly as easy as envisaged, Forsythe being even more inebriated than he had thought. He staggered in drunken circles until Wiki grabbed his elbow to hold him still, and then, though he consented to put on his hat, setting it rakishly over one eye, it was impossible to get him into his coat.
Finally, Wiki steered them both toward the gate with Forsythe’s arm draped over his shoulders, Forsythe’s coat over his free arm, and the remaining bananas in his free hand. By the time they arrived at the entrance to the alley, Forsythe had picked up the rhythm of walking, and everything seemed set. However, just as they were moving through the gate and into the street, a couple of harlots stepped up.
“Wiki,” said Forsythe, lurching to a stop. He was loosely grinning.
“No,” said Wiki firmly.
“One of ’em’s quite pretty. What are they saying?”
“That they can show us a good time. What else did you expect?”
“Wa’al, why don’t we let ’em?” said Forsythe, and wrapped his free arm around the prettier one’s neck.
“Because,” said Wiki. Then he saw that he had lost Forsythe’s attention. Instead of listening, the southerner was staring up the street.
“Wa’al, lookee who’s here,” said he. “And who’s that with him?”
Wiki looked. The tall figure of George Rochester was threading through the crowd toward them, and the man with him was Captain William Coffin.
Thirteen
Wiki’s face creased up with delight and astonishment. Then, as he recognized the stiff, fast way Captain Coffin was striding, his smile faded.
As the older man got close, Wiki could see that his normally hazel eyes were an icy blue-gray, and his mouth was tightly compressed. His father walked right up to him, stopped, and said, “So there you are.”
“Aye,” said Wiki uneasily. George Rochester didn’t look very pleased to see him, either, he noticed. He searched his conscience, but couldn’t t
hink of a reason. To make matters still worse, the prettier of the two girls detached herself from Forsythe’s drunken embrace, went up to Rochester, and tucked her hand into his arm, smiling up at him invitingly while he looked down at her like a loftily inquiring heron.
Wiki returned his gaze to his father, who still did not deign to smile. The pause had gone on for far too long, and had become awkward, so he said lamely, “It’s good to see you.” At other times when they met up in some foreign port, they shook each other’s hands warmly, but right now Wiki didn’t have a free hand.
William Coffin nodded. “It’s good to see you, too. Why don’t you pay off those girls and come along?”
“But we weren’t—” Wiki blurted in embarrassment, but then gave up, realizing that whatever he said was going to make matters worse. Instead, he introduced Forsythe, whose expression turned to blatant curiosity when it seeped into his foggy head that this stranger was none other than Wiki’s natural father. Abruptly realizing what a bad impression he was making, he tried to improve the situation by stepping away from Wiki and straightening up. Unfortunately, his equilibrium was not up to the challenge. Rochester had to grab hold of him to stop him from toppling into the gutter.
Wiki, searching his father’s face for any hint of what had made him so angry, saw Captain Coffin look the southerner up and down with a deep frown of disapproval. Nothing was said to acknowledge the introduction. Instead, as soon as the girls had been sent off, he said to Wiki, “Let’s go someplace where we can talk.”
Without waiting for an answer, William Coffin turned on his heel, and headed for the market. After a moment of hesitation, Wiki followed, listening to Forsythe and Rochester trailing behind. George had taken over the job of keeping the lieutenant upright, it seemed, because he could hear a lot of muttered swearing and stumbling, but he did not look behind to check, all his puzzled attention being fixed on his father’s rigid rear view.
First, Captain Coffin led the way through the market, and then he crossed Rua Direita, heading for Praça Quinze. As they passed the ancient jail, Wiki realized that his goal was the Hotel Pharoux—a logical destination, because that was where all the European travelers and American sea captains stopped, even though the food was reputed to be bad, and the smell when the wind blew in from the harbor was notoriously foul.
The famous hotel was quite plain in appearance, its thick whitewashed walls three stories high. The windows on the bottom floor were barred, while the windows on the second and third floors were more elegantly arched, each one provided with a square wrought-iron balcony. The street entrance was halfway along the frontage, with an embellished stone tympanum above it, but instead of heading there, Captain Coffin led the way to an iron gate at the side of the long building, and opened it to let them all through into a bricked, open-air passage. It was overhung with trees, the low branches half hiding the hotel privies that were sited along the left-hand side of the walk like a row of smelly huts.
Still, not a word was said. Wiki became conscious that Forsythe was staring from his face to his father’s, and that he had lost his ingratiating grin. However, the lieutenant tagged along behind as Captain Coffin strode along the walk to the curving stone stairway at the end, and climbed it to a doorway. This led into the hotel, opening onto a balcony on the second level which ran round the four sides of a big inner courtyard.
Plants climbed and hung everywhere; it was like being in a tropical forest. Two more stairways led off this balcony, one going up to the topmost floor, and the other curving down to a marbled hallway on the ground level. Captain Coffin passed these by, walking along the balcony to a curtained arch at the far end, which opened into a dining room.
Though the windows were wide open, they were also hung with curtains, so the light was dim. However, it was possible to see that the walls were covered with great oil paintings, some well done, others very bad. Four big round tables were laid for meals, but the room was empty. Then, in a hurried rattle of footsteps, the manager arrived. He greeted Captain Coffin and George Rochester effusively, with many nods and bows, evidently because they were expected. There was an awkward pause when he turned round and realized that one of Captain Coffin’s guests looked like an Indian, and that the other was drunk, but he covered up his discomfiture by talking a lot while showing them to a table.
With his own hands, the restauranteur placed decanters of wine on the table, before hurrying away to the kitchens. Without waiting for an invitation, Forsythe reached out, grabbed one of the carafes, and poured. As Wiki watched him lift his filled wineglass in a sardonic salute to Captain Coffin, he realized with a sinking heart that Forsythe had decided to be insulted by his father’s rudeness, and that trouble was definitely in the offing.
He didn’t have to wait long. “So you’re Wiki’s father,” the Virginian observed, and jerked his chin in Wiki’s direction. “Fine lad,” he went on, much to Wiki’s surprise, and added with meaningful emphasis, “You should be bloody proud of him.”
Wiki winced. Captain Coffin contemplated Forsythe quizzically, his fine black eyebrows arched, and his half-closed eye piercing.
“He won’t never make an officer, of course—except on blubber-hunters, where the skippers don’t care if their mates are black, brown, or brindle—and certainly never a captain. How could he, bein’ what he is? But he’s done bloody well, considering. Did you know he’s the agent of U.S. law and order on the expedition? That he has the same powers in the fleet as a sheriff does on land?”
William Coffin turned his half-closed eye on Wiki. “Good God,” he said without expression. Wiki smiled uncertainly. Then his father looked back at Forsythe, and said, “No, I didn’t.”
“Wa’al, he’s got a fancy document to prove it—and I bet you’ve got it in your pocket, Wiki,” guessed Forsythe in one of his disconcerting flashes of shrewdness. “I bet Wilkes ordered you to carry it, in case you needed to establish your credentials at the inquiry.”
“Inquiry?” Rochester echoed. He had been looking from Wiki to his father and back again, his expression worried, and now his face held consternation. Inquiry was an ominous word for a navy man.
“Assistant Astronomer Grimes is dead,” Wiki told him. “He was poisoned. The coroner held the hearing today.”
“Who?” said George, and then, thunderstruck, “Poisoned?”
“However, the coroner came to the conclusion that it was a mere misadventure, and that Grimes actually died of something else,” Wiki went on more sardonically than ever. “So absolutely no one is under suspicion of murder.”
“It’s a crock-up,” Forsythe idly observed, and then said to Wiki, “Show your father that letter.”
He behaved as if he were showing off a clever child, which embarrassed Wiki considerably. However, Forsythe’s guess was right, as Captain Wilkes had indeed instructed him to carry the letter of authority. For the sake of peace, he produced it from the inside pocket of his coat.
It was a grand parchment affair, embellished with a lead seal and a scarlet ribbon, which commanded the reader to provide whatever assistance the bearer, William Coffin, Jr., required, as he was the accredited agent of the sheriff’s department of the Town of Portsmouth, Virginia. Captain Coffin received it with an air of caution, opened it very slowly, and then studied it for what seemed a very long time, while everyone watched.
“How on earth did this happen?” he said at last.
Wiki grinned sheepishly. “It was an accident, really. When the expedition left Norfolk, the sheriff strongly suspected that a man who had committed a murder was with the fleet, and so he gave me the job of tracking down the killer, and this certificate to back me up.”
“Did you catch him?”
“Aye,” said Wiki, without mentioning that there had been more killers since. Then a pretty mulatto maid with a great deal of bouncing black hair came in, providing welcome distraction. She was carrying a tray piled with small bowls of assorted tidbits, and Wiki automatically swayed to one side so the f
ood would not pass over his head. She placed dishes in the center of the table until the tray was empty, and then cast Wiki a flirtatious smile over her shoulder as she left.
His responsive grin was absentminded. The moment she had gone, he turned to George and said, “I heard that the Swallow run afoul of a merchantman.”
George’s fair brows shot up. “Weren’t you on deck when the fleet came into the harbor, old chap?”
“Aye, but the last I saw of you was when you were a long way astern, racing a brigantine through the heads—well, that’s what it looked like, the way you were both flying along. Then Captain Wilkes sent me off to the Independence to deliver a letter, and I guess you run afoul after that. Was it with the brigantine?”
“It was indeed the brigantine,” George agreed thoughtfully.
“Well, I didn’t know that anything amiss had occurred until Midshipman Dicken told me about it.” Wiki paused, very aware of both his father and George staring at him, and added rather awkwardly, “He also said that the Swallow got off very lightly.”
“He’s right,” agreed George, looking even more pensive.
“He went on to say that you almost sunk the poor barky.”
“He did,” said William Coffin grimly.
Light dawned. Wiki exclaimed, “She was your ship?”
“She was.”
“Oh dear! And she’s badly damaged?”
“As your informant told you, the Swallow almost sunk me.”
“It was not like that,” Rochester exclaimed. “Tell him the truth, old chap—that it was you who run into me, and not the other way around.”
Instead of answering, William Coffin watched Wiki broodingly. “You didn’t recognize the Osprey?”
“No, I did not,” said Wiki, and shook his head. So this was the reason his father was so cross with him, he thought. He reached out, picked up a pastry triangle in his fingers, and ate it. It was warm and tasted of cheese. He liked it, so took another as he said, “The last time I saw her, she was a full-rigged brig, and I remember her as a topsail schooner. What do you expect, if you keep on changing the rig?”