Тимоти Уилльямз - Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 126, No. 3 & 4. Whole No. 769 & 770, September/October 2005

It wasn’t until he was alone that Edgar asked himself what the policeman Hawkshaw would have made of Wilkes’s false beard, one applied with more gum arabic than an actor would use.

Edgar went back into the library and caught up on the theatrical news in The Idler. Then he arranged to have the first sitting at dinner. After the meal he returned to his reading. But when the sea had driven all but the most stalwart of the passengers inside, Edgar, being a young man, decided he must venture out and make the circuit of the heaving deck.

Dusk was falling. Overhead, the pale moon passed through a line of scudding clouds like a ghost trying on masks. In the near distance lay a shelf of rain clouds as gray as anchovies in a jar.

Reaching the carriage lashed to the deck, Edgar timed his staggering strides so that they brought him down to the railing not far from the carriage door. He worked his way over to it, half-hoping to find Brownlea inside. But the leather window curtains were tightly drawn shut. However, he was puzzled by the distinct smell of one of the Sligo horse trader’s cigars. And he was puzzled a second time when he came around the carriage to continue his walk and saw Wilkes’s face at a dining-room window. But the man’s attention was so focused on the carriage he did not notice Edgar pass.

The young actor continued on his way until he reached Drugan, the master-at-arms, on his bench. Sitting down, Edgar rolled them each a cigarette. “It looks like rain,” he said.

“It always looks like rain on this passage, sir, coming and going,” the man told him. “But tonight we’ll have rain for certain. This is St. Ronan’s feast day. Tonight every Irish maiden who doesn’t think she’s as pretty as she ought to be goes to bed early with a prayer to St. Ronan on her lips. Sleep will instantly transport her to St. Ronan’s Well in Scotland, whose sacred water she will try to bring home with her. The next morning she’ll wash her face in it and become prettier than before.”

“But why does that make it rain?” asked Edgar.

The master-at-arms slapped his knee and laughed at himself. “And we are supposed to be an island of storytellers,” he said. “I left out the best part. They have to bring the water back in sieves.”

Edgar smiled. “A happier story than the one you told me before.”

Drugan grew solemn. “Yes, sir, I’ve been thinking about that. You know, sailors hold it unlucky to have a widow in full mourning aboard a ship. I never held with that until yesterday morning in Sligo when our first passenger up the gangplank, with the help of a cane, was a fresh widow bound for Belfast to live with her children. Mrs. Noonan wore a black veil and a dress that could have been cut from old umbrellas. The day began with a widow in full mourning and would end with Lady Gilroy’s suicide.”

The two men sat deep in their own thoughts for some time. Then the rain began to fall. “Perhaps you’ll join me in the wheelhouse, sir,” said Drugan. “We’ll be high and dry there and I must relieve the second mate so he can have a bite to eat.” Calculating that he could afford the tobacco, Edgar agreed.

The second mate greeted them both pleasantly and left for dinner with a “Steady as she goes, Mr. Drugan.”

Drugan laughed. “There’s even less to this job than my own, Mr. Meynell. The ship’s come this way so many times she’s worn a rut in the water.” Then he grew serious. “You know, here’s a funny thing about Lady Gilroy’s suicide. In her note she instructed her solicitor to alter her will to leave to her husband whatever she possessed in her own right.”

“Why is that so strange?” asked Edgar.

“I know the man, sir. I served under Lord Gilroy at Ulundi. Against his commander’s orders — he held the man too much his social inferior — he initiated a charge that cost him an ear to a Zulu blade.”

Cost him an ear? Edgar was opening his mouth to speak when Drugan added in a hoarse voice, “And it cost my brother his life.” The master-at-arms pounded a fist into his hand. “Back when my loss was fresh, had I come face to face with Lord Gilroy on a dark night, only one of us would have walked away alive.

“And another odd thing, sir,” remembered Drugan. “What’s time to a suicide? But the lid of Lady Gilroy’s bracelet timepiece stood open. If she was taking a last look at the photograph inside the lid, well, it wasn’t her husband. It was his brother Wilfrid, who my mother once pointed out to me on the street. Two men, she said, as different in personality as chalk and cheese. Did Lady Gilroy love another? Was this why she killed herself?”

When the second mate returned from his dinner, the master-at-arms put on an oilskin and took the saber from its peg and said, “Time for me to make my rounds, Mr. Meynell. I’ll be back in a shake.” But Edgar thought it best to save what tobacco he had for the rest of his journey. Following Drugan out of the wheelhouse, he made a dash for the first doorway.

In the noisy dining room, the stewards had pushed several tables together, put up a numbered wheel, and were operating a steeplechase game for the betting passengers, moving bright silhouettes of horses and jockeys around a felt racecourse.

Edgar went to the darker end of the room hoping to find the man who called himself Wilkes. Could he be Lord Gilroy? He was certainly paying enough attention to the Gilroy carriage. But why come on board in disguise? Perhaps the message telling him of his wife’s death failed to reach him. He hadn’t been at his estate, after all, but away fox hunting. Had he come expecting to find his wife alive? Edgar hoped to get some answers. But the man’s chair was empty. Perhaps he’d been driven away by the noisy gamesters.

Edgar sat down by the window to think things out. Beyond the glass was rain and darkness. Now and then a stroke of lightning linked sky and sea and outlined the carriage lashed to the deck. Suddenly, as if the leather curtains had been thrown open, an ember-bright spot appeared out of nowhere like the eye of a feral cat. Edgar thought it came from the interior of the carriage. The dot of light held steady while moving with the deck of the ship. Edgar thought it might be a signal, for soon after the light appeared he saw a figure pass between his window and the carriage. He thought of Drugan making his rounds. Or some woman come to get St. Ronan’s rain on the cheap. Or was it Wilkes or Lord Gilroy? Or Brownlea? A moment later three bright fingers of lightning forked down into the water. There was a crash of thunder and everything was darkness again.

Two hours later, Edgar stood at the top of the gangplank not far from Drugan, who was bidding the last of the disembarking passengers goodbye. The actor told himself there was still a faint chance Brownlea had somehow got into a cabin and stayed there for the trip. The last passenger down the gangplank was a large, bent-over woman in full mourning leaning heavily on the arm of a steward. Drugan called her Mrs. Noonan and raised his hand to the visor of his cap.

So that was the end of it. Old Bantry had been right all along. Brownlea, damn him, had taken the last train to Belfast the day before, and was long gone. Edgar felt very foolish.

As he turned to say goodbye to Drugan and go ashore, an ashen-faced sailor came up to the master-at-arms and said, “Better come see, sir. It’s the carriage. We were preparing to hoist it over the side for it’s due aboard the Liverpool packet tonight.” Drugan hurried portside and something told Edgar to follow. Several crewmen stood around the carriage. The one with the lantern said, “We needed to see if everything was secure inside, sir.” The man opened the carriage door and raised his lantern.

Propped in one corner of the upholstered seat was the bloody head of a man with a severed ear. It was Edgar’s horse dealer from Sligo stripped of his fake beard.