Eliot Pattison - Bone Rattler

Duncan fixed him with a somber gaze. “I assumed we were after the truth. You still doubted my words,” he declared. “So I thought you might believe the professor if he told you himself.”

“This is blasphemy!” Arnold barked. “I shall never allow-”

“His lungs were full of air.” Woolford’s declaration silenced the vicar, who stared at the lieutenant, jaw open, his anger slowly fading, replaced with shocked dismay. “You have heard it yourself, Reverend. No water in the lungs,” Woolford continued. “Air. This man did not drown.”

The vicar stared at the dead man. “Then he died preparing his suicide. A fall. The ship was rolling in the rising storm.”

Duncan lifted the dead man’s head again, probing, and discovered a soft spot behind the left ear where there should have been hard bone. “Someone hit him from behind,” he explained, pointing to the discolored, split tissue under the hair. “There is bruising, so it was done before death. The blood that would have clotted in the hair should have made it obvious, but the sea washed it away. It is a circle, nearly an inch wide. This was the end of a pole or spike. Perhaps the butt of a pistol. A hammer even,” he added.

“He was preparing for his suicide,” Arnold pressed, “planning to throw himself overboard after tying the rope to the rail, when a roll of the vessel knocked him backward, hitting his head so that he died before finishing his task. The top of a belaying pin could have made such a mark. He fell against the barrels and was hidden until that huge wave washed him over.”

Duncan probed further, pushing back the professor’s long hair, and paused again. “There’s another,” he said, and pointed to a second discolored circle, above the ear on the opposite side of the head. “He fell from the first blow, probably to his knees, and was finished with a second blow. This was no accident.”

Arnold’s face seemed to sag, then he turned toward the dead man. “Evering,” he declared in a mournful whisper, then stepped closer. “When Jehovah calls, not even the noblest of mortals may resist,” he added, his voice cracking. “God wills it so.”

They stood in silence, gazing upon the dead man as if at a wake. In Duncan’s youth, a man’s friends would have kissed his bloodless face.

“He never spoke with the sailors,” Woolford finally said in a slow, studied voice. “He acted as if the crew were invisible.”

Arnold began a whispered prayer, his palm now on Evering’s head.

“But he would often read to the prisoners,” Woolford continued. “And write letters for them.”

“In the evening,” Duncan agreed, recalling how Evering stayed with the Company prisoners when they were allowed evening exercise, sitting on a barrel, writing as this or that prisoner whispered to him. Even the keepers sometimes asked the scholar to help with a letter. “And the barrel that hid the line on his neck. The knots that bound it were those of a landsman.”

The vicar ended his prayer in midsentence. “What are you saying?”

“I asked the captain,” Woolford explained. “The chaos that day started at dawn, when the new watch passed through the compass room. Evering died in the night. All the earlier watch crew save the helmsman were below, out of the weather. There was a terrible fog before dawn, so thick the helmsman could not see the midship lantern. But the crew were all together below, no one unaccounted for. His murderer,” Woolford said, his voice fading to a whisper, “was someone in the Company.”

The announcement seemed to take the strength out of Arnold. He lowered himself onto a nearby crate, then stared into his folded hands a long time.

When Arnold finally spoke, he had found his pulpit voice. “We will not have our noble experiment destroyed by scandal.” He slowly raised his head toward the ceiling. “It must be resolved. One versed in the ways of death could do so.”

Duncan looked at Woolford. The officer did not react to Arnold’s apparent invitation.

“You have not yet signed the indenture, McCallum,” Arnold observed.

Duncan felt his chest tighten, his mouth go dry.

“I believe,” Woolford offered with a thin grin, “the good reverend has proposed an amendment to your terms.”

“I cannot. I will not inform against the men.”

“Of course the choice is yours,” Arnold said, his prayer-like tone raising gooseflesh down Duncan’s spine. “You can find our murderer. Or we can give you to the captain, who will lash you all the way to Jamaica. By the time you arrive, the flies will be burying eggs in your flesh as you lay dying.”

Arnold gained energy as he paced around Evering’s coffin. “You can have your indenture, have the freedom offered the Company tutor,” he continued. “But you will provide an answer to this horrible crime.”

Duncan’s heart began rising into his throat. “I have nothing to do with this,” he said.

“Your duty is to the Company, in all things. This must be addressed quickly,” Arnold said, then circuited the coffin again as he collected his thoughts. “You will speak to no one about your work. You will assemble the facts, identify the killer, and report your answer to us.”

“Surely you are mistaken,” Duncan said. “I am a-” He struggled for a moment, no longer sure who or what he was.

“You are highly educated, a doctor in all but name. You have demonstrated your power of deduction. You will still be part of the Company. As tutor you will have sufficient latitude to observe its workings. The prisoners will speak to you as one of their own. And you will have ample opportunity to obtain my counsel to assure the proper direction. Or,” Arnold said, his tone sharper, “I can burn the indenture.” He punctuated his statement with a pointed glance toward the cells. “The captain is paid by the head for his deliveries to the sugar plantations. No one will object if he delivers one more than he started with. No one will notice if you disappear at sea.”

Duncan did not reply.

“The Reverend and I will collect the letters the professor wrote for the prisoners,” Woolford suggested.

“They were confidences,” Duncan protested.

“Exactly,” Arnold shot back. “It is but a fine line between the secrets of convicts and outright conspiracy. We shall collect all the Company letters still on board.”

“They are part of the royal mails.”

“Which is why we must review them before we land.”

“You are asking me to be a spy, an informer. I cannot.”

Arnold breathed deeply. He seemed to take strength from Duncan’s protests. “I am asking only for the Company to be released from the threat of scandal. Prove your loyalty to Lord Ramsey. Sign our contract and find us an answer. A bargain any other man on this ship would leap at.”

“ An answer or the answer?” Duncan stared at the unhearing Evering, then flushed as he realized he had spoken aloud the question that had leapt to his tongue. He looked up to see Arnold’s eyes flare.

“Practice none of your sophistry on us, McCallum,” the vicar snapped. “The truth is a sacred thing. You have a duty to it. I bind you to it. If you sign and disobey, you will join the prisoners assigned to the Ramsey forests and confront the two- and four-legged beasts that dwell there. The members of the Company will not die of tropical diseases. But some will die of arrows and axes, I assure you. And worse.”

Duncan decided it was safest to address the dead man again. “So justice is a private affair in America.” He fought a temptation to take the dead man’s hand as he would a friend’s. In death the professor had become more a part of Duncan’s destiny than ever he had been in life.