Wilder Perkins: Hoare and the Passed Master

"I shall, Mr. Gamage," Hoare said, and dismissed him. "Be so kind as to ask Mr. Grimes to step in."

Gamage turned in the doorway for a last word.

"I'm glad the bastard's dead, Mr. Hoare."

No sooner was Grimes seated across from Hoare than he slapped the covered chests between them. "Someone has been meddling with my instruments," he said. "No one meddles with my instruments."

"I moved your instruments, sir," Hoare whispered. "They were in my way. Besides, they were disgusting to look upon, and I wanted them out of my sight. Why do you not wash them?"

"Wash them?" Grimes laughed with ill-concealed contempt. "Why should I do a thing like that? Every properly apprenticed surgeon knows better than to clean off his instruments; cleaning removes the protective film of blood. Wipe them off, indeed!"

"Never mind. I believe you were ashore for several days during the last week. Kindly tell me what you did and whom you met."

Like the purser, Severn's surgeon had spent the day completing his supplies-equipment, medicines, ointments, and the like. The port surgeon, Davis, would confirm this, as would the several apothecaries upon whom he had called.

"The first night I spent at the Blue Posts," said Grimes.

"And whom did you meet there?"

"Meet? No one. There was a band of noisy Scots upstairs, making as much ado as so many Mohocks, so I decided to betake myself to the country in search of peace. I rambled about the rural environs for the remainder of my brief leave, botanizing and living rough."

"What sort of shipmate was Mr. Tregallen?" Hoare asked.

"A fine seaman, though who am I to judge? Not an easy man to know. Intelligent? Yes. Ambitious? Yes. Demanding; just ask the mids. He would have made a bad enemy."

"How so?"

"Things went only one way with Mr. Tregallen; he took, but I never knew him to give. He watched; he watched. When he saw advantage to himself, he moved like lightning.

"That was how he advanced. He came aft through the hawsehole, you know. He left ruined reputations behind him wherever he went, peaching on pilfering petty officers so he could replace them, tempting young gentlemen-and others not so young-into outrageous wagers. He was a bad shipmate, Mr. Hoare, and I confess I do not regret his death. You might ask the same question of the marine officer, or the purser. How did he die, by the way?"

"His throat was cut," Hoare whispered.

"Ah. I would have expected you to say stabbed or bludgeoned."

"How so?"

"He was that sort of a man. Enraging. Ah well… de mortuis, as we scholars say." Mr. Grimes smiled patronizingly at Hoare. "Will that be all?"

"I shall detain you no longer," he whispered. "As you leave, be so kind as to ask Mr. McTavish to join me."

Sweeping his instruments into the chest on the table and picking up the lot, the surgeon departed.

It having been some obscure Gaelic feast-day, the lobster, Lieutenant McTavish, had forgathered at the Blue Posts with several others of his nation and had his fill of haggis, whisky, and melancholy song. None of the party, he said, had left the inn that night.

Most of the evening was a blank to him. In fact, he had awakened the next day at noon, alone and abandoned, in some inland village, completely at sea as to his whereabouts.

"I confess, sir, I didna know what day it was, let alone what toun. I was that frichtit of havin' missed me ship that I hired a vee-hical-at an unco' price, I tell ye-and retairned to Severn forrthweeth.

"The mon was a bad shipmate, bad," the marine said when Hoare asked him about Tregallen. "The fairst evenin' aboard he fills me wi' thot vile liquor he carries, an' the next thing I knaw, I've geeven him me note o' hand for mair guineas than I've sichtit me life lang. An' he kept dunnin' me for it. He kept havin' at me an' at me. Well, I'm free of that the noo. An' I wasna the only mon he troubled so," he added. "Ye might ha asked Muster Gamage or the sawbones aboot that."

"Who could vouch for your whereabouts while ashore, Mr. McTavish?" Hoare whispered.

"The Friday nicht, ony of my fellow Scots, tu be sure, an' the host. Aye, we had a braw set-to there, we did. As tu the Saturday, wull, I canna say. As I told ye, I wasna so bricht mesel'. An' the folk at the inn in the village, where I hired the shay to brring me back tae Portsmouth, I suppose."

"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.