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Wilder Perkins: Hoare and the Passed Master

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Wilder Perkins Hoare and the Passed Master

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"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.

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