Susanna Gregory - The Sacred stone

Thomas hung his head. His face went a brighter red, almost the colour of the thread I now held up. I felt my own face heating up. I did not like the exposure of this young man but, by now, I was a fierce hound for truth and justice. What did it matter that no one cared for Dr Jonathan Case, in fact that everyone positively disliked if not hated him? He had been murdered and someone had to be held accountable.

‘Yes,’ he said, keeping his head down and speaking scarcely above a whisper. ‘I admit I got the key from… from cousin Jonathan.. when he was sleeping and that I opened that cabinet there. I meant to take the sky-stone. I knew it was important, valuable. It was the reason we went to the Middle Temple, to collect it. Cousin Jonathan was full of talk about how he was going to sell it in France and make a handsome profit.’

‘You meant to steal it?’ said Colin Case. He looked stern, but his voice was surprisingly gentle.

‘I… I don’t know. Perhaps. I thought if I had the sky-stone I could use it against cousin Jonathan. He said it was powerful, that it had magic properties. I wanted to escape from him. I had become afraid of him, and the more afraid I was the more he liked toying with me. He was kind in the beginning but not later…’

‘Anyway, you did not take the stone,’ said Henry Tallman. ‘You couldn’t have done, because it was still there last night at supper.’

‘I took it out and looked at it in the candlelight and thought that it was a strange object, almost beautiful,’ said Thomas, his tone getting firmer. ‘I could not take it. I wrapped it up again and put it back in the cabinet and turned the lock and replaced the keys. I had nothing to do with what happened afterwards. I cannot say how cousin Jonathan died or who did it. I was sleeping in the fo’c’s’le, as I said. I did no murder.’

I believed him, not because he looked abject but because I found it hard to associate this willowy, blushing youth with the furious assault on Jonathan Case. I wondered how he managed among the rough mariners in the fo’c’s’le and remembered that the shipmaster had also been lodging there. Cousin Colin would have kept an eye on him. If he needed an eye kept. I thought of one or two of the boy players in the London acting companies and how, even though younger than Thomas, they had the power to wind some susceptible older players around their fingers.

There was a pause before we looked to the shipmaster for his account of last night. He was the last to speak.

‘Yes, there was a disturbance,’ said Colin Case. ‘I was called to the poop deck in the early hours of the morning. The boat moored next to us was drifting with the incoming tide. It was poorly manned and worse secured. Fortunately, a direct collision was averted. Our watch shouted loud enough to alert the mariners on the other vessel, and they fended themselves off with their staves. In fact, the two vessels touched only fleetingly.’

I was baffled. What had all this to do with the death of Jonathan Case? Had someone from the other boat leaped on to the Argo and disposed of the physician? The shipmaster seemed to be relishing this particular story, just as he’d enjoyed instructing us in the mysteries of the whipstaff.

He now instructed us to follow him outside once more. So Jack and I, together with the Tallman brothers and Thomas, went back on deck. We climbed the ladder to the poop — by now I was growing quite familiar with these marine terms — and made our way to the overhang of the stern. Above us was a furled aftersail and to one side the housing that offered a little shelter for the helmsman and also gave access to the ladder down to the great cabin and, beneath that, the hold. There was no helmsman on the poop deck since the boat was not under way.

We went to the bulwark at the far end. We were right above the spot where Dr Jonathan Case still lay. Beyond was the eastward stretch of the river, with a cluster of boats either moored tight against the wharf or standing slightly out from it if, like the Argo, their draughts were not shallow enough. The closest boat was the herring buss, which had put in rather clumsily on the previous day. I recalled the curses that had flown to and fro like musket balls.

If one forgot the dead body downstairs, the day looked to be set fair despite that red-streaked sunrise. Men were carrying cargo on and off the boats. There was a general bustle as preparations were made to sail with the tide. On the Argo, though, business was suspended. I noticed the mariners looking curiously at the captain and his little party up on the poop. No one questioned what he was doing (or not doing). It struck me that a shipmaster was an absolute monarch in his little kingdom.

Colin Case indicated the herring buss, one of the vessels readying to depart. In fact, about to cast off.

‘I am acquainted with the master of that boat,’ he said. ‘He has a bad name on the river. He drinks like one of the fish in his catch. He runs a sloppy vessel. It isn’t surprising that we have twice had to fend off the Draco.’

‘The Draco?’ said Henry Tallman.

‘A foolish name for a fishing boat. And her master is a foolish man. If you want to catch a murderer, Mr Revill, then you had better hurry to lay hold of him before the Draco departs. Or perhaps it would be more correct to say that you should apprehend the vessel herself.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Nor did I until I had a closer look at the cabin where my brother lies dead. I examined his corpse also. The wound in his back was a large one, wasn’t it?’

Thomas turned away at this point as if he was about to be sick. Perhaps the realization of the death of his erstwhile friend, his protector, was only just sinking in. Colin put a steadying hand on the young man’s shoulder.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘A great tear in the flesh.’

‘It would have taken a deal more than my little knife to cause that,’ said Henry Tallman.

‘The instrument that killed him was much larger than a mere knife. But its… appearance in the shipmaster’s cabin was the merest chance. A thousand-to-one chance. No, ten-thousand-to-one. If only my brother had not opened the casement to get rid of the smell of pipe smoke… Yes, he might have survived if the window had remained shut. But he left it open as he prepared for bed.’

‘What in God’s name happened?’ I said.

‘It would have been like threading a needle. A fine operation, requiring a sharp eye and a steady hand. Except that this needle was being threaded on the waters of the Thames and there was no eye or hand involved.’

‘Are you losing your mind, Colin?’ said Henry Tallman. ‘Why all this talk of needles and eyes and hands?’

‘There is your murder weapon,’ said the shipmaster. ‘Behold.’

As one we turned to watch the herring buss, the Draco, swing away from the Gravesend wharf, eased off by the staves of the herring fishers and turning with the tide. The boat sat much lower in the water than the Argo so that we peered down on to her deck with its canvas-covered hoops. A couple of the mariners glanced up and raised their fists at us, half salute, half insult. The end of the bowsprit was itself surmounted with an extension that glinted in the sun. The bowsprit was made of stout wood, but its tip was sheathed in metal.

And then I realized what Colin Case was talking about. Or thought I did.

‘Your brother had the ill luck to be standing with his back to the open casement,’ I said.

‘He should not have been up so late,’ said Colin. ‘I expect he could not sleep in his greedy excitement. He was examining his precious sky-stone, cradling it in his hands, working out his profit, oblivious to what was happening behind his back beyond the still-open casement…’