Ian McGuire - The North Water

Sumner tells him to let go, then tugs his shirtsleeve back down.

“Why didn’t you tell me about your injured hand when I examined you before?”

“You weren’t asking after my hand, if I recall.”

“If you can’t grip any better than that, how could you have strangled the boy? You saw the bruises on his neck.”

McKendrick pauses and then looks suddenly wary, as if the surgeon’s implications are too large and too hopeful to be easily or quickly absorbed.

“I saw them right enough,” he says. “He had a string of bruises all around his neck just so.”

“And there were two large bruises at the front. Do you remember those? One almost on top of the other. I thought at the time they must have been caused by the two thumbs pressing hard down on the gorge.”

“You remember them?”

“I remember them clearly,” Sumner says. “Two large bruises, one on top of the other one, like two smudges of ink.”

“But I don’t have two good thumbs no more,” McKendrick says slowly. “So how did I make them bruises?”

“That’s right,” Sumner says. “I need to talk to the captain now. It looks like the fellow with the lump hammer may have saved your neck.”

Brownlee listens to the surgeon’s arguments, hoping keenly as he does so that they are wrong. He has no desire to release McKendrick. The carpenter is a convincing culprit, and if he is released (which is the end Sumner seems, for some mystifying reason of his own, to seek), there is no one else aboard the ship who can take his place without a deal of trouble and complication.

“A scrawny cunt like Hannah can be strangled with one hand easy enough, I’d say,” Brownlee argues, “thumb or no thumb. McKendrick isn’t tall, but he’s plenty strong enough for that.”

“Not with the bruises patterned as they were on Hannah’s neck, though. The twin thumb marks were as clear as day.”

“I don’t remember thumb marks. I remember a good many bruises, but there is no way on earth of knowing which particular fingers caused which particular marks.”

“Before the burial, I made sketches of Hannah’s injuries,” Sumner says. “I thought a court might want to see them if it comes to a trial. Look here.” He puts a leather-bound sketchbook on the table in front of the captain and opens it to the relevant pages. “Do you see what I mean now? Two large oval bruises, one above the other one, there and there.”

He points. Brownlee looks, then rubs his nose and scowls. He is irritated by the surgeon’s conscientiousness. What business does he have making ink sketches of a boy’s dead body?

“The boy was sewn up in his shroud already. How could you have sketched him?”

“I asked the sailmaker to loosen the stitches, then had them tightened again while the making off was going on. It was easy enough to do.”

Brownlee turns the pages of the sketchbook and winces. There is a detailed rendering of the boy’s damaged and ulcerated rectum and a labeled diagram of his broken ribs.

“These pretty pictures of yours prove bugger all,” he says. “McKendrick was seen making advances to the boy, and he is a known and notorious sodomite. Those are the solid facts of the matter. Anything else is guesswork and fancy.”

“The thumb of McKendrick’s left hand is damaged beyond repair,” Sumner says. “It is physically impossible for him to have committed this crime.”

“And you are free to express that opinion to the magistrate as soon as we return to England. Perhaps he’ll be more convinced by it than I am, but in the meantime, while we are at sea and I’m the captain, McKendrick stays where he is.”

“As soon as we land back in England the real killer will leave the ship and disappear from sight, you do realize that? He will never be caught.”

“Should I arrest the entire fucking crew on suspicion of murder? Is that what you recommend?”

“If it’s not McKendrick who killed the boy, it’s most likely Henry Drax. He’s lying about the carpenter to save himself.”

“You have been reading too many penny dreadfuls, Mr. Sumner, I swear to it.”

“Let me at least examine Drax as I did McKendrick. If he’s a murderer, then it’s still not too late for the signs to be apparent.”

Brownlee shifts sideways in his chair, tugs down on his stubbled earlobe, and sighs. Although the surgeon is certainly annoying, there is something admirable in his persistence. He is a dogged little fucker all in all.

“Very well,” he says. “If you must. Although if Drax objects to being poked and prodded, I’m not so inclined to press the issue.”

When Drax is called for, he makes no objection. He drops his britches in front of them and stands there grinning. The captain’s cabin fills with a stink of stale urine and potted meat.

“At your pleasure, Mr. Sumner,” Drax says, giving the surgeon a coquettish wink.

Sumner, breathing only through his mouth now, bends and examines, with the aid of a magnifying glass, the dangling parabola of Drax’s glans.

“Pull back the foreskin please,” Sumner says.

Drax does as he is asked. Sumner nods.

“You have the crabs,” he tells him.

“Aye, I usually do have them. But that int a hanging offense now, is it, Mr. Sumner?”

Brownlee chuckles. Sumner shakes his head and then stands up.

“No visible chancres,” he says. “Show me both your hands now.”

Drax holds them out. Sumner looks at the palms, then turns them over. They are as black and rough as lumps of pig iron.

“The cut on your hand has healed, I see.”

“That wont anything,” he says. “Just a scratch.”

“And you have full use of all your digits, I suppose.”

“Of my what ?”

“Fingers and thumbs.”

“I do indeed, thanks God.”

“Take off your peacoat and roll up your sleeves.”

“Do you doubt me, Mr. Sumner?” Drax asks as he tugs his arms out of the jacket and starts to unbutton his shirtfront. “Do you doubt me when I tell what I saw by the deckhouse?”

“McKendrick denies it. You know he does.”

“But McKendrick is a sodomite, and what is the word of a sodomite worth in a court of law? Not too much, I’d say.”

“I have good reason to believe him.”

Drax nods at this and continues to undress. He takes his shirt off and his flannels. His chest is dark-pelted, broad, and stoutly muscled; his belly is proudly bulbous, and both his arms are coated in a checker-worked swirl of blue tattoos.

“If you believe the word of that cunt McKendrick, then you must fancy I’m a liar.”

“I don’t know what you are.”

“I’m an honorable man, Mr. Sumner,” Drax says, pressing down gradually on the word honorable as if honor itself is a complex and esoteric notion, but one he is proud to have mastered. “That’s what I am. I do my duty, and I have no cause to feel any shame because of it.”

“What do you intend by that, Drax?” Brownlee asks him. “We’re all honorable men here, I think, or honorable enough at least for the requirements of our calling, which is a dirty enough kind of business, as you know.”

“I think the surgeon gets my drift,” Drax says. (He is standing fully naked now — thick-limbed, fistic, unashamed. His face is burned brown and his hands are black from toil, but the rest of his skin — where it is visible beneath the mats of dark hair and the panoply of crude tattooing — is a pure pinkish white like the skin of a babe.) “Him and me are old pals, after all. I helped him search his way back to his cabin after that famous night in Lerwick. You likely won’t remember, Mr. Sumner, since you were fast asleep at the time, but me and Cavendish had a good look around before we left to make sure your necessaries was safe and sound just as they should be. Nothing disturbed or out of place.”