Hoare and the Portsmouth Atrocities (9 page)

Hopkin laughed with ill-concealed contempt. His breath was foul in Hoare's face. “Why should I do a thing like
that,
sir? Every properly apprenticed naval surgeon knows better than to clean off his instruments. Cleaning removes the protective film of blood. ‘Wipe it off,' indeed!”

Chapter V

H
OARE WONDERED
what Dr. Simon Graves would make of Mr. Hopkin's views on the maintenance of surgical instruments. After dismissing him with genuine relief, Hoare made a list of the other men he must question aboard
Vantage
today. They included his recent adversary, Mr. Wallace of the Marines; John McHale, master; Patrick Lynch, quartermaster; and Michael Doyle, sergeant of the Marine detachment. He sent Mr. Prickett in search of the three latter; he would go to Mr. Wallace himself.

At the time of their captain's murder, Mr. McHale and the quartermaster had been standing within feet of each other, separated from the crime by a mere two thin decks and adjoining an open skylight into the wardroom just below. Yet the statements of the two flatly contradicted each other. Looking intently at Hoare, Mr. McHale stated that during the time when the murder might have been committed, between six and seven bells of the afternoon dogwatch, he had heard only the ordinary sounds of shipboard life.

On the other hand, Lynch described overhearing an encounter fraught with melodrama.

“The capting begins to roar at Mr. Gladden the very minute I 'ears the door close be'ind him. He calls him hinsolent for interruptin' his dinner, an' lazy an' all like that—I can't remember all the words. Some of 'em I 'eard before, but he used some what I never wants to 'ear used again. Orful, they was.

“He says Mr. Gladden 'ad lorst control of his division an' wasn't supportin' his petty orficers like he orta. He starts givin' Mr. Gladden orders to carry out more hexercises aloft, an' then he starts off with more bad words. Well, then Mr. Gladden pipes up, a-squealin'-like, an' starts a—tellin' off the capting. An' then I 'ears the capting give a roar, and there's a thumpin' and more roarin', an' then I 'ears a scream. It was the captain's death scream, I know for sure, sir. It was orful. It makes me 'air stand on end just to think of it.”

“You're no Irishman, Lynch,” said Hoare. “You were born to the sound of Bow bells, I think.”

“Seven bells, sir. But me da was a Dubliner, me ma always said. Though I don't know 'ow she knew, I'm sure.”

“Be that as it may,” Hoare said. “You know Mr. McHale says he heard nothing of the altercation you just described.”

“‘Alter-what,' sir?”

“Argument. Dispute. Fight, if you will.”

Lynch stood on his pride. “I've told you wot I 'eard, sir, and I'll stand by it. About Mr. Mc'Ale's 'earin' I've nuffin' to say.” He was as good as his word and would say no more.

Unlike Lynch, Sergeant Doyle was so clearly Irish-born that Hoare was hard put to understand him. He said yes, there was always a guard at the captain's cabin door as well as at the spirit locker. He had placed the man there himself at the change of the watch. Doyle begged pardon for being derelict, but the entire draft was new to the ship and strangers to one another as well as to him, so for the life of him he could not name the man on guard during the time in question. The man was taller than average for a Marine; Doyle did remember that. He was not looking forward to hearing Mr. Wallace on the subject.

But Doyle could also more or less confirm the clerk's statement that there had been no guard at the captain's door when seven bells had sounded. At least none had been visible when Mr. McHale had summoned him to the cabin. And again he was sorry, but in the confusion he had not conducted the muster that Mr. Wallace had ordered as well as he should have, for he had counted off his men to forty at one time and thirty-nine a moment later. He had reported forty to his officer but would not be prepared to swear to the count. He again reminded his listeners that the Marines, like the rest of
Vantage
's crew, were a new draft and still largely strangers to one another.

“Has a uniform coat turned up missing?” asked Hoare.

Doyle looked at him as though he were a wizard. One of his privates had, indeed, complained about a missing uniform coat. Doyle had cursed the man, docked his pay for its replacement, and had the boatswain assign him to duty as captain of the heads until he could present himself in a new coat.

“Keep on searching for the coat,” Hoare said. “Include the bilges and the wings. If you find it, have it brought to me at the Swallowed Anchor by a safe hand. Safe, d'ye hear?”

Hoare now had Mr. Prickett conduct him to the narrow cabin off
Vantage
's wardroom where Mr. Wallace lay supine, snoring softly in a miasma of used rum.

“Sir! Sir!” cried Mr. Prickett. “Here's Mr. Hoare to talk with you about Captain Hay's murder!”

“Oh, my God,” Wallace said. “Hasn't honor been satisfied
yet?
” He tried to sit up in his berth but fell back with a grunt of pain. “Talk away, then, Hoare. I'm at your mercy.”

“Just tell me what happened the night of the murder, if you will.”

Wallace had nothing to add to Sergeant Doyle's evidence. He had not even been aboard
Vantage
at the time of the murder, although he had returned aboard within the hour and had directed Doyle to muster the men. To Wallace's shame, he was even more ignorant than his sergeant of the men in his detachment. All were new.

As Hoare was about to leave, Wallace cleared his throat.

“I owe you an apology, sir.” His whisper was little louder than Hoare's.

“No apology is necessary, Mr. Wallace,” Hoare replied. “Honor has already been satisfied.”

“I was drunk last night, I confess,” Wallace went on. “I was doubly at fault, first for miscalling you and then for mocking your lack of a voice. I did not know, then, the circumstances under which you lost it. I shall not forget your lesson. Indeed, I'll remember it in my gettings up and my lyings down, or whatever the phrase is …
unh!
”

Hoare could not forbear his silent laugh, but Wallace was not finished.

“Will you shake hands, sir?”

“Of course.”

*   *   *

A
T LAST
, H
OARE
could shove off in the late Captain Hay's borrowed gig, under sail. Mr. Prickett was bouncing like a ball in its bows despite the orders of the senior mid at the tiller to bloody keep still in the boat. He had successfully implored his acting captain to let him remain seconded to Mr. Hoare's inquiry.

Hoare directed the midshipman-coxwain at his side to land them, not at Portsmouth Hard, but at the Inner Camber, where he found Peter Gladden again awaiting him in the snug of the Swallowed Anchor. He dismissed Mr. Prickett to the inn's kitchen to be stuffed like a goose under the eye of the pink girl Susan.

Gladden had caught the first mudlark he had seen, gave him Hoare's message to deliver to Jom York, and then called upon his brother in his place of confinement. It was a dark little room in the cellars of Commissioner's House.

“This affair has been death on breeches as well as on post captains,” he said to Hoare. “It has ruined the ones your target Wallace was wearing when you shot him, Mr. Watt's when Captain Hay bled all over them, my poor brother's … and for that matter,” he added, “I hardly suppose Captain Hay's own unmentionables are any the better for their experience the other night.

“But you were going to tell me about Jom York.”

“Jom York is the king of the beachcombers of Southampton Water,” said Hoare. Hoare himself, he explained, spent his spare time, whether ashore or aboard
Insupportable,
in snooping. He had snooped into the Weymouth Town Hall, with those perplexing results. He snooped into coves, often when not wanted, as once when he had interrupted a clutch of petty smugglers unloading a cargo of casks. It was this that had earned him the trust of at least one gang and had resulted in his being given the interesting anker and then having it taken from him by person or persons unknown. It had been in another cove, of course, that he had encountered that singularly interesting, deadly partridge, Eleanor Graves.

He watched surgeons at their grisly work and listened to them. He interrogated butchers, masters-at-arms, tradesmen, cordwainers, mudlarks—anyone, in short, who had enlightenment to offer him.

Only country folk were immune to Hoare's curiosity. He had no use for farmers. He lumped all herders with beekeepers as men who had dangerous creatures in their power. But even in the countryside he made exceptions for poachers, tinkers, and gypsies.

During one of his snooping expeditions, he explained, he had encountered Jom York, king of the beachcombers, in a slimy little shebeen. Later, Hoare made a friend of the man when he slipped one of his royal henchmen out from the grip of the press. Jom York kept every longshoreman and mudlark, as well as his beachcombers, well under his eye and his large, horny thumb. He extracted his dues of information from all, and from their receivers and fences as well.

It was a long tale, made longer by Hoare's need to use his exhausting emergency whisper toward the end.

“He smells horrible, but he has his uses,” Hoare concluded. By now, the two were dissecting a grilled turbot.

“But what about the Marine uniform?”

“As you observed this morning, it is unheard of for a captain to allow his cabin door to go unguarded. The captains right here at Spithead in '97 learned that to their cost, as did Bligh of the
Bounty.
”

“And
Hermione
's beast of a captain, as well,” added Gladden.

“Exactly. And from what we have learned of Captain Hay, he was no man to skimp on proper routine. So I believe that, as Sergeant Doyle avows, a Marine guard
was
posted and that the murderer either enticed him away from his post or did away with him in some way. Or—more likely—the murderer was the Lobster himself.

“And
Vantage
's sergeant of Marines admits the head count he took that night may have been off by one or even two. And he reports a missing uniform.”

Chapter VI

W
EDNESDAY AFTERNOON
, a frightened, fetid wharf rat brought a soggy parcel to the Swallowed Anchor's snug. Susan the pink girl brought both rat and parcel to Hoare and Gladden. Mr. Prickett, who now would let no one detach him from his mute lieutenant, looked with wide, delighted eyes at the smelly things. Both objects, wrapped in oatmeal-colored shoddy, oozed and stank of harbor mud. As between the courier and the packet, only one was the object of Hoare's interest. He dismissed the other with a shilling, and the creature poured gratefully away, carrying its stench with it and singing Hoare's praises discordantly.

Hoare drew his sheath knife and cut the cord binding the parcel. A waterlogged red garment slipped to the floor. He smiled at it as if it were cloth of gold.

Hoare brought the coat's collar up to his nose and sniffed. Then he did the same, first with one of the folded-back cuffs, then with the other. He took a huge white kerchief out of his own coattails and wiped it across the inside of the coat collar where it would have rubbed against the wearer's neck, and then across the cuffs. He nodded to himself and handed the coat to the little mid.

“Take it away, Mr. Prickett,” he whispered, “and label it ‘Coat found in Portsmouth Harbor.' Put today's date on it. Oh, and take this, too, please.”

He handed Mr. Prickett the kerchief. “Label it ‘kerchief, with matter removed from Marine uniform found in Portsmouth Harbor, this date.' So, Gladden. We can be practically certain this coat was
not
last worn by one of
Vantage
's Marines.”

“How can you say that?” asked Gladden.

“Work it out, sir. Work it out.”

*   *   *

T
HAT AFTERNOON
M
R
. Gladden escorted Hoare to the place where his brother lay in durance.

Fortunately, the durance faced south, and the afternoon sun poured into it through a small barred window set high in the rough stone walls. There was no need to light the tallow candles flanking the pitcher and basin on the deal table.

In looks, the brothers shared only their wavy corn-yellow hair. Where Peter was shorter than Hoare, Arthur Gladden would have looked him in the eye when he rose to greet them, but for his stooped, scholarly posture. Instead of a bright cornflower blue, his eyes looked faded. Where his brother's face was robust and ruddy, Arthur was lantern-jawed and pallid. He wore clean breeches at last, but the odor of his lapse lingered faintly about him. It was reinforced by the reek of the untended chamber pot in one corner.

“What news do you bring, Brother?” Arthur Gladden asked anxiously in a tense tenor, before Peter could even introduce Hoare.

“None good yet, lad, none bad,” Peter Gladden said. “But I have enlisted a wizard on your behalf. Let me make you known to Lieutenant Bartholomew Hoare of Admiral Hardcastle's staff, who has agreed to serve you as counsel on Thursday.”

“But I thought
you
were going to stand for me!”

“I am, dear boy, but you know quite well how little I know about all the pettifogging details of court-martial proceedings. Mr. Hoare will back me up with all his experience.”

“Hoare. Is that your real name?” asked Arthur Gladden with what sounded like genuine interest.

“Yes,” whispered Hoare.

“Oh, you needn't whisper here,” said Arthur. “Nobody bothers to listen. In fact, I believe I could walk right out of this place without anybody's stopping me.” He paused, as if thinking the idea over, and brightened. “But then they'd catch me, and they'd be sure I was guilty.” He sighed.