Run Afoul Read online

  Then, just as Wiki heard Captain Wilkes expostulate in a furious shout, “One hundred days—one hundred days, sir! Do you realize that this is a record, a goddamned record?” a dreadful, hacking, stifled groan echoed from the stateroom that had so briefly been his.

  Grimes! Wiki threw down his knife, lurched out of his chair, ran around the corner of the credenza, threw open the stateroom door, and then stopped short, appalled. Grimes’s thin frame was rigidly arched, his limbs thrown out from the blankets and convulsing rapidly. The skin about his nose and lips was pinched and blue. His eyes were half-open, but were rolled up in his head so only the whites could be seen.

  “Jesus Christ,” Wiki whispered, and then yelled, “Jack!”

  “I’m here, I’m here,” the steward exclaimed from just behind his shoulder. His voice held panic.

  “What the hell is wrong with him? Has he been like this before?”

  “He’s been twitching for days, but nothin’ like this, I swear!”

  Even as the steward spoke, the convulsions stopped. Grimes flopped onto his back and then lay utterly still, save for the quivering in his stiffly held-out arm. His breathing was stertorous, and there was a waxy look about his brow, as if he were on the verge of death.

  Wiki said urgently, “Get Dr. Gilchrist.”

  He heard Jack Winter scuttle off, but didn’t know what to do next. There were bottles of medicine on the table by the head of the berth, but even if he had dared to administer anything, it was obvious it would be impossible to get it between Grimes’s rigid lips. From the cabin he heard Captain Wilkes shouting with vicious sarcasm, “You’ve created a sensation, sir! It’s the talk of the port! The longest passage recorded so far is ninety days—a record you’ve exceeded by ten!”

  Wiki turned to the door with relief as he heard hurried footsteps, but it wasn’t the surgeon—it was Festin, white-faced. Before the Acadian could gasp a single word, Dr. Gilchrist did arrive, coming up the corridor at a run.

  Evidently, the surgeon had been at the dining table when Jack Winter found him, as he still had a large napkin tucked into his collar. However, his manner was brisk and professional as he examined the patient. Even he looked rattled, though, as Grimes spasmed into another fit, his lips pulled back from his clenched teeth, and his eyes rolling even farther up into his head.

  He exclaimed, “This man has been poisoned!”

  Robert Festin was on the verge of tears. “Not by me, sir, not by me!”

  “What have you been feeding him, for God’s sake?”

  “Gruel—gruel, and good soup!”

  “Then it must be the medicine. Make sure those bottles are kept safe,” Dr. Gilchrist said to Wiki, and to the steward, “Get some saleratus and mix it with milk and water, quick. It’s his only hope—sodium bicarbonate, and being walked about. You!” he said to Wiki again. “Help me get him onto his feet.”

  It was a lot easier said than done. Grimes had collapsed after the second convulsion, and despite his thinness was as heavy and unyielding as a sack of wheat. As Wiki grappled with the unresponsive form, he could hear Captain Wilkes still raving at the unfortunate commander of the storeship Relief. The words rang clear, snapped out with vicious irony: “An American resident has been kind enough to favor me with a table he has been compiling, showing the monthly average of passages from the United States to Rio de Janeiro—and do you know the record for the shortest passage? Twenty-nine days! And do you know the longest? Yours, sir—yours! One hundred days exactly! You are aptly named, Captain Long!”

  “That figure of one hundred includes three days at the Cape de Verdes,” Captain Long protested, aggrieved enough to allow his voice to rise. This only served to trigger yet another outburst, but Wiki had lost attention, struggling instead with the slack, bony body in the very confined space of the stateroom, while Robert Festin bobbed around, getting in the way in his panic.

  “You have to admit, sir, that she is the dullest of sailers,” Long was arguing while they heaved Grimes toward the corridor. It took an age, but at last they got out of the stateroom in a clumsy, struggling knot, with the sick man swaying in the middle. Together, Wiki and Dr. Gilchrist propelled Grimes into a walk toward the outside air, while Festin scuttled along behind.

  “And a dull sailer demands smart seamanship,” Captain Wilkes was shouting. “Which makes me wonder where you crossed the equator, sir! Show me your logbook!”

  Rapid footsteps. Wiki looked up to see Jack Winter arrive in the corridor, his normally even gait quick and agitated. When a rat oozed out of a corner and ran across his boot he kicked out at it, and almost lost his balance. He was carrying a tumbler. “I mixed what you said,” he gasped.

  Wiki and Gilchrist lurched to a halt, gripping the slack body between them. They propped Grimes against the wall, and tipped the tumbler between his lips. His teeth were beginning to chatter, the skin about his lips had gone blue, and white liquid ran down his chin.

  In the captain’s cabin, Wilkes was shouting, “My God, you crossed at twenty-nine degrees west, where the equatorial current flows north! So what the hell did you expect? Can’t you read a goddamned chart?”

  Wiki looked at the open afterhouse door. At that moment, it seemed imperative to get the dying man out onto the deck, as if the fresh air would perform a miraculous cure. Dr. Gilchrist appeared to be gripped by the same impulse, because he put a hand under Grimes’s left armpit again, and said urgently to Wiki, “Come on, man, help me.”

  Silently, Wiki grappled with the sick man’s other side. As they reached the doorway, he heard a peculiar whistle echo from across the water. When he looked up, he glimpsed the smoke from a steamer chugging by—the Santos steamboat, he distractedly realized. When the wake washed against the flagship the half-empty Vincennes danced and bounced. He and Dr. Gilchrist, with their burden, staggered and crashed back into the corridor, slamming up against the larboard wall.

  The marine corporal on sentry duty peered in to see what the noise was about, his face confused and alarmed. When Dr. Gilchrist snapped at him to hurry up and bear a hand, he set down his musket and contributed his shoulder to the struggle. Between the three of them they got Grimes out into the open air. Festin followed, wringing his hands.

  The assistant astronomer stood a moment, swaying in their grip. Then his eyes opened, and he stared wildly all around at the decks, the busy waters of the harbor, the blue sky, Enxados Island, and the mountains beyond. “Oh, my God, they’ve done for me!” he cried, so unexpectedly that Wiki flinched.

  Then he went into another paroxysm—but not a silent one, this time. Instead, while the instrumentmaker writhed and arched, a wordless scream issued from his rigid lips: “Ah—ah—ah-ahhhh!”

  Despite their strenuous efforts to hold him, he buckled all the way to the deck. At the last instant, Wiki deliberately collapsed with him, to cushion his fall. They hit the planks together. For a terrible moment he was entangled with the man’s convulsing limbs, but then he managed to extricate himself, while all the time Grimes’s body threshed.

  Jack Winter had arrived, clutching the tumbler, and shaking so much that the white saleratus mixture slopped onto the deck. “Get blankets,” Dr. Gilchrist snapped. There was heavy sweat on the surgeon’s brow, and he had lost his napkin. Jack Winter dropped the tumbler, turned, and ran, blundering past the three captains as they came out of the afterhouse, having at long last noticed the commotion.

  “What the hell is going on?” Captain Wilkes demanded. His voice was high-pitched. No one answered.

  With a last scream Grimes arched and then flopped back to the deck. His blank eyes stared up at the orb of the sun and his right arm was stiffly extended toward Festin, as if in silent accusation. When Wiki looked up to follow the dead gaze, he saw a whirl of seabirds directly overhead, rising on a pillar of air.

  It was like an omen—a bad one. No sooner had Captain Wilkes heard the full details of the affair, than Robert Festin was charged with murder, and Wiki and Jack Winter were thr
own into the brig with him, as accessories after the fact.

  Eleven

  The inquest was held in a room at the back of a small courthouse on the Praça da Constituição. Wiki, attired in his best broadcloth, was sitting in the front row next to Jack Winter, who was sweating heavily, while Festin, weeping and wearing handcuffs, was in the dock to one side.

  Fortunately, none of them sported any further signs of battle, because they had had the shipboard prison to themselves. As regular as clockwork, at eight bells every evening watch, the crew of HMS Thunderer struck up “The Chesapeake and the Shannon,” just to taunt the patriotic Americans, who couldn’t wait to get on shore and teach the saucy British a lesson. Accordingly, Captain Wilkes had issued orders that no leave was to be given, and so there had been no broken heads, and no aggressive drunks tossed into the brig, and Wiki had been spared from fights.

  On the dark side, he did not have a notion of what was going to happen in this courtroom. At sea, there would have been an inquiry presided over by Wilkes and three other captains, and that would have been that, but, since they were in port, the Brazilian authorities had taken it over, and so the procedure was a mystery.

  As it was, Captain Wilkes was not even present. Captain Andrew Long had asked for a survey of the stores the ship Relief was carrying, as he reckoned they were defective, and for a long time, Wilkes had refused to listen. Before he had taken command of the expedition, he had been assured that the provisions had been inspected and found in such good order that they were expected to last the expedition for at least a year. However, Long’s officers backed him up, swearing that over the hundred-day passage they had had plenty of time to establish that even the flour was spoiled, and had probably been that way when loaded. The survey was held, and the decision the provisions must be replaced had been made. Accordingly, Captain Wilkes was too busy to turn up to a mere court procedure.

  By contrast, it seemed that just about every citizen of Rio was intensely interested—that the poisoning had become a cause célèbre, in fact. Though the benches in the public part of the courtroom were packed, men were still shoving and fighting to find a place, ignoring the remonstrations of the two fat court officers who stood on either side of the door. Clouds of flies buzzed angrily in the high ceiling, and the atmosphere became heavy, hot, and humid, redolent with sweat, wine, and garlic.

  To one side, there was a half-curtained alcove, like an opera box, where the grandees of the town were packed as tightly together as the men on the common benches. They were an animated lot of aristocrats, Wiki noted, talking to each other with great energy, pointing out people of interest. One of them was a lean, dark-haired gentleman with a strangely patchy complexion, and scars on his nose and cheeks. Wiki studied him, wondering what had caused the damage to his face. It looked as if he had run through a fire. While not particularly disfiguring, it made him stand out from the rest.

  Then his attention was taken up by the arrival of the coroner, who proved to be a slight, elegant man with a narrow, aristocratic nose. According to the clerk’s announcement, his name was Dr. Vieira de Castro. He studied the court through a pair of pince-nez, and then, with a bow, sat down behind the bench.

  Once everyone had settled, Wiki stood up, and introduced himself in Portuguese as the expedition linguister. Then, as Captain Wilkes had instructed, he offered his services as translator. Dr. Vieira de Castro listened with interest, and congratulated him on his Portuguese—though with the added comment that he had obviously learned the language from Azorean shipmates, as his accent was so provincial. Then he remarked on his foreign appearance, and asked about his origins.

  When Wiki admitted he was New Zealand Maori, he adjusted his pince-nez, studied him intently for a long moment, and declared himself overwhelmed with amazement that a man who had been raised as a savage could take on the trappings of civilization so completely. A few similarly grand compliments followed, and then this leisurely conversation came to an end. Senhor Coffin’s services were unnecessary, he announced, as he, Dr. Vieira de Castro, would conduct the hearing in English.

  This led to a lot of whispering in the crowd, some restlessness, and a few loud complaints. With a sniff and long, cold stare, Dr. Vieira de Castro informed the troublemakers that it was in the interest of saving time, as the members of the exploring expedition had many pressing matters for their attention. With that, he shifted to excellent English, which he spoke with an educated Boston accent. Wiki sat down, and Dr. Gilchrist was called.

  A chair had been placed on a bare patch of floor in front of the coroner’s bench. The surgeon’s footsteps set up echoes as he approached. Then he sat down, arranged the tails of his coat to either side of his chair, and proceeded to describe Grimes’s last moments, while the clerk industriously wrote down every word he said. Dr. Vieira de Castro listened very attentively, asking many questions and taking copious notes of his own.

  When Dr. Gilchrist had finished the scratching of pens went on for quite a while. Then Dr. Vieira de Castro looked up and said, “So what, in your opinion, was the cause of death?”

  “Strychnine,” said Dr. Gilchrist.

  “You sound very sure of that.”

  “I am. His jaw was stiff, his tongue was fixed, there were distinct convulsive movements of the body, his limbs were quivering violently, and there was great arching of the spine.”

  “Those are also the symptoms of tetanic convulsion.”

  “That’s true. However…”

  “And did you not also say that he was drowsy?”

  “I agree that drowsiness could indicate a tetanic condition.”

  “But you still believe that the cause of death was poisoning with strychnine?”

  “I am quite convinced of that, Dr. Vieira de Castro.”

  More scratching. “Dr. Gilchrist, how was the poison administered?”

  “I have no idea. When I was called by Dr. Olliver, the day Mr. Grimes was reported sick, there were no symptoms of strychnine poisoning, so it must have been subsequent to that.”

  “Dr. Olliver called you?” Dr. Vieira de Castro looked surprised.

  Dr. Gilchrist puffed out his chest a little, and said, “I am the official surgeon attached to the flagship of the expedition. Dr. Olliver was summoned when the deceased fell ill, and naturally consulted with me. After that, he remained the attending physician until called away by scientific duties.”

  “And you were happy about this?”

  “Of course. I gave my permission quite freely. While Dr. Olliver is officially a naturalist with the expedition, he is also a practicing physician.”

  “I see,” said Dr. Vieira de Castro, and with no further ado dismissed Dr. Gilchrist, and called for Dr. Olliver.

  Dr. Olliver crossed the planks in almost total silence, his gait as neat and light as always, and sat down with ponderous dignity. He and Dr. Vieira de Castro conferred a few moments, exchanging qualifications and pleasantries, and then settled down to business.

  “When did you first attend the deceased, Dr. Olliver?”

  “At just after four in the morning on the seventeenth of this current month,” Dr. Olliver replied instantly, without having to refer to notes.

  “And the reason you were summoned?”

  “Wiki Coffin called me, being alarmed about the state of the subject.”

  Again, the pince-nez were adjusted. The coroner looked at Wiki and said, “Senhor Coffin?”

  Wiki stood up. “Sir?”

  “What was the cause of your alarm?”

  “Mr. Grimes had a nasty stomach upset.”

  “Do you have any idea what caused it?”

  “He blamed the previous night’s supper.”

  “What had he eaten?

  “Fried fish and bread, and then a sweet potato pudding.”

  “And the same was eaten by all?”

  “We all ate the fish.” Wiki paused, and then added, “The pudding was an individual one that had been cooked for Mr. Grimes as a treat.”

>   “And was anyone else ill?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Ah. If the deceased was indeed poisoned by Senhor Festin’s cooking, the individual pudding must be the culprit, is that not so?”

  “Logically, yes,” said Wiki. He, like Dr. Vieira de Castro and everyone else in the courtroom, looked at Robert Festin, who smiled uncertainly. The replaced tooth had turned black, and the effect was dismayingly villainous.

  Wiki looked back at the coroner, waiting tensely for the next question, but instead he was told to sit down.

  “Dr. Olliver? Did you suspect any kind of poisoning?”

  “I gave the cause of the diarrhea very little thought,” the naturalist admitted. “I was more worried about the subject’s obvious state of bad health, which I had particularly noted the evening before. When I questioned the subject, he complained loudly of neuralgic pains in his head, and also of pains in his chest, yet it was still difficult to persuade him to let me examine him. When I did, it was to find that his temperature was high, and his pulse was rapid. Of greatest concern, however, was a severe congestion of the left lung, and a threatened pneumonia, the first symptoms of which had been brought on by the chills accompanying the intestinal cramps.”

  “And your prescription?”

  “Carbonate of ammonia, and a pill which I made up from a compound of Peruvian bark, piperine, ferri pulvis, and gentian root, all of which I carried in my medical chest. These were administered four times a day. This regime worked reasonably well until the supply of bark ran out, when his condition deteriorated rapidly. There was none in the ship stores, and the ship had become becalmed off Cape Frio. Captain Wilkes was kind enough to send a cutter into port so that I could visit an apothecary.”

  “And this apothecary?”

  “Dr. Elisha Tweedie.”

  “You knew Dr. Tweedie already?”

  “No. The lieutenant who commanded the cutter recommended him, and escorted me to his place.”

  “Is he present in this court?”