A Watery Grave Page 2

  Wiki said, aghast, “She’s a total stranger to me!”

  “You don’t know who she is?”

  “Of course I don’t!”

  The crowd was growing as more people streamed down through the trees. “Mrs. Tristram T. Stanton, she,” an ancient beldame volunteered. “Richest woman in the whole of ole Virginny, married to the son of old man Stanton hisself. Not a happy situation. Threatened to do away wiv herself often. Looks like she done it. Poison, I ’spect,” she added, with an air of omnipotence.

  “You think she committed suicide?” Wiki turned to stare at the corpse, which somehow looked more lifeless. The head was awry, the jaw sagging open. The muslin dress was sodden and sullied. The yellow hair looked as dead as wet hay. In many parts of the Pacific this would be considered a time of great danger, when the potentially malevolent spirit was loosed. The Polynesian side of Wiki’s nature craved some kind of ritual to send the hungry ghost on its proper path to the realm of darkness—te po, the place of departed spirits. The pakeha part of his mind dismissed the idea, but the hairs on his forearms kept on rising.

  Then he thought about the manner of the woman’s death. He felt certain that the old crone was wrong, but was not sure why he was so convinced that Mrs. Tristram T. Stanton had not done away with herself. The body was reposed in such a consciously artistic fashion that it was easy to envisage Mrs. Stanton pushing the boat out, wielding the paddle until she felt the poison take effect, and then sliding under the thwart and taking up this pose, preparing herself for a melodramatic end. But still the image was unconvincing. Something about her dress …

  “Hysterical sort she were, the poor mad creature,” the old crone nattered on. “I know it,” she claimed, “on account of my granddaughter is help at the Stanton plantation house. Mistress was so ’ysterical at the very notion of ’im bein’ gone for three or more years, there were strong doubts he’d get away.”

  This made no sense at all to Wiki. Then, as everyone stared at the old besom, the rapt silence was broken by the rolling thunder of a single cannon, setting the seabirds to wheeling and shrieking. It was the signal that the fleet was ready to drop down the river.

  The sheriff didn’t even bother to look at the source of the commotion. Instead, he turned his head to watch as two more horsemen came galloping through the thicket, reined in beside the beached boat, and leaped to the ground. Because they also wore nickel stars on their coat lapels, Wiki deduced they were the sheriff’s men—his deputies, his comitatus posse. They knew their job, he saw, because after nothing more than a nod from the boss they embarked on a businesslike examination of the boat.

  First, they picked up the paddle and studied it as if the damp blade could tell them something. Then, putting it aside, they set to poking fingers through the two holes in the hull. An animated but muttered conversation ensued. One produced a pad and pencil, and laboriously recorded the details of this discovery, along with the name of the victim.

  Then they started in on the corpse. The head with its bedraggled lace and ribbon cap was pushed back—rather too easily, Wiki thought with a preternatural shiver—and the mouth pried farther open. “No signs of poison,” the sheriff said sharply, as if this confirmed his suspicions. “No blistering of the mouth.” The hands got the same treatment. “No burns, no gunpowder marks, no blood. Wa-al,” he said, straightening as this was noted, “let’s get her out of the boat.”

  “Give way,” said one of the deputies, and the crowd obediently shuffled backward, Wiki with them. Mud squirted around his feet—the riverbank was becoming very trampled. He expected the sheriff to give the order to break the thwart so the body could be lifted straight upward, but apparently he didn’t think it necessary. The deputies, one on each side of the dead woman, gripped her stiff arms to pull her out from under the thwart. For a moment it looked as if the boat would refuse to yield its burden, but all at once with a ripping of cloth the body came up—with such a jerk that it arrived at a standing position before the officers could stop their hauling. When they staggered to a halt it dangled from their fists like a monstrous puppet, the head lying on the shoulder in a parody of life that was horribly grotesque. “Jee-rusalem,” someone in the crowd muttered sickly—and yet another rider came galloping down from the thicket.

  The deputies hastily laid the body on the grass and stepped back, brushing their palms against their sides and looking sheepish. The horseman vaulted to the ground and ran over to the corpse, crying in a low voice, “Oh my God, so she did it.” Then he whirled on his heel and stared at the sheriff. “Who found her?”

  Wiki saw that he was another big man, as brawny as the sheriff. Despite his wrestlerlike build, though, the newcomer had every appearance of a fine gentleman—albeit a most disheveled one. He wore a top-quality tailored coat, its black velvet collar turned down to display the lapels of his white vest, the high wing collar of his shirt, and the elaborate folds of his white silk cravat, but everything was spattered with mud. His knee-high boots were water stained after what had evidently been a wild gallop. He had lost or discarded his hat, and brown hair flopped over his broad, meaty forehead and heavy eyebrows. His ears were low down on his head and as protuberant as an ape’s, sticking out from behind thick sideburns, and his small, alert eyes were set far back in the sockets.

  This, Wiki had no doubt, was Tristram T. Stanton himself. Several of the men in the crowd had taken off their hats, presumably as a mark of respect to the bereaved. The sheriff, however, was unmoving, impassively waiting for Stanton to go on.

  Stanton muttered, “I shouldn’t have done it.”

  “Done what, Mr. Stanton?” asked the sheriff.

  “I’ve been invited to sail with the expedition as an astronomer. She did not want me to go, and we quarreled about it. Last night I sent her a note, telling her I was determined to go. But I did not believe she would carry out her threat.”

  “Threat?”

  “To put an end to her life.”

  The sheriff pursed his lips judiciously and then said, “She didn’t.”

  “What?” The tone was astonished.

  “I don’t believe she committed suicide.”

  “Not suicide?” Stanton’s face had gone scarlet. “But surely…”

  “I regret to inform you that I reckon your wife was murdered.”

  “Murdered?” Stanton cried.

  “I figure she was killed, put in the boat, and then set adrift. When it was floating down the river, the murderer shot two holes into the waterline—two shots in quick succession, as many of the fine folks here have testified. His vain hope was to sink both boat and body without a trace, but people responded to the sound of the shots before the boat could founder.”

  “But that’s insane!”

  “A nasty business,” the sheriff agreed. “The product of a savage mind.”

  Savage. Wiki’s mouth was abruptly dry. Every eye in the mob was on him.

  Stanton said blankly, “You’ve found the murderer?”

  “I believe so,” said the sheriff, and again looked deliberately at Wiki, who took a backward step, saying hastily, “Now then, just a moment—”

  It was not the sheriff who seized him, however. Instead, it was the two deputies who sprang forward and gripped his arms. The sheriff was busily contemplating Wiki’s pistols, back to bouncing and balancing them in his broad palms. “Two shots,” he said reflectively. “Close together, which don’t seem to allow much chance to reload. It appears to me a pair of pistols was exactly what the murderer needed—and that makes a lot more sense than an invisible fellow with a rifle.”

  Then, with ponderous deliberation, he thrust the guns into the wide leather belt that encompassed his massive waist and said, “Willy Kernacker, or whatever you call yourself, I am taking you into custody on suspicion of the murder of Mrs. Tristram T. Stanton and the desecration of her corpse.”

  As they escorted Wiki Coffin away, over his shoulder he could see the seven ships of the expedition taking their dep
arture. They were sailing in order of rank with their canvas billowing straight and the yards manned, the Vincennes in the lead, and the others following, while cannon thundered over and over in a rolling salute from the Gosport Navy Yard. With a terrible sense of desperation, he realized that the fleet was sailing, and had left him behind.

  Two

  They confined Wiki in the old Portsmouth Sugar House at the south end of Crawford Street. The cell was made of stone; but though it was pleasantly cool, it smelled bad because of the miasmas wafting in from the privy in the yard outside. There was a view of the waterfront from the barred window, but Wiki sank to the side of the narrow berth, his head in his hands.

  At this moment it was impossible to believe he had been reluctant about joining the expedition—that he had agreed only because he did not want to offend an old comrade. Now he would have given a great deal to be on board the brig Swallow, the deck dipping and swaying beneath his feet, a sticky salt tang in the air he breathed, on the verge of sailing off to the southern polar regions of the Antarctic. Instead, here he was incarcerated in a Virginian cell. When the sheriff and his men returned a half-dozen hours later, he stood up with every expectation of the worst. Then, with relief so intense that his face creased up into triangles of delight, Wiki recognized the man who was with them.

  “George!” he exclaimed, and then recollected himself. “Captain Rochester!” George Rochester might have been a mere midshipman, but—as Wiki knew very well indeed—he was a midshipman who commanded a ship of his own, the Swallow.

  George looked every inch a captain, too, dressed to the nines in a lieutenant’s blue claw-hammer coat, its broad lapels embellished with gold buttons and lace, and a gold epaulette on the right shoulder, which announced to the world that he was the master of a ship. His long neck was encompassed by a stand-up collar lavishly embroidered with gold oak leaves and acorns and fouled anchors, and three more buttons decorated the cuff of each sleeve, laced with still more gold. His trousers were white, and because of the way he stood with his bottom and his knees tucked in, his muscular calves shoved out at the back.

  Normally, George Rochester wore the benign expression of a sheep, the impression helped out by his long nose and fluffy fair sideburns, but at this moment he was extremely severe. “Mr. Coffin,” he pronounced, “you failed to report on board the brig.”

  “I apologize, Captain Rochester,” said Wiki humbly. “Events were out of my control. It’s very good to see you—I thought you’d taken your departure.”

  “Then you were mistaken, sir! The squadron’s lying abreast of Fort Munroe, ready to sail on the first fair wind, everything in a state of forwardness—it’s a great day for America! However, when the sheriff informed me that he was taking you to revisit the scene of the crime, I insisted on coming along as your representative.”

  So things were not looking up at all. His optimism dashed, Wiki silently followed the sheriff out of the cell and along a bricked corridor to a yard where five saddled horses were waiting. As they trotted along Crawford Street, a deputy rode on either side of him, and he was very conscious of the stares and whispers of onlookers.

  Then the town was left behind, and they were riding along the bridle path beside the river toward the place where he had retrieved the boat. Wiki could see the big tree that had sheltered him as he had waited from midnight to dawn. The strong, lower branches spread out horizontally, reminding him of a gallows tree. The boat had been taken away, along with the body, but a big muddy scar in the grass marked the place where the crowd had dragged it out of the river. Wiki glanced around, thinking that the place looked remarkably ordinary, considering the things that had happened here.

  The sheriff reined in. He said to Wiki, “You still reckon it was suicide?”

  “I never said it was suicide,” Wiki retorted. Then he added soberly, “As it happens, I’m certain you are right. Someone killed her, and then laid her out the way I found her in that boat.”

  “You think so, huh?” The sheriff looked interested. “And are you going to tell us what led you to that conclusion?”

  “Her skirt,” said Wiki. He had thought about it deeply during the hours of imprisonment. “When I first saw the corpse, her dress was spread all the way to her feet. If she had laid herself out that way, she would have had to sit up and reach over the thwart to smooth down her skirt. Then, when she lay down again, the hem would have ridden up to her ankles with the movement. So, by logic, it was someone else who arranged her—after she was dead.”

  “Clever,” said the sheriff. His eyebrows were hoisted high; it was the most complicated expression Wiki had seen on his face—surprise and curiosity mixed with a touch of admiration. “But you’re sticking to your story of the mysterious man with a rifle?”

  “He must have been the murderer. I presume he set up the scene to look like suicide, but when the boat was floating down the river he changed his mind and tried to get rid of the evidence.”

  The sheriff sat still a moment, gazing at Wiki in contemplative fashion. Then, moving abruptly, he wheeled his horse, leading the way up the slope to the thicket. When the brush surrounded them, it was suddenly warmer. Clouds of insects whined. Where the crowds had pushed through, the ground underfoot was heavily trampled. The sheriff looked over his shoulder. “You want to find the tracks of your rifleman, Mr. Kernacker-Indian?”

  “I’m not that kind of Indian,” Wiki said dryly.

  The sheriff shrugged and nudged his horse along. They followed him in single file upriver through the brush, their horses walking a narrow track where others had come before. The air was filled with the sounds of unseen rushing water, the hum of insects, the rustle of twigs and reeds as the horses pushed through them, and the steady, slow thump of hooves. The late afternoon sun was hot, and a mixture of sweat and dust prickled Wiki’s neck and arms. He watched Rochester’s uniform-clad back bob along ahead of him and thought his friend must be very uncomfortable. However, the long torso was ramrod straight. Wiki himself was riding native fashion, slumped on his jogging horse with his knees well bent and his feet high up the withers. It was comfortable—almost relaxing. Then the little cavalcade emerged from the undergrowth, arriving at the top of a cliff that overlooked a creek.

  The steep path that descended to the rivulet was overhung by trees. At the bottom was a backwater, where the stream formed a quiet lagoon. The surface of this pool was edged with reeds and dusted with pollen, and the water was dark with rotting vegetation. The air was cool, but the smell was unpleasant. This was the place where the boat with the dead body had been launched, Wiki realized. He could see the deep mark on the verge where the derelict had lain for a long time before being sent on its grisly last cruise and the dragging smear where it had been pushed into the creek. He slid off his horse—and was hit by a blast of overwhelming terror.

  Wiki stumbled and fell, tearing one knee of his dungaree pants—he could feel the violence that had been done here, and the shocking abruptness of the release of the woman’s spirit. Haere e te hoa, ko te tatou kainga nui kena, he cried in the back of his mind—“Go, friend, to the great abode that awaits us all,” commanding the tortured ghost to take te ara whanui a Tane, the broad path of Tane, to join her ancestors and abandon this world of life to the living. He was aware of the pakeha staring and wondering at his distress, but he was incapable of hiding it.

  When the inner panic had subsided, he clambered shakily to his feet, looked at the sheriff, and asked as calmly as he could, “How was she killed?”

  “Neck broken,” the sheriff said succinctly.

  Wiki winced, remembering how the dead head had flopped. Now the progression of events was obvious to him—after the woman was killed, the murderer had laid out the corpse and had waded into the water to push the boat into the stream, using the paddle as a crutch. Then he had returned to the bank, mounted his horse, and from this vantage point had watched the craft float off on its way to the Elizabeth River. Changing his mind for some unknown reason,
he had ridden along the riverbank with a rifle, chasing the boat in a doomed attempt to sink it with a couple of well-placed shots.

  The sheriff seemed quite uninterested in dismounting to study the scene in detail, turning his horse to lead the way inland. The group followed. Within minutes the trail broke out of the brush and became a road that slashed through a patchwork of cultivated fields toward a mansion set among gardens and trees. This, it soon became obvious, was the sheriff’s objective. The white marble columns of the wide portico gleamed magnificently in the late afternoon sun as they trotted toward it. For a long time they did not seem to be getting any closer, but then suddenly the dense shadow of the overhanging entranceway enveloped them.

  While there had been no apparent movement inside the mansion, their approach had been watched, it seemed, as stable hands silently materialized to take their bridles. Wiki slid down from the saddle, feeling very much at a disadvantage in his crumpled shirt and dungaree trousers. Since dawn his clothes had soaked in the river, had dried on his body, and had become sweaty and dusty with the ride. George might have been hot and uncomfortable in his fine tailored uniform, but Wiki now envied him his smart appearance.

  The entrance doors to this magnificent mansion were tall, with finely wrought glass panes. One of them opened to reveal a young black housemaid, the whites of her staring eyes matching the color of her mobcap. She looked terrified.

  The sheriff said, “Mr. Stanton is expecting us.”

  The girl’s gaze darted from one man to the other and then fixed on Wiki’s face. She pointed at his chest and said, “I don’t know that I oughter let him in, sir.”

  “Why not?” said the sheriff.

  “I don’t know about letting in Injuns.”

  An impatient male voice echoed from behind her. “Bring them in, Em, goddammit. Don’t you ever listen to orders? Bring them in!”

  The harsh resonance of the voice seemed familiar, but when Wiki arrived in the huge marbled hallway and looked up the curved stairway to where the speaker was standing, it was a man he had never seen before. However, the resemblance was so striking, it was obvious this was the father of Tristram T. Stanton. The hair was thick gray instead of brown but flopped over the same kind of meaty forehead and bushy brows, and the thick-lipped, down-turned mouth was just as arrogant. Like his son, Stanton had protuberant, low-set ears that stuck out from behind long sideburns, and small, deep-set eyes that flickered from man to man. Despite his husky build, there was the same apelike look.