The East Indiaman Read online

  ‘Well, I understand it matters little now, Captain, since Lieutenant Cavanagh sent word this morning that he, Hooker that is, has met with a fatal accident.’

  ‘That is a somewhat euphemistic assessment, if you will forgive the presumption. In fact he was murdered…’

  ‘Who by, Captain Kite?’

  ‘By the dacoit bodyguard he employed.’

  ‘Who looted him of his fortune, I assume, and have now vanished.’

  ‘I have no idea whether they have vanished, sir, but they are certainly not to be found on board my vessel. I rather thought that you would take the view that the murder of one British merchant might prejudice the lives of others in Bombay.’

  The president, a pleasant featured man with a sallow, rather unhealthy complexion smiled thinly. ‘Why so, Captain? We are not conquerors, merely traders and we enrich the countryside by our presence. How would the native princes export the produce of their fields, their cotton and so forth, without the Company? Look what we have created here in Bombay, with its regulated harbour, its dry-dock and its shipyards! Why there are native people here that would starve were they left to their own subsistence and there are native people here whose wealth and state proves the benevolence of the Company’s remit. Hooker’s dacoits will vanish into thin air, for he was a man who made enemies both amongst the natives and among his own kind. You must have heard the story about O’Neil, but the captain of sepoys is not the only man to nurse a grudge against Hooker. ’Twas as well you came here to Bombay and did not sail direct to the Hughli. I was myself in Calcutta until a year ago and can tell you that there are at least three trading houses in that busy city who found dealing with Hooker a less than profitable business.’ The factor broke off and smiled again. ‘So you see, Captain, no-one is going to weep for Josiah Hooker.’

  ‘Cavanagh told me to put to sea and bury him,’ Kite said flatly. His sleepless night was catching up with him and he felt incapable of thought. If he had come ashore seeking a resolution to his own personal crisis he could not expect this kindly but disinterested gentleman to help him.

  ‘That was sound advice, Captain,’ Cranbrooke continued, ‘and if you wish to register his demise with the authorities, I can advise you that a deposition over your signature attesting to the fact that Hooker expired by his own hand would find a ready lodgement with the governor. Since there is no estate…’

  ‘There is a widow, sir,’ Kite put in, troubled, despite his exhaustion by the notion of perjuring himself.

  ‘Ah yes. So she is with you too, is she? A Hindu woman, I recall. She too caused some problems. What was she called? Rosemary or something anglicé?’

  ‘I know her only as Rose, sir, and yes, she is aboard my schooner.’

  ‘Well sir, she is your problem. I should land her before you leave.’

  ‘She would be destitute, sir.’ Kite protested, disturbed by the president’s callousness, ‘unless you would subscribe to her subsistence.’

  Cranbrooke appeared to ignore Kite’s humanitarian plea. ‘She should be dead,’ he remarked obliquely, ‘but if chivalry is your forté, Captain Kite, then you must decide the matter for yourself. I would, however, be obliged if you would take the late Mr Hooker to sea and bury him there and thus avoid us the tedious necessity of our having to deal with a suicide here in Bombay.’

  Cranbrooke held out his hand in dismissal. Kite took it, feeling the weight of fatigue about to overwhelm him. He realised that the heat, despite the waving punkah, combined with the weight of his broadcloth coat and his sleepless night rendered him almost comatose. He was vaguely aware that he had called at the castle to ask something, but he could no longer recall it and he no longer cared very much. He had much to think about and he needed to rest.

  ‘Forgive me, sir,’ he mumbled, ‘I did not sleep last night…’

  Cranbrooke smiled. ‘Call upon me again, Captain Kite, when you have attended to the suicide. We must discuss your presence here in Bombay.’ He watched Kite leave the room. ‘You are no longer a young man, Captain Kite,’ the president murmured, ‘and I wonder what will become of you, for you are untutored in our ways.’

  It was late morning when the boat pulled him back out to the schooner. Harper helped him over the rail and gave him some good news. ‘We got out boat back, Cap’n, the one the dacoits stole. It was found drifting off the dockyard and a sea-cunny from the Artemis brought it back to us.’

  ‘A what?’ mumbled Kite irritably.

  ‘A sea-cunny, a quartermaster,’ Harper explained.

  ‘Then say a festering quartermaster, damn it!’

  ‘But he was Indian, Cap’n and I thought…’

  ‘Did you think to sew Hooker up in a hammock?’

  ‘All done sir, and none too soon. He’s still below but we’ve scrubbed the cabin out and…. Are you all right, Cap’n Kite?’

  Kite had reached the after companionway and leaned upon it, almost fearful of attempting a descent into the schooner’s dark interior.

  ‘Zachariah, can you get the vessel under weigh and take her out to sea? I must get some sleep…’

  ‘William? Is that you back at last? I have been so worried my dear.’ Sarah ran up the ladder and Kite recalled little more as she and Harper helped him below. He was vaguely aware of the swells lifting the Spitfire’s hull as Harper took her out to sea and her white wake cut through the brilliant blue of the Arabian Sea, mingling with the white wave caps of the moderated monsoon wind.

  Kite woke after eight hours, stirring as Sarah gently shook him. ‘My dear,’ she was saying as he rose through a fog of semi-consciousness, ‘Zacharaiah thinks we have gone far enough to sea and the wind is freshening. He thinks we must dispose of Josiah’s body soon.’

  Kite grunted, the events of the previous hours returning to him in distasteful recollection. ‘Yes, yes of course. Give me a moment… Is that Maggie? Maggie, do you tell Mr Harper to heave-to and muster the hands. I shall be up directly.’

  ‘Very well, sir,’ Maggie bobbed a curtsey and the sight of her doing so as Spitfire drove her bow into a wave brought a smile to Kite’s face. Perhaps things were not so bad; all he have to do was to adapt as Maggie had. He reached for his breeches and turned to Sarah. ‘Does Rose know what we are about to do?’

  Sarah nodded. ‘She is very distraught, William, especially now that we are going to bury Josiah. There is something troubling her deeply, more deeply than mere grief or even fear for the future, for I have assured her that we shall not abandon her.’

  Kite was surprised at this assurance, but it was no time for a quarrel with his wife, particularly as he knew he himself could never abandon the unfortunate woman, but the thought drove another from his mind, a slight feeling of unease that dogged him without him being able to nail it down. He dismissed the anxiety in his eagerness to get the present distasteful task over and done with.

  The Order of Service for burial at sea according to the Anglican rite is a brief and seamanlike affair. To their credit the hands turned up in their best rig, some sporting the ribboned straw hats and bell-bottomed trousers of the true nautical dandy. He assumed with good reason that their good behaviour was not without motives of self-interest, which Kite guessed were associated with the desire for shore leave when they returned to Bombay. Looking at them over the prayer-book, Kite thought that this unabashed currying of favour might be translated to his own advantage if he were shrewd enough to engineer matters properly. But he was pleased with the turnout. Even Jack Bow, whom he had hardly taken any notice of for weeks, was wearing clean clothes, though they were shabby and the lad had outgrown them. The sight reproached him: he ought to see the youth better clad. Maggie too was in her best and stood behind Sarah who had donned a dark dress and looked inexpressibly lovely with her hair blowing about her face. But Rose was missing, the only exotic on deck being the turbanned Rahman who seemed keen to pay his own respect at the strange ceremonial.

  Kite read the final words and waited for Harper’s burial party
to heave Hooker’s body over the side. The bulk of the corpse lay beneath the fluttering red ensign and then slid off the boards and fell into the sea with a loud splash. Kite stood for a moment, then closed the prayer book with a snap.

  ‘Very well, Mr Harper, let draw the foresheets, then put up the helm and run her off before the wind.’

  ‘Aye, aye, sir.’

  As the crowd broke up on the moving deck Sarah approached him with a sad smile on her face. ‘I think you should have been a priest, my dear, you read that beautifully.’

  ‘I did? Well, perhaps I would have made a better success of the priesthood than I have of this venture.’

  Standing close Sarah put her finger up to his lips. ‘Shhh, my darling, you are a man of resource, you will find a way.’

  ‘I am thinking of returning to the American coast,’ he said unenthusiastically, ‘it is the only place I can think of that will perhaps yield a prize. There are no enemy ships hereabouts to plunder.’

  ‘So we turn privateer again?’

  Kite shrugged. ‘I see no other possibility.’ But even as he spoke the words he dissembled. There was the germ of an idea at the back of his mind but he had no idea whether it stood the slightest chance of getting off the ground, let alone succeeding. At the moment it consisted of no more than a jumbled succession of vague notions and he needed advice, charts, and a, what was it Harper had called the native mariner? A sea-cunny?

  ‘Damned funny word,’ he murmured unconsciously.

  ‘What is?’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘You said, “damned funny word”,’ Sarah said curiously.

  ‘Did I?’ Kite shook his head. ‘I am still rather dopey from lack of sleep, Sarah. I am not certain what I am saying.’

  ‘Well you bade Josiah farewell very eloquently.’

  ‘And what of Josiah’s widow?’

  ‘Ah, there is a mystery. We can look after her can we not?’

  ‘I suppose we shall have to.’

  ‘She has a little money of her own, but not a great deal.’

  ‘Much like ourselves then,’ Kite said grimly catching hold of Sarah as she staggered on the canting deck. Harper had brought the schooner round and she was running before a quartering breeze, scending wildly in the tumbling following sea as she headed back for Bombay.

  ‘I’ll go below,’ Sarah said and Kite watched her move swiftly across the deck, smile at Harper and the helmsman, and then disappear down the companionway. He followed her and stopped beside the mate.

  ‘I’ll take the deck, Zachariah,’ he said, staring into the compass bowl set in the binnacle.

  ‘It’s all right, Cap’n, I’m fine, you could do with some more sleep I dare say.’

  ‘I daresay I could, Zachariah, but I’ve a deal of thinking to do and I’ll walk the deck to do it. Do you get some rest yourself, thank you.’

  ‘Very well, sir, if you insist.’ Harper shook his ugly head as though in obedient disagreement with his commander and the gesture brought a smile to Kite’s face. Silently he thanked providence for sending him Zachariah Harper. He only wished he could repay the American’s loyalty with some material success. He caught Harper’s eye and motioned the mate to withdraw a little towards the lee rail, out of earshot of the helmsman.

  ‘Bye the bye, Zachariah,’ he said in a lower tone, ‘we are to assume that Hooker cut his own throat.’

  ‘We are, Cap’n?’ Harper raised his eyebrows in surprise.

  Kite nodded. ‘Yes, we are, let it be known to McClusky, Maggie and the hands that that is what happened. All our other suspicions are unproven and are therefore groundless.’

  ‘Groundless, d’you say, Cap’n Kite? Well that’s mighty odd.’

  ‘Odd or not, Zachariah, it’s important that we close the matter as a suicide.’

  ‘But how do we explain the theft of Hooker’s fortune, sir?’

  Kite sighed and rubbed his chin. His palm rasped on the stubble and it occurred to him that, eloquent or not, he had conducted Hooker’s funeral with an unseemly beard gracing his own chops. ‘Well, Zachariah, we don’t.’

  ‘But it’s common knowledge…’

  ‘Then we must establish the fiction that nothing was taken.’

  ‘And how in Hades can we do that?’ Harper asked in astonishment.

  Kite looked at Harper’s incredulous face with a smile. ‘That’s what I need to think about.’

  ‘Well, good luck to ye, Cap’n, I’m sure glad that it’s you that have to do it and not yours truly. Damned if I’d know where to start.’

  ‘Damned if I do, Zachariah, but we’re a long way from home and even there we’ve precious few friends.’

  ‘Desperate measures then, sir.’ Harper’s ugly face grew solemn.

  ‘Aye, but are you with me, Zachariah?’

  ‘Well, Cap’n, I’ve precious little choice and you’ve already brought me to the ends of the earth.’

  Their eyes met and they both smiled. Then Harper turned away and, watching him follow Sarah down the companionway, Kite reflected on the curious differences that exist in the friendships between men and women.

  Chapter Eleven

  The Imperfect Wife

  Kite was far from feeling as confident as he thought Harper considered him to be. There had been that familiar, knowing look in the mate’s eyes, the look that signalled that he guessed his commander was cooking something up. Although Kite had been nursing an idea of his own even before Hooker’s death, he had not the faintest idea of how to promote it without Hooker’s intimate commercial knowledge. Now the scheme seemed remote, but irritatingly enough, now that he had to give his full attention to it, he was distracted by something else. Moreover, upon this distraction was piled another, for it occurred to him that the intrusion was but a means by which his tired brain refused to give its full attention to the primary problem. And yet was this mental diversion truly a distraction? Or should he consider this manifestation as a subconscious prompting to deal with first things first? Despite his long-held reservations about Hooker, had not the revelations about him materially altered Kite’s situation? And perhaps that quick, half forgotten aside of President Cranbrooke about Rose preyed upon his mind for entirely sensible reasons. She was, after all, the imperfect Hooker’s legacy to him and he had to resolve her status, explore the reality of her own situation insofar as it might still affect him, before he could right his own.

  Suddenly resolute, he passed word for McClusky and when the quondam clerk reported aft Kite ordered, ‘Do you turn yourself into a sea-officer proper, Mr MccLusky, and watch the con for me while I go below for a few moments. East Sou’ East is the course.’

  ‘East South East, sir. Aye, aye, sir.’ McClusky swallowed and stared at the compass as the card swung gently then Kite looked up and caught the helmsman’s eye.

  ‘And you can keep an eye on Mr McClusky, Pollard,’ he said with a smile. The remark disarmed Pollard’s resentment at McClusky’s rapid promotion and he too smiled.

  ‘Aye, aye, sir.’

  Down below in the tiny lobby from which the cabin doors opened, he hesitated. Harper’s tiny box led off forward, the pantry lay to one side and the after door led directly into his own portion of the after cabin. Access to the partititoned half in which the Hookers had been accommodated was through his own and he did not wish to alert Sarah to what he was about to do in case she dissuaded him out of compassion for the bereaved Rose.

  Slowly he turned the door handle and eased it open. Sarah was reading and he stepped inside, his finger to his lips as, startled, she looked up.

  ‘Oh, my word, what…’ then she fell silent as Kite tip-toed across the cabin, changing his mind as he did so.

  Bending to Sarah’s ear he whispered, ‘my dear, you may not agree with what I am about to do, but it is essential that we establish more details about Hooker. Unfortunately I learned a great deal from the chief factor that was not to Hooker’s credit and I am now anxious about Rose. You may come with me, or remain h
ere but I am determined to confront the woman.’ With his hands on the arms of her chair Kite drew back and waited for Sarah’s response.

  For a moment she considered what he had said and then she nodded. Lowering her book she said, I’ll come with you. Kite straightened up under the deck beams as Sarah, still in the unfamiliar dress, rose with a rustle of silk, then he led her to the interconnecting door.

  Rose Hooker lay on the palliasse, staring at the intruders, yet she made no other move and Kite was reminded of the inert form he had first seen long months ago in that filthy London tenement.

  ‘Rose, my dear, we have buried Josiah according to the sea-ritual of his Established church and now I regret to say there are some matters which we must discuss, chief among which is your future.’

  ‘Do not be too brutal, William,’ Sarah whispered in his ear, but Kite knew of no other way but to come directly to the point.

  ‘Now unfortunately I have learned a good deal about your husband, Rose, and I know of the affair with O’Neil and other matters touching affairs at Calcutta.’ Kite paused as Rose drew herself up into a squatting position equivalent to a European sitting formally in a chair, evidence that she was receiving this information in a formal sense. Seeing the wary hostility kindling in her eyes, Kite smiled kindly.

  ‘Now Rose, please rest assured that you yourself are among friends and that we shall not abandon you and you may stay with us if that is your wish…’ Kite paused and Sarah smiled and reached forward and touched the Indian woman’s bare forearm.

  ‘What is it you have heard about me?’ She asked in a low voice.

  ‘That you should not be alive,’ Kite said quickly, seeking to disarm the woman, but he was quite unprepared for the cry of naked anguish that sprang like a demonic spirit from the widow’s throat, nor for his own wife’s cry of protest at the unfeeling brutality of his remark. Rose was on her feet and had, with an abrupt gesture, drawn a knife from the folds of her sari. Her left hand wrenched at the silk about her until it tore to expose her left breast. She pressed the point of the knife so hard against the soft flesh that it drew blood.