Page 19

“T ell us about the ship’s crew,” Constance said to Sydney, as much for Solomon’s quest as for the resolution of this increasingly bizarre case.

They were in her carriage, en route to one of Barnabas Lloyd’s lesser clubs to collect him before going to the ship.

“The crew?” Sydney said. “I don’t really know anything about them. Captain Tybalt dealt with them.”

“Your father gave Tybalt free rein to pick his own men?” How odd, when he went to such lengths to control other aspects of his life. “He must place a lot of trust in this captain.”

“Oh, they’ve sailed together for years, off and on,” Sydney said without much interest.

“Is he ever a guest in your house?” Solomon asked.

Sydney looked at him as if he had grown horns.

“Of course not.” He was silent a moment.

“Come to think of it, I don’t believe he’s ever been in the house for any reason.

I’ve certainly never seen him there. My father contacts him when he needs him for expeditions, and he sees to the seaworthiness of the Queen and engages the crew. ”

“Always the same crew?” Constance asked quickly.

“Don’t know, to be honest. Old Silas Cauley—he of the treasure map—had certainly sailed with Tybalt and my father several times before ill health caught up with him.”

“How many men were there on the crew for this last expedition?”

“Lord, I don’t know,” Sydney replied without much interest. “A handful.”

“Did you change crew members at all during the journey?” Constance asked, mostly to see if Sydney was honest in his ignorance.

The young man considered. “One of them took ill. We left him in Madagascar and took up another fellow, I think.”

Constance did not look at Solomon. “What happened to the sick sailor you left on Madagascar? Did you pick him up on the way back?”

“No idea,” Sydney said. “Captain Tybalt will know.”

“What of the replacement sailor you took on at Madagascar?” Constance pursued. “Can you describe him?”

“Not really,” Sydney said. “Just another sailor. Young-ish, I think.”

The carriage halted outside the club and Sydney dashed out to fetch his father, leaving Constance and Solomon to exchange a long, meaningful glance.

“I wonder if he could describe you or me?” she said wryly.

“I shan’t argue the point any further. He is a singularly self-absorbed young man.”

“Or he just doesn’t notice the lower orders.”

Barnabas Lloyd was clearly not best pleased to have been winkled out of his club at this hour for a jaunt to the docks. Nor did he think much of their theory that the chest they had taken off the ship was a copy.

“Utter rot,” he said angrily. “A mere excuse for your own incompetence.”

“Be reasonable, Papa,” Sydney drawled. “It wasn’t they who lost the treasure in the first place.”

His father glared at him. “We did not lose it. It was stolen from us. There is no point in my even being with you. Tybalt is the man who knows the ship. And the crew.”

“Did you recognize any of the crew?” Solomon asked. “Had any of them sailed with you before?”

“Don’t think so,” Lloyd growled. “Ask Tybalt.”

At the dockside, an urchin was dispatched to fetch Captain Tybalt, while Lloyd stormed along to his ship, yelling for the watchman.

With the gangway lowered, they followed him on board.

Constance was glad not to have worn one of her more fashionable gowns, where the crinoline would have made it next to impossible to climb down the ladders and negotiate the narrow passages.

She had only ever been aboard pleasure boats on the Thames before, and she was fascinated by her glimpses into a working, seagoing vessel. Not that either of the Lloyds seemed to know a great deal about it beyond their own cabins. What on earth had they done during such long voyages?

The rooms meant to be the captain’s cabin had apparently been taken over by Lloyd himself, while the captain slept in the first officer’s accommodation. Sydney had been given a tiny cabin next to his father’s, the main benefit of which seemed to be that he would not need to share.

They began with Lloyd’s cabin, where the treasure had been stored, the chest secured to a wall hook by rope. There seemed to be no bolts on either the cabin door nor the bed alcove.

“Did you have a servant with you?” Solomon asked.

“No, no. One of the crew served meals in the main cabin. Tybalt joined us.”

“Always the same crewman?” Constance asked.

“Generally,” Lloyd said.

Fortunately, Captain Tybalt did not take long to arrive, looking somewhat harassed. He bowed to Lloyd and Sydney, nodded to Solomon, and widened his eyes at Constance before adding another hasty bow.

He took them down to the crew’s deck, where they had all slept in hammocks in the same space.

A smaller cabin had been set aside as a sick bay—the captain being the nearest thing to a medical man.

Other cabins were used as workshops for various necessities like mending sails and ad hoc carpentry work.

Then there was the galley kitchen, which, although apparently clean, still smelled of old onions and stale rum.

There was no direct means of getting from the crew’s quarters to the owner’s and captain’s. The men would have had to go up through the hatch to the open deck and then down again. Experienced sailors like Captain Tybalt could dash with great speed and ease up and down those ladders, though.

“What do you do during long voyages?” Constance asked Lloyd.

“Read,” came the reply. “Write my journal. Plan. Sometimes I sketch a little, though I am an indifferent artist. We’d play cards some evenings, though three is not a great number!”

“Where did you play?” Solomon asked.

“In my cabin, usually. Sometimes in Tybalt’s.”

Which certainly gave all the crew opportunity to go and inspect the chest in Barnabas’s quarters, but how on earth was it copied, and how had it been replaced?

Solomon clearly had the same idea, for he turned to Tybalt. “Captain, did you have a carpenter aboard?”

“Yes, we did. Very handy he was, too, replacing rotten planks and repairing cabinets.”

“Was he one of the crew you already knew?” Constance asked.

“No, actually. He was a bit older but happened to be around when I was recruiting. We were still short, so I took him on.”

“Did you know all the others?”

“Yes, I’d sailed with all of them before. Good men.” He glanced at Solomon. “Apart from Johnny, of course, who we picked up at Madagascar.”

“Maybe we should be looking more closely at him ?” Lloyd said, scowling.

“Oh, we are,” Constance assured him.

*

As a gesture of courtesy, Constance instructed her coachman to convey the Lloyds back to wherever they wished to be. Tybalt, who had been instructed to help them as though he were an old retainer, hovered uneasily on the dockside.

“Would you mind accompanying us to interview the sailors?” Constance said, bestowing one of her smiles upon him. It had its usual effect. “We believe their trust in you will incline them to answer our questions with truth.”

“I’ll come with you, of course,” Tybalt said, “but I really do not suspect any of them.” He cast Solomon a look of dislike. “Is that the real reason you were looking for Johnny yesterday?”

“Actually, no. I was told he’d sailed.”

“He might have,” Tybalt said neutrally. He led them through a warren of filthy, busy back streets east of the dock until they came to a row of crumbling old tenements, where he hesitated, glancing at Constance. “Shall I bring them down?”

“I am happy to go up,” Constance said at once. Like Solomon, she wanted to catch the sailors unwarned.

Since he had told her the truth this morning, Lloyd’s case seemed to have merged more calmly in Solomon’s mind with finding David—if Johnny was indeed David.

He had always known Constance could be more easily hurt than she pretended, but until now, he had not realized how much pain he could cause her by sheer thoughtlessness, by chasing his own agenda without her.

On top of which, she had reminded him of what he should have known—that men frequently lied to anyone in apparent authority, assuming they were always in trouble.

It was a good idea to bring Tybalt, as he realized as soon as they bumped into Jackson on the stairs.

He grinned in friendly surprise. “Captain! What brings you here? You’re not looking for crew again already, are you?”

Over Tybalt’s shoulder, he took in Solomon with irritation, and Constance with astonishment.

“Not yet. Any of the others here, Jackson?”

“Not just now. Kelly’s found a woman, God help her. What can I do for you?” He made way for a woman coming downstairs with a huge bundle of washing, and then for two arguing men coming up.

“Shall we talk outside?” Tybalt suggested.

They trooped back down again, and Jackson led them over to some disused steps. Constance perched on a low wall, with Solomon leaning beside her. Jackson and Tybalt sat on the steps.

“You told me Johnny had sailed,” Solomon said mildly.

Jackson grinned. “Figure of speech. Don’t know you from Adam, do I? A man’s got a right to choose who he talks to. I gave him your card. If he wants to, he’ll find someone who can read it.”

The air left Solomon’s lungs. “He can’t read?” Was this worse or better? Either seemed unbearable. And yet it wasn’t.

“Course he can’t read,” Jackson scoffed. “He’s African.”

“So am I,” Solomon said. “Can you read?”

Jackson’s gaze flickered over his face. He was too wily to betray any likeness of features he might have perceived. Or perhaps there was none, except in Solomon’s imagination.

“Nah,” Jackson said indifferently. “Never needed to read. You ain’t do-gooders, are you?”

“No, I told you yesterday. I work for Mr. Lloyd. And I need to know where everyone was during that last afternoon, from when the customs men came aboard until Mr. Lloyd stepped into his waiting carriage.”

“Blimey,” said Jackson. “He going to dock our pay ’cause we weren’t busy enough while waiting for the revenue men to poke about?”