Page 35

Tybalt did not deny it. “I guessed she would have come here. It’s where she brought her orphans and poor children to enjoy the seaside. Her one escape from that house.”

Like Constance, Solomon was clearly trying to revise their theory, taking Audrey’s very odd romance with the mere carpenter into account. “You are telling us, captain, that Samuels stole the treasure without your help?”

“Of course he did,” Audrey said unexpectedly. “It was my idea, but Joshua carried it out perfectly.”

“ Your idea,” Constance repeated, exchanging glances with Solomon. “How did that come about?”

“I never begrudged my brother anything,” Audrey told her.

“I was content to give him my inheritance from my parents, along with that from my godmother and my aunt. He spent it all on his expeditions, of course, which are terribly important to him. And he has found some remarkable items. So when old Silas Cauley gave him the treasure map, I really believed the treasure was there and that Barnabas would find it. I knew Cauley, you see, through my sailors’ charity. So did Joshua.”

“So you came up with the idea to steal it?” Constance said gently. “Because Barnabus had taken your inheritance from you?” And with it, any chance of an independent life in a home of her own.

But Audrey’s watery eyes widened. “Oh no. Well, Joshua might have. I’m afraid I only did it for revenge, because of what he did.”

“Which was what?” Solomon asked, coming to sit down at last.

“He evicted the Clarkes from the land they had held for generations. Just because Joshua and I wanted to marry. Joshua had almost finished his apprenticeship, but Barnabas ended that too. Joshua went to sea for a few years to make some money, which he saved to begin his own carpentry business—or at least, that which he didn’t give to his struggling family.

He is very good, you know.” She closed her eyes. “Was…”

“Did he make you the sculptures Rachel said were gone from your room?” Solomon asked.

She nodded. “Each time he came home, he made me one. But inevitably, we lost track of each other. I didn’t know where he was until I ran into him a couple of years ago at a sailors’ charity.

” She smiled. “We were no longer young, but it was just as it had used to be when I was seventeen. Better, because we understood so much more. We were going to get married, despite Barnabas’s objections.

Joshua had enough money by then to keep us both in that comfortable little house. But I knew…”

She trailed off, her eyes bleak again.

“Knew what?” Constance prompted her.

“That Barnabas would never leave us alone. He would find a way not just to cover up such a mésalliance, but to end it. He would find us, and destroy Joshua all over again. Then he—Barnabas—started talking about old Cauley’s buried treasure.

He decided to take Sydney with him—to make a man of him, apparently—and I knew how to do it when I saw the size of Sydney’s trunk.

I knew Joshua would easily be able to copy whatever vessel the treasure was found in—Cauley claimed it was wooden—and find some way to hide the real chest inside Sydney’s large trunk during crucial times. ”

“Of course, you had been aboard the Queen of the Sea ,” Solomon said quickly. “So you knew the layout of the ship, and where the crew’s quarters were in relation to the captain’s and the passengers’?”

“Of course. Barnabas showed the ship off to us years ago when he first acquired it. Naturally, I had to leave the minutiae, the precise timings, to Joshua, since I couldn’t predict such things with any accuracy.

But I knew he would find a way, with or without using Sydney’s trunk.

We had a few alternative plans for different situations…

“It was easy enough for Joshua to join the crew of the Queen —they needed a carpenter because of the ship’s state of repair. Joshua went aboard with plenty new wood, replaced the rotten pieces, and kept the old wood to make a replica chest if necessary.”

“He took a risk that Lloyd wouldn’t recognize him,” Tybalt interjected.

“It didn’t matter,” Audrey said. “He grew a beard to throw him off the scent, as it were, but even if he did spot him, Barnabas would never have acknowledged him. If he noticed him at all, he would merely pat himself on the back for having kept me away from a man who had clearly never made anything of his life. In Barnabas’s view. ”

There seemed to be nothing anyone could say to that. Constance and Solomon exchanged another glance. Audrey seemed about to lapse back into her silent world of misery, but Captain Tybalt would not allow it.

“So how the devil was the theft accomplished?” he demanded. “How did he do it?”

Audrey blinked a few times, as though dredging her memory. “He made the replica chest during the voyage, roughing it up and dirtying it further in places, to make it as similar as possible to the original.”

“But he never noticed the carved initials beneath the fastening plate,” Constance said.

“No, until he helped Barnabas tie it closed for disembarking, he had only ever seen the chest open, with the initials covered by the plate, so he missed that until it was too late. But then, so did everyone else until you two saw it on the photograph…”

“Go on,” Constance urged.

Audrey shrugged, half weary, half impatient.

“Joshua picked his moment carefully that last morning, while Barnabas and Sydney were breakfasting with Captain Tybalt. Sydney was already packed, so Joshua hid the copy of the treasure chest beneath Sydney’s bunk.

Then he went back to his duties. There was a small chance Sydney would notice the chest beneath his bed, but Joshua didn’t think it likely. ”

“What about the customs men who came aboard?” Solomon asked. “I understood they were very thorough.”

Audrey shrugged again. “All they would have found was a rotting old chest and assumed it was just for throwing out, especially as Joshua had filled it with bits of rubbish from his workshop on board—broken tools and bits of wood, a few rocks from the island beach. When the customs officers had left the ship, Joshua was left briefly alone with all the trunks while other sailors took up the first one.”

“Johnny,” Constance murmured. “And Squibbs.”

“Joshua then whisked the treasure chest into Sydney’s trunk—or at least heaved it somehow.

I believe it was pretty heavy, but then, Joshua was a very strong man.

He brought out the fake chest from Sydney’s room, and so this was the one that was taken up on deck and placed so carefully under Barnabas’s jealous eyes.

“Joshua made sure he was the one to haul Sydney’s trunk up. No one was paying much attention by then, because they were all so eager to get home, and I confess I played my own small part in distracting my family with particular silliness…

“So Joshua dragged Sydney’s trunk to the back of the baggage line, until he was sure no one was watching.

Then, more surreptitiously, he moved it to a place further out of sight, behind the wheelhouse or whatever it is called, while everyone else was on the other side of the ship waiting to disembark.

He removed the treasure chest from Sydney’s trunk, then returned Sydney’s to its place at the back of the queue.

“Captain Tybalt had already completed his inspection of the crew’s quarters, so he had no reason to do more than collect his own baggage from the deck and leave the ship when everyone else had disembarked—little knowing,” she added apologetically to Tybalt, “that Joshua was still there, lurking in the crew’s quarters with the treasure chest until everyone had gone.

He had plenty of time to amble alone onto the deck with his rotting old chest and haul it home. ”

“No one noticed that Samuels was still there,” Tybalt said, frowning. “ I didn’t, though I watched the men all go off in ones and twos…”

“People take Joshua for granted.” Audrey stopped and swallowed.

“Took,” she corrected herself in a wavering voice.

“But you see, it can be a strength—as you and your partner have just discovered, Mrs. Silver. Neither of you suspected me for a moment. And you only saw your way to Joshua because I had the misfortune to leave his house that day just as Mr. Grey was passing. Even then, he almost walked by me.”

“My mind was certainly elsewhere,” Solomon admitted. “We had pieced together much of this from bits and pieces, but you are right, we never truly suspected you. Only Captain Tybalt.”

“Well, I too have a grudge against Lloyd,” Tybalt admitted.

“He took advantage of my fall from grace to underpay me and my crew. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t revive the rumors against me whenever he could, just to keep my fee low.

And because he never forgave me either for aspiring to his sister’s hand. ”

“I thought he might agree to you,” Audrey said in a flat, dispassionate sort of voice. “But then, I suppose he couldn’t, since he had already destroyed whatever gentlemanly credentials he considered you had in the first place.”

Constance looked from her to Tybalt. “According to Mr. Lloyd, you two first met at an assembly ball a long time ago.”

“We did,” Audrey said, “back in Portsmouth when I was young. But I turned him down then because of Joshua. It was always Joshua, you see. Until, seven years or so ago, Captain Tybalt and I met again—when Barnabas was showing us all over his ship, in fact. My life was bleak at the time, and I had lost touch with Joshua. Captain Tybalt took me to funny little tea shops and made me laugh. When he asked me to marry him this time, I said yes.”

“She thought she could thus escape that house,” Tybalt said ruefully. “She told me at the time her heart was still with her lost first love.”

“You showed me a kindness I had forgotten,” Audrey said sadly, “and I was grateful for that. I thought we could have been content together…until Barnabas refused. And then I met Joshua again…”

“And you embarked together on a piece of very clever piracy,” Solomon observed.

“Was it piracy? Old Cauley had found the treasure first, or perhaps he stole it. Its true ownership is certainly moot. At any rate, Joshua and I could have traveled the world and lived very comfortably off the sale of all that gold plate and jewelry.”

“Where is the treasure?” Solomon asked. It was, after all, what they had been engaged to discover.

Audrey slumped again. “I expect Barnabas has it back. He’ll have taken it when he shot my Joshua.”