Lord Kelvin's Machine

THE PRACTICING DETECTIVE AT STERNE RAT


We had no choice but to set out for the coast by way of Sterne Bay. It wasn’t just the business of the downed ship; it was that St. Ives discovered that Dr. Piper, of the Academy, had retired years past to a cottage down the Thames, at Sterne Bay. Godall stayed behind. His business didn’t allow for that sort of jaunt, and there was no reason to suppose that London would be devoid of mysteries just because this most recent one had developed a few miles to the east.

St. Ives had put in at the Naval Office, too, in order to see if he couldn’t discover something about this Captain Bowker, but the captain was what they call a shadowy figure, an American whose credentials weren’t at all clear, but who had captained small merchant ships down to Calais for a year or so. There was no evidence that he was the sort to be bought off—no recorded trouble. That was the problem; nothing was known about the man, and so you couldn’t help jumping to the conclusion that he was just the sort to be bought off. It seemed to stand to reason.

We rattled out of Victoria Station in the early morning and arrived in time to breakfast at the Crown and Apple in Sterne Bay before setting about our business. Nothing seemed to be particularly pressing. We took over an hour at it, shoving down rashers and eggs, and St. Ives all the while in a rare good humor, chatting with the landlady about this and that—all of it entirely innocent—and then stumbling onto the subject of the ship going down and of Captain Bowker. Of course it was in all the papers, being the mystery that it was, and there was nothing at all to suggest that we had anything but a gossip’s interest in it.

Oh, she knew Captain Bowker right enough. He was a Yank, wasn’t he, and the jolliest and maybe biggest man you’d meet in the bay. He hadn’t an enemy, which is what made the business such a disaster, poor man, losing his ship like that, and now out of a situation. Well, not entirely; he had taken a position at the icehouse, tending the machinery—a good enough job in a fishing town like Sterne Bay. He was generally at it from dawn till bedtime, and sometimes took dinner at the Crown and Apple, since he didn’t have a family. He slept at the icehouse too, now that his ship was gone and he hadn’t got a new one. He was giving up the sea, he said, after the disaster, and was happy only that he hadn’t lost any men. The ship be damned, he liked to say—it was his men that he cared about; that was ever the way of Captain Bowker.

St. Ives said that it was a good way, too, and that it sounded to him as if the world ought to have a dozen more Captain Bowkers in it, but I could see that he was being subtle. His saying that had the effect of making her think we were the right sort, not busybody tourists down from London. That was St. Ives’s method, and there was nothing of the hypocrite in it. He meant every bit of it, but if being friendly served some end too, before we were done, then so much the better.

Now it happened that Hasbro had an aunt living in the town, his jolly old Aunt Edie. She had been a sort of lady-in-waiting to St. Ives’s mother—almost a nanny to him—and now, as unlikely as it sounds, she had taken to the sea, to fish, on a trawler owned by her dead husband’s brother, Uncle Botley. So after breakfast St. Ives and Hasbro went off to pay her a visit, leaving me to myself for an hour. I wanted to sightsee, although to tell you the truth, I felt a little guilty about it because Dorothy wasn’t along. I’ve gotten used to her being there, I guess, over the years, and I’m glad of it. It’s one of the few things that I’ve got right.

It was a damp and foggy morning, getting along toward late— the sort of morning when every sound is muffled, and even though there are people out, there’s a sort of curtain between you and them and you walk along the damp cobbles in a gray study, lost in thought. I strolled down the waterfront, thinking that Sterne Bay was just the sort of place to spend a few leisurely days, maybe bring along a fishing rod. Dorothy would love it. I would propose it to her as soon as we got back. The thought of proposing it to her, of course, was calculated to rid me of some of the guilt that I was feeling, out on holiday, really while Dorothy was stuck up in London, trapped in the old routine.

Then I thought of poor St. Ives, and of Alice, whom he had loved for two short years before that awful night in the Seven Dials. Thank God I wasn’t there. It’s a selfish thing to say, perhaps, but I can’t help that. The man had lived alone before Alice, and has lived alone since. And although he’ll fool most people, he doesn’t fool me—he wasn’t born to the solitary life. He’s been worn thin by it. Every emotional shilling was tied up in Alice. He had put the lot of it in the savings bank until he had the chance to invest it in her, and it had paid off with interest. All that was gone now, and the very idea of a romantic holiday on the water was impossible for him to bear. He’s been disallowed from entertaining notions that other people find utterly pleasant and common...

And just then, as I was strolling along full of idle and sorrowful thoughts, I looked up and there was a three-story inn, like something off a picture postcard.

It was painted white with green gingerbread trim and was hung with ivy vines. From what I could see, a broad veranda ran around three sides of it. On the veranda sat pieces of furniture, and on the willow furniture sat a scattering of people who looked just about as contented as they had any right to look—a couple of them qualifying as “old salts,” and very picturesque. There was a wooden sign over the stairs that read THE HOISTED PINT, which struck me as calculated, but very friendly and with the right general attitude.

I stepped up onto the veranda, nodding a hello in both directions, and into the foyer, thinking to inquire about rates and availability. Spring was on the horizon, and there would be a chance of good weather—although the town was admirably suited to dismal weather too—and there was no reason that I shouldn’t simply cement the business of a holiday straightaway, so as to make Dorothy happy.

She would love the place; any doubts I might have had from the street were vanished. There were wooden floors inlaid with the most amazing marquetry depicting a whale and whaling ship—the sort of work you don’t see anymore—and there were potted plants and a great stone fireplace with a log fire burning and not a piece of coal to be seen. A small woman worked behind the long oak counter, meddling with papers, and we talked for a moment about rooms and rates. Although I didn’t like her very much, or entirely trust her, I set out finally for the door very well satisfied with the inn and with myself both.

That’s when I thought I saw my rubber elephant lying atop a table, half hidden by a potted palm. I was out the door and onto the veranda before I knew what it was that I’d seen—just the bottom of him, his round feet and red-painted jumbo trousers. It was the impossibility of it that made it slow to register, and even by the time it did, by the time I was sure of it, I had taken another step or two, half down the stairs, before turning on my heel and walking back in.

The woman looked up from where she dusted at furniture now with a clutch of feathers. She widened her eyes, wondering, perhaps, if I hadn’t forgotten something, and I smiled back, feeling like a fool, and asking weakly whether I didn’t need some sort of receipt, a confirmation—implying by it, I suppose, that her bookwork there behind the counter wasn’t sufficient. She frowned and said that she supposed she could work something up, although... And I said quite right, of course but that as a surprise to my wife I thought that a little something to put into an envelope on her breakfast plate... That made her happy again. She liked to see that in a man, and said that she was anxious to meet the young lady. When I glanced across the room there wasn’t any elephant, of course, or anything like it.

I don’t doubt that you’re going to ask me why I didn’t just inquire about the woman and her son, who carried a rubber elephant with enormous ears. There would have been a hundred friendly ways to phrase it. Well, I didn’t. I still felt like half a fool for having blundered back in like that and going through the song and dance about the breakfast plate, and I was almost certain by then that I hadn’t seen anything at all, that I had invented it out of the curve of a leaf and the edge of a pot. It was a little farfetched, wasn’t it? Just as it had seemed improbable to the captain of the downed ship that the nonsense in his log ought to be taken seriously.

I had imagined it, and I told myself so as I set out toward the pier again, where, just like that, I nearly ran over old Parsons, the secretary of the Royal Academy of Sciences, coming along with a bamboo pole and creel in his hand, got up in a woolen sort of fishing uniform and looking as if even though he mightn’t catch a single fish, at least he had got the outfit right, and that qualified him, as the scriptures put it, to walk with the proud.

I was surprised to see him. He was thoroughly disappointed to see me. It was the company I kept. He assumed straight off that St. Ives was lurking somewhere about, and that meant, of course, that the business of the Royal Academy was being meddled in again. And he was right. His being there said as much. It was an altogether unlikely coincidence. If I had looked at it from the angle of a practicing detective, then I’d have had suspicions about his angling outfit, and I’d have concluded that he was trying too hard to play a part. He was up to something, to be sure.

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

I gave him a jolly look, and said, “Down on holiday, actually. And you, going fishing?”

Foolish question, I guess, given what he looked like, but that didn’t call for him to get cheeky. “I’m prospecting,” he said, and held up his bamboo pole. “This is an alchemical divining rod, used to locate fishes with coins in their bellies.”

But just then, when I was going to say something clever, up came a gentleman in side whiskers and interrupted in order to wring Parsons’s hand. “Dreadfully sorry, old man,” he said to Parsons. “But he was tired, and he’d lived a long life. Very profitable. I’m happy you could come down for the funeral.”

Parsons took him by the arm and led him away down the pier pretty briskly, as if to get him away from me before he said anything more. He had already said enough, though, hadn’t he? This man Piper was dead, and Parsons had come down to see him buried.

It was a full morning, taken all the way around. There was a half hour yet before I was to meet St. Ives and Hasbro back at the Apple. I was feeling very much like a detective by then, although I couldn’t put my finger on exactly what it was I had detected, besides this last bit. I decided that wasn’t enough, and went across toward the ramshackle icehouse, a wooden sort of warehouse in a weedy lot not far off the ocean.

I went in at a side door without knocking. The place was cold, not surprisingly, and I could hear the hiss of steam from the compressors. The air was tinged with the smell of ammonia and wet straw. The jolly captain wasn’t hard to find; he confronted me as soon as I came in through the door. He seemed to be the only one around, and he was big, and he talked with an accent, stretching out his vowels as if they were made of putty. I won’t try to copy it, since I’m no good at tricking up accents, but he was full of words like tarnation and fleabit and hound dog and ain’t and talked altogether in a sort of apostrophic “Out West” way that struck me as out of character in a sea captain. I expected something salty and maritime. I made a mental note of it.

That was after I had shaken his hand and introduced myself. “I’m Abner Benbow,” I said, thinking this up on the spot and almost saying “Admiral Benbow,” but stopping myself just in time. “I’m in the ice trade, up in Harrogate. They call me ‘Cool Abner Benbow,’” I said, “but they don’t call me a cold fish.” I inclined my head just a little, thinking that maybe this last touch was taking it too far. But he liked it, saying he had a “monicker” too.

“Call me Bob,” he said, “Country Bob Bowker. Call me anythin’ you please, but don’t call me too late for dinner.”

And with that admonition he slammed me on the back with his open hand and nearly knocked me through the wall. He was convulsed with laughter, wheezing and looking apoplectic, as if he had just that moment made up the gag and was listening to himself recite it for the first time. I laughed too, very heartily, I thought, wiping pretended tears from my eyes.

“You’re a Yank,” I said. And that was clever, of course, because it rather implied that I didn’t already know who he was, despite his recent fame.

“That’s a fact. Wyoming man, born and bred. Took to the sea late and come over here two years ago just to see how the rest of the world got on. I was always a curious man. And I was all alone over there, runnin’ ferries out of Frisco over to Sarsleeto, and figured I wouldn’t be no more alone over here.”

No more than any common criminal, I thought, assuming straight off, and maybe unfairly, that there was more to Captain Bowker’s leaving America than he let on. I nodded, though, as if I thought all his nonsense very sage indeed.

“Been here long?” I asked, nonchalant.

He gave me a look. “Didn’t I just say two year?”

“I mean here, at the icehouse.”

“Ah!” he said, suddenly jolly again. “No. Just got on. If you’d of come day before yesterday you wouldn’t have found me. Old man who ran the place up and died, though. Pitched over like he was poisoned, right there where you’re a-standing now, up and pitched over, and there I was an hour later, looking in at the door with my hat in my hands. I knew a little about it, being mechanical and having lived by the sea, so I was a natural. They took me right on. What’s all that to you?”

“Nothing. Nothing at all,” I said, realizing right off that I shouldn’t have said it twice; there was no room here to sound jumpy. But he had caught me by surprise with the question, and all I could think to say next, rather stupidly, was, “Up and died?” thinking that the phrase was a curious one, as if he had done it on purpose, maybe got up out of a chair to do it.

You can see that I had got muddled up. This wasn’t going well. Somehow I had excited his suspicions by saying the most arbitrary and commonplace things. Captain Bowker was another lunatic, I remember thinking—the sort who, if you passed him on the street and said good-morning, would squint at you and ask what you meant by saying such a thing.

“Dropped right over dead on his face,” said Captain Bowker, looking at me just as seriously as a stone head.

Then he grinned and broke into laughter, slapping me on the back again. “Cigar?” he asked.

I waved it away. “Don’t smoke. You have one. I like the smell of tobacco, actually. Very comfortable.”

He nodded and said, “Drives off the ’monia fumes,” and then he gnawed off the end of a fat cigar, spitting out the debris with about twice the required force.

“So,” I said. “Mind if I look around?”

“Yep,” he said.

I started forward, but he stepped in front of me. “Yep,” he said again, talking past his cigar. “I do mind if you look around.” Then he burst into laughter again so that there was no way on earth that I could tell what he minded and what he didn’t mind.

He plucked the unlit cigar out of his mouth and said, “Maybe tomorrow, Jim. Little too much going on today. Too busy for it. I’m new and all, and can’t be showing in every Dick and Harry.” He managed, somehow, to get me turned around and propelled toward the door. “You understand. You’re a businessman. Tomorrow afternoon, maybe, or the next day. That’s soon enough, ain’t it? You ain’t going nowhere. Come on back around, and you can have the run of the place. Bring a spyglass and a measure stick.”

And with that I was out in the fog again, wondering exactly how things had gone so bad. In the space of ten minutes I’d been Abner and Jim and Dick and Harry, but none of us had seen a thing. At least I hadn’t given myself away, though. Captain Bowker couldn’t have guessed who I really was. I could relate the incident to St. Ives and Hasbro without any shame. There was enough in the captain’s manner to underscore any suspicions that we might already have had of the man, and there was the business of his not wanting me to see the workings of the icehouse, innocent as such workings ought to be.

I lounged along toward the Apple—it wasn’t the weather for hurrying—and had got down past the market, maybe a hundred yards beyond The Hoisted Pint, when I heard the crack of what sounded like a firecracker from somewhere above and behind me. Immediately an old beggar with his shoes wound in rags, standing just in front of me, stiffened up straight, as if he’d been poked in the small of the back, and a wash of red blood spread out across his shirtfront where you could see it through his open coat.

Before I could twitch, he sat down in the weeds and then slumped over backward and stared at the sky, his mouth working as if he were trying to pray, but had forgot the words. He had been shot, of course—in the heart—by someone with a dead-on aim.

A woman screamed. There was the sound of a whistle. And without half knowing what I was about, I had the man’s wrist in my hand and was feeling for a pulse. It was worthless. Where the hell do you find a man’s pulse? I can’t even find my own half the time. I slammed my hand over the hole in his chest and leaned into it, trying to shut off the rush of blood and feeling absolutely futile and stupid until a doctor strode up carrying his black bag. He crouched beside me, squinted at the corpse, and shook his head softly to tell me that I was wasting my time.

Reeling just a little from the smell of already-drying blood, I stood up and stumbled over to sit on a bench, where I hunched forward and pretended for a bit to be searching for a lucky clover until my head cleared. I sat up straight, and there was a constable looming over me with the look in his eye of a man with a few pressing questions to ask. If I was a rotten actor in front of Captain Bowker, I had improved a bit in the score of minutes since, and it was a simple thing to convince the constable that I knew nothing of the dead man.

I avoided one issue, though: I seemed to be collecting dead men all of a sudden. First there was the tragedy up in Holborn, now a man drops dead at my feet, shot through the heart. Most of us go through our lives avoiding that sort of thing. Now I was getting more than my share of it. It was evidence of something, but not the sort of evidence that would do the constable any good, not yet anyway.

It wasn’t quite noon when I got back to the Crown and Apple and cleaned myself up, and when St. Ives and Hasbro found me I was putting away my second pint and not feeling any better at all. This last adventure had taken the sand out of me, and I couldn’t think in a straight enough line to put the pieces of the morning together in such a way that they would signify.

“You’re looking rotten,” said St. Ives with his customary honesty. He ordered a pint of bitter, and so did Hasbro, although St. Ives had lately been under a new regime and had taken to drinking nothing but cider during the day. They were following my lead in order to make it seem perfectly natural that I was swilling beer before lunch. St. Ives winked at Hasbro. “It’s the clean sea air. You’re missing the London fogs. Your lungs can’t stand the change. Send for Dorothy.” He said this last to Hasbro, who pretended to get up, but then sat back down when the two fresh pints hove into view.

They were joking, of course—being jolly after their morning visit. And I was happy for it, not for myself, but for St. Ives. I hated to tell them the truth, but I told them anyway. “There’s been a man shot,” I said.

St. Ives scowled. “The news is up and down the bay by now. We heard a lad shouting it outside the window of Aunt Edie’s cottage. Sterne Bay doesn’t get many shootings.”

“I saw the whole thing. Witnessed it.”

St. Ives looked up from his pint glass and raised his eyebrows.

“He wasn’t a half step in front of me. A tramp from the look of him, just about to touch me for a shilling, I suppose, and then, crack! just like that, and he’s on his back like a bug, dead. Shattered his heart.”

“He was a half step in front of you? That’s hyperbole, of course. What you meant to say is that he was nearby.”

“As close to me as I am to you,” I said, thinking what he was thinking.

St. Ives was silent for a moment, studying things. It had taken me a while to see it too, what with all the complications of the morning. Clearly the bullet hadn’t been meant for the beggar. There’s no profit in shooting a beggar, unless you’re a madman. And I had been running into too many madmen lately. The odds against there being another one lurking about were too high. Picture it: there’s the beggar turning toward me. From back toward The Hoisted Pint, I must have half hidden him. The bullet that struck him had missed me by a fraction.

So who had taken a shot at me from The Hoisted Pint, from a second-story window, maybe? Or from the roof of the icehouse; that would have served equally well. I thought about the disappeared elephant and about the captain and his “Out West” mannerisms. But why on earth...?

I ordered a third pint, swearing to myself to drink it slowly and then go up to take a nap. I’d done my work for the day; I could leave the rest to Hasbro and St. Ives.

“I saw Parsons on the pier,” I said. “And I talked to Captain Bowker. And I think your woman with the letters is skulking around, probably staying at The Hoisted Pint, down toward the pier.” That started it. I told them the whole story, just as it happened—the toy on the table, Parsons in his fishing regalia, the captain jollying me around—and they sat silent throughout, thinking, perhaps, that I’d made a very pretty morning of it while they were off drinking tea and listening to rumors through the window.

“He thought you were an agent,” said St. Ives, referring to Captain Bowker. “Insurance detective. What’s he hiding, though, that he wouldn’t let you look around the icehouse? This log of his, maybe? Not likely. And why would he try to shoot you? That’s not an act calculated to cement the idea of his being innocent. And Parsons here too...” St. Ives fell into a study, then thumped his fist on the table, standing up and motioning to Hasbro, who stood up too, and the both of them went out leaving their glasses two-thirds full on the table. Mine was empty again, and I was tempted to pour theirs into mine in order to secure a more profound nap and to avoid waste. But there was the landlady, grinning toward me and the clock just then striking noon.

She whisked the glasses away with what struck me as a sense of purpose, looking across her spectacles at me. I lurched up the stairs and collapsed into bed, making up for our early rising with a nap that stretched into the late afternoon.

I was up and pulling on my shoes when there was a knock on the door. It’s St. Ives, I thought, while I was stepping across to throw it open. It might as easily have been the man with the gun— something that occurred to me when the door was halfway open. And for a moment I was tempted to slam it shut, cursing myself for a fool and thinking at the same time that half opening the door and then slamming it in the visitor’s face would paint a fairly silly picture of me, unless, of course, it was the man with the gun...

It wasn’t. It was a man I had never seen before. He was tall, gaunt, and stooped, almost cadaverous. He wore a hat, but it was apparent that he was bald on top and didn’t much bother to cut the tufts of hair above his ears. He would have made a pretty scarecrow. There were deep furrows around his lips, the result of a lifetime of pursing them, I suppose, which is just what he was doing now, glaring down his hooked nose at me as if he didn’t quite approve of the look on my face.

Afternoon naps always put me in a wretched mood, and the sight of him doubled it. “You’ve apparently got the wrong room,” I said, and started to shut the door. He put his foot in the way.

“I’m an insurance agent,” he said, glancing back down the hallway. “Lloyd’s. There’s a question or two...”

“Of course,” I said. So that was it. Captain Bowker was under investigation. I swung the door open and in he came, looking around the room with a slightly appalled face, as if the place was littered with dead pigs, say, and they were starting to stink. I didn’t like him at all, insurance agent or not.

He started in on me, grilling me, as they say. “You were seen talking to Captain Bowker today.”

I nodded.

“About what?”

“Ice,” I said. “My name is Adam Benbow, from up in Harrogate. I’m a fish importer down on holiday.”

He nodded. He was easier to fool than the captain had been. I was bothered, though, by the vague suspicion that I had gotten my name wrong. I had, of course. This morning it had been Abner. I could hardly correct it, though, not now. And how would he know anyway? What difference did my name make to him?

“We’re investigating the incident of the downed ship. Did you talk to him about that?”

“Which ship?”

“The Landed Catch, sunk off Dover days ago. What do you know about that ship?”

“Not a thing. I read about it in the papers, of course. Who hasn’t?”

“Are you acquainted with a man named Langdon St. Ives?” he asked abruptly. He half spun around when he said this, as if to take me by surprise.

It worked, too. I sputtered there for a moment, blinking at him. And when I said, “Langdon who?” the attempt was entirely worthless. I was as transparent as window glass.

He acted as if I had admitted everything. “We believe that Mr. St. Ives is also investigating the business of the Landed Catch, and we’re wondering why.”

“I’m sure I don’t know. Who was it again? Saint what?” It was worthless pretending, and I knew it. I had to dummy up, though. I wasn’t about to answer the man’s questions. St. Ives could do that for himself. On the other hand, I suppose it was pointless to insist that I didn’t know St. Ives. The man was onto my game, what with the false names and the Harrogate business.

“What did you see, exactly, at the icehouse?”

“See? Nothing. The man wouldn’t allow me in. He seemed anxious, to tell you the truth. Like he didn’t want me snooping around. He has something to hide there; you can take that much from me.”

“Something to hide, you think?”

“Bank on it.”

The man nodded, suddenly jolly, grinning at me. “I think you’re right,” he said. “He’s hiding something horrible, is what I think. These are dangerous waters. Very rocky and shallow. He’s a subtle man, Captain Bowker is. My advice is to steer clear of him. Leave him to us. He’ll be in Newgate Prison waiting to swing, if only for this morning’s shooting.”

I must have jerked my eyes open when he said this last, for he grinned at the look on my face and nodded, pursing his lips so that his mouth almost disappeared. “You were a lucky man,” he said. “But you’re safe now. We’re onto him, watching him from every angle. You don’t have to hide in your room like this.”

“I wasn’t hiding, actually. I...”

“Of course, you weren’t,” he said, turning toward the door. “Quite a welcome you’ve had. Don’t blame you. Look me up. Binker Street.”

He was out the door then, striding away down the hall. I shut the door and sat on the edge of the bed, studying things out. I understood nothing—less than before. I was vaguely happy, though, that someone was watching the captain. Of course it must have been him who had fired the shot—him and his cowboy upbringing and all. Much more likely than my hansom cab lunatic. I could see that now.

There was another knocking on the door. It’s the agent, I thought, back again. But it wasn’t. It was the landlady with a basket of fruit. What a pleasant surprise, I remember thinking, taking the basket from her. “Grape?” I asked, but she shook her head.

“There’s a note in it,” she said, nodding at the basket.

From Dorothy, I thought, suddenly glad that I’d made the reservation at The Hoisted Pint. Absence was making hearts grow fonder. And quickly, too. I’d only left that morning. There was the corner of an envelope, sticking up through the purple grapes and wedged in between a couple of tired-looking apples. The whole lot of fruit lay atop a bed of coconut fiber in a too-heavy and too-deep basket.

It was the muffled ticking that did the trick, though—the ticking of an infernal machine, hidden in the basket of fruit.

My breath caught, and I nearly dropped the basket and leaped out the door. But I couldn’t do that. It would bring down the hotel, probably with me still in it. I hopped across to the window, looking down on what must have been a half-dozen people, including St. Ives and Hasbro, who were right then heading up the steps. I couldn’t just pitch it out onto everybody’s heads.

So I sprinted for the door, yanking it open and leaping out into the hallway. My heart slammed away, flailing like an engine, and without bothering to knock I threw open the door to the room kitty-corner to my own, and surprised an old man who sat in a chair next to a fortuitously open casement, reading a book.

It was Parsons, not wearing his fishing garb anymore.