Free A Burial at Sea by Charles Finch Page B

place. On the contrary, the cabin looked as if the lieutenant might walk into it at any moment and carry on living his life there.
    One detail, however: the porthole at the far end of the cabin was swung open, though it was ship’s policy to keep the portholes closed. It would have been the quickest way to jettison such a note, or indeed a murder weapon—a knife, say.
    After he had concluded his inspection of Halifax’s cabin, Lenox made his way down to the surgery. The corpse of the officer lay on the table at the center of the room still, rinsed clean of blood now, but Tradescant wasn’t there.
    Lenox found him on deck, smoking a small cigar and looking out over the water. The sun was up.
    “You finished examining the body, Mr. Tradescant?”
    “Yes, not five minutes since. I can show you what I found—come along.” The surgeon threw his cigar overboard, though the ship was now moving at a sufficient clip, with new sails set, that they didn’t hear the hiss of it being extinguished. “There was one interesting discovery I made.”
    Standing over Halifax’s body a few moments later, Tradescant described in clear language each wound the dead man had sustained.
    “These here are not very precise,” he said, pointing to the incisions along Halifax’s torso, “and the wounds that killed him—these, around his heart—are not very deep or strong. I suspect he died of blood loss rather than a deadly blow to his heart, in fact. His artery was nicked here.”
    “What conclusion can you draw about the murder weapon, then?”
    “I have the murder weapon.”
    Lenox paused, dumbstruck, for a moment. “You’ve—how have you got it?” The wild thought that Tradescant might be the murderer crossed his mind, and he even stepped backward slightly.
    This produced a bark of laughter from the surgeon. “It wasn’t I, Mr. Lenox. Here it is.”
    Tradescant went into the pocket of his vest and produced a gleaming silver pocketknife. He held it out and Lenox took it.
    It was about five inches long, on the larger side for these sorts of knives, and had three blades of different lengths that folded out and locked into place. There was also a fourth implement that folded out of the knife: a minute compass on the end of a metal rod.
    “Useful for a man at sea, that,” said Tradescant. “Specially made, perhaps.”
    “Are you certain this is the weapon? How did you find it?”
    He gestured toward the body on the table. “You asked me to check that Lieutenant Halifax’s organs were intact. They were, but this was tucked underneath the stomach, hidden from immediate view but not at all tricky to find.”
    “It couldn’t have been this clean.”
    “Oh, no. I washed it. I wanted to see if it had any distinctive markings.”
    “And you feel that this matches his cuts?”
    “There’s very little doubt in my mind. As I say, the wounds are too ragged in the one case and shallow in the other to have been the result of anything as precise as a scalpel or as big as a kitchen knife. A pocketknife such as this fits the bill.”
    “Sterling silver,” murmured Lenox.
    Tradescant nodded. “Well beyond the reach of any common bluejacket, I would have thought.”
    “Easily thieved, however.”
    “Perhaps, yes.”
    “Wouldn’t the blade have folded back into the knife if you attempted to stab someone with it?”
    “As you’ll observe, if I may show you—the blade locks out into place, and only pressing this button allows it to be folded back in.”
    “Ah, I see. Well done, Mr. Tradescant. May I ask, to change the subject only for a moment—did you look at his back? Halifax’s?”
    “I didn’t, no. Why? Surely the wounds are frontal?”
    “If he fell from a good height to the quarterdeck, as I believe, there might have been bruising on the back.”
    Tradescant nodded. “Yes, and in fact I did find a bloody cut on the back of his head. That might have been inflicted by the fall. Here—help me turn the body onto its side,