Free The Poisoned Island by Lloyd Shepherd Page B

Garden,” says Hopkins, his voice hushed, and there is indeed something churchlike about the space. “Bligh called it something similar on the Bounty . Though with less happy results.”
    They stand and watch, Horton watching the plants, the captain watching Horton, smiling proudly at his cargo, but also careful. Horton is very aware of being observed, and of Hopkins’s fierce intelligence. He is careful to compose his face in a mask of wonder, and nothing else.
    “Now, so, come,” Hopkins says at last, and Horton follows the captain back up the ladder well and into a cabin which is as spruce, plain, and businesslike as his ship. He is at a loss to understand the internal layout of the ship; the great cabin seems to have been removed completely, while the captain’s cabin is small, barely more than a cupboard. He recalls Bligh’s descriptions of his own accommodation on the Bounty , and wonders how similar this other captain’s space must be.
    Despite the lack of room, there are plenty of little books on the shallow shelves, and Horton looks at them carefully, his eyes clearing from the effusions of the flora below and around. Most of the books are botanical works, some of them in Latin. Horton notes the name Daniel Solander on one of the spines.
    “The ship is named after the botanist?” he asks.
    Hopkins smiles.
    “An enthusiast, constable?” he asks.
    “Not at all. My wife, though, is an avid natural philosopher.” He speaks the words drily, and Hopkins laughs for the first time, a deep rich brown-gravy sound which causes even Horton to smile.
    “Ah, a wife who is a natural philosopher. Which would make you a specimen for daily investigation, I’ll wager, Constable Horton.”
    “Indeed. More often than I care to imagine.”
    “But a man of the sea also.”
    “Is it so obvious?”
    “Always.”
    “I have not been on a voyage for some time. I have been on ships . . . but not on the open sea these past five or six years.”
    “Were you on a merchant vessel, or a fighting ship?”
    It occurs to Horton that it is he, not the captain, who is supposed to be asking questions. Particularly when the questions turn into the awkward byways of Horton’s naval history.
    “I was in the Navy. So, Captain. This Ransome. You can confirm he was one of your crew on the most recent voyage?”
    The bonhomie departs from Hopkins’s face like mud mopped off a deck, and he sits at the small table in the cabin, gesturing to Horton to sit upon the bed. This strikes the constable as unusual. The captain is clearly of a higher social standing, but the way he talks to Horton, and this invitation to sit, suggests that Hopkins feels no sense of superiority. “Ransome is a lazy unappealing bastard of a crewman, Constable Horton. You’ll have come across his like plenty of times before. Always complaining, always absent when hard work is needed, and always whispering behind his hand likea bloody old woman. I was glad to see the back of him when we docked. He took his pay and hopped off into Wapping at the first opportunity. I haven’t thought of him once since he left. Got himself into bother, has he?”
    “He’s dead.”
    The captain raises one thick black eyebrow and rubs his chin. He gazes in that appraising way at Horton.
    “Now then. An interesting statement, Constable Horton. Dead when?”
    “We believe yesterday evening. He was found dead by a female acquaintance, name of Hannah Crabtree.”
    “ Found dead by a female acquaintance . The kind of epitaph I’d expect for Sam Ransome. How did he die?”
    “We believe he was strangled.”
    Hopkins frowns and smiles at the same time, his face painted with disbelief.
    “Strangled? Are you certain?”
    “The appearance of his body suggests such a death. We believe he was killed and then robbed.”
    “In his room? Extraordinary.”
    Hopkins looks like a man half amused, half annoyed by Horton’s story. He seems oddly unmoved by Ransome’s death. As a former Navy man