Free A Watery Grave by Joan Druett Page A

celebrate!”
    â€œThat’s an interesting way of putting it,” Wiki said thoughtfully. “ E hoa —my friend—tell me, did he check his timepiece a lot?”
    â€œNot that I noticed. Why should he do such a thing?”
    â€œHe didn’t seem as if he was expecting a man to call for a message?”
    â€œI really couldn’t tell, old fellow. As I said, I doubt I exchanged five words with the chap. He was right near the top of the table, while I,” George said rather broodingly, “was placed near the foot.”
    Wiki’s lips twitched. “The guests were seated in ranking order?”
    â€œNo! Virginia gentry are disgustingly democratic! There was a whole fleet of midshipmen from the Relief storeship between me and the head of the table, along with a quartet of lobsters—marines, if you please!—from the Peacock. I didn’t know a single one of ’em, and I have not a notion why I was placed below the salt.”
    Wiki concentrated on a twist in the splice he was making and then said, “I don’t suppose you took note of what he was wearing?”
    â€œWhat? Who? Stanton?” Rochester cast his friend a startled look and said, “Not particularly. Why should I? Coat, vest, trousers, white shirt, white stock, I guess—no different from the other blessed civilians there, not that there was many of them. ”
    â€œAnd a top hat?”
    â€œGreat heavens, Wiki, I haven’t the foggiest idea! He was not in my boat—he could have worn a varnished hat with a pretty pink ribbon and I wouldn’t have known.”
    Wiki tucked and tidied loose strands in the splice as he remembered what Stanton had looked like when he had arrived on the riverbank to find his wife’s corpse—wearing the outfit George had described, except for riding boots, which George wouldn’t have noticed because everyone was seated at the table. Indeed, it was likely Stanton had traveled to and from Newport News by horse. After getting home and hearing the grim tidings of the discovery of his wife’s corpse, he must have ridden headlong from the plantation to the riverbank. It was no wonder he looked so disheveled.
    George Rochester said curiously, “Why are you asking all this? What does it matter what he wore or what mood he was in?”
    Wiki pursed his lips as he used a fid to knock the splice into shape. Finally he said, “The sheriff asked me to keep on thinking about the identity of the man who came to the plantation house.”
    â€œWell, I can assure you that it can’t have been Tristram Stanton,” George said rather testily.
    â€œYou and a passel of midshipmen and marines most surely can’t be wrong,” Wiki dryly agreed. “Yet both servants were so positive it was Stanton they saw.”
    â€œIt must’ve been an imposter—just as I heard you say to the sheriff.”
    So his conversation with the sheriff had definitely filtered down the skylight, Wiki realized, and he wondered if Stanton had overheard it, too. “An imposter had to be sure that Tristram Stanton was not at home,” he said. “Though I guess it was commonly known he’d be up at Newport News.”
    â€œStrangely enough,” said George, his brows lifting as he took on a meditative expression, “that ain’t so. He’d begged off the Pierce banquet on account of wanting to spend the night at his laboratory in Norfolk, tidying up before departure. We was all surprised to see him there.”
    â€œWhat!”
    â€œThe man has no blessed manners—he simply changed his mind and went along. What his hosts thought, I can’t imagine,” said Rochester virtuously. “I suppose they simply smiled and laid another place—but don’t it go to show that the fellow’s a perfect philistine?”
    â€œ E hoa, what it goes to show is that he has the luck of the devil! If he hadn’t changed