Innocent Murderer (10 page)

We stood there on the threshold of my door; me feeling uncomfortable, LuEllen ignoring everything but Scruffy. She was talking to him a mile a minute when she suddenly must have realized how rude she was being.

“Oh, I'm so sorry,” she said. “It's just that Scruffy is everything to me. Since my accident he's been my only …” she hesitated, “my friend.”

I tried to see in her face the woman she once was, but it wasn't possible to imagine anything but what was in front of me. And I didn't really know who that was. She must have seen the indecision in my face, having seen it countless times before, but she made no effort to help me.

“What the hell happened to you?” was what I wanted to say. But I didn't. I mumbled something that I couldn't even hear and one side of her face went up in a smile but the other side didn't follow.

“Where did you find him?” she asked as Scruffy basked in her love. Some people never get loved that much.

I hesitated and then told her about the garbage on the pack ice. I didn't think I had to tell her everything so I didn't mention the hawsehole. I could still see the look of incredulity on Jason's face when I told him and I didn't much want to repeat it.

LuEllen looked down at Scruffy. “We went to bed together as usual, and when I woke up ten minutes ago he wasn't snuggling against me. I was frantic until I found the note from the captain. I'm so sorry I woke you so early.”

I nodded away her apologies. “How did he get out?

Did you leave your door open?”

She suddenly looked guilty and stammered, “Th-h-he b-b-berth was so hot. You know what it's like. I'm just down the hall from you, between Sally and Terry.”

She cooed in Scruffy's ear. “Sometimes he wanders, but I really thought we were okay and it was so stuffy. Scruffy could have died if you hadn't had insomnia.”

And I wouldn't have had a brush with death either, I thought.

“So you think Scruffy walked around the ship trying to find a way back to me and smelled the food on the pack ice?” She looked dubious. “I don't know. Scruffy doesn't like water.” Dear god, the poor dog, trapped on a ship and it doesn't like water. “But he does like food.” I remembered the apple and smiled. Food tri
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umphs over water!

After LuEllen was gone I went back to bed, thinking about the sequence of events and wondering if they were as they seemed. The image of someone at the controls of the gangway haunted me; why would they not sound the alarm? It didn't make sense — unless someone wanted me dead. An odd little shiver cascaded down my spine.

The morning, when I finally met it, was gloriously sunny. And when I looked out my bow window I could see land. Colourless, barren, lonely, desolate land; the sun glinting golden on the cliffs making it look deceptively benign, a landscape suffering from depression and no more. But, of course, Franklin had known better and perhaps the landscape looked so barren and lonely because of all the sorrow it had wrought.

I was about to turn away from the window when I noticed a familiar figure sitting on the deck. Sally was in profile and was staring intently at something, her face a tapestry of misery. Curious, I followed her gaze. On the starboard railing I saw Terry and that Arthur fel
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low standing side by side, with Arthur's arm flung lazily around Terry's shoulders. I looked back at Sally. What was going through her mind?

I put her out of my thoughts and got ready for our first trip ashore. We were going to Franklin's grave — not his real grave, but a memorial. The Zodiacs deposited us on a rocky beach. It was an eerie place, with the last tendrils of fog wisping their way up the cliff face that lowered over the gravesite. How anyone could have lived here I couldn't fathom, and we were there on a sunny summer day. Frank
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lin and one hundred twenty-nine of his men had spent the winter of 1845–46 here. They built Northumberland

House with spars and masts from a wrecked rescue ship.

Three of Franklin's men died that winter and many would-be rescuers would succumb over the years.

It was a place full of pathos — you could feel the pent up strength of nature in the shadows, waiting to pounce, biding its time. Revealing its softer side, like a polar bear satiated from an evening meal turning a benevolent eye on a wayward tourist, but when hunger strikes unleash
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ing its full fury on any innocent wanderer. The terrifying gulf between the softness and the anger is what makes it so frighteningly lonely and touches even those who never knew the men who died in anger's eye.

Franklin's widow had spent a fortune paying peo
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ple to search for him and on his gravestone had had engraved the inscription: “… and the anguish, subdued by faith, of her who lost, in the heroic leader of the expe
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dition, the most devoted and affectionate of husbands.”

As I was reading this, with a little lump in my throat, I heard a strangled sob and turned to see Elizabeth look
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ing over my shoulder. She sniffed and hastily wiped her eyes with her hands.

“Sorry, I can't help it. My husband died far from home too.” She hesitated then added, “Lady Franklin was a brave woman searching for the truth about her husband.”

Her words were laced with such wistfulness that I turned to face her, but she had already turned away and was walking briskly toward the Zodiacs.

As I left the memorial I could see Martha down by the water's edge, Duncan at her side. I couldn't figure out what they were doing. Martha was taking up a weird sort of bent-at-the-knees, elbows-cranked-out pose. Then I saw the pebble. Duncan was teaching her how to skip stones. At least, he was trying. Martha's stone took a nosedive from her hand straight down into the water.

I told them what had happened to me and Scruffy, and they looked at each other and then back to me, their faces blank. I couldn't believe it. “You don't believe me either,” I said incredulously.

“It's not that we don't believe you, Cordi. It's just that it all sounds a bit far fetched,” said Martha. “The hawsehole?”

“My hand. Look at my hand” I said flapping it in front of their faces. It was scraped raw, and looked angry and very real.

Duncan took my hand and gazed at it for a while. “Cordi, if there really was someone there, as you say, why would they have not raised the alarm?” Echoes of Jason.

I stared at him and he stared back.

“No, Cordi. You can't be thinking what I think you're thinking,” he said.

I looked down at my hands and said, “That some
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one was trying to kill me?”

“Whoa, Cordi. Put your head back on. Why would anybody want to do that? And in such a roundabout way?”

“I don't know and I've put a lot of thought into it. I admit that planning this whole thing out sounds crazy, but maybe whoever it is just took advantage of a situa
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tion. The dog was already on the ice. All whoever it was had to do was lower and then raise the gangway.”

“Yes, but why?”

“Maybe I saw something or overheard something. Maybe I have something they want. I don't know.”

“Look, Cordi. You've been popping Gravol like pea
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nuts, you've been sick, you're stressed out. I think you're imagining demons where there simply aren't any.” He hesitated, clearly wanting to say something more but deciding against it.

I looked at him suspiciously and then at Martha, who shrugged and said, “Sleep on it, Cordi. See how you feel tomorrow.”

I didn't stay with them, but walked down the beach instead. I was actually feeling kind of, very, unsocial. I wasn't used to sharing my free time with so many people night after night and I felt irritable and sort of sad. I wondered if I WAS imagining things, but then I looked down at my hand and knew it had been real. Why did I sometimes let people talk me out of my feelings? Why do we all?

When we got back to the ship I headed out on deck to look for icebergs. It was late afternoon and the fog had rolled in. I prowled around all four sides but I found nothing except for the dampness of the sea, enshrouded by fog. As if on cue the foghorn sounded practically beside me and I jumped. I nosed about the deck where the pool is, poking my head here and there, not know
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ing what I was looking for or even if I would recognize it when I saw it. One of the huge orange metal lifeboats loomed out of the fog and I went over to take a look. It seemed to be made of multiple hatches all with numerous tie downs. I tried the handle of one of them and raised it slowly to an upright position. As I did so I heard a man and a woman arguing as they approached.

“We're playing with fire,” said the man.

“It's worth every risk if it works. She can't just take my man away from me,” said a woman, her voice rising.

“She's going to catch on, I know it.” Their voices were getting closer. “There's a lot of risk.”

“No one said it was going to be easy,” the woman said.

I felt like an eavesdropper, which I guess I was, but I was struck by the intensity of their voices. I frantically looked around for a place to hide. I didn't want them to think I'd overheard them. Without hesitating I swung my body through the hatch and crouched just below the opening as their footsteps came close and stopped. They had reached the lifeboat and I heard one of them lean up against it.

“I know that.” The man.

“Are you getting cold feet?”

There was no answer, just silence. I tried to peek out one of the portholes to see if one of them was nodding or shaking their head, but all I saw were shoulders and then the man's voice, “Who left the hatch open?”

There was a scuffling and a couple of grunts and then the hatch came down. I moved to the porthole and peered out. I could just make them out. The woman was facing me. Elizabeth. Suddenly the other one turned and I saw the bushy black beard: Peter. I heard their footsteps move away and I was left alone in the cold metal hull of that lifeboat with the hatch battened down.

Think like a mariner, I told myself, as I began to feel a tad uneasy. Lifeboats are for saving lives not locking people inside. Just because this hatch was locked down didn't mean they all were. Right? And there were more. I'd seen them sprouting their little levers like dozens of curling rocks. The portholes threw a gloomy light over everything so that I could just make out how awful it would be to have to be in one of these things for real.

The seats were solid metal benches with room for maybe seventy people. Being stuck in one would mean bounc
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ing around inside an unforgiving metal hull the shape of a walnut with people in various stages of seasickness.

I was already feeling claustrophobic and I'd only been inside for five minutes.

It was cold. The metal of the boat was taking up the cold of the air like a sponge takes up water. I felt my way around until my hands found the outline of a hatch. I pushed, but nothing happened. In the twilight I could see eight levers, two on each side of the hatch, and I began turning them. When I tried to push up again and nothing happened I felt a little twinge of fear. What if I couldn't get out? What if they never found me? How often did they do lifeboat drills? I tried again and felt it budge. After several more attempts the hatch flew open and I was free to wonder about the conversation I had just overheard.

I went back to my berth and flopped down on the bed.

Next thing I knew my stomach was in my mouth and my semi-circulars had lassoed my entire body, making me reel with nausea. I got up on my knees and opened the porthole. The sun was sinking toward the horizon that it would barely get to touch before being shot back up into the sky. The sea was roiling around in swells and the ship was doing a pretty good job of not roiling with them — something to do with stabilizers, we'd been told by the orientation crew. The PA system on the boat crackled to life and the captain's voice filled my little room. We were into some rough waters for a few hours before we could sneak around a headland and into calmer seas.

I spent those hours with my eyes glued to the barren mainland mountains. It helped keep the nausea at bay, but it was pretty tiring so at about 11:00 p.m. I got up and went to sit in the outer room, only once daring to take my eyes off the horizon to look at the time. Eventu
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ally we did hit calm water and I went back to bed and fell into a blanket-churning sleep. But before long I was awakened by a light tapping on my door and my name being whispered. I thought it was LuEllen, back for a repeat, but being mercifully quieter this time. I started to get up when the door opened — there were no locks on any of the berths on the ship — and in walked Martha, dressed in a floor-length, lime green velvet dressing gown and wearing enormous fuzzy Guinness slippers.

“You awake?” she whispered.

“I am now.”

The room was lit by the stream of light coming through the open door and I felt no need to turn on the lamp.

“Cordi — you've got to see this. Look out your window!”

Looking out that window was the last thing I wanted to do after spending five hours at it, but I turned and looked. All I saw was a never ending expanse of sea and pack ice, a deep blue sky, and the mainland. I turned back and shrugged at her.

Martha came closer and looked. “Oh, you're on the wrong side. Come on!” and she grabbed me by the hand and pulled. I was a dead weight and she let go.

“Cordi, you'll regret it if you don't come and see.”

“See what?”

“You'll see. Now where is your dressing gown?”

I was feeling groggy from the Gravol. “I don't have one.”

“You don't? Why not?”

“Because most people don't travel with dressing gowns.”

She stood there looking at me for a second and was about to say something when she thought better of it.

Instead she flung me a pair of sweats, a top, and my run
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ners. By the time I put my jacket on I was feeling a little better and thought that maybe Martha was right after all, until I caught sight of the time. It was 3:00 a.m. Was I doomed to always be awake at 3:00 a.m. on this ship?