The Titanic Secret (Isaac Bell 11)

Bell nodded. “Because of how the fight turned out aboard the locomotive, Vern had no choice but to say that Johnny was the saboteur. Tonight, I fed Hall a line about Johnny having a girlfriend he couldn’t be with and he went with it, embellishing the story as he went. He spun a narrative that dovetailed with how Jake Hobart was secretly married and thought he was convincing us with every word.”

“Only, he was digging himself deeper.”

“That he was.” Bell shot Vernon Hall a mocking smile. “I can’t tell you how many confessions I’ve gotten over the years because criminals are too stupid to keep their mouths shut.”

“What happens now?” Hall asked. “Are you going to kill me?”

Bell said to Joshua Brewster, “There’s some rope behind the seat in the truck. Could you get it for me?”

“Yeah.” Brewster got to his feet and lurched over to the truck. He was at his breaking point, physically and mentally.

Returning his attention to Hall, Bell said, “I’m going to leave you tied up here until Wednesday afternoon, when there’s nothing more you can do to interfere in this mission. Afterward, I’m going to turn you over to the Army liaison officer at the American Embassy and see to it you’re shipped back to the States in irons.”

Brewster came back, walked up to where Hall lay on the straw. He hesitated for just a second. Standing only a few inches above five feet, Joshua Hayes Brewster managed to look like he towered over his old friend. He gave that same disturbed tittering laugh Bell had heard in the pub back in Newcastle.

“No,” Bell shouted, but it was too late.

Brewster had fallen upon Vernon Hall with a rusty screwdriver that Bell had overlook

ed when he’d inventoried potential weapons in the dump truck. By the time Bell got to him and pulled him off, Brewster had sunk the tool into Hall’s chest a half dozen times. Brewster didn’t struggle. In fact, he was quite passive, considering the savagery of the attack.

He looked at Bell, his face streaked with blood. “Sorry about this little outburst. I get these wild ideas sometimes,” he said, repeating what he’d told Bell after the pub incident. “Though this time I know exactly where it came from.”

A few minutes passed. Brewster said, “It doesn’t matter to me why he did it. Maybe he was crazier than me. I’m going to tell myself that he had no choice. I’m going to believe the French had him in such a jam that he had to do this to us and that he’d been told we’d all be spared. I can’t live thinking it was any other way. That said, it’s still important to me that this stays between us. I’m not going to write about Vern’s betrayal in my notes and I’d be beholden to you if it stayed out of your official report.”

“I never lie in my personal journals, but I’ll make sure this stays out of my write-up for Colonel Patmore.”

“Thanks. So what now?”

Bell studied the corpse for a moment. “We make the best of this tragedy and bury one last Coloradan on British soil. The town of Southby has to have a church and cemetery. We need to also find a stonecutter for a special headstone. Vernon Hall is going to take a secret to his grave.”

41

The SS Bohemia was roughly three hundred feet long, black-hulled, with a single smokestack as tall and as straight as a chimney. She had two forward holds, with a mast derrick between them, and a third hold aft that also had its own crane for slinging aboard cargo. Bell estimated she was at least a decade old, and while someone had taken care of her in the early years, she seemed to have hit a rough spell of late. Her paint was peeling in places, and there was a massive dent in her bow where she’d slammed into a pier or possibly another ship. A placard on her pilothouse just aft of the bridge wing said she was owned by Bougainville Shippers Ltd. It was one of the smaller of the twenty-three steamship lines that used the port.

He had wanted to keep the ship under observation since her arrival in the bustling Port of Southampton, but making arrangements in Southby had taken a great deal longer than he’d anticipated. They’d barely arrived in time for the scheduled sailing.

The afternoon was fair, with the sun dancing around the clouds overhead. The temperature was nearing sixty degrees, which made it the warmest Bell had experienced since long before this case had begun back in Denver all those months ago. He was a man of dogged persistence, and there was no question he’d see this through to a satisfactory conclusion, yet it had taken a heavy toll.

He had watched the Bohemia on and off since before noon, but with all the commotion around Berth 44, it had been difficult. There had been thousands of passengers and well-wishers, as well as dozens of trucks carrying luggage, and more trucks with the last of the perishables, and barges loading coal that the recent strike had made so expensive, many ships had been left idle in port. While he hadn’t spotted Foster Gly, by the time he began a serious stakeout from the roof of a nearby warehouse with a ridiculously easy lock to pick, Bell had counted no less than six men moving about on the ship who didn’t act like sailors and another four loitering in the area that weren’t stevedores.

“What do you think?” he asked softly.

“I think if your plan doesn’t work, we didn’t bring enough guys.”

Joel Wallace looked almost as travel-worn as Bell, but he was back from a useless jaunt to Aberdeen, and Miss Bryer had done her job and told her boss to gather some troops. Sadly, he’d only managed to get four additional men, English lads eager for a few extra quid and good with their fists. They were waiting in a car out of sight behind the warehouse.

Bell checked the time. “We’d better get down there. The taxi should be here any minute. Don’t do anything until I give the signal.”

“Which is?”

“If I shoot my pistol or Gly’s thugs swarm me on deck, get up there and save me.”

“Got it. Gunshot or swarm.”

Bell and Wallace descended to the dock. Wallace went to get his boys, and they took up position hidden behind pallets of machine tools. Bell hung back too, checking his watch. Finally, a taxi appeared. He stepped into the open and it was as if he’d upended a beehive. The four heavies on the pier rushed toward him, fists clenched, intimidating scowls in place. On the freighter, several more of Gly’s men moved to the head of the gangplank, while another vanished into the superstructure. Even before Bell had made it ten paces, Gly appeared on the ship’s deck with a slovenly dressed man with a peaked hat. It had to be the captain, René Bougainville.

The taxi eased to a stop at the foot of the gangway. Bell was ready to watch the reaction when she exited the vehicle. This was going to be one for the ages, he thought.