for those who wished to hide, although why he should wish to hide I
couldn’t guess either-and another to scour the superstructure abaft the
bridge. I started going through the cabins on the boat deck, chart
house, flag and radar cabins and had mr. carreras to help me. Rusty,
our youngest apprentice, went aft to work his way forward, accompanied
by miss beresford who had probably guessed, and rightly, that I was in
no mood for her company. But rusty was. He always was. Nothing that
susan beresford said to or about him made the slightest difference to
him. He was her slave and didn’t care who knew it. If she’d asked him
to jump down the funnel, just for her sake, he’d have considered it an
honour. I could just imagine him searching about the upper decks with
susan beresford by his side, his face the same colour as his flaming
shock of hair. As I stepped out of the radar office I literally bumped
into him. He was panting, as if he’d run a long way, and I could see I
had been wrong about the colour of his face: in the half-light on the
deck it looked grey, like old newspaper. “Radio office, sir.” he
gasped out the words and caught my arm, a thing he would never normally
have dreamed of doing. “Come quickly, sir. Please.” I was already
running. “You found him?”
“No, sir. It’s mr. brownell.” brownell was our chief wireless
operator. “Something seems to have happened to him.” I reached the
office in ten seconds, brushed past the pale blur of susan beresford
standing just outside the door, crossed over the storm sill, and
stopped. Brownell had the overhead rheostat turned down until the room
was less than half lit, a fairly common practice among radio operators
on duty night watches. He was leaning forward over his table, his head
pillowed on his right forearm, so that all I could see was his
shoulders, dark hair, and the bald spot that had been the bane of his
life. His left hand was outflung, his fingers just brushing the bridge
telephone. The transmitting key was sending continuously. I eased the
right forearm forward a couple of inches. The transmitting stopped. I
felt for the pulse in the outstretched left wrist. I felt for the pulse
in the side of the neck. I turned to susan beresford, still standing in
the doorway, and said, “do you have a mirror?” she nodded wordlessly,
fumbled in her bag, and handed over a compact, opened, the mirror
showing. I turned up the rheostat till the radio cabin was harsh with
light, moved brownell’s head slightly, held the mirror near mouth and
nostrils for maybe ten seconds, took it away, glanced at it, then handed
it back. “Something’s happened to him all right,” I said. My voice was
steady, unnaturally so. “He’s dead. Or I think he’s dead. Rusty, get
dr. marston right away. He’s usually in the telegraph lounge this time
of night. Tell the captain, if he’s there. Not a word to anyone else
about this.” rusty disappeared and another figure appeared to take his
place beside susan beresford in the doorway. Carreras. He stopped, one
foot over the storm sill, and said, “my god! benson.”
“No, brownell. Wireless officer. I think he’s dead.” on the
off-chance that bullen hadn’t yet gone down to the lounge I reached for
the bulkhead phone labelled “captain’s cabin” and waited for an answer,
staring at the dead man sprawled across the table. Middle-aged,
cheerful, his only harmless idiosyncrasy being an unusual vanity about
his personal appearance that had once even driven him to the length of
buying a toupee for his bald spot – public shipboard opinion had forced
him to discard it brownell was one of the most popular and genuinely
liked officers on the ship. Was? had been. I heard the click of a
lifted receiver. “Captain? carter here. Could you come down to the
wireless office? at once, please.”
“Benson?”
“Brownell. Dead, sir, I think.” there was a pause, a click. I
hung up, reached for another phone that connected directly to the radio
officers’ cabins. We had three radio officers and the one with the
middle watch, from midnight to 4 a.m., usually skipped dinner in the
dining room and made for his bunk instead. A voice answered: “peters
here.”
“First mate. Sorry to disturb you, but come up to the radio room
right away.”
“What’s up?”
“You’ll find out when you get here.” the overhead light seemed far
too bright for a room with a dead man in it. I turned the rheostat and
the white glare was replaced by a deep yellow glare. Rusty’s face
appeared in the doorway. He didn’t seem so pale any more, but maybe the
subdued light was just being kind to him. “Surgeon’s coming, sir.” his
breathing was quicker than ever. “Just picking up his bag in the
dispensary.”
“Thanks. Go and fetch the bo’sun, will you? and no need to kill
yourself running, rusty. There’s no great hurry now.” he left, and
susan beresford said in a low voice, “what’s wrong? what-what happened
to him?”
“You shouldn’t be here, miss beresford.”
“What happened to him?” she repeated. “That’s for the ship’s
surgeon to say. Looks to me as if he just died where he sat. Heart
attack, coronary thrombosis, something like that.” she shivered, made
no reply. Dead men were no new thing to me, but the faint icy prickling
on the back of my neck and spine made me feel like shivering myself.
The warm trade wind seemed cooler, much cooler, than it had a few
minutes ago. Dr. Marston appeared. No running, no haste, even, with
dr. Marston: a slow measured man with a slow measured stride. A
magnificent mane of white hair, clipped white moustache, a singularly
smooth and unlined complexion for a man getting so far on in years,
steady, clear, keen blue eyes with a peculiarly penetrating property,
here, you knew instinctively, was a doctor you could trust implicitly,
which only went to show that your instinct should be taken away from you
and locked up in some safe place where it couldn’t do you any harm.
Admittedly, even to look at him made you feel better, and that was all
right as far as it went, but to go further, to put your life in his
hands, say, was a very different and dicey proposition altogether, for
there was an even chance that you wouldn’t get it back again. Those
piercing blue eyes had not lighted on the “lancet” or made any attempt
to follow the latest medical developments since quite a few years prior
to the second world war. But they didn’t have to: he and lord dexter
had gone through prep school, public school, and university together and
his job was secure as long as he could lift a stethescope. And, to be
fair to him, when it came to treating wealthy and hypochondriacal old
ladies he had no equal on the seven seas. “Well, john,” he boomed.
With the exception of captain bullen, he addressed every officer on the
ship by his first name exactly as a public school headmaster would have
addressed one of his more promising pupils, but a pupil that needed
watching all the same. “What’s the trouble? beau brownell taken a
turn?”
“Worse than that, i’m afraid, doctor. Dead.”
“Good lord! brownell? dead? let me see, let me see. A little
more light, if you please, john.” he dumped his bag on the table,
fished out his stethescope, sounded brownell here and there, took his
pulse, and then straightened with a sigh. “In the midst of life,
john… And not recently either. Temperature’s high in here, but I
should say he’s been gone well over an hour.” I could see the dark bulk
of captain bullen in the doorway now, waiting, listening, saying
nothing. “Heart attack, doctor?” I ventured. After all, he wasn’t all
that incompetent, just a quarter of a century out of date. “Let me see,
let me see,” he repeated. He turned brownell’s head and looked closely
at it. He had to look closely. He was unaware that everyone in the
ship knew that, piercing blue eyes or not, he was as shortsighted as a
dodo and refused to wear glasses. “An, look at this. The tongue, the
lips, the eyes, above all the complexion. No doubt about it, no doubt
at all. Cerebral haemorrhage. Massive. And at his age. How old,
john?”
“Forty-seven, eight. Thereabouts.”
“Forty-seven. Just forty-seven.” he shook his head. “Gets them
younger every day. The stress of modern living.”
“And that outstretched hand, doctor?” I asked. “Reaching for the
phone. You think “just confirms my diagnosis, alas. Felt it coming on,
tried to call for help, but it was too sudden, too massive. Poor old
beau brownell.” he turned, caught sight of bullen leaning in the
doorway. “Ah, there you are, captain. A bad business, a bad business.”