‘What are you looking for?’ asked Sara.
‘Nothing on this voyage happened by accident,’ he replied distantly, wiping gunpowder from the charm before pocketing it. He’d return it to the constable later. ‘The ship was a trap, designed to murder my uncle. Everything was planned years in advance.’
‘Including the three unholy miracles,’ said Sara.
‘Only crew members could have rolled the kegs containing The Folly out of here,’ said Arent.
‘Then we’re after three people.’
‘Two,’ he disagreed. ‘Captain Crauwels had to be involved. If Emily de Haviland always intended to bring us to this island, then he was the only one who could have ensured that happened. He was the ship’s navigator.’
‘Maybe The Folly was his payment,’ said Sara. ‘It was valuable enough. It almost bought Lia and I an entirely new life. Crauwels was obsessed with restoring his family’s name. If he sold The Folly, he could have done that.’
‘He knew when the Eighth Lantern would appear, so he knew when he’d be calling battle stations. He just needed a couple of trusted hands ready to take the kegs containing The Folly down to the cargo hold, and hide them in the smuggling compartments Bosey had built. If we’re right about Emily’s identity, she could have easily stolen the key to The Folly’s box.’
They stared at each other, feeling the sting of the revelation.
‘Do you think Isaack Larme would have been involved?’ he asked Sara abruptly.
‘Why?’
‘Because I’ve got a plan he could help me with, but he was close to Crauwels. They may have worked together.’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Sara. ‘He admitted to finding a piece of The Folly hidden in one of his smuggling compartments, but he said he couldn’t find the rest. Remember how disappointed he sounded. If he was working with Crauwels, why would he have confessed any of that?’
The steps upstairs were broken, forcing them to tread cautiously. The compartment under the half deck sloped towards the helm, and the dead were piled up against its wall. Aside from the bodies, the signs of battle were everywhere, from the gouges in the wood, to the swords still stuck in planks.
The rock had torn through the ship’s waist, obliterating everything upon it, including the mainmast, which was now in the sea, connected to the ship only by the rigging.
‘Reminds me of a severed arm,’ said Sara in disgust.
Arent was silent. Here was the battlefield he thought he’d escaped.
‘Should we start in the passenger cabins?’ said Sara, sounding sick. ‘If we’re right …’
‘I know,’ he said sympathetically. ‘I feel the same.’
They went silently, almost unwillingly, up the stairs into the passenger cabins. The fighting hadn’t reached this part of the ship. Guard Captain Drecht had made sure to station men at the door. Honour had compelled him to protect Sara and Lia, even as a lack of honour had compelled him to start the mutiny that had endangered them.
Arent couldn’t imagine being able to think like that. His mind must have been twisted like old rope.
They went into Vos’s cabin first, but Arent remained at the threshold. Arms crossed, he watched as Sara searched through the receipts of passage on the writing desk, then picked an expenses ledger off the ground. She flipped through a few pages, then ran her hand down the columns.
Finally, she thumped it shut angrily. The glance she flashed him confirmed everything they’d suspected.
Arent’s heart fell like a rock.
Crossing the corridor, they entered Viscountess Dalvhain’s cabin, Sara’s foot catching on the huge rug covering the ground.
Arent immediately knelt down, touching the weave with his fingers and murmuring. ‘So this is how they got it onboard.’
‘The wooden stick?’
He blinked at her. ‘What?’
‘I was in the corridor when they tried to wedge this rug into the cabin. They broke a long, thin wooden stick that was inside.’
‘No.’ His brow furrowed. ‘That wasn’t what I meant. Look.’
He ran his hand across the carpet. Squinting, she realised what he’d found. It was sliced, like somebody had dragged a blade across it.
‘The damage runs the length of the rug,’ he said.
‘What caused it?’
‘The murder weapon,’ he said, struggling to balance the satisfaction of being right with the revulsion it caused in him.
‘That’s a big blade,’ she said, with understatement.
‘It had to be,’ he said. ‘My uncle was a long way away.’
The ship wailed, wood shrieking as the ground shifted beneath their feet. ‘She’s tearing apart,’ said Sara, bracing herself.
Without speaking they hurried into Sara’s cabin, where Arent lifted the mattress off her bunk. Something about his presence near her bed caused her to turn slightly red, despite the circumstances.
‘The leper’s dagger used to kill my uncle made no sense,’ he said, searching the base beneath the mattress with his fingertips. ‘It was too thin, which meant it was too brittle to be a good weapon. But clever murder weapons are nearly always bad weapons, Sammy showed me that. Nobody going into battle would trust the venom from a snake, or a sharp piece of pottery. Murderers make their own weapons, according to their needs.’
‘And our murderer needed a weapon which could be used without anybody entering or leaving the cabin,’ said Sara.
‘Exactly. My uncle died in his bunk, so I started thinking about weapons that could reach him while he slept.’
He moved away, gesturing to the spot he’d been inspecting. ‘Here.’
Barely noticeable in the dark wood was a narrow slit about the size of her little finger.
‘Sammy found splinters on my uncle’s chest,’ said Arent. ‘He reckoned they were from the wooden handle of the leper’s dagger, but they weren’t. They were from this hole. My uncle’s cabin is directly beneath us, and I bet this hole appears above his bunk. It had to be thin or he would have noticed it. Even if he spotted this, he would have mistaken it for a crack in the wood. Emily de Haviland had a long, thin blade built to fit through it. She hid it in the rug because that was the only way to get something that unusual onboard without anybody commenting on it. She took the blade out of the rug, pulled the drawers out from underneath the bunk, then drove it down through this slot, killing my uncle. When she was done, she pulled the blade back up, put the drawers back, and threw it out of the porthole.’
‘I think I heard it,’ said Sara. ‘The night my husband –’ she reconsidered ‘– Jan died. I was tending you, and heard a splash outside.’
‘She must have been glad you weren’t in your cabin,’ replied Arent. ‘This was originally supposed to be her room, but Reynier van Schooten swapped you around because he thought this place cursed.’
‘If all of the passengers were in the great cabin having dinner when Jan was murdered and the doorway to the passenger cabins was guarded by Eggert, how did our murderer even get in here?’
Crauwels’s cabin was at the end of the passage and they went there now. His fine clothes were strewn across the floor, floating in the water that had splashed through his porthole during the wreck. Arent kicked through some ribbons, then pushed on the ceiling, which opened into the animal pens above, straw falling onto his shoulders.
‘This is how the Eighth Lantern slaughtered the animals, and this is where the leper disappeared when I chased him after he appeared at your porthole,’ he said. ‘The night of my uncle’s murder, the leper climbed out of the water and straight up the side of the ship to the poop deck. He used this hatch to drop in here. He dried off and changed clothes, so he wouldn’t leave any trace, then collected the sword and went to your cabin.’