Torn-missing 4 (17 page)

“I see,” Staffe finally said. “How thoughtful of you.”

He doesn’t believe me,
Jonah thought.
He can tell I’ve got ulterior motives. Now he won’t trust me ever again.

“Thank you for showing me the book,” Jonah said.

Staffe shrugged. He took the book back and walked away.

Jonah turned to Katherine as soon as the man was gone.

“This had better be important,” Jonah hissed at her.

“It is!” she whispered back, urgently. “Something really awful just happened!”

“Well, what is it?” Jonah asked impatiently.

She put out her hand, bracing herself against the frame of the stocks. Holding on, to counter the rocking of the waves. Or—Jonah looked at her a bit closer—to counter her trembling legs, her shaking hands.

“I started paying attention because I found out who left that letter in the crow’s nest,” she said. “It was Wydowse. You know, the really old guy? I saw him writing another message.”

“That doesn’t sound so awful,” Jonah said, because she was really starting to freak him out. “Unless—what did the message say?”

“I haven’t read it yet,” Katherine said. “Because, because
then—” She started gasping for breath, panic and fear battling in her expression.

“Because what?” Jonah asked. “What happened then?”

Katherine took in a huge, desperate breath.

“Prickett killed Wydowse,” she said.

“Killed?” Jonah gasped. “He
killed
him? Are you sure?”

Automatically he glanced toward the stairs, because if a murder had just occurred belowdecks, surely there’d be men running up to notify the captain. Surely there’d be sailors screaming,
Put that gun down!
or
Put that sword down!
or
No! Don’t kill me, too!

The stairs were silent and dark and, as far as Jonah could tell in the little bit of light that remained, completely empty. The only sound Jonah could hear from below was the thin edge of a snore.

“Why isn’t anyone screaming?” Jonah asked.

Katherine’s face twisted in anguish.

“Nobody knows he’s dead yet, except me. And Prickett.” She pressed her hands over her mouth, then let them slip down. “Oh, Jonah, I should have stopped
him, shouldn’t I? But I couldn’t—I didn’t know what was going on until it was over.”

“Start at the beginning,” Jonah said, which was what Mom always said to Katherine whenever Katherine came home from school in hysterics over some friend being mean to some other friend, or Katherine not getting invited to the biggest party of the year, or something like that. And then Katherine would talk endlessly.

Jonah thought murder was actually something worth saying “Start at the beginning” about.

“I looked all over for more of those notes like we found in the crow’s nest,” Katherine said. “There were some hidden in a writing desk down below, but they were just about things that happened weeks ago—some guy named Juet being demoted, some other guy named Bylot being promoted above him, the captain making everyone mad.”

“Juet—wasn’t that one of the people Prickett said he put out on an ice floe? One of the mutineers?” Jonah asked.

Katherine shrugged.

“I guess,” she said, sounding hopeless. “How many people do you think Prickett killed today?”

Jonah shook his head. “Don’t think about it that way,” he said. “Go on.”

“So then, while I was standing there, Wydowse hobbled over to the writing desk and sat down. And his handwriting was exactly the same as the writing on the letters in the crow’s nest,” Katherine said.

In a different mood Jonah would have felt as if he had to say, sarcastically,
Good job, Sherlock, figuring that out!
—just to keep Katherine from acting too proud of her detective skills. But now he only said, carefully, “Okay.” He thought for a moment, and then added, “But you didn’t just stand there, reading over his shoulder?”

“No,” Katherine said. “That was when people started screaming on the deck, and I came up here, and there was that native standing here, talking about how he’d never seen the river before, and then you started talking to him, too—”

“I know, I know, I remember all that,” Jonah said impatiently.

Since neither he nor Katherine had a candle or a lamp, Jonah couldn’t see anything around them. Still, Jonah couldn’t help sweeping his gaze all around the deck, trying to keep an eye out for—what? Prickett bringing Wydowse’s body up on deck, to toss him overboard? Some other horror or danger that Jonah couldn’t even imagine?

“So then, after that, I went back belowdecks again,
and Wydowse was slumped over his writing, like this.” She pantomimed someone having a stroke or a heart attack, and falling forward, sprawled across a desktop.

“His face and his arms were covering his papers, and he’d spilled his ink—I set it upright, because the ink was getting in his hair,” Katherine said. “And I could tell he’d just collapsed, just then, because there wasn’t that much ink out yet. … Jonah, what would you have done then?”

This question caught Jonah off guard. He’d actually been thinking,
Whoa. Kind of glad it was Katherine who had to deal with all that, not me. Makes being stuck in the stocks seem not so bad.

“I don’t know,” Jonah said slowly. “I guess I would have tried to figure out how to get Wydowse some help. Without blowing my cover or making people think the ship was haunted, or anything like that.”

“That’s what I thought!” Katherine said, hitting him on the arm in her excitement.

“So what did you do?” Jonah asked.

“Well, there were other people below the deck, just not right by Wydowse. And the way his desk was angled—it could have taken hours before anyone noticed he’d collapsed,” Katherine said. “So I stood right beside him and I made this noise, trying to sound
like an old man in pain. ‘Please help me! I—
glug
…’ I actually had to do that, like, three or four times before anyone noticed.”

“Smart,” Jonah admitted grudgingly.

“So some of the other sailors came over, and they tucked Wydowse into bed—well, into his hammock,” Katherine said. “And one of them suggested giving him some broth, and the others said, ‘No, we’ll not waste broth on a man who’s just going to die anyway’—and it was awful, it was just like JB was talking about back at the beginning, about how they’re all being so selfish with their food!”

Is it selfishness, when there’s not enough food to go around?
Jonah wondered.

“So I was going to get some broth for Wydowse myself, just to serve them right!” Katherine said indignantly. “But—there were always people clustered around, so I couldn’t.”

“What was Prickett saying?” Jonah asked.

“He wasn’t there then,” Katherine said. “I came upstairs to ask you what you thought we should do, but there were people all around you, too.”

“I would have said, ‘Read the papers on the desk!’” Jonah said, shaking his head in disgust.

“Oh, I thought of that,” Katherine said. “When they
moved Wydowse to his hammock, I looked right away, but the papers were turned facedown, like he’d just flipped the last one over to write on the back.”

“Then you could have picked them up!” Jonah said, barely managing to resist adding an insult like,
What are you, stupid?

“There were people around, remember?” Katherine asked. “You think they needed to see papers floating through the air?”

Oh, yeah….

Jonah was glad he’d resisted calling his sister stupid.

“But I kept waiting and waiting for the right moment,” Katherine said. “Because people were starting to drift away—it’s not like any of them could do anything to help Wydowse. But then he started talking.”

“Talking?” Jonah repeated.

“Yeah, like, babbling,” Katherine said. “He kept saying, ‘It makes no sense,’ and ‘John Cabot’s map couldn’t have survived out here for more than a hundred years,’ and—”

“Wait—he was talking about John Cabot’s map?” Jonah interrupted. “But—that was in the book, with the picture of Andrea and John White!”

“It was?” Katherine asked. “I don’t remember seeing—”

“Not the original picture,” Jonah said. “The one Staffe showed me … oh, finish your story, and then I’ll tell mine.”

Katherine looked puzzled, but shook her head and went back to talking.

“Someone must have gone to get Prickett, because he came in and said, ‘Let’s leave the poor man in peace,’” she said. “And then—” Katherine’s voice turned hollow, as if she had to force herself to continue. “Then Prickett pretended to leave with everyone else. I saw him walk out! Then all the lights went out belowdecks, and Wydowse did seem to settle down. He was just, like, whimpering, every few minutes. And I was going to just grab the papers and tiptoe away, but then I heard Prickett’s voice, whispering to Wydowse, ‘I can’t have you talking like that. You’re too smart. You’ve guessed too much.’”

She spoke the same way Prickett must have: in a low voice, with a threatening growl that no one could have heard more than a few feet away. She was too good at the imitation. Jonah started shivering, and couldn’t stop.

“And then Prickett must have suffocated Wydowse, or poisoned him, or something,” Katherine said.

“But you didn’t
see
what he did?” Jonah asked.

“It was pitch-black!” Katherine said. “I could barely make out shadows! But Prickett stood over Wydowse for a long time, and then I heard him tiptoeing away, and right away I went over to see why Wydowse wasn’t talking anymore at all. And, and—”

“You’ve seen dead bodies before,” Jonah said, and he meant it in a comforting way.

“But I’d never touched one!” Katherine protested. “I could
feel
his skin getting cold!”

Jonah did not want to dwell on this.

“Okay, okay, Katherine,” he said in his most soothing voice. “I know this is really awful, but you have to go back down there and get those papers from the desk. They’re probably, like, evidence against Prickett, and—”

“I’m not stupid,” Katherine said. “I didn’t panic or anything! I picked up those papers on my way out of the room! Here!”

She thrust something into Jonah’s hand. For a moment Jonah needed to steady himself:
They’re just papers. Okay, they were written by a man who was murdered a few minutes ago, but all you’re holding is paper.
You
didn’t have to touch the dead guy. You just need to think clearly….

“Light,” he said out loud, trying to sound normal. “We’re going to need a candle or a lantern and, oh, I guess, something to light it with—”

“Or perhaps something to burn those with?” a deep voice said.

And a second later Jonah wasn’t holding any papers. They’d been snatched straight from his hand.

“No!” Jonah cried. Instantly a hand clapped across his mouth. Jonah tried to bite down on the fingers, but then there was an arm clutching his head.

And squeezing.

“You make another sound, and I can dream up worse punishments than the stocks,” the voice whispered in his ear.

Jonah was almost certain it was Prickett, but in the darkness he was confused. He heard something different in the voice than he’d heard looking into the man’s face.

Jonah heard a scratching noise—flint, perhaps?—then a candle sparked to life, enclosed in a metal holder that looked strangely familiar.

Oh, yeah,
Jonah thought.
It looks like the twin to our Elucidator.

The candle flared, and Jonah could see Prickett’s scarred, weather-beaten face. He lost track of whatever he’d thought he heard in Prickett’s voice before.

“Silence. Agreed?” Prickett said.

Behind Prickett, Jonah could see Katherine, pointing to her mouth, open wide, then flaring her hands out—then raising them, questioningly. This time Jonah could understand exactly what she was saying:
I could scream, right now, and he couldn’t stop me! He couldn’t even see me! Should I scream or not?

Jonah shook his head, ever so slightly.

“Silence,” he whispered in agreement.

Katherine, you’re our secret weapon,
he thought at his sister, hoping she could figure that out, too.
Don’t give away that you’re here unless you really need to. Let’s figure out what’s going on first.