Water had lapped halfway under the boat when I’d left it. Now it was three-quarters of the way, the tide coming in.
The fisherman’s colleague and the lad caught the gunwale of the boat and began to haul it over. I stepped in to help—if I could brace myself, I was quite strong.
The boat rose, the cool of the wet wood cutting the afternoon’s warmth. It teetered on edge a long moment, threatening to take me and the other fisherman back over with it. The body trapped inside slid downward as we heaved, the sound like a bag of wet sand.
At last, the boat rolled all the way over. I danced back as it fell, pebbles scattering over my boots. The body under the seat dislodged and fell into the inches of water in the boat’s bottom.
The magistrate stepped forward and peered at the dead man, the crowd craning to see.
The young man’s clothes were sodden, making it difficult to discern their color. The puffy blue face held few features, and those were twisted in fear. His body was slightly rotund, made even more so by his stay under the boat.
The magistrate studied the corpse for a few moments then raised his head to the crowd. “Anyone know him?”
No one answered. Most here were on holiday, not from Brighton itself. Perhaps the young man had been a traveler too.
“We’ll take him to the coroner,” Pyne concluded. “Circulate his description. Doyouknow him, Captain?”
“Not at all,” I said. “You don’t?”
The magistrate stroked his chin. “Hard to say, isn’t it? Him all bloated like that. Coroner will go through his clothes, try to find a letter or paper that tells us. Poor sod.”
He did indeed look pathetic, sprawled before us, too young to have died and in such a fashion. Not a rich man, I thought. No gold chain on his waistcoat—although that could have been stolen.
I smoothed a fold of the young man’s coat between my fingers—it was thick and coarse. A laborer perhaps, but his hands were fairly smooth, no signs of hard work on them.
I thought of where I’d seen such clothing before, and recently.
“Is he a Quaker?” I asked the magistrate.
Pyne started. He bent to peer at the young man again and sucked in a breath. “Lord help us,” he said in a near whisper. “I think that’s Josh Bickley.”
I stared down at the corpse in renewed dismay. Bickley’s son. This was the lad I’d been meant to find, to restore to his family. A bitter taste coated my mouth.
The magistrate adjusted his hat. “All I need. Walking into the nest of pious Quakers, telling them one of their own’s been drowned.”
“Or killed, perhaps,” I suggested. “From the marks on his throat.”
Pyne shot me a look of dislike. “Might have been ropes that tangled him. ’S for the coroner to say.”
I straightened up, feeling stiff, and knowing I was right about how he’d died. “I can walk into the nest for you, sir. I am acquainted with the lad’s father.”
Pyne studied me as though I were a strange animal, but he gave me a curt nod. “I won’t say that wouldn’t relieve me of a burden.” He pointed a thick finger at me. “But no suggestion of murder, mind. I don’t need the whole lot of them raging around me.”
I promised I’d be circumspect. I retrieved my hat, which had dropped to the sand, gave the magistrate a polite bow, and left the shingle.
No one noticed my passage. They remained huddled around the boat, gawping at the spectacle, and I moved off to perform my unpleasant errand.
* * *
As I passedthe first pub on the street, Brewster emerged from it, pint in hand. He shoved the tankard at another patron and fell into step beside me.
“Now, where you going?”
I answered in a low voice, “To tell Bickley his son is dead.”
Brewster’s eyes widened. “Is that who was in the boat? And why’reyouoff to break the sad news?”
I did not answer. Brewster never liked my answers anyway.
