The Wreck Of The Mary Deare

One after the other the survivors went into the witness box, each from his different angle corroborating what had gone before — the certainty that the ship was jinxed, that she carried explosives and that she was destined to go to the bottom. It was the story of men carrying within themselves the seeds of inevitable tragedy.

And then at last ‘Holland called ‘Gideon Patch’ and he was standing there in the witness box again, slightly stooped, his hands gripping the rail, knuckles as white as the pallor of his face. He looked worried sick and the twitch was there at the corner of his mouth.

Bowen-Lodge questioned him first — questioned him in minute detail about the orders he had given after the fire broke out. He had him go through the whole thing again from the moment Rice had rushed into his cabin to report the outbreak. Then, when Patch had told it exactly as he’d told it before, Bowen-Lodge gave a little shrug and Holland took up the questioning again. And all the time it was obvious that something was being kept back. You could sense it in the way the man stood there with that hunted look on his face and his body all tense and trembling. And the questions went back and forth with nobody making any sense out of it and Patch sticking to his statement that he had been knocked out and that the fire had been started deliberately.

‘Yes, but by whom?’ Bowen-Lodge demanded.

And Patch had answered in a flat, colourless voice, ‘That is for the Court to decide.’

After that the ball had been tossed to the counsel representing the interested parties and they hounded him with questions about Taggart and Dellimare, about his handling of the crew, about the seaworthiness of the ship, and then finally the counsel for the Marine Officers’ Association was on his feet, going back once again over the orders he’d given the night the ship was abandoned, and Bowen-Lodge was beginning to glance at the clock.

At last Sir Lionel rose, and his questions were all about the cargo. If Patch could have said that those cases were empty or contained something other than aero engines, that would have been that and Sir Lionel would have been satisfied. But he couldn’t say it and the questions went on and on until Sir Lionel had exhausted all the possibilities. He paused then and seemed on the point of sitting down. He was bending forward, peering at some notes and he looked up over his reading glasses and said, ‘Perhaps, Mr Learned Chairman, you would ask the witness to tell me how he came to be on the Mary Deare.’

The question was put and Patch answered, quite unsuspecting, that he thought he had already explained that he had replaced Mr Adams who had been taken to hospital suffering from jaundice.

‘Yes, yes, quite,’ Sir Lionel said impatiently. ‘What I meant was, who signed you on — Captain Taggart or Mr Dellimare?’

‘Captain Taggart.’

‘He came ashore and made the choice himself?’

‘No.’

‘Who did come ashore then and make the choice?’ Sir Lionel’s voice still sounded bored. He gave the impression that he was dealing with a small routine point.

‘Mr Dellimare.’

‘Mr Dellimare?’ Sir Lionel’s face was suddenly expressive of surprise. ‘I see. And was it done privately, a meeting in some bar — by arrangement?’ His tone carried the bite of sarcasm in it.

‘No. We met at the agents’.’

‘At the agents’? Then there were probably other unemployed officers there?’

‘Yes. Two.’

‘Why didn’t Mr Dellimare choose one of them? Why did he choose you?’

‘The others withdrew when they heard that the vacancy was for the Mary Beared ‘But you did not withdraw. Why?’ And when Patch didn’t answer, Sir Lionel said, ‘I want to know why?’

‘Because I needed the berth.’

‘How long had you been without a ship?’

‘Eleven months.’

‘And before that you hadn’t been able to get anything better than the job of second mate on a miserable little Italian steamer called the Apollo working the coastal ports of East Africa. Didn’t you think it strange that a man with your record should suddenly find himself first officer of a 6,000-ton ocean-going ship?’ And when Patch didn’t say anything, Sir Lionel repeated, ‘Didn’t you think it strange?’

And all Patch could say, with the eyes of the whole court on him, was, ‘I never considered it.’

‘You — never — considered it!’ Sir Lionel stared at him — the tone of his voice, the carriage of his head all indicating that he thought him a liar. And then he turned to Bowen-Lodge. ‘Perhaps, Mr Learned Chairman, you would ask the witness to give a brief resume of the events that occurred on the night of 3rd/4th February nine years ago in the region of Singapore?’

Patch’s grip on the rail in front of him tightened. His face looked ghastly — trapped. The courtroom stirred as though the first breath of storm had rustled through it. Bowen-Lodge looked down at the questioner. ‘The Belle Isle? he enquired. And then, still in the same whisper of an aside, ‘Do you consider that necessary, Sir Lionel?’

‘Absolutely,’ was the firm and categorical reply.