Page 47 of The Trick of the Treasure
“Lord, I don’t know,” Sydney replied without much interest. “A handful.”
“Did you change crew members at all during the journey?” Constance asked, mostly to see if Sydney was honest in his ignorance.
The young man considered. “One of them took ill. We left him in Madagascar and took up another fellow, I think.”
Constance did not look at Solomon. “What happened to the sick sailor you left on Madagascar? Did you pick him up on the way back?”
“No idea,” Sydney said. “Captain Tybalt will know.”
“What of the replacement sailor you took on at Madagascar?” Constance pursued. “Can you describe him?”
“Not really,” Sydney said. “Just another sailor. Young-ish, I think.”
The carriage halted outside the club and Sydney dashed out to fetch his father, leaving Constance and Solomon to exchange a long, meaningful glance.
“I wonder if he could describe you or me?” she said wryly.
“I shan’t argue the point any further. He is a singularly self-absorbed young man.”
“Or he just doesn’t notice the lower orders.”
Barnabas Lloyd was clearly not best pleased to have been winkled out of his club at this hour for a jaunt to the docks. Nor did he think much of their theory that the chest they had taken off the ship was a copy.
“Utter rot,” he said angrily. “A mere excuse for your own incompetence.”
“Be reasonable, Papa,” Sydney drawled. “It wasn’t they who lost the treasure in the first place.”
His father glared at him. “We did notloseit. It was stolen from us. There is no point in my even being with you. Tybalt is the man who knows the ship. And the crew.”
“Did you recognize any of the crew?” Solomon asked. “Had any of them sailed with you before?”
“Don’t think so,” Lloyd growled. “Ask Tybalt.”
At the dockside, an urchin was dispatched to fetch Captain Tybalt, while Lloyd stormed along to his ship, yelling for the watchman. With the gangway lowered, they followed him on board. Constance was glad not to have worn one of her more fashionable gowns, where the crinoline would have made it next to impossible to climb down the ladders and negotiate the narrow passages.
She had only ever been aboard pleasure boats on the Thames before, and she was fascinated by her glimpses into a working, seagoing vessel. Not that either of the Lloyds seemed to know a great deal about it beyond their own cabins. What on earth had they done during such long voyages?
The rooms meant to be the captain’s cabin had apparently been taken over by Lloyd himself, while the captain slept in the first officer’s accommodation. Sydney had been given a tiny cabin next to his father’s, the main benefit of which seemed to be that he would not need to share.
They began with Lloyd’s cabin, where the treasure had been stored, the chest secured to a wall hook by rope. There seemed to be no bolts on either the cabin door nor the bed alcove.
“Did you have a servant with you?” Solomon asked.
“No, no. One of the crew served meals in the main cabin. Tybalt joined us.”
“Always the same crewman?” Constance asked.
“Generally,” Lloyd said.
Fortunately, Captain Tybalt did not take long to arrive, looking somewhat harassed. He bowed to Lloyd and Sydney, nodded to Solomon, and widened his eyes at Constance before adding another hasty bow.
He took them down to the crew’s deck, where they had all slept in hammocks in the same space. A smaller cabin had been set aside as a sick bay—the captain being the nearest thing to a medical man. Other cabins were used as workshops for various necessities like mending sails and ad hoc carpentry work. Then there was the galley kitchen, which, although apparently clean, still smelled of old onions and stale rum.
There was no direct means of getting from the crew’s quarters to the owner’s and captain’s. The men would have had to go up through the hatch to the open deck and then down again. Experienced sailors like Captain Tybalt could dash with great speed and ease up and down those ladders, though.
“What do you do during long voyages?” Constance asked Lloyd.
“Read,” came the reply. “Write my journal. Plan. Sometimes I sketch a little, though I am an indifferent artist. We’d play cards some evenings, though three is not a great number!”
