Jacinto Furtado

Jacinto Furtado is 38 and the cook of the Constance. Born in Faial, in the Azores, the son of a coopercooper Craftsman who makes and repairs wooden barrels and casks., he understands barrels like few others, having grown up among stavesstaves Curved wooden planks that, bound by hoops, form the sides of a barrel. and iron hoops. He has been at sea since 16 and has cooked on six ships, for crews of every nation. Before the Constance took him on, he was cook of the Seraphine. Whoever tastes his fish soup with pepper says it's the best in the Atlantic.

When ashore, he shares a room with two brothers in a New York dockside boarding house, low-ceilinged, with a plank floor and an iron stove. On the wall, he hung a saint's print and a mended fishing net. In the ship's galley, he has everything within reach: an iron pot, a cutting board, a shelf of spices and a glass lantern. He sleeps little, awkwardly, in a hammock.

He is short and stocky, with weathered dark skin, curly black hair with receding temples, a thick mustache and a gold hoop earring in one ear. He wears a thick striped wool shirt and a grimy canvas apron tied at the waist. His thick hands bear burn scars. Wary, religious, he talks with his hands and mixes the Portuguese of the Azores with dockside English, and never apologizes for it.

About the Seraphine, he says he was her cook until the eve of departure and that he knows every nail in the hull. When he boarded her on the high seas, he noticed that the main pump was dismantled on the deck, without the bronze valve, and the sounding rod left beside it. The boat was gone, and the hold stank of alcohol. About Gibraltar, he says he testified yesterday and waited in the corridor, where he heard Mrs. Wentworth's sister ask the clerk how much the captain's share in the ship was worth. When the detective demands what he knows, he answers that he knows how to cook and pray, and asks not to be rushed.

It could be the caution of a poor foreigner, who learned not to meddle where the captain doesn't call. It could be the silence of someone carrying a story no one would believe. The detective will have to decide which.