Dark Nantucket Noon (26 page)

“Surveyors,” said Homer. “What are they doing? Surveying your place?”

“No, no, Helen's land,” mumbled Alice. “The land she gave to the Boatwright Trust.”

“Oh, is that around here somewhere?” said Kitty.

“All around. Ours just sticks into it a little bit.” Alice stumped into the house, her face set. Kitty opened up her loaf of bread on the table and began slicing her Swiss cheese with one of Alice's kitchen knives. Bob Fern took his peaches to the sink and began peeling them. He was smiling like a boy at a birthday party.

Homer was changing his clothes behind the open door of his bedroom, shouting at Alice at the same time. “This Boatwright Trust of Helen Green's—it's some sort of conservation outfit, isn't it, Alice? To preserve the land intact forever, isn't that right?”

“I guess so,” grumbled Alice. She picked up a couple of cats from the table and dumped them on the floor. “What I want to know is, what do they keep surveying it for? That's all I want to know.”

Homer burst out of his bedroom wearing a pair of brown pants, buttoning a shirt over his sweaty chest. “Want me to find out for you?” he said. “Wait a minute. I'll be right back.” He threw open the screen door and pounded across the front yard in his bare feet.

At the top of the first rise beyond Alice's house he caught sight of the surveyors and shouted,
“Hey.”
They looked back and waited for him to catch up. “Excuse me,” said Homer, puffing to a stop. “I just wondered what you fellows are doing.”

“Just checking the lines on this map here so we can put in stone bounds,” said the man with the transit. “Dig a few holes. Gonna make some percolation tests.”

He had a large roll of paper under his arm. “Mind if I take a look?” said Homer. “My friend Mrs. Dove, who lives right here, she's sort of worried about what you guys are doing.”

“Well, I guess it's okay.” The man put his transit down on the ground and unrolled the map. “It's this big chunk in here,” he said, pointing at the middle of the sheet. “All this part marked ‘Boatwright Trust.'”

“My God,” said Homer, “that's a big piece of the island. Who's in charge of it anyhow, this Boatwright Trust?”

“Damned if I know. Do you know, Bertie?”

Bertie shrugged his shoulders.

“Well, who hired you guys?” said Homer.

“Oh, we work for an engineering firm in Woods Hole. Becket and Anderson. Come on, Bertie.” The transit man rolled up his map again and picked up his tripod.

“Off-islanders, eh?” said Homer. “Well, who hired Becket and Anderson to make the survey and dig the holes?”

“Don't ask me.” The man turned around and started up the road again, his transit over his shoulder. Bertie followed with his rod and shovel.

“What about you, Bertie?” shouted Homer. Bertie's back hunched up again to display his ignorance. “Sinister, that's what it is,” bawled Homer. “You're the faceless minions of a nameless blind gigantic secret power, that's what you are. You ought to be ashamed of yourselves.”

The two surveyors glanced at each other and grinned. Abutters—Christ, they always got so excited.

“It's huge. Holy cow,” said Homer, walking into Alice's kitchen again. “Alice, what in God's name is that trust?”

“Don't know.” Alice was pouring coffee. “Nobody seems to know,” she said, flashing him a lugubrious glance.

“Well, there must be some trustees or something. There must be somebody in charge.” Homer looked at the map on the wall. “Show me the boundary lines, Alice.”

Alice put down the coffeepot and pointed. “It's this big piece here, called Saul's Hills—that's the old name for it. The Hidden Forest is part of it. It's the
heart
of the island,” said Alice, turning away.

“It's about four square miles,” said Bob Fern, pacing them off on the map with his fingers. “That's a big part of Nantucket Island, all right. The whole island's only about fifty square miles, all in all.”

“Funny they hired an engineering firm from the mainland,” said Homer. “I'll tell you what I'll do, Alice. I'll see if I can track down the trustees of this Boatwright Trust. Don't worry. The whole thing's probably run by a couple of white-tailed deer and a flock of partridges. But I'll look into it anyway and find out.”

Alice said nothing. She was grubbing away at the breakfast dishes in the sink. Kitty nudged Alice aside and began washing the dishes herself. Bob Fern snatched up a dish towel and took the dishes reverently from Kitty. Alice was making funny noises. She went into her bedroom and shut the door.

“She's crying,” whispered Kitty, looking at Homer.

“Well, it means a lot to her,” said Homer softly. “She's got strong feelings, after all. She's a woman of passion.”

32

“… Aye, aye! thy silence, then,
that
voices thee …”

Moby Dick

It took Homer an hour to get through to Mr. James Anderson of Becket and Anderson, Civil Engineers, Woods Hole, because Becket was on vacation and Anderson was out to lunch, and then the line was busy, and then the secretary said Mr. Anderson was in conference, and Homer could hear him saying, “What does he want?” in the background and then making demurring noises, and the secretary made demurring noises at Homer in her turn.
“Put him on,”
thundered Homer, and the girl, who was new on the job and easily cowed, did so.

Mr. Anderson was merely fulfilling the requests of the firm that had engaged him as a civil engineer. “Doris, may I have the file for the Boatwright Trust? May I ask what business it is of yours, Mr.… ? Oh, I see. Well, all I can suggest is that you contact Chalmers and Partridge. That's East Forty-sixth Street in New York. A legal firm. You're welcome. Not at all. Good-bye.”

Homer took the phone away from his ear and looked at it. “I didn't even say thank you, you big jerk.”

He sought after Chalmers and Partridge then, and was connected at last with another secretary, who announced that all members of the staff of Chalmers and Partridge were on vacation for the month of July, and if he would care to leave a message he could expect a reply at some indefinite date in the future.

Well, would she look something up for him?

No, she was merely an answering service. She would suggest that he call back the first of August. Enraged, Homer threw the telephone at the floor. Then he picked it up again and called Mr. Tillinghast, the new president of the Nantucket Protection Society, or rather the Helen Green Society. Surely Tillinghast would know about the Boatwright Trust if anybody would.

“Why, yes,” said Mr. Tillinghast. “I have the brochure around here somewhere, and I must say, as I remember, it looked just fine.”

Ten minutes later Homer was standing in Mr. Tillinghast's front hall, examining the Boatwright Trust brochure, a folded pamphlet of heavy pale-green paper. On the outside there was a drawing of a spray of blueberry and the words “A priceless heritage, Nantucket's unspoiled moors.” The pamphlet unfolded to a photograph of a child on a horizon of blowing grass against a background of dark sky and cirrus clouds. The photograph had been taken through a red filter. The clouds were spectacular. There was a map on the next fold, with words below. Homer's eye skimmed over them.

… nature, unpolluted and unspoiled … irreplaceable beauty … preservation of these historic hills … headwaters of the island's pure fresh-water streams … wildlife … birdsong …

It was all just exactly what you would expect. Yet something about the wording irritated him. Something wasn't quite right. “Do you have anything else?” he said.

“Well, I've got a copy of the engineering diagrams made up by John Hepburn. Here they are, these charts here.”

“You mean the surveying has already been done?”

“Well, of course. It had to be, before the legal instrument could be drawn up.”

“Then why is another outfit, from Woods Hole, in there surveying the land again? Look, all I want to know is, who's in charge? I should think there would be some trustees.”

“Oh, yes, there will be. My understanding was that a local board of trustees would be appointed once the legal transaction had been formally completed. Why don't you look at the deed? It must be on file at the Registry of Deeds in the Town Building.”

“Good,” said Homer. “I'll do that right now. One more thing, Mr. Tillinghast. What would Helen Green's land have been worth, I mean in dollars, if she had sold it for development instead of giving it to this conservation trust? Vulgar question, I know.”

“Oh, I think I heard a figure going around—five million dollars, I think it was, but that was just a romantic notion. After all, some of the land is under water. I should think …” Mr. Tillinghast looked at the map in the pamphlet and mumbled to himself, then raised his eyebrows. “Well, you know, maybe that's not far off, the way real estate values are today. It could have been worth that much. It was an extraordinarily generous gift.”

“Five million dollars?”
Five million dollars. Five million … Homer was still muttering it to himself as he groped through the file in the office of the registrar of deeds.
Five million dollars.
He found the file for the Boatwright Trust. It contained a single sheet of paper. Homer carried the sheet to the woman at the desk. “What does this mean? There's nothing there.”

The registrar's assistant glanced at the sheet of paper. “Oh, that deed must be in Boston. It says, ‘Department of Corporations and Taxation.' You'll have to go there. This just gives you the name of the trustee.”

“That's what this Hermann Dankbinkel fellow is? The trustee? Do you know him? There's no address. Does he live in Nantucket?”

“I don't know him,” said the woman, “but he may be in the phone book.” She riffled through the Nantucket directory, but there was no Dankbinkel.

“Tell me,” said Homer, “is it customary to have a deed filed elsewhere than in the local Registry of Deeds? Why would anybody do that?”

“I have no idea. It's not exactly customary. But it
is
done. It's perfectly legal.”

“Well, thanks.” Homer copied down the scant information he had uncovered and drove home again, muttering to himself, wondering how anybody could be so unselfish as to give up with a stroke of the pen an inheritance worth five million dollars. It was odd that the deed wasn't registered in Nantucket. Peculiar. Suppose, just suppose, that this Dankbinkel, whoever he was, turned out to be some kind of swindler or chiseler who had found a way of diddling Helen Green out of her land by some tricky legal wording in the trust agreement, and then he had killed her before she found out. The murderer was not Katharine Clark, but Hermann Dankbinkel! Or maybe Dankbinkel was in league with one of the eager builders and realtors on the island.
Five million dollars.
Christ almighty.

Homer sat down with a can of beer in his hand and called up his friend Jerry Neville in Boston. Jerry specialized in writing leases for supermarkets, but he was also the expert on estate planning and realty trusts for his legal firm. “Why would the deed to a Nantucket conservation trust be registered in the State House in Boston rather than right here on the island?” Homer wanted to know.

“Beats me,” said Jerry. “I'll send somebody over to the State House to have a look at the deed and call you back.”

Jerry called Homer that evening after supper. “It smells,” he said. “At least I think it smells, but then maybe I've got extrasensitive nostrils. This Dankbinkel is a Swiss. He's the sole trustee. He's an executive of the Schweizerische Kredit Anstalt in Zurich. That's a Swiss bank. The deed can be terminated at any time by its shareholders, but they're not listed. Are there any shareholders on the island?”

“Not so far as I know,” said Homer. “But I'll look into it some more. What if I call up Dankbinkel in Zurich?”

“Not a prayer. Those Swiss bankers are sworn to secrecy to protect the privacy of their clients. I've tangled with some of them before. That's what seems so peculiar to me. Why would a nice wholesome conservation outfit like this one need that kind of anonymity and privacy? I suspect that something not quite nice is going on.”

Homer hung up. Alice Dove was looking at him silently. He told her what he had turned up, or failed to turn up, and what Jerry had said. Alice said nothing. She looked grimly down at her folded hands.

“You know, Alice, even that pretty little green pamphlet didn't look right,” said Homer. “There was something missing in it, and I've finally figured out what it was. There was nothing in there anywhere about time. You'd think there would have been all sorts of phrases like ‘in perpetuity' or ‘world without end' or ‘forever-more' or ‘till the last syllable of recorded time.' Why not? And now the deed itself says that the shareholders can terminate the trust whenever they so desire. Why? Do you know of any shareholders, Alice? Do a lot of people on the island own shares?”

“No,” said Alice curtly. “Nobody I know of. Not a soul.”

“Funny. I'm awfully afraid somebody was out for plunder. Somebody was making a fool of poor old Helen Green.”

33

“Whosoever of ye raises me a white-headed whale with a wrinkled brow and a crooked jaw; whosoever of ye raises me that white-headed whale, with three holes punctured in his starboard fluke—look ye, whosoever of ye raises me that same white whale, he shall have this gold ounce, my boys!”

Moby Dick

Mary Kelly came at last. Homer met her plane in Boston, took her home to Concord, and then brought her to Nantucket and settled her in a small house he had rented in town on Vestal Street. He took her around to meet Kitty Clark and Alice and Alden Dove.