Dark Nantucket Noon (29 page)

“
I
did,” said Bob. “You should be investigating me.” He laughed in a shaky voice. “How do you know it wasn't me?”

“I don't,” said Homer. “Look, have you got a list of the membership of that society? You do? Could you bring it over? I want you to tell me about all those people.”

Bob was melancholy when he walked into Homer's front hall. “It's a pity you haven't got that piece of Mr. Green's car anymore. You really need it to make this whole thing hang together.”

“A pity? That's an understatement. Damn Boozer anyway.”

“I saw Mr. Doolittle walk into the Jared Coffin House this morning,” said Bob. “You know, the district attorney from New Bedford.”

“Tom Doolittle?” Homer whistled. “They're sending in their big gun. Look, Fern, you can help me. I've got to get some confirmation of this deal between Helen Green and the Harmon Corporation, so I've got to go after James Harmon, and here it is Saturday afternoon, and I've got a thousand other things to do. I'm going to give you the whole job. We'll go over the Nantucket Protection Society membership list another time.” Homer scribbled a number on a card and gave it to Bob Fern. “Call up my friend Jerry Neville. He'll tell you how to go about it. Call me in when you think you need me.”

Joe Green was next. Homer stood on the granite doorstep of Helen Boatwright Green's house once again and rang the bell. Joe opened the door slowly and stood looking at him, and once again Homer had the sensation that the man was brimming with unspoken speech. But the question about Helen's financial arrangements with James Harmon of Harmony Hotels produced only apparent surprise. Joe threw back his head. He opened his mouth, then shut it again. “I knew nothing about that,” he said at last. “Helen kept her business affairs pretty much to herself.”

“You had separate checking and savings accounts?”

“Yes. In the Pacific National Bank. Dick Roper sent me an accounting a while ago and asked me to examine the contents of Helen's safe deposit box. I found the key in her pocketbook and took a look in the box. There was some family silver in it, and some stock certificates. That was all. And a copy of her will.”

“Her will. You are the principal beneficiary, I understand?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Does it seem out of character to you, Mr. Green, that your wife might have taken part in this underhanded agreement with the president of a chain of hotels?” Insulting question to ask of a grief-stricken husband.

Again the hazel eyes became keen, and the lids drew back to show the entire circumference of the iris, and the mild face braced itself. But Joe said nothing, and then, with what seemed a massive effort, he mumbled something inaudible, withdrew clumsily and closed the door in Homer's face.

On his way back to Vestal Street Homer pondered the thwarted power that was now so fiercely driven back upon itself, and wondered if it had ever been unleashed, whether it was a force with which Joe might somehow have destroyed his wife. Homer had jokingly compared him with Bluebeard, because he had not wanted Helen to enter his house on the beach, and Bluebeard after all had murdered his wife. Bluebeard had murdered dozens of wives. And Joe had refused entrance to Kitty too, that day when she was running away from the terns. Kitty had told Homer about that encounter. Maybe Joe's shack was like Bluebeard's chamber. Maybe it was full of murdered women. Maybe Homer should get a search warrant and take a look at that place. Was Joe telling the truth or was he lying when he said he knew nothing about Helen's business affairs? Ignorant he might have been, but who was it, after all, who was going to end up with the five and a half million if the hotel deal went through? Helen wasn't going to get it. Joe was. And if the hotel people didn't think it was going to go through, why were they out there every day putting up lines of stakes for a roadbed and marking out a huge rectangle that looked very much like the outline of a giant foundation? Why were there, twenty or thirty of them out there all the time now, the way Alden said?

At home Mary was ready for him. She had made up a nasty list of judicial objections to the miscellaneous extraneous evidence Homer wanted to introduce into the murder trial of Katharine Clark. Homer took a look at it and groaned.

“Mary, holy cow, you should go over to the Jared Coffin House and work for the prosecution. Good God, look at that one. What am I going to say to that one? Well, hell, what did I do with my index cards? I can't do anything without those index cards. And how about some supper? My God, I'm a starving man.”

Heroically Mary Kelly suppressed a retort that was the fruit of her six months' examination of the slow upward movement of womankind. She became her husband's devoted assistant and self-effacing slave. She found him his index cards. She made him some supper. She typed up his notes. She sat solemnly at her typewriter looking at the back of the picture of Emmeline Pankhurst, and then she frowned at the keyboard and typed up some more queries. She slipped them silently under Homer's nose.

“Oh, damn, damn,” said Homer, looking them over. “All right, you're right. I'll ask Jake.” He picked up the telephone and dialed Jake O'Donnell on the mainland. Mary abandoned him and drove out the Polpis Road to see Kitty.

Kitty was glad to see her. Kitty was restless. Mary told her what Homer had learned from Dankbinkel. Kitty didn't seem to be paying much attention.

“Tomorrow's my last day,” she said.

“What are you going to do with it?” said Mary.

“Well, if it doesn't rain I'm going out with Alice Dove. Tomorrow's the day of the highest and lowest tides in six months, since last spring. We're going to do what Rachel Carson talked about. We're going to see if we can find a piece of the floor of the harbor that ordinarily never sees the light of day, and look for various kinds of underwater life. The Head of the Harbor has the longest tidal beach on the island. We're going to go out there at low tide. Alice said we should hope for a northeast wind, and that's what the weather report is for tomorrow. I hope it doesn't rain.”

“Why do you want a northeast wind?”

“Because it would make the low tide even lower. How is it out there now? Which way is the wind blowing?”

They stood outside Kitty's door, looking up. The wind was northerly. Mary felt it on her face, on her lips. It tasted a little salt. It tasted free. How would it taste to Kitty the day after tomorrow? When the Commonwealth would pick her up, then let her go, when each day after that it would pick her up and let her go, until perhaps one day it would pick her up in its iron grasp and not let her go again.

“I'm going to Quaker Meeting tomorrow,” said Mary. “Want to come with me?”

“You're going to pray for me, is that it?”

“No, I just want to see what it might have been like to be a Quaker on Nantucket Island. Why don't I stop by for you?”

“No,” said Kitty, “we haven't got time. Alice and I are going out early. The first low tide is around nine in the morning. But look for Mr. Biddle at Friends Meeting. He's my landlord. He'll be there.”

“Well, then, how about having supper with us tomorrow night?”

“Well, I don't know. Look, tell Homer how grateful I am, how much—”

“Oh, for heaven's sake.” Mary wondered if Kitty's dignity would be offended if she were to embrace her, decided it would, started for her car, then changed her mind and went back and hugged her hard. Kitty seemed pleased.

Back at the house on Vestal Street Mary found Homer still talking to Jake O'Donnell. He was arguing and making notes, cursing and laughing. He didn't hang up until Bob Fern came in at midnight. Bob was all excited.

“I talked to Mr. Harmon,” said Bob. “James Harmon of Harmony Hotels. I got him on the line with your friend Jerry Neville. It was a three-way call, but mostly I just listened.”

“Did he admit it?” said Homer. “Did he admit the deal with Helen Green?”

“Oh, sure, but the way he told it, it wasn't a deal, it was a regular—you know—business arrangement.”

“Well, did the business arrangement go through? She signed the letter of intent, apparently, but did she sell it in actual fact?”

“No! Wait till you hear! She was
going
to sign the actual bill of sale, and they had a date all set up, and she was going to meet his representatives at a place on Martha's Vineyard on the afternoon of March
seventh!
The day of the eclipse! Only she was killed first! She must have been killed so she wouldn't be there, so she couldn't sign it!”

“March seventh? By God, that's great! Good for you, Bob. Well, what did they think when she didn't show up? I notice they're still out there surveying as if they were getting ready to build.”

“They're gambling on the supposition that they'll win a case in probate court, that her signature on the letter of intent is sufficient, that it is no different from an item in her will. They're just waiting now for this trial of Kitty Clark's to be over, he said. Obviously they just want to be sure that nothing too unpleasant will come up.”

“What did Harmon say about the phony conservation trust?”

“Oh, he didn't seem to have the slightest qualms of conscience about that. I gather Mrs. Green had arranged all that with somebody else, and as far as Mr. Harmon was concerned, it was just a temporary holding arrangement. That was the way Mrs. Green had explained it to him. It wasn't his fault, he said, if she had described it falsely in public. He had agreed to keep his negotiations with her a secret, and to say nothing about her involvement in the land development, but he seemed to think that was normal business practice.”

“Did any money change hands?”

“Not yet. He said he was ready to pay the specified amount into her estate, five and a half million dollars, whenever the court agreed that the land was his.”

“Had he talked to Joe about it? Joe's the beneficiary.”

“No. I asked him that. He said no. Helen had not wanted him to discuss the matter with any outsiders except for Dankbinkel and she had specifically mentioned her husband as someone who should not be involved.”

“Good, good! Bob, you're magnificent. I'll just call back Jake O'Donnell and tell him all this.”

Mary went to bed exhausted. Homer never went to bed at all. When the Old South church bell began ringing the next morning, he was just finishing his preparations. He was fresh as a daisy. He had reshuffled and rearranged all his cards and reassembled them under a new set of headings. He had a clever index to the whole thing and a handy set of little tabs he had constructed with scissors and tape. He demonstrated it proudly to his wife, ate a large breakfast and asked for Kitty.

“Kitty?” said Mary. “She must be out at the Head of the Harbor by now, looking at the sea floor.”

“Well, I guess I'd better drive put there in the truck and get her. We've got a lot to talk over before tomorrow.”

“Oh, no,” said Mary. “Poor Kitty! Look, it's her last free day.”

“Well, for Christ's sake, I've got to get her ready for the witness stand. Tell you what. I'll just go out there and tell her to be back here by the middle of the afternoon. I'll go right now, while I still know where she's at, and then I'll come home and go with you to Quaker Meeting. Do me good. After all, like Melville's Ishmael, I cherish the greatest respect for religion, no matter how comical.”

36

Such deeps were bared as when the sea

Convulsed, vacates its shoreward bed,

And Nature's last reserves show nakedly.…

Timoleon

Kitty woke up and looked anxiously out the window. It was a gray morning, but it wasn't raining, not yet anyway. She got up and put on her jeans and a shirt and made breakfast, thinking about the shape of time. Last spring it had seemed formless and abundant, but lately it had become a compressing hollow space, large and open at one end, small and constricted at the other like a funnel. And she was about to drip out the small end, thought Kitty, into some kind of jar. She smiled grimly, thinking of herself as a nice little crystal teardrop, dripping out of the funnel. The day ahead of her had a narrow and contracted shape. Her chest felt tight. She couldn't breathe. She unbolted her door and threw it open.

It wasn't going to rain. The clouds were thick but they were high. The wind was blowing from the northeast, just the way Alice had hoped it would. And there was the pickup truck coming up the lane. Kitty was surprised to see two people in it.

“I thought I'd come along,” said Alden, hopping out. “Take a holiday.” His hands and face were streaked with grease.

“Well, of course,” said Kitty. “Why not?” But Alice apparently disapproved of this arrangement. Her mouth was pursed up tight. Kitty climbed in beside her, and Alden got back in and started the engine, backing and turning and heading out to the Polpis Road. He laughed at the chill atmosphere of Alice's disapproval. “Alice is mad because I left things every which away.”

“I told him,” said Alice, “we had to be out there at low tide, and I couldn't wait, and he suddenly decided he had to come along. He was fixing the car; he was all greasy. The animals haven't even been tended to. He just dropped everything.”

“You're not going to find anything in particular, you know, you girls,” said Alden, obviously renewing another argument he had been having with his wife. “Just because the tide may be lower than usual, it's hardly worth it. After all, I dredge along the bottom of that harbor all the time, don't forget, and if there were anything special, don't you think I'd find it?”

“How can
you
tell?” said Alice sharply. “By the time you get anything small and fragile up onto that culling board of yours, it would be all smashed. You can't even touch some of those things, or they just disappear.”