Dark Nantucket Noon (34 page)

And then there was the big storm the night before the eclipse; he hadn't expected that. So when he went out into the harbor the next morning, pretending he was just going scalloping as usual, he discovered that the water was right up over Coatue, and he got the idea of going across to Nantucket Sound right there. He wouldn't have to be seen going out through the jetties at all. He could just lift off his engine and pole his way across Coatue. So that's what he did. And then he took off the winch and the culling board and set up his big box—he just put the painted boards together with a few screws so that his boat looked like a cabin cruiser. Then he put on the scuba equipment and greased his face black so if anybody saw him sticking his head out of the water they wouldn't know who he was. And then he just headed for Great Point, put down his anchor and swam under water across the Rip and down the Atlantic side until he was near the lighthouse.

And then two things almost ruined his plan. First, there were so many people there, when he hadn't expected to see anybody but Helen and Joe. Second, it had never occurred to him they would have a key to the lighthouse and would disappear inside, but they did. But it didn't matter after all, because Helen came out again, not once but twice. So he had two shots at her. He missed the first time, and he was disgusted because he thought it was his last chance. But then she appeared for the second time, and Alden could see her silhouetted clearly against the light around the horizon. He shot at her again. This time he didn't miss. And then he just swam back to his boat and headed for Coatue and poled across that narrow place again. This time he had to wait for a couple of small planes to stop circling around overhead, and then he had to wait some more for Bob Fern's boat to go back to Straight Wharf, because it was right there at the Head of the Harbor. But after he got across Coatue, he just took the box off the boat and put his winch back on, and dropped the weapon over the side (of course that was a mistake, and it haunted him afterward; he was afraid somebody would dredge it up, and he kept trying to dredge it up himself, but he never did)—and then he went right to Haul-over Pond and picked up his bags of scallops. And then he went back to the wharf and showed his catch to Charley Piper, and Charley was impressed. So of course it was like an alibi: he'd been in the harbor all that time, working hard to get such a big catch at the end of the season.

So that's all. Of course it was a help that Homer was there in our house, because we knew what he was up to—like the time Boozer Brown hid that piece of Joe Green's car: Alden just went over there and took that case of beer.

There's one more thing I want to say, I've been so miserable about it. I worked against Alden without realizing it. Taking Kitty out there to the very spot in the harbor where he'd thrown the spear gun over the side! I never guessed he would have dropped it where it would show up at low tide. If she hadn't found the spear gun he would never have tried to kill her, and then maybe she would have come through that trial all right. Of course when Alden asked me for the key to Joe's shack I had no idea what he was about to do, so I gave him all the keys I'd copied from Helen's key ring, and one of them fitted. But when I saw what he was doing to Kitty, trapping her in there, starting a fire with kerosene, I couldn't stand it, hearing her scream. I unlocked the door to let her out and then I ran away and started walking home, crying my eyes out, keeping away from the beach and from the road. And then at home I discovered Jupiter was gone. So I put some cracked corn in my pocket and went looking for him, walking all over the island from one pond to another. I used to do the same thing when I was a girl. I slept two nights in Ram Pasture beside Hummock Pond. And at last there he was, coming down right near that place at Quaise where Helen Green had almost killed him. So we had come full circle.

And another thing. Before he left the house on the day of the eclipse, Alden told me to remove all those documents from Helen Green's safe deposit box. Well, I knew just how to do it. The bank was open that day because of the influx of visitors to the island, so I was right there doing my job. And then when everybody went outdoors to see the eclipse I ducked back inside the bank with my copy of Helen's key. There was nothing to it. It was just as though everybody had been struck blind or put to sleep for two minutes. I could have done anything.

I took the papers home and Alden burned them. So Helen never signed them. What will happen to that land of hers now? If this awful mess has been for nothing it will break my heart. Well, it's broken anyhow.

That's all I have to say.

Alice Dove

P.S. I forgot to mention what happened to the box Alden made for his boat. He set it up in Jupiter's pen and Jupiter's been living in it ever since.

P.P.S. And one more thing. That paperweight we've got with our initials on it, AD—it's not really our initials, of course. That chunk of Italian marble was the only thing Alden was able to bring up from that sunken luxury liner. It's a souvenir of the
Andrea Doria.

Homer put down Alice's deposition and looked at Kitty. Her face was blank.

“I saw him,” said Kitty.

“You saw him? You saw who?”

“Alden. I saw him at Great Point.”

“You
what?”

“A seal. I had forgotten. I thought he was a seal. I'd seen them in the water on the way to the lighthouse. No, really, I did see them. There were harbor seals in the water, three or four of them, with funny whiskery faces and flippers and tails. And then as I came close to the lighthouse I saw another one. Another shiny black head in the water. I thought it was a seal.”

Homer stared at Kitty, his mouth open.

“I'm sorry,” said Kitty.

“Good God,” said Homer.

42

“There she blows! there! there! there!

she blows! she blows!”

“Where-away?”

Moby Dick

Bob Fern came over to the house on Vestal Street at dawn to help Mary and Homer get their stuff to the boat. He had insisted they get up early because he had a couple of things he wanted to show them, he said.

The first was a rumpled tabloid called
The Naked Truth.
Homer and Mary goggled at the front-page picture of a grinning Arthur Bird with—good God, could it be Helen Green? It was Helen Green. Sometime or other the damn fool had succeeded in having his picture taken with Helen Green. The headlines that went with the picture were staggering.

“I WAS AN INSTRUMENT OF DESTINY!”

FINAL SECRETS OF MURDERED WOMAN REVEALED

Intimate Family Friend Was Confidant of Helen Green
ARTHUR BIRD BEGINS FIVE-PART SERIES IN THIS ISSUE:

It was I
who told Helen Green about the other woman in her husband's life. Two weeks before her death Helen came to me. She had discovered the truth about his
literary infidelity.
She knew that his novel had been written about
another woman.
Therefore
it was I
who told her all I knew about Joe Green's
BLAZING ROMANCE.
It was I
who knew Kitty Clark had been his wife in all but name, that she still wanted Joe, that she was coming to claim her own on the very day of the eclipse, the day that was
destined to be
Helen Green's last day on earth.

(
STORY
page 6)

“It was
you
, you goddamned interfering snoop, you creep, you bastard, it was
you
who did your damnedest to drag everybody down into the dirt you wallow in. Destiny, bullshit! Destiny's stool pigeon!” Homer dropped the paper on the floor and jumped on it.

“Me too,” said Mary. She jumped up and down beside Homer.

“Move over,” said Bob. The whole house shook. Bob sat down on a box labeled
PANKHURST.
“It explains one thing anyhow,” he said. “Why Helen was running around the island that morning, going to the observatory and Altar Rock and so on. She was looking for Kitty.”

“That's right, so it does,” said Homer. “She was going to tell her to get lost. And that's why she was in such a hurry to meet Kitty at the lighthouse. She wasn't going to invite her up. She was just going to say, ‘It's my bloody husband and my bloody lighthouse and my bloody island and my bloody sun, moon and stars, so, sister, you can just bloody well get the hell out.' And another thing—Joe told me somebody had broken into his shack and thrown the first draft of his novel around. It must have been Helen. She had a copy of his key, we know that. So it
was
Bluebeard's chamber. And Bluebeard's wife went into the forbidden room and discovered the corpse of his dead love right there in the shape of that first draft of Joe's novel, the one that had Kitty's name all through it. Aha!”

Mary leaned over and picked up The
Naked Truth.
“Does anybody want this anymore?”

“Hell, no,” said Homer.

“Well, then, help me tear it up. I'm going to flush it down the john.”

Bob Fern wanted to show them something else. So after they had loaded all of Mrs. Pankhurst into his car and all the rest of the boxes and suitcases into Homer's Chrysler, he said, “Follow me,” and drove ahead of them down the Polpis Road. There he pulled up in a familiar place among the weedy grass and sweet fern growing beside Alice Dove's mailbox. They all got out and walked along the driveway until Bob suddenly said, “In here,” and ducked to one side into the undergrowth. There was a narrow path heading off to the right.

It led to the Hidden Forest. Mary and Homer found themselves standing in a mossy hollow among thick trunks and heavy branches mottled with patches of red light from the rising sun. The dappled shade was lucid and serene.

“It was here all the time,” said Mary. “Think of that. Places like this can make you feel foolish, the way they go on quietly existing while you're running around frantically somewhere else, warning everybody the sky is falling down.”

“Well, maybe they go on existing, and then again maybe they don't,” said Homer. “Isn't the Hidden Forest part of Helen Green's property? What in the hell is going to happen to it, Fern?”

Bob Fern grinned at Homer. “That's what I wanted to tell you.” He turned and led them out of the grove of trees to the top of a hill from which they could look out over the moor. The risen sun shone pinkly on Bob's face and glittered on the polished leaves of the scrub oaks and made of every red-leaved shrub a burning bush as far as the eye could see. The fine hairs of the amber-colored grass gave back the color of the sky, and there were constellations and companies of asters and throngs of goldenrod, the scarlet hips of the rugosa rose sparkling among them like foreign stars. Far away on the horizon, a long low line was too blue and flat to be anything but the sea. “It doesn't have to go through probate court,” said Bob. “Because the land wasn't Helen's to sell. It was Joe's all the time.”

“What?” said Homer. “Joe's? But Helen inherited it!”

“That's what everybody thought. But they were wrong. The land was Joe's. He told me about it yesterday. He didn't know anything about it either, until he came to the island that first time to attend the funeral of his old Boatwright relative, and met Helen. Since he and Helen were the sole survivors, they went through all her grandfather's papers together, and they came upon this old deed that made it very plain that his side of the family had
bought out
her side a couple of generations back. The exchange had never been filed in the Registry, but the paper was legal, all right. So Helen had never owned the land at all. Well, when she understood that, she got to work on Joe and bowled him over and hogtied him and got the two sides of the family united in wedlock. So then, of course, they owned the land jointly. And then Joe wanted to put the land into a conservation trust that would keep it the way it was forever, but Helen didn't want any part of it. After a while he thought he had persuaded her, and she said she'd go along with the whole thing if he'd give her power of attorney, and she'd make it her special project and take care of the whole thing. And then of course she made this secret deal with Harmon. But she's gone, and the land is Joe's. So it's going to be all right! All this.” Impulsively Bob reached down and broke off a milkweed pod from a dry stalk and blew at the gossamer seedlings that clung to it, ready for flight.

Mary caught one, then let it fly again. “Thank God,” she said.

Homer gaped at Bob. “Jesus,” he said. “No kidding? What's Joe going to do with it? I wonder if he's made up his mind.”

The sunlight was shining through the floating wisps of thistledown, catching on the finespun polished threads. One of the seedlings caught in Bob Fern's hair and glistened there like a sign of special favor. “Well, it just so happens,” he said, “that I know what he's going to do with it. They asked me over for lunch, you see, yesterday, Joe and Kitty, there at Mr. Biddle's place. And Joe told me he's going to put the whole thing into a nature conservancy district. That means there won't even be any picnic tables or parking lots for tourists. Just jack rabbits and white-tailed deer and goldenrod and milkweed and—and me.”