Dark Nantucket Noon (6 page)

“But unless all those people are lying—Mr. and Mrs. Roper and Arthur Bird and Joe—then it couldn't have been any of them. They were all up at the top of the lighthouse together the whole time. And they didn't see another soul.”

“It was dark, don't forget. For two or three minutes it was almost as dark as a moonless night. That's a long time. Anything could have happened. And the people up at the top of the lighthouse were further blinded because the light turned on. That little room up there was flooded with light.”

“The light turned on?” said Kitty. “You mean the
lighthouse
light?”

“Yes. It's operated by an electric eye, and turns on automatically when the sky gets dark. So naturally at the instant of totality it turned on. The people in the same room with the light had a poor view of the eclipse, because the pupils of their eyes were suddenly so constricted.”

“But I should think a tremendous light like that would have blinded them! Wasn't it dangerous?”

“Oh, no. There's a lot of candlepower in the thing, but it's concentrated by the lens system to throw a narrow beam way out to sea. Up close it doesn't seem bright. That's what they tell me.”

“It's funny I didn't notice it was on.”

“Well, you were looking the other way. And immediately afterward there was enough light in the sky so the light turned off.”

“Homer,” said Kitty, hit by a sudden stroke of genius. “You don't suppose she killed herself?”

“Killed herself? Stabbed herself somehow? Well, how did she stab herself and then hide the knife while she was expiring? For God's sake, girl, don't cringe like that. What did you say?”

“I said it was the moon.”

“Well,” said Homer gloomily, rolling a piece of red wax in his fingers, “that's as good an explanation as any of the others that come to mind. By the time I got there yesterday the place was one mess of sand, as if an army of little children had been digging with giant buckets and shovels. But Chief Pike made two things very clear, getting there as quickly as he did in that amphibious vehicle of the Coast Guard's before the tide came up again. Nobody—
nobody
walked up out of the water anywhere around that point, because the marks of their feet in the wet sand would have been distinctly visible, and there weren't any around that whole end of Great Point above the Gauls—that's what they call that long narrow place where it's all one beach, you know, that place where the water was rolling over and you got wet. The sand was undisturbed. Except for the car tracks and your little tootsies, naturally. They've got pictures of your footprints galloping up. And the other thing Pike said was that Helen's movements were plain. She came a couple of steps out of the lighthouse and dropped in her tracks. Died almost immediately. Couldn't have bled for more than four or five minutes before her heart stopped pumping.”

Kitty was sinking deeper and deeper into despair, her head drooping in her hand. Homer looked at her, then thumped his glass down on the table and picked up a quarterly review. “Say,” he said, “isn't this the one with your thing in it? The one with all the
q'
s? Yes, here it is—‘Quit me no quits.' And all those queries and quixoticisms and querulousnesses. That's the one.”

“Oh, did you like that?” Kitty smiled. “I had fun with all those
q'
s.” She sat up suddenly. “Two things, Homer. First. I've got a lot of my salary saved up, and I can pay you more money anytime. How about right now?”

“Oh, Jesus, no. I've been well enough paid already. If I want more, I'll tell you. For God's sake, shut up.”

“Well, all right, but I'm not a charity case. I'm going to pay you what's right and proper. Second. I'm going back to Nantucket. I'll miss my classes for the rest of the year, but I know Dr. Winter will take over for me, and the university would probably be better off without an embarrassing person like me on its hands anyway.”

“But Jesus Christ, what are you going back there
for?”

“I've got to find out what really happened to Helen Green.”

“You don't trust me.” Homer stood up, offended. “My God, you get hired and fired pretty damned fast by some people.”

“No, no, Homer, it isn't that.” Kitty stood up too and grinned at him. “I just have this feeling that it's not just a matter of finding blood on things, and so on. If I knew a little more about the island, maybe I could help you.”

“I see. You might discover that the moon makes a habit of falling on Great Point once a week. Okay, girl, I know what you mean. And I'd be grateful for that kind of help. Every police department ought to have an officer in charge of spiritual investigation. Serious deficiency in law enforcement and citizen protection throughout the land. I wish you could stay with the Doves, where I am, but they've only got the one spare room. I'm crowded in with old scallop dredges and fishing rods and lobster pots and boat hooks and rubber boots and nautical charts and coils of rope, and sometimes I even expect to feel the tide rising around my bed. But you won't have any trouble finding a place to stay. It'll be easy. After all, it's off season.”

7

“All hands bury the dead, ahoy!”

MELVILLE
,
White Jacket

Homer was wrong. Off season or not, Nantucket did not open hospitable arms to take an indicted murderer to its breast.

Kitty came over on Thursday on the boat from Woods Hole, the back seat of her car loaded with clothes and books. She drove straight up Main Street, looking right and left, hunting for a place to spend the night, and stopped in front of a house where a sign,
GUESTS
, hung on the railing of the front porch. Yes, the old lady had a room to rent. Just sign the guest book, please. But when Kitty signed her name the old woman sucked in her breath and looked at her queerly. “Oh, you're the one that's in today's paper,” she said, nodding her head at a copy of the
Inquirer and Mirror
, which was lying open beside the guest book. For a moment Kitty was afraid the woman would ask her to leave. But instead the old lady handed her a key with trembling fingers. “Number twenty-one,” she said. “At the top of the stairs.”

“May I borrow the newspaper?” said Kitty.

“Help yourself,” said the woman. Then she scuttled sideways, her eyes round and frightened, and disappeared into her parlor, slamming the door and rattling a key in the lock on the other side.

Kitty had an impulse to kneel in front of the door and scream boo through the keyhole. But instead she picked up her suitcase and the newspaper and walked upstairs. She sat down on the bed and looked at the front page.

It made her wince. At the top there was a blurred photograph of someone she faintly recognized, the face washed out and staring, one hand up as if in self-defense. Behind this dim person was Homer Kelly, large and solid in the doorway. Cheek by jowl with this picture there was another photograph of another couple in another doorway, a church doorway this time, and it was all broad smiles, radiant bride, grinning bridegroom, Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Green on their wedding day. It was Helen and Joe, and Joe was like a bridegroom leaving his chamber, like a strong man running his course with joy.…

Triangle
, shrieked the pictures, so crudely juxtaposed.
Triangle
, shrieked some accuser in Kitty's head. Of course the newspaper was too refined to use such a word, but the inference was clear that this off-island madwoman, insane with jealousy, this obscene person of “a voluptuous appearance”—incredulous, Kitty read the words again: “a voluptuous appearance”—had apparently committed first-degree murder, killing with malice aforethought the island's most precious citizen, Helen Boatwright Green, beloved bride of …

There was another photograph of Helen on page two, with a tearful obituary. “Distinguished island ancestry … a marriage that seemed predestined by a happy fate … the last survivors of this historic Nantucket family joined in wedlock … Helen Boatwright Green … youth, beauty … selfless devotion to the Nantucket Protection Society … inspiration of her life to all who knew her … grief of her bereaved husband, whose book about their marriage is still a best seller … hundreds turned away at the church.”
Shock, despair, horror
, exclaimed the
Inquirer and Mirror.

Well, don't look at me
, said Kitty to herself.
It isn't my fault. And so it isn't a triangle at all, you see. After all, it was Helen and Joe who were the children of destiny, not me. I was just a random episode in the distant past.
The paper drooped in Kitty's hand. With a deliberate effort she slapped it open and looked for advertisements for real estate. There was a big one on page four. She picked up the telephone beside the bed and dialed the number.

“Magee Realty,” said the telephone. “Mrs. Wilhelmina Magee speaking.”

“Hello, Mrs. Magee. I'm looking for a house or an apartment to rent. Do you handle rentals?”

“Yes, we do. I'm sure we can do something for you, Miss …?”

“Clark. Katharine Clark. And I'd just as soon not be right in the town. Would there be anything a little farther out?”

The telephone fell silent. Then Mrs. Magee said, “I'm
terribly
sorry, Miss Clark, but, would you believe it, every single one of our rentals has been taken. You might try the Miller cottages. You'll find them in the phone book.
Good
-bye.”

Doggedly Kitty worked her way through the ads in the paper. At last she ran across a man who didn't boggle at her name, and he drove over to the guesthouse on Main Street and took her to see a couple of places on the north side of town.

“They're very nice,” said Kitty. “But I really would like to be farther out, where I could be a little more private.”

“Well, zheesh, it's too bad. I don't have a thing out of town right now, except for one listing. But it wouldn't be right for you at all. Old Mr. Biddle's place. Old chap didn't keep the place up.”

Kitty was interested at once. “Where is it?” she said. “Is it cheaper than the others? That would be great.”

“It's out the Polpis Road. It's not anywhere near the beach. Way down a dirt road. Doesn't even have an inside toilet. You wouldn't—”

“Really, I don't mind. It sounds fine.”

The realtor, whose name was Flakeley, shrugged his shoulders and looked significantly at his watch. What he meant was, customers like Kitty should accept his professional opinion and shut up—after all, he had been twenty-five years in the business. But Kitty insisted. “Okay, sister, it's your funeral,” said Mr. Flakeley. Grumpily he eased his expensive car away from the curb, drove through town and turned out on the Polpis Road.

It was a gray day. Kitty found herself looking at the Nantucket landscape as if she had never seen it before. She had been this way twice, that day last week. But she hadn't seen it at all—the wind-swept trees, the colored fields, the thick silvery undergrowth. “Why, it's beautiful,” she said, turning to Mr. Flakeley.

“Beautiful?” said Mr. Flakeley, “Oh, sure: Beautiful.” The word seemed to offend him. “That's what
they
always say. After a while it makes you puke.”

“They?”

“Conservation types. Holier than thou. That Nantucket Protection Society. Creeps.” Mr. Flakeley began to talk, almost to himself, slumbering resentments whining in his voice: partly at Kitty, who was wasting his time this way, partly at the damn-fool snobs in the Nantucket Protection Society, who were trying to ruin his livelihood by keeping people out. “That's what they're really saying, that bunch: ‘Stay out. This island is our personal property. You can't have it.' Or they gas away about the goddamn birds, as if birds were more important than people. What difference does it make to a bird if it lands on this tree or that tree? I ask you. It's still got about a million trees to land on, on this island.”

Kitty was curious. “You mean people are trying to keep Nantucket from being built on anymore? And that's not good for real estate?”

“You can say that again. Got a new bylaw.” Mr. Flakeley glanced at Kitty balefully. “Here we have all these nice potential buyers, would like to live here, build a house. They've got the money too. They'd like to put up a nice home in a high-class neighborhood. You know as well as I do that people like that aren't about to clutter up the island with cheap jerry-built cottages. They're well-to-do. Nice people. Probably spend half their time feeding the goddamn birds. But no, those snobs with their Nantucket Protection Society won't let an honest man pick up one square acre of their precious sacred holy soil. You'd think Jesus Christ had personally peed on every square inch of it. Excuse me.”

Kitty felt herself warming to this big crass brute. “This new bylaw—it will really make a difference?”