Lethal Legend (11 page)

Miss Dunbar blinked and managed, for a moment, to focus on Diana. “People keep trying to ruin my plans,” she whined. “Not fair.”

“Perhaps you should change your plans,” Diana suggested.

She might
not
go through with her confidence game, Diana realized. Why should she? The confidence woman could retire and let the fortune hunter take over, assuming it hadn’t been her intention from the first to snare Graham Somener. She appeared to have succeeded, though to what degree it was difficult to tell. Certainly there was something between them ... just as there had been something between Serena and Frank Ennis.

Diana thought again of what Justus Palmer had told her. There were reports of criminal activity on Keep Island—recent criminal activity. That sounded to her as if the rumors had sprung up at just about the same time the so-called archaeologists arrived on Keep Island.

A third possibility occurred to her. Perhaps Miss Serena Dunbar herself was the leader of a band of smugglers. Not a confidence game at all, nor fortune hunting, but an elaborate cover for more nefarious activities. And if there had been a falling out among thieves, if Frank Ennis had become a threat, she’d—

The soft thud of a brandy bottle hitting the carpet interrupted Diana’s theorizing. The next sound she heard was a soft snore.

Miss Dunbar would not answer any more questions tonight. Sprawled fully dressed across the foot of her bed, she was out like the proverbial light.

Chapter Five

It was late morning before the sheriff, county attorney, and coroner arrived. Just as well, Ben decided. He had stayed up late the previous night, drinking brandy and smoking Graham’s very fine imported cigars. The two of them had avoided the subject of murder, reminiscing instead about their shared boyhood. Diana had briefly reappeared to say that Miss Dunbar had retired for the night and then had gone off to bed herself.

Ben had not risen until ten and had not yet had a private word today with his fiancée. He was pleased to see she looked well rested and alert. Miss Dunbar decidedly did not. Her eyes were bloodshot, as if she had been crying, and the area beneath them had the hollow, bruised look he usually associated with lingering illness. 

They gathered in Graham’s parlor, where Mrs. Monroe had set out pots of coffee and of tea, together with an assortment of pastries. The sheriff greeted the sight of these with delight.

“Missed my morning meal,” Dorephus Fields explained. “Had to start out some early to travel the eighteen miles between Ellsworth and Bucksport on horseback.” The others had waited for him there and the entire party had set out as soon as he’d arrived. This being Sunday, the
Miss Min
did not make her regular delivery run, but the county attorney, Oscar Fellows, had commandeered her for their journey.

Fellows, a tall, thin man with a neatly trimmed, if somewhat sparse, beard, edged closer to Ben’s side as Ben poured himself a cup of coffee. “Dr. Northcote.”

“Mr. Fellows.”

“You were only recently involved in another sensational case, as I recall.”

Which one? Ben wondered. But of course Fellows would only know about the murderer captured in Bangor back at the beginning of April. Ben and Diana had expected to be called to testify at the trial, but in the end there had been no need. Instead of languishing in prison, the villain was now being cared for in the Maine Insane Hospital in Augusta. To Ben’s mind that fate was far worse than simple incarceration.

Aloud he said only, “My duties as city coroner frequently bring me in contact with murder.”

“And the lady?”

“My fiancée, do you mean?”

“Ah. Congratulations are in order, then. She is a charming creature.”

Ben presented Fellows to Diana and the others and they made small talk until the coroner finished viewing the body and joined them. Frank Ennis’s remains had been stored in the ice house, together with his diving suit.

Ben had purposely stayed away, to avoid any suggestion he might be trying to influence the coroner’s observations. With the coroner were his clerk and six stalwart citizens of Bucksport, Captain Cobb among them, who had been duly sworn in and instructed to declare whether the victim had died by felony, mischance, or accident.

That part of the proceedings did not take long. When the eight men had assembled in the parlor, Graham Somener urged them to help themselves to refreshments. He was not happy about the invasion of his island, but he’d resolved to make the best of it.

The coroner refused food or coffee, impatient to begin. He was a young man, fresh out of medical school and cocky with it, but he seemed to know his job. He announced that everyone who had been present on the beach at the time of the death would be called upon to give a statement, which would written down by the clerk. Familiar with the drill, Ben offered to go first.

“Do you solemnly swear that the evidence which you shall give to the inquest, concerning the death of the person here lying dead, shall be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?”

“I do.”

“State your name, place of residence, and profession.”

“Benjamin Northcote, Bangor, physician.”

The coroner’s sharp look told Ben the other man had heard of him, but in what context Ben could not guess. When asked what he’d observed, Ben gave a full account of the previous afternoon’s events, concluding with his discovery that the air hose had been tampered with.

With each word, Graham Somener’s expression grew darker. He could not contradict what Ben said, but he did not like having it become part of the official record. When Ben volunteered the story of the earlier incident of morphine poisoning, Graham’s hands curled into fists at his sides. It all sounded much worse when couched as testimony.

Once Ben had finished, the others were called up one by one. Paul Carstairs, looking distraught, described how the diving equipment worked and explained that he and Amity had been unaware of Ennis’s difficulties until it was too late to save him. Amity said much the same thing.

When it was Serena Dunbar’s turn, she came forward reluctantly and it was clear she was not only in an emotional state but suffering physically, as well. Headache, Ben diagnosed. Perhaps a migraine, since she appeared to be sensitive to light.

For once she’d dressed conservatively, in a plain, reddish-brown dress with a small bustle. She spoke in a quiet—almost inaudible—voice.

“I know this must be trying for you, Miss Dunbar.” The brusque manner the coroner had used to question the men vanished and he all but patted her hand in an effort to reassure her of his kindly intentions. “I’ll be brief. You have heard what the others said. Does that agree with your memory of events?”

“Yes, sir, it does, except for one thing.”

“And what is that, Miss Dunbar?”

She took a moment to collect herself. “I do not believe anyone deliberately murdered Mr. Ennis. Some chemical must have been spilled on the air hose by accident. We have photographic supplies, strong cleansers ... with our equipment. I—” She broke off, apparently overcome.

“Take your time, Miss Dunbar.”

“Yes. Thank you.” Then she leaned forward, sincerity radiating from every pore. “It is a terrible thing to speak ill of the dead, but Mr. Ennis, although a brilliant archaeologist, was sometimes careless. And a bit of a daredevil. He wanted to make that dive very badly, to prove he’d recovered from the ... food poisoning. I fear he may not have been as thorough as he should have been about examining his equipment.”

With that she lowered her face into her handkerchief—very prettily—and her shoulders heaved just enough to suggest silent tears. Skeptical, Ben caught Diana’s eyes and saw there a reflection of his own doubts.

Graham, who echoed Miss Dunbar’s opinion that both the morphine poisoning and the damaged air hose might have been no more than terrible accidents, Mrs. Monroe, and the two watchmen were deposed in short order. After their testimony, the coroner’s jury acted with dispatch, declaring that Frank Ennis “died of drowning on the 16
th
of June, A.D. 1888 by means as yet unknown.”

Miss Dunbar’s testimony had planted seeds of doubt, as she’d intended. With no evidence to indicate what person had killed Frank Ennis, or even if he had been murdered, the coroner was unable to order Sheriff Fields to arrest anyone. He ordered his clerk write out the official verdict and adjourned the inquest.

Ben caught Graham’s arm and hauled him out of earshot of the others. “What was that all about? I thought we agreed to tell the truth.”

“How do you know that
wasn’t
the truth? Accidents happen.”

“This was no accident!”

“Let it go, Ben. Let the law decide.”

Unfortunately, Ben did not have a great deal of confidence in the law just now, not when the young coroner seemed inclined to believe anything Serena Dunbar told him. “At least be careful. If someone
did
murder Ennis—”

“We may all end up dead? This isn’t one of Damon Bathory’s tales of terror, but I will take precautions. And I still want to know more about this Palmer fellow who questioned Mrs. Spaulding.”

Swallowing everything else he wanted to say, Ben again promised to see what he could find out. What else could he do? Graham was still his friend.

“Ready to go?” Diana called from a short distance away. While Ben had confronted Graham, she had collected his carpet bag and doctor’s satchel as well as her gripsack.

“Be careful,” Ben warned again. He had more than potential murderers in mind. He had serious reservations about leaving Graham to the tender mercies of Miss Serena Dunbar.

He’d done all he could, he told himself as he joined Diana and they headed for the steamboat wharf. At least there was one bright spot in the day. The
Miss Min
was not bound by her regular schedule. They would be back in Bucksport in time to catch the afternoon train to Bangor. 

A short time later, as they chugged away from Keep Island, Fellows joined Ben and Diana at the rail. “Have you known Somener long, Dr. Northcote?” he asked.

“Most of my life.”

“Good man?”

“He’s not a likely murder suspect.” Ben firmly believed that, although he knew that Diana was not so certain.

“I didn’t say he was, but his name has come up in connection with another matter. Have you ever heard of a fellow named Justus Palmer? Seems he paid a visit to the sheriff last evening to inquire about your friend.”

Ben felt Diana tense at his side and reached down to give her gloved hand a squeeze where it rested on the railing. He listened without comment as Fellows detailed Palmer’s claims—the same insubstantial charges he’d voiced to Diana.

“I think I’d like to the sheriff’s first-hand account,” Ben said when Fellows had finished.

“I believe the he has gone to fetch that picnic basket Mrs. Monroe sent along.” Graham had not invited any of them to stay for Sunday dinner.

Over cold chicken and hard-boiled eggs, Ben set about discovering what Dorephus Fields knew of Justus Palmer.

“Came by the house,” Fields said. “About eight o’clock, it was. Said he was a detective working on a case.”

“And you took his word for that?”

Fields balanced a chicken leg on a napkin on his knee and fished in his vest pocket for a piece of pasteboard. “He gave me this.”

Engraved on the card were the words “Justus Palmer, Private Inquiry Agent” and Palmer’s business address in Boston. In the corner, in smaller letters, it read, “Discretion Guaranteed.”

“I asked him if he was a Pinkerton man,” Fields said, “and he said he was more akin to James R. Wood.”

“I don’t know that name,” Diana interjected.

“James R. Wood? He’s a Boston policeman who started his own detective agency in that city. I met him once. He’s often called in on cases in Maine and New Hampshire. Hard to miss him. Bushy eyebrows. Oversize mustache. Dapper dresser. And he’s one smart fella. The way he solved that constable’s murder down to Bath four or five years back was some impressive.”

“Matchsticks, wasn’t it, that led him to the killer?” Ben remembered reading about the case.

Fields nodded. “As clever a piece of detecting as I’ve ever heard.”

The sheriff seemed to have a far more vivid recollection of Wood’s appearance than Palmer’s and was likewise vague about what he’d told the Boston detective.

“Did he question you about Keep Island?” Ben asked.

“Now that you mention it ....” Fields’s vacant stare was not encouraging, but after a moment he added, “Said something about criminal activity.” He reached for another hard-boiled egg. “I told him I never heard nothing about anything illegal going on there in the whole five years Somener’s been wintering on the island. Then he said it was likely a recent development and that he’d send someone to investigate except that visitors aren’t welcome on Mr. Somener’s private island. Said I could go, since I’ve got jurisdiction over all of Hancock County.” Fields snorted. “Can’t just go barging in for no reason. Told him that.”

“But by eight o’clock last night, you must already have known you’d be visiting the island today,” Diana interrupted. “Why didn’t you tell him you’d check into the matter at the same time you investigated Frank Ennis’s death?”

The look of bewilderment on the sheriff’s face troubled Ben. It was almost as if he couldn’t remember parts of his visit from Justus Palmer. “I must have been some tired,” Fields muttered, more to himself than to them. “I shouldn’t have said anything about that.”

“So you
did
tell him someone might have been murdered?” Diana’s fingers twitched, as if she could barely contain the impulse to make notes.

The sheriff scratched his head and the frown lines around his mouth deepened. “Must have, because I remember inviting him to come along this morning. Shouldn’t have done that. Good thing he turned me down.”

Ben exchanged a puzzled look with Diana. “He had a chance to visit Keep Island and he didn’t take it?”

“Nope.” Fields relaxed and helped himself to more chicken. “Seems he’s got a tendency towards seasickness.”