Lethal Legend (8 page)

Apparently, the long johns would stay on. Over them, with Mr. Carstairs’s help, Ennis donned a waterproof suit made of rubber. Next came a curved metal plate that covered his upper chest and back and had studs protruding from it.

Diana moved closer to get a better look.

“The opening for the head and neck is surrounded by a waterproof gasket,” Mr. Carstairs said, seeing her interest.

He drew the upper edges of the suit up and over the breastplate, matching each hole in the suit to a stud. Then he placed metal straps over the studs and made them tight with wingnuts, sandwiching the suit between the breastplate and the straps to create a waterproof joint. Lastly, he dropped a huge brass helmet into the opening of the breastplate and locked it in place with a one-eighth turn.

Two flexible hoses rose out of the helmet. Remembering what Mr. Somener had told them earlier, Diana studied them with considerable curiosity. One went in close to the right ear. The other was aimed directly at the mouth. She could see that the first hose was connected to the pump. The second, however, was not. It appeared to be a speaking tube of some sort.

“Safe as houses,” Carstairs proclaimed, giving the helmet a smack. “Everything is sealed tight, so there’s no risk of filling up with water. And as you can see, air comes in through a hose, supplied by a force pump, to circulate freely through both the helmet and the suit.”

“How does the pump work?”

“It’s hand operated, designed for use in warm, shallow water. It supplies air from the surface. Amity and I will man it from the tender while Ennis drops over the side of the boat and walks along the bottom, looking for any odd formations. Something shaped like the hull of a ship would be nice.” He grinned, and a gold tooth glinted in the sun.

“I wouldn’t call the water off this coast particularly warm,” Ben remarked. “Or all that shallow, either.”

Carstairs shrugged. “It’s mid-June. The water temperature is no longer frigid. And soundings indicate it’s no deeper than about forty feet out there where the ledge drops off.”

Carstairs’s confidence and the care she’d witnessed him take to outfit Ennis convinced Diana she should not worry overmuch about Mr. Ennis’s safety. Carstairs seemed to know what he was doing, and she was frankly fascinated by the idea that they might find something underwater after all this time.

When the men were in the boat and on their way out to the spot where Mr. Ennis would go overboard, she turned to Miss Dunbar. “I am surprised you aren’t in the tender with the others.”

The archaeologist responded with an unfriendly glare, but Graham Somener seemed to have recovered from his fit of temper and become mellow once more. “There isn’t room enough,” he told her, “and since it is a two-man pump, it only made sense to leave the physical labor to Amity and Carstairs.”

Diana didn’t bother to ask about the underwater work. Just imagining it caused a delicate shudder to pass through her. How closed in it must feel in that suit. In Mr. Ennis’s place, she knew it would be all she could do not to scream at the sound of the bolts fastening the helmet in place. No, she did not believe she would care to spend any time deep under water. She enjoyed new experiences but there was a line between adventurous and foolhardy.

“How does Mr. Ennis get back to the boat?” she asked Mr. Somener.

“He wears weights to take him down to the bottom and keep him there. When he’s ready to surface, he removes them and floats up. The weights are secured by a separate line so they can be pulled up afterward.”

“And he is looking for an unusual formation or shape on the bottom?”

“An anomaly of some sort, yes,” Miss Dunbar interrupted, the desire to lecture on her area of expertise evidently overcoming her aversion to talking to a journalist. “Assuming anything
did
survive the shipwreck, that is the most likely place to find it. You see the way that bit juts out?” She indicated the curve of land that contained Ben’s cave. “If the ship sank—during a storm perhaps—while anchored in that spot ... “

Her voice trailed off. Frowning, she shaded her eyes, trying to get a better look at what her men were doing.

Ennis went over the side with a barely audible splash.

“Four hundred and eighty-seven years is a long time for anything to survive,” Diana said.

Miss Dunbar shot an accusing glance in Mr. Somener’s direction. “You
told
her?”

“If I hadn’t, Ben would have.”

“Was it a fishing vessel, Miss Dunbar? I suppose shipwrecked fishermen would have had to settle where they were wrecked, but would they have stayed on Keep Island long? Surely they’d have been able to build some sort of water craft, a raft at least, and reach the mainland.”

“They were
not
fishermen. They came to these shores intending to stay. To colonize.”

“So early?” If Diana remembered her lessons, the first settlers in America had been at Jamestown, and then at Plymouth in Massachusetts. She was fairly certain those settlements dated from the seventeenth century, not the fifteenth.

“If Europeans sailed this far in medieval times, they discovered not only rich fishing grounds but also unlimited forests. In the Old World, supplies of timber had been badly depleted by the fifteenth century. It only makes sense that some early entrepreneur would think of establishing a colony to harvest and export wood.”

“You’re saying they meant to found a trading center?”

“I believe so, yes. And I believe that the colonists who came here to Keep Island originally set out from Scotland. They wanted timber for shipbuilding, in particular for masts. No doubt they also wanted the advantage this would give them over their traditional enemy. That was England,” Miss Dunbar added, sounding a bit condescending.

“How do you know all this? “

“Years of research.” Miss Dunbar’s brusque tone would have discouraged further questions from anyone less determined.

“Even if Mr. Ennis finds remnants of a ship, how can you possibly prove—?” Diana broke off when Miss Dunbar caught her forearm.

“There’s a second boat out there.”

“There are dozens of boats plying the waters of Penobscot Bay,” Diana said.

“There!” She pointed. “At anchor. Carrying two men.”

She was right. There was a small vessel a short distance from the tender, in an excellent position to observe the dive. Archaeological rivals? Reporters? Or simply curious passersby?

Miss Dunbar swore under her breath.

“Looks like a dory,” Graham Somener said. “Most likely fishermen from one of the neighboring islands.” He did not sound unduly concerned about its presence.

“Whoever they are, they’ve no business here,” Miss Dunbar complained.

“Shall I have MacDougall fire a warning shot?”

“Your sarcasm in not appreciated, Graham!” In her irritation, Miss Dunbar so far forgot formality as to use her host’s given name. The slip, and the similar one Somener had made earlier, confirmed Diana’s suspicions about the nature of their relationship.

Somener peered at the distant craft. “One of them has binoculars. I can see the sun reflecting off the glass. Damnation! There’s no such thing as privacy anymore.”

“We have a bigger problem,” Ben said in a strained voice. “Something’s wrong on the tender.”

Diana shifted her gaze to the other boat. Carstairs and Amity had abandoned the pump. They were leaning over the side, tugging at the cables and hoses that led beneath the surface to Frank Ennis.

“Dear Lord!” Miss Dunbar whispered in a tone that made Diana’s chest go tight with sudden fear.

Ben was already moving, stripping off his coat and shedding his shoes as he ran towards the shore. Graham Somener hesitated only a moment before following suit.

“Ben! No!”

Ignoring Diana, Ben plunged into the water and struck out for the tender. He was a good swimmer. He’d told her so himself. But that knowledge was not enough to keep Diana’s heart out of her throat.

“It’s already too late.” Miss Dunbar’s voice was thready and Diana had never seen such a ghastly color in a living face. “If the pump failed, they’ll never get him back to the surface in time. He’s already run out of air. Frank is already dead.”

Chapter Four

Heartsick, Diana could not take her eyes off the tender. She wanted to look away but couldn’t. Her stomach clenched and she gulped in air, imagining what it must be like to be trapped underwater, struggling to breathe. As she watched, beset by a terrible sense of helplessness, the swimmers finally reached the boat.

With what seemed to be excruciating slowness, Frank Ennis’s limp body was hoisted aboard. Although the men worked frantically to get him out of the diving suit and Ben was clearly doing all he could to revive him, nothing had any effect. Well before they began their slow journey back to shore, it was obvious to Diana that Miss Dunbar had been right. Frank Ennis was dead.

“How could the pump fail as long as your men kept working it?”

“I don’t know.”

Miss Dunbar’s voice was so flat that Diana turned to look at her. Her expression was equally devoid of emotion. She stood with her arms tightly pressed against her sides and her hands fisted, stiff and silent as a statue. Only the tracks of tears on her cheeks betrayed the depth of her feelings for the dead man.

Belatedly, Diana remembered that they were not the only women on the beach. She glanced at Mrs. Monroe and found on her face all the shock and grief she’d expected to see on Miss Dunbar’s. Diana hadn’t thought Mrs. Monroe knew the archaeologists except in passing. They’d been camping out, doing their own cooking, until ... until they’d been poisoned.

Diana frowned. Was it possible? Could this, somehow, be connected to the earlier attempt on the lives of Ennis, Carstairs, and Amity?

When Somener’s two watchmen had pulled the tender up on shore, Diana picked her way towards it, careful to avoid sharp rocks, clumps of wet seaweed, and barnacles. Miss Dunbar pushed ahead of her. By the time Diana caught up, the other woman stood beside the boat, staring without visible emotion into the lifeless face of Frank Ennis.

“He’s dead,” Ben said. “Murdered.”

The bald announcement did not surprise Diana. It only confirmed her worst fear. On almost everyone else, however, it had the effect of a firecracker in a church.

Miss Dunbar took a quick step back, hands raised as if to ward off a blow. Mrs. Monroe gasped. MacDougall went stiff as a poker, except for the quivering of his mustache. Landrigan started, then looked wildly about, as if he expected an ax-wielding madman to leap out from behind the nearest boulder.

Only the men in the tender failed to react. Diana presumed that was because they’d already heard Ben’s opinion on the cause of death.

Miss Dunbar recovered first. “What are you talking about?” Irritation brought bright spots of color into her cheeks. “He can’t have been murdered. It was an accident. A tragic accident.” Her voice broke on the last word.

It was not that Miss Dunbar did not have softer emotions, Diana decided. She was simply adept at hiding them.

“See for yourself.” Ben indicated a section of the hose attached to Ennis’s helmet.

Diana’s eyes widened when she observed its condition. The once-smooth surface was now horribly corroded, pitted and broken to the point where water had been able to get in.

“I admit I’m no expert,” Ben said, “but I don’t need to be to see that this hose has been treated with a chemical—an acid of some sort that reacted to the salt water—causing it to eat into the hose. My best guess is that all seemed well until after Ennis reached bottom. Then the hose failed too quickly for him to do anything to save himself.”

“Horrible,” Mrs. Monroe whispered, turning away. Diana hadn’t even realized she’d followed them down to the tender.

It
was
horrible, she thought. It was also part and parcel of the strange happenings on Keep Island. Graham Somener’s request to his old friend had placed Ben smack in the middle of Somener’s troubles.

“Did he say anything?” Diana asked Paul Carstairs. “Shout for help? Indicate he needed to be hauled up?”

“Nothing,” Carstairs said.

George Amity confirmed it. “Not a peep.”

“It was only when I asked Frank a question through the speaking tube and didn’t get an answer that I realized something was wrong. From our end, the pump looked to be going great guns. The air must have been venting straight into the bay.” The hand Carstairs scraped over his pale face trembled.

“Shouldn’t there have been bubbles?” Diana asked. “If the hose failed, shouldn’t you have seen bubbles rising to the surface?”

“Didn’t notice,” Amity admitted.

“Wouldn’t matter,” Carstairs said quickly. “As long as Frank’s diving weights were still in place, we wouldn’t have been able to haul him out quickly enough to save him.”  

Miss Dunbar had been examining the diving suit and helmet they’d taken off the body. “There was nothing wrong with this equipment earlier today. Frank inspected it himself. He was always careful.”

“If it was acid applied to the hose,” Ben said, “it might not have been visible.”

He’d retrieved his coat and shoes but did not put them back on. He was dripping wet and shivering, as was Graham Somener. Miss Dunbar didn’t seem to notice.

“Wouldn’t it smell? Feel odd to the touch? I tell you he checked
every
thing.”

“I don’t know what might have been used.” Ben’s teeth had started to chatter and Diana was relieved to see that Mrs. Monroe had gone to the tents to fetch blankets off the cots. “I can only say this looks like the kind of damage acid would cause.”

“Could someone have tampered with the hose between the time Mr. Ennis last checked it and the time he went into the water?” Diana took a blanket from the housekeeper and wrapped it around Ben’s shoulders. His shirt was icy to the touch. Who would have supposed that the water in the bay would be so cold in the middle of June?

Miss Dunbar’s breath hissed in through her teeth. Diana had the feeling she was silently cursing. She didn’t answer at first. When she did, disgust was rife in her voice. “Frank—Mr. Ennis—and Mr. Carstairs loaded all the gear into the tender. Then they went to the kitchen for something to eat. Anyone on the island could have gotten at that hose.”