Dark Nantucket Noon (13 page)

“Closed? The stores were all closed? I know some people had to work that day.” Homer thought of Alice Dove in the Pacific National Bank and Alden out in his scalloping boat in the harbor. “So you set off with Richard and Letty Roper in your jeep around noon, is that right? I suppose they're your closest friends on the island?”

There was a pause. (Ah, what is a friend, reflected Homer philosophically.) “Closest friends—well, yes, I guess so. They were both born here, like Helen. They had all known each other for a long time.”

“And when you got to Great Point you found Arthur Bird there waiting for you?”

Joe grimaced in mocking self-pity. “Yes, Bird was there.”

Homer abandoned his official grimness and smiled. “Ass of a fellow.”

Joe said nothing, but the muscles around his mouth twitched a little, as though he might smile himself.

“When did the four of you start up the stairs?”

“Just a little while before the total part of the eclipse began. There was some kind of effect Dick wanted to see from up there.”

“The shadow bands,” murmured Homer. “Some people at Altar Rock, where I was, put a sheet down on the ground. We saw them, flickering shadows across the sheet, just before totality. Did you see them from the lighthouse?”

“I don't know whether the others did or not. I—I forgot to look for them.”

(Because you were watching Kitty.) “You saw Katharine Clark approaching across the sand. Did you recognize her?”

“I—I thought I did. Then when she took off her sunglasses I was sure.” Joe had turned his face away. He was studying the blank surface of the roller shade. “And then Bird spoke up. He said her name.”

“Did the name mean anything to your wife?”

Again there was a pause. “No, I don't think so.”

“Did you have any pictures of Kitty in the house?”

Joe flushed. “No.”

Homer stared at the roller shade too, where a vision of Kitty running across the sand was as clear as if it had been projected on a screen. “At any rate,” he said, “your wife started downstairs. It was a dangerous staircase, wasn't it?”

Joe turned wretchedly to Homer. “Don't you think I know that? I should never have let her go.”

“You loved your wife?” Homer's voice was flat.

A wave passed over Joe's face, and he seemed about to burst out, but then with obvious difficulty he mastered himself and said almost inaudibly, “What do
you
think?”

But Homer was ruthless. “You had been in love with Kitty Clark before.”

Joe had recovered. Now he retreated behind a barrier of reserve. “Yes, until I met Helen.”

“You were surprised to see Kitty coming? Did you think what you would say to her?”

Joe's voice was under careful control. “It would have been difficult. Embarrassing.”

Homer shifted in his chair, leaned forward, looked down at his shoes. “The medical examiner found a number of bruises on your wife's body. Do you know how they came to be there?”

“She had fallen downstairs, here in the house.”

Homer looked up to find Joe looking intently back at him, as though he were eager for the next question, seeking it, directing it. “How did she happen to fall downstairs?” said Homer slowly.

“It was the stair carpet. The tacks had come loose. It slipped out from under her one day. About two weeks ago.”

“May I see where it happened?”

“Certainly.” Joe led the way back to the front hall and gestured at the carpeted stairs to the second floor. “The carpet on the two top steps was loose and slipped out as she was starting down.”

Homer walked up the steps and looked at the carpet. There were shiny new nails holding it fast at the top. “Had you noticed that it was loose?”

“No, neither of us had noticed anything like that.”

“Mmmm.” Homer stared at the bright heads of the small tacks and thought about it. A fall downstairs was seldom fatal, not for someone as young and strong as Helen Green had been. But it was odd, just the same. He shrugged his shoulders and descended the stairs. They went back to the small room with the lowered shades and sat down again in the folding chairs.

Homer changed the subject. “Were you as much involved in that new bylaw as Helen was? I understand she spent a great deal of time organizing support for it.”

“Yes, she did. No, I didn't do anything. I had nothing to do with it.”

“A lot of Helen's own land went to a conservation trust, I'm told?”

“Yes. The Boatwright Trust.”

“Did you help with that? Or was it just Helen?”

“It was Helen's project. She took care of it.”

There was another silence. Joe looked back at the window shade.

Homer changed the subject. “Are you writing anything now?” he said.

“No. I haven't … felt much like writing. I'm reading a good bit.” Joe's eyes glanced involuntarily at the books piled on the card table. Homer looked at them too, wondering suddenly whether or not Kitty's was among them. He ran his eyes up and down the stack of books, looking for a narrow one with a purple cover, trying to think of another inconsequential question. There was a thin book at the very bottom of the stack. He couldn't see what color it was. “Do you—ah—use this room to write in?”

“This room? No, I don't write here. I have to get out of the house.”

The rest of the books were all too big, too thick. The only one that could possibly be Kitty's was the skinny one on the bottom. “You've got a room outside somewhere? In the garage maybe?”

“No. I've got a little shack on the beach. I bought it when it was advertised for sale. I go there when I'm working.”

Maybe if he were to lean on the table, here on this side where the legs looked rickety, the whole thing might fall down. “Where is this shack? Is that the place Chief Pike said was broken into a few weeks before your wife's death?”

“Yes. It's up at the Head of the Harbor. Nobody took anything. All they did was throw an old first draft of mine around. Vandals, I guess.”

Homer tipped his chair back dangerously until it leaned on the edge of the card table. “Did your wife use it too? I mean, did you work there together?”

Joe seemed startled at this idea. “Oh, no, she never went there at all. We had an agreement about that. That was
my
place.” Joe seemed to feel he had gone too far. “It's a kind of quirk I have. I don't like anybody to look at anything I'm working on until it's all finished.”

“So Helen never went there? Bluebeard's chamber, eh?” With a furtive movement of his backside, Homer slid the two supporting legs of his chair so far past his center of gravity that most of his weight came crushing down upon the weak-kneed side of the fragile overburdened card table, and at last he accomplished his object. Chair, table, books and hulking clumsy oversized Melville scholar and occasional espouser of lost impossible causes went over together in a shambling disastrous collapse. Homer hit his head on the edge of the table and cursed aloud. Joe Green jumped up with an exclamation of shock and sympathy and tried to lift him out of the wreck.

“Are you all right?” he said.

“Oh, Jesus, it's just my head. Just let me get all these books off me.” With a massive sweep of his arm Homer tumbled the books on the floor, riffling them apart like a cardsharp examining a deck. Aha, there it was. Skinny book, purple cover, the name “Katharine Clark.” “Christ, I'm sorry,” said Homer. “I'm afraid there's not much left of this chair. Or the table either. I'll get you another set. A whole set.”

Joe Green was helping him up. “For God's sake, never mind. They were falling apart anyway. Are you sure you're all right?”

“Positive.” Homer shook himself and passed his hand through his hair. “Thanks a lot for letting me talk to you.”

“You're quite welcome.” They were back at arm's length. Joe was stiffly polite again. “I'll show you out.”

He opened the door of the small room and waited for Homer to go ahead of him. But in the front entry he reached past Homer, grasped the doorknob and then looked vaguely over Homer's “shoulder at the view of the harbor and the distant shore of Coatue. “How is she?” he said.

“How is …? Who, you mean Kitty? Oh, she's … all right. She's fine.”

Joe pulled open the door then, his face expressionless, and Homer, with a final nod, took his leave. He knew now what those Melville phrases were that had run through his head on his first glimpse of Joe Green: “He looked like a man cut away from the stake.…” And: “… Ahab stood before them with a crucifixion in his face.…”

Homer drove out of the driveway slowly, grumbling Melville to himself, pulling to one side into the undergrowth to let Letty Roper's car go by. Letty waved at Homer and smiled. What was Dick Roper's wife doing here? Well, it was obvious. She was bringing another good home-cooked meal to her bereaved friend and fellow author.

Alas for poor Kitty. As Homer turned out into the Polpis Road he found himself paying silent tribute to the power of Joseph Green. He could understand now what Kitty saw in him—the large slow reflection, the clear careful eye, the steady unself-conscious grace. Homer could see how they would hang on in a girl's mind.

16

… this is one of those disheartening instances where truth requires full as much bolstering as error.

Moby Dick

“Come in, Sergeant,” said Homer, leaning against the doorframe, stroking a full stomach. “You got those pictures?”

Sergeant Fern walked into the house and took off his coat. “Yes, sir,” he said.

“Well, good for you,” said Homer, trying not to smile. Sergeant Fern was wearing the kind of suit that used to be worn on Sundays, and the sort of shirt that wasn't supposed to be worn with a tie, but he was wearing a tie. He was a funny kid. Why had he gone to so much trouble? He must have thought Kitty would be here. He must have dressed up for Kitty.

Sergeant Fern looked around the room nervously, and nodded at Alden Dove, who was scooping dishes off the table, slapping them into the sink. “Hello, there, Bob,” said Alden, splashing water into the dishpan. “There you are again. Fella can't turn around without running into Bob Fern. How was your catch today?”

“Not so good,” said Bob. “How was yours?”

“Bag and a half. Pretty bad.”

“You mean police officers go scalloping too?” Homer looked at Sergeant Fern in surprise.

“Bob's a boy of many parts,” said Alden. “If he isn't giving you a parking ticket, he's dredging scallops off the bottom of the harbor right in front of you, and if he isn't doing that he's planting heather in your front yard, or putting a mustard plaster on your crippled swan.” Alden grinned at Bob Fern. “Bob's an officer in the Nantucket Protection Society. He really knows his stuff.”

“Well, I'll be damned.” Homer looked at Sergeant Fern with new respect. The kid looked like a baby, too young to know anything yet.

“Here they are, Mr. Kelly,” said Sergeant Fern, taking an envelope out of his pocket. He took out a set of color prints and laid them on the table side by side. Homer bent down to look at them, his eyes darting over the whole row. Then he swore and began picking them up in turn, holding them under the lamp.

Arthur Bird was a poor photographer Most of his pictures were either out of focus or underexposed in the poor light before and after the eclipse. But what Homer could see in them in spite of all these failings made him shake his head with dismay. He could imagine them blown up to giant size on a screen in the courtroom. They would be damaging, very damaging. He could hear the shocked exclamations of the judge, the jury, the people crowded into the chamber. One of the worst was a picture of Helen, dead, her face distorted and staring, her blood too black in the underexposed shot, blood everywhere, an awful lot of blood. But good God, the worst of all was a picture of Kitty. There she was, in the only clear bright picture, gesturing with the bloody knife in her hand, explaining, her face all sweet reasonableness (and of course it was her reasonableness they had thought insane; reason at such an unreasonable time had struck them as madness)—and the color film had somehow exaggerated the redness of the blood upon her hands. It shone wetly, it fairly sparkled, it was running in dribbles down her arm. Good lord. Homer wrenched himself away from that one and looked at the next, a wild shot apparently taken by mistake of several people's legs against the sea horizon. Then there was a harrowing blurry picture of Joe Green with his head in his hands. Then a dark underexposed shot of Joe's profile in the lighthouse. Then another mistake, a view of the sea horizon tipped up at a forty-five-degree angle. And then a set of cheery normal shots of the picnic, taken in strong sunlight before the eclipse began.

“What do you think?” said Bob Fern, standing respectfully at Homer's elbow.

“What do I think?” Homer glanced at Bob and shook his head. “Jesus Christ. We can talk all we're worth, and produce character witnesses for Kitty by the carload, but with these pictures on the other side, good lord, I don't know. Goddamn that Arthur Bird.”

“Take a look at these two,” said Bob Fern. He picked up the picture of the tipped sea horizon and set it down beside the view of several pairs of legs. “This one with the legs—I think it shows the horizon to the northeast, the water off there on the open Atlantic side of the point. There's nothing out there, you see. No craft of any kind. But the other one has some spots on it that must be something. Here, compare it with this picture of Mr. Green. He's up on the slope there. Went off to be by himself for a minute, that's what everybody said, and that Bird went after him and took this picture, and then I think he took this one of the water by mistake, which is why it's all tipped. That's not the Atlantic side, that's the Nantucket Sound side of Great Point. And there are those spots out there. See, the picture of Mr. Green shows one of the spots too, this big blotch. It's in both pictures. It might be Cresswell's big sport-fishing yacht. These little spots are too blurry; you can't tell what they are. But they
must
be something.”