Murder at five finger light

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First published by New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA:

Henry, Sue, 1940-Murder at Five Finger Light : a Jessie Arnold mystery / Sue Henry. p. cm.

eISBN : 978-1-101-09608-6

1. Arnold, Jessie (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Dwellings—Maintenance and repair—Fiction. 3. Women detectives—Alaska—Fiction. 4. Lighthouses—Fiction. 5. Islands—Fiction. 6. Alaska—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3558.E534M’.54—dc22 2004025297

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the
author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead,
business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

WITH SINCERE THANKS TO:

Jennifer Klein and Ed McIntosh, owners of Five Finger Lighthouse, who extended a warm welcome for a week’s visit to their small island in Southeast Alaska, acquainted me with its history and eccentricities, and openhandedly shared everything from information to a very good cabernet. (To support the Juneau Lighthouse Association contact Jennifer Klein and Ed McIntosh at P.O. Box 22163, Juneau, Alaska, 99802.)

Good friends Barbara Hedges and Vickie Jensen, who went along as research assistants and work crew—though none of us did much more than add a lick or two of paint and polish brass in the tower.

The city of Petersburg—particularly the Tides Inn, Harbor Bar, and Northern Lights Restaurant—for generous hospitality.

Tina Green and Nancy Zaic at Sing Lee Alley Books with its great assortment of helpful and tempting materials.

Ginny Arthurs, Dispatcher and Jail Guard for the Petersburg City Police, Fire Department, and EMTs, for information concerning the dispatch of law enforcement to Frederick Sound.

Rod Judy of Pacific Wing Air Charter, who ferried us from Petersburg to Five Finger Light in his floatplane and pointed out some of the many whales in Frederick Sound.

Steve O’Brocta of Temsco Helicopters, who, at short notice, flew us back when the weather turned too rough for floats.

Bruce Wing, Fishery Research Biologist at the Auke Bay Laboratory of the National Marine Fisheries Service, for identifying and providing information on the isopods we found on Five Finger Island.

My talented son, Eric, who does the maps and photography for my books.

For Jennifer Klein and Ed McIntosh—

The real owners of Five Finger Lighthouse,
who are restoring and keeping alive
an important piece of Alaskan history.

Anythin’ for a quiet life, as the man said wen he took the sitivation at the lighthouse.

Charles Dickens,
Pickwick Papers,
1836-37

INTRODUCTION

There is little warm and welcoming about a lighthouse. Like medieval castles, lighthouses are solidly built not to attract, but to survive and repel; to withstand the assault of armies of waves, weather, and misguided ships. Most stand in solitary isolation where sea meets land, casting sweeping Cyclopean beams of warning into the dark. Their existence is all about hazard and the prevention of disaster.

But there is something captivating about a lighthouse—something mysterious and legendary that relates to remoteness and solitude, singular purpose, unique structure, reclusive keepers, and, sometimes, haunted reputation—that enthralls and compels consideration.

Many North American lighthouses are accessible to visitors by road, or waterway. But those that stand guard over the thousand-mile maze of Pacific Coast islands and channels of the Canadian and Alaskan Inside Passage are not easily available. Most rise where there are no roads, in splendid seclusion, often secreted by veils of mist that make them invisible to travelers of daylight waters. These are not the more familiar, tall, cylindrical structures designed to cast a light many miles out to sea. Surrounded by the islands that form the channels of the passage north, most have no need to be seen from such great distances. They are often built on high ground, so they are lower and, for the most part, square and solid in appearance.

Many of their names are resonant reminders of wilderness and grandeur, the early history of these wild coastal shores with their many perils, and the disasters of explorers and gold seekers that prompted the placement of light stations: Prospect Point, Discovery Island, Trial Island, and Gallows Point in British Columbia; Cape Sarichef, Eldred Rock, Guard Island, Cape Decision, Scotch Cap, and Cape Saint Elias in Alaska.

With two assignments, Five Finger Lighthouse was placed in Alaskan waters, where Stephens Passage opens into Frederick Sound, to guide ships on their way to and from the gold fields through that part of the tangle of passages, and to warn mariners away from the jagged rocks of five low, narrow islands that resemble a nefarious reaching hand that is all but invisible in dark or rough weather and could rip the bottom from any vessel unfortunate enough to founder upon them. On one of these, a tiny, three-acre island, six to seven hundred feet long, north to south, and around a hundred and fifty feet wide, depending on the tides, the deco-style lighthouse (a replacement for the original wooden structure that burned in December 1933) rises from its rocky base near and facing the north point.

This historically significant light holds distinction as the first of Alaska’s lighthouses to be lit, in March of 1902, and the last to be automated, in 1984.

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