Lethal Legend (28 page)

“Two men. I couldn’t tell who they were, but I’m sure it was Graham’s boat. I’ve seen it often enough.”

“Is there anywhere to land on that side of the island?” Diana had a vague recollection of seeing it from the deck of the steamer from Bar Harbor to Islesborough. In her memory the shoreline did not look inviting.

“It’s mostly swamp backed up against more cliffs.”

“Is anyone guarding that part of the shoreline?”

“I doubt it. It would be all but impossible to get to the house from that direction. There’s no path.”

         Diana’s gaze skimmed across the high ground. The point of land jutted out into Penobscot Bay to form one side of the little cove. Just now the tide was high. The mouth of the cave Ben had shown her on the day of the dive was no longer visible. “Did you know there was a cave up there?” she asked Serena.

“No. Where?”

Diana pointed. “Ben and Graham played there as boys. It seems to me that if someone could climb that far, then they’d be able to reach the top of the ridge without much difficulty. It looks like it would be a scramble, but—”

Alarm flared in Serena’s eyes. “They could come over the ridge at low tide and reach the excavation site.”

A chill ran through Diana. “If they can get this far, they can also go up the path to the promontory and gain access to the house. If I were you, I’d be much more worried about that!”

* * * *

Ben had planned to be on board the
Miss Min
with Diana when the little steamer left Keep Island following her second daily stop. Graham had already agreed to alter Captain Cobb’s schedule once more, so that they’d reach Bucksport in time to catch the train back to Bangor. Everything changed when Diana and Serena came running up to the house with word that Lucien Winthrop and Paul Carstairs might have landed on the island.

The search for the intruders began at once and continued throughout the day. They located Graham’s sailboat easily enough, spotting it from the cliff top where it had been abandoned in the swamp. But of the men who’d come ashore, there was no sign.

They split up to search, each party armed. Ben, accompanied by MacDougall and his rifle, carried a pistol in his coat pocket, an old Army sidearm issued during the Civil War. Awkward and heavy as it was, Ben doubted it would be of much use, but it was better than nothing. He reached for it when he heard the crunch of boots on gravel. Someone was coming towards them along the path.

Signaling MacDougall to keep still, Ben pressed himself flat against a boulder. It jutted out far enough to conceal him. Quietly drawing in a breath, he steadied himself. To judge by the slow, uneven steps, it was Winthrop approaching, but old man or not, it would not do to underestimate him. If nothing else, he’d be armed with the cane he used as a walking stick.

It looked as if Serena had been right about Winthrop’s ability to move over rough terrain. To elude them this long, the fellow had to be half mountain goat. But he was slowing down now. Only to be expected. He’d been roaming Keep Island for more than five hours.

To Ben’s surprise, it was not Winthrop but Paul Carstairs who stepped out into the fading light, his thin frame picked out by the last rays of the sun as that golden orb disappeared behind the promontory above. Carstairs movements were awkward, as if he’d used up his last reserves of strength. He might well have done so. Carstairs had almost died of morphine poisoning only a fortnight ago, and that on top of a serious injury less than a year earlier.

Ben stepped out of concealment, pistol held steady in both hands. “Stop right there,” he ordered.

Carstairs gave a start, his eyes going wide. “What the—”

“Where’s Winthrop?”

“I—I don’t know.”

“You brought him here?”

“Well, yes, but—”

“Then we need to keep searching. MacDougall, tie Mr. Carstairs’s hands behind his back. Then go find Mr. Somener and tell him I’m taking our prisoner to the house to question him.”

“You’re making a mistake. Winthrop did it all. Everything.”

“Then why are you here?”

“He insisted I bring him. He ... did me a favor. I ... I didn’t know how to refuse.”

“You brought a man you know is a murderer back to the scene of the crime?”

“No! That is, he didn’t mean to kill anyone. I don’t think he did. And he’s not trying to hurt anyone now. He just wants the treasure.”

And then he fainted.

“MacDougall!” Ben bellowed.

Between the two of them, they got Carstairs’s limp form back to the house. Ben did a cursory examination while he was still unconscious, decided there was nothing seriously wrong with him, and made sure he was roped securely to a chair before he shoved a bottle of smelling salts under his nose. By then, Graham had arrived. Diana, who had remained indoors with Serena and Mrs. Monroe during the search, had already joined Ben in the library.

“Alright, Carstairs,” Ben said when the prisoner came around. “What’s this treasure you say Winthrop is after?”

Although he still looked dazed and sick, Carstairs seemed willing to cooperate. “That’s what he called it. I swear it. He doesn’t care about archaeological discoveries anymore. He thinks there’s something of great value buried on this island and he wants to find it so he can live comfortably in retirement for the rest of his life.”

“And does he know precisely where this treasure is?” Graham’s temper was barely leashed. He was almost as protective of his island, Ben thought, as he was of his wife.

“He has to find the map first. That’ll tell him. Min Somener’s map. She was supposed to leave her papers to him when she died but she willed them to Serena instead. That’s what he’s after. He thinks one of those papers is a map that will lead him to the treasure. To great riches.”

“He’s incoherent,” Graham said in disgust. “Babbling.”

“And he’s mistaken,” Diana said. “Or rather, Winthrop is. Serena has some diaries and an old coin, but no treasure map.”

“Where
is
Serena?” Ben asked. “I’d have thought she’d want to be here.” Even Mrs. Monroe had poked her head in when they first showed up with the unconscious Paul Carstairs.

“She had a headache and went to lie down. Shall I fetch her?”

“No, let her rest.” From the look Graham gave Carstairs, Ben suspected he did not want his new wife to witness what he might do to the miscreant. The guess was confirmed when Graham seized Carstairs by the throat and gave him a vicious shake. “Who did you plan to kill this time?” 

“I never killed anyone,” Carstairs gasped after Graham loosened his grip enough to allow him to answer.

“You had to have been the one who interfered with Frank Ennis’s equipment,” Ben said. “How much did Winthrop pay you to disrupt the excavation?”

“Are you mad? I didn’t even know Professor Winthrop was in the area until last week—the same day I saw you in Belfast.”

“Then you did it on your own?”

“No! No, that’s not what I meant.”

“Was the morphine in the Moxie?” Diana asked.

The startled look in Carstairs’s eyes could have been because the suggestion was so unexpected ... or because he was surprised Diana had figured it out.

“Look, you’ve got it all wrong.” Suddenly Carstairs sounded much more lucid. “You didn’t find morphine in my possessions, did you?”

Ben conceded the point. They had no proof he’d doctored the Moxie and poisoned himself and his colleagues, or that he’d tampered with the air hose. Neither did they have any proof that he had not. “How much did Winthrop pay you?”

“I wasn’t working for him!”

“Why did you steal Graham’s boat? Why did you leave?”

“I was afraid of just what’s happened—that you’d suspect me. I went to Winthrop because he was the only one who could help me find another job. And the old buzzard came through. I leave for Mexico in a week to excavate some newly-discovered pre-Columbian ruins on the Yucatan Peninsula.”

For a moment Ben almost believed him, but Graham wasn’t buying his story. He seized Carstairs by the hair and jerked his head back. “The truth, this time.”

“That is the truth!” Carstairs wasn’t faking his fear. Sweat beaded his forehead. He rolled his eyes in Ben’s direction in mute appeal.

“Let’s say we believe you.” Ben moved close enough to prevent Graham from taking any drastic action. “That doesn’t explain your presence here, now, with Winthrop.”

“I told you. I felt obliged to do him that one favor. I brought him over and I promised to wait and take him back, but he didn’t return. I was looking for him when I ran into you.”

“You’ve no idea where he is now?”

“None. Look, I know I shouldn’t have brought him. And I should have come straight here to warn you once I had. I wasn’t thinking. I ... I’m sorry.” There were tears in his eyes.

Disgusted, Graham released him. Carstairs sagged, bound though he was. In a barely audible voice he whispered, “Winthrop would have come here to the house, looking for the map. Are you sure Serena’s only sleeping?”

* * * *

Diana rapped lightly on the bedroom door but there was no answer. Louder knocking also went unheeded, so she turned the knob. Serena was not there. She was nowhere in the house.

The sun had been down for two hours by the time they had new search parties organized. With only the full moon and the light of lanterns to guide them, no one was optimistic about finding Serena before morning.

Graham was frantic. “Why would he do this? If he was after Min Somener’s map, why kidnap Serena?”

“Maybe she caught him searching for it,” Diana suggested, “and he took her with him as a hostage.”

“Why?” Ben asked. “Far easier to knock her out, or even kill her.”

“We’re missing something.” Diana glanced at Carstairs, still trussed up like a Christmas goose. He’d stopped cooperating and settled into a sullen silence after Graham punched him in the face in an effort to convince him to provide more information.

The searchers went out in short forays, reporting back to the house in between. George Amity stayed behind, armed with a rifle, to guard Diana and Mrs. Monroe and the prisoner. Diana would have liked to have a gun herself, but there were not enough to go around. She had to be satisfied with tucking a sharp little penknife into her pocket. It would be useless against a more serious weapon, but she nonetheless found its presence on her person a comfort.

It was after one in the morning when Landrigan spotted the body caught on the pilings of the steamboat wharf. Diana wanted to go with the men, but Ben forbade it. “Stay here where it’s safe,” he ordered. “Keep all the doors and windows locked. If Winthrop has murdered Serena, he won’t hesitate to kill again.”

Resigned, Diana obeyed. Leaving Amity on guard in the hallway, she returned to the library.

“You could let me go now,” Carstairs said. “It ought to be pretty clear I had nothing to do with this.”

“I think we’ll just hold on to you for a bit longer. There’s something about this whole affair that doesn’t make sense.”

In fact, there was quite a lot that seemed inexplicable. And there was one thing in particular that bothered her about Paul Carstairs. He kept glancing at the mantel clock. His eyes had darted in that direction at least a half dozen times in the short while she’d been in the room.

Diana prowled. She stopped at the shelf where Serena kept her books and was staring at it when she remembered something. The day she had left Ben and Graham to settle their differences with their fists, she’d found Serena reading in the library. She hadn’t put that book away on a shelf. She’d tucked it into one of the drawers in Graham’s desk.

A quick search revealed a leather-bound diary and a small metal box. Diana’s hands shook slightly as she pulled both out of the drawer. The bookmark in the diary took her to the page on which Min described finding the coin. There was no sketch of the location, but it was clearly near where Serena had been digging. Next she pried open the box. The silver groat nestled safely in a bed of soft blue velvet. So much for the theory that Serena had surprised Winthrop in the act of stealing her inheritance from Min Somener.

 Diana sent a suspicious glare in Carstairs’s direction. “Is it Serena’s body they’ve found or the professor’s?”

“I imagine it’s Winthrop’s. The tide would have washed him up about there.” Carstairs sounded so matter-of-fact that it took a moment for his words to sink in. When they did, shock held Diana both motionless and speechless ... until he began to laugh.

“Why did you kill him?” Although her question was barely audible, Carstairs heard her.

“He was slowing me down. Damned old fool. As if Min Somener had anything worth stealing! I threw him off a cliff.”

“Then Winthrop wasn’t behind this. It was you all along.” A stray connection came together. “You sent the telegram, the one telling me not to meddle.”

“That was a wasted effort,” Carstairs said in disgust.

“When you were in Belfast that day, did you meet with Winthrop?”

He sighed, as if in resignation. “You may as well know the whole story. I met him several times, starting weeks ago, before we came to Keep Island. He thought he was using me to get to the treasure. He was a fool! I was the one using him.”

“I think he suspected that. Why else would he have hired Justus Palmer?”

“I’m beholden to you for that information, Mrs. Spaulding. I’d never have known about the detective if you hadn’t told us he was on the case. The same day I sent that telegram to you, hoping to discourage you and Dr. Northcote from meddling further, I did pay a visit to Winthrop. I told him to call off Mr. Palmer.” He gave a rueful chuckle. “If I’d known Winthrop was planning to meet with you the very next day, I’d have put a stop to that, too. Unfortunately, he didn’t think the interview worth mentioning. He hadn’t made the connection, you see. He knew Benjamin Northcote was Somener’s oldest friend, and I told him Northcote had been on the island, but he didn’t realize that D. Spaulding was Dr. Northcote’s fiancée.”

“Where’s Serena?” Diana asked. Other explanations could wait. The more Carstairs confessed to, the more certain Diana became that Serena was in danger.

“I’ll tell you. Soon. Ask me another question first. I’m sure you must have dozens of them.”