TWENTY

“I DIDN’T KNOW you knew first aid,” I said to Crystal when we were by ourselves out on the porch.

“I don’t. Not really.”

We leaned side by side against the railing. The underbellies of the black clouds in the eastern sky were tinted russet, but it was still dark in Dog Cove. I put my face close and breathed the scent of her hair from behind her ear. She knew first aid. There were so many things still to learn about her. “Say, would you be interested in a little carnal knowledge?”

“Sure, but we have guests.”

“Presumably they’ll leave.”

“While I was fitting his sling, Arno told me he killed Compton Kempshall. He sort of whispered it in my ear. What are they doing? Who are they trying to protect?…You don’t care, you just want to satisfy your throbbing lust.”

Was that so bad? “Hawley told me he killed Kempshall. He had the murder weapon to prove it.”

“What? He carries it with him?”

“A Cub Scout hatchet. He had it in that gym bag. He had it to prove his point. And if the sheriff investigates, Hawley wants me to say he did it.”

“It’s fascinating, don’t you think?…You don’t, do you?”

“It’s making me edgy, all these people confessing to murder.”

“Under normal circumstances, yes, but this is an old murder. It’s not so real. Bones and bodies aren’t the same.” She was making certain wanton moves with her left hand. “Can’t you think of it as the vacation mystery?”

“If you put it like that, I’ll agree to anything.”

“These folks think you’re a hero. Are you aware of that?”

“They do?”

“They said so. Hawley said it was very bad out there. He said you stood up and stepped right onto the other boat. I’ve always imagined since I was a little girl what it would be like to have carnal knowledge with a hero.”

Wow. If it hadn’t been raining, I might have suggested we avail ourselves of the privacy of the woods, roll around in a bed of ferns like our indigenous progenitors. I think Crystal felt it, too. I could see it in her eyes.

“Did you really want to have carnal knowledge with heroes or were you just being facetious?”

“No, it was a true fantasy. Now I will.”

“Tell me about the fantasy. I mean about sex with heroes like me.”

“No.”

Then I saw Roxanne, apparently heading our way, hesitate on the other side of the French doors, not wanting to intrude. I invited her out. Her face was tired, drawn, and old, but it was also strong and elegant, like one of those black-and-white photographs of Depression women who hold the family together, Ma Joad types. She had narrow features and a tall forehead. Hatless, her hair was pure white and long. She moved lightly, despite her age and what must have been a tough slog on foot over the hill from the Crack in the middle of the storm.

“I want to thank you again, dear,” she said to me.

“I was glad to help, Ms. Self.”

“Call me Roxanne.” She touched Crystal’s forearm. “And thank you, too, dear. You two are in love, aren’t you?”

Crystal patted Roxanne’s hand and said yes, we were.

“That’s good. I’m glad you’re here. The boathouse has been lonely for a long time.” It was all very maternal, familial, old-fashioned—until Roxanne said, “I’m told you found bones.”

“Accidentally,” I mentioned. “We weren’t looking.”

“Where?”

Crystal pointed off to the top of the hill, obliterated now in low cloud and fog.

“Out in the open?”

Crystal told her about the dogs.

“…Dwight is on his way over from the Crack,” she said distractedly. “He thinks we can cross the strait. We’ll be leaving you in peace soon.” She turned her back on the cove and leaned against the rail. “Clayton—Do you know how to get in touch with Clayton?”

“I have his New York number, but I believe he’s still in California.”

“California? He is? Oh, that’s wonderful!”

What? Wonderful?

“Why wonderful, Roxanne?” Crystal comes right out and asks. It’s one of the things I love about her.

Hawley was standing in the threshold between the French front doors. “Are you telling it?”

“I was about to.”

“Can I listen?”

She didn’t say yes and she didn’t say no. “He’s in California,” she said.

“He is? No kiddin’? For sure?”

Crystal and I watched them blankly. Why was that such good news, Clayton in California? Hawley ducked back in to tell his father that Clayton was in California.

Roxanne looked at us. “There’s been another murder in town,” she said. “One of the pilgrims or a tourist. They don’t know yet. Teddy Kelso thinks it’s a psychopath. The man was murdered the same way as the young woman was. His head was split down the middle…”

“Maybe you’d better tell us, Roxanne,” suggested Crystal.

Hawley returned and stood against the outside wall like a little boy trying not to be noticed.

“Back that night—the night of the fire—Clayton Kempshall knocked on our door. He was about ten. We lived over on the other side of the island. It was blowing a gale of wind and cold that night. The kind of wind and cold that kills. We didn’t expect visitors. He must have been out there a long time, knocking, but we didn’t hear him because of the wind. We might not have seen him at all, except we began to notice a pale glare at first, like ice in the sea from a long distance off, then a flickering light, and that brought us to the door. There stood little Clayton on the step. He had on white pajamas—they were soaked in blood from top to hem.”

Crystal gasped.

“Yes. And he had his Cub Scout hatchet in his hand.”

Oh Jesus, it dawned on me. She meant to connect murders—the old one and the new ones—

His face pale and drawn, Arno appeared in the doorway, just stood there, head bowed listening, remembering.

“We warmed him, comforted him,” Roxanne continued. “Pretty soon, we became aware he didn’t know how he came to be running the island in a winter storm in blood-soaked pajamas. Like he was out of his head with fever. He seemed to know about the fire, but he didn’t know where his father was. He didn’t remember. Took a day and a half before the Castle burned itself out.

“Police came, experts, and poked around in the ashes. We were sure they’d find his father’s corpse. But we never questioned Clayton about the bloody pajamas, we just stayed with him and waited for him to tell us. But the experts found nothing. They said if there was remains in the ruins, they’d have found them. Even now I don’t know for certain what happened in the Castle that night. Did Clayton kill his father with that little boy’s hatchet and drag his corpse through the storm all the way up there—?”

We looked up the hill; it seemed to be scudding along with the windblown clouds. We tried to imagine the scene that night. Gale wind and rain like last night, only cold, December. Clayton dragging the freshly killed corpse of his father over the rocks, through the undergrowth, brains running out on his pajamas. How could you forget a trip like that? But of course maybe the opposite is true.

“The police came and questioned Clayton. They were very suspicious. They suspected that Compton Kempshall faked it all so he could disappear. He was under investigation for all sorts of frauds and crimes. They thought Kempshall burned the Castle himself. But Clayton didn’t seem to know anything.

“Arno and me, we’d made a decision. We discussed it, before the police came. We decided not to tell anybody about the bloody pajamas or the hatchet, if Clayton didn’t tell them himself. I don’t know if that was a good decision or bad, we only wanted it to be best for him. If he didn’t remember then, maybe he’d never remember ever. I don’t know about that, I mean, whether the mind can work that way. But the fact was that boy did not remember. We burned the bloody pajamas.” She fell silent.

“Are you saying you think Clayton killed those people in Micmac?” Crystal asked.

She didn’t respond immediately. She looked down at the boards beneath our feet. “I think I hear Dwight’s boat coming.”

Crystal and I listened. We heard nothing.

“I believe you met Eunice and Lois?” said Roxanne.

“Yes,” said Crystal.

“Lois said she saw Clayton.”

“Here?”

“Lois said she saw him out in a little boat off the north end. Lois is a dear. I love her. But she’s…subject to fits. So that’s why we’d be ever so grateful if you could get in touch with Clayton in California. Just to be sure.”

“I bet Shelly could track him down,” said Crystal.

“Shelly?”

“Jellyroll’s agent.” Jellyroll sat listening to the whole thing. When we looked at him, his tail thumped the deck. “I’ll call right now. All agents get up with the crack of dawn.” I called him. He was up. He said he’d get right on it. I told him thanks for sending Sid. Sid seemed perfect for the job.

Dwight came around the point. Hawley moved the boats away from the flat rock, so Dwight could dock there. We carefully put Arno aboard. He looked terrible, but he managed a nod to me and a faint grin as he went over the rail.

Hawley put his father’s boat on the mooring and in his own followed Dwight out of sight around the point.

Crystal and I went to bed.