The Crossing Read online

  It was a shock that night when she first slid into the water. It took her legs forever to fuse into the long, powerful tail. She had to pull with her arms as she never had before. Her two legs seemed to flail until finally she stopped trying to use them for fear she would splash too much and attract attention from shore. So she dived, but found she could no longer hold her breath as easily under the water. She had barely made it out of the channel before she had to come up for air. There was, of course, the slime and refuse of a busy city harbor. Then she turned right, dived deep, and swam straight out into the harbor as her legs finally fused. She was careful to avoid the sweep of the Boston Harbor Light. That first night she did not have the strength to swim very far. But by the second night she felt much stronger and took a course south by southeast to the Stellwagen Banks. She had avoided a pod of dolphins. Normally, she would have swum with them for a few miles. They loved to play with her, especially when they had new pups. She often helped with pups, herding them along so as to keep them close to their mothers if a shark was in the vicinity, or often just tumbling with them through the currents. But she was not feeling particularly sociable tonight.

  At least she had a chance to meet again with Ettie. Ettie was going to try to contact May and May’s beau, Hugh. Hugh was very smart, a Harvard man, and he had said as soon as the trial began that if Lucy was found guilty, they could appeal it. However, neither Hannah nor Ettie really understood that much about the law.

  May had written to both Hannah and Ettie from Egg Rock, the lighthouse just off the coast of Bar Harbor where May lived with her stepfather, Gar Plum, and his invalid wife, Hepzibah. May was anxious as she had not heard from Hugh in several weeks. Hannah knew how that might feel. But she was certain that Hugh would not have forsaken May. She herself would often have qualms when Stannish went away, such as now on his trip to New York concerning a new commission. She knew that it was a glittering world that he entered, filled with glamorous women and extravagant parties. It was nothing like Boston. He would come back with reports of the grande dames of the city and the latest fashion. But he would always return and fold her in his arms and say that not one could come close to her beauty. Those moments of his return were wonderful. She tucked them away like precious jewels, stringing them together like pearls on a necklace that proved their love.

  By the time she had swum back it was close to dawn and a slight drizzle had begun to fall. The Old Custom House Tower rose like a flinty schoolmaster over the old port city. The hands on the clock of its east-facing side pointed at five. She decided that she had to go see May. May’s beau, Hugh, supposedly was getting a new fancy lawyer, or she thought he was. And Ettie — she had met with her twice since the wedding. She wasn’t sure how Ettie was able to slip out from the house on Louisburg Square and escape the vigilant eye of her governess, Miss Ardmore, but she did.

  Ettie had been sending not just letters but telegrams to May in Bar Harbor and had managed to on her own slip across the Charles River into the distant precincts of Harvard to find Hugh, whom she was pestering to do something. Ettie had told her that poor Hugh was trying to do everything while at the same time finish his thesis in astronomy.

  When Hannah had accidentally called it astrology, Ettie had nearly exploded. “Astronomy! Hannah! Astrology is a quack science. No, that’s really a contradiction in terms, I think. Astrology is all based on superstition. It’s at best a faux discipline but most undisciplined.” She had paused briefly. “It’s for undisciplined quacks.” It was very hard arguing with someone like Ettie, who was younger by nearly seven years and yet smarter than any towering adult.

  The second time Hannah had seen Ettie she was talking about going to her favorite uncles, Godfrey and Barkley Appleton, or God and Bark as she called them. They were two middle-aged bachelor gentlemen who had distinguished themselves as being the only members of the family who seemed to take Ettie seriously and encourage her education beyond what they called “the domain of the governess.” They had made noises about Ettie going to Radcliffe, the women’s college across the river next door to Harvard. Ettie was an unstoppable force of nature, and there was no telling how far she would go to help save Lucy.

  When Hannah had worked in the Hawley house as a servant, she and Ettie had become unexpected friends. It was odd how it all turned out. For at that time Hannah had not crossed over and had no inkling of her true nature, nor did she suspect that out there two sisters were waiting to be found. It was ironic that Ettie herself, who had two fully human sisters, felt as if she had been born into the wrong family. So she and Hannah had gravitated toward each other like two lost stars in the infinity of space seeking to make their own small galaxy.

  THE SOFT DRIZZLE in Boston was a hard pounding rain in Maine. May had just come down from trimming the lamp wick in the lens of the lighthouse. What else was there to do? She wound the clockworks and oiled the gears — twice in one week, which was unnecessary, but time lay heavily on her hands. No, that was wrong. Something lay on her heart. A weight, a fear? Fear for Lucy but another kind of unbearable pain. Hugh had not written since the guilty verdict. She knew he had a lot on his mind with his thesis, but it still hurt that he wasn’t there when she needed him more than ever.

  Hugh knew she was mer and loved her all the more for it. That secret had saved his life the summer when they met. But now that he was back at Harvard, May had to wonder whether life would be easier for him with a normal girl, a fully human one. Could she blame him if he was fearful? If he had to perhaps “take a breather”?

  “Taking a breather”! That was what Cora Bunker, a classmate from the high school, said when her beau, Calvin Eaton, signed on to a Newfoundland codder out of St. John’s. Some breather! Calvin was nowhere in sight. Hadn’t even come back when his mother died. What if Hugh never came back? What if his passion for astronomy took him all the way to the other Cambridge, the one in England? May peered out the windowpanes of the lighthouse watch room, which were glazed with sliding water. Everything blurred. It was as if the world were dissolving before her eyes into a liquefied landscape — rocks, sea, coastline blending into one grayish mass. With Lucy in prison and with Hugh so silent, it felt as if the world were receding from her. And it was not just Lucy who was receding. She had received a disturbing note from Ettie about Hannah. How Hannah had changed. How Stannish was, in Ettie’s words, “bossing Hannah about” and even insisted that her hair be dyed. “She just isn’t herself,” Ettie had complained bitterly in the letter.

  If Lucy died and Hannah retreated into the oblivion of that high-society world of Stannish, and Hugh … and Hugh … She could not complete the thought. The loneliness was crushing. Her world had been so wonderful, so promising, and now she felt as if she were spinning in a vacuum, bereft of love, of kinship, of all the things that mattered most to her.

  The thought of Lucy hanging was inconceivable. Her brain wasn’t capable of processing the horror. She knew she would feel that death inside her. That death would be real for Lucy. But it would be something else, something never ending in its terror for herself and Hannah. They would feel, experience, the horror of their sister’s death every day for the rest of their lives. They would see fragments of it in their sleep. It would be the first thing they thought of when they awoke in the morning, And when they slipped into the sea to swim, there would be a void where Lucy had swum. Lucy might be free, but they never would be.

  Hugh, of course, wouldn’t feel it the way she and Hannah would. Phin would not even feel it in this way. He would grieve, of course, but eventually he would find some island girl who in a short time would produce three or four children. He would forget about Lucy because his home would be filled with laughing children tumbling about. Rumor had it that before Lucy he had been sweet on Rosie Cobb. Maybe he would go back to her.

  A voice came to May. It seemed to shout in her head. Odd — it sounded the way Zeeba did when she was demanding something. But this certainly wasn’t Zeeba’s voice. It was her own, and now
it didn’t sound anything like Zeeba’s. Quit moaning and groaning! Get to it and do! Who had said that to her years ago? Mrs. Bressler, of course! Her fifth grade teacher, whom she loved! How often she had said that to the fifth graders when one would complain that they had not done their homework because they had to help their fathers bait hooks, or watch their baby sister or brother. “Think about long division when you bait. Practice your times tables in your head while you’re watching the baby. Baby won’t care. Teach the baby the times tables. Make up a song for the fours tables. So much rhymes with four.”

  That was exactly what May had to do. Get to it and do!

  She looked out the window. The rain was ceasing, and there was just a hint of a weak sun behind the clouds. Her mind ranged back to the trial. Lucy’s defense lawyer was pushed around by the prosecution. The evidence, at least in May’s mind, seemed flimsy. There was more than reasonable doubt. Just because Lucy didn’t want to marry Percy Wilgrew didn’t mean that the alternative was murdering him. Something wasn’t right in their presentation of the whole case. She was not sure what it was, but there was something amiss.

  Then some other words came back to her — those of the greatest fictional detective of all times, Sherlock Holmes. When May had been in the eighth grade she became so hooked on Sherlock Holmes that Miss Lowe, the librarian in the Bar Harbor library, actually let her take home to keep a rather ancient and battered copy of Sherlock Holmes stories that had been replaced by a new one. May went to her bookshelf. The story was “A Study In Scarlet.” She turned to a page she clearly remembered underlining. It was where Sherlock is explaining to Watson one of the basics of crime solving:

  “In solving a problem of this sort, the grand thing is to be able to reason backwards. That is a very useful accomplishment, and a very easy one, but people do not practice it much. In the everyday affairs of life, it is more useful to reason forwards, and so the other comes to be neglected. There are fifty who can reason synthetically for one who can reason analytically.”

  “The grand thing.” That was it! She had to reason backward. Percy Wilgrew, the Duke of Crompton, had died of poisoning at the Abenaki Club. Each member of the club, or very high-ranking summer visitors, had their own little wooden jam pot with their name painted on it. Poison had been put in the one that bore the name of the Duke of Crompton. How the murderer had managed to get into the club without being seen to do this heinous crime no one seemed to know. But how had the police been tipped off and why had they come out to the modest cottage above Otter Creek and arrest Lucy? Lucy of all people! Then, of course, they found the rat poison in a small handbag of hers. All very convenient. But how did they know to go there in the first place? The question now was not who the murderer was, but who would try to place the blame on Lucy. May scrambled off the window seat where she had been sitting to read the passage from the Sherlock Holmes story.

  She must take the skiff to Bar Harbor. She needed desperately to talk to Neville Haskell, the longtime manager of the Abenaki Club. The club was officially closed for the winter, but the last time she had been in town she saw they were doing extensive repairs, and Neville was outside directing some men who were shingling the south side of the building.

  The winds were light and would be on the quarter both to Bar Harbor and back. Gar never minded. He knew she could handle the skiff. He also knew if it sank, she could handle that as well. Gar knew May’s secret, knew she was mer.

  An hour later she was sitting in Neville Haskell’s office. Neville was a jolly sort of man, with his white whiskers and carefully waxed mustache.

  “Well, Miss May, we don’t see much of you around here these days.”

  “You don’t see much of me any day, sir. I’m not a member. There’s no jam pot with my name on it.” She felt that was a good way of sliding into the subject.

  “What can I do you for?”

  “I have a question, Mr. Haskell, and I guess you could say it is about the jam pots, or rather one jam pot.”

  “Oh, no, here we go!” He sighed and laced his fingers together over the generous expanse of his belly.

  “The murder of the Duke of Crompton.”

  “A-yuh,” he said, then frowned. He was not going to make this easy for her.

  “How did the police know to go to the Snows’ house?”

  “Are you asking if I told them to?”

  “I’m just curious,” May replied, using all her self-control to keep her tone neutral.

  “Why is this of any interest to you?” he said gruffly. “Fancy yourself some sort of detective?”

  “Well, did you?” She conceded and ducked her chin a bit, trying to affect an air of modesty. Perhaps she had been too forward with her questions.

  “No, I did not tell them to go to the Snows’ house.” She knew that Neville Haskell was an excellent chess player, and this was beginning to seem more and more like a chess game. He sighed deeply, got up from his chair, and stretched his back. “I received a note a day or so after the murder.”

  “The one mentioned in the trial about how Lucy had been spurned.”

  “It just said ‘young lady’ in the note. Didn’t name her. But you hear a lot of gossip around here being the manager of the club. There was talk about the Snow girl and the duke. Now, I’m not one to gossip and I am strict about our waitstaff not repeating anything they hear. Grounds for dismissal. I run a tight ship. But this was a matter of the law, of a crime committed on these premises. So I called the Mount Desert constable, Constable Bundles, told him about the note and, yes, told him the gossip I had heard. And, well … the rest is history.”

  “Yes,” May said. “History based on gossip.”

  “Now, here! Here, May Plum! I’ve humored you long enough. This matter has nothing to do with you and is far more complex than a young girl is capable of understanding.”

  May leaned forward and skewered him with a sharp gaze. “Mr. Haskell, with all due respect, you are missing an important part of the story.” Neville Haskell was taken aback by her bold move. Her gaze was steely and her jaw set in a most unbecoming manner as if she would dare to lecture him, which she was apparently determined to do. He was a damn good chess player. He would not rise to the challenge but feigned a relaxed manner with just a mere hint of contempt to lure her in, shake her up a bit.

  “Now, what might that be, young lady?”

  May hated it when people said the words young lady with the inflection that Neville Haskell just had. It seemed to be code for Are you smart enough to know anything? After all, you’re a girl. But May would not let it distract her. “How did the note get here? Through the post?” she asked.

  “No. It was here when I arrived the next day, or rather two days later.”

  “Just slipped in?”

  “More or less.”

  May cocked her head and looked at him questioningly as if to say, Well, what is it — more or less?

  “Miss Goodfellow, my secretary, found it when she arrived in the morning. She always comes in quite early. It had been slipped under the door, and she brought it and placed it on my desk.”

  “She’s not here right now, is she?”

  “No, deah, it’s almost winter. Don’t need a full-time secretary except in season. But she works as a part-time bookkeeper down at the sardine factory.”

  THE DOWNEAST SARDINE Factory Limited was located on the waterfront at the very end of Atlantic Street, on the wharf where the sardine purse seiners came in. One could smell it in this wind a quarter mile away. As the light leaked out of this day, the boats bobbed by the wharf with their dark nets hanging on hoists to dry. May felt a shiver go down her spine. She could not help but recall the sad cries of the mother seals whose pups had been ensnared. The nets swayed in the breeze like the rags of specters flying through the night. Although it was only half past three in the afternoon, it got dark early this far north in Maine at this time of year, and the oil lamps in the factory were lit.

  She went through the main entrance
and asked the desk clerk if she could speak with Miss Goodfellow. Without looking up, he pointed down the hall. His hand had only three fingers. Losing a finger was a common occupational hazard for sardine factory workers. Gutting and beheading the tiny fish took skill. One slip of the knife and a fingertip or more could be severed. May walked down the dim hallway. There was a door with pebbled glass that had the word Accounting stenciled in black on the pane. May knocked softly.

  “Come in.” The voice was thin and papery.

  Miss Goodfellow peeped over the top of a high desk. Everything about her seemed tiny. Although she perched on a stool, her feet dangled a foot or more above the floor. With her sharp nose and pointy chin, she reminded May of a mouse.

  “What may I do for you?”

  “I’m May Plum.”

  “I know that,” she said, hardly moving her thin, colorless lips. Her eyes were very pale, so pale as to be almost transparent.

  “I want to ask you some questions.”

  “In regard to bookkeeping?”

  “No, no … why would you think that?”

  “Because at this time of year those are the kinds of questions I am asked. Bookkeeping questions. Winter questions. Sardine questions. Cut-off finger questions. Medical advice, although I always tell them to consult with Doctor Holmes. In the summer people ask me summer questions. Reservations questions, seating arrangement questions” — she paused — “jam pot questions.”

  May quickly jumped in. “This is a jam pot question.”

  “About the poisoning, I presume.”

  “How did you guess?”

  “It wasn’t a guess, really. I figured you weren’t here to request one with your name.”

  “Oh, hardly.” She laughed. “If I had, I would be the first islander to do so. It’s not a distinction that I seek.”

  Miss Goodfellow set down her pen. This was perhaps a good sign. One that showed a willingness to talk a bit. May realized that Miss Goodfellow’s mind was as neatly organized as her books. If that was the case, she might prove very helpful.