Lethal Legend (26 page)

“Did Amity drink some too?” Graham asked.

Ben nodded. “I asked all three of them to list everything they consumed for two days before they fell ill. There were undoubtedly smaller doses in other foods first, but Moxie would have hidden the taste of the final, larger dose.”

“Wait,” Diana objected. “There is one thing that makes no sense. Carstairs was poisoned, too. He almost died. Why would he have taken such a risk?”

“It would be an extraordinarily dangerous thing to do,” Ben agreed, “unless he believed he had built up a tolerance for the drug. That’s entirely possible. He took a bad fall on his last job. Broke some bones. Infection set in. He’d have been given something for the pain.”

“It was on an expedition to Casa Grande,” Graham confirmed. “Serena told me about it when Carstairs first came here. She felt sorry for him.”

“If he was treated with morphine, he may already have had a supply of the drug when Winthrop hired him to disrupt the excavation.” Ben shook his head at Carstairs’s foolishness. “If we’re right, it was a horrendous risk to take. All three of them could easily have ended up dead.”

A distant whistle put an end to the discussion. The
Miss Min
had docked and, in accordance with the message Landrigan had been charged to deliver to Captain Cobb as soon as he arrived, she would not depart until Ben and Diana were aboard.

“That’s it, then. All we can do for now.” Ben offered his arm to Diana. “
Our
wedding is Saturday, Graham. Will you and Serena be there?”

“We will.”

“So will Horatio Foxe,” Diana reminded them.

“Ah, yes, the newspaper editor who thinks he’s discovered something sensational about me. I’ll talk to him. I’m certain we can come to terms.”

Diana opened her mouth to protest that Foxe could not be bribed, then shut it again. It was up to Graham how he dealt with the press.

They left Keep Island aboard the
Miss Min,
Captain Cobb under orders to steam straight to Bucksport so that Ben and Diana would arrive there in time to catch the afternoon train back to Bangor.

She should feel relieved, Diana told herself. Their part in the trouble on Keep Island was over. But throughout the trip, her mind kept circling around the loose ends that remained. She didn’t realize she’d sighed aloud until Ben asked her what the matter was.

“It’s petty of me, but now that Graham has so clearly taken control of the situation, I feel a trifle left out.”

“It isn’t as if there aren’t still some minor mysteries to be solved.”

“True. The rumors that the island is cursed, for example. Where did they come from? And I still don’t understand why—”

“On the other hand, there are only five days left until our wedding,” Ben reminded her. “Shouldn’t you be concentrating on that?”

“You’re right. I cannot in good conscience spend any more time thinking about anything else. There are dozens of last-minute details to see to. The rest of my family and other guests will be arriving. Mother will need muzzling.”

“And you must pack for a wedding journey that I now think will take us away from home for several months.”

“Months?” That news caught her off guard. The last she’d heard, he planned on a week at the Poland Spring House. “Where are we going?”

“Abroad, if you agree. Now that my professional life is about to take a new course, there are several doctors I would like to consult with, in England and on the Continent.”

Delighted and distracted by the prospect of foreign travel, Diana did not let unsolved mysteries impinge on her thoughts again until well after they were back home in Bangor.

* * * *

Ben let himself into his office late Monday evening with a sigh of relief. His home had turned into a madhouse, and he knew whereof he spoke!

He wandered through the rooms that had meant so much to him only a few years earlier. Even the familiar smell of carbolic had started to fade. A fine film of dust covered the bell jar that protected his microscope.

He’d done good work here, been of service to the community, but there were plenty of other doctors to take care of Bangor’s sick and injured. There were others qualified to be city coroner, too.

He found some cartons in a store room and began to gather what he would take with him. Most of the equipment could stay with the practice when he sold it, just as it had come to him when he’d bought it.

Busy with sorting and packing, Ben had no idea how much time had passed when a knock pulled him away from his task. Justus Palmer stood on the back stoop.

“Come in,” Ben invited, opening the door. “I’ve been wanting to speak to you.”

“And I you,” Palmer said.

A few minutes later they were settled in Ben’s office, Ben at his roll-top desk and Palmer in the patient’s chair. Ben had offered brandy. Palmer had refused.

“First and foremost,” Palmer began, “my intentions towards your mother are honorable. I enjoy her company and her conversation. And she, I think, finds me equally entertaining.”

Ben said nothing. He didn’t approve, but he’d been raised to believe that a woman had the right to make up her own mind.

“I also owe you an apology. The first time I met Mrs. Spaulding, I encouraged her to follow you to Keep Island. By telling her she should not go there, of course. I planned to question her upon her return. In the event, that proved unnecessary. I learned all I needed to from Sheriff Fields.”

“Why not go to the island yourself?”

“You already know the answer. I cannot tolerate traveling by boat, not even across the smallest body of water.” He shrugged. “It is a weakness I abhor, but there is nothing I can do about it. It is my nature.”

“Why tell me this now?”

“Because I have a feeling we will be seeing a great deal of each other in the future.” He smiled, and Ben knew the other man sensed his discomfort.

“If that’s all you came to say—”

“It is not. I cannot afford to spend any more time on this Keep Island business. Other cases require my attention. But one or two further bits of information have come my way. You may make of them what you will.”

Ben leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers on his chest. “Such as?”

“Professor Winthrop is no longer in Belfast. No one knows where he’s gone.”

Proof of the man’s guilt? After a brief debate with himself, Ben told Palmer that Carstairs was missing, too, and summarized what they had concluded about his connection to Winthrop.

“I know nothing more about him,” Palmer admitted, “but I did discover that Winthrop was once great friends with Graham Somener’s aunt. He was distraught when she died.”

“Winthrop was in love with Min Somener?” There was another couple Ben had difficulty imagining together!

“I don’t know about love, but he apparently expected to be mentioned in her will. He complained to several of his cronies at Harvard that she reneged on a promise to bequeath him all her papers and books.”

“The legacy she ended up leaving to Serena Dunbar, perhaps?”

“That seems likely, although Winthrop does not seem to have known about Miss Dunbar until well after she turned up as a student at the Peabody.”

“As I understand it, she didn’t tell anyone there about her connection to the Someners and Keep Island.”

“A secretive lot, these archaeologists. I am glad to be done with them.” Palmer stood, prepared to take his leave, but Ben called him back.

“What can you tell me about hypnosis?”

Both of Palmer’s eyebrows lifted slightly. “Why would you think I know anything about the subject?”

“It’s obvious you have some command of the art.” More than a little, Ben suspected. “I am interested in the process.”

For some reason, even though he still was not sure he liked or trusted Justus Palmer, Ben felt comfortable telling the other man his plans. When he’d summarized what he hoped to do, he explained that he thought it might be useful to him to master the techniques of hypnosis.

“You are laboring under a misapprehension,” Palmer said slowly. “I possess nothing more than a certain facility with the power of suggestion, and that works well only with weak-willed individuals. Sheriff Fields remembered part, if not all of the visit I paid to him, when I had hoped to erase his memory of it entirely. Lucien Winthrop proved completely immune to any influence. And dear Magda has a distressingly accurate recollection of every moment we have spent together.”

The reminder that Palmer had been meeting Maggie Northcote in the garden in the middle of the night and, apparently, nibbling on her neck, had Ben’s stomach twisting into knots. His muscles went taut and his hands curled into fists. Enjoyed her
conversation
, did he?

“Mr. Palmer,” Ben said in a low rumble, “may I suggest that in future you visit Mrs. Northcote at a more seemly hour than midnight, and in company?”

Palmer’s steel-gray eyes caught and held Ben’s gaze. “Are you inviting me to pay a social call, Dr. Northcote? Perhaps you will even invite me to attend your upcoming nuptials? Is that what you mean to say, Dr. Northcote?”

Momentarily caught by the rhythm and timbre of Palmer’s voice, Ben nodded. Then he shook his head with a violence that made the other man laugh.

Only with weak-willed individuals, indeed!              

“Who the hell are you, Palmer?”

“Just an old friend of Magda’s, Dr. Northcote. A very old friend.”

* * * *

With Ben spending the day in town on Tuesday, arranging details of their wedding journey and meeting with the young doctor interested in buying his practice, Diana found that she could not, after all, withdraw completely from her investigation of events on Keep Island. Curiosity, if nothing else, prompted her to pursue one minor point, in between last-minute wedding preparations and organizing her wardrobe for the trip abroad. With her aunt’s able assistance, she sent a query to the New England Historic Genealogical Society.

“Here it is,” Aunt Janette cried, waving the telegram in triumph. “The reply to your wire.”

“Mr. Pingree’s heirs?” Delmar Pingree, according to Mrs. Hatch of Islesborough, was the name of the man who’d sold Keep Island to the Someners, the man whose heirs, or so Maggie Northcote had once told her, Jedediah Somener had cheated out of their rightful inheritance. The Pingrees, Diana thought, were the most likely source of the story that the island was cursed.

“Heir,” Aunt Janette corrected, consulting the telegram. “An only child named Susan. She married a gentleman called Perley Brown and had just one child herself, her daughter Prudence.”

“Gracious!”

“You know who she is?”

“I believe I do. A Mrs. Prudence
Monroe
is Graham Somener’s housekeeper, and if I am not mistaken, her mother’s given name
was
Susan.”

“Yes, that’s the one.” Aunt Janette surrendered the slip of yellow paper. “Prudence Brown married Amariah Monroe—such names these islanders have!—and he died a year later.”

“Gracious,” Diana said again, for it had belatedly occurred to her that Mrs. Monroe had been in an even better position than Paul Carstairs to do Winthrop’s dirty work. They already knew she had been in contact with the professor. Perhaps the association had not been as innocent as she’d claimed.

Shaken, Diana remembered the look Mrs. Monroe had given Graham in Paul Carstairs’s bedroom. There had been a great deal of pent up resentment in that glare. Were there even deeper emotions hiding just below the surface? What if Mrs. Monroe believed that Jedediah Somener had cheated her grandfather—the same one, presumably, who’d told her tales about the island? If she wanted revenge, then it made sense that she might join forces with Lucien Winthrop.

Of their own volition, Diana’s hands covered her mouth to hold in a little cry of dismay. Mrs. Monroe could easily have poisoned Serena’s crew, which would explain why Carstairs had not been spared. Had he really fled, Diana wondered, or had Mrs. Monroe done away with him to protect herself? A knock on the head with a marble rolling pin perhaps? The housekeeper’s presence in Carstairs’s room might not have been so innocent, either. They’d assumed she’d been searching his possessions, but what if she’d gone there to take them away, to support the assumption that Carstairs had fled?

Maggie Northcote in full voice brought Diana back to her senses with a start. “Hellooooo!” she called from the first floor. “Company!” She stretched out each syllable, sounding entirely too cheerful.

“Now what?” Diana muttered, but she did not dare ignore the summons. Leaving her aunt behind with the accumulation of papers and telegrams, she sailed forth from the bedroom where they had been working.

The answer to her question stood in the foyer below, resplendent in a brand new four-button cutaway suit that looked exactly like every other one he owned. His sand-colored hair was slightly mussed from the hat he’d just removed, and he was already fumbling in his breast pocket for a cigar.

“Diana, my dear!” Horatio Foxe greeted her. “You’re looking splendid.”

“What are you doing here?”

“You invited me to your wedding. Don’t you remember?” He grinned at her, showing a mouth full of straight but tobacco-stained teeth.

He was a small, wiry man with glittering hazel eyes. The first time Diana had met him, he’d put her in mind of a leprechaun, and he was just as tricky to deal with as one of those mythical little men. She knew better than to think he had only one reason for anything he did. “And?”

“And I have information on your oh-so-interesting Mr. Somener.”

“Do tell?” Maggie hovered, eyes bright and curious. She’d met Foxe several months earlier and had proclaimed him “fascinating” on that occasion.

Diana sighed. “You may as well tell us both. Whatever it is, I assure you it will not convince either of us to think less of Graham Somener.”

“Come into the parlor,” Maggie invited. “Make yourself comfortable. And yes, you may smoke that cigar. I adore the smell of a good cigar. I have been considering taking up the habit myself.”

Foxe lost no time lighting his cheroot but he was more leisurely about revealing the information he’d brought. He blew a circle of smoke towards the ceiling and settled himself comfortably in a chair before he finally began to speak. “What I found actually relates to Somener’s partner, Vernon Law.”