The Castle on Deadman's Island (16 page)

“He's learning,” Graham said. “He's a lot better at it than I am.” He saw Crescent working on Snyder. “We heard the crash and saw the wreckage; thank God it wasn't you guys. How is he?”

“No sign of life,” Crescent said.

Graham and Daniel climbed out of the punt and stood looking down at Snyder. “We should get him to a hospital,” Daniel said.

“The wind is dying,” Crescent said. “By the time we sail over to shore and find a phone …” She got up. “But we'd better go anyway. I don't seem to be doing any good here.”

“We should let his wife know first,” Graham said.

They found Mrs. Snyder standing on the dock, peering into the darkness. She watched silently as Neil and Crescent approached in
Discovery.
The wind died completely and they had to paddle the rest of the way to the dock.

They climbed out. “I'm afraid we have bad news about your husband,” Crescent said.

Barbara Snyder looked at the two teens in front of her, her eyes veiled.

How strange, Neil thought, to be standing here with her, when she was making plans just an hour ago to hurl Crescent from the balcony. It felt surreal,
as if they were actors in a play discussing the next scene.

“His boat hit a submerged rock and he was thrown out,” Crescent said. “I tried to revive him, but …”

“He's dead, isn't he?” Mrs. Snyder said in a flat voice.

Crescent hesitated. “I … I can't detect any pulse-that's all I know.”

“We could take him over to shore now and try to find a doctor,” Neil said. “But it will be a long, slow trip with no wind…. It might be just as fast to wait till morning, when the Ruffs come with their boat.”

“I'd like to see him,” Mrs. Snyder said, after a pause.

Neil saw that Daniel's dinghy was still tied up where he'd left it earlier. “Your husband's at Lovesick. We'll leave the sailboat here and row you over.”

On the way, they were silent, avoiding each other's eyes. Mrs. Snyder stared at the wreckage of the speedboat as they passed by.

Graham and Daniel were waiting on the dock with the body. Graham was anxious to question Mrs. Snyder about his aunt's disappearance and might have, regardless of the circumstances, had Daniel not convinced him that this wasn't the right moment.

Mrs. Snyder got out and approached the body. They all stood back while she knelt and lifted her husband. For a moment, Neil thought she was going to take him in her arms, but she was only turning him over
to check for a heartbeat and examine the gash on his head. When she straightened up, Neil could see that her eyes were moist.

“Take us both back to the island, please,” she said. “It's only a few hours till dawn.”

They lifted Snyder into the dinghy. There wasn't space to lay him flat on the bottom, so they sat him on the stern seat, his wife beside him to keep him from toppling over. It looked for all the world, Neil thought, as if they were taking a drunk home from a party. He manned the oars and Crescent sat in the bow.

As they approached Deadman's Island, Mrs. Snyder began, for the first time, to speak. “He was a good man at heart,” she said. “Weak, though. As long as everything was going well, Carson was fine, but if something went wrong, he fell apart. Do you know, he actually thought he saw Grimsby's ghost sitting behind the wheel of the speedboat tonight?”

So that's why it took him so long to come after us, Neil thought. We were saved by a ghost! He waited to hear more, but Mrs. Snyder turned to the body of her husband.

“I don't suppose I was the best wife for you, Carson,” she said, smoothing his hair. “You should have married someone with less ambition, someone who would have been content just being your wife.”

“What will you do now?” Crescent said.

Mrs. Snyder considered, then said in the same flat voice, “I shall spend my days in retreat – husbandless and ambitionless.”

Neil doubted Mrs. Snyder would ever be ambition-less. Nevertheless, he began to feel sorry for her and had to remind himself what she had done. He thought of Grimsby's broken body, still lying on the rocks. What a shock it will be for the Ruffs – first a skeleton, now two bodies.

When they reached the dock, they lifted Snyder's body out. They expected Mrs. Snyder would want them to carry it to the castle, but she told them to leave it at the dock. “I'd rather not go back to the castle ever again,” she said. “That place was our downfall. I'll just stay here with him and wait for the Ruffs.”

As Neil rowed away, the last he saw of Mrs. Snyder, she was sitting on the bench staring out over the water, the body of her husband propped up beside her. “I wonder if she'll be charged over Grimsby's death,” he said.

Crescent looked skeptical. “I doubt it. She has her cover story.”

“But she can't say it was suicide. She knows that you saw it all.”

“Yes, but all I could see was a jumble of bodies on the balcony. I couldn't tell who pushed who, and she
knows that. She'll say that her husband was jealous and that he and Grimsby tussled, the railing gave way, and he tumbled over. I couldn't dispute that.”

“She's got it all worked out, hasn't she?” Neil said. “I suppose they loosened the railing beforehand too, but I don't expect the cops will catch that – not with Sergeant Simpson doing the investigating. She'll play the bereaved widow, and he'll swallow her story about Grimsby hook, line, and sinker.” Neil turned to make sure he was still heading for the Lovesick Island dock. “But it may not be so easy to explain what her husband was doing chasing us with the speedboat.”

“I don't know about that,” Crescent said. “She can say he must have changed course to avoid hitting us and hit the rock instead. Boating accidents like that happen all the time – especially at night. There's no way for us to prove he was planning to ram us. Any way, what's the point – he's dead.”

Neil made a course correction with an oar. “We're just lucky that Snyder got spooked by a ghost and didn't catch up to us sooner. Otherwise, it might be us laid out on the dock instead of him.”

Crescent shuddered. “Don't say that, Neil.” She leaned forward and touched his cheek.

“I wonder how come he thought he saw Grimsby's ghost?” he said. “Blood-soaked jacket and all, he told his wife.”

“It
is
strange,” Crescent said. “Almost as if Grimsby's ghost was looking out for us – if it really was Grimsby's ghost.”

Neil stopped rowing. “You don't suppose …?” He gazed at her. “I wonder where Graham and Daniel went in that old punt?”

“A good question,” Crescent said. “Where
did
they go, and what were they up to at that hour?”

“I'm going to ask them,” Neil said.

But, for the moment, he wanted to forget the events of the night. The water was flat calm, like a dark polished mirror. He let the dinghy drift and patted the seat beside him. “Come and sit here.”

She slid into the seat and he folded her in his arms. The dinghy continued to drift, the two figures locked as one, a ribbon of moonlight stretching out before them like a silver path.

It was driving Neil nuts. All he could get out of Graham were meaningless responses, accompanied by an enigmatic grin. Nor was Daniel any more forthcoming.

“C'mon, Graham,” Neil pleaded. “Did you or didn't you impersonate Grimsby's ghost last night?”

“But Neil, to impersonate means to imitate a person,” Graham said, “and a ghost is not a person-at least not anymore. Therefore it's a contradiction in terms, if you see what I mean….”

“Oh, for Pete's sake. All right then, I'll rephrase my question. Did you find Grimsby's body and borrow his sport's coat? Then did you get in the speedboat and
pretend you were Grimsby's ghost in order to scare off Snyder?”

“What! Take a bloody sport's jacket off a dead man and put it on? Yuck! I shudder at the thought. Besides, it's highly illegal to tamper with a dead body before the police arrive. Think what Sergeant Simpson would say if he suspected I'd undressed Grimsby's corpse and borrowed his clothes!”

Neil sighed. They were sitting around the campfire, only smoldering ashes now. Crescent, however, had returned to Deadman's Island. She had grown fond of Mrs. Ruff and knew she would need company after the shock of finding two bodies.

Leonard, accompanied by Mrs. Snyder, took Snyder's body to shore. Grimsby's, however, was left untouched to await the arrival of Sergeant Simpson.

The morning sun and the blue sky proclaimed yet another fine day. Gulls circled raucously around a boiling school of minnows. The world goes on as if nothing happened, Neil thought, no matter what people get up to in the night.

He turned back to Graham. “If you were impersonating Grimsby you're a hero in my books. By delaying Snyder, you saved Crescent and me – otherwise he would have caught us and run us down.”

“What difference does it make who saved you?” Graham said. “All that matters is that you were saved.”

“But don't you see? If
you
didn't do it, and
Daniel
didn't do it, it means there really was a ghost!”

Daniel said, “Don't you believe in ghosts? I sure do. My great-grandmother's ghost is still hanging around Gran and Gramps' house on Long Island. She's neat.”

“I don't know whether I believe in ghosts or not,” Neil said earnestly. “That's what I'm trying to find out. But you guys aren't helping at all.”

“Sometimes it's best to retain your illusions,” Graham said. “Especially in these times.”

And that was all Neil could get out of him. Graham was, understandably, more concerned about his aunt. “With Grimsby and Snyder gone, I wonder if we'll ever find out about Aunt Etta,” he said morosely. “I don't imagine Lady Macbeth will tell us anything. If she is involved with Aunt Etta's disappearance – and I'm darn sure she is – she'll never admit it. She'll be more interested in saving her husband's reputation, as well as her own. But I'm still going to try to get Sergeant Simpson to grill her about it.”

He stood up and stretched. “I'm going down to the dock to wash up.”

Graham was kneeling on the dock, washing his hands and face, when he heard the whine of an outboard. He looked up. A small runabout was going by, headed for Deadman's Island. He did a double take and looked
at the woman in the yachting cap running the outboard.
Could it be?
Impossible.
But yes, it was!

He leapt up. “Aunt Etta!”

Henrietta Stone looked around to see where the voice had come from.

“Over here!” he called, and she, in turn, did a double take when she spotted Graham dancing around the dock and frantically waving his arms. She veered her boat sharply and headed for Lovesick.

“Graham! What a coincidence running into you here,” she said, as she pulled into the dock.

Graham was stunned by the sight of her. “Are … are you all right, Aunt Etta?” he managed to say.

She scrambled nimbly onto the dock. “Of course I'm all right. Why wouldn't I be?”

He had an urge to throw his arms around her and hug her right then and there, but he couldn't quite do it, as much as he cared for her – neither he nor his aunt were huggers. He was so overcome to see her, however, that tears welled up. He turned away and swiped at his eyes.

“What a lovely surprise,” his aunt said. “What are you doing here?”

“Camping, Aunt Etta,” Graham said, still somewhat stunned.

“That's my castle over there.” She pointed. “Hard to believe it belongs to your aunt now, isn't it? I can
hardly believe it myself. You may have heard about the horrendous events there last night.”

“I'll say I did,” Graham began, “in fact, we –”

“I'm just going there now to find out more. Both Grimsby and Snyder dead in terrible accidents. Heavens! I'm not ashamed to admit I didn't like either of them, but I wouldn't have wished their fate on anyone. At any rate, it's safe to return now, callous as that may sound.”

“Safe to return?” Graham said. “Then you knew –”

“Of course I knew them. They're the other two owners of the castle – they
were
the other two owners, I should say. Now I'm the only one left.”

“What I meant was –”

“Confidentially, Graham,” Henrietta looked around to make sure no one was listening, “they were not nice men. I believe they sabotaged my boat. Certainly, someone did. It sank under me in the middle of the channel last Sunday.”

“Your boat sank! What did you do?”

“Why I swam to shore, of course.”

“But Aunt Etta, that's a long way! How did you ever –”

“I swim almost that far every day,” Henrietta said indignantly, as if her prowess had been doubted. “Quite a current, mind you, and carrying my purse around my neck made it a bit difficult. I wanted to
save my good shoes too, but they slowed me down and I had to kick them off – they were practically new. So I had to buy new ones, and I also bought this yachting cap – rather chic, don't you think? I can't wear my favorite straw hat when I'm in the boat – it blows off and I have to chase it.”

Two more puzzles solved, Graham thought. “But where did you go when you got ashore?” he managed to slip in. “We were looking –”

“Why I just drove down the road to the Riverview Inn. Charming old place. I thought of going to the police about the sabotage, but I had no proof – the boat is now on the bottom – so I decided the safest thing was to let Grimsby and Snyder think they'd succeeded in getting rid of me. I knew they wouldn't tell anyone, of course, so I didn't have to be concerned that my friends would be worrying about me. But I vowed I'd never stay in the castle again while they were there. I thought I'd just wait until they'd gone back to town, then I'd rent another boat at Muldoon's, come back to the castle, get my suitcase and clothes, and leave on my trip south, as I planned all along. But when I heard about the deaths here last night, that changed everything.”