Crimson Shore (Agent Pendergast, #15)(28)

“Endless apologies.” More fussing. “You are here, Mr. Boyle, in a completely voluntary capacity. So you wish to decline answering questions?”

“And if I do? You gonna get a warrant or something, make me come back?”

“No, no. I’m conducting a private investigation. I have no subpoena power. You are free to go. No hard feelings.”

A grunt. “Well, as long as I’m here…” He sat down.

Constance could see that Boyle was a man of higher intelligence than his looks warranted, and that Pendergast, in feigning incompetency and giving Boyle a feeling of superiority, had managed to put the man in the right frame of mind for answering questions. A clever ploy—and in stark contrast to her own sadly underdeveloped skills with people. She recalled the long list of potential interviewees and wondered if perhaps it wouldn’t have been better for her to stay back at Riverside Drive.

“Mr. Boyle, on the weekend of the wine theft, you were, I presume, clamming on the Exmouth mudflats?”

“I went out on Saturday afternoon for a few hours.”

“Whereabouts?”

“An area they call the Channel Flats.”

“Can you show me on the map?” He unrolled a map of the area and placed it in front of Boyle.

“Right here.” A dirty finger thumped the location.

“Ah. I see you had no view of the lighthouse at all.”

“That’s right. That’s two miles from the light and behind the Exmouth bluffs. You can’t see over the marsh grass and cattails, anyway, seeing is how they’s five, six feet high in most places.”

“I was hoping you might have seen something, perhaps coming or going.”

“Nothing but mud and clams.”

Pendergast began rolling up the map. “You must know those marshes quite well.”

“Better than just about anyone.”

“I imagine they have their own peculiar beauty.”

“They do.” Boyle said it with conviction, but also in a tone that meant he had no interest in exploring that subject further.

“And a history?”

“Oh, yes.”

“But I don’t suppose you have much interest in history, being a clammer.”

Now the man bristled. “I was captain on a dragger, Mr. Pendergast, for forty years. I’m a seafaring man, and seafaring men have always had an interest in history.”

Pendergast raised his eyebrows. “I see. But what sort of history could an uninhabited marsh have?”

“More than you might think.” Boyle laughed. He was enjoying having an audience, especially someone as dim-witted as Pendergast. “All kinds of history. Stories, too. Of witches. And the Gray Reaper.”

“The Gray Reaper?”

“Sometimes at night, you see a light out there in the marshes, moving around, bobbing this way and that. That’s the Gray Reaper. Couple hundred years ago, they say, there was a man named Jack, and he was the meanest son of a bitch between Casco Bay and Gloucester. When he died, the devil came and got him, hauled him down to hell. But Jack was so ornery that after a while the devil couldn’t stand it anymore. He tossed Jack a glowing coal and said, “You’re too mean for my hell, so you take that coal and go start a hell of your own!” He roared with laughter. “He’s there in the marshes, covered in the gray-black mud. That’s where he got the name. Blends in, like so you can’t see him. Save for the coal, of course. When you see that light bobbing out there, that’s the Gray Reaper wandering around, coal in hand, looking to reap some souls and start a hell of his own.”

Pendergast seemed considerably irritated by this diversion. “And the witches?”

Boyle waved his hand. “There’s a story, goes back to the days of Salem. When things got hot and they started hanging the witches down there, a group of them hightailed it out of Salem in the dead of night and came north, where they settled on one of those salt marsh islands, out of the reach of civilization. Men and women both, mind you.”

“Are you saying there were real witches?”

“I’m saying no such thing. The legend is those old Puritans hanged a lot of innocent people while the real witches got away.”

“Where in the marshes did they settle?”

“Nobody knows. Inland a bit somewhere, according to the story. But things didn’t go well. A bad winter, starvation, and Indian attacks wiped them out. Later on, they say, from time to time a traveler would get lost in the marshes and come across the ruins of that witch settlement, wooden houses all rotten and collapsed. They say in the middle of this crazy settlement was a circle of flat stones with carvings on them and, in the center of that, a piece of slate with a one-word message.”

“Which was?”

“T-Y-B-A-N-E.”

Pendergast and Constance exchanged glances.

“What does it mean?”

“No one’s ever figured it out.” A knowing leer. “Until now, maybe.”

“So you’ve heard that whoever killed the historian, McCool, carved that word on his body.”

Boyle shrugged. “Can’t keep no secrets in a town as small as Exmouth.”

“Any speculations as to why someone would do that?”

“It’s some kids, probably, tweakers from Dill Town getting their kicks, playing at raising the devil. They robbed the man to buy drugs and are dumb enough to think they’ll get the cops to think witches did it.”