Crimson Shore (Agent Pendergast, #15)(56)
Within minutes, the driving wind and storm surge began carrying wreckage ashore—spars, planks, barrels…and then survivors. A ripple of surprise went through the group standing on the beach. Instead of well-dressed officers, what appeared out of the dark and the storm were young women—some grasping babies or toddlers, still others clinging to debris. They struggled through the surf and onto the beach, crying piteously for help, soaked to the skin, bleeding from scrapes and cuts. Other bodies, already drowned, were washed up the strand and deposited in grotesque, wanton poses. Among them were the bodies of men in dungarees—crew.
Pendergast turned his attention from the wreck to two of the men onshore, so alike they must have been brothers—the one with the stopwatch, the other with the spyglass. Their faces registered confusion and surprise. They clearly had not expected the ship to be laden with so many passengers—especially not women and children. The other men were shocked as well. For a moment, all were paralyzed, unable to act. Then, on impulse, one broke for the water, preparing to help a woman and baby ashore. As he ran past the man with the stopwatch, the leader angrily seized him and threw him to the ground. Then he turned to the others. “These are witnesses!” he cried, addressing the crowd. “Do you understand? Witnesses! Do you all want to swing for this?”
The only answer was the howl of the storm and the piteous sounds of drowning and desperate women and children, struggling up through the surf.
And then, coming in through the waves, Pendergast beheld a remarkable sight: a large dory, crammed with women and children. A lifeboat had managed to survive. Captain Libby stood at the bow, holding a lantern and giving orders, two crewmen at the oars. As the group onshore watched, Libby brought the boat expertly through the surf, and the women and children poured out onto the beach even as the captain jumped back into the boat and ordered the men back to the wreck in a heroic effort to save more. The survivors swarmed toward the guttering bonfire, believing themselves saved.
The leader of the mob was enraged at this development. “That’ll be the captain!” he said, pointing with a shaking finger. “That’s the man we want! He knows where the loot is! Get him—now!”
The mob, galvanized, rushed forward with a roar, brandishing guns, knives, and scythes. As the boat returned with more survivors, it was overtaken. The two crew members were quickly dispatched. Libby drew his sword but was overcome by numbers, dragged out, and hauled before the leader.
The captain, his features distorted by gashes across his forehead and left cheek, looked at the leader with anger and disgust. “You did this!” he said. “You lured us in. Murderer!”
In response, the leader put a gun to the captain’s head. “Tell us where the money is.”
The captain remained motionless, saying nothing. The leader cracked his pistol across Libby’s face. The captain sank to his knees, temporarily stunned. At the leader’s order, the captain was hauled roughly back to his feet, blood now streaming from a broken nose. He was searched, but no valuables were found. The leader, further enraged, dealt him a stinging backhanded blow. “Haul him off to the lighthouse,” he ordered the men.
Two of the men grabbed the captain by the upper arms and began half pushing, half dragging him northward along the beach. Rousing himself, the captain cried: “What are you going to do with the women and children?”
In answer, the leader spat into the sand—but not before glancing over his shoulder at the dunes beyond the shingle beach. Then he turned back to his men. “Take that dory out to the ship,” he said. “Search it, starting with the captain’s quarters! Find the loot before the ship breaks up!”
The men, though still in shock, were now united. The utter barbarism of the atrocity they’d committed had bound them together, made them resolved to see it through to the end, no matter what. The mob went lumbering down the beach and launched the dory into the water, manning the double sets of oars and driving it through the surf until they reached the broken back of the ship, wedged on the reef, battered and being driven into pieces by the sea. Converging on a gaping rend in the center of the hull, they disappeared inside, the torches winking out one by one as they were swallowed by the hulk’s interior.
Pendergast watched them from his position at the rear of the beach. Then he turned his attention to the pathetic, bedraggled groups of women, young children, and babies, huddled together in threes and fours, crying and pleading for help.
Another man was staring at them, too: the leader of the mob. In one hand was his pistol; in the other, a heavy, cruel-looking cudgel. And the expression on his face was so harrowing that, in an instant, the memory crossing was cut violently short and Pendergast found himself once again in the present, lying upon the stony beach, Constance Greene nearby, a statue standing guard over the deserted scene.
32
Carole Hinterwasser stepped up to the front door of her shop, A Taste of Exmouth, and peered out the window through a slit in the gauzy drapes. It was four thirty, half an hour before the regular closing time, but a CLOSED sign had already hung on the door for the past ninety minutes. She looked left, then right. Main Street was quiet, with only a few pedestrians moving purposefully along.
Soft footsteps approached from the rear of the shop, and then she became aware of the presence of Bradley Gavin behind her. She felt his body touch hers, felt his warm breath on her neck as he, too, peered through the window.