The Shape of Night(58)

    “I don’t know what power this entity has over you,” says Maeve, “but you need to step back and think about what happened to the women who came before you. Four of them died here.”

“Five,” I say softly.

“I’m not counting the woman who was found floating in the bay.”

“I’m not counting Charlotte, either. There was also a girl, fifteen years old. I told you about her. A group of teenagers broke in on a Halloween night. One of the girls climbed up to the widow’s walk, where she fell.”

Maeve shakes her head. “I looked, but it didn’t come up in my search of the newspaper archives.”

“My carpenter told me about it. He grew up here, and he remembers it.”

“Then we need to talk to him.”

“I’m not sure we should.”

“Why not?”

“He’s a suspect. In the murder of Charlotte Nielson.”

Maeve lets out a startled breath. She turns and stares at the house, which seems to be at the center of this maelstrom. Yet I myself feel no fear because I can still hear his words whispered in the darkness: Under my roof, no harm will come to you.

“If your carpenter remembers it,” says Maeve, “other people in this town will remember it, too.”

I nod. “I know just the person we should talk to.”





Twenty-Two


It is just past five when Maeve and I arrive at the Tucker Cove Historical Society. The CLOSED sign is already hanging, but I knock anyway, hoping that Mrs. Dickens is still inside, tidying up. Through the smoked-glass door I see movement, and hear the thump of orthopedic shoes. Pale blue eyes, distorted by the thick lenses of spectacles, peer out the doorway.

“I’m sorry, but we’re closed. The building will open at nine A.M. tomorrow.”

“Mrs. Dickens, it’s me. We spoke a few weeks ago, about Brodie’s Watch, remember?”

“Oh hello. Ava, isn’t it? It’s nice to see you again, but the museum is still closed.”

“We’re not here to see the museum. We’re here to speak with you. My friend Maeve and I are doing research on Brodie’s Watch for my book, and we have questions you might be able to answer. Since you’re the number one expert on the history of Tucker Cove.”

    That makes Mrs. Dickens stand a little straighter. On my last visit here, there’d been almost no other visitors. How frustrating it must be for her to be so knowledgeable about a subject that few people care about.

She smiles and opens the door wide. “I wouldn’t call myself an expert, exactly, but I’d be happy to tell you whatever I know.”

The house is even gloomier than I remembered, and the foyer smells of age and dust. The floor creaks as we follow Mrs. Dickens into the front parlor, where the logbook of The Raven, the ship formerly under the command of Captain Brodie, is displayed under glass.

“We keep many of our historical records in here.” She pulls a key ring from her pocket and unlocks the door to a glass-fronted bookcase. On the shelves are volumes of leather-bound books, some of them so old they look ready to crumble. “We hope to digitize all of these records eventually, but you know how hard it is to find funds to do anything these days. No one cares about the past. They only care about the future and the next hip new thing.” She scans the volumes. “Ah, here it is. The town records for 1861. That’s the year Brodie’s Watch was built.”

“Actually Mrs. Dickens, our question is about something that happened far more recently.”

“How recently?”

“It would be about twenty or so years ago, according to Ned Haskell.”

“Ned?” Startled, she turns to frown at me. “Oh, dear.”

“I guess you’ve heard the news about him.”

“I’ve heard what people are saying. But I grew up in this town, so I’ve learned to ignore half of what I hear.”

“Then you don’t believe he—”

“I see no point in speculation.” She slides the old book back on the shelf and claps dust from her hands. “If your question’s about something that happened only twenty years ago, we wouldn’t have that record here. You should try the Tucker Cove Weekly. They have archives going back at least fifty years, and I think much of that is digitized.”

    Maeve says, “I’ve already searched their archives for any articles mentioning Brodie’s Watch. I never found anything about the accident.”

“Accident?” Mrs. Dickens looks back and forth at us. “Something like that might not even make the news.”

“But it should have. Since a fifteen-year-old girl died,” I tell her.

Mrs. Dickens lifts her hand to her mouth. For a moment she doesn’t speak, but just stares at me.

“Ned told me it happened on a Halloween night,” I continue. “He said a group of teenagers broke into the empty house, and there may have been drinking involved. One of the girls went out onto the widow’s walk, and somehow she fell. I don’t recall her name, but I thought, if you remembered the incident, and which year it was, we might be able to track down the details.”

“Jessie,” Mrs. Dickens says softly.

“You remember her name?”