Maidenstone Lighthouse (17 page)

Aimee whirled about and stared at me.

“How could you know that?” she asked, her tone filled with despair. “Our love was a secret. Our secret.” She wrung her pale hands in despair. “Father would have killed my dear Ned if he'd suspected,” she moaned.

“But your father did know, Aimee,” I said as gently as I could. “He went down to New York and brought you back home. Back here, to this house. Surely you must remember that.” Something told me it would not be a good idea to mention the painting in the Greystone Club, so I shut up.

Aimee thought for several moments, then she slowly sank to her knees, her lovely head bowed onto her chest. Her smooth back was wracked with deep, shuddering sobs and I longed to be able to take her into my arms and hold her.

“Oh, God,” she wailed. “Father! I remember it all now. That wicked man told him everything. That horrible man with his horrible, obscene letters—”

“Amos,” I said. “Amos Carter, the lighthouse keeper.”

Aimee slowly raised her head and gazed into my eyes, her beautiful face a mask of profound grief. “Amos,” she whispered, as if repeating a name from a frightening Gothic horror story. “That wicked, evil man.” She shook her head in disbelief. “Amos tried to lure me into his house on Maidenstone,” she whispered. “Tried to put his dirty hands on my bosoms…” She paused, struggling to cope with the foul memory of Amos Carter. “He said he would tell Father about Ned and me, said he'd make me sorry if I didn't do what he wanted.”

I was momentarily speechless. For though I had suspected Amos Carter of the worst kind of lechery, the despicable lighthouse keeper's blatant attempt to trade his silence for Aimee's sexual favors was a revelation that even I had not anticipated.

“Why, that dirty son of a bitch!” I finally hissed.

Aimee seemed to recoil in shock from the sound of my voice. And it took me a moment to understand that Victorian sensibilities would have prevented a young woman of her class from ever expressing herself in such crude language.

“I'm sorry,” I apologized. “I know women didn't talk like that when you were…in your time.”

“Nevertheless, it's true,” she whispered after a further moment of painful reflection. “Amos Carter was exactly what you said, and worse. He was a terrible, terrible man.”

Her head fell back onto her chest and she sobbed as though her heart were breaking. “He made everything that had been so sweet and beautiful between Ned and me seem filthy and degraded,” she said and then wept.

Aimee's stricken eyes were filled with girlish innocence as she raised them to mine. “Ned and I were going to marry,” she said. “He had pledged himself to me. I only left him and returned home after Father threatened to have my love thrown into prison.”

She shook her head in despair. “Father refused to understand that Ned painted me as the great Renaissance masters painted, with purity and reverence…”

I did not trust myself to reply to that. For I realized then that Aimee must be blissfully unaware that her painting had ended up hanging behind the bar at the Greystone, there to be leered at by generations of rich old men. Evidently she had not lived long enough to discover that Ned Bingham had been every bit as big a bastard as the despicable Amos Carter.

“The night you fell,” I began, confident now that I finally had the full picture, and determined to guide the subject back to the circumstances of her death. “Am I correct in supposing that Amos Carter lured you up into the lighthouse with some new threat? And that he pushed you off when you refused to submit to his advances?”

Aimee's dark eyes widened in astonishment and she shook her head emphatically. “Oh, no,” she exclaimed. “That's not what happened at all.”

Her voice suddenly caught and she turned to gaze out through the window at the ghostly white outline of the old stone tower on the nearby island.

“If that had been what happened…” She sighed as if she devoutly wished it was true. “If Amos Carter had murdered me, then I could have gone straight to the loving arms of those waiting for me in the heavenly Light.”

Aimee was rocking back and forth on her knees in profound sadness, causing her raven tresses to scatter over the pale ivory of her shoulders.

“If only that awful man had killed me,” she moaned, her words directed not to me this time, but to whatever cruel fate held her trapped in perpetual limbo, “then I would long ago have passed over to the glories of the other side.”

I stared at her as an explosive, cracking noise outside signaled the loss of another tree limb in the yard.

F
ollowing a few hours of troubled sleep I had anxiously phoned Dan shortly after dawn. He had driven over and picked me up for an early breakfast. Now we were sitting in a window booth at Krabb's, overlooking the choppy waters of the harbor.

Dan was positively thunderstruck.

“You're saying that Amos Carter was innocent? That Aimee Marks actually did commit suicide by jumping from the lighthouse tower…”

I held up my hands to stop him. “I said no such thing! And even though Amos Carter didn't murder Aimee Marks he can hardly be considered innocent,” I retorted angrily. “In fact, if there really is a Hell, I sincerely hope that evil—” I paused to regain my composure. “I just hope he is slowly roasting in it this very second.”

Taking a deep breath and forcing a calmer tone into my voice, I continued. “Aimee's death was far more complex than a simple suicide. You just didn't let me finish.”

Dan threw up his hands and leaned back against the hideous pink vinyl of the restaurant booth. “I'm sorry,” he said, genuinely puzzled. “But if Amos didn't kill Aimee and she didn't kill herself, then who did?”

Before I could answer him a tired-looking waitress appeared at our table with two mugs of steaming black coffee and pulled out a pad to take our orders.

I felt Dan's eyes worriedly scrutinizing my haggard features and rain-soaked hair as I ordered toast and poached eggs. He ordered his scrambled, with bacon, and the waitress departed. When she had gone, he leaned closer, anxiously awaiting my explanation.

I looked around the nearly deserted restaurant to be certain that nobody was eavesdropping on our bizarre conversation. “Ned Bingham murdered Aimee Marks,” I said. “But the poor thing doesn't even know it.”

Dan couldn't have looked more confused. He dumped a packet of sweetener into his coffee mug and waited for me to continue.

“Aimee's father went to New York and broke into Bingham's little love nest, threatening to have the jerk arrested for alienation of affection and seduction with promise to marry…” I began.

Dan's brow wrinkled into a frown. “Arrested for what?” he spluttered in disbelief. “She was twenty-five years old, hardly a child.”

I shook my head. “It may seem unbelievable now,” I said, “but in 1910, Victorian thinking remained firmly rooted in society and the law. Women hadn't yet been given the vote and were still essentially treated as property. Accordingly, an unmarried female was considered to be the ward of her father until she was turned over to the care of a proper husband.”

I paused to let that information sink in before continuing. “The bottom line is that either of those seemingly silly charges I mentioned—even discounting the far more serious offense of unlawful intercourse—could land a man like Ned Bingham in seriously deep ka-ka. I'm talking prison time.”

Dan took a gulp of the scalding coffee and the hint of a smile creased his features.

“What?” I snapped peevishly.

“Oh, nothing.” He grinned. “I was just wondering how many years I would have gotten for what went on in your parlor last night.”

“Very amusing,” I said, scowling. “Do you want to hear the rest of this or not?”

He looked suitably chastised and nodded. “Please do continue,” he urged. “I find it absolutely fascinating.”

I sighed, reached for a container of low-fat milk and stirred some into my coffee. “Anyway,” I went on, “in order to protect Bingham, Aimee returned to Freedman's Cove and became a virtual prisoner in her room. Because, no matter how much the family might have blamed Ned Bingham for what had happened, Aimee had been his willing accomplice. So, until they could pack her off on a long European tour or some similar diversion that would get her out of town for a while, they were afraid to let her out in public, where, thanks to Amos Carter, people would be sure to gossip about her…and the family.”

“It all sounds terribly Victorian,” Dan remarked.

I nodded. “Depressingly so,” I agreed. “But similar things frequently happened to ‘good' families in that era. But if they had enough money, which Aimee's family did, the wilted flower could generally be married off to a suitable man in another city and the scandal would eventually be forgotten. Or at least it would never be spoken of in polite society.” I paused for a sip of my own coffee. “So that was the plan.”

“But something went wrong,” Dan said, finally coming up to speed. He thoughtfully stirred his coffee. “Like Aimee discovering that she was pregnant.”

I rewarded him with a small smile. “Very good,” I said. “Although the term Aimee used was ‘with child.' And that presented the poor woman with an entirely new dilemma. Because she couldn't even imagine what her father would do to Ned Bingham if he found out.”

“More likely than not, there would have been a formal shotgun wedding,” Dan cynically interjected.

I nodded impatiently. “You may be right. But you must remember that Aimee had heard her father issuing death threats against her lover and promising him prison time, just for having slept with her. So she had no reason to imagine that the old man would suddenly welcome the creep as his son-in-law.”

“I think I see where all of this is going,” Dan said. “Aimee didn't tell her family about her,
ahem
, condition…”

He paused as the waitress returned with plates of eggs, toast and a platter of crisp bacon.

“Of course she didn't tell them,” I replied impatiently when the waitress had finished and gone away again. “She was absolutely terrified.”

Dan snagged a piece of bacon. “But she did tell Ned Bingham,” he guessed, “who, being disinterested in giving up his mad Bohemian lifestyle, obligingly took the next train north and killed her.”

He popped the piece of bacon into his mouth and waited for me to confirm his conclusion.

I shook my head. “Wrong again,” I said, deliberately pausing to butter my toast.

“You're punishing me now,” he complained.

“No,” I said, enjoying the suspense of making him wait. “I'm just trying to show you the folly of leaping to one false conclusion after another.”

“I won't say another word,” he promised.

I gave him a jaundiced look as I bit into the corner of my toast and thoroughly chewed the morsel.

“But you were at least partly right,” I finally conceded, “in that Aimee did write to Ned Bingham, describing her plight and beseeching him to come secretly to Freedman's Cove to take her away and marry her, just as he'd promised.”

Dan skeptically raised his eyebrows. “The girl was not exactly a rocket scientist, was she?”

“That's unfair,” I snapped, waving my toast for emphasis. “Like most young women of her time, Aimee Marks had been deliberately kept ignorant of the most basic facts of life. As a result, she had absolutely no experience of what love was supposed to be, other than what she'd absorbed from silly Victorian romance novels, where lovers sent one another flowery notes and ladies swooned at the thought of a bare ankle. She'd never even seen a naked man before Ned Bingham blew into Freedman's Cove and bowled her over.”

I slowly let the anger drain out of my voice. “By our standards, Aimee Marks was nothing more than a sheltered, provincial child who fell hopelessly in love with this charming jerk. She wholeheartedly believed every word Ned Bingham ever uttered to her.”

“But he didn't kill her?”

I shook my head. “No! The miserable son of a bitch did something far, far worse than that.”

Dan remained silent while I took another sip of my coffee, followed by a deep breath.

“After he received her letter, Ned Bingham got a message to Aimee. He said that he would indeed come in secret for her, by boat. He named a night when the moon would be dark and the tide low, and instructed her to wait for him out on Maidenstone Island. After Amos Carter had retired that night, which he always did by midnight, Aimee was to climb to the top of the lighthouse tower and watch the sea from the balcony for Ned's signal. If she signaled back to him that the coast was clear, he would sail in and pick her up.”

“Well, old Ned certainly wasn't taking any chances on running into her old man,” Dan observed.

“That's what convinced Aimee to do as Ned instructed,” I told him. “To her it seemed a perfectly logical and wildly romantic way to begin an elopement. On the appointed night, Aimee went out to Maidenstone Island and climbed to the top of the lighthouse to watch for Ned's signal. But when she got there, Ned was already waiting for her.”

“Uh-oh,” Dan muttered.

“Ned appeared to be distraught,” I continued, ignoring the interruption. “He told Aimee he'd just learned that her father had already filed charges against him and that he was a ruined man. Henceforth, no self-respecting millionaire would allow him into his home to paint portraits of his wife and daughters, et cetera.”

Dan interrupted again, waving his hand to get my attention. “May I assume that Bingham's entire story was a big fat lie?” he impatiently queried.

I nodded. “I think we can safely assume that,” I said, “considering what good old Ned did next.”

Dan leaned forward. “Go ahead,” he urged.

“Well,” I continued, “after Ned informed Aimee of his own ruination, and reminded her that she was a fallen woman—by Edwardian standards, anyway—he suggested a solution to their joint problem. It was exactly the kind of solution the cunning bastard knew would fit perfectly into one of Aimee's flowery romantic novels.”

Dan raised his eyebrows.

“Because he loved her so much and could not bear to see her suffer the indignities that her pregnancy and his disgrace were sure to bring,” I said, my voice filled with loathing, “Ned Bingham proposed a suicide pact.”

“Oh, hell!” Dan exclaimed.

“He and Aimee would share one last kiss, then step out onto the balcony of the Maidenstone Light and leap to their deaths on the rocks a hundred feet below.”

“Sweet, Jesus!”

“And,” I went on, “being a perfect gentleman, Ned said he would allow Aimee to jump first. So that, in the extremely unlikely event that she somehow survived the fall, he would be available to gallantly go down and deliver a coup de grace, before climbing back up and offing himself.”

Dan looked like he was going to be ill. “So Aimee jumped,” he said.

I nodded. “It would have been a simple matter for Ned to remain hidden in the lighthouse until Amos Carter came out and discovered Aimee's body. Afterwards, Ned must have sneaked down from the tower, gone to the boat he had hidden among the rocks and sailed away into the night.”

“Having just committed the perfect crime,” Dan whispered in awe.

“Perfect except for one small detail,” I said.

Dan looked at me, puzzled.

“Aimee's ghost,” I said. “She's trapped eternally somewhere between Aunt Ellen's and the lighthouse, still waiting for Ned Bingham, to join her.”

“Good Lord, you mean you didn't tell her the truth?”

I wearily shook my head. “Tell her that the only man she had ever loved betrayed her, in return for her having made the greatest sacrifice that any human can make?”

I lowered my voice and swiped an angry tear from my cheek. “How could I tell her a horrible thing like that, Dan?”

He reached across the table to touch my hand. “I see what you mean,” he said.

I wiped my nose on my napkin and looked up to see his green eyes filled with concern. “Your breakfast is getting cold,” he said.

“But don't you want to hear what else Aimee told me?” I asked.

“Later,” he said, “after you've eaten something and calmed down a little.” He pointed to the food on my plate. “Now eat!”

“Yes, sir,” I meekly replied.