Maidenstone Lighthouse (9 page)

B
y midafternoon the rain clouds had disappeared entirely. The heavy northeast winds had been replaced by a mild breeze that rippled the glassy surface of the sea with the little rough patches that old-time sailors refer to as cat's-paws. Since it was unlikely that I would have many opportunities to enjoy the moped once winter set in, I rolled it out of the carriage house and fired up the eager little engine. To my great satisfaction it caught on the very first try.

This time I was prepared for the breezy ride out to the island. I had found an old ski jacket to wear and with a bike helmet on my head and heavy sunglasses protecting my eyes, the trip was even more enjoyable than it had been the first time.

From a distance I saw Dan's Toyota beside the lightkeeper's cottage. So I rode into the parking area expecting to find him posed theatrically behind an easel. The sight that actually greeted me when I spotted him caused my jaw to drop.

Because Dan Freedman was standing at one corner of the old cottage, slapping thick white paint onto the weathered clapboards from a big plastic bucket. He turned at the sound of my approach and cheerfully waved his brush at me.

“I was wondering if you were going to show up,” he called out over the buzz of my engine.

“You really are painting the lightkeeper's cottage.” I laughed, not sure if he had arranged the whole thing as a joke for my benefit.

Dan raised his eyebrows mischievously and wiped his paint-soiled hands on a rag. “Well, that is what I said I was going to be doing, isn't it?”

I turned off the motor, parked the bike on its stand and pulled off my helmet and glasses. “That's what you said,” I admitted.

“One of the duties of an honorary museum curator,” he explained, “is helping to keep the old place shipshape. In fact, I suspect that's the only reason the town council gave me the job, though I've recently done a bit of redecorating on my own. Come on inside and I'll show you around.”

He carefully replaced the lid on the paint bucket and led me around to the open front door of the cottage. “Welcome to the Maidenstone Island Maritime Museum and Lighthouse Tour,” he said, ushering me into a cozy room with a large stone fireplace.

“Prior to full automation of the beacon in 1967, the cottage was the residence for a succession of lighthouse keepers and their families,” Dan announced, sounding like a tour guide. “Based on old photographs and journals of the time, I've tried to restore this room to approximately what it would have been like in the late 1860s. At least,” he added sheepishly, “this is my idea of how it might have looked.”

“It's lovely,” I said, looking around with an appraising eye. The small front room was filled with sturdy but comfortable country furniture of the period, and a gaily colored rag rug covered the polished oak floorboards. There was a blackened iron cooking pot on the hearth and a magnificent polished brass barometer on the mantel.

“Except for a few exhibits in dusty cases the cottage was practically empty when I took over as curator,” Dan said as I walked around the room. “It was my idea to try to re-create the original feel of the place by furnishing it. I gathered up this stuff from antique shops around the area.”

I smiled approvingly. Though the furnishings were authentic I was more impressed by the little touches that Dan had added to his re-creation of the lightkeeper's living space. Small items like a 19th-century child's reading primer lying open on the hearth and a half-finished wood carving beside a rack of well-chewed pipes gave the impression that the room's Victorian-era occupants had stepped out just a moment before.

“You've got an artist's eye for detail,” I said, which brought a broad grin to his face.

When I had finished admiring the parlor, Dan led me into an adjoining room, which really did look like a museum. The whitewashed board walls were filled with photos of shipwrecks, storms at sea and portraits of generations of lightkeepers and their families.

Ranged beneath the pictures were glass cases containing small mementos, pieces of nautical gear and journals kept by the lightkeepers over the years.

“These are wonderful pieces,” I said, leaning over to inspect a display of exquisite scrimshaw carvings beneath the glass.

“The lightkeeper's life was a pretty lonely one,” Dan explained. “Before the raised causeway was constructed out here to the island in the 1940s the lighthouse was frequently cut off from the mainland by high seas. Creating handicrafts like that scrimshaw helped pass the long, stormy nights, and the objects produced were often sold in the village as a means of supplementing the lightkeeper's small salary.”

“Too bad they didn't know what scrimshaw would be going for in today's collector's market,” I commented. “All of their descendants could have been rich.”

Dan halted and smiled ruefully. “My great-great-grandfather would have been very happy to hear that,” he said, pointing to a picture of a white-bearded old salt standing before the cottage. “Old Ben Freedman there was the first keeper of the Maidenstone Light.” Dan touched the photo affectionately. “Unfortunately, the poor old guy died nearly penniless.”

Like every other child in Freedman's Cove I had heard the story of Ben Freedman many times while I was growing up. The town's name had been changed from Southport to Freedman's Cove to honor the lightkeeper after he had heroically risked his life rowing a tiny dinghy into murderous surf to rescue the victims of an 1875 shipwreck.

But I also recalled the whispered stories about the Freedmans, which Aunt Ellen had repeated often when rebellious young Danny had come to cut our lawn. Aunt Ellen had always said it was a disgrace that the town hero's descendants had turned out to be nothing more than a collection of poor drunks and lobstermen, and she hoped poor Danny wouldn't turn out the same way.

“Your ancestor must have been a remarkable man,” I commented diplomatically while trying to read the flinty-eyed gaze of the grizzled old codger in the photo.

“Well, you won't find it in the official historical record,” Dan replied, “but I'm afraid my luckless ancestor actually ended up as the town drunk.”

I raised my eyebrows but said nothing, for that was exactly what I had heard.

“According to his journal,” Dan continued, “Ben Freedman originally became a lighthouse keeper because he never could get along with people. So when the rescue turned him into an overnight celebrity he just couldn't handle it. Though he didn't write it down, Old Ben is reported to have once told my great-grandmother that he only took to the bottle because it made the people tolerable to him.”

I nodded, not sure what to say.

Dan ended the awkward moment by taking my hand. “When was the last time you were up in the lighthouse?” he asked.

“When I was about twelve,” I answered uneasily. I had gone into the tower on a dare and I vaguely recalled a long, dizzying climb up the winding iron stairway, followed by an even more dizzying view from the round glass cupola on top. I think I may have gotten nauseous afterward.

Generally I am not too fond of extreme heights.

 

We entered the damp, chilly interior of the lighthouse tower through a heavy steel door. An electric motor hummed softly somewhere high over our heads. The gloom of the place closed in on me almost immediately and I shuddered under the massive bulk of the black serpentine stairway that filled the tower and obscured most of the wan light filtering down from a hundred feet above.

Dan pulled the outer door shut with a loud clang that echoed through the enclosed space. “Well, how do you like it so far?” He grinned.

“It feels like a tomb,” I replied, pulling my jacket tighter around me and trying to think of a good excuse to return to the cottage.

“Ah, but wait 'til you see that view again.” He laughed, bounding away up the stairs and disappearing around the first twist before I could protest. “Come on. You'll love it.”

I craned my neck helplessly, trying to catch a glimpse of him. But except for the hollow ring of his footsteps on the metal treads I might as well have been alone. So, wondering exactly how I had gotten myself into this fine predicament, I gripped the cold iron railing and started up after him.

Ten minutes later, huffing like an elderly asthmatic, I stepped into the small white chamber at the top of the tower.

“Your face is red,” Dan observed with amusement. When I did not reply his smile faded and he reached out to touch my perspiring brow. “You okay?”

I nodded and unzipped my jacket, feeling the heat rise off my chest. “I'm afraid I've been neglecting the gym lately,” I puffed, looking around the small space while I waited for my heart rate to slow to normal. The afternoon sun was streaming in through the circle of spotless glass panes that surrounded the room, casting dazzling reflections off the huge lenses suspended on polished brass fittings in the center.

“It really is a beautiful piece of work, isn't it?” I was gazing in fascination at the intricate clockwork mechanism of the old beacon.

He ran a hand fondly over the satiny finish of the massive gear wheel supporting the light. “We seldom give our ancestors enough credit for their technical accomplishments,” he agreed. “This beacon weighs almost a thousand pounds. It projects a beam forty miles out to sea. And this same hand-machined gear has been turning it precisely once every forty-five seconds for over a hundred and sixty years without a single breakdown.”

“Amazing,” I said, stepping closer to examine the polished gears and counterweights suspending the mechanism.

“Makes you wonder how long your car would last if it had been made by the guys who built this thing, doesn't it?” Dan pointed to a spidery engraving on the metal wheel. “See here, the man who made this gear signed it. Arthur Thackeray, Greenwich, England, 1846.”

“Pride of craftsmanship was everything in that time,” I said, bending to peer at the inscription. “It's one of the things I love about working with antiques. You can feel the sheer joy that went into crafting something especially beautiful and enduring.” I straightened and shook my head. “Nobody cares about things like that anymore.”

“Oh, some of us still care deeply.” Dan's voice was filled with fervor and I turned to look at him. Through the broad window at his back I could see the cold waters of the Atlantic that stretched endlessly to the horizon, their color in the sun exactly matching the shade of his clear green eyes.

The absolute perfection of the scene clutched at my heart. Suddenly I felt a wave of dizziness sweeping over me. I closed my eyes and reeled forward into his arms. He caught me effortlessly. “Sue, what's wrong?” he asked with concern.

“Nothing,” I murmured, feeling extremely foolish. But I did not immediately open my eyes, savoring for just a moment the feeling of being held…the way that Bobby had once held me, I dimly realized.

No sooner had that thought come into my mind than I understood what was happening to me. I shook off the feeling and pulled free of his embrace, embarrassed.

“I'm afraid I have a little vertigo issue,” I said, indicating the dazzling vista of sea and shore that lay beyond the windows.

“Why didn't you say so?” he asked, pulling a stool from a small desk containing nothing but a black emergency telephone. “I would have never brought you up here if I'd had any idea…”

I sat down, feeling the hot blood coloring my cheeks. “No, I wanted to come up here again,” I insisted, forcing myself to look outside. Far away, at the base of the stone causeway, the line of stately Victorian homes dominated the shoreline. I could clearly see my bedroom turret above the outlines of the denuded trees.

“This is exactly the reverse of the view from my bedroom window,” I observed, pointing.

Dan nodded absently. “I know,” he replied.

I swung my head around and stared at him. Behind him the barrel of a large brass telescope gleamed in the sun. He followed my gaze to the instrument, which was pointed in the general direction of my house, and understanding slowly registered on his tanned features.

Dan raised his hands disarmingly. “Oh, no, Sue,” he protested. “You don't think I've been sitting up here at night spying on you.” He saw the shock in my eyes and realized that he had put into words exactly the first thought that had popped into my mind. “Good God, no,” he spluttered. “Actually I was just remembering something I read about your house when I inventoried some of the museum's papers last year.”

I gave him a blank stare.

“There's a series of entries in one of the old lightkeepers' journals,” he hurried to explain. “They were all written around the time your ancestor fell to her death from this tower.”

“My ancestor?” My voice was a hoarse whisper.

Dan nodded. “A young woman…Surely you heard the story from your family.”

I shook my head slowly. “I never heard any story.”

Dan paused, considering his next words carefully. “Well, maybe they wouldn't have told you. I mean, it wasn't exactly the kind of thing the Markses would have wanted spread around, especially back in 1910. I'm sure they probably preferred to forget the whole thing.”

“What happened to her?” I asked, feeling my mouth go suddenly dry.

D
an Freedman lifted a big canvas-bound book from a stack of similarly bound ledgers on my coffee table and placed it in his lap. “The journal of Amos Carter for 1909 and 1910.”

It was dark outside and we were sitting before a roaring fire in Aunt Ellen's old parlor. Unable to recall all the details he had read more than a year earlier, Dan had not attempted to relate to me from memory alone the full story of Aimee Marks's death.

Instead, we had come down from the lighthouse and dug out the old journal from a huge cache of documents stored in the attic of the lightkeeper's cottage. Without telling me why, Dan had insisted on searching for three other journals as well. By the time we finally found them all the sun was going down. So we'd placed my moped in the back of his truck and returned to the house, where I had prepared an impromptu supper of canned soup and cold sandwiches.

Now, with our sandwiches eaten and mugs of freshly brewed coffee before us, Dan was ready to proceed.

“Amos Carter was the keeper of the Maidenstone Light from 1905 until 1913,” he began, thumbing through the lined pages of the thick handwritten ledger. “And, like all lighthouse keepers of the time, he was required to keep records of everything that affected the light.”

“Like a captain keeps a ship's log?” I asked with interest.

Dan nodded. “Exactly like a ship's log,” he answered. “The idea was to put down important information concerning the operation of the light. But there were no hard rules about what had to be written, so journals might also include other information, such as daily weather reports, descriptions of shipwrecks along the coast and almost anything else you can imagine.”

Dan found the entry he was seeking and looked up. “In many cases, depending on how detailed he wanted to get, a lightkeeper's journal might contain the only accurate historical record of local events. Of course,” he added, “many lightkeepers entered only the absolute minimum information required.”

He showed me a double page crammed with small, neat handwriting in faded blue ink. “But Amos Carter seemed to have spent a great deal of time working on his journal. In fact, it's a regular gossip column about life in turn-of-the-century Freedman's Cove.” He took back the book and scanned it with distaste. “And it seems that Amos was also something of a Peeping Tom and self-appointed moral guardian,” Dan said. “He describes several times in his journals how he kept his eye on the whole town through that big brass telescope up in the tower.”

“Which is how you happened to know all about the view of my bedroom window,” I interjected sheepishly.

He nodded. “Amos Carter had been watching your ancestor Aimee Marks for a long time and he wrote it all down.”

I took a deep breath as Dan placed his finger on the page.

“For instance, here's an entry Amos wrote in July of 1909, more than a year before the girl's death:

“Dammit!” I angrily exclaimed. “Do you mean to say that this lecherous bastard was deliberately spying on her night after night without her knowledge?”

“All in the worthy interest of protecting public morals,” Dan said sarcastically.

“That is such bullshit,” I retorted. “It was a hot summer night and the girl came to her window, which does not, by the way, face the town. She was probably only hoping for a breath of cool air. Amos Carter was undoubtedly the only one who could even see her.”

“Hey, I didn't write it, I'm just reading it,” Dan replied defensively. He flipped through several more pages of Amos Carter's cramped handwriting. “But if you liked that,” he said, “you're going to love this. Here's another entry, dated August of the same year:

“No wonder poor Aimee ran away to New York,” I said, pitying the long-dead girl for the cruel injustice she had suffered at the hands of the sanctimonious lighthouse keeper.

“Life in Freedman's Cove must have become a sheer hell for her,” Dan concurred, “with Amos secretly scrutinizing her every move and sending anonymous poison-pen letters to her family and God knows who else in town.” He flipped to several more journal entries for August of 1909, all detailing Aimee's increasingly intimate liaisons on the beach with the same nameless artist.

Then, in mid-September, the stranger suddenly disappeared and Amos Carter had returned to spying on Aimee through her bedroom window. In a final entry, posted in early November, he wrote of observing “a fearful row” between the girl and her father, an argument that left Aimee alone and weeping in her room.

“My God,” I whispered when Dan had finished reading, “the wicked bastard must have destroyed her reputation and forced her to leave town.”

“Well, something happened,” Dan agreed, “because there's no further mention of Aimee Marks in Carter's journal until late the following year, when she turns up dead here at the lighthouse.”

He looked up from the book with a frown. “You say she went to New York?”

I quickly related the few sketchy details that I had gotten from Aunt Ellen about Aimee and the anonymous New York artist.

Dan listened thoughtfully. “So she ran off to New York to live with a painter,” he marveled. “I can see how that would have scandalized your average straitlaced New England family of the time. Do you think this painter's interest in her was romantic or professional?”

I went to the bookcase and retrieved the group photo of the girl as a teenager. “You be the judge,” I said. Dan regarded the picture for several moments.

“She was very beautiful,” he said at last. “Not just conventionally pretty, but truly beautiful.” His green eyes left the picture and met mine. “For a minute I was sure I'd seen that face before.” He smiled. “Then I realized why she looked familiar. I suppose you know that you look a lot like her,” he added softly.

I took the picture from his hand and stared at it, aware for the first time that there was indeed a strong family resemblance between me and the girl perched on the antique bicycle. “Well, I'll never see sixteen again,” I said, trying to make a joke of it.

Dan's eyes hadn't left mine. “You're still the prettiest girl in Freedman's Cove,” he said, reaching up to touch my cheek. “I remember wishing that you were a year or two older, back when we were teenagers…”

The touch of his fingers was electric on my skin and I recoiled in shock from the unexpected surge of emotions that suddenly welled up within me, emotions I hadn't experienced since…Bobby.

“Well, I probably couldn't have competed with Debbie Carver back when you two used to drive out to the island together,” I quipped, in a poor attempt to cover my acute discomfort.

Almost before the cruel words had left my lips I regretted them, for Dan's face had turned suddenly dark.

“I'm sorry, Dan,” I stammered. “I had no right to say that.”

“It's okay,” he said, picking up the journal and searching for another entry.

“No, it's not,” I moaned. “You just paid me a lovely compliment and I repaid it by hurting your feelings. I feel like such a jerk.”

Dan carefully set the book on the coffee table. “Sue, I know what people in this town always thought and said about Debbie and me,” he said evenly. “And after all this time it doesn't really matter that none of it was true.” His mouth curved into a wan smile. “Both of us have managed to survive.”

I shook my head vigorously. “What I said was positively unforgivable,” I insisted, thinking of the long-ago summer night when I had secretly watched his old Mustang driving slowly out to Maidenstone Island and wished I was the one with him. “As unforgivable as icky old Amos Carter spying through his telescope and spreading his poisonous rumors about Aimee Marks. I have absolutely no idea what kind of relationship you and Debbie Carver had,” I concluded lamely. “Nor is it any of my damn business.”

“Debbie and I were the best of friends,” Dan said quietly, “two outcasts from the wrong side of the tracks who clung to one another when things got rough. Mostly we talked about escaping from Freedman's Cove…She wanted to be a singer, you know.”

“Please, Dan,” I pleaded, feeling even worse than before. “You don't have to explain anything to me—”

“Oh, but I want to,” he whispered, taking my hand in his. “I really do want you to understand, Sue.”

Then, without warning, our lips were touching and the electricity had been turned back on. I felt it reaching down into my soul and let it carry me away, heedless of my guilty realization that Dan Freedman was not entirely to blame. For, like two magnets placed too close together, we had been irresistibly drawn together at the same instant.

An image of Bobby's smiling face flashed through my mind and I abruptly pulled away.

“I'm sorry. That was my fault—” Dan began.

I waved my hand, dismissing the apology. “No,” I said, slightly breathless. “It happened and it was wonderful—”

“But?” He left the question hanging between us.

“This is just a very bad time for me,” I said evasively. “It's complicated…”

“Let's just leave it there for a while, then,” he said with a smile. “We'll just say it was a very nice kiss between friends—”

“No,” I corrected, “it was a great kiss. And I hope we can have another one sometime soon.”

Dan grinned at me, then took my hand and gave it a firm shake. “Deal,” he said.

“Now,” I resumed, clearing my throat to regain my composure. “What about my poor ancestor Aimee? Are you going to let me in on the rest of the details or not?”

Dan picked up the journal again and turned to a page he had already marked. “I thought it was important for you to understand everything that went on between Aimee and Amos Carter the previous year,” he said. “Because this is the entry that Amos made on the night that she died:

Dan closed the journal and placed it back on the coffee table with the others.

“That's it?” My voice was a hoarse whisper.

“That's all he wrote,” Dan confirmed. “Amos Carter never mentioned Aimee or the incident again. He stayed on as the keeper of the light until 1913…when he leaped off the tower to his own death.”

“Christ,” I breathed.

“The strangeness of the incident intrigued me when I first ran across it last year,” he said. “So the next time I went to the town hall to do research I checked the records for Aimee's death certificate. Her fall was ruled accidental.”

“Accidental?” I snorted. “What on earth would she have been doing up in Amos Carter's lighthouse alone in the middle of the night in winter?”

Dan shrugged. “That remains a complete mystery. There was a short obituary in the local paper that simply reported Aimee had died from an accidental fall. Nothing more. So evidently the town authorities bought Amos's story, lock, stock and barrel. Possibly the fact that her reputation had already been ruined made her seem like a logical candidate for suicide. Or—”

“Or what?” I challenged. I was really extremely upset by the whole thing.

Dan shrugged. “Or perhaps she really did commit suicide. Maybe choosing the lighthouse as the place to kill herself was her way of getting back at Amos for what he'd done to her.”

“Well, I'll tell you what I think happened,” I exclaimed vehemently. “Aimee Marks went out there to the lighthouse to confront that son of a bitch about his spying and he killed her.”

“That certainly seems like a good possibility,” Dan conceded.

“A possibility?” I shouted, jumping to my feet and pacing the floor like a caged tiger. “It's the only answer that even makes any sense. Afterwards, that bastard Carter was obviously so overwhelmed by his own guilt that he ended up killing himself.”

“Why is all of this so important to you?” Dan asked quietly.

The unexpected question caught me completely off guard. “Well, isn't it perfectly obvious that Amos Carter murdered Aimee Marks?” I spluttered.

“Maybe,” said Dan. “But even if that's true, it happened almost one hundred years ago, Sue. Anyone who might have even known either of them when they were alive has been dead for several decades now.”

I sat down and sipped cold coffee from my cup. “Well, of course,” I murmured, reluctant to admit that I had in fact been visited by the ghost of Aimee Marks less than twenty-four hours earlier.

“You haven't by any chance seen her lately, have you?” Dan inquired casually.