Harold was released late in the afternoon on $86,111 bail, put up by an Essex County real-estate corporation of which Mrs. Claudia Wildman was a major stockholder. Outside, it was bright, dry and windy, and he was picked up by Ollie Morgan, one of Bruce K. Wildman's clerks, and driven back to Harvest Mills Cottage.498Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡXubLkcZems
Ollie Morgan was young and flush-faced, with a fluffy little mustache. He had never been involved in a homicide case before, and, apparently, was quite scared of Harold.
"I read the police report on Mrs. Donald Baylor's death," he told Harold, as he drove. "That was some way to die."
Harold nodded. It was impossible to explain to anybody what he felt about the gruesome events of the previous evening. He was still suffering from residual shock, and a kind of persistent nausea. He could actually imagine what chandelier chain must have felt like, passing right though Mrs. Baylor's insides, cold and uncompromising and beyond any human capability to remove. Worst of all, though, he still felt dread. If Mrs. Baylor's dearly beloved Donald had been powerful and cruel enough in his spectral state to impale his widow like that, what would Jerry try to do Wilbur Price, or Nancy try to do to him? And from what Bruce Wildman had told him, Wilbur and Mrs. Donald Baylor and himself weren't the only ones in Ol' Spithead who had been visited by flickering visions of their dead relatives.
For some reason, it seemed as if this year the influence of these manifestations was stronger than usual, although he hadn't really been living in Ol' Spithead long enough to know what "usual" might be. Mrs. Baylor had said something about the manifestations being seasonal, more frequent and more obvious in the summer months than they were in the winter. Only God knew why that could be: maybe there was more static electricity in the air in the summer, feeding the apparitions with natural power.
Ollie Morgan said, "Mr. Wildman will get you off of this rap. You just wait and see. He talked to the D.A. already, and tomorrow he's going to have a meeting with the chief of police. Actually, the police don't really think you did it, either. They don't know how the hell Mrs. Donald Baylor got herself up on that chandelier chain, but they don't really believe that it was you who put her there. They had to arrest you as a matter of procedure; and to satisfy the newspapers."
"It's in the newspapers? I haven't seen one."
Ollie Morgan nodded towards the back seat. "There's a couple of the locals there. Help yourself."
Harold reached over and picked up the Ol' Spithead Messenger. The main headline read, WIDOW IMPALED IN GRISLY GRANITEHEAD KILLING, Local antique dealer held. Underneath there was a morgue photograph of Mrs. Donald Baylor taken when she was ten years younger, and a picture of Harold that had been taken outside Winstanley's Marine Antiques when it first opened.
"That'll be good for business," Harold said, folding up the newspaper and tossing it back onto the seat.
Ollie Morgan drove up Harvest Mills, turned around in a circle outside Harold's cottage, and parked. "Mr. Wildman said that he'd call you later this evening. Something about making an appointment to drop over."
"Yes," said Harold.
"Is there anything else you need? Mr. Wildman said I was to go get anything you wanted."
"No, I don't think so, thanks. I want a drink more than anything else."
"You're sure you're going to be okay?"
"I'm sure. Thanks for the ride. And tell Mr. Wildman thanks, too."
Ollie Morgan drove off, and once again he was standing alone outside Harvest Mills Cottage, his hands in his pockets, unsure of what lay waiting for him inside, what strange disturbances from a time and a place that he could only guess at. Was it heaven? Was it hell? Or a shifting, displaced limbo; a half-seen world of distorted psychic energy, where the spirits of the dead faded and flickered like those garbled radio messages which you can pick up during the hours of darkness?
The house watched Harold with its neutral, shuttered eyes. He walked up the garden path, took out his keys, and opened the front door.
Everything was just as he had left it yesterday evening. At least he had had the presence of mind to turn off the oven before running out, leaving a half-cooked lasagna dinner on the middle shelf. He went into the living-room and the fire was dead, ashes blowing across the rug from the draft which blew down the chimney. His books were laid out on the floor, and propped up against the side of a chair, the painting of the George Badger.
He crossed the room and looked out through the diamond-leaded windows into the garden. He could just see the back of the swing-seat, and the right-hand side of the orchard. In the distance, silvery-gray rain clouds were building up over Lobster Bay. Seagulls turned and fluttered around the Neck like windblown newspapers. He pressed his forehead against the cold windowpane, and for the first time in his life felt utterly defeated.
Maybe he should leave Ol' Spithead for good. Sell up the business, and go back to St. Louis. There was even a chance that he might be able to get his old job back, at Transosis Chemical Bonding. He would probably forfeit a few years of promotion, but what was that compared with the extraordinary terror of what was happening here in Ol' Spithead? He was especially disturbed by the excitement which Bruce K. Wildman had shown when he had told him about the apparition of Nancy. There was something grotesquely unhealthy about it, as well as dangerous. The trouble was, he was beholden to the Wildmans not only for bailing him out of jail, but for 2/3 of the finance which had opened up Winstanley's Marine Antiques and so it was going to be very hard for him to refuse their request to come over to Harvest Mills Cottage and see Nancy's ghost for themselves.
He was just about to pour himself a drink when there was a ring at the front doorbell. Tracker Miller, maybe? Or Andy Curtis? It had better not be Andy Curtis---I've give him a not-soon-forgotten "thanks" for telling the police that I had been "rambling and deranged." He called, "All right, I'm coming," and went to answer it.
Standing outside in the evening wind was Michael Trotter, in a plaid lumberjack coat and a peaked denim cap. "I'm sorry to call on you personally. But I heard what had happened, and I just had to come over from Salem to talk to you."
As a matter of fact, Harold was oddly relieved to see him. It was better to have some company in that unsettled house than none at all. And he did want to talk to him about the painting of the George Badger.
"Come on in," Harold told him. "I haven't lit the fire yet. I've only just been sprung, if that's the word."
"Do you think your lawyer can get you off?" Michael Trotter asked, taking off his cap and stepping into the hallway.
"I hope so. He's my father-in-law. Well, he was my father-in-law, before my wife died. Bruce K. Wildman, of Wildman & Fullhouse. He's pretty well connected. Plays golf with the D.A. and gin-rummy with the judge."
"We've met," said Michael Trotter. "You forgot that I knew your wife. She and I were in a seminar together, to study maritime history. That was, what, three or four years ago now, up at Rockport. She was a very pretty girl, your wife. All the guys there kept trying to date her. She was clever, too. I was sorry to hear that she died."
"Thank you for that much," Harold told him. "Can I get you a drink?"
"I'm a beer man myself.
"There's Samuel Adams in the icebox."
Michael Trotter followed him into the kitchen and he opened a bottle of beer for him. He watched him closely as he poured it out.
"Did you really kill that old woman?" he asked Harold.
Harold looked up at him; then shook his head. "How did you know?" he queried.
"I have a pretty good idea of what's been going on around here. I don't work for the Peabody for nothing, you know. I know more about the maritime history of Salem and Ol' Spithead than almost anyone, except maybe the Grimaldi family. But then I don't have their books."
"You know what's been going on?"
"Sure," he said, taking the beer-glass out of Harold's hand. He sipped a little, leaving foam clinging to his mustache. "Ol' Spithead has always had a reputation for ghosts, just like Salem has always had a reputation for witches. Although the town fathers have done all they can to downplay it, there's just not any doubt in my mind that Ol' Spithead is a nexus between the spirit world, if I dare to call it that, and the physical world. More than anywhere else in the whole U.S.A. Maybe anywhere else in the whole world."
"So what happened to Mrs. Donald Baylor if you don't think I'm the culprit?"
"It's possible that you were the culprit, but in my opinion not likely. What you obviously don't know is that there have been six or seven deaths of bereaved people in Ol' Spithead over the past ten years, and all of them have been characterized by the extraordinary and inexplicable ways in which they have occurred. One man was found with his head trapped inside a water-pipe, drowned. The newspapers said that he had put his head down through an access hole to discover what had been stopping the pipe up, but the police report says different. The access hole was tight around the man's neck, so that it would have been impossible for him to have put his head through it. The doctors had to cut off his head to get him out, and then flush his head out of the pipe with a strong jet of water."
Harold made a face, and Michael Trotter shrugged. "Mrs. Donald Baylor's death was no different," he said. "A physical impossibility and the police know that, too. They have to prove in court that you killed Mrs. Donald Baylor, and if you can show beyond any doubt that it was impossible for any human being to have impaled her on the chandelier like that, you're home free."
"Come through to the living room," Harold said. "I'd like to get the fire going before the temperature drops."
They went through to the living room, where Harold got down on his knees before the hearth and began clearing out the fire. Fortunately, there were plenty of logs and kindling stacked beside the grate, so he didn't have to go out to the woodpile. Michael Trotter put down his beer, and picked up the watercolor of Ol' Spithead beach. He examined it minutely, and when he turned around from the fire to find some rolled-up copies of Newsweek to stuff under the logs, he saw that he was paying particular attention to the ship.
He said, "Out of those six or seven other deaths, only two people were ever charged with homicide, and both of those were released before their cases got to trial. In each case the D.A. said that there was insufficient evidence to proceed. The same will happen to you."
"How come you've made such a study of it?" Harold asked him, as he struck the first match, and lit the corner of the rolled-up magazines.
"Because the maritime history of Ol' Spithead and the spiritual history of Ol' Spithead are inextricably intertwined. This is a magical place, Mr. Winstanley, as you've discovered for yourself, and what's more, the magic is real, and violent. It's not like the Haunted House at Disneyland."
The fire started to catch, and Harold stood up and brushed his trousers. "I'm beginning to realize that, Mr. Traitor."
"Trotter. But why don't you call me Michael?"
"All right. I'm Harold." And for the first time, they shook hands.
Harold nodded towards the watercolor. "I know now why you were so anxious to lay your hands on that picture. I did a little detective work last night, and I found out what that ship is, in the background."
"What ship?" asked Michael.
"Come on, MIchael, don't act so innocent. That ship is the George Badger; and this picture must be one of the only surviving illustrations of it. No wonder it's more than $61. I wouldn't take less than a thousand."
Michael tugged at his beard, curling the hair of it around his fingers. He regarded Harold from behind his round glasses with watery eyes; and then let out a long, resigned puff of breath. Licorice and aniseed again.
"I was hoping you wouldn't find out," he said. "I'm afraid I made an ass of myself yesterday, running after you that way. I should've played it cool."
"You did arouse my interest. Now you've raised my financial expectations, too."
"I can't pay more than $400."
"Why not?"
"I just don't have more than $400, that's why."
"I thought you said the Peabody was buying this," Harold told him. "Don't tell me the Peabody has only $400!"
Michael sat down, still holding the picture. "The truth is," he said, "the Peabody doesn't know about this picture. In fact, the Peabody doesn't know about any of the investigations I've been doing into the history of the George Badger. In Salem, and especially the Peabody, the George Badger is something that people just don't talk about. You say 'George Badger,' and they say 'Never heard of it,' and they make it pretty damn clear that they don't want to hear about it, either."
Harold poured himself a whiskey, and sat down opposite him. "But why?" he wanted to know. "George Badger himself was supposed to have had conversations with the devil or something, wasn't he? But I haven't read anything that explains why they cut the ship's name out of all the records, or why people won't talk about it."
"I'm not sure, myself," said Michael. He finished his beer, and put down the glass. "But I first came across the name George Badger the year that I joined the Peabody from college. They gave me a small exhibition to prepare, a special showcase depicting the history of the recue and salvage operations that had gone on around Salem and Ol' Spithead during the past three hundred years. It was pretty tedious stuff, to tell the truth, apart from one or two spectacular wrecks on Lobster Island, and a couple of whalers being overturned by humpbacks. But I was interested in one of the earliest documents I found, which was the log of the salvage vessel Pequod, out of Ol' Spithead. Apparently the captain of the Pequod was a real 18th-century hotshot when it came to bringing up wrecks, and he successfully salvaged one of Caleb Fentby's Chinamen, when it was blown by a storm into the mouth of the Trevors River and sunk in six fathoms of water off Tucker's Point. His name was Simon Mears, and he kept a really meticulous log for five years, from 1701 to 1706."
"Go on," Harold said. He poked the fire to keep it crackling.
"There's not very much to tell," said Michael, "but one summer there was an unusually low tide in Lobster Bay, and even the smaller ships were stranded on the mud. This was 1704, I think, or 1705. The low tide is mentioned in several other diaries and records as well, so it's soundly authenticated. It was during this low tide that a friend of Simon Mears spotted in the mud banks to the west of Ol' Spithead Neck a protrusion from the mud which he took to be part of the bow castle of a sunken and half-buried ship. Mears walked out to the wreck himself, in wading boots, although he was unable to get as close as he might have because the ooze was so soft. He did manage, however, to bring back to the shore a fragment of decorative molding, and Ahab Marsh, who owned the George Badger, tentatively identified it as part of his lost ship."
"Lost? The George Badger was lost?"
"Oh, yes. She sailed out of Salem Harbor on the last day of October, 1692, and the only reason I knew that is because it happens to be mentioned in the diaries kept by one of the early Salem wharfingers. He says something like, 'A tempestuous north-westerly gale had been blowing for three days and showed no sign of letting up, but in spite of the perilous weather the George Badger set sail, the only vessel to do so during that whole wild week. She vanished into the storm and was never again seen in Salem.' That's the gist of it, anyway. I can show you the diary itself, if you wish."
"But what's the connection with apparitions in Ol' Spithead?" Harold asked. "There must be scores of wrecks around these shores."
As the fire blazed up, Michael unbuttoned his jacket. "Let me get you another beer first," Harold told him.
Harold went outside to the kitchen. At the foot of the staircase, he paused for a second or so, listening. He hadn't ventured upstairs yet, not since he'd seen the flickering light in there last night. He hoped to God there wasn't anything up there which he didn't want to see. He hoped to God that Nancy wouldn't appear again, not for her father, not for her mother, and especially not for him. She was dead but he wanted her to stay dead, for her own good, and for the good of their child who never was.
When he came back with the beer, Michael was leafing through Great Men of Salem Town. "Thanks," he said. Then: "You're not having any problems yourself, are you?"
"Problems? Me?"
"You haven't seen anything which might suggest that Nancy's trying to contact you? Or maybe heard something? A lot of the Ol' Spithead hauntings have been aural, rather than visual."
Harold sat down, realized that his glass was empty, and stood up again. "I, uh, I---no. No, nothing like that. I guess it only happens to old Ol' Spitheaders. Not to us strangers."
Michael nodded, as if he accepted what Harold was saying, but didn't totally believe him.
"You were telling me about the connection between the George Badger and the hauntings," Harold reminded him.
"Well," he said, "it's only fair to warn you that in strictly scientific terms, it's a pretty tenuous connection. It wouldn't win a history award. But I don't know what kind of a world we're dealing with here: I don't know why these ghosts are manifesting themselves, or how. It may just be an unpleasant freak of nature, something to do with weather conditions, or maybe it's something to do with geographical location. Ol' Spithead may be like Easter Island, a spot on the map that for completely incomprehensible reasons happens to be conducive to spiritual apparitions."
"But you think it's the ship."
"I'm inclined to think it's the ship. And the reason why is because I've discovered two accounts of the George Badger being prepared for her final voyage---one written before she sailed and the other written nearly eighty years later. I found the older account in a boring old book, a late 17th century treatise on maritime shipfitting and metalwork. It was written by a shipbuilder from Boston called Phelps, and let me tell you--that man was tedious. But near the end of the book he mentioned the Salem coppersmiths of Gould and Drew, and says what a magnificent job they were making of a 'huge copper vessel' to be fitted inside the George Badger for the purpose of 'containing that Great Foulness which has so plagued Salem, that we may look forward to his final removal.'"
"You know this stuff by heart," Harold remarked, not altogether admiringly.
"I've studied it often enough," said Michael. "But Nancy was the one learning history by heart. She could reel off dates and names like a memory bank."
"Yeah," Harold agreed, remembering the way Nancy could memorize telephone numbers and birthdays. He didn't really want to discuss Nancy with Michael Trotter; it was too raw a subject, and besides, he felt absurdly but strongly jealous that Michael had known her before he did.
"What was the other account?" Harold asked him.
"The latter one---eighty-two years later, as a matter of fact---was contained in the memoirs of the Rev. Robert Semple, who had lived and worked in Ol' Spithead for most of his life. He said that one day in 1753 he attended the deathbed of an old-time Salem bo'sun, and the bo'sun asked him particularly to commend his soul to heaven, since when he was younger he had spied on the secret loading of the George Badger's final cargo, even though he had been warned that all who set eyes on it would be condemned to walk the earth forever, neither alive nor dead. When the Rev. Semple asked the bo'sun what the cargo might have been, the bo'sun went into convulsions and started screaming about 'Soupy the Payman.' The Rev. Semple was greatly disturbed by this, and went to speak to everyone willing to talk to him in the hopes of shedding some light on what the bo'sun had said, but without success. But he later said himself that he was sure that he had seen the bo'sun after his death, just turning the corner by Village Street."
Harold sat back in his chair and mulled all this over. Under normal circumstances, he would have dismissed it immediately as a fantasy, myth. But he knew now that fairies and goblins and all kinds of other manifestations might actually exists, and if a young man as serious as Michael Trotter were convinced that the wreck of the George Badger was somehow influencing the community of Ol' Spithead, then he was not too far away from taking him seriously.
And what had that old witch-woman said to Harold on Salem Common? "It's the place you die, not the time, that makes the difference. There are spheres of influence: and sometimes you can die within them, and sometimes you can die without them. The influence came, and then the influence fled; but there are days when I believe that it didn't flee for good and all."
"Well," Harold said at last, "I suppose you want this picture because it might give you some clues about what the George Badger might have been carrying?"
"It's beyond that," said Michael. "I want to know what she looked like, as exactly as possible. I do have one sketch which is supposed to be the George Badger, but it's not half as detailed as this."
He looked at Harold, and removed his spectacles. Harold knew that he wanted him to say that he could have the picture, that he would drop his thousand-dollar price to $411; but he wasn't going to. There was always the remote chance that he was a glib and creative con man, and that he had simply invented all these stories about Simon Mears and the Rev. Semple and "Soupy the Payman." Harold didn't really believe that he had, but he still wasn't going to let his picture go.
"The detail in this painting is vitally important," Michael said. "Although it's not very artistic, it looks reasonably accurate, and that means I can more or less estimate the size of the George Badger, and how many frames her hull was likely to have, and how her superstructure was fashioned. And that means that when I do find her, I can be sure I've located the right ship."
"When you---what?!" Harold asked him.
Michael replaced his spectacles and gave him a small smile of modest pride. "I've been diving off Ol' Spithead Neck for seven months now, trying to locate her. I haven't been able to do too much diving during the winter, but now that spring's here, I intend to start again in earnest."
"What the hell do you want to find her for?" Harold asked him. "Surely, if she's having this kind of influence on Ol' Spithead, she's better off under the water."
"Under the mud, you mean," said Michael. "She'll be pretty deeply buried by now. We'll be lucky if there's even a few frame-tops showing."
"We'll be lucky?!"
"There're a couple of other guys from the museum helping me, and Tom Cowgill from the Ol' Spithead Aqualung Club. And Joe Bean's been my unofficial lookout and log-keeper."
"You really think you can find this wreck?"498Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡM8XybtomQy
"I think so. It's not too deep around that side of the Neck, because of the way the mud builds up. There are dozens of wrecks down there, but almost all of them are yachts and small dinghies, all comparatively recent. We did come across the remains of a fabulous 1920s Dodge motorboat, but that couldn't have sunk more than six months ago. When the summer comes, we intend to scan the seabed with EG & G sub-mud sonar, and see if we can pinpoint the George Badger precisely."498Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡOra4ocYjdC
"Surely she would have decayed by now. There won't be anything left to pinpoint."498Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ5EIkvnyETc
"I think there will be," Michael disagreed. "The mud there is so soft that you can plunge your arm into it right up to the elbow without any trouble at all. Once, I almost sank down to my waist. The George Badger, if she sank around there, would have been buried almost up to her original waterline pretty well straight away, and over the next few weeks she would have sunk deeper. All the timber beneath the mud would have been preserved intact, and as it happens a particularly cold current runs into Lobster Bay around Ol' Spithead Neck, and that would have had the effect of inhibiting decay in the timbers that remained exposed. Fungi and bacilli don't like cold water, any more than gribble or nototeredo norvavica---that's a woodboring mollusk, to you."498Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡxlm4ASTVFx
"Thanks for the marine biology lesson. But what are you hoping to do if you eventually find the George Badger?"498Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡQQsicmIrs7
Michael spread his hands in surprise. "Bring her up, of course," he said, as if it had been obvious, all along. "Bring her up and find out what it is she's carrying in her hold."498Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡud0JgnuOPE
