The Bermuda Shipwreck

by Eric Murphy

  “That’s how you came to contact Brian Ord, because he owned the art gallery?”

  Bennett nodded. “Ord asked me why I wanted to sell it. I took a chance and told him I wanted to raise enough capital to do a wreck dive for Lily because, based on my ancestor’s letters, I had a good idea where she’d sunk. I didn’t think he’d believe me. But he took me here and showed me the twin to my painting. His was the one that Consul Allen sent to the navy. So Ord knew of Lily and he wanted to hear about the content of Papineau’s letters. We agreed to split whatever we found fifty/fifty.”

  Before continuing, Bennett shot a worried look toward the back room, then to the open elevator he could see through the door. “Turns out our Mr. Ord was not only selling original paintings. He was involved in forged paintings as well. And he and his father had shown a certain skill in buying up recovered treasure. That is, until the Bermudian government passed a law claiming all sunken treasure in territorial waters as part of their national heritage.”

  “Is that why you wanted to smuggle wreck-excavating equipment into Bermuda?”

  “Yes. I dove and within a week I’d found the wreck based on the geography mentioned in Papineau’s last letter. All we needed was the underwater excavating gear. I’m sorry Will. You were just supposed to bring the boat here and fly home. We didn’t count on you and Harley finding the gear in that hollowed-out water tank. I wasn’t even worried that you had found our excavation gear because you didn’t know what it was for. But Claire didn’t want to take any chances. She wanted us to make it look like an accident. Probably what she had in store for me. Dead men tell no tales.”

  “You keep saying ‘her.’ Isn’t Brian Ord behind all of this?” pressed Will.

  Bennett again shook his head with impatience and large drops of blood flew off the end of his nose and landed on Will’s pants. He tried to rub them off but they smeared, like two big wounds on either thigh.

  “I called Ord from Nova Scotia and told him you and your cousin were bringing the boat here. He said he didn’t like involving children and would think about the deal. Never saw him again. Claire wanted him to stick with the plan to try and find the shipwreck. They argued and he had a heart attack and she let him die. When I got back here, he was already dead — only I didn’t know that till just the other day.”

  “Wait a minute. I just saw Mr. Ord on the balcony,” protested Will.

  “That’s the dummy you saw in the other room. She dresses it up like Ord so she can wheel him out there and leans in pretending to talk to him so people who walk by on the street think he’s still alive. She even spits sunflower seed shells into waste bins like Ord did when he was alive. That’s how sick she is. As his manager she was already running just about everything for him, so taking over from Ord after his death wasn’t that difficult for her.”

  Will shook his head. “It wasn’t a dummy I saw on the Boston Whaler when he came out to Wavelength,” blurted Will.

  “I thought it was Ord too. But it was Claire. See, he was pretty frail at the end, so he and Claire were about the same size. After he died, Claire just wore his clothes and with that gauze he always had on his face and hands to protect against the sun, well, she looked the part. And when she was on the boat, she only talked to us by cellphone and lowered her voice.”

  “So she’s the one who gave the order to ‘make it look like an accident’ on the boat?” asked Will. “That’s why she kept sending the gang after us. Not because she needed the content of the letter but because our story could bring the police here and they would discover what she’d done with Ord.”

  Bennett nodded, again flinging blood from his nose. “She was boiling mad that I’d lost that letter at the archives. She said I had put them all at risk. That we’d be found out — not just the illegal wreck diving but all that stolen stuff Ord was involved in,” he said, nodding to the back room. “Of course, at that time, Drury and I didn’t know she had let him die. Drury still doesn’t know Ord’s dead.”

  Bennett caught his breath, then continued, “After she threatened me, I realized I had to get away. Before she could read them, I hid two letters on the boat, wrapped in plastic. When I snuck down here to get my painting back, I stumbled onto the room full of stuff stolen by the Red Feather Gang. I heard her coming. I tried to hide in that closet. And that’s how I found him. I screamed. She pulled out a gun and told me I knew far too much.”

  “You’re saying she left him to die in that closet?” asked Will.

  “Yes, yes. If you don’t believe me, open the door and see for yourself.”

  Will sidestepped toward the closet and laid his hand on the handle. He held his breath and jerked it open. He jumped back. Inside the cupboard, in his wheelchair, sat Brian Ord — or what was left of him. There was a bit of skin showing between the gauze gloves and his shirt cuff. Ord was mummified, and this was where the slight smell of decay was coming from.

  “And now you know too so we’re both at risk. Please, Will, find something to cut me loose. I’m not the one to worry about, she is. Please,” said Bennett with exasperation.

  Will leapt to the back room and flicked the light on. He stopped cold. The room was jammed up with all kinds of items: flat screen televisions, laptops, cellphones, two scooters, at least six gas generators, jewelry in a series of baskets and pillow cases full of stuff just piled onto and under foldout tables.

  Will skipped over to a counter and pulled a number of drawers open till he found a pair of pliers and ran back to Bennett.

  “Was Claire the one who hooked up with the Red Feather Gang?” asked Will.

  He knelt beside Bennett and he turned his wrist toward Will.

  “No, that was Brian Ord. Two years ago he was approached by that guy Drury who had stolen a painting. Ord realized these guys needed organizing and a place to stash their loot and if need be, sit on it till the police lost interest, then sell it, sometimes by shipping things to the Caribbean. He had the money to pay them a deposit and the patience to wait it out before selling it,” explained Bennett.

  “What changed?” asked Will. He squeezed on the pliers to get its pinchers to bite into the chain on the handcuff. Nothing. Again he squeezed as hard as he could till he heard a crack. One of the pliers’ jaws had snapped off.

  Bennett’s head sagged with despair. “She’s been counting on us finding Papineau Benoit’s treasure then getting out of Bermuda before anybody realizes what’s up. She was probably going to cut me out of the picture all along.”

  “It’s worth that much?” asked Will.

  “Papineau wrote he’d been paid in US double eagles. They were worth twenty dollars back then. But if they’re in good shape, Ord thought that they could be worth over two million dollars as collector pieces.”

  “Why hasn’t she taken the money and left?” asked Will. “You found the wreck. That’s why we were diving there —”

  “The money box was empty. Drury and I did a night dive but found nothing. Papineau’s done something else with the gold. That’s why I was looking at the archives. For a place called Trotters’ Trail. But —” said Bennett, freezing in mid-sentence.

  They heard an electric garage door opening somewhere in the back of the building. A car rumbled into the garage. Its motor stopped. Will shot a look at Bennett, who had gone pale.

  “That’s her. She’s back. Get outta here before she gets you too.”

  “I can’t just leave you,” hissed Will, looking off to the far door that he assumed led to the underground garage.

  “Go and get help. If she finds you here, we’re both dead. She’s got a gun, Will, and she’ll use it. When you get back up to the office, look in a file drawer for one called ‘Edward James.’ That’s where you’ll find one of Papineau’s letters. That’s the one that led me to the wreck,” said Bennett. “Now go, go.”

  Will scurried into the elevator and stabbed the second floor button. This time the whirr sounded incredibly loud, probably because he knew Claire Calloway had entered
the basement.

  The elevator hadn’t fully stopped on the second floor landing before Will bolted out and over to the desk. He yanked the lower drawer open, running his finger along the files till he came to the one marked “Edward James.”

  He flipped it open, ignored the photocopies of his various paintings but stopped when he saw the old-time envelope addressed from Papineau to Lily. He heard the elevator start up. Claire Calloway was on her way here.

  Will jammed the letter into his shirt pocket. He slid against the desk smudging it with Bennett’s blood that had landed on his pants. Once on the balcony, Will slowed his pace as he sidled along the concrete wall till he was abreast of the sunburst guardrail. He threw one last look at the hidden elevator panel and as soon as the first go-kart screeched through the turn below, Will hoisted himself out onto the same steel rods he’d used to spin onto Brian Ord’s patio.

  This time the rusted rod under his foot didn’t sag. It snapped. Will fell backward with a scream that was drowned out by the go-kart engines.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Papineau's Last Letter

  Capstan: A nautical apparatus used for hoisting heavy objects such as anchors, by means of a line around a vertical spool-shaped cylinder that is rotated manually or by motor.

  Will waved his arms in a vain attempt to stop his fall. He did a perfect back flop into the blue food tent before passing out.

  He didn’t know how long he’d been out. He could hear the go-karts racing off in the distance, but nearby voices were pushing their way into his consciousness. He blinked awake and stared into the worried, round face of Louise, the large woman serving up Jamaican food from inside the tent.

  “Well, sweetie, lucky for you my broad back was under the tent when you decided to go Olympic diving on us. I know my jerk chicken be the best on the island but you didn’t hav’ta go to that length to get yo’sef some,” she said, smiling.

  “Will! Will, are you okay?” asked Harley, peering over Louise’s shoulder.

  “Excuse me, please. I’m a doctor. Please, just let me have a look at — oh my God, it’s Will,” said Dr. Doan, her face shifting from professional poise to concern, then back to business mode.

  “I think I’m okay,” said Will, trying to pull himself upright.

  “Just you lie there a moment till I have a look at you —” said Dr. Doan before she was interrupted by another voice.

  “Excuse me, please let us through. Police. Please move back and, oh, Dr. Doan, what have we got here, then?” asked a Bermudian police officer in blue polo shirt and matching cargo pants as he kneeled beside Dr. Doan. He looked at Will’s pants and added, “You’re bleeding. Do we need an ambulance?”

  “It’s not my blood,” wheezed Will, still trying to get his breath back.

  The officer leaned into the walkie-talkie hanging on his left shoulder, activated the two-way radio, and said, “Hey, Mickey, tie her up and join me here in front of the Ord Gallery, will you?” He turned back to Will. “I’m Sergeant Wilson. Where did this blood come from, and how did it end up on you?”

  Will used the officer’s hand to pull himself into a sitting position. He leaned out around the tent and peered between the legs of the onlookers who were staring down at him.

  “I was up there on the restaurant patio and I could see a woman hitting Mr. Ord in his wheelchair on his patio. I think she was using a gun,” lied Will, wanting to warn the officer. Will knew the Bermudian police weren’t armed so he didn’t want Sergeant Wilson to walk into a shooting situation. “She pushed him inside and he was bleeding. You know, up against the desk. The big desk in there. So I ran in to help, but she had pushed him into an elevator. He needs help. Dr. Doan, he needs help, in the basement. He’s there bleeding. And he needs help now.”

  “What makes you think they were going to the basement?” asked the sergeant.

  “Uh, well, I, I …,” began Will, looking to Harley for help. She held up her hands to show Will she had bunched up the gauze gloves in one hand and had pulled Papineau’s letter from his pocket and held it in her other hand.

  Reassured he wasn’t about to be exposed as a break-in thief, Will regained his composure. “Well, I think the gallery’s closed today because of the race. So that floor’s closed and I’m guessing she took him to the basement, wouldn’t you think, Sergeant?”

  Another officer made his way through the crowd. Sergeant Wilson turned and said to him, “We’re going to have a look on the second floor balcony of the Ord building to see if there’s someone there in need of assistance. And Mickey, there’s a report of a gun on the premises.”

  With Dr. Doan’s warning that Will wasn’t to overdo it, the two officers and Will retraced his steps from the restaurant’s balcony to Ord’s balcony. Will was told to stay on the restaurant balcony. Most of the guests barely took time from the go-kart race below to pay them the slightest interest.

  “Police officers. Who’s in there?” Sergeant Wilson called into the office. When no answer came, they pushed their way through the door.

  “The elevator’s right there,” said Will, pointing.

  When the officers followed the direction he was pointing, Will swiveled from the patio he was on to the Ord patio. Before they could protest, Will skipped past them to the hidden elevator.

  “They went in here,” said Will, giving the panel a little shove so that it sprang back. The officers stared into the darkness. Without explaining how he knew to do it, Will clicked the button that whirred the elevator back up to them.

  The two officers got in and disappeared. A few minutes later they emerged looking pale and serious. “Well, someone’s been handcuffed to a chair down there. Blood splats everywhere. And Mr. Ord is dead. It couldn’t have been him you saw because the body we found in a wheelchair’s been dead for quite a while,” explained Sergeant Wilson.

  “But not long enough for the smell to completely dissipate,” said the other officer, who looked pale.

  Sergeant Wilson said, “We also saw a whole bunch of paintings and what looks like a lot of stolen goods. We’ve called in the criminal investigation unit.”

  “What about the man I saw in the wheelchair? He was alive and he needs your help and, well, you have to do something to help him, don’t you?”

  “Well, there’s also a mannequin that looks like Brian Ord in a wheelchair in the basement. But I can’t imagine she’d hit a mannequin. And it wasn’t a mannequin that bled all over the floor down there. I’ve called in Claire Calloway’s description. We’ll bring her in for questioning. You up to giving us a statement, Will?” asked Sergeant Wilson.

  “Uh, well, you know, sure, I’d like to. But right now I feel I’d like to just lie down, if that’s all right. Not feeling too good. Seeing all that blood, you know.”

  “Sure, sure,” said Wilson, ushering them all back out to the balcony and the fresh breeze. “Let’s get you back to your family and Dr. Doan, shall we?”

  They drove back to Aubrey’s place and ate the jerk chicken meals Louise insisted on giving them because she’d never had a client drop in like Will had to get her food before. There’d been enough excitement for one day, so they ate in silence. Aubrey insisted Harley stay with Will as he cleaned up the dinner dishes.

  “Hey, Harley,” whispered Will, despite the fact that the only ones listening were the keskidees perched on the nearby branches, “let’s read Papineau’s letter, huh? According to Bennett, Ord thought the gold coins could be worth over two million dollars. That would make up for Aubrey giving away his companies, right?”

  Harley nodded, unfolded the letter and read it out loud.

  St. George, Bermuda, July 30, 1864

  My dearest Lily:

  I can scarcely believe that I am alive and penning this letter from Trotters’ Trail. A few days ago I would have been hard-pressed to imagine this possible.

  A month ago we were at anchor in St. George, awaiting a cargo that needed shipping. I was having dinner at the Globe Hotel when in cam
e Villiers Rougemont with a man he introduced as Dr. Luke Blackburn. They bade me accompany them along Penno’s Wharf as they had a delicate business proposition they wished to put to me.

  Dr. Blackburn tells me he has trunks full of clothes he wishes brought to auction in Boston. They called upon my dedication to the Southern cause to take these trunks but not to open them or to come into contact with the clothes, this under any circumstances. Blackburn was reticent but Villiers, who had been drinking, bragged that the clothes belonged to those who had succumbed to Yellow Jack and had been collected by Dr. Blackburn who had ministered to them. Because the textile mills have been closed for want of cotton, used clothes have gone up in value. Once auctioned in Boston, they believe the infected clothes will ravage the north with yellow fever and do what Lee’s armies have not done: annihilate the north by attacking civilians.

  Harley skimmed bits and summarized. Papineau refused the offer and thought it was the end of the issue — it wasn’t. Days later, Papineau was hired at the last minute to take salted meat and two new Whitworth breech-loading, rifled cannons to Wilmington. Unable to assemble his crew on time, Papineau and his partners accepted the men the new client provided. Papineau had just paid off his debts, bought a Bermudian cottage called Trotters’ Trail and hired Edward James to paint a fresco of the family over the fireplace. His payment for this trip was two thousand dollars in double eagle coins that filled his wooden money box. This payment ensured it would be his last trip as a blockade runner. But all was not as it seemed.

  They snuck into Charleston where, because of the previous outbreak of yellow fever, they were put in quarantine and overheard their replacement crew’s real plan: take control of the ship and kill the partners. When cornered, the youngest mutineer admitted that they were hired by Villiers Rougemont to kill Papineau because he knew too much about Dr. Blackburn and Alexander Keith Jr.’s plans to spread yellow fever through the northern states. Papineau devised his own plan. Harley read: