by J A Whiting
“The doctor used what was available to him,” Lin said. “The staff workers must have been very busy most of the time. The doctor wanted to hire a workman, but there was probably a labor shortage on Canter, so he took advantage of the next best thing … the men who had nothing to do while they waited to pass the quarantine period.”
Viv folded her arms on the table. “Why do I suspect that Dr. Mitchell didn’t pay the men a fair wage for their work?”
“Because you think the doctor used these men, and so do I.” Lin went on, “It had to be against policy and protocol to take the men out of the observation area. If the men were carriers of the disease, they might have passed the illness to those they came in contact with.”
“What a stupid thing for Dr. Mitchell to do,” Viv said with sass. “Why would a doctor do something so risky? Something that posed such a serious danger to others?”
“A devil-may-care attitude?” Lin lifted a shoulder. “It won’t happen to me way of thinking?”
“It was a completely irresponsible thing to do,” Viv said. “He should have been investigated for breaking his oath to do no harm when he became a doctor.”
Lin looked to the date of the letter in her hands. June 10, 1890. She wondered what had become of William, the letter-writer. He’d written to someone he called M. Was it his mother? A girlfriend, a brother? His wife?
A shot of excitement rushed through Lin’s body as she recalled Joyce Parker saying she had a relative whose brother-in-law’s name was William, and that William had died on Canter. Was this that brother-in-law? Did Joyce mention the year William was in quarantine? Did she say he was an immigrant on his way to America?
“Viv.” Lin asked her cousin if she remembered any details Dr. Parker told them about William, the brother-in-law of one of her distant ancestors.
“Let’s see. What did Joyce say?” Viv looked off across the room trying to remember. “She told us her ancestor already had been on Nantucket for two years at the time her sister arrived to join her. Six months later, the sister’s husband, William, made the voyage to come to America. He was detained at Canter and he died there. I think that was all of what she said.”
“Did Joyce tell us the sisters’ names?” Lin asked.
“She didn’t,” Viv said. “And she didn’t know William’s last name.”
“I think we should talk to Joyce again.” Lin felt antsy, like too much energy was pent up inside of her. “There’s something about this letter. It’s signed by someone named William. Is this William the brother-in-law of Joyce’s ancestor?”
Viv looked skeptical. “There are only twenty letters in this pile. What are the odds that this letter came from Joyce’s William?”
“I know. I’m clutching at straws.” Lin pinched the muscles at the back of her neck to release some of the tension built up there. “But there’s something about it that makes me think there’s a connection.”
Viv took a look at the letter. “June, 1890. Let’s ask Joyce what the two sisters’ names were. If one of them starts with an ‘M’ then maybe this is their William. But so what? It doesn’t help us identify the ghost.”
Lin’s shoulders slumped. “No, it doesn’t.”
Felix bustled over to the table waving a piece of paper. “I found this in the archives. A clerk at the Nantucket town hall made a list of citizens of the island and their relatives who ended up at Canter. It has names, date sent to Canter or date of quarantine, date released or date of death. It’s from 1885 to 1895. Do you have any interest in it? Is it the time period you’re interested in?”
“Yes,” Lin almost shouted and stretched her neck to get a look.
Felix rested the paper on the table. “This is a photocopy. I don’t need it back.”
Lin wanted to hug the man.
Viv pulled her chair closer to her cousin and they studied the list of names and dates.
“Look,” Lin’s voice sounded bubbly. “Here’s a William. William Irons. Date of detainment: June 8, 1890. Date of death: August 10, 1890. This must be the man who wrote the letter I just showed you. That letter is dated June 10.”
Viv eyes squinted at the words on the page. “It very well could be the same person.”
“William Irons,” Lin said softly as her stomach muscles clenched and unclenched.
Viv scanned all of the names and dates on the piece of paper. “Does this document list the closest relative to the patients on Canter?”
“No, it doesn’t,” Lin sighed. “Unfortunately.”
“Send Joyce a text,” Viv suggested. “Ask her the names of her ancestor and the ancestor’s sister.”
“You don’t think it would be rude to ask her by text?”
“I don’t think it’s rude at all. We’ve met the woman. We had a good chat with her. It’s certainly a reasonable thing to do,” Viv told her cousin.
Lin composed a text message and sent it off to Joyce Parker. “I’ve been thinking it might be good for us to return to Canter.”
“No,” was all Viv said.
“If we go back, we might be able to pick up more clues. The ghost might appear and lead us in the right direction,” Lin said with a hint of hope in her tone.
“I don’t want to go back.”
“There will be other ghost mysteries that we get involved with after this one,” Lin explained. “If you’re afraid to go back to Canter because you think you’ll have another experience there, well, I think you’re just putting off the inevitable,” Lin said. “When a ghost comes around, you’ll either sense it’s presence or not.” Lin eyed her cousin with a slight grin. “You can’t avoid running into ghosts … unless you stop hanging around with me.”
“That might be an option to consider,” Viv kidded.
“So my point is,” Lin said, “you can avoid Canter, but you can’t avoid being around ghosts.”
Viv let out a long breath of air. “I’ll go back with you, if we have to, but let’s try to steer clear of the place for a little while.”
Just as Lin gave a nod, her phone vibrated with an incoming text from Joyce Parker. She read it, and then turned the phone so Viv could see the message.
My ancestor’s name was Eve Silver Holden. Her sister’s name was Merry. Merry’s husband’s name was William.
Viv said, “Merry. The letter from William starts by saying, My Dearest M. Does the M stand for Merry?”
“Was Merry’s husband William Irons?” Lin asked. “The ghost is dressed like a man from the late 1800s. We need to find out if the ghost might be named William Irons.” Lin sat up straight and pulled the list of names and dates closer. “Irons’s date of detainment was June 8 and his date of death was August 10. That’s two months. Why was he on Canter for so long before he died?”
Why, indeed.
14
Lin and Viv strolled up Main Street to a neighborhood on the edge of Nantucket town where Viv’s antique Cape house was located. A white picket fence encircled her front yard and flowers bloomed in the gardens and rested over the top of the fence. Viv’s flower boxes overflowed with pink, violet, and white impatiens and geraniums which gave the home a cozy look.
Inside, the dog and cat sat up from their snooze in the sunlit living room blinking their eyes and stretching before welcoming the young women back to the house. Viv and Lin pet the animals and then headed for the kitchen to make a simple meal of grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup. Nicky and Queenie were fed and let out on the wide deck at the back of Viv’s home to enjoy the soft, warm air and the setting of the sun.
When the meal was ready, the cousins carried plates and glasses to the deck table, lit the candles, and sat down to eat.
“I’m starving,” Lin bit into her cheesy sandwich. “I’ve been getting up earlier than usual to meet Leonard and get the landscaping work done. We have so many clients now, it’s getting harder to complete the day’s work at a reasonable hour.”
“Maybe you need to hire some help. You can’t do everything yourselves,”
Viv said as she poured some wine into her glass. “There are only so many hours in the day. Leave the more advanced projects for you and Leonard and hire some people to take care of the lawn mowing, weeding, and planting.”
“We should do that.” Lin yawned. “I’ll talk to Leonard about it.”
“John and I are going to have a romantic weekend at an inn in ‘Sconset in a few weeks,” Viv said with a smile. “John said he’s been so busy that he feels like a chicken with his head cut off. He wants some quiet time for us to be together.”
Lin smiled. “That’s wonderful. He can’t go nonstop. I’m glad he recognizes that he needs to take some time to relax.”
“I was happy to hear the suggestion.” Viv dipped her spoon into her soup bowl. “I was getting worried that everything else took priority over me.”
“Has John decided what he’s going to do about a boat?” Lin asked.
Viv waved her hand around in the air. “I don’t think he knows what he wants to do. He says he needs more space. He’s lived on that boat of his for years. Why does he suddenly need more space?”
“If he gets a bigger boat, he’ll just end up filling it with stuff he doesn’t need.” Lin grinned. “It’s like a house. The more space you have, the more you buy and store.”
“We should all live more simply,” Viv looked over at the dog and cat relaxing in the grass next to each other. They kept their eyes on a squirrel running up and down the tree, but neither one saw any need to bother the creature.
Viv had made brownies in the morning and she carried out two dessert plates each with a brownie and a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top.
Lin groaned. “I’ll have to run three extra miles tomorrow if I eat that dessert.”
“Skip it then,” Viv sat in the deck chair with smile. “More for me.”
“I’m happy to run further so I can eat it. Give it here.”
Nicky let out a whine and Lin looked over to the yard where he was sitting. “What’s wrong, Nick?”
The dog trained his gaze to the back of Viv’s darkening yard.
“Maybe he sees a ghost.” Viv was about to lick some ice cream from her fingertip when she realized what she’d just said and froze with a look of horror on her face. “I was kidding. I didn’t mean a real ghost. You don’t see one, do you?”
“No, nothing,” Lin reassured her.
“Nicky doesn’t see one, does he?”
“I don’t think so.”
“That’s a relief.” Viv let out a breath.
“I talked to Anton,” Lin reported. “I gave him the quick version of what had happened here while he was at the conference. He said he could meet us tomorrow evening.”
“Sounds good.” Viv kept glancing nervously around the yard in between taking bites of the brownie. “It’s getting chilly. Should we go in?”
Lin knew her cousin was concerned about a spirit showing up. “Why don’t we finish the dessert and then take a stroll. Nicky could use a walk. We could go do some window-shopping and then go down to the docks and wander around for a while.”
“Let’s do it,” Viv agreed.
Once the kitchen was cleaned up, Lin, Viv, and Nicky left the house for their stroll. Lin asked Queenie if she wanted to come with them, but the cat turned away and climbed the staircase to the second floor bedroom where she jumped on the bed and took another nap.
Walking along the brick sidewalks under the streetlamps, Nicky sniffed and sniffed at the ground, at the base of the streetlights, and at the trunks of trees.
“You’d think that dog had never been out of the house,” Viv chuckled as she watched Nicky taking his sniffing seriously. “I would not like to have a dog’s sense of smell. It must be so annoying.” Viv’s face screwed up. “Wait. I smell something, too. It has kind of a yucky metallic odor.”
Lin took a deep breath. “I don’t smell anything.”
“It must be coming from the fishing boats.” Viv shrugged it off.
Moving along the sidewalks of Main Street, the cousins peeked in store windows at paintings, furniture, woven blankets and throws, jewelry, pottery, and clothes.
“It’s fun to window shop,” Lin said. “I pick out everything I want and picture it in the house and then I never buy it. Satisfies my creative ideas and saves my money,” she laughed.
“I do the same thing,” Viv admitted. “I do it online, too. I fill my virtual shopping bag with all the things I like and then I close out of the website without buying a thing.”
“We must have some gene that makes us do those things,” Lin suggested.
“It’s the only explanation,” Viv nodded with a grin.
The two women and the dog made a loop around the docks. John wasn’t at his boat so they kept walking.
“He’s probably still in the office,” Viv said and then wrinkled her nose. “I smell that odd metallic odor again. It’s kind of coppery.”
“I don’t smell anything.”
“I don’t know how you can’t smell it. It’s strong.” Viv made a disgusted face.
Heading up Main Street, Lin yawned. “I think I’m ready for my bed.”
“I agree. The alarm seems to go off earlier and earlier.” Viv shook her head. “We’ll see Anton tomorrow evening?” she confirmed.
“Yes. You want to walk over to his house or shall I pick you up?” Lin asked.
“Let’s see how the day goes and how exhausted we are by evening.” Viv stopped in her tracks just as they passed Tangerine Street. “That smell again.” She started to cough. “It’s awful. So metallic. Like copper. What is it?”
Lin’s heart began to race and Nicky whined low and deep. The air around the young woman dropped about fifty degrees and Lin’s body started to shake.
She saw the ghost standing on the corner of the street, shimmering and translucent. His face looked drawn and his eyes were wide.
“Is someone here?” Viv whispered and shuffled over the sidewalk so her shoulder touched Lin’s.
“Yes.” The word slipped from Lin’s throat.
Viv closed her eyes for a second and put her hand on her chest. “I thought so. I think the odor is coming from him.”
Lin’s eyes flicked to her cousin, not understanding why the ghost was giving off an odd smell.
The spirit reached his hand behind his head and when he brought his arm back to the front, his fingers dripped with blood.
Lin sucked in a breath and Viv stared at her. “What’s wrong? What’s wrong with the ghost?”
“There’s blood on his hand,” Lin said softly.
The ghost-man moved his feet a little to turn himself around and when Lin saw the back of his head, she had to stifle a shriek.
“What is it? What do you see?” Viv’s voice trembled.
Nicky growled and whined.
Lin’s dizziness took over and her vision dimmed for a moment.
The ghost’s head had been bashed in and an enormous gash showed just above his neck and ran all the way to the top of his head. The blood from the injury pooled on the sidewalk.
When he turned back around to face the cousins, the spirit’s atoms flared and sparked, and he slowly began to fade until his body disappeared from view.
Lin’s hand was clasped over her mouth and she almost swayed.
Viv gripped her arm. “What was it? He’s gone, isn’t he?”
“Yes,” the word was barely audible. “His head. The back of it.” Lin took a deep breath and told Viv about the injury she had seen.
“Oh,” Viv put her hand against her stomach. “Oh.”
“That smell,” Lin said. “It must have been the metallic smell of blood. The ghost must have been following us for a while.”
Viv’s lips quivered. “I thought so. I thought I could sense him around us.” Rubbing at her temple, she said, “I didn’t want to believe I could feel it. I knew something was wrong.” Trying not to hyperventilate, she asked, “What happened to him? How could he have such an injury?”
Lin cou
ld barely squeeze the words from her throat. “Someone could have hit him with something. Something hard. Or he might have fallen or suffered an accident. I don’t think that ghost had smallpox at all … something ... something terrible happened to him.”
Viv wrapped her arms around herself and closed her eyes as Lin’s little brown dog leaned against his owner’s leg, tossed his head back, and let out a mournful howl.
15
“You need to get hold of his death certificate.” Leonard heaved a flowering bush from the truck, placed it into the wheelbarrow, and pushed it around to the back with Nicky trotting after him. “See if it claims he died of smallpox or from an injury.”
Lin had spent the last twenty minutes telling Leonard about the previous night’s encounter with the ghost.
“If it says smallpox,” Leonard said, “then there was something fishy going on at Canter Island. And if it says the man died from a head injury, then something even fishier was going on at Canter.”
“So basically, the ghost’s death is fishy.” Lin leaned on a shovel.
Leonard gave his partner the eye. “You might want to actually employ that tool you have in your hands instead of using it to hold you up.”
The brown dog took a spot on the grass to watch the planting of the bush.
Lin shook her head at Leonard’s sassy comment and began to dig, but then she suddenly stopped.
“What?” Leonard asked.
“Dr. Benjamin Mitchell seems to have asked two men who were on Canter for observation to work for him. What could he have wanted them to do? Did my ghost get hurt while working for Mitchell?”
“Good questions. What happened to the first guy who was approached by Mitchell?”
“I don’t know if he was the first man asked by Mitchell to do some work for him, but he’s the first one we’ve heard of. The man said he did some digging around the island. He said the doctor was crazy. The man stayed two weeks longer than the normal observation period and then he was allowed to leave.”
