Dark Nantucket Noon by Jane Langton Read Free Book Online

turned on. That little room up there was flooded with light.”
    â€œThe light turned on?” said Kitty. “You mean the lighthouse light?”
    â€œYes. It’s operated by an electric eye, and turns on automatically when the sky gets dark. So naturally at the instant of totality it turned on. The people in the same room with the light had a poor view of the eclipse, because the pupils of their eyes were suddenly so constricted.”
    â€œBut I should think a tremendous light like that would have blinded them! Wasn’t it dangerous?”
    â€œOh, no. There’s a lot of candlepower in the thing, but it’s concentrated by the lens system to throw a narrow beam way out to sea. Up close it doesn’t seem bright. That’s what they tell me.”
    â€œIt’s funny I didn’t notice it was on.”
    â€œWell, you were looking the other way. And immediately afterward there was enough light in the sky so the light turned off.”
    â€œHomer,” said Kitty, hit by a sudden stroke of genius. “You don’t suppose she killed herself?”
    â€œKilled herself? Stabbed herself somehow? Well, how did she stab herself and then hide the knife while she was expiring? For God’s sake, girl, don’t cringe like that. What did you say?”
    â€œI said it was the moon.”
    â€œWell,” said Homer gloomily, rolling a piece of red wax in his fingers, “that’s as good an explanation as any of the others that come to mind. By the time I got there yesterday the place was one mess of sand, as if an army of little children had been digging with giant buckets and shovels. But Chief Pike made two things very clear, getting there as quickly as he did in that amphibious vehicle of the Coast Guard’s before the tide came up again. Nobody— nobody walked up out of the water anywhere around that point, because the marks of their feet in the wet sand would have been distinctly visible, and there weren’t any around that whole end of Great Point above the Gauls—that’s what they call that long narrow place where it’s all one beach, you know, that place where the water was rolling over and you got wet. The sand was undisturbed. Except for the car tracks and your little tootsies, naturally. They’ve got pictures of your footprints galloping up. And the other thing Pike said was that Helen’s movements were plain. She came a couple of steps out of the lighthouse and dropped in her tracks. Died almost immediately. Couldn’t have bled for more than four or five minutes before her heart stopped pumping.”
    Kitty was sinking deeper and deeper into despair, her head drooping in her hand. Homer looked at her, then thumped his glass down on the table and picked up a quarterly review. “Say,” he said, “isn’t this the one with your thing in it? The one with all the q’ s? Yes, here it is—‘Quit me no quits.’ And all those queries and quixoticisms and querulousnesses. That’s the one.”
    â€œOh, did you like that?” Kitty smiled. “I had fun with all those q’ s.” She sat up suddenly. “Two things, Homer. First. I’ve got a lot of my salary saved up, and I can pay you more money anytime. How about right now?”
    â€œOh, Jesus, no. I’ve been well enough paid already. If I want more, I’ll tell you. For God’s sake, shut up.”
    â€œWell, all right, but I’m not a charity case. I’m going to pay you what’s right and proper. Second. I’m going back to Nantucket. I’ll miss my classes for the rest of the year, but I know Dr. Winter will take over for me, and the university would probably be better off without an embarrassing person like me on its hands anyway.”
    â€œBut Jesus Christ, what are you going back there for?”
    â€œI’ve got to find out what really happened to Helen Green.”
    â€œYou don’t