Dark Nantucket Noon by Jane Langton Read Free Book Online Page A

trust me.” Homer stood up, offended. “My God, you get hired and fired pretty damned fast by some people.”
    â€œNo, no, Homer, it isn’t that.” Kitty stood up too and grinned at him. “I just have this feeling that it’s not just a matter of finding blood on things, and so on. If I knew a little more about the island, maybe I could help you.”
    â€œI see. You might discover that the moon makes a habit of falling on Great Point once a week. Okay, girl, I know what you mean. And I’d be grateful for that kind of help. Every police department ought to have an officer in charge of spiritual investigation. Serious deficiency in law enforcement and citizen protection throughout the land. I wish you could stay with the Doves, where I am, but they’ve only got the one spare room. I’m crowded in with old scallop dredges and fishing rods and lobster pots and boat hooks and rubber boots and nautical charts and coils of rope, and sometimes I even expect to feel the tide rising around my bed. But you won’t have any trouble finding a place to stay. It’ll be easy. After all, it’s off season.”

7
    â€œAll hands bury the dead, ahoy!”
    MELVILLE , White Jacket
    Homer was wrong. Off season or not, Nantucket did not open hospitable arms to take an indicted murderer to its breast.
    Kitty came over on Thursday on the boat from Woods Hole, the back seat of her car loaded with clothes and books. She drove straight up Main Street, looking right and left, hunting for a place to spend the night, and stopped in front of a house where a sign, GUESTS , hung on the railing of the front porch. Yes, the old lady had a room to rent. Just sign the guest book, please. But when Kitty signed her name the old woman sucked in her breath and looked at her queerly. “Oh, you’re the one that’s in today’s paper,” she said, nodding her head at a copy of the Inquirer and Mirror , which was lying open beside the guest book. For a moment Kitty was afraid the woman would ask her to leave. But instead the old lady handed her a key with trembling fingers. “Number twenty-one,” she said. “At the top of the stairs.”
    â€œMay I borrow the newspaper?” said Kitty.

    â€œHelp yourself,” said the woman. Then she scuttled sideways, her eyes round and frightened, and disappeared into her parlor, slamming the door and rattling a key in the lock on the other side.
    Kitty had an impulse to kneel in front of the door and scream boo through the keyhole. But instead she picked up her suitcase and the newspaper and walked upstairs. She sat down on the bed and looked at the front page.
    It made her wince. At the top there was a blurred photograph of someone she faintly recognized, the face washed out and staring, one hand up as if in self-defense. Behind this dim person was Homer Kelly, large and solid in the doorway. Cheek by jowl with this picture there was another photograph of another couple in another doorway, a church doorway this time, and it was all broad smiles, radiant bride, grinning bridegroom, Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Green on their wedding day. It was Helen and Joe, and Joe was like a bridegroom leaving his chamber, like a strong man running his course with joy.…
    Triangle , shrieked the pictures, so crudely juxtaposed. Triangle , shrieked some accuser in Kitty’s head. Of course the newspaper was too refined to use such a word, but the inference was clear that this off-island madwoman, insane with jealousy, this obscene person of “a voluptuous appearance”—incredulous, Kitty read the words again: “a voluptuous appearance”—had apparently committed first-degree murder, killing with malice aforethought the island’s most precious citizen, Helen Boatwright Green, beloved bride of …
    There was another photograph of Helen on page two, with a tearful obituary. “Distinguished island ancestry … a