by Eric Murphy
Will and Harley jumped back as Aubrey shifted his weight backward. But he held the light steady and there was no doubt that there was a skeleton here, covered by wisps of cotton clothing that hadn’t completely rotted away. Will held his breath as Harley did the same.
Harley pointed to the thighbone. It wasn’t in a straight line like the other one. It had been staggered and had healed in a way that shortened the bone. That would explain why Papineau had limped. It was him — at least, likely him.
Will stared at the skull of the man he had known through his letters and his visions. He seemed like such a nice man. Will’s eye caught something and he gestured to Aubrey for his flashlight.
When he moved the beam over the ribs, they saw two small bullets wedged into the back of a rib. Papineau hadn’t died of yellow fever.
They looked at each other and nodded before shifting the cover back on and leaving the graveyard.
Nobody spoke till they’d jumped back into Aubrey’s truck and locked the doors. Will said, “Those two bullets were really small caliber.”
“And they were close together,” said Harley. “Villiers Rougemont had a small bore, double-barreled derringer, remember? If I were betting on it …” she said, letting the thought go unfinished.
They didn’t talk again till they drove across the bridge by the airport as the headlight caught the “walk your horse across” sign.
“So they killed him so Papineau wouldn’t talk about the plot to ship clothes infected with yellow fever to the north,” said Harley. “And the blood on his shirt from the two small bullets would have been mistaken for blood vomited by a victim of yellow fever and they would have been in a hurry to dispose of the infected body.”
“Yellow fever doesn’t spread by contact,” said Aubrey. “It’s a mosquito-borne disease.”
“But they didn’t know that back then, right?” asked Harley. “That’s why the port of Charleston quarantined boats from Bermuda. That’s why Dr. Blackburn thought shipping infected clothes to the north would spread the disease. So Villiers Rougemont didn’t kill him for the coins because Consul Allen said he was a penniless drunk. He killed him to stop him from talking about their plot. Just like Claire Calloway killed Bennett to stop him from talking about Papineau’s gold coins.”
“Which she’ll likely find if she finds Trotters’ Trail before us,” said Harley.
Aubrey turned to them and said, “I know where Trotters’ Trail is located.”
Chapter Twenty-four
Trotter's Trail
Wainscoting: Wood paneling, usually from the ground up to mid-wall or higher, often using thin strips of tongue-and-groove pine or hard wood.
As the sun crested over the horizon, Aubrey drove past a restaurant called Henry the VIII. “When I was a boy, the roof was covered in huge turtle shells and you could smell turtle soup cooking for miles around. Conservation practises put an end to that or we’d have wiped out the species by now.”
They passed the Turtle Hill golf course, now empty in the early dawn. “Before that was a golf course, it was a pig farm. Papineau must ’a bought a piece of land from the farmer and built his cottage here.”
“How’d you know it was called Trotters’ Trail?” asked Harley.
“I worked with my father in the quarry. Must’a been six or seven when my dad was called to Trotters’ Trail to fix the roof. Even back then people had stopped calling it that, but my dad remembered the old name.” Aubrey pulled his truck up along the driveway entrance to a house. In the headlights and the faint morning light, they could see a big chain and padlock blocking their access. There was a for sale sign by the Ord Real Estate Company.
“Mr. Ord had a reputation as a slumlord,” explained Aubrey. “He’d rent it for as long as he could, then sell it off.”
They stepped out and peered over the “Private Property, No Trespassing” sign at a derelict one-story house with what appeared to be two chimneys.
They waited for a scooter to pass and looked around to be sure they weren’t watched. They vaulted the sagging, rusty chain that blocked the driveway. The roof that Aubrey had worked on almost sixty years ago had two holes in it that showed wooden beams beneath that had grayed in the sun like the bones of an animal. Instead of it being a bright white roof like most Bermudian houses, this one was black with soot.
The doors and windows were locked. Aubrey pointed out the hatch to the cistern. A hundred or so years after Papineau had built Trotters’ Trail, the owners had erected an addition. There were two cisterns; this one opened into a cupboard in the new kitchen, if one can call a sixty-year-old addition new.
Aubrey led them through it in a crouch. Because nobody had cleaned the gutters of leaves and other debris, water no longer gathered in the cistern. It was damp but without water.
The three intruders crawled out of the cupboard. They cautiously circled the living room where rain had warped the wide floorboards. Harley pointed to the fireplace, “I guess the mural that was painted there is long gone, huh? Who was that painter again?”
“Edward James,” answered Will. Wainscoting encased the chimney above the mantle. Its once-white paint now peeled in long curls. Rot had eaten away at a couple of boards where they rested on the mantle and reached to the ceiling. A mouse had taken advantage of the soft wood to chew a hole.
Will borrowed Aubrey’s flashlight, and pointed his beam through the hole. Seeing something, he crooked his index finger in the golf-ball-sized opening and tugged on it. A huge section of the wainscoting crashed to the living room floor.
“Wow,” said Will.
“Holy wow,” added Harley as she stepped up to where Will stood gawking.
The painting was in amazingly good shape. It was about six feet wide by four feet high. In the background, Trotters’ Trail was caught in her prime, standing out beautifully in the blazing Bermudian sun. At the gate, smiling, were a man and a woman holding a baby. The man was Papineau Benoit, just like he looked in the photo on Papineau’s carte de visite. He had the same dark hair, same square, squat features. Only Edward James had made him look happier in the painting than he did in the photo.
The three spread out to explore each room, each cupboard and pantry. They ran fingers along high ledges. In short, they did a thorough search of Trotters’ Trail for a clue as to what had become of those double eagles that had not been found in the money box on the wreck. Coughs echoed through the house because their search raised only dust as their hopes sank.
Dejected, they clustered around the fireplace as if seeking warmth now that the trail had gone cold. Will looked to the fresco, then through the shore-side window to the gateposts by the ocean. He squinted because something was different. He walked over to the window and peered through the salt streaks to get a better look, compared what he saw to the fresco, and said, “It’s not the same.”
Harley and Aubrey shuffled over to him. “The wall in the fresco, painted while Papineau was alive, is a short wall, knee-high at best. The wall out there,” he said, pointing outside, “built up after his death, is a lot higher. And there’s something else that’s different. Very different,” teased Will, his mood brightening.
Harley snapped her fingers and said, “The gateposts. There were no gateposts leading to the dock when it was painted.” They hurried back out, through the cistern, up through the manhole, and down toward the ocean.
Aubrey squatted by the wall, drew a finger along the middle and said, “This is where the old wall stopped and you can see where it was built up later.”
Will gave the rusty pintail a couple of whacks with a big stone, loosening the old mortar. The pintail, bits of stone, and mortar all fell away. Will pointed the flashlight beam into the crevice where the pintail had been. He jumped back onto the wall and, with the stone, banged the top of the gatepost off. He used the rusty pintail to scrape away the bits of mortar, slipped his hand into the opening, and felt around.
“These are the cannons. I can feel the rifling in them. I’m p
retty sure these are the Whitworth cannons he salvaged,” said Will with excitement.
“Then Lily was the one who buried them, maybe because the canons and the fresco were too painful a memory to keep around,” mused Harley.
“And with the war at an end,” said Aubrey, “not much demand for cannons in a market flooded with surplus ordnance. But we can’t just take them. No matter what we think of Mr. Ord, they still belong to him or his estate.”
The three of them looked back and forth between the two gateposts until a little smile crept onto Will’s face and he waved Harley over and explained his plan.
Harley called the number on the real estate sign and asked for the property manager. That individual was only too willing to let Mr. Aubrey Dill, the stone-cutter and famous cricketer, repair the gateposts and take pictures to showcase his company. There was one stipulation. Aubrey had to take all the rubble away and not leave it on the property.
They rushed to the quarry, cut the necessary stone, but with the motorized saws for speed. They spent the afternoon removing the old stone and replacing it with new stone and fresh mortar. Time had not robbed Aubrey of either skill or speed. They were quick to cover the rusty cannons with a tarp after they’d been liberated from their stone tombs. With everything shipshape and new galvanized pintails embedded and waiting for an eventual gate, Aubrey had wheelbarrowed the small scraps into the back of the truck.
The breeches on the cannons had long rusted shut. But the openings had merely been covered over by the thin layer of Bermuda stone that Will had knocked loose. Using the jack from the truck they raised the breech, which lowered the mouth of the cannon — nothing came out. Will rammed a long branch into it. Bits of rotten cloth came out. When they jacked the breech higher a bucketful of coins flooded out in front of them. The second cannon yielded up at least as many double eagle coins. They’d found Papineau’s fortune through the mouth of his cannons.
Chapter Twenty-five
Amazing Grace
“Amazing Grace”: A widely sung Christian hymn that speaks
of redemption, composed by Pastor John Newton. Although it was later sung as a hymn against slavery, Newton did not compose it for that reason because it was only years after composing it that he opposed slavery.
Will, Harley and Aubrey each picked up a coin, studied them, and let out a collective whoop. They had found Papineau Benoit’s double eagles.
Will suddenly had the feeling they were being watched. He scanned the trees on either side of the property and walked up a bit till he could see the road — nothing. He urged Harley and Aubrey to get the coins off the property.
Aubrey said he couldn’t haul the cannons up to the truck without destroying either his truck or the property and likely both. So they thought about that a moment till Harley blurted, “Sherman. Let’s ask him if he can come and get us by boat. You can come back for the truck later, Aubrey.”
Sherman said he’d be there in thirty minutes. They rolled the cannons down to the wharf and onto a sectional floating dock that just managed to stay above water.
When Sherman saw all the gold coins his knees buckled and he slumped to the gunwale, took off his baseball cap and fanned himself with it despite the strong offshore breeze. “I have never seen such wealth in one spot at one time, no sir, no sir.”
They put the coins into one of Sherman’s empty fish coolers. He threw his arms out in puzzlement.
Harley explained how Bennett had found letters from his ancestor that spoke of the blockade runner Lily that had sunk opposite the boilers while laden with gold. He had brought the Edward James’ painting of Lily to sell to Brian Ord with the hopes of financing an illegal salvage operation.
Will jumped in and explained how Ord, who owned the painting’s twin by Edward James offered to become partners in the illegal wreck dive. But when he got cold feet, Claire Calloway let Ord die and dressed like him to create the impression that Ord was still alive. She was the one who had locked Bennett in Wavelength’s cabin and blew it up.
Towing the floating dock wouldn’t allow them to gain speed but they’d be at Aubrey’s place in about an hour. They had moved offshore maybe a mile when a Boston Whaler suddenly roared right up to them.
The man behind the hat and sunglasses was Drury. Claire Calloway sat beside him with her pistol pointed at them, saying, “I think you have something that belongs to me.”
Claire stepped into the stern of Sherman’s boat. With one hand she tied her boat to Sherman’s. Drury tied a bow line onto Sherman’s, then joined Calloway.
“You probably thought we’d left the island,” she said with a faint smile. “Problem is, it takes money to travel. And when you,” she said looking at Will, “exposed me to the police, well they put a freeze on Mr. Ord’s bank accounts. I was counting on all those double eagles as my travelling money but we weren’t as lucky as you. So now, I’ll take what’s rightfully mine,” she said, sitting on the transom and resting her gun on her lap but in a manner that said she could shoot before anybody took a step forward.
“This isn’t your money,” said Aubrey. “You didn’t find it, these two did,” he said waving a finger between Will and Harley.
“Who do you think identified that Edward James painting as authentic? I knew we were onto something good and if that idiot Ord hadn’t lost his nerve, we would have taken our time and found those double eagles. So where are they?” she asked, raising her gun.
When the silence grew too long, she said, “Look, I can shoot you one at a time or you can show me now and we leave you to float for a few hours.”
Aubrey flipped the fish cooler open and pointed at its contents. Claire got up and smiled when she ran her free hand through the mound of gold coins. “I’m going to assume it’s all there. Well, it’s been fun, but I have to say goodbye. Which of you two bothersome brats is first?” She swiveled her gun from Will to Harley.
Aubrey stepped in front of them and swept them behind him with his long arms. “You won’t be hurting my friends.”
“Well, isn’t that chivalrous. Okay, you first.” She leveled the gun at Aubrey’s chest.
“Wait a minute Claire,” said Drury sidling up to her. “You said we were just going to take the coins and disable their motor and radio.”
“Oh, Drury, wake up. We’ll need a few hours to get a sailboat and make our way to Florida. Somebody will see them long before that and we’ll be lucky to leave Bermuda’s territorial waters.” Calloway raised her gun in a two-handed grip.
“That’s Aubrey Dill. You can’t kill Bermuda’s most famous cricketer. You can’t,” blurted Drury.
“You either kill or be killed,” she said without taking her eyes off Aubrey.
Drury sprang, wrestling with her till the gun went off. Aubrey was struck by the bullet and spun around, blood flying from his head as he spiraled onto the gunwale, toppling overboard.
“Aubrey!” yelled Will.
Drury was in a death grip with Calloway. The gun went off two more times and they pitched off the stern.
With a life ring in hand, Will leaped overboard, splashing into the filament of blood trailing after Aubrey’s inert form. Will kicked his way forward and grabbed him with one arm. As he turned back to the boat, Sherman scrambled down the flying deck. He and Harley pulled Aubrey and Will aboard.
Sherman whipped open his first-aid kit and put a compress against Aubrey’s bleeding scalp. There was no sign of either Calloway or Drury.
They tied the floating dock with the cannons to the boat Calloway had used and dropped its anchor so it wouldn’t drift and damage coral or another boat. After alerting the Bermuda police, Sherman raced all the way to the hospital.
A few hours later Will, Harley, and Sherman paced in the waiting room at the King Edward VII Memorial Hospital. After being treated in the Emergency Ward, Aubrey had been wheeled into a private room, still unconscious. The doctors had said that time would tell how he would do. The sooner he responded to outside stimulus, the likelier
he was to recover. They were not prepared to let them in because they weren’t family.
Will finally sat looking at his hands, Harley beside him. Sherman huddled with a handful of members of the church choir, whispering and nodding to encourage each other that the outcome would be positive.
The doors flew open and Hamlet padded his way across the tiled floor with Dr. Doan holding a leash that had no slack.
The duty nurse jumped up, “Sorry, Dr. Doan, there are no dogs allowed —”
Dr. Doan and Hamlet were already through the next set of doors as she called back, “What dog?” She cupped her left hand for Will and Harley to follow. Sherman and the choir didn’t wait to ask if they were included, they just came.
Will skipped ahead to Aubrey’s room. He leaned over and whispered, “You can go back in the water if you need to, Aubrey. I just want you to know that as your friend, whatever you choose, I’ll understand and I’ll be on shore waiting.”
“Give us a sign,” whispered Dr. Doan to Aubrey, who lay with his eyes closed, his head wrapped in a thin gauze turban. Hamlet jumped up at the end of the bed, his tail tap, tap, tapping gently, staring at Aubrey’s ashen face as if he understood the gravity of the situation. Sherman and the choir shuffled in, forming a horseshoe-shaped support group at the foot of his bed.
The only sounds came from pinched nostrils and machines that beeped the status quo. Will took one of Aubrey’s hands into his and Dr. Doan took the other.
Without knowing why, Will started to sing “Amazing Grace.” But his voice broke as he sang, “how sweet the sound.”
Without missing a beat, Sherman and the choir stepped in, their voices clear and strong. Then he felt it. Aubrey’s hand twitched. Will and Dr. Doan looked across at each other because she’d felt it too — and so had the machines, which beeped.
A doctor rushed in with two nurses in her wake. Without being asked, everyone, Hamlet included, made their way back to the waiting room.