by Anita Shreve
I do not believe she was in his room for more than ten minutes before I heard a small exclamation, a sound that a woman will make when she is suddenly surprised, and then a muffled but distinctly distressed cry. As there was no noise from Louis, the first thought I had was that the man had fallen out of his bed. I had been on my knees with a dustpan, cleaning the ashes from the stove, and was halfway to my feet when there was a loud thump as though a shoulder had hit the wall that separated Louis’s apartment from the kitchen of our own. There was a second bump and then another unintelligible word. I set down the dustpan on the table, wiped my hands on a cloth and called to Anethe through the wall. Before I could wonder at a lack of response, however, I heard the door of Louis’s apartment open, and presently Anethe was in our kitchen.
One plait to the side of Anethe’s head had pulled loose from its knot and was hanging in a long U at her shoulder. On the bodice of her blouse, a starched, white garment with narrow smocked sleeves, was a dirty smudge, as though a hand had ground itself in. The top button of her collar was missing. She was breathless and held her hand to her waist.
“Louis,” she said, and put her other hand to the wall to steady herself.
The color had quite left Anethe’s face, and I saw that her beauty was truly in her coloring and animation, for without both she looked gaunt and anemic. I confess I was riveted by the contrast of the dirty smudge on the white breast of her blouse, and I suppose because I am not at all a demonstrative person I found it difficult to speak some comfort to her. It was as though any word I might say to her would sound false and thus be worse than no word at all, and for some reason I cannot now articulate, I was in an odd state of paralysis. And though it shames me deeply, I must confess that I think I might actually have begun to smile in that awful inappropriate way one does when one hears terribly bad news, and the smile just seems automatically, without will, to come to one’s lips. I reproach myself greatly for this behavior, of course, and think how easy it might have been to go to my sister-in-law and put my arms around her and console her, or at least help to put behind her the absurd and almost laughable advances of the man next door, but as I say, I was frozen to the spot and able only to utter her name.
“Anethe,” I said.
Whereupon the blood left her head altogether, and she fell down in a wondrous sort of collapse that I am sorry to say struck me as somewhat comical in nature, the knees buckling, the arms fluttering out sideways as if she would try to fly, and it was only once she was on the ground that I was able to unlock my limbs and move toward her and raise her head up and in that way help her back to consciousness.
When I had her in her bed, and she had nearly recovered her color, we spoke finally about Louis and about the fearful rage that this incident might provoke in Evan, and it was decided then and there between us that I would not tell my brother, but rather would suggest to my husband that there had been some disappearances of beer and honey and candles in the household for which I could not account, and that without raising a fuss I thought it might be wise to terminate our boarder’s lease.
Unfortunately, however, I was not present at Louis Wagner’s dismissal and, as a consequence, John did not quite heed or remember my precise advice, and said to Louis that because I had missed certain household items it might be better for Louis to look elsewhere for lodgings. Louis denied these charges vigorously and demanded to see me, but John, of course believing his wife and not his boarder, stood firm and told Louis that he would be leaving the next day. The following morning, as Louis was preparing to board Emil Ingerbretson’s schooner for the passage into Portsmouth, I remained in the kitchen, as I did not want an unpleasant confrontation, but just before sailing Louis came up from the cove and sought me out. I heard a noise and turned to see him standing in the open door. He did not speak a word, but merely stared at me with a look so fixed and knowing I grew warm and uncomfortable under his gaze. “Louis,” I began, but could not go on, although the expression on his face seemed to dare me to speak. Truthfully, I could think of nothing I could say to him that would not make the situation worse. He smiled slowly at me then and closed the door.
Thus it was that Louis Wagner left Smutty Nose.
I THINK ABOUT the weight of water, its scientific properties. A cubic foot of water weighs 62.4 pounds. Seawater is 3.5 percent heavier than freshwater; that is, for every 1,000 pounds of seawater, 35 of those will be salt. The weight of water causes pressure to increase with depth. The pressure one mile down into the ocean is 2,300 pounds per square inch.
What moment was it that I might have altered? What point in time was it that I might have moved one way instead of another, had one thought instead of another? When I think about what happened on the boat, and it was a time that was so brief — how long? four minutes? eight? certainly not even ten — the events unfold with excruciating lethargy. In the beginning, I will need to see the scene repeatedly. I will hunt for details I have missed before, savor tiny nuances. I will want to be left alone in a dark room so that I will not be interrupted. But after a time, I will not be able to stop the loop. And each time the loop plays itself, I will see I have a chance, a choice.
Thomas pulls me by the arms up onto the deck. He tries to wipe the rain from his eyes with his sleeve. “Where have you been?” he asks.
“Where’s Billie?”
“Down below.”
“It was my last chance to get any pictures.”
“Christ.”
“We started back the minute it began to rain.” My voice sounds strained and thin, even to myself.
“The wind came up half an hour ago,” Thomas says accusingly.
“The other boat has already left. I don’t know what’s going on.”
“Billie’s all right?”
Thomas combs his hair off his forehead with the fingers of both hands. “I can’t get her to put her life jacket on.”
“And Adaline?” I ask.
He massages the bridge of his nose. “She’s lying down,” he says.
Rich hoists himself onto the deck from the dinghy. I notice that Thomas does not extend a hand to his brother. Rich drags the dinghy line to the stern.
“Tom,” Rich calls, again using the boyhood nickname. “Take this line.”
Thomas makes his way to the stern, and takes the rope from Rich, and it is then that I notice that Thomas is shaking. Rich sees it too.
“Go inside,” Rich says to Thomas quietly. “Put on dry clothes and a sweater. The foul-weather gear is under the bunks in the forward cabin. You, too” he adds, looking at the quickly and then away. He ties the line in his hand to a cleat. “I’ll go down and listen to what NOAA has to say. How long ago did the other boat leave?”
“About fifteen minutes,” Thomas answers.
“Did she say where she was headed?”
“Little Harbor.”
As if in answer to Rich’s doubts, the Morgan shudders deep in her hull from the hard bang of a wave. I can feel the stern skid sideways in the water, like a car on ice. The rain is dark, and I can barely make out the shape of the islands around us. The sea is lead colored, but boisterous.
I go below to find Billie huddled in her berth. She has her face turned away. I touch her on the shoulder, and she snaps her head around, as though she were raw all over.
I lie down beside her. Gently, I rub her shoulder and her arm. “Daddy was right,” I say softly. “You have to put your life jacket on. It’s a law, Billie, and there isn’t anything we can do about it.”
Invoking parental helplessness before a higher authority has usually worked with Billie, as when I tell her that the police will stop me if she doesn’t put on her seat belt in a car. The door to the forward cabin is shut. Thomas knocks and enters simultaneously, a gesture that catches my breath. I can see a slim form lying on the left side of the V berth. A head rises. Thomas shuts the door.
My sneakers make squelching sounds on the teak floor grate. I kick them off, and they thwack against a galley cab
inet. I strip off my sweatshirt and shorts and underwear and pull from my duffel bag a pair of jeans and a cotton sweater. Billie, hearing the unexpected bumps of the sneakers, rolls over in her berth and looks up at her naked and shivering mother.
“Can’t I wear an orange one?” she asks.
“No, those are for adults. Only yours will fit you.” I peer down at the life vest, with its Sesame Street motif, on the table.
Thomas opens the door of the forward cabin. I am struggling awkwardly with jeans on wet skin. Rich swings down from the deck. Instinctively, I turn my back.
Thomas drops a muddle of navy and yellow foul-weather gear onto the teak table. “There’s a small one here,” he says and holds it up. “I think it will fit Billie.”
“Oh, Daddy, can I have it?” Billie asks, holding out her arms.
I wrestle with my sweater. I bend to Thomas’s duffel bag and take out a dry shirt, a sweater, and a pair of khakis. I hold them out to him. I look at Thomas’s face, which has gone white and looks old.
As the trial, Mr. Yeaton for the prosecution asked “Mary S. Hontvet” how long she had known Louis Wagner. She answered that he had boarded with her for seven months the previous year, beginning in the spring.
“When did he leave, get through boarding with you?” Mr. Yeaton asked.
“He went into Portsmouth about November,” Maren answered.
“What room did he occupy in your house?”
“He had the easterly end of the house, he had a big room there.”
“Where did he keep his clothes?”
“He kept his clothes in a little bed-room there hanging up. He had oil skin hanging up in my entry, when he had been out fishing, he took his oil skin off and hung it up in the entry, entry coming into my kitchen.”
“Entry in your part?’
“Yes.”
Mr. Yeaton then asked what was in Louis Wagner’s room.
Maren answered: “He had his bed there, and one big trunk, which belonged to my sister Karen.”
“Do you know what was in that trunk?”
“She had clothes, some she wore in the winter time, and she put them in the trunk in the summer, and summer clothes she did not use she put in the trunk, and she had a feather-bed that she had at the time she came over in the steamer.”
“Was that in the trunk?”
“Yes, the bed was in the trunk, the big chest.”
“While he boarded with you, was Karen a member of the family?”
“She came out visiting me some days.”
“Did she sleep there?”
“No, sir.”
Mr. Yeaton then asked Maren whether she knew if Karen had a piece of silver money. Maren answered that yes, she had seen the piece of silver money in October or November, and that Karen had said she had gotten the money from boarders at Appledore, and that it was kept in her purse. Mr. Tapley then asked her if she knew if Karen kept anything else in that purse or if Maren had seen Karen on the day of the murders put something in the purse.
“Yes,” Maren answered.
“What was it?”
“A button, white button like.”
“Have you any articles of clothing, with similar buttons upon?”
“Yes, have got some.”
“Where was the button taken from, if you know?”
“From my sewing basket.”
“State what was done with the button, how did it come there.”
“She took the sewing basket and looked for a button, and took a button there and handed it to Karen.”
“Who took it from the basket?”
“Anethe, and handed it to Karen, and Karen put it in her purse.”
“Have you any buttons similar to that?”
“Yes, have them with me.”
Maren then produced the buttons.
“Where did you get these buttons?” Mr. Yeaton asked.
“Got them in my sewing basket, found one in the basket and two in my box that I have always kept in my sewing basket. I have a nightdress with similar buttons upon it.”
Maren produced the nightdress, and the Court said to Mr. Yeaton that it did not see how the buttons and the nightdress were relevant.
“We will connect them hereafter and offer them again,” Yeaton answered.
Rich stands at the chart table, a microphone uncoiled and in his hand. Staticky sounds — a man’s even, unemotional voice -drone from the radio over the quarter berth, but I cannot understand what the man is saying. Rich seems to, however, and I watch as he bends closer to the charts, sweeping one away onto the floor altogether and examining another. I am looking for a sweater for Billie.
Rich puts the microphone back into its holder and makes markings on a chart with a ruler and a pencil. “We’ve got a front coming in faster than they thought,” he says with his back to Thomas and me. “They’re reporting gusts of up to fifty miles an hour. Thunderstorms and lightning as well.” A wave hits the sail-boat side to and floods the deck. Seawater sprays into the cabin through the open companionway. Rich reaches up with one hand and snaps the hatch shut.
“The wind alone could put us up on the rocks,” he says. “I’m going to motor in towards Little Harbor, the same as the other boat, but even if we get caught out in the open, we’ll be better off than we’d be here. There’s not enough swinging room.” He turns and looks from Thomas to me and back to Thomas, and seems to be making lists in his mind. He is still in his wet T-shirt and shorts, though this is a different Rich from the one I saw earlier, organized and in charge. Alarmed, but not panicked.
“Thomas, I need you to put sail ties on the main. Jean, I want you to heat some soup and hot coffee and put it into thermoses, and put dry matches, bread, toilet paper, socks, and so on — you decide — into Ziploc bags. We need to lock down everything in the cabin — drawers, your cameras, the binoculars, anything in the galley that could shift. There are cargo straps in that drawer over there if you need them. Get Adaline to help you. We want all the hatches tightly closed.” Rich turns around to the chart table. “And you’ll need these.”
He opens the slanted desk top and pulls out a vial of pills, which he tosses to Thomas. “Seasickness pills,” he says. “Each of you take one — even you, Thomas — and give a half of one to Billie. It could be a little uncomfortable today. And Thomas, there are diving masks under the cushions in the cockpit. Those are sometimes useful in the rain for visibility. Where is Adaline?”
Thomas gestures toward the forward cabin.
“She’s sick?”
Thomas nods.
I look at my daughter, struggling with the jacket of the foul-weather gear. I open a drawer to retrieve the plastic bags. Beside the drawer, the stove is swinging. I realize that it is not the stove that is swinging, but rather the sloop itself. Seeing this, I feel, for the first time, an almost instantaneous queasiness. Is seasickness in the mind? I wonder. Or have I simply been too busy to notice it before?
Rich goes to the forward cabin and leaves the door open. Adaline is still lying motionless on the berth; she has thrown her arm across her eyes. I watch Rich peel off his wet clothes. How casual we are being with our nakedness, I think.
Rich dresses quickly in jeans and a sweatshirt. I can hear his voice, murmuring to Adaline, but I cannot hear the precise words. I want to know the precise words. He comes out and pulls on a pair of foul-weather pants and a jacket. He slips his feet back into his wet boat shoes. I can see that he is still thinking about the storm, making mental lists, but when he walks past me to go up on deck, he stops at the bottom of the ladder and looks at me.
It is strange enough that just a half hour before I was willing — no, trying — to make love with my brother-in-law. But it seems almost impossibly strange with my daughter in the berth and my husband at the sink. I feel an odd dissonance, a vibration, as though my foot had hit a loose board, set something in motion.
Thomas turns just then from the faucet, where he has been pouring water into a paper cup. In one hand,
he holds the cup; in the other, a pill. I believe he is about to say to me, “Drink this,” when he sees his brother’s face, and then before I can pull away, my own.
Thomas’s eyes move briefly from Rich’s face to mine. Rich glances away, over toward the radio. I can see images forming in Thomas’s mind. He still holds the cup of water with his hand. The other hand with the pill floats in front of me.
“What?” he asks then, almost inaudibly, as if he cannot formulate a whole question. I take the pill and the cup of water. I shake my head quickly, back and forth, small motions.
I hand the cup to Thomas. Rich goes immediately up to the cockpit. Billie calls to me: “Mommy, help me, please. I can’t do the snaps.”
With the exception of Maren Hontvedt’s testimony as an eye-witness to the murders, the prosecution’s case was based on circumstantial evidence and a lack of an alibi. It had been a bloody murder, and blood was found on clothing (left in the privy behind his landlady’s house) belonging to Louis Wagner. Mrs. Johnson, the landlady in question, identified a shirt as belonging to Wagner by the buttonhole she had once mended. Money had been stolen from the Hontvedt house, and the next morning Wagner had enough money to go to Boston and to buy a suit of clothes. Any man who made the row to Smuttynose and back would have put a lot of wear and tear on a dory; the brand new thole pins in James Burke’s dory were worn down. Wagner had talked to John Hontvedt and know that the women would be alone on Smutty-nose. In the weeks prior to the murders, Wagner had said repeatedly that he would have money if he had to murder for it. Wagner could not produce a single witness who had seen him in the city of Portsmouth from seven P.M. on the night of the murders until after seven o’clock the next morning. His landlady testified that Wagner did not sleep in his room that night.