Medusa

CHAPTER 38

PAUL TROUT DROVE THE RENTED SUV INTO THE DESERTED back lot of a four-story mill that had been abandoned decades before when New Bedford’s textile business pulled out of the city. Silhouetted against the night sky, the granite building could have been a relic from a bygone civilization if not for the banner-sized sign advertising DISCOUNT FURNITURE. A security light over the front door illuminated a small wooden plaque: BRIMMER’S ANTIQUITIES, 4TH FLOOR.

The mill was otherwise dark, except for the night lights in the showroom and a yellow glow in a fourth-floor window.

“Look familiar?” Gamay asked.

“Yes,” Paul said. “It’s the old Dobbs mill, the place Rachael showed us in that print back at the mansion.”

Gamay pointed to the top floor.

“Either Brimmer is up there,” she said, “or the ghost of Captain Dobbs is putting in overtime.”

Paul reached for his cell phone and called Brimmer’s number.

“Strange,” Paul said. “Light’s on but Brimmer’s not answering. Not even a recording. Are your antennae picking up the same something’s-not-right vibes that I’m getting?”

Gamay wrinkled her nose.

“More like a bad smell,” she said.

Ticking the points off on her fingers, she said, “Brimmer tells us the logbook is a goner, then calls to say he knows where it is. Then he asks us to meet him at this overgrown haunted house instead of at his shop, or even a public place. Why all the secrecy?”

“I’m getting a picture in my mind of a mousetrap,” Paul said. “Only instead of cheese, an old book is the bait. And we’re the mice.”

“Maybe this creepy old building is making us paranoid,” Gamay said. “Brimmer isn’t the violent type. What do you want to do?”

“I don’t know if the information in the Dobbs logbook will help Kurt and Joe find the missing lab,” he said. “But, with lives involved, I say we go for it.”

“Looking at this from a cost-benefit point of view, I’d have to agree with you. Let’s cut the risk factor, though, and scout things out.”

Paul parked the SUV in the shadows, and they cautiously approached the main entrance.

“Unlocked,” Paul said. “Nothing suspicious there. Brimmer is expecting us.”

“But he didn’t answer the phone,” Gamay said. “If he isn’t in his office, he wouldn’t leave the door unlocked. And that is suspicious.”

They walked the length of the five-hundred-foot-long building, eventually coming to another door. This one was locked. Continuing on around a corner of the building, they came upon the black cast-iron fire escape that zigzagged up to the top floor.

They climbed it and tried the door at each landing, but all were locked.

Paul jabbed the doorjamb on the top floor with his car key. The wood was soft with rot. He took a step back and threw his shoulder against the door, felt it give, and slammed it a few more times until the latch ripped out of the jamb. Gamay produced a small halogen flashlight from her handbag, and they stepped inside.

Their footfalls echoed as they walked across the dust-layered floor. The vast space where workers once tended hundreds of looms was as still as a tomb. They headed toward the far end of the room, where light was seeping under a door, and eventually came to a drywall partition. Cartons were stacked against it. BRIMMER was written in ink on the boxes.

Paul picked up a two-by-four from a pile of debris, hefting it like a baseball bat, and whispered to Gamay to knock on the door. She did, softly. When there was no answer, she stepped aside, and he did his battering-ram imitation again. The door popped open at first nudge.

The floor was littered with books and papers from the shelves, now empty, that lined the office. Sheets of paper hung from strings stretched across the room. The light visible outside through the window came from a goosenecked desk lamp on a table that also supported a computer, a small artist’s drafting board elevated at the back, and Brimmer’s body. The antiquities dealer was sprawled facedown, his hand stretched out toward a cell phone several inches from his fingertips. The back of his suit was perforated with a single bullet hole and stained red.

Paul put his fingers to the artery in the dealer’s neck.

“Now we know why Brimmer didn’t answer the phone,” he said.

Gamay bent over the drafting board, which held a half-finished document written in ornate script. Next to it were some antique calligraphy pens and a bottle of ink. She read aloud a handwritten note on a sheet of paper next to an open book:

“Call me Ishmael . . .”

“The opening sentence from Moby-Dick?” Paul asked.

Gamay nodded.

“It appears our Mr. Brimmer was forging manuscript pages from Melville,” she said.

“Could that type of thing get him killed?” Paul asked.

“Rachael Dobbs would be my first suspect. But it was more likely that someone didn’t want him using the phone.”

Paul slid a piece of paper under Brimmer’s cell and flipped it over so the display screen showed.

“He was calling the police,” he said. “He got as far as 91 . . .”

“I think we can conclude that Brimmer was forced to come here,” she said. “He would never have let anyone into his forgery workshop otherwise. And, judging from the mess on the floor, I’d say they were looking for something.”

“The 1848 logbook?”

“As Holmes would say, eliminate the impossible and you have the possible.”

“His body is still warm, Ms. Holmes. What does that tell you?”

“That we had better be on our toes,” she said. “And the murderer knew we were coming to see Brimmer.”

“Doesn’t that seem far-fetched?” he asked.

Gamay pointed to the corpse.

“Tell Mr. Brimmer that it’s far-fetched.”

“Okay,” Paul said with a tight smile. “You’ve convinced me.”

Paul put his finger to his lips and opened a door opposite the one they had come through. He stepped out onto a landing, edged over to the railing, and looked down the stairs. He saw a tiny orange glow and smelled cigarette smoke rising up the shaft. He backed up into the office, shut the door quietly, and turned the lock.

He picked up Brimmer’s cell phone, punched in the second 1 to complete the emergency call. When the police dispatcher answered, Paul said his name was Brimmer, gave the address, and said somebody was prowling around in the building. He suspected they were armed and dangerous.

Paul hung up and put the phone back in Brimmer’s lifeless fingers.

He and Gamay slipped out of Brimmer’s office and quickly made their way across the wide loom floor. Paul set the two-by-four against the wall, and they stepped out onto the fire escape, only to stop short.

The rickety old fire escape was trembling, and there was the tunk-tunk of ascending footfalls on the cast-iron steps. The Trouts ducked back inside, and Paul picked up the two-by-four he’d just left behind. They plastered themselves flat against a wall on either side of the door. He tightened his grip on the board.

Low male voices could be heard, then a quick exclamation of surprise. The men had found the smashed latch. Then the voices ceased.

The door opened slowly. A figure stepped inside, followed by another. There was a spark, as the lead man flicked on a cigarette lighter. Paul calculated that he would have a second to act and brought the two-by-four down on the head of the second figure. The man with the cigarette lighter turned at the thwack of wood smacking skull. He was holding a revolver in his other hand. Paul jammed him in the midsection with the end of the two-by-four, and followed up with a blow to the head as the man doubled over.

The Trouts dashed through the door, paused briefly to make sure nobody else was climbing the fire escape, then flew down the steps and raced to their vehicle. As they drove away from the mill, they passed two police cruisers speeding toward it, lights blinking but sirens silent.

Gamay caught her breath, and said, “Where’d you learn to swing a bat like Ted Williams?”

“The Woods Hole summer softball league. I played first base for the institution’s oceanography team. Strictly for fun. Didn’t even keep score.”

“Well, I’m going to put you down for 2 to 0, after that neat double play,” Gamay said.

“Thanks. I guess we’ve reached a dead end on the Dobbs logbook. . . . Literally,” Paul said.

Gamay pursed her lips in thought for a moment.

“Captain Dobbs wasn’t the only one who wrote down his memoirs,” she said.

“Caleb Nye?” he said. “All his records went up in flames.”

“Rachael Dobbs mentioned the diorama. Isn’t that a record of sorts?”

Suddenly energized, he said, “It’s worth a try.”

Paul pumped the SUV’s accelerator and headed across town to the Dobbs mansion.

Rachael Dobbs was saying good night to the cleaning crew that had cleared up after the jazz concert and was about to close down the building. She looked less frazzled than when they saw her earlier.

“I’m afraid you missed the concert,” she said. “You found Mr. Brimmer’s shop, I trust?”

“Yes, thank you,” Gamay said. “He couldn’t help us. But then Paul and I remembered the Nye diorama that you mentioned. Do you think it might be possible to see it?”

“If you come by tomorrow, I’d be glad to show it to you,” Rachael said.

“We’ll be back in Washington by then,” Gamay said. “If there is any chance . . .”

“Well, after all, your generous contribution made you members of the Dobbs Society in good standing,” Rachael said. “Let’s go down to the basement.”

The basement of the Dobbs mansion was big and musty. They wove their way through antique odds and ends to a floor-to-ceiling cabinet that Rachael explained was an airtight, temperature-controlled walk-in safe. She opened the safe’s double doors to reveal metal shelves stacked with plastic boxes, each labeled. A cylinder-shaped object around six feet long, wrapped in plastic, filled the lowest shelf.

“This is the Nye diorama,” Rachael said. “I’m afraid that it’s a bit heavy, which is probably why no one has dragged it out to have a look at it.”

Paul squatted down and lifted one end of the cylinder up a couple of inches.

“It’s doable,” he said.

All through college, Paul had helped on his father’s fishing boat, and since then he’d spent hours at the gym keeping in shape for the physical demands of his job. Gamay was even more of a fitness nut, and although her long-legged figure could have come out of the pages of Vogue she was stronger than many men. Working together, the Trouts easily hefted the package and carried it upstairs.

At Rachael’s suggestion, they took the cylinder to the tent, where there was space to unwrap it. The Trouts removed the plastic and undid the ties wrapped around the diorama. It had been tightly coiled, with its blank brownish gray back side facing outward.

Carefully and slowly, they unrolled the diorama.

The first panel became visible. It was an oil painting around five feet high and six feet wide, depicting a whaling ship tied up at a dock. There was a caption under the picture:

JOURNEY’S END.

“We must be looking at the last section of the diorama,” Rachael said. “This shows a ship unloading its catch in New Bedford. See the barrels being rolled down a ramp to the dock?”

The colors of sea and sky were still bright, but the other colors were garish, in the style of a circus poster. The brushstrokes were bold, as if the paint had been applied in a hurry. The perspective was wrong, seen through the eyes of an untrained artist.

“Any idea who painted this?” Gamay asked. “The technique is rough, but the artist had a good eye for detail. You can even see the name of the ship on the hull: Princess.”

“You’re very discerning,” Rachael Dobbs said. “Seth Franklin was self-taught, and he sold paintings of ships to their owners or captains. Before he started painting, he was a ship’s carpenter. As I understand it, Nye stood in front of the diorama as it was unrolled from panel to panel and fleshed out the details with his own story. The lighting would have been dramatic, and maybe there were even sound effects. You know, someone behind the diorama shouting ‘Thar she blows!’ ”

The next panel showed the Princess rounding a point of land that the caption identified as THE TIP OF AFRICA. In another panel, the ship was at anchor against the backdrop of a lush volcanic island. Dark figures that could have been natives were standing on the deck, which was bathed in a blue glow. The caption read:

TROUBLE ISLAND-LAST PACIFIC LANDFALL.

The panel that followed showed another volcanic island, apparently much bigger, with a dozen or so ships at anchor in its harbor. The caption identified the setting as Pohnpei.

Paul continued unrolling the diorama. The next panels depicted, in reverse, the crew cutting up a sperm whale and boiling its blubber down for oil. Particularly interesting was what appeared to be a white-haired man lying on the deck over the caption:

MODERN-DAY JONAH.

“It’s the Ghost,” Rachael said. “This is marvelous! This shows Caleb Nye as he must have looked after he’d been cut out of the whale’s stomach.”

The stiff canvas of the diorama was becoming hard to handle, but with Paul unrolling it and Gamay rolling it back on its spindle, the whaling saga continued to unfold in reverse.

The panel before them was the classic depiction of a whaleboat-harpooned sperm whale in the lace-topped waves. Two legs were sticking out of the whale’s mouth. The caption identified the scene:

CALEB NYE-SWALLOWED BY A WHALE.

Rachael Dobbs could hardly contain her excitement. She started talking about a fund-raiser to restore the diorama and finding wall space to hang it. Paul and Gamay Trout found the diorama fascinating but of little help. Yet they kept going until they came to the last panel, almost a mirror image of the ship in the first panel, only returning from its long voyage. In this panel, there was a crowd of people on the dock, and the ship’s rigging was unfurled. The caption read SETTING SAIL.

Paul stood up to stretch his legs, but Gamay’s sharp eye noticed that there were a few more feet of canvas. She asked him to keep unrolling, expecting to see a title panel of some sort. Instead, they were looking at a map of the South Pacific. Lines had been drawn in a crooked pattern across the ocean. There were whales’ tails scattered across it. Each tail had a longitude-latitude position inked next to it.

“It’s a map of the 1848 voyage of the Princess,” Rachael said. “Those position notations show where the whales were caught. Captains often illustrated their logbooks to record good whaling areas. The map would have given Caleb’s audience an idea of the extent of the voyage and shown where his adventures had occurred.”

Gamay got down on her hands and knees and followed a line with her index finger from Pohnpei to a speck called Trouble Island. The island’s position had been noted next to it.

The Trouts jotted down the coordinates, rolled the diorama back up, and carried it into the kitchen. Despite Rachael’s protest, they gave her a substantial contribution to start the ball rolling on a place for the mural.

While Rachael Dobbs went to close up the museum, the Trouts went out into the garden.

“What do you think?” Gamay asked.

“I’m not sure whether this will help them find the lab,” Paul said, “but it’s all linked somehow: the present and the past, the blue medusa, the miraculous cure of the men aboard the Princess.”

“Don’t forget that somebody thought the log was important enough to kill Brimmer over,” Gamay said. “We should let Kurt and Joe know what we found.”

Paul already had his cell phone in hand, scrolling down to a number on his contact list.