Scimone lived down near the water in East Gloucester, just on the borderline of the artists' colony called Rocky Neck. It was a shack, but nicely kept up and decorated with many potted plants hung from macrame holders. Peter emerged from his darkroom with four prints of the Windhover. I glanced at them and was instantly on edge, and excited. Even at first blush the missing Windhover and the phantom Penelope were very similar.
Scimone had done the job quickly on a moment's notice for the local Gloucester paper, and the print was a year old when the Globe bought it. He didn't remember much about any of it. A gray-haired man sat on the deck of the boat with two other men. On the dock behind the boat was an attractive young lady with long blond hair. Scimone knew nothing about her, had not seen her before or since. I paid him and left with the prints.
On the way back through town a name, crudely painted with a big brush on a mailbox caught my eye. The name was Murdock, and the house was near the water. I pulled over and walked to the mailbox. If it was Daniel Murdock, and he couldn't construct a boat any better than he could write his name on his mailbox, I wouldn't want to be out in a millpond on one of his vessels.
I knocked at the door which, like the house, wasn't in very good repair. I waited. The gulls cried and cars whispered by behind me on the road. A curtain fluttered in a window above me. A voice called out asking me what I wanted.
I said merely that I wished to speak to the owner, Mr. Dan Murdock.
"I've got a boat that needs work on it. Where can I reach. him?"
"Who wants to know?"
"Doesn't he do repair work?"
"Who wants to know? He ain't heah."
"Where can I find him?"
"Try the Schooner Race or the Harbor Cafe. He'll do it… if he's not too drunk. He owe you money?"
"No. I just want to talk with him briefly."
The window slammed shut and I walked toward the car. But I stopped, and chanced to look back beyond the tiny frame house toward the harbor, whose slimy water, coated with prismatic and rainbowesque swirls of petrochemicals, gave off a heavy aroma. A shack was back there, perched over the harbor like a stork over a lily pad. I began ambling down the gravel lane toward it, I was curious to see the spot of Penelope's conception and delivery.
I heard the window slide up again with a clunk.
"He ain't heah! Mistah, go away!"
But stubborn soul that I am, I kept at it. When I was halfway to the shack, I heard the ring of a phone inside it. It rang once. That's all.
I stood in front of the doorway. The place was dark inside. I peered in through the windows. There was the looming dark shape of the bows of a big boat silhouetted by the shiny harbor water behind it. I tried the door. It wouldn't budge. But why only one ring? Had the caller hung up after only one ring? No. Murdock was in there, in amongst the tools, timbers, and old beer cans that lay strewn everywhere. I looked again through the windows of the dismal place, but nothing moved in the dark. I pounded on the door, then peeked again. Then left. The single ring was probably a warning signal sent by his wife. Lord knows how many people were anxious to make contact with Mr. Murdock. From his apparent drinking habits and the slovenly state of his operation, I guessed that he owed quite a lot of people money.
"Mrs. Murdock? Mrs. Murdock!"
Curtain flutter. Window up again.
"Mistah, look he ain't-"
"I know. Listen, tell him a man wants very much to speak to him about the Penelope. Tell him I'll call again in a couple of days, OK?"
Window slam. No answer. I left for The Breakers. It had been a tiring day. As I drove back down to Eastham the vision of poor Sarah Hart stayed in my mind. I saw her in tears, pushing her fragile wrists through the broken glass of her window.
As soon as I arrived I sat at the leather-topped desk in the study corner of the living room and switched on the brass student lamp. I laid out the photos that Scimone had given me, and next to them the eight by tens of the pictures I had taken of the Penelope during her brief sojourn in Wellfleet. I studied the photographs for twenty minutes. At first it was obvious they were the same boat. Then for a while I saw how it was clearly impossible that they could be. Then I saw it was possible. The common dimensions were one factor, but I knew that the forty-foot-or thereabouts-length is one of the most common for bay trawlers. But the bows did flare out in exactly the same way. The sweep of the gunwale lines were congruent. These things, I knew, could not be altered. But what of the things that could be altered?
The superstructures of the two vessels were very different: the Windhover had a lot of cabin space, the cabin extending far forward and leaving only enough foredeck for a crewman to stand and heave a line; the Penelope, typical of commercial fishing boats, had a small wheelhouse with a lot of foredeck. The Windhover however, preserved her work-boat appearance by retaining the tiny round portholes (invariably the mark of an older vessel) on her topsides just under the foredeck, whereas Penelope had instead the more modern rectangular single ports located roughly in the same place. In fact, I mused as I studied the pictures, exactly in the same place. Squinting my eyes slightly and glancing quickly from Scimone's photo of Windhover to my own pix of Penelope, I saw that the ports, which are very uncommon on small fishing craft, were located congruently on the two boats, except Penelope had one longish porthole instead of two round ones close together. And how difficult would it have been to cut out the intervening metal between the two ports with a power hacksaw to make one big one on each side?
"Do you want beer?"
"No."
"Do you want coffee?"
"No."
"Tea?"
"No."
"Me?"
"No."
"Hey what the hell is this-"
I felt a sharp kick in my calf.
"Come 'ere, Mary. Look at this."
CHAPTER FIVE
I overslept the next morning; was up late playing chess with Jack, who told me Tony suspected he'd caught the clap. I told Mary and Jack shot me a look as if we had betrayed his brother. Mary took it in passively. After confronting kidney failure, cardiac arrest, and terminal cancer every working day, gonorrhea was a minor affliction. Her face remained impassive, and beautiful. Dark olive skin, wide-set eyes, arched cheekbones, and mountains of black hair, still no gray at forty-three. Her nose and profile look as if they've been taken off a Roman statue. She cleared her throat.
"Have him call us and describe his symptoms to me or Dad, and then he should have a culture taken at the nearest clinic. Tell your brother he should be more choosy about whom he sleeps with-God knows he's handsome enough to be picky. And tell him to wear a condom too, that way we won't have to worry about pregnancy as well. Clear?"
There was a husky grunt in response from Jack, who said he had no idea she knew so much about it.
"About 'it'? Look, buster, I'm a nurse; I've been married twenty-five years with two sons. Don't tell me about 'it.' "
I suggested we call Tony and extend our sympathy and understanding. We did, and he seemed relieved.
"Thanks, Mom and Dad, And don't worry; it'll never happen again."
"Of course not," said Mary, "and if they give you medication, don't skip any pills; take them all."
Mary decided she'd go over to say good-bye to Sarah Hart, who was leaving for Pasadena. Just after she left I dialed the police station and spoke with Lieutenant Disbrow briefly. He said they were treating Allan Hart's death as accidental. Did I have anything to add or suggest? I said not at the present, but that I was looking for the trawler Penelope, and if Disbrow or any of the department saw her, could they let me know?