She was in the cockpit, staring toward the Reefcomber, her fists against her throat, her eyes bulging with shock and hysteria. She wore slacks and a cotton coolie jacket. I looked where she was looking, and I did not take the time to cuff the hysteria out of her. I went up onto the dock and toward the Reefcomber at a dead run, and the closer I got to him, the more unpleasant he looked. The Reefcomber moved in the east wind, and he swayed with each movement, swayed at the end of the short length of nylon line. I went up on the trunk cabin, clasped one arm around his thighs, severed the line with one slash, caught his full weight, and brought him down to the deck. As I was doing it, I kept wondering why I could not force myself to move more slowly, more clumsily.
The half-inch nylon had bitten deeply into the flesh of his throat. I worked the slipknot loose and pulled the loop off over his head. I rolled him onto his back and began artificial respiration, but I knew from the feel of the body of Yates Brogan that he was irrevocably dead. Hoarse questions were shouted. People gathered around. A fat man in pink pajamas identified himself as a doctor and immediately confirmed the fact of death.
I went back to my boat. It was getting lighter every minute. I heard Nan sobbing. I looked in on her. She was face down on the bunk. I went below and sat next to her. She turned and looked up at me. “He’s dead.” It was more statement than question.
“Yes.”
“I... I woke up and I couldn’t go back to sleep. I couldn’t stop thinking about... everything. So I came out to watch... the sun come up. The first time I glanced over there, I didn’t see him. I just got the feeling something was wrong. I looked again and then I saw... what it was.”
“There’s a doctor there. He says it happened maybe a couple of hours ago.”
“What a mess! What a dreadful mess!”
I shrugged. “It simplifies a lot of things, doesn’t it?”
“Don’t be so callous, Vince.”
“I’m being honest. He wasn’t one of my favorite people. I won’t miss him a bit.”
She sat on the edge of the bunk, frowning. “I thought he’d do some crazy thing. But I didn’t think it would be that.”
“So instead of a divorcée, you’re a widow. And pretty well off.”
“I won’t touch it! Not a dime of it!” She looked speculatively at me. “I suppose he left some vile note of farewell.”
“I don’t know. I didn’t look.”
“I’m sorry I went to pieces. But...”
“You don’t have to explain or apologize. Nan. You know that.”
Johnny appeared at eight o’clock. When he heard what had happened he turned pale and sweaty and sat down abruptly, his mouth sagging.
The Bahamian officials appeared a little after nine. Three men, two of them young, two of them in uniform. They questioned us together and separately. Brogan had left no suicide note. They seemed most curious about the fact of the public brawl I’d had with Brogan. The spelling out of the relationship between Brogan, Nan, and Johnny seemed to pain them. And they acted very weary, as though they could see an endless wilderness of forms, red tape, and complex documents ahead of them. Suicide is incorrect and troublesome.
We were told more investigators would fly in from Nassau, and we could expect a visitation of reporters from Nassau as well as the States. Nan and Johnny were politely requested to remain in Bimini until officially released. By then perhaps Mrs. Brogan could arrange to have the Reefcomber taken back to Lauderdale, its port of registry.
Suicide is troublesome, but in Bimini tuna is king. I would be permitted to fulfill my charter.
After the questioning I lined up a good boy to crew for me and set him to work acquiring the bait fish we would need. Nan and Johnny had gone off into town. I felt restless. I looked over at the Reefcomber. For once there was no one standing on the dock staring at where a man had died. I sauntered over and stood and figured out how he had done it. He had stood atop the trunk cabin and put the noose around his neck, and reached as high as he could to tie the other end of the line to a stay and then had stepped off.
The line still hung where I had slashed it apart, and the breeze had unraveled the end of it into an Irish pennant.
I stared at that clean white line.
Suddenly the world had a entirely different look. In the midmorning silence I heard Nan’s voice. I turned and saw her with Johnny. He went into the dockmaster’s office. She came walking toward me.
She came up to me. “Vince... you have such a strange look.” I could not speak. I pointed at the end of the line. “What do you mean, Vince. What am I supposed to... Oh!”
It took her as long to see it as it had me. Her fingers closed convulsively around my wrist. The color went out of her face so that her tan looked yellowish and sickly. She moistened her lips. “Even... even when Yates was so drunk you couldn’t understand a word he said, he would never never...”
“I know. It would be the same with you or with me.”
Then she said in a very small voice, “Johnny has been telling me it would be childish not to accept the money.”
“What’s going on?” Johnny Welch asked, cheerfully enough. We both turned and stared at him. He was alien, a creature of the land, whereas we were of both the land and the sea, with skills he would never know. Johnny’s face changed. “What’s the matter with you two?”
In a voice that did not seem like my own, I said, “Was he so drunk he wasn’t any problem, or did you have to hit him? You could safely hit him. I left enough marks on him so one more wouldn’t be noticed.”
“What the hell are you talking about, Vince?”
“About murder. For love and money. Maybe mostly money. You aren’t in very good shape, are you?”
“Are you accusing me of killing him?”
“You came back in the night, after everybody had settled down for the night. You hoisted him up onto that trunk cabin. Then I think you made the line fast, made a loop in the other end, lifted him up, worked the noose around his neck, and let him fall free.”
“Nan, he’s talking nonsense! Why are you looking at me like that!”
I took a small gamble. “Somebody saw you do it, Johnny. Those Bimini cops are on their way back here, looking for you.”
For a moment he smiled. Then his face went blank. He turned away and began to run, with a frantic, ludicrous, hopeless haste, like an overweight kid being chased across a schoolyard. We watched him run over the grass, past the swimming pool, and out through the open gate into the road and disappear. There was no need to follow him. Bimini is a small island.
Nan sagged heavily against me for a girl so small. I put my arm around her. I took her slowly back to the Faraway Gal.
I had them call the officials back. I took them to the Reefcomber and showed them the frayed line. I told them how Johnny had run when I had tricked him. They nodded. They accepted the evidence of the line because they were men who lived close to the sea and knew boats and lines, and they came to the same conclusion as Nan and I had. The line was the evidence, and his flight was the confession.
When a child is learning to tie a square knot and makes the second loop the wrong way, the result is an awkward, untrustworthy knot, one that is a symbol of scorn among seafaring people. And a seaman like Yates Brogan, no matter how fumbling drunk he might have been, how depressed or how suicidal, would never have made the hangman rope fast with a granny knot.