'You did arouse my interest. Now you've raised my financial expectations too.'
'I can't pay more than 300.'
'Why not?'
'I simply don't have more than 300, that's why.'
'But you said the Peabody was buying this,' I told him. 'Don't tell me the Peabody only has 300.'
Edward sat down, still holding the picture. 'The truth is,' he said, 'the Peabody don't know about this picture. In fact, the Peabody don't know about any of the investigations I've been doing into the history of the David Dark. In Salem, and especially at the Peabody, the David Dark is something that people just don't talk about. You say "David Dark", and they say "Never heard of it," and they make it pretty damn clear that they don't want to hear about it, either.'
I poured myself a whisky, and sat down opposite him. 'But why?' I wanted to know. 'David Dark himself was supposed to have had conversations with the devil or something, wasn't he? But I haven't read anything which explains why they cut the ship's name out of all of the records, or why people won't talk about it.'
'Well, I'm not sure, either,' said Edward. He finished his beer, and put down the glass. 'But I first came across the name David Dark the year that I joined the Peabody from college. They gave me a small exhibition to prepare, a special showcase depicting the history of the rescue and salvage operations that had gone on around Salem and Granitehead during the past three hundred years. It was pretty tedious stuff, to tell you the truth, apart from one or two spectacular wrecks on Winter Island, and a couple of whalers being overturned by humpbacks. But I was interested in one of the earliest documents I found, which was the log of the salvage vessel Mimosa, out of Granite-head. Apparently the captain of the Mimosa was a real 18th-century hotshot when it came to bringing up wrecks, and he successfully salvaged one of Elias Derby's Chinamen when it was blown by a storm into the mouth of the Danvers River and sunk in six fathoms of water off Tuck's Point. His name was Pearson Turner, and he kept a really meticulous log for five years, from 1701 to 1706.'
'Go on,' I said. I poked the fire to keep it crackling.
There isn't very much to tell,' said Edward, 'but one summer there was an unusually low tide in Salem Bay, and even the smaller ships were stranded on the mud. This was 1704,1 think, or 1705. The low tide is mentioned in several other diaries and records as well, so it's soundly authenticated. It was during this low tide that a friend of Pearson Turner's spotted in the mud banks to the west of Granitehead Neck a protrusion from the mud which he took to be part of the bow castle of a sunken and half-buried ship. Pearson walked out to the wreck himself, in wading boots, although he was unable to get as close as he might have liked because the ooze was so soft. He did manage, however, to bring back to the shore a fragment of decorative moulding, and Esau Hasket, who owned the David Dark, tentatively identified it as part of his lost ship.'
'Lost? The David Dark was lost?'
'Oh, yes. She sailed out of Salem Harbour on the last day of October, 1692, and the only reason I know that is because it happens to be mentioned in the diaries kept by one of the early Salem wharfingers. He says something like, "A tempestuous north-westerly gale had been blowing for three days and showed no sign of letting up, but in spite of the perilous weather the David Dark set sail, the only vessel to do so during that whole wild week. She vanished into the storm and was never again seen in Salem." That's the gist of it, anyway. I can show you the diary itself, if you like.'
'But what's the connection with apparitions in Granite-head?' I asked. There must be scores of wrecks around these shores.'
As the fire blazed up, Edward unbuttoned his jacket. 'Let me get you another beer first,' I told him.
I went outside to the kitchen. At the foot of the staircase, I paused for a second or two, listening. I hadn't been upstairs yet, not since I had seen the flickering light in there last night. I hoped to God there wasn't anything up there which I didn't want to see. I hoped to God that Jane wouldn't appear again, not for her father, not for her mother, and especially not for me. She was dead but I wanted her to stay dead, for her own sake, and for the sake of our child who never was.
When I came back with the beer, Edward was leafing through Great Men of Salem. 'Thanks,' he said, then, 'you're not having trouble yourself, are you?'
Trouble?'
'You haven't seen anything which might suggest that Jane's trying to get in touch with you? Or maybe heard something? A lot of the Granitehead hauntings have been aural, rather than visual.'
I sat down, realized my glass was empty, and stood up again. 'I, er, I — no. No, nothing like that. I guess it only happens to old Graniteheaders. Not to us strangers.'
Edward nodded, as if he accepted what I was saying, but didn't completely believe me.
'You were telling me about the connection between the David Dark and the hauntings,' I reminded him.
'Well,' he said, 'it's only fair to warn you that in strictly scientific terms, it's a pretty tendentious connection. It wouldn't win a history award. But I don't know what sort of a world we're dealing with here: I don't know why these spirits are manifesting themselves, or what for, or how. It may just be an unpleasant freak of nature, something to do with weather conditions, or maybe it's something to do with geographical location. Granitehead may be like Easter Island, a spot on the map that for completely incomprehensible reasons happens to be conducive to spiritual apparitions.'
'But you think it's the ship.'
'I'm inclined to think it's the ship. And the reason why I'm inclined to think it's the ship is because I've discovered two accounts of the David Dark being prepared for her last voyage — one written before she sailed and the other written nearly eighty years later. I found the contemporary account in the most boring old book you could think of, a late 17th century treatise on maritime shipfitting and metalwork. It was written by a shipbuilder from Boston called Neames, and let me tell you that man was tedious. But right near the very end of the book he mentions the Salem coppersmiths of Perly and Fisk, and says what a magnificent job they were making of a "huge copper vessel" to be fitted inside the David Dark for the purpose of "containing that Great Foulness which has so plagued Salem, that we may look forward to its final removal." '
'You know this stuff by heart,' I remarked, not altogether admiringly.
'I've studied it often enough,' said Edward. 'But Jane was the one for learning history by heart. She could reel off dates and names like a memory bank.'
'Yes,' I said, remembering the way Jane could memorize telephone numbers and birthdays. I didn't really want to discuss Jane with Edward Wardwell; it was too sensitive a subject, and besides, I felt absurdly but strongly jealous that Edward had known her before me.
'What was the other account?' I asked him.
'The later one — 82 years later, as a matter of fact — was contained in the memoirs of the Reverend George Nourse, who had lived and worked in Granitehead for most of his life. He said that one day in 1752 he attended the deathbed of an old-time Salem bo'sun, and the bo'sun asked him particularly to commend his soul to heaven, since when he was younger he had spied on the secret loading of the David Dark’s last cargo, even though he had been warned that all who set eyes on it would be condemned to walk the earth forever, neither alive nor dead. When the Rev. Nourse asked the bo'sun what the cargo might have been, the bo'sun went into convulsions and started screaming about "Mick the Cutler". The Rev. Nourse was greatly disturbed by this, and went to speak to all the cutlers in the Salem district to see if he could throw some light on what the bo'sun had said, but without success. But he later said himself that he was sure that he had seen the bo'sun after his death, just turning the corner by Village Street.'