"Be nice, Emma."
I processed all this information and played with it awhile. I again thought about Charles Wilson's detailed letter to his brother, and I asked Emma, "Do you think Kidd could recall from memory all the locations of where he'd buried his treasure? Is that possible?"
"Probably not." She added, "Bellomont did look for evidence of hidden treasure and recovered some papers from Kidd's Boston lodgings and from the San Antonio, but there were no maps or locations of buried treasure among the papers-or if there were, Bellomont kept it to himself. I should mention that Bellomont died before Kidd was hanged in London, so if Bellomont had any of Kidd's treasure maps, they may have disappeared on Bellomont's death." She said to me, "So, you see, John, there are lots of little clues and hints and inconsistencies. People who have an interest in this have been playing historical detective for centuries." She smiled at me and asked, "So, do you have it figured out?"
"Not yet. I need a few more minutes."
"Take as long as you need. Meanwhile, I need a drink. Let's go."
"Hold on. I get to ask a few more questions."
"Okay. Shoot."
"Okay… I'm Captain Kidd, and I've been sailing around Long Island Sound for… how long?"
"A few weeks."
"Right. I've been to Oyster Bay where I got into contact with a lawyer, and my wife and children have come aboard from Manhattan. I've been to Gardiners Island… I asked Mr. Gardiner to bury some treasure for me. Do I know where he buried it?"
"No, which is why a map wasn't needed. Kidd simply told Gardiner to make sure the treasure was available when he returned, or he'd cut off a Gardiner head."
I nodded. "That's better than a map. Kidd didn't even have to dig the hole."
"That's right."
"Do you think Kidd did the same thing at other locations?"
"Who knows? The more common method was to go ashore with a few men and bury the treasure secretly, then make a map of the location."
"Then you have witnesses to where the treasure is buried."
She replied, "The traditional pirate method of insuring secrecy is to kill the person who dug the hole and throw him in. Then the captain and his trusted mate fill the hole. It was believed that the ghost of the murdered seaman haunted the treasure. In fact, skeletons have been found buried with treasure chests."
"Presumptive evidence of homicide," I said.
She continued, "As I mentioned, Kidd's crew at this point may have been reduced to six or seven. If he trusted at least one to watch the ship and the crew and his family, he could easily row to any bay or inlet and bury a chest of treasure himself. It's not a major engineering project to dig a hole in the sand. The old movies usually show a big party going ashore, but depending on the size of the chest, you only need one or two people." nodded, "A lot of our perception of history is influenced by inaccurate movies."
"That's probably right," Emma said. "But one thing in the movies is pretty accurate-all treasure hunting starts with the discovery of a long-lost map. We sell them for four bucks downstairs, but they've sold for tens of thousands of dollars to gullible people over the centuries."
I mulled this over, thinking that it may have been one of these maps-a real one-that had somehow come into the possession of Tom and Judy, and/or Fredric Tobin. I said to Emma, "You mentioned that Gardiners Island was once called the Isle of Wight."
"Yes."
"Are there other islands around here that once had other names?"
"Sure. All the islands initially had Indian names, obviously. Then some acquired Dutch or English names." She added, "And even those changed over the years. There was a real problem with geographic place names in the New World. Some English sea captains had only Dutch maps, some had maps showing the wrong name for an island or river, for instance, and the spelling was atrocious, and some maps simply had blanks and some had purposely misleading information."
I nodded and said, "Let's take, for instance, Robins Island or, say, Plum Island. What were they called in Kidd's day?"
"I'm not sure about Robins Island, but Plum Island was the same, except spelled P-L-U-M-B-E. This came from the earlier Dutch name for Plum Island, which was spelled P-R-U-Y-M E-Y-L-A-N-D." She added, "There could have been an even earlier name, and someone like William Kidd, who hadn't been to sea for years before he accepted this commission from Bellomont, may have had or purchased navigation charts that were decades old. That was not uncommon." She went on, "A pirate's treasure map, which would be drawn from a chart, could start with some inaccuracies. And you have to remember there are not many authentic treasure maps in existence today, so it's hard to draw any conclusions about the general accuracy of buried-treasure maps. It depended on the pirate himself. Some were really stupid."
I smiled.
She continued, "If the pirate chose not to draw a map, then the chances are much smaller of finding a treasure based on his written instructions. For instance, suppose you found a parchment that said, 'On Pruym Eyland, I buried my treasure-from Eagle Rock go thirty paces to the twin oaks, thence, forty paces due south' and so on. If you couldn't figure out where Pruym Eyland was, you had a major problem. If research said Pruym Eyland was once the name for Plum Island, then you have to find the rock that everyone at that time knew was Eagle Rock. And forget the oaks. You see?"
"I do."
After a bit, Emma said to me, "Archivists are sort of like detectives, too. Can I make a guess?"
"Sure."
She thought a moment, then said, "Okay… the Gordons got on to some information about Captain Kidd's treasure, or maybe some other pirate's treasure, and then someone else found out about it, and that's why the Gordons were murdered." She looked at me. "Am I right?"
I said, "Something like that. I'm working on the details."
"Did the Gordons actually retrieve the treasure?"
"I'm not sure."
She didn't press me.
I asked, "How would the Gordons have tumbled on to that information? I mean, I don't see any files here marked 'Pirate Treasure Maps.' Right?"
"Right. The only pirate treasure maps here are in the gift shop. There are, however, a lot of documents here and in the other museums and historical societies that are still unread, or if read, their significance is not understood. You understand?"
"I do."
She continued, "You know, John, people who haunt archives like the Public Records Office in London, or the British Museum, find new things that other people either missed or didn't understand. So, yes, there may be information here or in other collections or in private homes."
"Private homes?"
"Yes, at least once a year we get something donated that was turned up in an old house. Like a will or an old deed. My guess-and this is only a guess-is that someone like the Gordons, who were not professional archivists or historians, simply stumbled on to something that was so obvious that even they could understand what it was."
"Like a map?"
"Yes, like a map that clearly shows a recognizable piece of geography, and gives landmarks, directions, paces, compass headings, and the whole works. If they had something like that, they could pretty much go right to the spot and dig." She reflected a moment, then said, "The Gordons did a lot of archaeological digging on Plum Island…maybe they were really looking for treasure."
"No maybes about it."
She looked at me a long time, then said, "From what I hear, they had holes dug all over the island. That doesn't sound like they knew what or where-"
"The archaeological digs were cover. It gave them the ability to walk around remote parts of the island with shovels. Also, I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of the archival work wasn't also a cover."