Read Online Dark Nantucket Noon by Jane Langton - Free Book Online Page A

their family within bounds, somehow or other, and finally they started dwindling away until nobody was left in this generation but Helen. Oh, of course, Joe is a Boatwright too, in a way. At least, one of his four sets of great-grandparents was. But I keep forgetting about him, because he didn’t grow up here. He never even came to the island until that time when he met Helen at her grandfather’s funeral. And of course he doesn’t even carry the Boatwright name. I mean, like the man says, some of my best friends are Jews, but it’s strange to think of the blood of an old Nantucket family flowing in Jewish veins. Poor Helen.” Dick Roper shook his head sorrowfully. “Known her all my life. Can’t see how anybody could have had it in for her. Why, you know she was the leader of a whole lot of people who were working for the good of the island. She was really heroic, the way she went to bat to save it. She even gave up five hundred acres of her own land, gave it to a conservation trust, the Boatwright Trust. And she was the president—I guess you know that—of the Nantucket Protection Society, and I guess it would be fair to say that she was responsible for the new town bylaw to protect the future of the moors. A real crusader, that was Helen.”
    â€œThat was at the Special Town Meeting in February? I’ve heard people talk about it. Was anybody against the bylaw?”
    â€œAgainst it! Oh, sure. It just barely passed. After all, it took a two-thirds vote because it was a change in zoning. Oh, I see what you mean. Yes, I guess she did make some enemies with that bylaw. Some of the real estate dealers didn’t like it, of course. Hated to see all that land pass out of the pool of future development. Although I must say some of the more enlightened realtors voted for it, Mr. Hinckley, for instance, and Mrs. Pettigrew. Of course a lot of other people were against it because they had wanted to make money off their extra land. Matter of fact, I voted against it myself.”
    â€œYou did? Why? Do you own land on the island?”
    â€œWell, yes, I guess you could say I own quite a lot of land. Came down in my family. But I was just as glad when the bylaw passed. I never intended to develop it anyway. Not like some of those landowners. They were really angry. Especially that guy Holworthy out at Madaket. Lost a million dollars he was trying to make through a deal with that crummy character Flakeley, the real estate developer. Did you read his letter in the paper? Says he’s going to take that bylaw to a higher court.”
    â€œSo the point is, I guess,” said Homer, “Helen still had some enemies.”
    â€œWell, if you want to call those people enemies. But I’d say that was a pretty strong word. And anyway, how could any of those people have killed Helen at the lighthouse? Nobody else was there.”
    â€œCould anybody have been in the water nearby? Were there any boats offshore?”
    â€œOh, well, yes. I could see that classy fishing yacht of Cress-well’s, away out in Nantucket Sound.”
    â€œCresswell? Who’s he?”
    â€œOh, he’s that big moneybags who’s a boyfriend of Mrs. Magee’s. She’s in real estate. Excuse me, I shouldn’t talk about a big depositor that way. He’s in oil, I think, or maybe it’s wheat futures. I don’t know what the heck it is. Wish I had his kind of money. What I wouldn’t give for a forty-five-foot sport-fishing boat like that! I’d take it to the Virgin Islands. You just get in and drive the thing like a bus.”
    Homer stared dreamily at the white sails and bright pennants of the whaling vessel that had belonged to Richard Roper’s great-great-grandfather. “How far out in the Sound would you say Cresswell’s boat was?”
    â€œOh, way out. And I remember seeing a little sailboat, it was a Rainbow, and a red cabin cruiser in the Sound while it