The Ghost of the Mary Celeste

A PROMISE KEPT

Violet was right: Arthur Briggs hadn’t strayed far from his hometown and it didn’t require the genius of a great detective to track him down. My inquiry to the postal official at Marion drew a quick reply, directing me to an address in Uxbridge, the home of a Rev. William Cobb, who was, my correspondent informed me, the uncle of Arthur Briggs and most likely to know his current address. My letter to Rev. Cobb was answered by his wife, who explained that Arthur Briggs was employed at the First National Bank of New Bedford and could be reached in care of that institution.

I was familiar with New Bedford, that cacophonous city built on whale oil, as I’d spent some weeks there a year earlier covering the trial of Miss Elizabeth Borden, who was accused of murdering her parents with an ax. By the time the famous trial was over, the journalists’ pool filled half the courtroom and greatly augmented the income of a nearby café, which provided us with sandwiches at all hours. I was among the few who thought Miss Borden probably did the deed, but the prosecutor was reckless, at one point tossing the skulls of the dead parents on the evidence table, which caused Miss Borden to swoon for upward of twenty minutes. The defense was patient, pointing out again and again that hearsay wasn’t evidence. In the end, the judge practically instructed the jury to find the lady innocent, which they promptly did.

In the course of that trial, I had struck up a friendship with the “other” lady journalist, Miss Lucy Dial, who was reporting for the Boston Herald, and as I had an invitation to visit her over Thanksgiving and a few days off at the end of the month, I accordingly wrote to Arthur Briggs, describing myself as a friend of a friend of his mother’s, and stating my mission, the delivery of a memento that had belonged to his mother and therefore now rightly belonged to him. I concluded citing my availability to deliver it to him at some time between November 24 and the last day of the month.

Arthur Briggs responded almost at once, a cordial though slightly stiff response, thanking me for my note and informing me that he took a noon meal every working day at a restaurant near his bank and suggesting that this would be “as good a place as any” for the meeting I proposed.

And so, on a blustery day in late November, I found myself looking through the plate-glass window of Darcy’s Café in downtown New Bedford. It was an unpretentious room with no more than a dozen tables, perhaps half of which were occupied by businessmen in twos or threes, eating and talking cheerfully. Two gentlemen were dining alone, and as one was white-haired and crusty, I knew the other, who had chosen a table near the back of the room, where he was dreamily perusing the menu, must be Arthur Briggs. As I opened the door and stepped into the warm, moist, fishy atmosphere, he looked up, met my eyes, and lifted his chin and eyebrows at once, signaling his expectation of my arrival. I made my way through the tables, pulling off my gloves and loosening my coat. The other diners cast quick glances as I passed, the only woman in a male domain and not, their brief surveys informed them, a particularly interesting specimen.

Arthur stood up, a faint smile playing about his lips as he put out his hand to mine and we exchanged a brief, lifeless handshake. “Miss Grant,” he said. “Thank you for coming.” He pulled out a chair and I sank upon it, setting my briefcase to one side of the table. Arthur frankly stared at my battered old case; most men do. It sets me apart from my sex and, combined with my plain attire and above-average height, makes them check off a few boxes in their catalog of female possibilities. “Have you dined?” he asked politely.

“I haven’t,” I said. “I just got off the train from Boston. If you don’t mind, I’ll join you.” He signaled to a waiter, who instantly brought a paper menu and a glass of water, pointing out that the fried haddock was the special. “I’ll have that, then,” I said.

Arthur, exchanging an approving nod with the waiter, doubtless because my indifference to the menu saved them having to watch me read it, said, “I will too.”

When the waiter was gone, Arthur studied his hands, which were loosely folded on the table. I applied myself to the water glass. I had sensed at once that he suffered from extreme shyness — his encounters with my eyes had thus far been of the briefest duration — and I took him to be screwing up his courage. He was a remarkably plain-looking young man — I knew him to be not yet thirty — neatly dressed in a gray frock coat like the bank clerk he was, with thin brown hair cut square across his forehead, mild brown eyes with long feminine lashes, and a small, thin-lipped mouth. He was clean-shaven, which was unusual. “I wonder,” he said, “that your friend would keep … whatever it is you’ve brought me for so many years.”

“It is odd,” I agreed.

“And why return it now?”

“She has gone abroad and she feared she might not return. She didn’t know your address, so she asked me to find you.”

“Your friend,” he said, with the faint smile I began to understand was his manner of expressing incredulity.

“Her name is Violet Petra. She was a school chum of your mother’s.”

“That’s a peculiar name. I think I’d remember it if I’d ever heard it.”

“It is odd,” I agreed. “Frankly, I suspect it’s not her real name.”

“I see,” he said. Our waiter appeared and set two plates piled with fish and potatoes before us.

“This is a generous portion,” I observed.

To my surprise, Arthur essayed a humorous remark. “Bankers have big appetites,” he said. “Money makes them hungry.”

I glanced about the room at the busy forks and knives of our fellow diners. “I see that,” I said.

He cut off a bit of potato with his fork and swallowed it, hardly moving his lips. “When I read your letter,” he said, “I couldn’t help thinking that in those Sherlock Holmes stories when someone says he’s acting on behalf of a friend, it usually turns out he’s acting for himself.”

I cut into my fish, which yielded promisingly. “You mean you think I’ve had the book for twenty years and don’t want to be held responsible for keeping it from you?”

“Is that what it is?” he said. “A book?”

“That’s what Violet said it was. I haven’t seen it.” Our eyes coalesced upon my briefcase. “Shall I give it to you now?” I asked.

“Let’s finish our meal,” he said. “The table is too crowded.”

“Do you know the name of any close friends of your mother’s?” I asked.

He chewed reflectively, his quiet eyes resting on the middle distance. When he had swallowed, he said, “I went to live with my uncle in Uxbridge when I was eight. I remember my grandparents’ house in Marion, but I don’t recall much about the town. I’m sure my mother had many friends, especially in the singing society, but I never heard their names.”

“And how long have you been in New Bedford?”

“About seven years. My father’s mother was ill. She passed away five years ago now. I had the bank job by then, so I stayed on.”

“It’s an interesting town,” I said. “I spent some weeks here last year, for the Borden trial.”

He grimaced. “That awful business. Why were you here for that?”

“I’m a journalist,” I said. “I was covering the trial for my paper in Philadelphia.”

This considerable tipping of my hand was designed to provoke a range of emotions in my dining companion. The first, I anticipated, was a deepening of what I took to be an habitual suspicion of anyone connected with the business of making information public. Then there was the combination of horror and interest kindled in most quiet gentlemen by the very idea of a woman in the thick of things, jostling with tough-talking male reporters for access to thieves, murderers, swindlers, and politicians, filling her notebook with the details of anything that qualified as scandalous, sordid, and newsworthy. He’d probably been thinking I was an old maid librarian or someone’s crackpot aunt who carried her knitting around in a briefcase, and lo, I was a female with a nose for news.

We addressed our plates for a few minutes as I allowed him to work through the conflict I represented to his sensibilities — I never tire of watching men struggle to fathom what I am. In the end, after another mouthful of fish had been thoroughly masticated, he laid his fork down on the plate and said, “A journalist.”

Was that a glimmer of respect I detected?

“Don’t be anxious,” I said. “I’m on vacation.”

“Truly?” he said. “You’re not out to solve the mystery of the Mary Celeste?”

“I assure you,” I said.

The waiter approached to clear our plates away. “Coffee and pie goes with the special,” he informed me.

“Is there a choice of pie?” I asked.

“Apple, custard, lemon crème.”

“Take the apple,” said Arthur, looking knowledgeable and pleased with himself.

“The apple,” I said.

The waiter stacked our plates on one hand and sailed away to the kitchen. I reached for my briefcase, unfastened the latches, and took out the package. As I handed it to its owner, I said, “You know, it’s an odd thing, but Conan Doyle’s name keeps popping up in connection to your family.”

“He wrote a scurrilous story about the ship,” Arthur said. “Do you know about that?”

“I do,” I said. “He was also partly responsible for Miss Petra’s decision to go abroad, and hence to send you this book.”

He turned the package over, set it between us, and pulled at the string. “Well, what book is it?” he said petulantly. “Not one of his. My mother was gone before his time.” The string came loose and he stuffed it into his waistcoat pocket. Then he folded the brown paper back carefully, revealing a green cloth book embossed with a small gilt pineapple. He lifted the board cover, turned over the marbled flyleaf, and read the handwritten inscription on the following page:

He turned to the next page, which was entirely covered in a neat cursive hand. The ink had faded to brown. He read the first few sentences to himself. Before he closed the book, I made out the first four words—My sister has dreams.

“It’s my mother’s diary,” he said, resting his palm gently across the cloth cover. “From before I was born.”

I said nothing, thinking of how he must feel, how I would feel, if a total stranger brought me a diary written by my mother in her youth. “Did you know of its existence?” I asked after a few moments.

“I did not,” he said.

“Are you certain it’s hers?”

“I have a few letters still. It’s her handwriting.”

The waiter arrived with our coffee and pie. Arthur rewrapped the book and set it carefully aside. When he raised his dark eyes to mine, his gaze was gentle and diffident. “I don’t know how to thank you, Miss Grant,” he said. “You’ve brought me my mother’s voice.”

For a few months I was on the lookout for a letter from Violet, though I had no reason to think she would write. Her correspondence had generally been in the form of a summons. I assumed she had arrived in London and had submitted to the tests of the investigating gentlemen. After that, well, I didn’t like to think about what might happen after that. I hoped she had found a better way of life. Several years passed, busy ones for me, and though Violet was sometimes in my thoughts, I couldn’t let her know, as she hadn’t left me an address.

When the letter from the Boston law firm of Clarence, Fogg, & Little arrived on my desk, I had no premonition that it might have anything to do with Violet Petra. The Boston postmark puzzled me. My friendship with Lucy Dial, which had so flourished that we were in more or less constant touch with each other, was my only real connection to that city. Lucy and I had our eye on a little house on Cape Cod, which we were in hopes of purchasing together with the intention of renting it out and eventually retiring, or at least summering there together in future, and my first thought was that it must have something to do with this venture. Had the owners come down enough on their price to bring the sale into our range? Eagerly, I took up my letter knife, slit the envelope open, and unfolded the single page inside.

Mr. Albert Little wrote to inform me that he represented the estate of Violet Petra, who had been missing for more than five years. All efforts by his office to contact her had been to no avail, and she was last known to have boarded a steamer to Britain in November 1894. In the intervening years she had made no effort to contact the firm or to withdraw funds from the account in her name. It was assumed that she had passed away, possibly at sea.

The law required that, as her heir, I be notified and that I contact Mr. Little’s office as soon as possible. In order for his firm to follow Miss Petra’s wishes and execute her will as she intended, it would be necessary to petition the court to declare Miss Petra legally dead. Mr. Little looked forward to assisting me in the matter and hoped to hear from me at my earliest convenience.

I folded the letter and closed my eyes, overcome by a surge of sadness and shock too powerful for tears. She was gone; she had been gone, year after year, and I hadn’t known it. It hadn’t occurred to me, when I left the hotel that gloomy day in November, that I would never see Violet again. I recalled her bitterness and anxiety, as well as her wry acceptance of her complex fate. Her caustic remark—“Even I may have my little moment of courage”—came back to me. Had she? I wondered. Or had she simply despaired?

Sadder still was the news that she had named me as her heir. To have lived, as she had, in the constant company of strangers, without family, with no dearer friend than I was — really little more than an acquaintance — struck me as terrible. But perhaps I was simply the poorest person she knew.

It was a consolation to me that we had parted that afternoon in the hotel lounge on such good terms. She had been gratified to discover that my good will toward her could survive the revelation that she was not what she pretended to be. Perhaps what we both learned that afternoon in Philadelphia was that Violet Petra was a great deal better than she pretended to be. That much, at least, is all I want the indifferent world to know about her now.