The Mammoth Book of Best British Mysteries

THE FERRYMAN’S BEAUTIFUL DAUGHTER by Peter Robinson

The strangers came to live on the island at the beginning of summer, 1969, and by the end of August my best friend Mary Jane was dead. The townsfolk blamed the Newcomers and their heathen ways, but I was certain it was something else. Not something new, but something old and powerful that had festered in the town for years, or perhaps had always been there.

I remember the morning they arrived. We were all in chapel. It was stifling hot because the windows were closed and there was no air-conditioning. “Stop fidgeting and listen to the Preacher,” hissed Mother. I tried my best, but his words made no sense to me. Flecks of spittle flew from his mouth like when water touches hot oil in a frying pan. Something about Judgment Day, when the dead would rise incorruptible.

Next to me, Mary Jane was looking down at her shoes trying to hold back her laughter. I could see the muscles tightening around her lips and jaw. If we started giggling now we were done for. The Preacher didn’t like laughter. It made him angry. He finally gave her one of his laser-like looks, and that seemed to settle her down. He’d never liked Mary Jane since she refused to attend his special instruction evening classes. She told me that when he had asked her, he had put his face so close to hers that she had been able to smell the bourbon on his breath, and she was sure she had seen the outline of his thing pushing hard against his pants. She also said she had seen him touching Betsy Goodall where he shouldn’t have been touching her, but when we asked Betsy she blushed and denied everything. What else could she have done? Who would have believed her? In those days, as perhaps even now, small, isolated communities like ours kept their nasty little secrets to themselves.

Across the aisle, Riley McCorkindale kept glancing sideways at Mary Jane when he thought she couldn’t see him. Riley was sweet on her, but she gave him a terrible run-around. I thought he was quite nice, but he was very shy and he seemed too young for us, no matter how tall and burly he was. Besides, he was always chewing gum and we thought that looked common. We were very sophisticated young ladies. And you have to understand that Mary Jane was very beautiful, not gawky and plain like me, with golden hair, delicate soft skin and the biggest, bluest eyes you have ever seen.

At last the service ended and we ran out into the summer sunshine. Our parents lingered to shake hands with neighbors and talk to the Preacher, of course. They were old enough to know that you weren’t supposed to seem in too much of a hurry to leave God’s house. But Mary Jane and I were only fifteen, sophisticated as we were, and everybody knew that meant trouble. Especially when they said we were too old for our own good. “Precocious” was the word they used most often to describe us. I looked it up.

And that was when we saw the Newcomers. I think Mary Jane noticed them first because I remember seeing her expression change from laughter to wonder as I followed her gaze to the old school bus pulling into the parking lot. It wasn’t yellow, but was painted all colors, great swirls and blobs and sunbursts of green, red, purple, orange, black and blue, like nothing we’d ever seen before. And the people! We didn’t own a television set in our house, but I’d seen pictures in magazines tourists left on the ferry sometimes, and I’d even read in Father’s newspaper about how they took drugs, listened to strange, distorted loud music and held large gatherings outside the cities, where they indulged in unspeakable practices. But I had never seen any of them in the flesh before.

They certainly did look odd, the girls in loose dresses of pretty, flowered patterns, the men with their long hair over their shoulders or tied back in ponytails, wearing Mexican-style ponchos and bell-bottom jeans and cowboy boots, the children scruffy, dirty and long-haired, running wild. They looked at us without much curiosity as they boarded the ferryboat carrying their few belongings. I suppose they’d seen plenty of people who looked like us before, and who looked at them the way we must have done. Even Riley, who had clearly been plucking up the courage to come over and say hello to Mary Jane before his ferry left, had stopped dead in his tracks, mouth gaping open. I could see the piece of gum lying there on his tongue like a misplaced tonsil.

Once the Newcomers had all boarded the ferry, the regulars got on. There was no chapel on the island. Only about thirty people lived there, and not all of them were religious. The Preacher said that was because most of them were intellectuals and thought they knew better than the SCRIPTURES. Anyway, the ones who weren’t businessmen, like Riley’s father, taught at the university in the city, about forty miles away, and commuted. They left their cars in the big parking lot next to the harbor because there were no roads on the island.

Just because we had the ferry, it didn’t make our little town an important place; it was simply the best natural harbor closest to Pine Island. We had a general store, a rundown hotel with a Chinese restaurant attached, the chapel, and an old one-room schoolhouse for the children. The high school was fifteen miles away in Logan, the nearest large town, and Mary Jane and I had to take the bus. The sign read “Jasmine Cove, Pop. 2,321” and I’d guess that was close enough to the truth, though I don’t think they could have counted Mary Jessop’s new baby because she only gave birth the day before the Newcomers arrived.

Over the next few days, we found out a little more about the Newcomers. They were from inland, a thousand miles away, according to Lenny, who ran the general store. There were about nine of them in all, including the children, and they’d bought the land fair and square from the government and had all the right papers and permissions. They kept to themselves and didn’t like outsiders. They shunned the rest of society – that’s the word Lenny used, “shunned”, I looked it up – and planned to live off the land, growing vegetables. They didn’t eat meat or fish.

According to Lenny, they didn’t go to chapel. He said they worshipped the devil and danced naked and sacrificed children and animals, but Mary Jane and I didn’t believe him. Lenny had a habit of getting carried away with himself when it came to new ideas. Like the Preacher, he thought the world was going to hell in a hand basket and almost everything he saw and heard proved him right, especially if it had anything to do with young people.

That day, as we wandered out of the general store onto Main Street, Mary Jane turned to me, smiled sweetly and said, “Grace, why don’t we take a little ferry ride tomorrow and find out about the Newcomers for ourselves?”

Mary Jane’s father, Mr Kiernan, was the ferryman, and in summer, when we were on holiday from school, he let us ride for free whenever we wanted. Sometimes I even went by myself. Pine Island wasn’t very big – about two miles long and maybe half a mile wide – but it had some very beautiful areas. I loved the western beach best of all, a lonely stretch of golden sand at the bottom of steep, forbidding cliffs. Mary Jane and I knew a secret path down, and we spent many hours exploring the caves and rock pools, or lounging about on the beach talking about life and things. Sometimes I went there alone when I felt blue, and it always made me feel better.

Most of the inhabitants of Pine Island lived in a small community of wood-structure houses nestled around the harbor on the east coast, but the Newcomers had bought property at the southern tip, where two abandoned log cabins had been falling to ruin there as long as anyone could remember. Someone said they’d once been used by hunters, but there was nothing left to hunt on Pine Island any more.

We saw the Newcomers in town from time to time, when they came to buy provisions at Lenny’s store. Sometimes one or two of them would drive the school bus to Logan for things they couldn’t find here. They were buying drugs there, and seeds to grow marijuana, which made folk crazy, so Lenny said. Perhaps they were.

Certainly the Preacher found many new subjects for his long sermons after the arrival of the Newcomers – including, to the dismay of some members of his congregation, the evils of tobacco and alcohol – but whether word of his rantings ever got back to them, and whether they cared if it did, we never knew.

The Preacher was in his element. He told us the Newcomers were nothing other than demons escaped from hell. He even told Mr Kiernan that he should have nothing to do with them and that he shouldn’t use God’s ferryboat to transport demons. Mr Kiernan explained that he worked for the ferry company, which was based in the city, not for the Preacher, and that it was his job to transport anyone who paid the fare to or from Pine Island. The Preacher argued that the money didn’t matter, that there was a “higher authority”, and the ferry company was as bad as the Newcomers; they were all servants of Beelzebub and Mammon and any other horrible demon names he could think of. In the end, Mr Kiernan gave up arguing and simply carried on doing his job.

One bright and beautiful day in July around the time when men first set foot on the moon, Mary Jane and I set off on our own exploratory mission. Mr Kiernan stood at the wheel, for all the world looking as proud and stiff as if he were piloting Apollo 11 itself. We weren’t going to the moon, of course, but we might as well have been. It was only later, in university, that I read The Tempest, but had I known it then, Miranda’s words would surely have echoed in my mind’s ear: “O brave new world that hath such people in it!”

The little ferry didn’t have any fancy restaurants or shops or anything, just a canvas-covered area with hard wooden benches and dirty plastic windows, where you could shelter from the rain – which we got a lot of in our part of the world – and get a cup of hot coffee from the machine, if it was working. Through fair and foul Mr Kiernan stood at the wheel, cap at a jaunty angle, pipe clamped in his mouth. Some of the locals made fun of him behind his back and called him Popeye. They thought we hadn’t heard them, but we had. I thought it was cruel, but Mary Jane didn’t seem to care. Our town was full of little cruelties, like the way the Youlden kids made fun of Gary Mapplin because there was something wrong with his spine and he had to go around in a wheelchair, his head lolling on his shoulders as if it were on a spring. Sometimes it seemed to me that everywhere Mary Jane and I went in Jasmine Cove, people gave us dirty looks, and we knew that if we spoke back or anything, they’d report us to our parents. Mr Kiernan was all right – he went very easy on Mary Jane – but my father was a bit of tyrant, and I had to watch what I said around him.

Riley McCorkindale was hanging around the ferry dock, as usual, fishing off the small rickety pier with some friends. I don’t think they ever caught anything. He blushed when Mary Jane and I walked by giggling, and said hello. I could feel his eyes following us as we headed for the path south through the woods. He must have known where we were going; it didn’t lead anywhere else.

Soon we’d left the harbor and its small community behind us and were deep in the woods. It was cooler there, and the sunlight filtered pale green through the shimmering leaves. Little animals skittered through the dry underbrush, and once a large bird exploded out of a tree and startled us both so much our hearts began to pound. We could hear the waves crashing on the shore in the distance, to the west, but all around us it was peaceful and quiet.

Finally, from a short distance ahead, we heard music. It was like nothing I’d ever heard before, and there was an ethereal beauty about it, drifting on the sweet summer air as if it belonged there.

Then we reached a clearing and could see the log cabins. Three children were playing horseshoes, and someone was taking a shower in a ramshackle wooden box rigged up with some sort of overhead sieve. The music was coming from inside one of the cabins. You can imagine the absolute shock and surprise on our faces when the shower door opened and out walked a young man naked as the day he was born.

We gawped, I’m sure. I had certainly never seen a naked man before, not even a photograph of one, but Mary Jane said she once saw her brother playing with himself when he thought she was out. We looked at one another and swallowed. “Let’s wait,” Mary Jane whispered. “We don’t want them to think we’ve been spying.”

And we waited. Five, ten minutes went by. Nothing much happened. The children continued their game and no-one else entered the shower. Finally, Mary Jane and I took deep breaths, left the cover of the woods and walked into the clearing.

“Hello,” I called, aware of the tremor in my voice. “Hello. Is anybody home?”

The children stopped their game and stared at us. One of them, a little girl, I think, with long dark curls, ran inside the nearest cabin. A few moments later a young man stepped out. Probably only three or four years older than us, he had a slight, wispy blonde beard and beautiful silky long hair, still damp, falling over his shoulders. It was the same man we had seen getting out of the shower, and I’m sure we both blushed. He looked a little puzzled and suspicious. And why not? After all, I don’t think anyone else from Jasmine Cove had been out to welcome them.

Mary Jane seemed suddenly struck dumb, whether by the man’s good looks or the memory of his nakedness I don’t know, and it was left to me to speak. “Hello,” I said. “I’m Grace Vincent, and this is my friend Mary Jane Kiernan. We’re from the town, from Jasmine Cove. We’ve come to say hello.”

He stared for a moment, then smiled and looked at Mary Jane. His eyes were bright green, like the sea just beyond the sands. “Mary Jane,” he said. “Well, how strange. This must be a song about you. The Mad Hatters.”

“What?” I said.

“The name of the band. The Mad Hatters. They’re English.”

We listened to the music for a moment, and I thought I caught the words, “Mary Jane is dreaming of an ocean dark and gleaming.” I didn’t recognize the song, or the name of the group, but that didn’t mean much. My parents didn’t let me listen to pop music. Mary Jane seemed to find her voice and said something about that being nice.

“Look, would you like to come in?” the young man said. “Have a cold drink or something. It’s a hot day.”

I looked at Mary Jane. I could tell from her expression that she was as uncertain as I was. Now that we were here, the reality was starting to dawn on us. These were the people the Preacher had called the Spawn of Satan. As far as the townsfolk were concerned, they drugged young girls and had their evil way. But the young man looked harmless and it was a hot day. We were thirsty. Finally, we sort of nodded and followed him inside the cabin.

The shade was pleasant and a gentle cross-breeze blew through the open shutters. Sunlight picked out shining strands of silver and gold in the materials that draped the furnishings. The Newcomers didn’t have much, and most of it was makeshift, but we made ourselves comfortable on cushions on the floor and the young man brought us some lemonade. “Homemade,” he said. “I’m sorry it’s not as cold as you’re probably used to, but we don’t have a refrigerator yet,” He laughed. “As a matter of fact, we’ve only just got the old generator working, or we wouldn’t even have any music.” He nodded towards the drinks. “We keep some chilled in the stream out back.”

By this time the others had wandered in to get a look at us, most of them older than the young man, and several of them lovely women in bright dresses with flowers twined in their long hair.

“I’m Jared,” said the young man, then he introduced the others – Star, Leo, Gandalf, Dylan – names we were unfamiliar with. They sat cross-legged on the floor and smiled. Jared asked us some questions about the town, and we explained how the people there were suspicious of strangers but were decent folks underneath it all. I wasn’t certain that was true, but we weren’t there to say bad things about our kin. We didn’t tell them what lies the Preacher had been spreading.

Jared told us they had come here to get away from the suspicion, corruption and greed they had found in the cities, and they were going to live close to nature and meditate. Some of them were artists and musicians – they had guitars and flutes – but they didn’t want to be famous or anything. They didn’t even want money from anyone. One of them – Rigel, I think his name was – said mysteriously that the world was going to end soon and that this was the best place to be when it happened.

Someone rolled a funny cigarette, lit it and offered it to us, but I said no. I’d never smoked any kind of cigarette, and the thought of marijuana, which I assumed it was, terrified me. To my horror, Mary Jane took it and inhaled. She told me later that it made her feel a bit light-headed, but that was all. I must admit, she didn’t act any differently from normal. At least not that day. We left shortly after, promising to drop by again, and it was only over the next few weeks that I noticed Mary Jane’s behavior and appearance gradually start to change.

It was just little things at first, like a string of beads she bought at a junk shop in Logan. It was nothing much, really, just cheap colored glass, but it was something she would have turned her nose up at a short while ago. Now, it replaced the lovely gold chain and heart pendant that her parents had given her for her fifteenth birthday. Next came the red cheesecloth top with the silver sequins and fancy Indian embroidery, and the first Mad Hatters LP, the one with “her song” on it.

We went often to the island to see Jared and the others, and I soon began to sense something, some deeper connection, between Mary Jane and Jared and, quite frankly, it worried me. They started wandering off together for hours, and sometimes she told me to go back home without her, that she’d catch a later ferry. It wasn’t that Mary Jane was naive or anything, or that I didn’t trust Jared. I also knew that Mary Jane’s father was liberal, and she said he trusted her, but I still worried. The townsfolk were already getting a bit suspicious because of the odd way she was dressing. Even Riley McCorkindale gave her strange looks in chapel. It didn’t take a genius to put two and two together. At the very least, if she wasn’t careful, she could end up grounded for the rest of the summer.

Things came to a head after chapel one Sunday in August. The Preacher had delivered one of his most blistering sermons about what happens to those who turn away from the path of righteousness and embrace evil, complete with a graphic description of the torments of hell. Afterwards, people were standing talking, as they do, all a little nervous, and Mary Jane actually said to the Preacher that she didn’t believe there was a hell, that if God was good, he wouldn’t do such horrible things to people. The Preacher turned scarlet, and it was only the fact that Mary Jane ran off and jumped on the ferry that stopped him taking her by the ear and dragging her back inside the chapel for special instruction whether she liked it or not. But he wouldn’t forget. One way or another, there’d be hell to pay.

Or there would have been, except that was the evening they found Mary Jane’s body on the western beach of Pine Island.

The fisherman who found her said he first thought it was a bundle of clothes on the sand. Then, when he went to investigate, he realized that it was a young girl and sailed back to Jasmine Cove as fast as he could. Soon, the police launch was heading out there, the parking lot was full of police cars and the sheriff had commandeered the ferry. Mr Kiernan was beside himself, blaming himself for not keeping a closer eye on her. But it wasn’t his fault. He wasn’t as mean-spirited as the rest, and how could he know what would happen, anyway? By the time it started to get dark, word was spreading around town that a girl’s body had been found, that it was the body of Mary Jane Kiernan and that she had been strangled.

I can’t really describe the shock I felt when I first heard the news. It was if my whole being went numb. I didn’t believe it at first, of course, but in a way I did. So many people said it had happened that in the end I just had to believe it. Mary Jane was gone.

The next few days passed as in a dream. I remember only that the newspapers were full of stories about some huge gathering out east for folks like the Newcomers, at a place called Woodstock, where it rained cats and dogs and everyone played in the mud. The police came around and questioned everybody, and I was among the first, being Mary Jane’s closest friend. The young detective, Lonnegan was his name, seemed nice enough, and Mother offered him a glass of iced tea, which he accepted. His forehead and upper lip were covered by a thin film of sweat.

“Now then, little lady,” he began.

“My name’s Grace,” I corrected him. “I am not a little lady.”

I’ll give him his due, he took it in his stride. “Very well, Grace,” he said. “Mary Jane was your best friend. Is that right?”

“Yes,” I answered.

“Were you with her when she went to Pine Island last Wednesday?”

“No,” I said.

“Didn’t you usually go there together?”

“Sometimes. Not always.”

“Why did she go there? There’s not exactly a lot to see or do.”

I shrugged. “It’s peaceful. There’s a nice beach…” I couldn’t help myself, but as soon as I thought of the beach – it had been our beach – the tears started to flow. Lonnegan paused while I reached for a tissue, dried my eyes and composed myself. “I’m sorry,” I went on. “It’s just a very beautiful place. And there are all kinds of interesting sea birds.”

“Yes, but that’s not why Mary Jane went there, is it, for the sea birds?”

“Isn’t it? I don’t know.”

“Come on, Grace,” said Lonnegan, “we already know she was seeing a young man called David Garwell.”

David Garwell. So that was Jared’s real name. “Why ask me, then?”

“Do you know if she had arranged to meet him that day? Last Wednesday?”

“I’m sure I don’t know,” I said. “Mary Jane didn’t confide in me about everything.” Maybe he did know that Mary Jane was “seeing” Jared, but I wasn’t going to tell him that she had told me just two days before she died that she was in love with him, and that as soon as she turned sixteen she planned to go and live with him and the others on Pine Island. That wouldn’t have gone down well at all with Detective Lonnegan. Besides, it was our secret.

Lonnegan looked uncomfortable and shuffled in his seat, then he dropped his bombshell. “Maybe she didn’t tell you that she was having a baby, Grace, huh? And we think it was his. Did Mary Jane tell you she was having David Garwell’s baby?”

In the end, it didn’t matter what I thought or said. While the bedraggled crowds were heading home from Woodstock in the east, the police arrested Jared – David Garwell – for the murder of Mary Jane Kiernan. They weren’t giving out a whole lot of details, but rumor had it that they had found Mary Jane’s gold pendant in a drawer in his room.

“He did it, Grace, you know he did,” said Cathy Baker outside the drug store a few days later. “People like that… they’re… ugh!” She pulled a face and made a gesture with her hands as if to sweep spiders off her chest. “They’re not like us.”

“But why would he hurt her?” I asked. “He loved her.”

“Love?” echoed Cathy. “They don’t know the meaning of the word.”

“They call it free love, you know,” Lynne Everett chirped in. “And that means they do it with anyone.”

“And everyone,” added Cathy.

I gave up. What was the point? They weren’t going to listen. I walked down Main Street with my head hung low and the sun beating on the back of my neck. It just didn’t make sense. Mary Jane stopped wearing the pendant when she bought the cheap colored beads. Jared couldn’t have stolen it from her, even if he was capable of such a thing, unless he had broken into her house on the mainland, which seemed very unlikely to me. And she hadn’t been wearing it on the day she died, I was certain of that. It made far more sense to assume that she had given it to him as a token of her love.

The problem was that I hadn’t seen Jared or any of the others since the arrest, so I hadn’t been able to ask them what happened. The police had searched the cabins, of course, and they said they found drugs, so they hauled everybody into the county jail and put the children in care.

I was so lost in thought that I didn’t even notice Detective Lonnegan walking beside me until he spoke my name and asked me if I wanted to go into Slater’s with him for a coffee.

“I’m not allowed to drink coffee,” told him, “but I’ll have a soda, if that’s all right.”

He said that was fine and we went inside and took a table. He waited a while before speaking, then he said, “Look, Grace, I know that this is all a terrible shock to you, that Mary Jane was your best friend. I respect that, but if you know anything else that will help us in court against the man who killed her, I’d really be grateful if you’d tell me.”

“Why do you need me?” I asked. “I thought you knew everything. You’ve already put him in jail.”

“I know,” Lonnegan agreed. “And we’ve probably got enough to convict him, but every little helps. Did she say anything? Did you see anything?”

I told him how Jared couldn’t possibly have stolen the locket unless he went to the mainland.

Lonnegan smiled. “I don’t know how you know about that,” he said. “I suppose I shouldn’t underestimate small town gossip. We know she wasn’t wearing the locket on the day she died, but we don’t know when he stole it.”

“He didn’t steal it! Jared’s not a thief.”

Lonnegan coughed. “I beg to differ, Grace,” he said. “David Garwell has a record that includes larceny and possession of dangerous drugs. He should have been in jail to start with, but he skipped bail.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“That’s up to you. I could show you the evidence if you want to come to headquarters.”

“No, thank you.”

“It’s your choice.”

“But why would he hurt Mary Jane? He told her he loved her.”

Lonnegan’s ears pricked up. “He did?” He toyed with his coffee cup on the saucer. It still had an old lipstick stain around the rim. “We think they had an argument,” he said. “Maybe Mary Jane discovered the theft of the pendant. Or perhaps she told Garwell that she was pregnant, and he wanted nothing further to do with her. Either way, she ran off down to that cozy little beach the two of you liked so much. He followed her, maybe worried that she’d tell her parents, or the police. They fought, and he strangled her.”

“But then he’d know for certain that the police would suspect him!”

“People ain’t always thinking straight when they’re mad, Grace.”

I shook my head. I know what he said made sense, but it didn’t make sense, if you see what I mean. I didn’t know what else to say.

“You’re going to have to accept it sooner or later, Grace,” Lonnegan said. “This Jared, as you call him, murdered your friend, and you’re probably the only one who can help us make sure he pays for his crime.”

“But I can’t help you. Don’t you see? I still don’t believe Jared did it.”

Lonnegan sighed. “They had an argument. She walked off. He admits that much. He won’t tell us what it was about, but like I said, I think she confronted him over the gold pendant or the pregnancy. He followed her.”

I squirmed in my seat, took a long sip of soda and asked, “Who else was on the island that day? Have you checked?”

“What do you mean?”

“You must have asked Mr Kiernan, Mary Jane’s father, who he took over and brought back that day. Was there anyone else who shouldn’t have been there? Have you questioned them all, asked them for alibis?”

“No, but…”

“Don’t you think you ought to? Why can’t it be one of those people?”

“Like who?”

“The Preacher!” I blurted it out.

Lonnegan shook his head, looking puzzled. “The Preacher? Why?”

“Was he there? Was he on the ferry?”

“You know I can’t tell you that.”

“Well, you just ask him,” I said, standing up, “because Mary Jane told me she saw him touching Betsy Goodall somewhere he shouldn’t have been touching her.”

The Preacher was waiting for me after chapel the following Sunday. “Grace, a word in your ear,” he said, leading me by the arm. He was smiling and looked friendly enough, in that well-scrubbed way of his, to fool anyone watching, including my parents, but his grip hurt. He took me back inside the dark chapel and sat me down in a corner, crowding me, his face close to mine. I couldn’t smell bourbon on his breath – not that I would have known what it smelled like – but I could smell peppermint. “I had a visit from the police the other day,” he said, “a most unwelcome visit, and I’ve been trying to figure out ever since who’s been telling tales out of school. I think it was you, Grace. You were her friend. Thick as thieves, the two of you, always unnaturally close.”

“There was nothing unnatural about it,” I said, my heart beating fast. “And yes, we were friends. So what?”

His upper lip curled. “Don’t you give me any of your smart-talk, young lady. You caused me a lot of trouble, you did, a lot of grief.”

“You’ve got nothing to worry about if you’re pure in heart and true in the eyes of the Lord. Isn’t that what you’re always telling us?”

“Don’t take the Lord’s word in vain. I swear, one day…” He shook his head. “Grace, I do believe you’re headed for a life of sin, and you know what the wages of sin are, don’t you?”

“Did you go to Pine Island that day, Preacher? The day Mary Jane died. Were you on the ferry? You were, weren’t you?”

The Preacher looked away. “As a matter of fact, I had some important business there,” he said. “Real estate business.” We all knew about the Preacher and his real estate. He seemed to think the best way of carrying out God’s plan on earth was to take ownership of as much of it as he could afford.

“Why haven’t they arrested you?” I asked.

“Because I haven’t done anything wrong. The police believe me. So should you. There’s no evidence against me. I didn’t strangle that girl.”

“Mary Jane told me about Betsy Goodall, about what she saw.”

“And just what did she see? I’ll tell you what she saw. Nothing. Ask Betsy Goodall. The police did. Your friend Mary Jane was a wayward child,” the Preacher said, his voice a sort of drone. “She had a vile imagination. Evil. She made up stories. The police know that now. They talked to me and they talked to Betsy. I just want to warn you, Grace. Don’t you go around making any more grief for me, or you’ll have more trouble than you can imagine. Do you understand me?”

“Betsy was too scared to say anything, wasn’t she? She was frightened of what you might do to her. What did you do to Mary Jane?”

There. It was out before I realized it. That’s the problem with me sometimes: I speak before thinking. I felt his fingers squeeze into my arm and I cried out. “Do you understand me?” he asked again, his voice a reptilian whisper.

“Yes!” I said. “You’re hurting me! Yes, I understand. Leave me alone.” And I wrenched my arm free and ran out of the chapel over to the ferry dock. I wanted to be by myself, and I wanted to walk where Mary Jane and I had walked. There was really only one place I could go, and I was lucky, I had only ten minutes to wait.

The day had turned hazy, warm and sticky. There’d be a storm after dark, everyone said. Mr Kiernan seemed worried about me and told me if I wasn’t on the next ferry home he’d send someone looking for me. I said that was sweet but I would be all right. Then he said he’d keep an eye on the weather to make sure I didn’t get stuck out there when the storm came.

I walked past the houses and through the woods to the southern tip of the island, where the Newcomers used to live. They had been taken away so fast they hadn’t even had time to grab what few belongings they had. Nobody seemed to know what would happen to their things now, whether anyone would come for them. I stood behind the cover of the trees looking into the clearing, the way Mary Jane and I had done that first time, when we saw Jared come out of the shower. And there it was again, faint, drifting, as if it belonged to the air it traveled on: Mary Jane’s song. “And Mary Jane is dreaming/Of oceans dark and gleaming.”

But who was playing it?

Heart in my mouth, I ducked low and waited. I wanted to know, but I didn’t want to go in there, the way people went into basements and rooms in movies when they knew evil lurked there. So I hid.

As it turned out, I didn’t have long to wait. As soon as the song ended, a furtive head peeped out of the doorway and, gauging that all was clear, the young man stepped out into the open. My jaw dropped. It was Riley McCorkindale.

Some instinct still held me back from announcing my presence, so I stayed where I was. Riley stood, ears pricked, glancing around furtively, then he headed away from the cabins – not back towards his parents’ house, but west, towards the cliffs. Now I was really puzzled.

When I calculated that Riley had got a safe distance ahead of me, I followed through the trees. I couldn’t see him, but there weren’t many paths on the island, and not many places to go if you were heading in that direction. Once in a while I would stop and listen, and I could hear him way ahead, snapping a twig, rustling a bush as he walked. I hoped he didn’t stop and listen the same way and hear me following him.

As I walked, I wondered what on earth Riley had been doing at the Newcomers’ cabin. Playing the record with the Mary Jane song on it, obviously. But why? I knew he had been sweet on her, of course, but he had always been too shy to say hello. Had he made friends with the Newcomers? After all, they were practically neighbours. But Riley went to chapel, and he seemed the type to take notice of the Preacher. His father was a property developer in Logan, so they were a wealthy and respected family in the community, too, which made it even more unlikely that Riley would have anything to do with Jared and the others.

When I reached the cliffs, there was no one in sight. I glanced over the edge, down towards the beach but saw no one there, either. I wasn’t sure whether Riley knew about the hidden path Mary Jane and I used to take. He lived on the island, so perhaps he did. I stood still for a moment and felt the wind whipping my hair in my eyes and tugging at my clothes, bringing the dark clouds from far out at seas, heard the raucous cries of gulls over a shoal of fish just off the coast, smelled the salt air. Then, just as I started to move towards the path, I heard a voice behind me.

“You.”

I turned. Riley stepped out from the edge of the woods.

“Riley,” I said, smiling, trying to sound relaxed, and holding my hair from my eyes. “You startled me. What are you doing here?”

“You were following me.”

“Me? No. Why would I do that?” I felt vulnerable at the edge of the cliff, aware of the golden sand so far below, and as I spoke I tried edging slowly forwards. But Riley stood his ground, and right now he didn’t seem shy at all.

“I don’t know,” he said. “But I saw you. Maybe it’s something to do with Mary Jane?”

“Mary Jane?”

“You know I loved her. Until that… that freak came and took her away from me. Still, he’s got what he deserves. Let him rot in jail.”

“Now, listen Riley. You don’t have to say anything to me.” The last thing I wanted was to be Riley’s confessor with a hundred foot drop behind me. “Let’s just go back, huh? I don’t want to miss my ferry.”

“I used to watch them, you know,” Riley said. “Watch them doing it.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. I swallowed.

“They’d do it anywhere. They didn’t care who was watching.”

“That’s not true, Riley,” I said. “You know that can’t be true. You were spying on them. You said so.”

“Maybe so. But they did it down there.” He pointed. “On the beach.”

“It’s a very secluded spot.” I don’t know what I meant by that, whether I was defending Mary Jane’s honor, deflecting the shock I felt, or what. I just wanted to keep Riley talking until I could get around him and… well, getting back to the ferry was my main thought. But if Riley had other ideas there wasn’t much I could do. He was bigger and stronger than me. Drops of rain dampened my cheek. The sky was becoming darker. “Look, Riley,” I said. “There’s going to be a storm. Move out of the way and let me go back to the ferry dock. I’ll miss my ferry. Mr Kiernan will be looking for me.”

“I didn’t mean to do it, you know,” Riley said.

I had been trying to skirt around him, but I froze. “Didn’t mean to do what?” There I was again, speaking without thinking. I didn’t want to know, but it was too late now.

“Kill her. It just happened. One minute she was…”

Now he’d told me I just had to know the full story. Unless I could make a break into the woods when he wasn’t expecting it, I was done for anyway. I didn’t think I could outrun him, but with the cover of the trees, and the coming dark, perhaps I had a chance of staying ahead of him as far as the ferry dock. “How did it happen?” I asked, still moving slowly.

“They had a fight. I was watching the cabin and they had a fight and Mary Jane ran out crying.”

The baby, I thought. She told him about the baby. But why would that matter? The Newcomers loved children. They would have welcomed Mary Jane and her child. It must have been something else. Perhaps she wanted to get married? That would have been far too conventional for Jared but just like Mary Jane. Whatever it was, they had argued. Couples do argue. “What happened?” I asked.

“I followed her like you followed me. She went down to the beach. Down that path you both thought was your little secret. I went after her. I thought I could comfort her. You know, I thought she’d dumped him and maybe she would turn to me if I was nice to her.”

“How did it go wrong?”

“She did it with him, didn’t she?” Riley said, his voice raising to a shout against the coming storm. “Why wouldn’t she do it with me? Why did she have to laugh?”

“She laughed at you?”

He nodded. “That’s when I grabbed her. The next thing I… I guess I don’t know my own strength. She was like a rag doll.”

There was a slim chance that I could slip into the woods to the left of him and make a run for it. That was when he said, “I’m glad I told you. I’ve been wanting to tell somebody, just to get it off my chest. I feel better now.”

I paused. “But Riley, you have to go to the authorities. You have to tell them there’s an innocent man in jail.”

“No! I ain’t going to jail. I won’t. Only you and me know the truth.”

“Riley, if you hurt me they’ll know,” I said, my voice shaking, judging the distance between his reach and the gap in the trees. “They’ll know it was you. I told Mr Kiernan I came here to talk to you.” It was a lie, of course, but I hoped it was an inspired one.

“Why would you do that?” Riley seemed genuinely puzzled. “You didn’t know anything about it until just now. You didn’t even know I existed. You didn’t want to know. None of you did.”

“I mean it, Riley. If you hurt me, they’ll find out. You can’t get away with murder twice. You’ll go to jail then for sure.”

“They say killing’s easier the second time. I read that in a book.”

“Riley, don’t.”

“It’s all right, Grace,” he said, leaning back against the tree. “I ain’t going to hurt you. Don’t think I don’t regret what I did. Don’t think I enjoyed it. I’m just not going to jail for it. Go. Catch your ferry. See if I care.”

“B-but…”

“Who’d believe you? The police have got the man they want. There sure as hell’s no evidence against me. My daddy doesn’t know where I was, but he already told them I was home all day. Last thing he wants to know is that his son killed some girl. That would surely upset the applecart. Nobody saw me. The Preacher’s with us, too. He was at the house talking real estate with daddy. I don’t know if he knows I did it or not, but he don’t care. He was the one told me about Mary Jane and that freak, what they were doing and how it was a sin. That’s why I went to spy on them. He told me he knew she was really my girl, but she’d been seduced by the devil. He told me what that long-haired pervert was doing to her and asked me what I was going to do about it. The Preacher won’t be saying nothing to no police. So go on. Go.”

“But why did you tell me?”

Riley paused. “Like I said, I knew I’d feel better if I told someone. I’m truly sorry for what I did, but going to jail ain’t going to bring her back.”

“But what about Jared? He’s innocent?”

“He’s the Spawn of Satan. Now go ahead, Grace. Catch the ferry before the storm comes. It’s going to be a bad one.”

“You won’t…?”

He shook his head. “Nope. Don’t matter what you say. Go ahead. See if I’m not right.”

And I did. I caught the ferry. Mr Kiernan smiled and said I was lucky I just made it. The storm broke that night, flooded a few roads, broke a few windows. The next day I took the bus into the city to see Detective Lonnegan and told him about what Riley had said to me on the beach. He laughed, said the boy was having me on, giving me a scare. I told him it was true, that Riley was in love with Mary Jane and that he tried to… I couldn’t get the words out in front of him, but even so he was shaking his head before I’d finished.

So Riley McCorkindale turned out to be right. The police didn’t believe me. I didn’t see any point running all over town telling Mr Kiernan, father, the Preacher or anyone else, so that was the end of it. Riley McCorkindale strangled Mary Jane Kiernan and got away with it. Jared – David Garwood – went to jail for a crime he didn’t commit. He didn’t stay there long, though. Word made it back to town about a year or two later that he got stabbed in a prison brawl, and even then everyone said he had it coming, that it was divine justice.

None of the Newcomers ever returned to Jasmine Cove. The cabins fell into disrepair again, and their property reverted to the township in one of those roundabout ways that these things often happen in small communities like ours. I thought of Mary Jane often over the years, remembered her smile, her childlike enthusiasms. The Mad Hatters became famous and once in a while I heard “her” song on the radio. It always made me cry.

After I had finished college and started teaching high school in Logan, the property boom began. The downtown areas of many major cities became uninhabitable, people moved out to the suburbs and the rich wanted country, or island, retreats. One day I heard that McCorkindale Developments had knocked down the cabins on Pine Island and cleared the land for a strip of low-rise, ocean-front luxury condominiums.

I suppose it’s what you might call ironic, depending on the way you look at it, but by that time the Preacher and Riley’s father had managed to buy up most of the island for themselves.