Dark of the moon - Dr. Gideon Fell 22 Read Online Free PDF

he boomed. "I think I have heard . . . Isn't there a subsequent story rather like that one, about two hundred years later?"
    "If you mean Commodore Luke Maynard in 1867, we have almost as little evidence about him."
    "Almost as little evidence? Archons of Athens! Surely there were newspapers?"
    "Oh, yes. But—"
    "But what?"
    "Commodore Luke Maynard, a grim sort of swashbuckler and as fire-eating a Confederate as ever lived, commanded one of the Southern raiders which wreaked such havoc on Union commerce. Everybody has heard of C.S.S. Florida and C.S.S. Alabama. Luke Maynard commanded C.S.S. Palmetto, like the others built in England and fitted with guns at a port far from Britain. She was finally accounted for by U.S.S. Pontiac, of much heavier tonnage and gun-power; the two warships sank each other in a running fight off Jamaica in 1864. Luke Maynard stayed with his ship when it went down, but was picked up by a boat-load of Confederate sympathizers from Port Royal.
    "If he didn't die under the guns of the enemy, he might well have died in a duel after the war. Down came the stars and bars from the flagstaff outside Maynard Hall. The grip of reconstruction squeezed Charleston hard; Union troops occupied the then-Citadel on Marion Square; there were damnyankees at every corner, and Commodore Maynard had no even temper. Yet he didn't die by a bullet either.
    "One night in April of '67 he was walking west along the beach below and at one side of the Hall. They found his body at low tide next morning. Though he lay above the highest reach of the tide, the sand was damp for thirty feet around him in every direction. Right side of the head battered in, no footprints except his own, no weapon there either.
    "I said the newspapers weren't very helpful. They're still preserved in the basement at Charleston City College Library. But you can understand why they're not very helpful. The Confederacy had endured four years of horrors, including Sherman's gentle march from Atlanta to the sea, and afterwards into the Carolinas too; the Confederacy had supped full. Newspaper accounts of Commodore Maynard's death are so discreet it's hard to tell what happened. The one point they do mention is hardly informative. On the sand at a short distance from the body, twelve or fifteen inches from his head and ten inches above it, lay a little tangle of seaweed."
    "Seaweed!" Dr. Fell suddenly boomed. "O Lord! O Bacchus! O my ancient hat! Did you say seaweed?"
    "Yes. It's often found on beaches, you know."
    "Oh, ah; of course. I was wool - gathering again." Dr. Fell blinked at the countryside flowing by. "Incidentally, where are we now?"
    "Past Columbia and the hundred-mile mark. In another hour and a bit . . ."
    They said little more for the rest of the journey. With cross-eyed concentration Dr. Fell studied, hands folded on his stick. Alan smoked cigarette after cigarette, an image of Camilla in his mind. He saw the chestnut-colored hair, the glow of her complexion, the dark-blue eyes that would never quite meet his own.
    At a quarter past noon they were negotiating the gritty industrial area north of Charleston's center. Alan made a right-hand turn through thickening traffic.
    "This is King Street," he said, "the very long thoroughfare you mentioned. Now ten minutes or so of fast-changing traffic lights. When the light turns green, you must be almost the next car in line or it's red again before you get there."
    "Must we search all over town for the hotel?"
    "No. You'll see it presently on the right, at the corner of Calhoun Street opposite Marion Square. Watch for a large red-brick building with the entrance to the parking space beside it in this direction.
    "As I tried to indicate long ago," he said ten minutes later, "Henry Maynard should be able to tell us more family history than there is in the record." Disquiet smote again. "But nothing very bad can be going on now, or we should have heard of it! There can't be anything wrong, can there? This