Dark Harbor

“It’ll be a few minutes while the necessary checks and setup are done.”

“Let’s lock up this room, then; the trooper will be here soon, and I doubt if you want him looking in here.” He locked the room, and they sat down to wait.

“This is a beautiful house, Stone,” Holly said. “You’re lucky to have it.”

“I haven’t gotten used to the idea yet,” Stone replied. “It’s all very strange. Most of my mother’s and father’s families haven’t spoken to them since long before I was born, and yet I’ve inherited two houses from my mother’s side of the family. The Turtle Bay town house came from my great aunt, who took an interest in me. She also gave my father his first large commission: the cabinet work and much of the furniture for the house. And now there’s this place. The strange thing is, if I’d built it myself it would be exactly as it is. The whole thing is spooky.”

The doorbell rang, and Mabel answered it. A moment later, she showed a uniformed sergeant of the Maine State Police into the study. Stone introduced himself and the others.

“What can I do for you, Mr. Barrington?”

“I am Richard Stone’s first cousin, his attorney, and the executor of his will. I’d like to know as much as possible about the circumstances of his death.”

“The local constable called my office in Belfast two days ago and said that the caretaker here had found the owner and his wife and daughter dead in the house, apparently shot. I and a crime-scene investigator choppered over here, and when we got to the house we found the wife and daughter in the same bed upstairs with two bullets in each of their heads. We found Mr. Stone’s body at the desk with a wound to the head and a small pistol in his hand.

“We fingerprinted the corpses and had them removed to the Belfast morgue for postmortem examination. We dusted the study and the upstairs bedroom and found only the fingerprints of the occupants and the housekeeper. There were no fingerprints of any other person in the house. The place was locked, and there was no sign of an intruder.

“In the absence of any evidence to the contrary, I judged the circumstances to be murder-suicide, possibly while the mind of the perpetrator was disturbed. I removed the weapon to our offices for ballistic comparison with the bullets removed from the bodies.”

“I notice that the bullet that killed Mr. Stone passed through his head and lodged in the desk.”

“Yes, we were able to extricate that. It will be of less use than the ones removed from the two women, but I think that my preliminary conclusion will be confirmed: that the weapon in Mr. Stone’s hand was both the murder and suicide weapon.”

“Did you investigate Mr. Stone’s state of mind?”

“I interviewed the caretaker and his wife, and they maintained that he seemed normal at dinner the night before.”

“Did you determine the time of death?”

“The medical examiner has put it somewhere between midnight and four a.m. By the way, an inquest will be held tomorrow at eleven a.m. in the Belfast courthouse. You’re welcome to attend, if you like.”

“Thank you. What will be your recommendation at the inquest?”

“Death by murder and suicide.”

“I should tell you that our investigations”-Stone indicated the other people in the room-“have determined that Richard Stone was of sound mind and cheerful disposition and that he was excited and happy about his appointment to a new, high position by his employers.”

“And you consider yourselves investigators?” the sergeant asked.

“A reasonable question. I am a retired officer of the New York Police Department, where I spent eleven years as a detective, specializing in homicides. Lieutenant Bacchetti, here, commands the detective squad at the Nineteenth Precinct of the NYPD, and Ms. Barker is a retired military police officer and chief of police in the state of Florida.” He didn’t mention Lance.

“Well, that’s all very impressive,” the sergeant said. “I’m interested to know what you’ve learned about Mr. Stone’s state of mind, but do you have any other evidence that this was anything but a murder-suicide?”

“Take a look at this,” Stone said, beckoning the trooper to the desk. He took a pencil from a coffee mug on the desk and placed it in the hole left by the bullet. “Note that the angle of the bullet’s trajectory was only about twenty degrees off the vertical. I think that might indicate someone standing over Mr. Stone and firing a bullet into his head. Also, in your scenario, he would have fired with his left hand, and he was right-handed.”

“My crime-scene investigator, an experienced man, concluded that Mr. Stone laid his head on the desk before firing the fatal shot. That would account for the angle. I didn’t know he was right-handed, but there was nothing to prevent him using his left hand.”

“Our consensus, based on Mr. Cabot’s investigation into Mr. Stone’s state of mind in the days and weeks before his death, is that an unknown person shot him in the head with a silenced pistol, then went upstairs and shot his wife and daughter.”

“You’re entitled to your theory, Mr. Barrington, but my investigation has not found any reason to believe that any person on this island had a motive to kill this family. I should point out that they resided in London for many years and they came into contact with the locals only for a few weeks a year and that no one knows of any local who had any animosity toward the family. Indeed, they were very popular summer residents. Also, my investigation revealed that no summer residents had yet arrived on the island at the time of the deaths. Mr. Stone’s brother and his family arrived only yesterday-we have the ferry operator’s testimony for that-and only one aircraft was parked at the airstrip, that belonging to a local. The people who live nearest the strip tell us that no aircraft landed or took off on the day or the day before the deaths. It’s a small island; people pay attention to who comes and goes.”

“Did you take any photographs of the crime scene?” Stone asked.

“Yes, but I didn’t bring them with me. If you come to the inquest, I’d be glad to show them to you, and the gun, as well.”

“Thank you, Sergeant. I appreciate your taking the time to come to the island to brief us. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

The trooper handed Stone an envelope. “Here’s the original of the death certificate,” he said. “You’ll need it to file the will for probate.”

They shook hands, and the trooper left.

Stone turned to the group with a questioning look.

“The sergeant has some good points,” Dino said. “He did his job.”

“He didn’t spend much time on state of mind,” Stone said.

“I wouldn’t have spent much more time on that, in the circumstances,” Dino said.

Holly spoke up. “You didn’t mention to the trooper that Caleb Stone had been disinherited by Dick. That’s motive.”

“Not really. It would be motive if Caleb had known that he was about to be disinherited, but there is no indication of that. Caleb was very surprised to learn that Dick had made a new will. I’d be surprised to learn that they’d even communicated in recent months.”

“I can check Caleb’s home and office phone records, as well as Dick’s,” Lance said.

“Yes,” Stone said, “I would like you to do that. Maybe you’d better get started.”

Chapter 6

LANCE WENT TO WORK on Dick Stone’s Agency computer while Stone called his office.

“The Barrington Practice,” Joan said.

“Hi, it’s me. What’s up?”

“I trust you were met at the airport?”

“Yes, and we’re comfortably ensconced in the house. There are three phone lines, one for the fax.” He gave her all of them.

“How long will you be there?”

“I’m not sure; there’s a lot to do. There’s the inquest tomorrow morning, and I have to file the will for probate.”