Free Cape Cod by William Martin Page B

overboard in one of her night moods. The others agreed, as her driftings about the deck were well known.
I then asked Ezra Bigelow, who has been most nervous and jittery-seeming since she died, what he did that night. He summoned an indignified air and asked why such question was put to him.
I answered that he had been seen beside her many times since we anchored, and that when her husband went on his latest voyage, he stayed behind and was seen in the night to take her hand.
Elder Brewster, a just and wise-seeming man, asked if there were truth in my words. Ezra answered that he loved Dorothy Bradford like a sister, which seemed enough for Brewster, though not for me.
I said that the night of her death, I did study the coast in the chartkeeper’s cabin. The deck being deserted, the sound of voices drew my attention. Sharp voices they were, ’twixt Ezra and Dorothy, as though they had come to some terrible pass.
This brought torment to Bigelow’s face, but angrily he told me I eavesdropped, and for that he had no respect. I answered that I gave no care for his respect and what happened on my ship was my business, broad daylight or no.
William Brewster demanded that, were I charging one of their firmest members with the death of Dorothy Bradford, I give evidence.
Then came William Bradford himself, saying he would brook no suspicion of Ezra, a godly man and good friend. With shaking voice, he said the wilderness so terrified his wife that he believed she had taken her own life.
All gasped at this. Ezra told Bradford that grief colored his talk. He called Dorothy a woman of good faith and admitted that he had spent many hours with her that night, that they had talked of the frightening wilderness and God’s love, but never did she mention the taking of her own life.
And Brewster ended the meeting. He thanked me for my scrupulosity and assured me that the elders were more scrupulous than I. He chided Bradford for suspecting something so sinful of his wife. And he said that Ezra Bigelow was exonerated by his honesty.
If the elders want him, let them have him After a month in the New World, they know full well that the dangers they face be far more pressing than a single accident, if accident it were. Every man, innocent or not, will be needed.
As for me, I’ve done my honor in this.

Murder on the Mayflower
    The next morning, Geoff rose early. He started the coffee, then went onto the deck that faced the rising sun. He loved the early morning on Tom’s Hill, the light that slanted in over the hillside, the gentle warmth before the heat of the day, the nearby quiet that let him hear the faroff sounds.
    Down on the Little Pamet Marsh, a blue heron was poking its bill into the grass. Geoff watched its slow and careful movement and marveled that such a delicate creature could be related to the gulls squawking above Pamet Harbor. But then, he had often marveled that Janice could be related to Dickerson Bigelow.
    Then the phone rang, frightening the bird into the air.
    Geoff grabbed the phone, brought it outside, and picked up the receiver before the second ring.
    “Geoff, did you know there was a Tom Hilyard painting called Murder on the Mayflower?”
    “George?”
    “The one and only.”
    “The only one who calls before seven o’clock in the morning.”
    “I’m so lagged I can’t sleep. From Tinseltown to Provincetown, seven hours on commercial airlines, a hundred years on the time machine.”
    Janice came stumbling to the screen door. People did not normally call at this hour. Geoff put his hand over the receiver and whispered, “George.” That explained it. George was not normal people.
    She went into the kitchen and poured a cup of coffee. It had begun. The gathering of the boys. There were three of them. Harvard had thrown them together as freshmen in 1969, and they had been friends ever since. Times changed, along with careers, addresses, wives and lovers, worldviews, values, and dreams, but the boys still