Abigail Browining: Murder Most Merry

Mrs. Kay fed him at a dining room table of polished wood with a single place setting. “I’ve already eaten.” she explained. “I like my supper early. And Father. Mr. Kay. never takes anything before he goes to work. He’ll just heat his up in the microwave when he gets home.” The meal was baked finnan haddie. Creamed smoked haddock was a favorite Sorley had not seen for a long time. She served it with a half bottle of Alsatian Gewurtztraminer. There was Stilton cheese and a fresh pear for dessert. “Father hopes you’ll join him later in the study for an after-dinner drink,” said Mrs. Kay.

The study was a book-lined room decorated once again with relics and artifacts of the sea. The light came from a small lamp on the desk by the door and the fire burning in the grate. A painting of a brigantine under sail in a gray sea hung above the mantel. Mr. Kay, a tall, thin man with a long, sallow, cleanshaven face, heavy white eyebrows, and patches of white hair around his ears, rose from one of two wing-backed chairs facing the fire. As he shook his guest’s hand he examined him and seemed pleased with what he saw. “Welcome, Mr. Sorley.” Here was a voice that might once have boomed in the teeth of a gale. “Come sit by the fire.”

Before sitting, Sorley paused to admire a grouping of three small statues on the mantel. They were realistic representations of pirates, each with a tarred pigtail and a brace of pistols, all three as ugly as sin and none more than six inches tall. A peglegged pirate. Another with a hook for a hand. The third wore a black eye patch. Seeing his interest. Mr. Kay took peg leg down and displayed it in his palm. “Nicely done, are they not? I’m something of a collector in the buccaneer line. Most people’s family trees are hung about with horse thieves. Pirates swing from mine.” He set the statue back on the mantel. “And I’m not ashamed of it. With all this what-do-you-call-it going round, this historical revisionism, who knows what’s next? Take Christopher Columbus, eh? He started out a saint. Today he’s worse than a pirate. Some call him a devil. And Geronimo has gone from devil incarnate to the noble leader of his people. But here, Mr. Sorley. Forgive my running on. Sit down and join me in a hot grog.”

Sorley’s host poured several fingers of a thick dark rum from a heavy green bottle by his foot, added water from the electric teakettle steaming on the hearth, urging as he passed him the glass, “Wrap yourself around that.”

The drink was strong. It warmed Sorley’s body like the sun on a cold spring day. “Thank you.” he said. “And thanks for the excellent meal.”

“Oh, we keep a good table, Mother and I. We live well. Not from the bed-and-breakfast business, I can tell you that. After all, we only open one night a year and accept only a single guest.”

When Sorley expressed his surprise, Mr. Kay explained, “Call it a tradition. I mean, we certainly don’t need the money. I deal in gold coins—you know, doubloons, moidore—obtained when the price was right. A steal, you might say. So, yes, we live well.” He looked at his guest. “And what do you do for a living, Mr. Sorley?”

Sorley wasn’t listening. For a moment he thought he’d noticed something small move behind Mr. Kay, back there in the corner where two eight-foot-long bamboo poles were leaning, and was watching to catch sight of it again. When Mr. Kay repeated his question Sorley told him what he did and briefly related his adventures connected with the aborted article.

Mr. Kay laughed like thunder, slapped his knees, and said, “Then we are indeed well met. If you like, I’ll tell you the whole story about the Christmas Triangle. What an evening we have ahead of us, Mr. Sorley. Outside a storm howls and butts against the windows. And here we sit snug by the fire with hot drinks in our fists, a willing taleteller and...”

“... an eager listener,” said Sorley, congratulating himself once again on how well things had worked out. He might get his article yet.

Mr. Kay toasted his guest silently, thought for a moment, and then began. “Now years ago, when piracy was in flower, a gangly young Canadian boy named Scattergood Crandal who had run off to join the pirate trade in the Caribbean finally earned his master-pirate papers and set out on a life’s journey in buccaneering. But no pantywaist, warm-water pirating for him, no rummy palm-tree days under blue skies. Young Crandal dreamed of home, of cool gray summers plundering the shipping lanes of the Great Lakes, of frosty winter raiding parties skating up frozen rivers with mufflers around their necks and cutlasses in their teeth, surprising sleeping townspeople under their eiderdowns.

“So with his wife’s dowry Crandal bought a ship, the Olson Nickelhouse , and sailed north with his bride, arriving in the Thousand Islands just as winter was closing the St. Lawrence. The captain and his wife and crew spent a desperate four months caught in the ice. Crandal gave the men daily skating lessons. But they were slow learners and there were to be no raiding parties that winter. By the end of February, with supplies running low, the men ate the captain’s parrot. And once having eaten talkative flesh, it was a small step to utter cannibalism. One snowy day Crandal came upon them dividing up the carcasses of three ice fishermen. He warned them, ‘Don’t do it, you fellows. Eating human flesh’ll stunt your growth and curl your toes!’ But it was too late. Those men were already slaves to that vile dish whose name no menu dares speak.”

As Mr. Kay elaborated on the hardships of that first year he took his guest’s glass, busied himself with the rum and hot water, and made them both fresh drinks. For his part, Sorley was distracted by bits of movement on the edges of his vision. But when he turned to look, there was never anything there. He decided it was only the jitters brought on by fatigue from his long drive in bad weather. That and the play of light from the fire.

“Now Crandal knew terror was half the pirate game,” continued Mr. Kay. “So the loss of the parrot hit him hard. You see, Mr. Sorley, this Canadian lad had never mastered the strong language expected from pirate captains and counted on the parrot to hold up that end of things. The blue jay he later trained to stride his shoulder hadn’t quite the same effect and was incredibly messy. Still, pirates know to go with the best they have. So he had these flyers printed up announcing that Captain Crandal, his wife (for Mrs. Crandal was no slouch with the cutlass on boarding parties), and his cannibal crew, pirates late of the Caribbean, were now operating locally, vowing Death and Destruction to all offering resistance. At the bottom he included a drawing of his flag, a skeleton with a cutlass in one bony hand and in the other a frying pan to underscore the cannibal reference.

“Well, the flyer and flag made Crandal the hit of the season when things started up again on the Lakes that spring. In fact, the frying pan and Crandal’s pale, beanpole appearance and his outfit of pirate black earned him the nickname Death-Warmed-Over. And as Death-Warmed-Over the Pirate he so terrorized the shipping lanes that soon the cold booty was just rolling in, cargoes of mittens and headcheese, sensible swag of potatoes and shoes, and vast plunder in the hardware line, anvils, door hinges, and barrels of three-penny nails which Crandal sold for gold in the colorful and clamorous thieves’ bazaars of Rochester and Detroit.”

“How about Niagara Falls?” asked Sorley, to show he knew how to play along with a tall tale. He was amused to detect a slur in his voice from the rum.

“What indeed?” smiled Mr. Kay, happy with the question. He rose and lifted the painting down from its nail above the mantel and rested it across Sorley’s knees. “See those iron rings along the water line? We fitted long poles through them, hoisted the Olson Nickelhouse out of the water, and made heavy portage of her around the falls.”