The Old Salt
Wesley Norman was pleasantly surprised to hear from his boyhood friend, Arlen Frazier, a successful Manhattan attorney, who, when he found himself on the verge of a nervous breakdown, gave up his busy law practice and moved into a restored 1840 house in Provincetown, Massachusetts, for some much-needed rest. Arlen had phoned his old college friend and was most insistent that Wesley and his wife visit him in New England.
"I feel bad for him," Wesley told his wife, Helena, as the couple drove along Route 6 toward Arlen's seaside home. "First, his wife left him. Then, after the ordeal of the divorce, he could no longer handle the stress of his profession, so he sold his law practice and ran off to live in some out-of-the-way New England town."
"Provincetown is a beautiful place," Helena told her husband. "When I lived in Salem, my friends and I often sailed down there to shop or dine."
Wesley looked over at his wife and laughed.
"I sometimes forget I married a witch, born and raised in Salem. I always think of you as being from Boston."
Shortly after noon, the Normans pulled into the driveway of Arlen's oceanfront home. Having heard their car approach, their host met them on the front steps.
"I'm so glad you could come," he said, embracing them both in a bear-like hug.
Wesley and Helena exchanged a meaningful glance, conveying an unspoken fear: something was wrong! Arlen looked as though he had aged ten years in the past six months. It wasn't until after he had several before-, during- and after-dinner drinks that he confided in his guests the real reason for inviting them for a visit.
"Have you ever heard of the legend of the Old Salt?" he asked Helena.
"When I was a child, my parents would jokingly warn me that if I didn't behave, the Old Salt would get me."
"Well, in Salem the people may take the legend lightly, but here in Provincetown they don't."
"What exactly is the legend?" Wesley asked. "I'm originally from New Jersey, remember, and I don't know anything about Massachusetts folklore."
"The Old Salt is believed to be a fisherman who disappeared sometime back in the early 1800s," Arlen explained. "No one knows who he was or what actually became of him, but over the past two centuries, several people have seen his ghost ...." The former New York lawyer stopped and took a long swallow of his drink before continuing, "And they all died shortly thereafter."
"Oh, come on!" Wesley exclaimed, unable to keep the amused skepticism out of his voice. "What is this, some juvenile ghost story kids tell around the campfire?"
Neither Helena nor Arlen shared Wesley's amusement.
"Ghosts foretelling imminent death are nothing but superstition," he continued, "much like the stories about black cats and broken mirrors."
"It's not superstition," Arlen argued quietly. "I saw him myself."
"When?" Helena asked.
"Four days ago. That's why I asked you to come here. I need your help."
Helena looked to her husband for understanding and support. It was common knowledge in their circle of friends that she was psychic and that in the past she had helped the police locate missing persons and crack seemingly unsolvable murder and missing person cases. She knew talk of her clairvoyant abilities made her husband feel uneasy. This was to be expected since he was a mathematics professor who put his faith in formulas and algorithms, not extrasensory visions and precognition.
"Just how do you think I can help you?" Helena asked their host.
"I have to find out who the Old Salt is and what happened to him," Arlen replied.
"I don't know if I can be of much help," the psychic explained. "In order to discover his identity, I would need to see the fisherman's photograph, touch something that belonged to him or go to a place where he spent a good deal of time. But you have no idea who he was or where he came from."
"I imagine he was from right here in Provincetown or one of the other towns on Cape Cod. We can look through old newspapers and local history books to see if there's mention of a missing fisherman," Arlen suggested.
"All right, I'll help, but don't get your hopes up," Helena warned. "It will be like searching for the proverbial needle in a haystack."
"I realize that, but I have to try. I don't want to wind up being the Old Salt's next victim."
* * *
Later that night, when Arlen showed the couple to his guest room, Helena was immediately drawn to a portrait over the fireplace mantel. The woman in the painting was stunningly beautiful. Her golden hair was swept up and piled atop her head in a mass of curls, and her sapphire eyes gazed proudly out of her finely sculpted face.
"What an enchanting woman! Who is she?" Helena asked her host.
"That's Lucinda Seabrook. She lived in Provincetown in the nineteenth century. When she was still a teenager, Lucinda married a wealthy sea captain, and after he died, she became a philanthropist and donated large sums of money to local charities. There are plaques honoring her generous contributions in many of our local public buildings."
"I've heard of her. The Seabrook Trust offers scholarships for female students. However, I had no idea she was so beautiful."
Later that night, Helena's dreams were haunted by images of the beautiful blond woman whose portrait hung in Arlen's guest room. They were normal dreams—nothing at all like the psychic visions she had experienced in the past—just the run-of-the-mill sleeping reveries billions of people have every night. Yet those dreams disturbed her more than her telepathic episodes ever had.
The following day, Helena took an early morning walk along the beach. She did not wait for Wesley to wake up since she wanted to be alone. Her mind was filled with questions, not about the Old Salt but about the mysterious and beautiful Lucinda Seabrook. For reasons she could not fathom, Helena was sure that the nineteenth-century philanthropist was somehow a key player in the legend.
When she got back to the house, her husband was waiting for her.
"Where did you go?" he asked.
"Just out for a walk. I love the ocean in the morning."
"Well, hurry up. Arlen's housekeeper has made a wonderful breakfast for us."
Over her second cup of coffee, Helena informed her host, "I'm going into town to see what I can learn about the Old Salt."
"I'll go with you," Arlen volunteered.
"I think we can cover more ground if you stay here and continue your Internet research."
Arlen saw the logic in her argument. Helena's reason for not wanting him to go along, however, was that she planned on investigating Lucinda Seabrook, not the missing fisherman.
After breakfast, she drove to the Provincetown Museum where Mr. Shockley, the elderly gentleman who worked there part-time, welcomed her. The old man proved to be quite helpful, showing her where several books on prominent past Provincetown residents were located.
"There are also some files in the back room if you need ...."
Mr. Shockley stopped and took a closer look at his visitor.
"I thought you looked familiar," he exclaimed. "Now I remember. I saw your photo in The Boston Globe about eight months ago. You helped the police locate that lost child in Plymouth."
"That's right. You have a good memory. It must come in handy since you're a historian."
"I'm not an actual historian. I used to teach history at the high school. Now that I'm retired, I've got a lot of free time on my hands. If you'll excuse me, I'll go get those files for you."
The information available at the historic society confirmed Helena's own recollections and what Arlen had told him about Lucinda. In 1817, the beautiful young woman married Captain Tristan Seabrook, one of the wealthiest men in Massachusetts. Unfortunately, two years after they were wed, Captain Seabrook died of a disease he had contracted on a voyage to Africa. After the captain's death, his wife inherited his vast fortune and remained in Provincetown where she dedicated her life to helping others.
Helena was disappointed. She had hoped to find a link between Lucinda and the Old Salt, but she failed to do so. Captain Seabrook could not have been the mysterious fisherman since he died of natural causes, and his body was buried in the Winthrop Street Cemetery.
Helena thanked Mr. Shockley for his help and returned to her friend's house. Arlen and Wesley were still in the library, huddled over the computer, so she went upstairs to the guest room and stared at the face in the portrait.
"Who were you, Lucinda?" she asked, feeling there was some secret that the beautiful blonde had kept hidden from the town.
Still staring at the painting, the Salem-born psychic lay on the bed and let her body relax. Soon she drifted off into a trance. The visions she saw were like scenes from a movie, following a logical sequence of events. They were not the kaleidoscopic fragments she had seen in her sleep the previous night. Helena saw the squalor of a city slum. From the accents of the passersby, she could deduce that she was in London, and from the style of the clothing, she knew she had journeyed into the past.
A somewhat plain young girl, in her early to mid-teens, was walking down the crowded, filthy street beside her.
"I ain't gonna wind up in no poor 'ouse or living on the streets like me Mum!" she cried. "You can be sure of that! I 'ear tell wealthy American seamen are lookin' for wives sight unseen. I intend to marry me one and move to the States where I can live in luxury. You being so much prettier than me, I'll bet you could land the wealthiest one of all!"
Downstairs, the library door opened and Wesley called out, "Honey, where are you?"
Helena was immediately taken from nineteenth-century London and returned to twenty-first-century Massachusetts.
"Did you have any luck finding the identity of the fisherman?" her husband asked as he walked into the guest room.
"No. What about you?"
"We struck out, too."
When Helena sat down to dinner with Wesley and Arlen later that evening, she told them the theory she had formed based on her recent vision.
"Lucinda's marriage to Tristan Seabrook was an arranged one. She married him to escape the miserable life she had in England. Perhaps she came to Massachusetts, after marrying a much older man for money, and then found a lover. He could be the fisherman."
"That makes sense," Wesley said. "Sea captains were usually gone for months at a time. That would be quite convenient for an adulterous wife."
"When did Lucinda marry Captain Seabrook?" Arlen asked.
"In 1817."
"Your theory doesn't fit the timeframe then. The first reported sighting of the Old Salt was in 1815, two years before the Seabrooks were married."
"The dates could be wrong," Helena argued, not willing to let go of her hypothesis. "If I could just hold something that belonged to Lucinda, I might be able to get a more detailed vision."
"I think that can be arranged," Arlen announced with a smile. "The real estate agent who sold me this house was the one who told me about the portrait. She also boasted to me that she owned a sapphire pendant that once belonged to Lucinda. Perhaps I can talk her into letting me borrow it for a day or two."
* * *
When Arlen Frazier asked Gwendolyn Sills if he could borrow her necklace, the real estate agent agreed. She, in turn, asked him if she could sit in and observe Helena's psychic reading.
"I've always been fascinated by Lucinda Seabrook," Gwendolyn explained excitedly. "You know, I actually grew up in Captain Seabrook's house, but then my parents sold it once my brother and I went out on our own. The place was far too big for just two people."
"I don't believe Helena will object to your being present. Why don't you come over to dinner tonight and bring the pendant with you?"
The meal was a simple one, a tossed salad followed by meatballs and spaghetti, because Arlen and his guests were eager to see what Helena could learn from Lucinda's necklace.
"Let's all go into the living room, shall we?" the host proposed as the housekeeper began clearing away the dinner dishes.
When the four of them were all comfortably seated in the eighteenth-century-style living room, Gwendolyn reached into her purse, took out a jeweler's box containing Lucinda's sapphire pendant and handed it directly to Helena. The psychic closed her eyes and held the necklace in both hands, slowly moving her fingertips over the large sapphire and the tiny diamonds that surrounded it. Helena soon found herself traveling back to the filthy, crime-ridden streets of London.
"Lucinda is very poor," the psychic announced, conveying her observations to the others. "She lives in the worst part of London where there is nothing but hunger, filth, crime and disease. Her future is grim. A friend, a girl close to her own age, offers her hope. There are several lonely men who earn their living from the sea who have advertised for wives to join them in Massachusetts."
"Mail-order brides from England?" Wesley whispered to his friend. "I never heard of such a thing. Weren't there any women in America?"
"Probably none who would want the hardship of being a sailor's wife," Arlen replied.
Helena slipped deeper into her trance. Soon she was no longer an observer; she was not just seeing the world through Lucinda Seabrook's eyes, she was also feeling the dead woman's emotions.
"It was, I thought, my one chance to escape the poverty I was born into," Helena continued with a thick British accent. "Rather than be doomed to walk the streets of London and sell my favors for a few pence, I would sail to America and find happiness there."
Helena laughed bitterly.
"I was foolish enough to believe that love and romance waited for me across the Atlantic. I was wrong. Life in America—for me, anyway—wasn't much better than it was in England. I hated everything about my new life: the hard, back-breaking labor, the loneliness and, most of all, I hated the man I married. He was ugly and clumsy, and he always smelled of sweat and dead fish."
Wesley, Arlen and Gwendolyn exchanged puzzled looks.
"Why would Lucinda's husband smell like fish?" the real estate agent whispered to the two men. "Tristan Seabrook captained a merchant ship. He was not a fisherman."
"Every day I woke up cursing my life and wishing I were back in London. Finally, I couldn't take it anymore."
Helena broke down in heartrending sobs. Shaking, she dropped the necklace and buried her face in her hands.
"It's okay, darling," Wesley said in an attempt to comfort her. "I think you've had enough for one day. I'm going to take you upstairs, and you can rest awhile."
* * *
"Your wife's visions can't be correct," Gwendolyn declared when Wesley returned to the living room several minutes later. "Captain Seabrook was one of the wealthiest men in Massachusetts. His wife wouldn't have had to work; he had a house full of servants."
"Maybe the necklace didn't belong to Lucinda, after all," Arlen suggested. "What Helena may be seeing is someone else's life."
"No," Wesley argued. "Helena saw almost the same vision when she concentrated on the portrait upstairs."
"And the portrait is definitely that of Lucinda Seabrook," the realtor declared.
"Then there must be some logical explanation as to why my wife's visions differ from the accepted facts."
"Perhaps there is more to Lucinda Seabrook's life than what is written in the Provincetown history books," Arlen conjectured.
"I have an idea," Wesley said. "A cousin of mine has a part-time business researching people's family trees. She's got access to all sorts of information: immigration records, marriage licenses, death certificates. I can ask her to look up Lucinda Seabrook. Who knows? She might turn up something."
Arlen, who believed he faced imminent death at the hands of the Old Salt, asked uneasily, "How long will it take?"
"Not long. I imagine most of the records are computerized. I'll give her a call now and ask her to get right on it."
* * *
The following night Arlen, Gwendolyn and the Normans again met for dinner, and afterward, they retired to the living room.
Once they were all seated, Wesley took a computer printout out of his jacket pocket and announced, "According to my cousin's research Lucinda Seabrook née Roland was born in London in 1790 and came to America in 1806 where she married a man named Jarvis Tinker. There's no further record of her until the 1817 marriage between Lucinda and Captain Seabrook."
"What happened to her first husband?" Gwendolyn asked.
"I have no idea."
Arlen's face suddenly brightened.
"I'll bet he disappeared. That's fantastic! We've found the Old Salt!"
"What else did your cousin learn?" the realtor queried.
"Captain Seabrook died in 1819, which we already knew, and Lucinda died at the age of ninety-two in 1882."
"Cause of death?"
"I don't know. All the information indicates is that she died in Danvers State Hospital."
"Danvers? Are you sure?"
Wesley nodded.
"Yes. Why? What's so special about Danvers State Hospital?"
"It was an insane asylum," Gwendolyn explained. "That's another bit of information about Lucinda that never got into our local history books."
Helena then spoke for the first time.
"We can sit here and theorize for hours on end, but why waste the time? I can get the answers directly from Lucinda herself. Did you bring the necklace with you?"
Gwendolyn nodded and took the pendant out of her handbag. Several moments after taking hold of the antique sapphire and diamond necklace, Helena slipped into a trance and formed another psychic connection with the past.
"I was so miserable," she announced with Lucinda's British accent. "I couldn't take it anymore. Life on that damned little island was worse than death!"
"Island?" Wesley echoed. "What Island? Provincetown is on a peninsula."
"She must be referring to one of the Elizabeth Islands,' Gwendolyn explained. 'They're located at the outer edge of Buzzards Bay. It makes sense. Back in Lucinda's day, no one lived there but a handful of fishermen."
"I couldn't take it anymore," Helena repeated. "When a ship stopped at the island for fresh water, I paid the captain what little money I had to take me away—anywhere! I just wanted to get the hell off that cursed island. The ship took me to Provincetown where I met Tristan Seabrook. He was the answer to my prayers! He was everything my husband was not: handsome, rich and free of the stench of the sea. I couldn't believe my good fortune to fall in love with such a man."
"It's possible Lucinda committed bigamy," Wesley told the others. "My cousin could find no record of a death certificate for Jarvis Tinker."
"For two years, Tristan and I were blissfully happy. Then ...."
A tear rolled down Helena's cheek and she found it hard to finish her sentence.
"Then I lost him. He died from a disease he'd contracted in Africa. I was alone again; only this time I was a very wealthy woman. I might have found some small happiness, even after losing Tristan, but the fortune I inherited was blood money."
"What is she talking about?" Arlen asked.
"It's not in any of the history books," Gwendolyn confided, "but it was rumored that Captain Seabrook made his fortune in the triangle trade: molasses, rum and slaves."
"Blood money," Arlen mused. "So, Lucinda's inheritance came from her husband's dealing in the slave trade. It must have preyed on her mind and driven her insane."
"The poor woman!" Gwendolyn empathized.
Helena was openly sobbing now, her words nearly unintelligible.
"I think we've learned enough," Wesley declared, wanting to spare his wife emotional pain—even if it was Lucinda's and not her own.
He put his hand on Helena's shoulder and gently tried to break her concentration. She did not respond, so Wesley reached for the necklace.
"It's mine!" she spat venomously, clutching the sapphire pendant to her chest. "Tristan gave it to me on our first wedding anniversary."
Suddenly the French doors that led out to the rear deck flew open. Despite the warmth of the night, an icy wind blew through the room. Wesley, Arlen and Gwendolyn stared in awe as the revenant of a fisherman entered the living room. It was only after the ghost of the Old Salt moved toward Helena that Wesley and Arlen recovered from their shock.
When Wesley tried to pull his wife out of harm's way, the sapphire necklace fell to the floor, and she came out of her trance. She saw the ghost walking toward her and backed away. But the spirit made no attempt to hurt her. Rather, his eyes held a silent plea. Helena brushed her husband's protective arm aside, raised her hand and touched the cheek of the Old Salt. The psychic closed her eyes, and moments later she moaned with despair. Then her eyes opened wide and she stared at the sad, gentle features of the dead fisherman.
"I will help you," she said, her voice choked with emotion.
The Old Salt smiled, shed a silvery tear and vanished.
"What the hell was that all about?" Wesley demanded to know.
His wife sighed and explained, "It was the spirit of Jarvis Tinker, who has haunted the beaches of this area for nearly two hundred years."
"Do you know why?" Arlen asked.
"Yes. He's been looking for someone to help him uncover his body. You see, Lucinda murdered him and their infant son. She simply couldn't take the hard life on those remote islands anymore, so she killed her husband and child and left."
"And no one noticed Tinker was dead?" Wesley asked with disbelief.
"Maybe the other fishermen assumed he'd taken his wife and child to live on the mainland."
"What are we going to do now?" Arlen inquired.
"Tomorrow we'll take a boat down to the island and dig up the remains of the two victims."
* * *
The police—normally not ones to believe in tales of ghosts and restless spirits—did not question Helena's explanation. Most of the men and women on the force knew of her psychic gifts and respected her for her past efforts in helping law enforcement.
"Who did you say the victims were?" Officer Lenny Oswell asked Helena when the bones were brought back to the mainland.
"Jarvis Tinker and his son. I don't know the child's name. I realize it would be impossible to prove after all this time, but I've had a psychic vision in which I saw Lucinda Seabrook murder her husband and child before fleeing to Provincetown."
Oswell raised his eyebrow in surprise.
"Lucinda Seabrook? You're telling me a woman who has been admired and respected for two centuries was actually a murderess?"
Helena nodded.
"What would make her do such a thing?" the officer asked.
"Who knows? If she were alive today and was tried in our criminal justice system, a lawyer might claim she suffered postpartum depression or that she was a victim of child abuse. But who really knows why anyone takes the life of a fellow human being?"
"I can somewhat understand a wife killing her husband to get out of an unhappy marriage," Arlen said, "but a mother killing her own child?"
Oswell shook his head.
"It happens more than we'd care to admit. She must have been a sociopath, one of those people born without a conscience."
"No, that wasn't the case," Helena argued. "Lucinda had a conscience, and it drove her mad."
Wesley and Arlen looked questioningly at the psychic.
"You assumed," Helena explained, "that it was her husband's being a slaver that drove Lucinda over the edge, but it was her own crime—not his—that haunted her. The blood was on Lucinda's hands, not Tristan's. In a way, I feel sorry for her. She was unhappy in London and miserable on this lonely sland. Then she went to Provincetown and soon had everything she'd ever wanted, and yet it brought her no lasting happiness. When her beloved captain died, her only companions were the ghosts of her first husband and their child. She couldn't even enjoy the fortune that her second husband left her. You see, to her tortured mind it was blood money, gotten at the cost of two innocent lives."
Oswell closed his notebook and thanked Helena for her statement.
"If there's no objection," Arlen told the police officer, "I'd like to give the remains of Jarvis Tinker and his child a proper burial—when the police are done with their investigation, that is."
"I don't think that will be any problem. In fact, the mayor will probably be grateful that the town won't have to foot the bill."
When Arlen and his two friends returned to his house, the former New York lawyer repeatedly thanked Helena for her help. He was confident that with the discovery of the bones, the threat of death that had hung over his head was lifted and that the Old Salt would be seen no more.
He was wrong. One final time the spirit of Jarvis Tinker appeared on the Provincetown beach. Helena Norman, the only person to see it, was not afraid.
She bravely smiled at the grateful spirit and said, "You're welcome."
Then the Old Salt disappeared at last.
Salem doesn't understand why someone would object to the smell of fish. After all, he loves seafood!
