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“Okay,” I said, before Short Clarry could accidentally talk the islanders into forming a lynch mob. “Thank you, Short Clarry.”

Short Clarry smiled and nodded.

“I’m going up to the lighthouse to call the police,” I told him. “After that I’ll join the search on the point.”

“Righto,” Short Clarry said, and checked his watch. He spoke to the crowd again. “We’ll meet back here at nine. It’s going to be a cold one. Watch yourselves out there.”

Murmuring vaguely, the crowd dispersed into smaller groups and set out.

As I walked up the street, I passed Sarah Hooper stepping inside her house. I was close enough to hear the dull thunk of the lock as she turned it.

A locked door on Dauntless Island.

That was a first.

It didn’t bode well for what the islanders thought of Eddie Hawthorne, did it?

I headed up toward the point with Hiccup, unease biting at me.

* * *

E ddie’s yellow tent was still lying at the base of the lighthouse when I got back.

I went into the cottage and stood in front of the radio in the kitchen. Then, drawing a deep breath, I turned it to the channel for the water police, and made the call.

“Dauntless Island to Marine Area Command,” I said, and then repeated myself through the static.

It took a little while to answer. The channel was monitored, but rarely used.

“Marine Area Command here. Go ahead, Dauntless.”

“I need to report we have two possible missing persons and a land search underway,” I said.

“Copy that, Dauntless. Go with all the details.”

I hoped the guy was ready with a pen, because it was a long story.

* * *

I rejoined the search party on the point, my oilskin pulled tight to protect me from the bite of the wind.

“What’d the police say, Red Joe?” Verity Corporal asked, the wind tugging her red hair in all directions.

“To keep them informed,” I said. “They’ll send a boat over in the morning if we haven’t turned them up by then.”

Verity nodded, the beam of her torch bouncing along the tussocky ground. “No point searching at night anyway. Can’t see a bloody thing.”

In the faint distance, I could hear someone calling out John Coldwell’s name.

Shortly before nine, footsore and dispirited, our party returned to the church.

Nobody had found any sign of either John Coldwell or Eddie Hawthorne.

“Righto,” Short Clarry said. “The police will be here tomorrow. Go along home. Check your yards and your outbuildings, and we’ll get an early start on it in the morning.”

One or two people looked to me.

“We’ll get an early start in the morning,” I agreed.

Beside me, Short Clarry huffed, and I wondered if he thought I was overstepping his authority here. I was a Nesmith, but he was the mayor. Island politics could be as complicated as island family trees, and the two were mostly intertwined and impossible to untangle anyway.

The islanders dispersed slowly, and my feet ached at the thought of the long walk back up to the lighthouse.

“Cup of tea before you head back?” Short Clarry asked as we walked along the main street. “Something a little stronger, maybe?”

“Not tonight, thanks,” I said. “I’ll turn in, I think, while I can.”

Short Clarry clapped me on the shoulder. “See you first thing, then.”

I nodded and watched as Short Clarry walked toward his cottage.

I whistled for Hiccup, who came bounding out of the darkness, and we continued on our way.

We’d already started up the hill towards the point when I stopped suddenly.

Check your yards and your outbuildings, Short Clarry had said.

But had anyone checked the yard at the museum?

It was the former customs house, and there had once been a storage building out the back for seized goods.

That had been knocked down years ago now, the stone used for other construction around the place, but the cellar remained.

It had been used as an icehouse, back in the day.

Shit .

I turned and looked back towards the village. I didn’t want to walk all the way back there now, but I knew I wouldn’t sleep if I didn’t put my mind at ease.

I turned and headed back to the village, Hiccup looking at me like I was mad.

“I know,” I told her. “I know. Come on.”

It was dark, but I knew my way. Mavis’s window was closed, and the curtains were pulled. I wondered if she’d locked the shop tonight, like Sarah Hooper had locked her door.

What did they think? That Eddie Hawthorne, inheritor of his great-great-great-grandfather’s bloody tyranny, was running amok on Dauntless Island? Cracking people over the heads in some sort of mad revenge spree?

I thought of Eddie, and his big eyes, and his grin and his glasses and the way he wrinkled his nose and the way he kissed.

I wished I could laugh at the idea, but I couldn’t.

My gut told me he couldn’t hurt anyone, but I was tired, cold, and unhappy, and doubts were creeping in like shadows under a door.

What made me so sure I could trust my gut?

How well did I really know Eddie? How well did anyone know anybody?

My boots crunched against the dirt as Hiccup and I walked back down the main street towards the museum.

It was cold, getting colder, and I’d forgotten my gloves. I jammed my hands into the pockets of my coat instead, trying to ignore the fact that my fingers felt like icicles.

Hiccup and I reached the museum at last and walked down the side of the sandstone building.

It gleamed in the moonlight. The backyard was a little overgrown, and it took me a moment to remember where the cellar was.

It was difficult to spot even in the moonlight: a dark door lying against the grass like it had been dropped there from a great height.

I crouched down and heaved it open. No shower of dirt came with it, and my stomach clenched. Had someone opened it recently? I turned my torch on and shone it down the dark, narrow stone steps.

The beam of light hit John Coldwell in the face.

He looked as though he’d been dead for hours.

* * *

I trudged back up the hill towards the point, glad that Hiccup was with me.

I felt colder than the chill night warranted.

Colder than the grave. Part of that was from descending those steps into the cellar.

But most of it came from pressing my fingers to John Coldwell’s throat in what I’d known was a vain attempt to find a pulse.

John was already cold and stiff. There had been nothing I could do for him.

I shivered as I continued up the hill. The beam of the lighthouse drew me on, solid and strong.

When I reached the top of the point, Eddie’s tent was still there.

I entered the lighthouse, switching on the interior lights as I stepped inside. Hiccup, like always, waited outside. She wasn’t a fan of the steep steps.

I climbed the stairs to the flag room and opened up the crates.

Would Eddie remember what I’d told him on that tour of the lighthouse? Would he remember what the flags were for?

I climbed up to the lantern room and went out onto the catwalk.

It was dark now, the wind wild, but the sunlight would hit the lighthouse first in the morning, and it would shine like a beacon.

I moved around to the leeward side of the lighthouse, where the flags wouldn’t be seen by shipping traffic. I fastened the two flags I’d chosen to the rails.

One was a blue checked flag.

The other was divided into four squares. The top left and the bottom right were red. The top right and the bottom left were white.

Would Eddie be able to read them?

The flags fluttered in the wind, broadcasting a message for those who could read it.

Your movements are not understood , said the first.

And the second said, You are running into danger .

Because the moment John Coldwell’s body was found, there wouldn’t be a man or woman on the island who didn’t assume Eddie Hawthorne was responsible for his death. And I wasn’t sure that my name alone would be enough to protect Eddie until the police arrived.

Eddie needed to stay hidden, wherever he was, and to stay safe.

Eddie hadn’t made any friends on the island.

I’d even started to let doubts sneak in after hours tramping around in the dark and cold.

Right up until I’d found John’s body, I’d started to wonder if it might be possible that Eddie wasn’t who he seemed to be.

That he had the potential to snap in anger.

And I might have even let those doubts continue to build, to twist into suspicions, if I hadn’t looked in the old icehouse behind the museum.

Because how would Eddie even know the icehouse existed?

It wasn’t in any of the museum brochures, and John Coldwell would never have volunteered such information to a Hawthorne.

No, the existence of the icehouse was something only an islander would know.

Which meant that only an islander could have killed him.

And Eddie, of course, would never have left Henry Jessup’s diary tucked inside John Coldwell’s jacket where I’d found it.

I slipped my hand inside my pocket as I went back down the curving steps. The diary, no longer wrapped in plastic, felt damp and cold to my touch, the pages brittle.

Hiccup was waiting for me outside the lighthouse.

I walked to my cottage, turning once to stare up at the flags fluttering and snapping in the wind.

Then I went inside. Closed and locked my door behind me.

I took the diary from my pocket to inspect it. As far as I could tell, all the pages were still there. I opened it carefully somewhere in the middle and squinted down at the faded, spidery handwriting. It took my eyes a while to make sense of the letters, and of the words they formed.

…that on the 2nd day of February Lt. Jos.

Nesmith grew belligerent with Capt Hawthorne for the captain refused to allow the men to force their attentions upon the women passengers of the Antigone.

The civilian passengers were much alarmed.

The next day being the 3rd, Jos. Nesmith & a company of his men seized muskets and demanded Capt Hawthorne resign his post.

I closed the diary again.

All of this.

All of this for such a little book.

I opened up the kitchen pantry and pulled a box of Cornflakes out. I removed the inside packet, slipped the diary into the box, and then replaced the cereal. Then I shoved the Cornflakes box to the very back of the pantry.

It was no medical chest, but that had hardly been secure either, had it? And what was a padlock to someone who had killed a man?

I crossed to the radio and turned the volume up. “Dauntless Island to Marine Area Command.”

“Dauntless Island, this is the Marine Area Command. Have you found your missing persons?”

I rubbed my forehead. “Negative, Marine Area Command. I need to report a homicide.”