Author’s note: Our village on Cape Cod is full of homes—and stories—of old seafarers and merchants. Not long ago my wife asked: “Why don't you write about the Cape?” I never had, but as soon as I thought about it I saw what so many writers before me had seen: the magical possibilities of a place as insular as an island (it is actually a peninsula) and as full of intrigue as an extended family (which to people who live here it is, considering all the sharing and squabbling). The result was a historical mystery. In the story, a writer makes a pitch to his agent for a project he hopes will salvage his reputation—and his marriage. Here is my pitch to you:
Failed scholar and reluctant detective Hayden McTeague buys an old sea captain’s house. It seems the captain met an untimely death, and his widow is implicated—in the husband’s death and in the death of subsequent husbands. But was she guilty? In a daring commercial/historical venture, McTeague digs for evidence in the house and in the Cape Cod village of Basil’s Cove. He discovers more than he could have imagined, including much about himself.
This is a summer story, set in a beach town and meant for light literary pleasure. It is too long for the literary journals I usually publish in, so I offer it here in serial form. Four short parts will be posted through the beginning of the tourist season of 2023.
The Widow Chase-Part 1
Through fifteen years of ups and downs Shelly was my friend, partner, critic, and muse. She was also the other thing a wife is supposed to be to a husband, although recently that part of our relationship had cooled. I knew this was common; some would say it is inevitable. I accepted my circumstances and tried to put all that unused energy into my work. When measured by persistence no one could fault me. When measured by success it was another story.
I am a historian. A few years after finishing graduate school I did what everyone in my profession hopes to do and wrote a best-seller. I would advise my younger colleagues, if any asked, to be careful what they wish for.
You may have heard of me: Hayden McTeague. You may have even read my books. My first book, anyway. The Tale of the Whale: America’s First Industrial Triumph and Tragedy sold forty thousand hardcover copies and nearly two hundred thousand more in paperback. It was optioned for TV, although the show was never produced. As for the two books that followed, the less said the better. Neither made back their advance, and you will find them these days only at library sales, and only in southern New England. Only on Cape Cod, to be precise. That is where I live and where I still have a small reputation. Shelly, to her credit, stuck by me through all of it. She agreed to postpone having children so I could write. She went back to work when the third book flopped. She was patient while I threw away one false start after another. She did not judge while, late into the night, I typed and drank.
The two activities are not unrelated. I make it a point never to drink before seven o’clock, and the evenings are when I get my ideas. My agent, never one to flatter, told me they were lousy ideas. I responded with more bourbon and more lousy ideas. The cycle had admittedly become unhealthy. My literary life at forty-five was reduced to occasional readings at Cape Cod bookshops and at the summer festivals that fill the calendar around here during tourist season.
I live in Basil’s Cove, near the Cape’s midpoint. We are an ancient fishing village that has become a tourist town. Economically the community is mixed. There are waterview estates that sell for twenty million dollars, and ramshackle cottages miles from the shore, and an eclectic cluster of wooden houses that have stood proudly in the center for centuries. It was one of these that gave Shelly her inspiration.
The house of Captain Thaddeus Chase is a modest white clapboard building whose only nod to ornamentation is a porch that wraps handsomely around the front. It stands on a grassy lot next to the Unitarian church and across from the Post Office. At the time it was owned by the trust of a family who seldom used it, and was in disrepair. It came on the market in early spring, and we made a successful offer the following week.
It was a business proposition, not a lifestyle choice. We lived in a condo two miles from the center. Housing costs go down sharply as you move away from the water, and our home had suited us since my books stopped selling. A condo suited me: I am one of those grown men who can barely use a screwdriver. And what was a writer with no money and no handyman skills doing buying a one-and-a-half million dollar, two-hundred-year-old fixer-upper?
Writing. At least that was the plan.
After Shelly pitched her idea to me I pitched it to my agent.
“This is the first scheme of yours that doesn’t suck, Hayden,” he said from his Manhattan office. “In fact, it’s brilliant.”
I didn’t tell him the scheme wasn’t mine. I had walked past the Thaddeus Chase house for years and never once saw literary potential in it.
“Here’s why,” he went on, getting worked up the way only Frank Barnes could. “Local history or found treasure or whatever you want to call it is a thing. Fixing up old houses is a thing. There must be a dozen reality shows between the two. Put them together and you got a winner.”
“It’s a book, Frank, not a TV show.”
“It’s a book to begin with. You’re planning to do some of the construction stuff yourself, right? For cred, for authenticity.”
“Absolutely,” I assured him.
“I imagine you need some front money.”
I told him how much and heard a gasp over the phone. Then he said, “I’ll talk to your publisher tomorrow.”
Frank Barnes is not especially literary but he can be very persuasive, and mere days later I had a check for a quarter of a million dollars for the downpayment and expenses. Closing would be in mid-April, so I had more than a month to prepare.
The venture was to be a sort of illustrated historical entertainment. An old New England house would become both an archeology site and a restoration project. I would document everything in words and photos: the discoveries, the disappointments, the building successes and failures. It would be part do-it-yourself manual, part memoir, and part pop history. I bought a cordless drill, a job-site saw, and a book called Carpentry for Dummies. I watched YouTube videos on demolition, framing, wallboard, and flooring. I tried and failed to solder a copper pipe. I began to panic.
“You’re trying to do too much,” Shelly soothed. “We have a budget. There are people around here we can hire.”
“I’m supposed to do the lion’s share, then write about it,” I said miserably.
“You’re supposed to appear to do it. I can take your picture in your cute safety glasses holding your little saw. Then you can get out of the way and let the professionals do the work.”
“You’re a genius.”
“You don’t know the half of it.”
At the time I thought nothing of the comment. My wife had always displayed a playful confidence, and on a good day I can be a little playful myself. Shelly is also a clever woman, but unfortunately no handier than I.
The morning of the closing I drove alone to the property with the house key and a carful of tools. A non-bearing wall in the kitchen was slated to go first, at Shelly’s suggestion. I donned my protective gear and swung my twenty pound sledge. The old plaster crumbled after a few blows, and there behind the wall, among the splintered lath and horsehair, was a human skull.
~:~
I didn’t call the police. The remains were very old, something for the antiquarian, not a homicide detective. I didn’t call Shelly, who was at her bookkeeping job. I called my agent.
“Jesus, Hayden! We were maybe hoping your sea captain stashed his gold coins in there. This is better.”
“From a commercial point of view, I suppose. Also I believe it is the sea captain.”
“How the hell do you know that?”
I didn’t know it, but I had reason to suspect. After I’d gotten over my initial squeamishness, I tugged on gloves and dug through the rubble. I found much more than a skull; the larger bones were all there, down in the well between the aged timbers. Probably the smallest bones were there too, mixed with the debris. I laid the skeleton roughly out on the wide plank floor and beheld a figure of adult size. I photographed it. I know nothing about forensics and could not determine age, sex, or possible cause of death. But I know something about historical research, and I went straight to the village records office. The clerk, a youngish man named Crumbly, was pleasant enough but nosy, and I requested the scholar’s privilege of a private viewing area. He questioned my credentials. I asked if he had heard of a book about whaling by Hayden McTeague.
“You’re Hayden McTeague?” he said, and let me examine the musty boxes in a room in back. In fact, he insisted on carrying them.
We think of sea captains as grizzled old Ahabs, but in fact many were young men. It was a path to riches for the daring and lucky, and a few successful voyages were enough to secure a fortune. Such was the case with Captain Thaddeus Chase. He made a merchant voyage to China in 1819 and another in 1821, on a three-masted schooner called Prudence. A year later he built the house overlooking the church. He died there in 1824, aged thirty-one. There was no cause of death, not unusual in those days. But what caught my historian’s eye was a complaint, lodged with the village magistrate a month after the captain’s funeral, of a “Corrupshin such as no Man should suffre.” It was made by one Chas. Davis, wheelwright. According to a contemporary map, his shop was next door. Corruption referred to the flesh, and his complaint surely meant the stench of decomposition.
There was more. The widow Chase remarried the following year. Her new husband, a printer, also died a few years after his wedding. The two-time widow remarried a third time, to a solicitor. He lasted a little longer. When I followed his trail I found, decades later, a distraught letter from a descendent. She’d had the solicitor exhumed for reburial (they wanted the entire family with them in their new life in the Western territories) and was shocked to discover the casket was empty. As for the woman, who continued to be known as the Widow Chase, she lived on in the house until her death in 1883, aged eighty-five.
I told all this to Frank Barnes.
“You’re a lucky bastard, Hayden.”
“I’d prefer to think I’m bearing witness to a family tragedy.”
“You got yourself a black widow. Your fixer-up history show just turned into a crime show. Congratulations.”
“It’s a book, Frank.”
“Tomorrow I’m calling the History Channel and the Learning Channel. It’s gonna be a bidding war.”
To be continued…
This is super. You've got me hooked. Looking forward to the next installment.
Keep ’em coming!