Lethal Legend by Kathy Lynn Emerson Page B

to make that dive. More than ready.”
    “Dive?” Interest piqued, Diana looked to Ennis for clarification.
    “We were preparing to explore underwater the day we fell ill. It is perfect weather today. I want to get on with it.”
    Diana studied each face in turn. George Amity seemed ambivalent, but the others wore remarkably similar expressions of stubborn determination.
    Ben reached for his stethoscope. “No one is going to do anything until I have examined each of these men one more time. Ladies, will you wait in the hall?”
     
    “Where is Miss Dunbar?” Graham Somener glared at the empty place at table. “She rarely misses a meal and she is partial to corn chowder.”
    From the look on Diana’s face as she tasted a spoonful, Ben concluded that she was also partial to the dish. He trusted she’d do justice to the entire meal, in spite of the ham sandwich she’d eaten earlier. His Diana had a healthy appetite.
    Leaving his own food untasted, Ben answered Graham’s question. “Miss Dunbar is preparing for Mr. Ennis’s dive.”
    She hadn’t waited to hear his verdict. Abandoning Diana in the upstairs hallway without a word, she’d gone to the shed where the diving equipment was stored and begun to ready her equipment. Ben had tracked her there to confirm that Frank Ennis was healthy enough to go back to work.
    “That confounded shipwreck.” Graham slathered butter on a roll with a heavy hand.
    “Do a great many ships come to grief along this coast?” Diana asked.
    With obvious effort, Graham forced himself to be sociable. “Not so many since the lighthouses were built, although the City of Portland sank off Monroe’s Island just four years back. And there was a very famous shipwreck south of here during colonial times, the Angel Gabriel .”
    Inevitably, Graham’s love of history overcame his aversion to talking to a journalist. “An ancestor of mine was aboard the Angel Gabriel ,” he told Diana. “Fortunately the ship was close to shore when a hurricane hit. Most of the passengers survived, although they lost all their worldly goods. 1635, that was.”
    “What is it Miss Dunbar is looking for?” Diana asked.
    “Do you know much about early explorations in this part of the world?”
    “Not a great deal, no.”
    “Fishing boats have been coming to these shores for centuries,” Graham said. “They kept the best grounds secret, of course, so the competition wouldn’t know where to find them. Other ships came, too. Explorers. Settlers. It is Miss Dunbar’s belief that one of these ships was wrecked on the rocks off Keep Island during a long-ago storm. That’s what she’s looking for—proof that there were survivors and that they settled here. She hopes to find remains of their buildings, perhaps even artifacts from the ship itself.”
    “Would there be anything left of a vessel that sank more than a few decades ago? Surely any wooden parts that weren’t dashed to bits against the rocks would have been dispersed by the tide or would have disintegrated over the years from sheer age.”
    “The water here is deep and cold. Those are preservative properties. If the ship sank in mud or sand, protecting it from being washed out to sea, then it is possible there are remnants left. Enough to identify. More likely, of course, is that she will find some trace left on land by the survivors of the shipwreck. That is why the present excavation centers on a small cove below the promontory. Since they have diving equipment, however, it only makes sense to take advantage of good weather to explore underwater.”
    “How frustrating it must have been to have to postpone the dive.”
    “I doubt that a few days delay did any harm. Miss Dunbar’s ship has already been down there for four hundred and eighty seven years.”
    Ben smiled as Diana blinked in surprise. She’d assumed, as he had at first, that Miss Dunbar was looking for a colonial settlement, which would have meant a place established some two