Slack tide

The house was on a low-lying island just a hundred and fifty feet across the inlet from the MacLaren Boatyard. A year before, it had been bought by Oliver Kingsley—notorious for his night-club escapades and unsuccessful marriages—and remodeled as a summer home. Contrary to the natives' expectations, he had done nothing unusual to it, but they had noticed that the windows of the corner room at the rear of the house were kept continually shuttered. Harry Danaher, the captain of Kingsley's cruiser and general man-about-the-house, couldn't—or wouldn't—say why. It was up to the girl who swam out…