“So how long have you been teaching, Sweeney?” Rosemary asked her, leaning across Toby, who put an arm around her shoulder.
Sweeney took a deep breath. “Well, I was a teaching assistant when I was in graduate school. But I’ve been an assistant professor for just a year. I like it, though it’s a bit uncertain. I think my department chairman hates me. And they’ll never give tenure to anyone from the department. Did I mention my chairman hates me?”
“How could he?” Rosemary said sincerely. “He must be jealous.”
“That’s what I keep telling her,” Toby said.
“Jealous or not, he’s decided to supplement his non-existent course load with a couple of semesters of torturing me. If you know any voodoo, let me know. I’d love to make a little doll of him and stick pins in it or something.”
“Actually,” Rosemary said, smiling, “when we lived in South Africa, we were out in the bush for a while and there was this local tribal chief my father knew a little. He used to curse people. It was really weird. One day he’d say something about how he didn’t like so and so, or that they had crossed him, and then sure enough, a couple of days later the fellow’s gun would misfire or he’d fall off a horse or something. I couldn’t tell you how he did it, though.”
“Isn’t she amazing?” Toby said to them. “Do you know anyone else who knows about voodoo and curses?”
Sweeney felt herself flush again. The conversation went on, but she hardly heard what they were saying. This time she looked up to find Ian Ball watching her across the table. She did not like what she saw in his face and as soon as she felt she could, she said she was tired and went up to bed.
Climbing the stairs to the third floor, she recalled it with anger and shame. He had looked at her with sympathy.
AS A CHILD, Sweeney had been terrified by the idea of sleep, the feeling of gradually surrendering her place in the earthly world. It felt like a kind of dying, and even as an adult, she often jerked awake three or four times as she fell asleep before finally giving in. Some nights, she could not give in at all and she had tried all the usual remedies, warm baths and milk and pills. Warm baths got her creative juices flowing, she hated milk, and pills made her jittery the next day. The only thing she’d found that worked was alcohol.
That night, helped along by the five glasses of wine she’d had at dinner, she had no trouble nodding off, but she awoke with a start early the next morning, conscious that something had startled her from sleep. She looked at the glowing clock on her bedside table. It was 4:30, and outside the window of her third floor bedroom, it was not quite dark, the waxing moon casting a washed-out light on the snow-covered fields.
She turned on her bedside light, awake as if she’d downed a cup of coffee. What had it been? She was almost certain that something specific had drawn her back from sleep, the sound of a voice, a presence in her room. Footsteps. That was it. She’d heard footsteps somewhere. Someone going to the bathroom, probably. But no, it hadn’t been inside the house, she realized as the sound came back to her. The sound had been someone or something’s footsteps on the roof. Strangely this made her feel better. It had probably been a rat or a squirrel.
That was it. All was well. But she knew with the certainty of a lifelong insomniac that further rest was impossible. She got out of bed and went to look for a book to read.
The bedroom to which she had been assigned was a cozy little chamber tucked under the eaves of the third floor and decorated in leafy green. A stenciled vine wound its way around the room, dipping and twining itself around the wall behind a four-poster bed and echoed in a vine-print throw rug and the canopy draped over the bed. The selection of books about the colony she’d borrowed from the Wentworths’ library were piled promisingly on the mirrored dressing table.
She chose the one that appeared the most comprehensive, a hardback history by Bennett Dammers, the expert on Byzantium whom her colleague Jamie Benedetto had recommended she consult. She got back in bed, opening the book to the faded back jacket flap where she found a picture of a dapper-looking man with light hair styled in formidable ‘70s sideburns. The collar of his shirt reached almost to his shoulders, but still he managed to look preppy and formal. “Bennett Dammers was for many years the chairman of the Art History Department at Williams College,” the jacket copy read. “He was born and raised in Byzantium, Vermont, where he continues to live in a house once owned by the painter Gerard Fierman. His other books include biographies of the Byzantium sculptor Bryn Davies Morgan and a history of American painters abroad.”
She spent the next hour reading about the history of the colony, about how Morgan had come up from New York and seen the hills of Byzantium and bought a piece of land for his house, about how his friends and their friends had followed him here, for the natural beauty, for the solitude, for the companionship. In their rustic Byzantium studios, some of the best American artists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries had found inspiration and fame.
Next Sweeney read about Toby’s great-grandfather. “Herrick Gilmartin built his studio in the woods behind Birch Lane soon after the house was finished, complete with a small kitchen, woodburning stove and overhead sleeping loft, so that he could sleep there when artistic inspiration struck him, as it often did, at odd hours.”
There was a photograph of the artist at his easel, the cluttered interior of the little studio filled with canvases and jars of paint, books and smocks.
It was now 5:30 and the sky seemed even darker outside her window. She wasn’t going to get any more sleep so she decided she might as well get up and make some coffee.
“Shhh,” she told the dogs as they clattered ahead of her down the stairs, their nails clicking on the wood floors. “You’ll wake everyone up.”
But someone was already up. From the foyer, she caught sight of Patch’s blond head bowed over the coffee table in the living room.
He was working on his jigsaw puzzle.
The puzzle had progressed a bit toward completion. There was now a red-haired woman dressed in a flowing pink gown and seated on a black horse in the center of the puzzle.
“I do puzzles when I can’t sleep, too,” Sweeney said, standing over him and scanning the pieces. “Try that one.” She pointed to a piece printed with grass and flowers. “I think that goes under the horse’s front foot. Yes, like that.”
Sure enough, it fit.
“Thanks.” He stared at it for a few minutes, then picked up another green piece and fit it in next to the one Sweeney had spotted. “I don’t think I slept at all. I kept imagining someone was breaking in down here, going through our stuff. You had trouble, too?”
“Yeah. I’ve been up getting some reading done about the history of the colony. I was looking at Bennett Dammers’s book. I was hoping to talk to him about the gravestone and the colony.”
“Well, he’s the guy to talk to.” He went back to the puzzle, picking out a small piece printed with pink and adding it to the flowing skirt of the woman’s dress.
“Can I see it?” she asked. He handed her the cardboard box and she turned it over to find a print of Sir Frank Dicksee’s La Belle Dame Sans Merci. In the print, the woman looked condescendingly down on a helmetless knight, one arm holding the harness of her horse, the other outstretched in a kind of supplication. In the background were a lake and a sunset and rolling hills, a typical Pre-Raphaelite landscape. She was trying to remember what she knew about Sir Frank Dicksee when she saw there was a small note at the bottom of the box.
“La Belle Dame Sans Merci. Dicksee (1853–1928) was not a true member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, but he adopted many of their themes and techniques, as in this undated painting. The familiar Keatsian subject matter was popular with many of the Pre-Raphaelites.”
Dicksee. An artist who wasn’t a Pre-Raphaelite, but had adopted some of their themes and techniques. It gave her an idea.
“Would it be all right to look through some of your grandfather’s papers now? I don’
t think I’ll be going back to sleep, so I might as well get some work done.”
Patch turned around and studied her for a moment. “As I said, I’ve been all through it.” His blue eyes were hard. “But you’re welcome to look again, of course. A lot of it has gone to various museums and libraries, but what’s left is in storage up in the attic. Here, I’ll show you.” He got up and led the way up the main staircase, then up the narrower passage to the third floor. Sweeney had noticed the door at the end of the hallway, but assumed it led to another bedroom.
The attic, Sweeney saw, when she reached the top stair, was not the cramped overhead crawl space she had always associated with the word, but rather a full fourth floor with room for even her to stand up and walk around. Along the walls were stacked boxes and steamer trunks and file cabinets. One wall was almost entirely obscured by a large cabinet.
Patch lifted a small panel on the front and she saw that it had humidity and temperature controls. “That’s for the good stuff. Not many papers in there, though. I think you’d be most interested in what’s in here.” He opened the top file drawer on a tall wooden storage tower. “We hired a librarian to come up and organize everything a couple of years ago. Here’s the index. See, there’s stuff related to Morgan, Marcus Granger. There’s even a Picasso card. I don’t know what that could possibly be, but you’re welcome to look through all this stuff.”
Sweeney flipped through the neatly organized cards. There were entries for almost any topic she could think of, “Byzantium,” “Dogs,” “Tax Problems.” The hired librarian had been extremely thorough.
“Did he keep a journal?” She had discovered long ago that a well-kept journal offered endless possibilities for authenticating works of art or confirming biographical information.
“Not that I’ve ever found, though he had a secretary toward the end of his life and she kept his appointments, I think. Anyway, feel free to root around as much as you like. I’ll leave you to it.”
He turned to go, the floorboards groaning under his feet, but when he reached the stairs, he waited there for a moment as though he was going to say something.
“Was there anything else?”
“No, sorry. Good luck.” She watched him go down the stairs, but his hesitation seemed to hover there in the little hallway, thickening the chilly air.
For the next hour and a half, Sweeney looked through the file cabinet, finding lots that was of interest—including a letter to Herrick Gilmartin from Teddy Roosevelt—but absolutely nothing of any use.
Under “Denholm,” Mary’s family name, there was only one notation: “See 234871.x.” But there wasn’t any such entry in the file cabinet and she decided that it probably referred to a catalog of artwork. She had done some research in a family library once where the .x referred to paintings and drawings and the plain numbers represented letters and documents. She’d have to ask Patch about it.
The problem, she decided after a few more minutes of halfhearted searching, was that she didn’t know what to look for. She didn’t know anything about Mary Denholm and her family, didn’t really know anything about the Byzantium sculptors or the other gravestones in the cemetery.
Its creator might be right under her nose.
NINE
DECEMBER 14
AT BREAKFAST, Sweeney announced that she was going to spend the morning at the historical society.
“I’ll give you a lift,” Ian Ball said, looking up from his coffee. “I’m talking to this chap at an antiques place called the Emporium. I think it’s just near the historical society.”
Sweeney thought fast. “Thanks, but I have to get back this afternoon. I wouldn’t want you to have to rush. I’ve got an appointment with Bennett Dammers. He’s going to help me with my research.” She had found the Byzantium scholar’s name in the phone book and called him earlier that morning. “I’m afraid you may find me very old,” he’d said and then chuckled in a raspy voice. But he’d agreed to see her that afternoon at his home.
“That’s all right. I’ve got some things I want to do here this afternoon anyway. I’ll be ready to leave when you are.”
Sweeney, seeing no other way, reluctantly told him she’d go get her bag and see him outside.
Five minutes later they were in his little rental car, speeding toward town.
The day was slightly overcast, giving the snow piled along the side of the road a lavender cast. Sweeney thought about the impressionists and how they had been pilloried for making snow lavender. It was lavender, the essence of it in this exact moment in time. She looked over at Ian’s hands gripped on the steering wheel. They were the hands of a piano player, long-fingered and slender. She wondered suddenly who his favorite painter was.
The landscape opened up as they neared town. They drove on past a couple of neatly kept trailers, one with a big pond in front and an enormous sign that read “Daddy’s Li’l Slice of Heaven.”
Across the road was a stretch of field and a farm with a big white house and lots of red barns. “Van Dyke’s Goat Farm,” a sign in front read. “La Manchas, milk, cheese.” Sweeney had a sudden vision of Don Quixote perched on a goat, tilting at windmills.
Ian smiled.
“What?”
“Nothing, it’s just that farm. I had this image of Don Quixote riding a goat.”
“I was thinking the exact same thing. With a little Van Dyke beard,” Sweeney said. They both laughed.
“I forgot about how the English smirk.”
“We don’t smirk. We smile inside.” He relaxed and released his death grip on the steering wheel. He really was handsome. It had taken her awhile to see it. But there was something stiff and on guard about him that she didn’t find attractive.
She raised her eyebrows and nodded.
“So tell me about this research you’re doing,” he said after a few minutes. “An exploration into the past shenanigans of Byzantium’s artists?”
“I’m just trying to find out some more about the gravestone, who might have done it, why it’s so strange.” She decided not to say anything about Ruth Kimball’s death. After all, she had absolutely no proof that it had anything to do with Mary Denholm and her gravestone.
“And why is it so strange?”
“It’s just unlike any other Victorian stone I’ve ever seen. Nobody was putting figures of Death on stones in the late 1800s. In fact, it would have been considered very odd. And also . . .” She hesitated.
“What?”
“Well, it’s beautiful. I guess that’s why I’m interested. I just want to know who made this beautiful sculpture.”
“It is beautiful,” he said as they drove into town.
The couple hundred yards of downtown Byzantium consisted of rows of colonial and federal houses, some empty and some well-preserved and converted into shops and restaurants for tourists. It was a pretty little strip, but there were discrepancies between the rarefied atmosphere of the colony and the village: a McDonald’s on one corner, a rusting car abandoned in the driveway of an old gas station. Ian drove slowly down the main drag, then turned down a side street and pulled up in front of a small, yellow colonial with a sign out front reading “Byzantium Historical Society.”
Sweeney got out and thanked him for the ride.
“So, I’ll be back here at one,” he said distractedly. “Good luck.”
She slung her bag over her shoulder and was about to slam the door with her hip when she thought of something. How had he known where the Historical Society was?
He looked up at her questioningly and she shut the door.
Following the directions on a little calligraphy sign on the door, she lifted the brass knocker next to it and let it fall with a wooden thump.
Inside, footsteps padded toward her and when the door swung open, there was a tall, skinny young man with thinning blond hair and horn-rimmed glasses standing there.
“Can I help you?” he asked in a proper voice.
“Yes. I was interested in looking at som
e old family records.”
“Of course. Follow me.”
He led her through a narrow hallway and small room beyond, both lined with bookshelves and filing cabinets. The air smelled of stale paper and woodsmoke.
But the interior was very neat, with dust-free filing cabinets against one wall and old black-and-white pictures of town life in times past in gleaming glass frames along another. A poster above the desk showed an open book and cartoon characters of George Washington, Abe Lincoln and Paul Revere popping out. “Pick up a book about history. You never know what you’ll find,” it proclaimed.
“We have genealogical and historical files compiled for prominent town citizens, families that have been in town for a long time,” he said, lifting up the pen with which he’d been writing, and pointing it at a stack of photocopied request slips. “Just fill out one of those with the name of the family and I’ll get it for you. Oh, and please sign our guest book. We depend upon the generosity of the town taxpayers for our funding and it’s nice to be able to demonstrate how many people are using our resources.”
Sweeney handed him a completed request form and signed her name in the guest book. Under “area of interest,” she just wrote “Byzantium Arts Colony.” While the librarian went to get the files, she flipped back through the book, wanting to see who else had been here recently. Her curiosity was rewarded when she saw that Ruth Kimball had been to the Historical Society back in July. She had signed her name, but left the “area of interest” column blank.
“Here we are,” the historical society librarian was saying as he handed over a stack of manila folders and pointed toward a doorway on the far wall. “There are tables through there.”
“Thanks.” She took them into the next room and settled down at one of the three round reading tables. There were four Denholm files: “Elizabeth,” “Ethel,” “Louis,” and, finally, “Mary.”
O’ artful death Page 7
