She had told herself not to expect too much, that he was quite elderly and his memory may have failed. But except for searching for his glasses on his desktop for five minutes, he seemed as sharp as a man thirty years his junior. She sat back in her chair and looked around the chaotic clutter of the study. Books lined the walls and lay asymmetrically piled on every surface, the great teetering towers balanced precariously. Around his desk were stacks of newspapers a couple of feet high, yellowed with age. A fire burned in the fireplace and in the greenish light from the banker’s lamp on his desk, he regarded her kindly, the rectangular-framed spectacles now on his nose.
“Now, Miss St. George,” Bennett Dammers said finally, his withered hands folded on the desk in front of him, the cardigan sweater he had on over his shirt and tie opened in the heat of the room. “What can I do for you?”
He had the look of a very old human, the shape of his skull showing just beneath his skin and thin hair. When she had leaned in to shake his hand at the door, Sweeney had caught an odor she had come to associate with old age. She got out one of the photographs of Mary’s gravestone and handed it over to him.
“Have you ever seen this?”
He held the photo out in front of him and studied it for a minute. “Oh, yes. Of course,” he said finally. “Someone thought it might be a Morgan, once.”
She pointed to the snapshot. “It’s not Morgan, is it?”
“Goodness, no.” Bennett Dammers continued studying it and then put it down on the desk in front of him. “None of the other Byzantium sculptors either. I’ve always thought it must be one of the students.”
“Students?”
“The old boy ran a kind of studio school. Promising young things from the Pennsylvania Academy or wherever would come up and help him out in the studio for a summer. Mix plaster, build armatures and provide some young blood at cocktail parties. Many of them became colonists themselves and then went on to great things. Have you ever heard of Myra Benton? Frank Bellweather?”
Sweeney said she had. Still, for the next fifteen minutes, he gave her an account of the careers of the two great American sculptors, both trained by Morgan. She had to resist an overwhelming urge to bring him back to Mary’s grave.
“You’re sure you can’t guess at who the artist here might be,” she broke in finally.
He looked at it again. “It reminds me of something,” he said. “But I’m not sure what.”
A grandfather clock in the hall chimed three times.
Sweeney handed him the copy of the poem she’d written out. “I don’t know if you remember the poem that’s on the stone, but I’m wondering if you could help me out with it. I’m really at a loss.”
It took him quite a long time to read it, his chin tucked against his collarbone, and Sweeney wondered if he had fallen asleep. But then he sat up and grinned.
“Well! I haven’t seen it for years. It’s quite something, isn’t it?”
“It’s pretty bad, I know. But if I can figure out who wrote it, it may bring me closer to knowing who the sculptor is.”
“Well,” Dammers said, “there weren’t many poets and writers in the colony. A few journalists. It was mostly Morgan’s sculpting cronies. And the painters, of course.”
He stood up again and got a copy of his own book from a box on the floor.
“That’s for you,” he said. “The new edition. I write about Matthew Bentley. He wasn’t a very good poet, but he wasn’t that bad. Besides, his work is very different. That sounds like the ruminations of a romantic schoolgirl.”
“Or someone over-enamored of the Victorians,” Sweeney said. “It’s like the author had made kind of a hodgepodge of different themes, if you know what I mean. The thing that strikes me as strange is that the monument is clearly by a Pre-Raphaelite. But why haven’t we heard of him? Or her, I suppose.” It hadn’t struck her before that the artist could be a woman.
He smiled at her. “That’s a very good question, my dear. I don’t know. Perhaps he or she died young. As for the Pre-Raphaelites, it’s interesting, you know. There were some connections. Morgan met the Rossetti brothers once, in London, before he emigrated.”
“But I looked them up in your book.”
“Yes, it’s only in the new edition. I received a letter from a scholar at Cambridge after my book came out, telling me of the meeting. It was only a dinner, but I think it must have smoothed the way for him when he arrived in New York.”
“Was Morgan influenced by them?”
“No, not really. But there may have been connections that we didn’t know about. Perhaps a young protégé came over to study with him one summer.”
His eyes were tired and Sweeney decided she only had a few minutes left. “There’s something I’ve been wanting to ask you. You grew up here. What were things like between the artists and the people in town?”
“Good question.” He grinned at her. “That’s one of the things I’ve always thought is most interesting about Byzantium and other arts colonies in this part of the world.” He settled back in his chair.
“You have to understand that most of the people who lived in Byzantium before the artists arrived were farmers, small town businessmen. My own father kept a feed and grain store. They didn’t understand the artists, I think, didn’t understand them spending days in the studio or writing, looked down on the parties.
“But then, many of the people in town—the natives, they were called by the artists—made extra money cleaning or cooking during the summers and, of course, it meant that there was a kind of interest in the town. You know, Byzantium would be written up as the most beautiful place in America, things like that. The gardens were famous. Many of the people in town modeled for the artists, too, the children especially.”
“How did that work? Would they pay them.”
“Yes. Not much, though. Sometimes they paid in work.” He was looking over her shoulder, off into space.
“It was very complicated,” he said finally. “As most things are. Colonial, almost. If you think about the word colony. Well, that’s what it was. They colonized . . .” He trailed off and Sweeney had the feeling that he was winding down, like a music box. But then he seemed to come back from wherever he had been.
“The interesting thing is that you can still see the dynamic at work today. I’ve always fancied I was quite separate from it, since I wasn’t exactly a native and wasn’t exactly a colonist and most of the time I feel as though that’s okay. But there are times when a dispute will come up about something and I can tell that they want me to choose sides. This thing about Ruth Kimball’s land, for example.
“Of course I felt it was imperative that we keep The Island the way it was. But I was also sympathetic to her right to do what she wanted with her property. The Wentworths couldn’t understand that someone might really need the money. They’ve never been in that position. Anyway, about your stone, I’m not sure what to tell you, my dear.”
“Can you think of anyone else in town who might be able to help?”
He thought for a moment and then said, “I would think you might get useful information from some of the descendants. Willow Fontana has always been very helpful to me. Oh, and of course you could ask Patch about it. I ran into him at the historical society a couple of months ago and he said he was looking into the gravestone.
“Patch? You’re sure about that?” Sweeney sat up.
“Oh yes. That’s all I can suggest. In an appendix to my book, there’s a list of most of the students who stayed with Morgan. Still . . .” He trailed off, then turned in his chair to look up at his bookcase.
“Mary Denholm strikes a chord somewhere up here.” He tapped a finger on his temple. “You can’t imagine how awful it is to lose your memory for things like this.”
He got up and continued staring at his bookcase for a minute. Sweeney sat uncomfortably. It was like watching a person in a wheelchair try to get up over a curb.
“Ah!” he called out finally and took a
book from the middle shelf.
As he pulled it down, his hands shaking, she saw a portrait of a woman and the name Herrick Gilmartin on the front.
Bennett Dammers looked in the index, then flipped the book open and held it out to her, his thumb holding it to a simple portrait of a young woman. “That’s her,” he said simply.
Sweeney stared at the oil painting reproduced on the page.
She was wearing a white dress and sitting in front of a fantasy landscape of a dark forest. The mass of dark, curling hair hung around her face in wild tendrils, setting off her pale, almost blue skin. Sweeney stared at the portrait, mesmerized. Her vague stare, the dead tint of her skin, and the coiling, almost obscene tendrils of hair made her seem lifeless.
“ ‘Mary,’ 1890” the painting was titled. But at the bottom of the page, there was a caption that read, “The model for ‘Mary’ was Mary Denholm, a local girl and neighbor of Gilmartin’s.”
Sweeney stared at the girl. “It’s creepy.”
Bennett Dammers laughed. “Yes. Quite an interesting little piece of necrophilia. They were big on it, the Victorians.”
“Was she one of his regular models?”
“I have no idea,” he said. “Something just made me remember it. I can’t think why I didn’t before.”
“It’s incredible.” Sweeney studied the painting again. “Did you know that Herrick Gilmartin was the one who discovered Mary’s body?”
“No,” he said. “I don’t know much about her. I think this is the only portrait I’ve ever seen.”
“So you’ve never heard that there was anything . . . suspicious about her death? She died very young.” She tried not to seem too eager for the answer.
“Suspicious?” He didn’t understand.
“I’m wondering if there was ever anything untoward about Gilmartin’s um . . . behavior. I mean as far as young girls go, if you know what I mean.” She sounded like a prudish idiot. Untoward! For godsake.
The old man stared at her for a minute and then, as though something had bubbled up from deep within his body, exploded in laughter. Sweeney was afraid he was going to break.
“My dear,” he almost shouted at her, still giggling. “They were sensualists. The lot of them. Young girls, young boys. Whatever adventure happened to present itself. Gilmartin and Morgan had parties here and at Morgan’s New York pied à terre that were, well, definitely untoward. Does that answer your question?” He was grinning, enjoying shocking her.
Sweeney blushed and tried to join in the joke. “Oh,” she said. “What about Mary Denholm? Do you think there may have been anything between her and Gilmartin?”
“There may well have been, but I don’t know how you’d prove it. You’ll have to read the Byers.” He pointed to the book in Sweeney’s hand. “You can borrow mine. But I don’t think he mentions her much. Why are you so interested in Gilmartin’s sex life, may I ask?”
Sweeney felt herself blush again. “I’m not really. It’s just that I’ve gotten interested in Mary’s gravestone and anything I can find out about who she was is going to help.”
He smiled kindly at her, but Sweeney could see he wanted her to go.
“You’ve been so helpful,” she said, shutting the book. “But I won’t take any more of your time. Thank you. And thank you for the book.”
“I’ll keep the gravestone in mind,” he said. “I want to look through my files again and see if anything rings a bell.”
“Of course. I’d appreciate that. If anything comes up, try me at the Wentworths’.”
“I hope you don’t think I’m a nosy old coot,” he said, studying her. “But I’m wondering how a lovely girl like you came to be interested in all this doom and gloom. You don’t think I’m a chauvinist, do you?”
Sweeney laughed. “No,” she said, honestly. “I remember seeing an English woodcut when I was about ten, of Death looking over the shoulder of a woman lying in a bed, surrounded by weeping relatives. I was fascinated by the idea that Death was an actual person, that people needed to think of all death as a kind of murder, that they made art in order to understand it, to come to terms with human mortality.”
“Do you understand it, Miss St. George? Have you come to terms with it?”
He was thinking about how young she was and wondering how much of death she’d seen. Though she hated being condescended to, she wanted even less to embarrass him. What could she say? Actually my father killed himself when I was thirteen and my fiancé died in a violent accident a year ago.
“No,” she said.
“Neither have I. Even at my advanced age.” He looked sad all of a sudden. “I beg your pardon. Good luck with your mystery.”
ELEVEN
BYZANTIUM’S CHIEF OF POLICE, Jonas Cooper, sat in the truck watching the mouth of The Island bridge and holding his gloved hands over the heater vents, trying to get warm. He’d been there for over an hour, supposedly doing speed checks on Route 20, but actually waiting to see who was driving on and off The Island today. In his experience, there was a lot to be learned from watching what people did in the days after a suspicious death. He had once caught a murderer that way, when he was still in Boston working homicide. The guy had sat stony-faced through an interview about his wife’s death and then hopped in his truck and driven off to his girlfriend’s house, where Cooper, having followed at a discreet distance, watched him burn a pair of pants in the driveway.
But so far, the traffic over the bridge had been pretty thin. A couple of the state crime guys had come out and waved cheerily at him, causing Cooper, who was trying to be inconspicuous, to curse under his breath. Other than that, nothing. He was annoyed, a mood, he realized, left over from this morning, when one of the state investigators had asked him where he was from when he’d suggested they look at the pattern of burn marks the pistol had made against the victim’s skin. “We know our job,” he’d replied simply when Cooper told him he was from Boston, but lived in Byzantium now.
He had come up to take the job three years ago, but Cooper still felt like a city slicker at least once a day. He remembered the former chief, a tall, blond, ex-basketball player from somewhere in the Midwest telling him, “It’s funny about these people up here. You’re either from here or you aren’t. It really matters to them. They don’t like to tell you things if you’re not a native.”
When Cooper had asked about the townspeople, the departing chief had said, “There seem to be three types. The ones whose families have lived here for generations, the colony people who have been here for a while but are in a slightly different category, and then the flatlanders—newcomers who have moved up from Boston or New York. You’ll find you don’t really fit in anywhere.” Cooper had discovered the basketball player was right.
But there was something about the town and about Vermont that was starting to grow on him. Though he was constantly reminded of his outsider status, Cooper felt more and more that if it didn’t accept him, the town had come to respect him. That was good enough, for now.
Just as he was starting to wonder whether he should head back to the station to see what was going on, a Volkswagen Rabbit, going just a little too fast, came down the road and turned onto the bridge. When he saw it had Massachusetts plates, he figured it was the young woman staying at the Wentworths. A professor of some kind, he’d heard. She was the one who had been asking Ruth Kimball about the gravestone. He had questioned Sherry Kimball about her mother’s actions in the days before her death and she had told him all about Sweeney St. George. Now she was staying at the Wentworths’. Coincidence? Cooper didn’t know what to think about that. He didn’t think Sweeney St. George had anything to do with the death, but it raised some interesting questions.
He’d have to talk to her, he decided. And to the rest of the neighbors again. There had been something about Britta Wentworth’s eyes when he’d asked her what Patch and the kids had been doing the afternoon of Mrs. Kimball’s death that gave him the idea she knew more than she was letting on. An
d when it came down to it, the Fontanas hadn’t been all that willing to tell him where they’d been. He’d definitely have to talk to them again. But first he’d go back to the station and see if the medical examiner’s report was in. He had a bad feeling about this death. It didn’t feel like any suicide he’d ever investigated.
TWELVE
WHEN SHE GOT BACK to the house Sweeney stood for a moment in the foyer, feeling shaken and sad. Her conversation with Bennett Dammers had conjured up feelings she thought she had gotten past months ago and, desperate for an emotional distraction, she searched the hallway for a picture to look at. She found one, a strange, moody beachscape in shades of red and coral. There was something about it that drew her in and she stood, mesmerized, looking into its depths.
“Sweeney? Are you okay?” Rubbing at her eyes, she turned to find Gwinny standing in the doorway of the living room watching her. She was wearing a long purple dress with an empire waistline and a black velvet headband in her hair and she was holding a book. Her eyes appeared to have been inexpertly made-up with purple eye shadow and the costume made her look like a medieval lady-in-waiting.
“Oh yeah. I was looking at this.” She gestured to the painting.
“Were you just crying?”
“I just . . . Something that happened today made me think about a friend who died, that’s all. Where is everybody?”
“My parents are taking naps. Ian went skiing.” Here, Gwinny blushed a little. “I don’t know where Toby and the twins are. Did you find out anything about the stone today?”
“A little bit. I went and saw Bennett Dammers this afternoon.”
“He’s nice. Is it true that someone killed her? Mary?”
O’ artful death Page 9
