He’s babbling, Maggie thought, a leaden sense of unease settling over her. He’s crazy! Her mind was racing as he propelled her from room to room, each of them containing what resembled an elaborately structured stage setting. Earl was holding her hand now, pulling her along as he darted about to show everything, explain everything.
They were almost at the end of the long hallway, and Maggie realized that she still had not seen anything resembling the bells she had found on the graves.
“What do you have on the third floor?” she asked.
“That’s not ready for exhibits yet,” he replied absently. “I use it for storage.”
Then he stopped abruptly and turned to her, his eyes intense. They were at the end of the hallway, in front of a heavy door. “Oh, Maggie, this is one of my best exhibits!”
Earl turned the handle and with a dramatic flourish threw open the door. “I combined two rooms to get the effect I wanted here. This depicts an aristocrat’s funeral in ancient Rome.” He pulled her inside. “Let me explain. First they built a bier, then they put the couch on it. On top of that were placed two mattresses. Maybe this would make a good opening shot for the series. Of course, right now the torches just have red light bulbs, but we could really have them flaming. The old man who made this bier for me was a real craftsman. He copied it exactly from the picture I gave him. Look at the fruit and flowers he carved into the wood. Feel it.”
He grasped her hand and ran it along the bier. “And this mannequin is a treasure. He’s dressed just like a dead aristocrat would be dressed. I found that fancy raiment in a costume shop. What a show these funerals must have been! Think of it. Heralds, musicians, flaming torches . . .”
Abruptly he stopped and frowned. “I do get carried away on this subject, Maggie. Forgive me.”
“No, I’m fascinated,” she said, trying to sound calm, hoping he would not notice the dampness of the hand he was at last relinquishing.
“Oh, good. Well, there’s just one more room. Right here. My coffin room.” He opened the last door. “Quite a spread here too, wouldn’t you say?”
Maggie stood back. She did not want to go in that room. Only ten days ago she had been the one to choose a casket for Nuala. “Actually, Earl, I should be heading back,” she said.
“Oh. I’d like to have explained these. Maybe you’ll come back. By the end of the week, I’ll have the newest one in. It’s shaped like a loaf of bread. It was designed for the corpse of a baker. The custom in some African cultures is to bury the deceased in a coffin that symbolizes the way that person’s life has been spent. I included that story in one of the lectures I gave to a women’s club right here in Newport.”
Maggie realized that he might have given her the opening she had been seeking. “Do you lecture in Newport very often?”
“Not anymore.” Earl closed the door of the coffin room slowly, as though he were reluctant to leave it. “You’ve heard it said that a prophet is without honor in his own country, no doubt? First they expect to get you without even an honorarium, then they insult you.”
Was he talking about the reaction to his lecture at Latham Manor? Maggie wondered. The closed doors of the rooms shut out most of the light, and the hall was filled with shadows, but even so she could see that his face was turning crimson. “Surely, no one insulted you?” she asked, her voice controlled, caring.
“Once,” he said darkly. “It upset me terribly.”
She didn’t dare tell him that Liam had been the one to tell her about the incident with the bells. “Oh, wait a minute,” she said slowly. “When I visited Mrs. Shipley at Latham Manor, didn’t I hear that something unpleasant had happened to you when you were kind enough to speak there? Something involving Mrs. Bainbridge’s daughter?”
“That’s exactly what I mean,” Earl replied sharply. “She upset me so much that I stopped giving one of my most effective lectures.”
As they walked down the stairs to the first floor, past the mannequin of the liveried footman and out onto the porch, where, Maggie realized, the daylight felt unexpectedly strong after the dim interior of the museum, Bateman told of that evening at Latham Manor and described handing out the replicas of the Victorian bells.
“I had them cast specially,” he said, his voice ominous with anger. “Twelve of them. Maybe it wasn’t smart to have let those people hold them, but that was no reason for treating me the way that woman did.”
Maggie spoke carefully. “I’m sure other people don’t react that way.”
“It was very upsetting to all of us. Zelda was furious.”
“Zelda?” Maggie asked.
“Nurse Markey. She knows my research and had heard me speak a number of times. I was there because of her. She had told the activities chairperson at Latham how well I lecture.”
Nurse Markey, Maggie thought.
His eyes narrowed, became cautious. She could see he was studying her. “I don’t like to talk about this. It upsets me.”
“But I would think that would be a fascinating lecture,” Maggie persisted. “And maybe those bells would be a good visual for an opening or closing shot.”
“No. Forget it. They’re all in a box up in the storeroom, and that’s where they’ll stay.”
He replaced the key under the planter. “Now don’t tell anyone it’s here, Maggie.”
“No, I won’t.”
“But if you’d like to come back yourself and maybe take some pictures of the exhibits that you think I should submit to the cable people, that would be fine. You know where to find the key.”
He walked her to her car. “I have to get back to Providence,” he said. “Will you think about the visuals and see if you can come up with some suggestions? Can I call you in a day or so?”
“Of course,” she replied as, with relief, she slid into the driver’s seat. “And thank you,” she added, knowing that she had absolutely no intention of using the key, or of ever coming back to this place if she could help it.
“See you soon, I hope. Say hello to Chief Brower for me.”
She turned the key in the ignition. “Good-bye, Earl. It was very interesting.”
“My cemetery exhibit will be interesting too. Oh, that reminds me. I better put the hearse back in the garage. Cemetery. Hearse. Funny how the mind works, isn’t it?” he said as he walked away.
As Maggie drove out onto the street, she could see in the rearview mirror that Earl was sitting in the hearse, holding a phone. His head was turned in her direction.
She could feel his eyes, wide and luminous, watching her intently until at last she was beyond his range of vision.
67
SHORTLY BEFORE FIVE, DR. WILLIAM LANE ARRIVED AT the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Boston, where a cocktail party and dinner for a retiring surgeon were being held. His wife, Odile, had driven up earlier to go shopping and to keep an appointment with her favorite hairdresser. As usual when they had that kind of schedule, she had taken a room for the afternoon at the hotel.
As he drove through Providence, Lane’s earlier good mood gradually dissipated. The satisfaction he had felt after hearing from the Van Hillearys had dissolved, and in its place there resounded in his mind a warning, not unlike the beeping caused by a failing battery in a smoke detector. Something was wrong, but he wasn’t clear as yet just what it was.
The mental alarm had started just as he was leaving the residence, when Sarah Bainbridge Cushing called to say she was on her way in to visit her mother again. She had informed him that Letitia Bainbridge had phoned shortly after lunch to say that she wasn’t feeling well, and that she had become terribly nervous because Nurse Markey was darting in and out of her room without knocking.
He had warned Markey about that very thing after Greta Shipley complained last week. What was she up to? Dr. Lane fumed. Well, he wouldn’t warn her again; no, he would call Prestige and tell them to get rid of her.
By the time he arrived at the Ritz, Lane was thoroughly on edge. When he got up to his wife’s room, the s
ight of Odile in a frilly robe, just beginning to put on her makeup, annoyed him intensely. Surely she can’t have been shopping all this time, he thought with growing irritation.
“Hi, darling,” she said with a smile, looking up girlishly as he closed the door and crossed to her. “How do you like my hair? I let Magda try something a little different. Not too many trailing tendrils, I hope?” She shook her head playfully.
True, Odile had beautiful frosted blond hair, but Lane was tired of being trapped into admiring it. “It looks all right,” he said, irritation apparent in his voice.
“Only all right?” she asked, her eyes wide, her eyelids fluttering.
“Look, Odile, I have a headache. I shouldn’t have to remind you that I’ve had a rough few weeks at the residence.”
“I know you have, dear. Look, why don’t you lie down for a while while I finish painting the lily?”
That was another coy trick of Odile’s that drove him wild, the use of “paint the lily,” when most people said “gild the lily” instead. She loved it when someone tried to correct her. When they did, she was only too happy to point out that the line was often misquoted, that Shakespeare actually had written “To gild refined gold, to paint the lily.”
The would-be intellectual, Lane thought, his teeth on edge. He glanced at his watch. “Look, Odile, that party starts in ten minutes. Don’t you think you’d better get a move on?”
“Oh, William, nobody gets to a cocktail party the minute it starts,” she said, again using her little-girl voice. “Why are you so cross with me? I know you’re terribly worried about something, but please share it with me. I’ll try to help. I’ve helped you before, haven’t I?”
She looked to be on the verge of tears.
“Of course you have,” Dr. Lane said, relenting now, his voice softer. Then he paid her the compliment he knew would appease her: “You’re a beautiful woman, Odile.” He tried to sound affectionate. “Even before you paint the lily, you’re beautiful. You could walk into that party right now and outshine every woman there.”
Then, as she began to smile, he added, “But you’re right. I am worried. Mrs. Bainbridge wasn’t feeling well this afternoon, and I’d be a lot more comfortable if I were around, just in case there were to be an emergency. So . . .”
“Oh.” She sighed, knowing what was coming. “But how disappointing! I was looking forward to seeing everybody here tonight, and to spending time with them. I love our guests, but we do seem to give our whole lives to them.”
It was the reaction he had hoped to receive. “I’m not going to let you be disappointed,” he said firmly. “You stay and enjoy yourself. In fact, keep the room overnight and come back tomorrow. I don’t want you driving home at night unless I’m following you.”
“If you’re sure.”
“I’m sure. I’ll just make an appearance at the party now and head back. You can say hello for me to anyone who asks.” The warning beep in his head had become a keening siren. He wanted to bolt, but he paused to kiss her good-bye.
She took his face between her hands. “Oh, darling, I hope nothing happens to Mrs. Bainbridge, at least not for a long while. She is very old, of course, and can’t be expected to live forever, but she’s such a dear. If you suspect anything is seriously wrong, please call her own doctor in immediately. I wouldn’t want you to have to sign yet another death certificate for one of our ladies so soon after the last one. Remember all the trouble at the last residence.”
He took her hands from his face and held them. He wanted to strangle her.
68
WHEN MAGGIE GOT BACK TO THE HOUSE, SHE STOOD FOR long minutes on the porch, breathing in deeply, inhaling the fresh, clean, salt scent of the ocean. It seemed to her that after the museum visit the smell of death was in her nostrils.
Earl Bateman enjoyed death, she thought, feeling a shiver of repulsion run up her spine. He enjoyed talking about it, re-creating it.
Liam had told her that Earl had relished describing how frightened the Latham residents had been when he had made them handle the bells. She could certainly understand their fright, although Earl’s version of the incident was that it had upset him so much, he had packed away the bells in the third-floor storeroom.
Maybe it was a little bit of both, she thought. He might have enjoyed terrifying them, but he certainly had been furious when he was sent packing, she thought.
He had seemed so anxious to show her everything in that strange museum. So why hadn’t he offered to show the bells to her as well? she wondered. Surely it couldn’t have been just because of painful memories over what had happened to him at Latham Manor.
So was it because he had hidden them on the graves of women from the residence—women who might have been in the audience the night of that lecture? Another thought struck her. Had Nuala attended that lecture?
Maggie realized that she was hugging her arms tight against her body and practically shivering. As she turned to go in the house, she took the note she had left for Chief Brower off the door. Once inside, the first thing she saw was the framed picture Earl had brought her.
She picked it up.
“Oh, Nuala,” she said aloud, “Finn-u-ala.” She studied the photo for a minute. It would be possible to crop it to show Nuala alone, and she could have it enlarged.
When she had started the sculpture of Nuala, she had collected the most recent pictures she could find of her around the house. None were as recent as this, though; it would be a wonderful help in the final stages of creating the bust. She would take it upstairs now, she decided.
Chief Brower had said he would stop by this afternoon, but it was already a little after five. She decided to go ahead and do a little work on the sculpture. But on the way up to the studio, Maggie remembered that Chief Brower had said he would phone before he came. She wouldn’t hear the phone in the studio.
I know, Maggie thought, as she passed the bedroom, this would be a good time to clean out the rest of Nuala’s things from the closet floor. I’ll just take the picture to the studio and come back.
In the studio, she took the photograph out of the frame and carefully tacked it to the bulletin board by the refectory table. Then she switched on the spotlight and examined the picture closely.
The photographer must have told them to smile, she thought. Smiling had come naturally to Nuala. If there’s anything wrong with this picture, it’s that it isn’t enough of a close-up to show what I saw in her eyes that night at dinner.
Standing next to Nuala, Earl Bateman looked uncomfortable, ill at ease, his smile definitely forced. Still, she thought, there was nothing about him that suggested the frightening obsessiveness she had witnessed this afternoon.
She remembered Liam saying once that a crazy streak ran in the family. She had taken his remark as a joke at the time, but now she wasn’t so sure.
Liam probably never took a bad photograph in his life, she thought, as she continued to study the picture. There’s a strong family resemblance between the cousins, mostly the facial structure. But what looks peculiar on Earl, looks good on Liam.
I was so lucky Liam brought me to that party, and so lucky I spotted Nuala, she mused as she turned away and started down the stairs. She remembered how it almost hadn’t happened, how she had decided to go home because Liam was so preoccupied, racing from one group of cousins to the next. She had definitely felt neglected that evening.
He’s certainly changed his tune since I arrived up here, though, she thought.
How much should I tell Chief Brower when he comes? she asked herself. Even if Earl Bateman put those bells on the graves, there’s nothing inherently illegal about that. But why would he lie about the bells being in the storeroom?
She went into the bedroom and opened the closet door. The only two items that remained hanging there were the blue cocktail suit Nuala had worn that night at the Four Seasons, and the pale gold raincoat that she had rehung in the closet when Neil and his father moved the bed.
&nbs
p; Every inch of the closet floor, however, was covered with shoes and slippers and boots, mostly in disarray.
Maggie sat on the floor and began the job of sorting them out. Some of the shoes were quite worn, and those she tossed behind her to discard. But others, like the pair she thought she remembered Nuala wearing at the party, were both new and fairly expensive.
True, Nuala wasn’t a neatnik, but surely she never would have tossed new shoes around like that, Maggie decided. Then she caught her breath. She knew the bureau drawers had been ransacked by the intruder who killed Nuala, but had he even taken the time to rummage through her shoes?
The telephone rang and she jumped. Chief Brower, she thought, and realized she would not be at all sorry to see him.
Instead of Brower, however, it was Detective Jim Haggerty, calling to say that the chief would like to postpone the meeting until first thing in the morning. “Lara Horgan, the state medical examiner, wants to come with him, and they both are out on emergencies right now.”
“That’s all right,” Maggie said. “I’ll be here in the morning.” Then, remembering that she had felt comfortable with Detective Haggerty when he had stopped by to see her, she decided to ask him about Earl Bateman.
“Detective Haggerty,” she said, “this afternoon Earl Bateman invited me to see his museum.” She chose her words carefully. “It’s such an unusual hobby.”
“I’ve been there,” Haggerty said. “Quite a place. I guess it’s not really an unusual hobby for Earl, though, when you consider he’s from a fourth-generation funeral family. His father was mighty disappointed he didn’t go into the business. But you could say that in his own way he has.” He chuckled.