O' Artful Death Part 12

That was true. "This is a pretty cool place to spend Christmas. It must have been a fun place to grow up."

He said, "It was when I was little. We used to go swimming and hiking all the time and stuff. My dad used to come with us all the time. My mom even used to ski. She was really good."

"She doesn't do that stuff anymore?"

"No, because then she'd have to spend time with my dad."

"Oh."

She said impulsively, " " I remember how weird it was to be seventeen. It does feel like things kind of fall apart, doesn't it? Everything gets so much more complicated."

"No," he said cryptically. "I think things are the same. I think you just begin to see them the way they really are, to see things you couldn't see before. People can't fool you anymore."

They had reached the top of the mountain and in a quick, graceful motion he lifted the bar and dropped down on to the snow, leaving Sweeney fumbling for her poles. She jumped off, too, but promptly fell onto the snow, cursing the sport of skiing and wondering about Gally.THEY GOT BACK to the house in the late afternoon and showered and changed to go out to dinner at Les Deux Canards, Patch and Britta's favorite restaurant in Byzantium. to the house in the late afternoon and showered and changed to go out to dinner at Les Deux Canards, Patch and Britta's favorite restaurant in Byzantium.

As they were getting ready to go, Sweeney said, "It's really weird. I've lost my emerald earrings. You guys haven't found them, have you?"

"Those ones you were wearing at dinner?" Gwinny asked. "I liked those."

"I'll look around for them," Britta said. "Maybe you just misplaced them. They were lovely." Her voice was cheerful, but Sweeney thought she saw worry in her eyes.

LES DEUX CANARDS, housed in a perfectly restored Georgian mansion on Byzantium's Main Street, reminded Sweeney of a combination of a Savoy Raclette restaurant she'd eaten in once and The c.o.c.k and Lamb, her favorite pub in Oxford. As a student, she'd often settled into a snug at the back to read and drink pints of Guinness, something her English friends had ribbed her for. The library was for coursework, pubs were for socializing, they'd said. On her last trip to Oxford, Sweeney had been dismayed to find that The c.o.c.k and Lamb was now a nightclub called-bizarrely but nodding to tradition-The Rooster.

The walls of this cozy little bar and restaurant were papered in a cream and blue fleur-de-lis pattern and covered with landscape paintings and old photographs of the Byzantium artists. The long bar up at the front was ornate, a rich, dark mahogany, and at eight o'clock it was cluttered with skiers and end-of-the-workday revelers. The men seemed all to have beards and work boots and expensive jackets, and there were a lot of beautiful, earthy women with long hair.

In the car on the way to the restaurant Britta had told Sweeney that it was all over town now that Ruth Kimball hadn't committed suicide. "Gwinny was supposed to babysit for a family we know tonight. But they called this afternoon to say they wouldn't be needing her after all. I felt just sick. We haven't done anything!" She'd sounded as though she was about to cry.

As they'd come into the restaurant, there had been a strange, halting moment in which conversation had slowed and a few people had turned to watch them enter. Sweeney felt the attention of everyone in the room focus on them as they made their way to a table in the back. "Everyone's staring at us," Gwinny had whispered to them.

Once they were seated, Patch said quietly, "Let's have a good time. We haven't done anything wrong. We don't care what people think."

"Hey, look Gwinny," Trip said, looking at the menu. "Sweetbreads. That's brains. You should get some. Maybe it would make you smarter." He was sitting on Sweeney's other side and had been telling her about boarding school life and playing Nathan Detroit in the school's production of Guys and Dolls Guys and Dolls.

"f.u.c.k you," Gwinny said nonchalantly. The twins laughed.

"Gwinny!" Britta gave her a stern look.

"I bet Ian will get sweetbreads," Sweeney told Gwinny in a loud stage whisper. "English people like all kinds of disgusting innards and brains and things. Tripe. Trotters."

Gwinny giggled.

"Only those brains belonging to American professors," Ian, who was sitting directly across from them, countered loudly, winking at Sweeney. He was making an effort to cheer them all up, she realized, and it made her warm to him.

"Because we have the best brains, is that it?" She nudged Gwinny, who laughed again.

"Yes, the brains of art historians are known to be particularly delicious. A bit tough sometimes from so much thinking, but nonetheless ..." The waitress appeared over his shoulder and everyone looked down at their menus again.

After they had ordered, Toby asked Ian about his job.

"Basically, I look for pieces that are very valuable whose owners don't know they're very valuable. I'm a bit of a confidence man, really. I don't ever want to be dishonest with anybody, but my profit margin depends on my being able to acquire something for less than it's worth."

"Ian makes himself sound like some kind of crook," Patch said. "The truth is that he's probably the most respected decorative arts guy in Britain. He headed up a commission last year that did a survey of decorative arts in country estates. It was a really important piece of work."

Gwinny took a sip of her father's wine and said, "No offense, Ian, but how did you get so interested in lamps and stuff? It isn't even art really, is it?"

Ian leaned back in his chair. "Think of it the way you think of Sweeney's gravestones. You have to have furniture, right? But what the really fine craftsmen and their workshops did was to turn it into an art. Creating a leg wasn't just about making something for the table to stand on, it was about making it the most functional and beautiful leg they could make it."

He looked over at Sweeney and smiled.

"I'm interested in that," Patch said, warming to the topic. "When you study a gravestone, are you studying it as a piece of art or a piece of anthropology? I mean, there are other media for artistic expression that are easier to work with than gravestones."

"It's art and and anthropology. Many stonecarvers didn't have those media available to them," Sweeney said. "In America they were frequently European immigrants who had trained as sculptors back home. They carved some beautiful stones. For families who could afford special commissions, but also for families who couldn't. I like to think of them like Amish quilts. The women who made them weren't allowed to be artists. But when they created functional things like quilts, they really let loose and made things of beauty." anthropology. Many stonecarvers didn't have those media available to them," Sweeney said. "In America they were frequently European immigrants who had trained as sculptors back home. They carved some beautiful stones. For families who could afford special commissions, but also for families who couldn't. I like to think of them like Amish quilts. The women who made them weren't allowed to be artists. But when they created functional things like quilts, they really let loose and made things of beauty."

"What do you mean when you say art history?" Gwinny asked.

Gally said meanly, "It's the history of art, stupid."

Gwinny made an extremely unattractive face in his direction, but Ian turned to her and said kindly, "It's the study of how art has developed over the years. From cave paintings in France to Andy Warhol. Art historians trace the different movements, how one led to another and how artists reacted against, say, paintings they thought were too fancy and formal by making paintings that were more natural, that recreated nature without embellishment."

"Oh," Gwinny said. "But cave paintings aren't considered real art, are they? It's just drawings of buffalo and stuff."

"But they are absolutely art," Ian said, with feeling. "The people who painted animals on the insides of caves were painting what was familiar to them. Animals were their means of survival, they were sacred, and those cave painters drew them with loving detail, the same way the Renaissance painters would labor over every detail of the background in a painting of a madonna and child."

"But what is it for?" Gwinny asked. "I like looking at art and everything, but what is it for, other than being pretty?"

It struck Sweeney that Gwinny was acting out by questioning the usefulness of art. In this family, it was the equivalent of questioning capitalism in a family where the business was banking.

"It's for a lot of things," Sweeney said now. "For one thing, it tells us a lot about what was going on at a particular time. How people lived, what kind of houses they lived in, what kind of bowls they ate out of. Art as anthropology. When I study gravestones and things like Victorian mourning rings or Egyptian funeral practices, I learn a lot about how people felt about death.

"But that's only part of it, I think. Art is also about representing the sublime, or at least it should be. When you look at a beautiful painting, you feel that you know what feeling or atmosphere the artist was trying to capture. You experience something that's true."

The food came quickly and she ate silently for a few minutes before she looked up to find Ian staring at her.

"Have you heard anything about the little girl?" he asked after an awkward moment. "I wonder how she's doing?"

"The little girl? Oh, you mean Mrs. Kimball's granddaughter. You'd have to ask Patch. She can't be doing very well."

"Children that age react to things in funny ways. They're very good at deflection. At least my daughter is."

"You have a daughter? I didn't know." She felt herself blush.

"Her mother and I are divorced and they live in Paris," Ian said quickly. "I don't see her as much as I'd like, but ..."

"What's her name?"

"Eloise."

"That's pretty. I had a French friend named Eloise when I was at Oxford."

"Oxford," he said. "Well, I shall have to watch my back. I was at Cambridge. You Oxonians are notoriously treacherous, you know."

"I was only there for a few years," Sweeney said, grinning at him. "Doing graduate work. Maybe it doesn't count."

The waitress came over with another scotch for Ian and he took a long sip as Patch said something at the other end of the table that made everyone laugh.

"What part of England are you from? I'm good at accents and I guessed London," Sweeney asked.

"Ha! Suss.e.x. But I did have a strange and unsettled upbringing that included British schools in some of the most peculiar outposts of the world. When one has been taught by unhappy, exiled Londoners, one's accent tends to come to the middle after a bit."

"Why did you move around so much?" She looked up and down the table guiltily. She had felt for a second that they were alone.

"My father worked for what he called 'The Government,' but was actually British Intelligence. He was always going off on hush-hush little jaunts. Sometimes we went with him."

"Where?"

"Belgium for a year. Then Egypt. And then Lebanon. Then military school and France, when I was older. That's where I met Sylvie. Eloise's mother."

"That sounds so romantic. I had a roving, unsettled childhood, too, but we just roamed around backwater American cities. What happened with Sylvie?" Being tipsy made her brave.

"Oh. I don't know." He was uncomfortable. "The usual. We were too young. We grew apart. She fell in love with her psychiatrist."

"Really?"

"Yes. Now let me ask you something. How did you get your name?"

"My mother was an actress. She had this thing about old Irish legends."

He grinned at her. "Mad Sweeney?"

"I know. I think she just liked the name, the way it sounded."

"It suits you, you know, in an odd sort of way." He studied her for a minute and she felt her heart speed up under his gaze. "I'm not quite sure why. Are your parents still alive?"

She looked down at her plate. "My father's dead. I don't see much of my mother anymore."

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to pry."

"No, that's fine." But it was the end of the conversation.

They finished their meals and lingered over dessert and coffee. They were waiting for Patch to finish paying the bill up at the bar when an older man, very drunk, stood up and turned his back to them.

"Some people have a lot of nerve," he said loudly to the bartender. "Coming down here when the cops are still sniffing around up on The Island. When old Cooper proves that one of them did her in, I'd just like to see if they have the guts to show their faces around her friends."

The bar got very quiet as Britta gasped and hustled the children out of the restaurant. Before she joined them out on the sidewalk, Sweeney saw Patch step toward the man as though he was going to say something, then put his wallet back in his coat as he followed them through the door.

EVERYONE HAD GONE TO BED. Sweeney lay on the couch in the living room with a gla.s.s of scotch, listening to the end of the "Hallelujah Chorus." Someone had put it on and she had no idea where the stereo was. The music seemed to come out of the walls and ceilings and floors.

So she just let it play. Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hall-ay-loooo-ya! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hall-ay-loooo-ya! She had never much liked Handel. She'd take Mozart's She had never much liked Handel. She'd take Mozart's Requiem Requiem any day. any day.

"Feeling Christmasy?"

She jumped. Ian was standing behind her, still wearing the too-crisp black jeans and taupe sweater he'd had on at dinner. "You scared me," she said, sitting up.

"Sorry." He went over to the little bar and poured himself a scotch. "One thing about Patch. He knows his scotch. I try to send him a bottle of something interesting every once in awhile. The last bottle was Royal Brackla. Very nice. Want to try some?"

"Sure." She drained her gla.s.s and held it out for him. He frowned, put it face down on the bar and got her a new one. "Musn't mix our scotch up," he said. He was clearly drunk.

"It's lovely," she told him after taking a sip. "Smoky and kind of peaty."

"It's one thing I hate about traveling. I always feel like I have to sneak around and keep my own bottle in my room. So," he said, sitting down across from her. "Oxford. I should probably challenge you to a duel or something. You know, in the defense of dear old Cambridge."

"Really? Do you duel? Wonders never cease."

"Oh yes. All Englishmen learn to duel. It's very important." He got up and pretended to joust with the bookcase.

"I'm too drunk for a duel," Sweeney said.

"So am I too drunk, come to think of it." He went over to the bookcase and looked at the books, then picked up a little antique pistol that was lying on an ivory plate. "This is what I love about the Wentworths," he said. "This is just the sort of thing they would have. What is this anyway?"

"Looks like an itsy bitsy gun," Sweeney said.

He jabbed at the air with it. "On guard!" Then he saw her face and put it down. "Oh G.o.d! That's tasteless." He sat down again. "Forgive my boyish exuberance. We can't keep it down, all those years of pretend war at military school." He raised his eyebrows at her. "So, Toby was pretty angry at you yesterday."

She sat up. "Oh, that? He's just really emotional. He likes to play Papa Bear. We've made up already."

Ian just watched her and it made her stumble ahead. "Toby and I have been friends for a long time ... how do I explain it? You know how there are things that happen to you that are so overwhelming, so awful or beautiful or whatever, that whoever is with you when they happen is forever locked up in you?" Ian nodded. "Anyway, he's just an emotional person."

Ian smiled. "I don't know. As a fellow man, I can say that we don't take shows of emotion like that lightly."

"Well, you're an Englishman. Toby's the hot-blooded Mediterranean type. Though, I have to say, you talk a lot for an Englishman."

"Do I? I had no idea, I really didn't. Do you really think I do? Really? That's odd."

She laughed, and spotted The Collected Robert Frost The Collected Robert Frost on the bookshelf. on the bookshelf.

"Hand me that," she said, pointing to it. "I want to read that poem you were reciting. That day." He hesitated, then got it down for her. It was one called Desert Places Desert Places, she saw when she looked up the first line in the index. She began reading aloud, finis.h.i.+ng with the lines, They cannot scare me with their empty s.p.a.ces/Between stars-on stars where no human race is./I have it in me so much nearer home/To scare myself with my own desert places." They cannot scare me with their empty s.p.a.ces/Between stars-on stars where no human race is./I have it in me so much nearer home/To scare myself with my own desert places."

He had his back to her and his shoulders seemed suddenly fragile. She was silent for a moment.

Then she asked, "What's your daughter like? Eloise?"