O' Artful Death Part 16

And that was what broke the spell, for it was something that Colm had always done when he wanted to make love or when he was feeling sentimental, and she stumbled backward toward the door, mumbling that she was sorry but that she had to go.

TWENTY-FIVE.

DECEMBER 21.

Winter in the colony was a time of hunkering down, of keeping the houses warm with wood fires and hot coals at the bottom of the bed. And for the colonists who stayed year round, and those who came north for Christmas, it was a time of celebration.There was ritual to the season, as there was to most things at the colony. A giant tree was felled in the woods and brought to Birch Lane and decorated by the servants. Shortly before the children were allowed to come in, it was lit. Then their parents summoned them and they waited in the dark for the doors to the parlor to be opened. There was eggnog and hot cocoa and all kinds of sweets. When she was older, Violet Gilmartin remembered Morgan's annual turn as St. Nick for the Gilmartin's holiday parties. "He would put on a red coat and trousers and big black boots and a fake beard of white wool. Then, while the children were being given hot cocoa and cookies after their sleigh rides, he would sneak in the back door and surprise them. Handing out presents from the giant bag over his shoulder, he would ask each child if they had been naughty or nice. Of course they all said nice and got a present."There was one concession to his character that Morgan was not willing to make and that was to wear a hat. He hated hats and so until I saw a picture of St. Nicholas in a book, I a.s.sumed that he had red hair, no hat, and a long white beard."-Muse of the Hills: The Byzantium Colony, 18601956, BY BENNETT DAMMERS.IT WAS THE NEXT NIGHT, the night of the Christmas party, and Sweeney stood against a wall of the living room, feeling decidedly antisocial and overdressed in the vintage red c.o.c.ktail dress and spike heels she'd brought from home. Someone had told her once that redheads should never wear red. Usually it was a rule she liked to break, but tonight she was wis.h.i.+ng she'd stuck to something a little more modest. "Who's the flashy broad in the red dress?" she pictured the guests whispering to each other.

What must have been half the evergreens in Vermont had been sacrificed to transform Birch Lane into an approximation of the outdoors in winter. Little Christmas trees decorated with red and purple velvet bows sat on every surface and the giant tree in the foyer was hung with strings of silvery ornaments. Feathery boughs decorated mantels and shelves and tables, sending off a pleasant piney scent.

It was mystical, a glorious antidote to the stark, chilly world outdoors.

Sweeney asked the bartender to pour her a scotch and tried to drink it slowly. Then she took up a post in a corner of the living room, hoping no one was going to take her in hand and make sure she had a good time. She tried not to look forlorn.

It was eight now and the party was in full swing. A few couples danced over by the four-piece jazz band playing My Embraceable You My Embraceable You, and everyone else stood around a velvet-covered buffet table laden with wonderful things-smoked meats, a whole poached salmon, little bowls of caviar with toast and lemon wedges, oysters on a bed of crushed ice.

A dessert table in the hallway held six varieties of cakes, homemade Christmas stollen studded with fruit, crystal bowls of tiny, candied oranges, nuts and about twenty kinds of Christmas cookies. The living room, with another huge tree as the centerpiece, sparkled in candlelight.

Her efforts toward not looking forlorn obviously weren't enough. Willow, dressed almost as formally as Sweeney in a long blue velvet s.h.i.+ft and Indian print silk shawl, glanced over at her a couple of times before excusing herself from the group she'd been talking to and coming over.

"Sweeney, you look fantastic," she said kindly.

"Thanks. I was feeling a bit overdressed, actually."

"Oh, don't worry about that. I'm always overdressed up here. I refuse to let myself go just because everyone else does. I like to think of myself as a fas.h.i.+on voice in the wilderness, actually. Here, have one of these. Patch always buys the best."

Sweeney traded her tumbler for a flute. They sipped their champagne and then Willow said, "Isn't it something about Carl Thompson?"

The champagne was delicious and Sweeney drank it a little too quickly, the dry, bubbly fumes tickling her throat.

"Yeah. Everyone seems so relieved. I almost hadn't realized how much it was weighing on all your minds."

Willow's eyes were artfully made up with pink and beige shadow and dark mascara. They glanced up quickly at Sweeney, then darted away again, and she said falsely, "I know it was weighing on mine. I always felt that someone was going to just come in at any moment, you know? Anders went back to Boston today and I can't tell you how much better I feel being in the house alone, now that there's been an arrest."

"Anyway," she added, as a gray-haired man approached them, carrying a gla.s.s of champagne. "It's a huge relief. For all of us. Hi, Frances." Around the man's neck was a Christmas-themed ascot. His hair was in a ponytail and his eyebrows looked like fuzzy gray caterpillars. "We were just talking about Carl Thompson. Have you heard?"

"Yes," he said. "We're all relieved, although it's no relief for poor Mrs. Kimball's family."

He offered Sweeney a hand. "I'm Frances Rapacci. You must be Sweeney."

"Nice to meet you. Wasn't yours one of the houses that he broke into?"

"That's right." He looked slightly surprised that she knew. "We didn't lose much, an old radio, a few paintings, some knickknacks, but it was a horrible feeling to think that someone had been in there."

"What paintings?" Sweeney asked.

"Oh, nothing particularly valuable. It took us a few days to even remember what they had been. The thieves left much more valuable works right on the walls. Actually it's interesting. One of the pieces stolen was a Granger, not a good one, but we realized when we looked through the insurance records that it was of Rosemary. Her grandfather did it when she was just a toddler. I wish I could have shown it to her. She was a lovely little thing." He took a sip from his gla.s.s and added, "Well, who knows. Maybe we'll get it back now."

"We've been trying to decide if we should take out a new policy for the art," Willow said. "With everything that's been going on, we realized we'd get hardly anything for what we have."

"You really should look into it. Thank G.o.d, we didn't lose some of our really valuable stuff. With the way sales have been going lately, you need to get your collection appraised every year so you'll get what it's worth if something happens."

Sweeney, who had been forgotten, quietly downed her champagne and excused herself to get another drink. Despite her best intentions, she was starting to feel slightly tipsy, and she watched the partygoers from behind a veil of displaced feeling. They danced and talked and swirled around the room, but she might as well have been on the other side of a river, watching them through a fog. She had seen Ian only once, when he'd come down looking crisp and movie star handsome in his tuxedo, then he'd disappeared into the other room.

When Rosemary came up behind her and put an arm around her waist, Sweeney jumped as though she's been tapped on the shoulder by a ghost.

"Is this as strange to you as it is to me?" Rosemary whispered. "My grandmother's been telling me about the parties they used to have. But it always sounded like kids playing dress-me-up."

They both watched Patch make his way across the room, chatting jovially and topping off champagne gla.s.ses from the bottle he carried. It struck Sweeney that he was in his element as host.

"I had a nice talk with your grandmother the other day," Sweeney said. "She's a great old lady."

"Isn't she?"

"I think I'm starting to understand what it is that drew them all here. There's a sense of belonging to something important, something beautiful, and whether you're an artist or not, you're part of it."

"You're right," Rosemary said, smiling. "That's exactly what I felt when I arrived here. It was like stepping back in time, into this beautiful world, where nice things and art mattered more than anything. I felt somehow that I belonged to this world more than I've ever belonged to any other."

They were silent for a moment, watching the guests.

Sweeney asked, "Did you hear a lot about the colony when you were growing up."

"G.o.d, no. My parents pretended that it didn't exist. They'd had a falling out with my grandmother and Marcus when I was about four. After we moved to England and then South Africa, I never heard about it again."

"So how did you get in touch with your grandmother again, after your parents died?"

"Well, I wrote her to tell her about the car accident. I thought that she should know. And she wrote me a letter back saying that if I needed anything, I should let her know. I had just ended a relations.h.i.+p and was thinking about switching jobs and I did need ... It wasn't money so much as it was family. So I came to visit and it turned out that she needed someone to look after her. It worked out well for everyone. And I've fallen in love with Byzantium. It was absolutely instantaneous. I drove up and felt that I'd come home."

"Tell me about this thing with the condominiums. Was Ruth Kimball really going to sell her property?"

Rosemary looked at her curiously. "It all started before I got here, so I just know what I've heard from Grandmother. I think she did want to sell the house and move into something smaller that didn't need so much upkeep. So she'd been talking to a real estate developer who thought it would be a good spot for condominiums. Because of the ski area, people are always looking for second homes here. Everyone was furious, Patch and Anders especially. Of course the Wentworths would have been the ones looking right at them. For the rest of us, it was more the idea idea of it." of it."

Rosemary thought for a moment. "When it comes right down to it, we were all ready to fight to keep things the way they are. We're very attached to our past here, in case you haven't noticed."

"Did Ruth Kimball know how everyone felt?"

"I think she must have. Patch had been going to town selectboard meetings where they were discussing it and spoken his mind."

Sweeney lowered her voice, suddenly conscious that someone might hear them. "The thing I don't understand is why Patch didn't just buy her out if he was so worried about it."

"I know. I wondered about that, too. I think Mrs. Kimball was being stubborn. She felt that it was her land and Patch was trying to prevent her from doing what she wanted with it. It was a lot of money, too. It probably wouldn't have broken Patch, but it might have been a little bit of a stretch."

Sabina came up behind them and said, "What are you two up to? You look as though you're plotting to overthrow the king."

"Yes," Rosemary said, in a loud whisper. "Do you want to join our movement?" They all laughed.

"I feel so relieved about this burglary thing," Sabina said. "I didn't realize how much it's been weighing on my mind."

"I know," Rosemary said. "I feel like I've s.h.i.+fted a ton of bricks from my shoulders."

Sweeney had been trying to keep her face impa.s.sive, but a small nervous twitch must have caught their attention because they both looked at her strangely.

"Don't you feel relieved, Sweeney?" Rosemary asked.

"I don't know ... I ... Yes, of course."

"Oh look," Sabina said. "There's Bennett Dammers. I didn't know he was coming." She waved at him across the room, and he waved back cheerfully, hoisting his champagne gla.s.s in the air.

Sweeney told them she wanted to say h.e.l.lo.

The elderly man was seasonally resplendent in a white s.h.i.+rt, red suspenders and red silk bowtie. Sweeney kissed him on the cheek and traded his empty champagne gla.s.s for a full one from a pa.s.sing tray.

"Happy holidays, Mr. Dammers," she said. "It's so good to see you here."

"It's lovely to see you, my dear. I was hoping I'd get a chance to speak with you tonight. I got your message and looked through my records for you, and I did find a reference to Jean Luc Baladin-what a wonderful name that was. It seems a small relief signed by him was given to the Historical Society in the 1930s. I found the transference agreement. But the interesting thing is that there was a little note that went along with it. It noted that the relief might be of interest since Baladin had visited the colony, though he hadn't been a member per se. It seems he met Morgan in Europe and Morgan extended an invitation. So he wasn't exactly a student, you see. That's why he wasn't listed anywhere."

"That makes sense," Sweeney said, thinking. "I was trying to figure out how he could have escaped being listed."

"I hope it helps," Bennett Dammers said. "May I ask if you've discovered anything?"

"Just that it seems as though Baladin must have made Mary Denholm's gravestone." She wouldn't tell him until she knew exactly what had happened.

He smiled. "Well, congratulations. Isn't that what you were trying to find out?"

"Yes, I guess so. It's just that there are still some ... unanswered questions."

"There usually are. Are you having a good time?"

"Yes. I keep thinking about your description of the parties in your book. The modern-day version must seem very tame to you."

"It does," he said, smiling. "Though I suspect the music's better. In the old days, Gilmartin always insisted on singing. Apparently, he was not gifted with a particularly melodious voice." They talked about the accounts of the parties in his book for a few minutes and then Britta came over and announced that it was time to eat.

Sweeney went and filled her plate, and took it over to the couch, where Sabina and Rosemary were sitting with a big group of people.

"Isn't Bennett wonderful?" Sabina asked as Sweeney came over.

"I think I have a little bit of a crush on him," Rosemary said in a whisper, and Sweeney said that she did, too.

They ate happily for few minutes, and listened to a story one of the guests was telling about a trip to Morocco on which she had been robbed at knifepoint. Sweeney turned to ask Sabina if she wanted anything more to eat and found her sitting straight up on the couch and staring at the big window on the wall across from them.

"Sabina?" Rosemary asked after a moment. "Are you okay?"

"Did you see someone outside?" Sweeney stood up and looked through the window. There was nothing but the party, reflected in the gla.s.s. When she went over and cupped her hand against the window, she saw only the empty black night.

Sabina said nothing. She just stared. And after a moment, she put her plate down and started talking again, a.s.suring them that she was fine.

The moment pa.s.sed, but the tension wasn't broken until Patch came in dressed in boots and a parka. His face was ruddy from the cold. "Anyone want to go for a sleigh ride? I just brought it around."

Britta was standing at one end of the room, holding a plate of food. "Patch," she called out. "You're drunk. Be careful."

"I'm not so drunk," he called back cheerfully. "And I'm always careful."

Toby and Rosemary had put on their parkas and boots, too, and they stood beside Sweeney arm in arm.

"Come with us, Sweeney," Rosemary said, grinning. Willow and Ian and Gally and Trip had gotten dressed to go, too.

"Come on, Sweeney," Toby said. "Let's go. You'll love it. It's just like in Russian novels. You'll feel like Anna Karenina, racing across the steppes. And I promise there aren't any streetcars."

They were being kind to include her, and though she felt a thin rivulet of distilled fear snake its way down her spine, she nodded and let them lead her to the door.

TWENTY-SIX.

The highlight of any Christmas gathering at the Gilmartins was a sleigh ride up to Maple Hill. Herrick Gilmartin loved to drive his little German-made sleigh and he made a tradition of taking his guests up to watch the stars from the summit, one side of which formed a modest cliff above the river and offered pleasing views of The Island.He wasn't content merely to squire his pa.s.sengers, but would ask the cook to pack a basket of snacks and flasks of hot chocolate fortified with brandy. If there happened to be a musically talented guest at the house, pa.s.sengers might be serenaded atop Maple Hill as they viewed the night sky.-Muse of the Hills: The Byzantium Colony, 18601956, BY BENNETT DAMMERS.THE WENTWORTHS' SLEIGH was painted a glossy black, with red velvet upholstered seats and crimson blankets folded on the floor. It stood nearly ten feet tall, a gorgeous, strange insect that did look as though it were out of a Russian novel. was painted a glossy black, with red velvet upholstered seats and crimson blankets folded on the floor. It stood nearly ten feet tall, a gorgeous, strange insect that did look as though it were out of a Russian novel.

"It can seat twelve," Patch said as he climbed in and took the reins. "We got it from a bed and breakfast that used to take guests on sleigh rides. Isn't it great?" Sweeney, Toby, Rosemary, Willow, Ian and the twins settled in, tucking the blankets around their legs. Sweeney had put on a pair of Patch's high winter boots and her parka over her dress, but she s.h.i.+vered in the cold air.

The two giant Clydesdales harnessed to the sleigh pranced and snorted impatiently. They were handsome animals, their chestnut coats and bell-laden harnesses gleaming under the driveway lights. Patch murmured something soothing to them and turned around, holding up a silver flask. "Anybody? There's only one way to stay warm on a sleigh ride."

"I'll have a drop," Ian said. "I think it'll be really good to be drunk as we careen wildly across the landscape."

"Oh come on, Ian. Where's your sense of adventure?" Willow teased him. "Patch has only lost a couple of pa.s.sengers."

"My grandfather actually did lose one," Patch said. "Fell right out as they went around a turn. But I probably shouldn't be telling you that."

"What, some artist?" Ian said. "He was probably a depressive and decide to off himself by leaping from the sleigh. You know artists, always offing themselves." He pa.s.sed the flask back around the sleigh and it struck Sweeney that he was very drunk. The twins and Toby each took a swig as the flask came around to them.

"Ready?" Patch called. And with a great heaving the sleigh started off, two battery-powered lanterns on the front showing the way through the night.

The horses pulled the sleigh down behind the house and across the back lawn, the runners whistling as they skated across the frozen snow. Sweeney took another gulp of the brandy and felt it shoot a warm path to her stomach.

As they reached the open field, they gathered up speed. It was exhilarating, the cold wind whipping at her face, the other bodies pressed against her. The night was clear and the sky was filled with stars. Sweeney raised her face up to the dark, cold air.

They sailed across the frozen fields as if borne by a great wind and she watched the cemetery and the Kimb.a.l.l.s' house fly by in the moonlight as the sleigh glided along the edge of the woods and then, suddenly, came out into another open field. The broad, opalescent expanse of it lay out in front of them like a huge, white sheet.