O' Artful Death Part 6

IAN WAS WAITING for her in front of the historical society. for her in front of the historical society.

"I'm sorry," she said breathlessly. "I ended up going across to the library and got wrapped up in my reading."

"That's just fine, I had to park down the street a bit," he said in a friendly voice. He took half of the stack of books the librarian had let her borrow on the Wentworths' card and tucked them under his arm.

Ian and Sweeney walked in silence for a few minutes before she spoke. "How was your afternoon? Did you find anything good?"

"Oh, yes. Everything went smoothly," he said stiffly, and the finality in his tone of voice stopped her from asking any more questions. When they got to his car, he opened the door for her and she felt a sudden flash of irritation. Chivalry was well and good, but on him, it seemed overly decorous, as though he felt guilty about something and was making up to her. "I'm fine," she said crossly, when he asked if she wanted to move her seat back.

This time, the silence in the car was awkward. Ian broke it by saying, " 'A few weeds and stubble showing last.' 'A few weeds and stubble showing last.' It's from a Robert Frost poem." She looked at him in confusion, but then she saw that they were pa.s.sing a broad expanse of snow-covered field where a few weeds and stalks poked through the white cover. It's from a Robert Frost poem." She looked at him in confusion, but then she saw that they were pa.s.sing a broad expanse of snow-covered field where a few weeds and stalks poked through the white cover.

"I never liked Frost until I came to Vermont. Isn't that strange?"

"No. It's the same for me. I've always loved the Americans, but not Frost. Always found him too rural rural, I think. Then I came here and I thought of that poem about the stone walls, the ..."

" 'Mending Wall,' " Sweeney said, and recited it. "Toby loves that poem. Loves Frost. Now I feel like I understand him a little better."

"Goodness. You've got it committed to memory."

"Oh, it's not as much a feat as it seems. I just have one of those memories. Photographic or whatever. If I've seen it on a page I can remember it, the image of it, you know?"

"Have you got plans this afternoon?" he asked as they pulled up in front of the house. "I was thinking about borrowing Patch's cross country skis and going for a spin. Interested?"

She undid her seatbelt and tried not to flush. Suddenly, she could hardly look at him. "Oh, I'm sorry," she said awkwardly. "I've got that appointment. With Bennett Dammers. Apparently he's the go-to man on the Byzantium colony. I'm just going over to ask him some questions. For my research."

He got out of the car quickly and gathered up her books and notebooks and a small briefcase from the back seat. When he slammed the car door, Sweeney flinched.

"Fine, another time then," he said smoothly, looking into her eyes before going into the house.

TEN.

BENNETT DAMMERS'S HOUSE, Windy Hill, was in the section of the colony that wrapped itself along the curve of the river, stretching north toward town. Sweeney detected a slight difference in the architectural style of Windy Hill and the six or so estates around it. The houses in the "Upper Colony" had been built earlier and they were somehow grander, less eccentric than those on The Island.

Sitting in his study, Sweeney marveled at the small, strange worlds she and her fellow academics came to inhabit. A week ago, she hadn't known much about the arts colony in Byzantium, Vermont. Now, here she was sitting in front of the undisputed expert on the colony, a man who, more or less, lived back in the world the artists had lived in.

When Bennett Dammers talked about them, it was as though they were old friends. Gilmartin this, Gilmartin that. They might as well have gone to boarding school together.

He even dressed like an Edwardian bohemian, in a floppy bow tie and wrinkled white s.h.i.+rt, a black hat on a stand by the door. In the pictures of picnics and parties in the copy of Dammers's book in the Wentworths' library, the artists were mostly wearing the same thing. His fine white hair had thinned down to a cottony tuft over each ear and his eyes were pale robin's eggs surrounded by spidery red vessels.

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 gla.s.ses 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 s.h.i.+rt 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 a.s.sociate 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 c.o.c.ktail 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 protege 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 s.p.a.ce.

"It was very complicated," he said finally. "As most things are. Colonial, almost. If you think about the word colony colony. Well, that's what it was. They colonized 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. ..." 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 ma.s.s 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 t.i.tled. 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 G.o.dsake.

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 a terre pied a terre that were, well, definitely untoward. Does that answer your question?" He was grinning, enjoying shocking her. 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 s.e.x 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 embarra.s.s him. What could she say? Actually my father killed himself when I was thirteen and my fiance died in a violent accident a year ago Actually my father killed himself when I was thirteen and my fiance 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.