O' Artful Death - By Sarah Stewart Taylor Page 0,18

children to Toby and back again. “What she means is that the cemetery may still be roped off. You see, that’s where Ruth Kimball died.”

SIX

PATCH WENTWORTH felt relief slow his blood as he watched Toby and Sweeney disappear across the back field, down toward the cemetery. He stood for a moment, looked across the field in the other direction, toward the other houses, toward one house in particular, and felt a sudden gaping loneliness. He didn’t want to go back inside. He breathed in the cold air for a few moments, like a smoker taking a last drag on the porch, then lifted a load of firewood into his arms and went into the kitchen. The outdoors clung on him like cigarette smoke, a cold, gray smell, of frozen water, deadened nature.

“Brit?”

She was standing at the window, looking out over the white fields rolling down to the river and she started at the sound of his voice. She said nothing, still looking out the window, then carefully tucked a few pieces of her fine blond and gray hair behind her ear. The action was as precise as everything she did, Patch thought, an ordering of the elements that made up her world. He had once found it endearing.

“What do you think of Sweeney?” Patch deposited the wood into the box and then pushed a log into the large woodstove against one wall. It was burning just right, emanating a cozy cloud of heat and warming the huge kitchen. As a child he had liked the kitchen best of all the rooms at Birch Lane. His grandparents had been strict about children running through the house, but in the kitchen he had been allowed to spill out toys on the floor or draw at the big table while the cook and housekeeper worked away at the cookstove they’d had in those days. It was still his favorite room, where the family ate and where the children did their homework when they were all home from school. It was Britta’s room, he realized. It was here that she seemed happiest and where he had glimpses of what their marriage had once been, what he had thought it might be the first time he brought her to Byzantium.

He watched her for a moment, shocked by how thin she’d become in the last few months. Then he took off his parka and boots, poured himself a cup of coffee and sat down at the kitchen table with the paper. Droplets of melted snow glistened on his blond hair until he ran a hand through it. His face was ruddy from the cold.

“She seems nice,” Britta said finally, turning away from the window and going back to stirring something in a pot on the stove.

“Her father was Paul St. George. You know, the big orange paintings of Arizona or Mexico or somewhere. I asked Toby about it just now, before she came down, and he said not to say anything because she doesn’t like people to know.”

Britta finally turned around and looked at him. “The one who . . .?”

“Yeah. Isn’t that sad. She was pretty young, I guess.” He took a deep breath. “I wish she didn’t have this idea about looking into Mary Denholm’s gravestone. This is hardly the time to be bothering Sherry. Don’t you think it’s kind of inappropriate?”

“I don’t know. It was Toby’s idea.” She gestured at the window. “The police are back. I just saw the car.”

He went to stand behind her, conscious of her thin shoulders, the rigidity of her back. He looked out the window, and saw a state trooper car parked on the road leading to the Kimballs’ driveway.

“Patch, why would they bring the state police in? Wouldn’t Cooper be able to handle it?”

“I’m sure the state cops get involved whenever there’s a death involving a gun,” he said breezily.

Britta took a pan over to the sink and stood there, her back to him, for a few minutes before the metal clattered against the porcelain.

He felt a flash of annoyance. If there was anything that defined his marriage it was that communicative clatter. It was how Britta told him what she wanted these days. “What’s wrong?” he asked finally.

She hesitated, then turned to him. “Patch, they—the police—asked me what everyone was doing during that afternoon. Where we all were.”

“Yes?”

“Well, I said that you were outside stacking wood, but . . .”

He waited and Britta went back to the window. She hesitated again for a long moment