O' Artful Death - By Sarah Stewart Taylor Page 0,55
have forgiven it, but Emily had this idea that they wouldn’t, that they condemned her for leaving the country. It went from there and they never spoke again. If Electra were a different sort of person, she might have made overtures. But she was so proud. Still is. Shall we go?”
As Sweeney followed her out of the room, she caught a glimpse, out of the corner of her eye, of a piece of sculpture, a child sitting in a chair, hanging on a far wall. There was something familiar about the snowy white relief, the careful lines of the boy’s thick locks of hair.
“Isn’t that a lovely little relief? I’ve just brought that out as well.”
Sweeney went closer and saw, down in the right-hand corner, a signature. “J.L.B.” it said, in flowing, cursive script.
“Who’s J.L.B.?” She had to stop herself from grabbing Sabina by the shoulders and shaking the answer out of her.
“J.L.B?” She went over and peered at the signature. “Oh, I see. I don’t know. Gilda always thought a student of Morgan’s. Such a pretty little thing. I think Gilda found it lying around the studio and asked if she could have it. I’ve always kept it. Why?”
Sweeney stared at the relief. The style was the same as Mary’s stone. It had to be the same artist. Bennett Dammers had been right that it was a student. But which student had it been?
Sabina showed her around the spacious upstairs rooms, including the one that had been Gilda’s studio. It seemed to have been preserved exactly the way it had been left, an easel still set up in a corner, with an unfinished canvas on it. Sweeney went over to look at it. A winter landscape, much like the one just outside the window, was emerging from the white of the canvas. Bottles of turpentine and tubes of paint were scattered on a low table. A smock hung from a peg and a couple of finished Gilda Donetti canvases were piled against a wall.
Sabina pointed to a small pottery urn on the mantel. “That’s her,” she said. “I know I should have given her a proper gravestone, but I’m selfish. I wanted her here. You must disapprove.”
“A gravestone is for the living, not the dead. I think it should be up to you,” Sweeney said kindly. But she shivered. There was something creepy about the shrine.
“Are you cold? I can get you a sweater.”
“No, I’m okay.” Sweeney went over to the window and looked out at the white emptiness. “I loved seeing your house, but I suppose I should really get going. I think they’re expecting me back at the Wentworths’. I can walk Electra back if you’d like.”
“That would be wonderful.” Sabina shut off the light and closed the door behind them. “It’s a huge house for one person, but I can’t bear to sell it. I feel somehow as though I would lose her if I did.” Downstairs, she helped Sweeney and Electra into their coats.
“It’s silly,” she continued saying as she showed them out. “But I haven’t really moved on, I guess. Sometimes you don’t. Or can’t. We live so much in the past here. Do you know what I mean?”
“Yes,” Sweeney said. “I think I do. I liked hearing your stories.”
“Well. Come again. You’ll be at the party?”
“Oh yes, the party. Saturday, right?”
“Yes. We look forward to it all year around here, though it’s such hard work for Patch and Britta. If I think of it, I’ll look through Gilda’s things for notes on the relief.”
SWEENEY AND ELECTRA stepped out into the cold. It felt good to be out of the close atmosphere of the house.
“There was a lovely portrait of Rosemary upstairs,” Sweeney said as they walked arm in arm along the snow-covered road. “It was fun to see it. She seems so much a part of things here.”
“Yes. She does seem to fit right in, doesn’t she. She’s like her grandfather, I think. Has a real love for Byzantium. Emily—my daughter and Rosemary’s mother—always hated it, found it stifling, couldn’t wait to get away.”
“It must have been hard having Marcus Granger for a father.” Sweeney had been reading about the career of Marcus Granger. Though he had resisted the century’s move away from realism and landscape painting, he had made quite a name for himself as a stalwart realist and larger-than-life personality. Bennett Dammers’s book was full of stories about his famous temper.