O' Artful Death - By Sarah Stewart Taylor Page 0,6
It would be much too easy if Ruth Kimball could just explain the whole thing, but years of research had taught her that sometimes the obvious route to an answer was the best one.
She got the number from information and then tried to decide what to do. She had discovered over the years that people sometimes got angry when asked about long-dead ancestors. There was often enmity and resentment buried deep among the roots of family trees. She could write a letter, but something in her wanted to know now.
The phone rang six times before a woman answered with a gruff, “Yup?”
“Oh, yes. I was looking for Ruth Kimball. Is she available?”
“Yup?”
“I’m sorry. Are you Ruth Kimball?”
“I said I was. What do you want?”
Sweeney took a deep breath, picturing an annoyed older woman, scowling down the phone. “Oh, I’m so sorry. My name is Sweeney St. George and I’m a professor down here in Boston. My area of specialty is funerary art, gravestones and things like that and well, the gravestone of an ancestor of yours, a Mary Denholm, was recently brought to my attention.” Good God, she was going on. Get to the point, Sweeney. “Anyway, I found it really intriguing and I was wondering if I could ask you a few questions about it?”
“Yup.”
“Well, yes. What I was wondering was . . .” She had forgotten her questions. “I mean, I’m looking for any information about the artist who created the stone. It’s very strange, for the time period and for the region.”
“I don’t know who did it. I don’t think anybody around here does anymore. Probably one of the artists from the Byzantium colony. You know about the colony?” She pronounced the word “colony” with an air of distaste. The woman’s accent was unlike any Sweeney had heard before, somewhere between Boston and London, a salty, almost colonial burr, as though her settler relatives had passed it down, barely adulterated by two hundred years in the New World. She pronounced the name of her hometown Bisantum, the way Toby did.
“Yes,” Sweeney said. “You mean the Byzantium Arts Colony?”
“That’s right. One of the artists, I think.”
“Oh. Well, could I ask you how Mary Denholm died? She was very young and it might have a bearing on who created the stone and why they chose such a large monument.” Sweeney was thinking about Victorian monuments made to commemorate children who had died in large scale tragedies like apartment fires or mine disasters.
Then she heard a child’s voice in the background and Ruth Kimball told her to hold on for a moment, calling out a muffled warning. “Well,” she said when she was back on the phone, “she was supposed to have drowned, you know. That was the story that was got about. But, my grandmother Ethel, who grew up with Mary, always said she’d been killed by one of the Byzantium artists and the whole thing was hushed up.”
“Killed? You mean murdered?”
“Yeah, murdered. That’s what my grandmother always said. No one around here thinks there’s anything to it but, well, they wouldn’t want it to get out, would they? The colony folks.”
“No, I suppose they wouldn’t. I . . .” There was a knock on her open office door and Brendan Freeman came in. Damn, she’d forgotten she had an appointment with him. “Oh, hold on, Mrs. Kimball.” She held up a finger, letting Brendan know she’d be off in a second. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Kimball. I have to go. Could I call you tonight perhaps, so we could talk at more length?”
“Got bingo tonight. I’ll be around tomorrow, though. My daughter Sherry’s working and I’m watching Charley. That’s my granddaughter.”
“Okay, fine. Thank you. Tomorrow evening then.”
She jotted down some notes as she gestured to Brendan to sit down.
Toby’s gravestone was getting even more interesting.
TWO
RUTH KIMBALL WAS NOT a beautiful woman. She had not been a beautiful girl or a beautiful young woman and at sixty-seven, she was not a beautiful older woman.
But there was something about her face that pleased her as she looked into the hall mirror to adjust her hat. Her skin was lined, but clear and pink, as though she’d just been out in the cold. And her eyes, which had always been her best feature, were still a pale, icy blue, the color of forget-me-nots. “You look at people too much,” her mother had always said. “It’s not ladylike. You make them think you can see right through them.”