O' Artful Death - By Sarah Stewart Taylor Page 0,61
sport of skiing and wondering about Gally.
THEY GOT BACK to the house in the late afternoon and showered and changed to go out to dinner at Les Deux Canards, Patch and Britta’s favorite restaurant in Byzantium.
As they were getting ready to go, Sweeney said, “It’s really weird. I’ve lost my emerald earrings. You guys haven’t found them, have you?”
“Those ones you were wearing at dinner?” Gwinny asked. “I liked those.”
“I’ll look around for them,” Britta said. “Maybe you just misplaced them. They were lovely.” Her voice was cheerful, but Sweeney thought she saw worry in her eyes.
LES DEUX CANARDS, housed in a perfectly restored Georgian mansion on Byzantium’s Main Street, reminded Sweeney of a combination of a Savoy Raclette restaurant she’d eaten in once and The Cock and Lamb, her favorite pub in Oxford. As a student, she’d often settled into a snug at the back to read and drink pints of Guinness, something her English friends had ribbed her for. The library was for coursework, pubs were for socializing, they’d said. On her last trip to Oxford, Sweeney had been dismayed to find that The Cock and Lamb was now a nightclub called—bizarrely but nodding to tradition—The Rooster.
The walls of this cozy little bar and restaurant were papered in a cream and blue fleur-de-lis pattern and covered with landscape paintings and old photographs of the Byzantium artists. The long bar up at the front was ornate, a rich, dark mahogany, and at eight o’clock it was cluttered with skiers and end-of-the-workday revelers. The men seemed all to have beards and work boots and expensive jackets, and there were a lot of beautiful, earthy women with long hair.
In the car on the way to the restaurant Britta had told Sweeney that it was all over town now that Ruth Kimball hadn’t committed suicide. “Gwinny was supposed to babysit for a family we know tonight. But they called this afternoon to say they wouldn’t be needing her after all. I felt just sick. We haven’t done anything!” She’d sounded as though she was about to cry.
As they’d come into the restaurant, there had been a strange, halting moment in which conversation had slowed and a few people had turned to watch them enter. Sweeney felt the attention of everyone in the room focus on them as they made their way to a table in the back. “Everyone’s staring at us,” Gwinny had whispered to them.
Once they were seated, Patch said quietly, “Let’s have a good time. We haven’t done anything wrong. We don’t care what people think.”
“Hey, look Gwinny,” Trip said, looking at the menu. “Sweetbreads. That’s brains. You should get some. Maybe it would make you smarter.” He was sitting on Sweeney’s other side and had been telling her about boarding school life and playing Nathan Detroit in the school’s production of Guys and Dolls.
“Fuck you,” Gwinny said nonchalantly. The twins laughed.
“Gwinny!” Britta gave her a stern look.
“I bet Ian will get sweetbreads,” Sweeney told Gwinny in a loud stage whisper. “English people like all kinds of disgusting innards and brains and things. Tripe. Trotters.”
Gwinny giggled.
“Only those brains belonging to American professors,” Ian, who was sitting directly across from them, countered loudly, winking at Sweeney. He was making an effort to cheer them all up, she realized, and it made her warm to him.
“Because we have the best brains, is that it?” She nudged Gwinny, who laughed again.
“Yes, the brains of art historians are known to be particularly delicious. A bit tough sometimes from so much thinking, but nonetheless . . .” The waitress appeared over his shoulder and everyone looked down at their menus again.
After they had ordered, Toby asked Ian about his job.
“Basically, I look for pieces that are very valuable whose owners don’t know they’re very valuable. I’m a bit of a confidence man, really. I don’t ever want to be dishonest with anybody, but my profit margin depends on my being able to acquire something for less than it’s worth.”
“Ian makes himself sound like some kind of crook,” Patch said. “The truth is that he’s probably the most respected decorative arts guy in Britain. He headed up a commission last year that did a survey of decorative arts in country estates. It was a really important piece of work.”
Gwinny took a sip of her father’s wine and said, “No offense, Ian, but how did you get so interested in lamps and stuff? It isn’t even art really, is it?”