O' Artful Death - By Sarah Stewart Taylor Page 0,71

and disappeared into The Auld Sod, the best Irish bar in the neighborhood.

She looked down at the spot where Ian had been standing. What did he want? She hadn’t been able to shake the feeling that he had some business in Byzantium, that he was somehow wrapped up in the mystery of Mary Denholm’s death and Ruth Kimball’s murder. And now he’d followed her to Boston.

She remembered the credit card receipt she’d picked up accidentally with her books the day he’d driven her downtown. She’d forgotten to give it back to him, so it was still in the front pocket of her research bag. She got it out and found the name of the restaurant, “Jane’s Diner,” in Suffolk, a large town next to Byzantium, and saw that he’d spent $11.93 on eggs, bacon, coffee, orange juice and a cranberry muffin. She was about to put it back when she saw the date printed in small faint purple type. It was three days before she and Toby had arrived in Byzantium.

Yet, when Patch had introduced Ian to them, he’d said he had just arrived from London. She remembered it distinctly now. Patch told them that Ian was exhausted because he’d just that day arrived from London. Sweeney couldn’t imagine why Patch would have lied to them about it, so Ian must have lied to Patch.

But why?

Sweeney forced herself to stop thinking about Ian. She had the rest of Myra Benton’s diary to read and she settled down on the couch. She worked her way through seemingly endless descriptions of Benton’s work on a sculpture.

She had been reading for almost thirty minutes and she was growing bored of Myra Benton’s confessional. There was a sly intimation of some kind of romantic adventure with a student of Gilmartin’s, but no mention of J.L.B. She still hadn’t reached the summer Mary died.

Finally, in May of 1890, Myra Benton was back at Byzantium.

And then:

July 6, 1890—The girls and I went for a lovely picnic today at the pond and asked the Denholm girls to come along as they do not have much fun on account of their father’s strictness. We brought cold meat and drank water from the little spring on the way and Ethel said it was the first picnic she had ever gone on and that she was enjoying herself immensely.

It is just the time of year when the wildflowers are blooming and as we walked, we saw flowers of every variety. They were so beautiful, I could hardly believe they were of nature and we plucked them up and made little crowns for ourselves. I came upon Mary picking the petals from a daisy and saying, to herself, he loves me, he loves me not, and I asked her who her sweetheart was and she said she would not tell me and then flushed so deeply I could not help but laugh and tell her that she looked exactly like a blushing bride.

The next passage of interest was dated July twenty-sixth, 1890:

M. and J.L.B. had most terrible row tonight. I was coming back from the Ladies Guild meeting at the Church and when I had brought the horses into the stable and put them away I thought I would pass by the studio and have a word with M. about my “Hermione” work, since I have been so distracted and have made no headway these last three weeks. In any case, thinking M. might have some words of advice, I took a lantern and started for the studio when I heard them screaming at each other like jealous women.

“I won’t have it,” J.L.B. called out. “It’s madness, sheer madness. The deception, the lies, it’s too much.”

“My dear man, surely you see that it is . . . unavoidable.” M. was far more measured than J.L.B., but still his voice rose from the studio and reached me where I stood, shivering on the path. I would like to say, dear diary, that I turned on my heel and went straight back to the house, but instead I waited there and eavesdropped, knowing they were too involved in the discussion to leave the studio and find me.

Then, to my surprise, I heard G’s voice also. He spoke softly and I could hear only the fragment of a sentence, something that sounded like “. . . and I wish things could be different.”

The three of them fought on like that for a few minutes more and I was about to go when I heard