68

When Maggie got back to the house, she stood for long minutes on the porch, breathing in deeply, inhaling the fresh, clean, salt scent of the ocean. It seemed to her that after the museum visit the smell of death was in her nostrils.

Earl Bateman enjoyed death, she thought, feeling a shiver of repulsion run up her spine. He enjoyed talking about it, recreating it.

Liam had told her that Earl had relished describing how frightened the Latham residents had been when he had made them handle the bells. She could certainly understand their fright, although Earl’s version of the incident was that it had upset him so much, he had packed away the bells in the third-floor storeroom.

Maybe it was a little bit of both, she thought. He might have enjoyed terrifying them, but he certainly had been furious when he was sent packing, she thought.

He had seemed so anxious to show her everything in that strange museum. So why hadn’t he offered to show the bells to her as well? she wondered. Surely it couldn’t have been just because of painful memories over what had happened to him at Latham Manor.

So was it because he had hidden them on the graves of women from the residence-women who might have been in the audience the night of that lecture? Another thought struck her. Had Nuala attended that lecture?

Maggie realized that she was hugging her arms tight against her body and practically shivering. As she turned to go in the house, she took the note she had left for Chief Brower off the door. Once inside, the first thing she saw was the framed picture Earl had brought her.

She picked it up.

“Oh, Nuala,” she said aloud, “Finn-u-ala.” She studied the photo for a minute. It would be possible to crop it to show Nuala alone, and she could have it enlarged.

When she had started the sculpture of Nuala, she had collected the most recent pictures she could find of her around the house. None were as recent as this, though; it would be a wonderful help in the final stages of creating the bust. She would take it upstairs now, she decided.

Chief Brower had said he would stop by this afternoon, but it was already a little after five. She decided to go ahead and do a little work on the sculpture. But on the way up to the studio, Maggie remembered that Chief Brower had said he would phone before he came. She wouldn’t hear the phone in the studio.

I know, Maggie thought, as she passed the bedroom, this would be a good time to clean out the rest of Nuala’s things from the closet floor. I’ll just take the picture to the studio and come back.

In the studio, she took the photograph out of the frame and carefully tacked it to the bulletin board by the refectory table. Then she switched on the spotlight and examined the picture closely.

The photographer must have told them to smile, she thought. Smiling had come naturally to Nuala. If there’s anything wrong with this picture, it’s that it isn’t enough of a close-up to show what I saw in her eyes that night at dinner.

Standing next to Nuala, Earl Bateman looked uncomfortable, ill at ease, his smile definitely forced. Still, she thought, there was nothing about him that suggested the frightening obsessiveness she had witnessed this afternoon.

She remembered Liam saying once that a crazy streak ran in the family. She had taken his remark as a joke at the time, but now she wasn’t so sure.

Liam probably never took a bad photograph in his life, she thought, as she continued to study the picture. There’s a strong family resemblance between the cousins, mostly the facial structure. But what looks peculiar on Earl, looks good on Liam.

I was so lucky Liam brought me to that party, and so lucky I spotted Nuala, she mused as she turned away and started down the stairs. She remembered how it almost hadn’t happened, how she had decided to go home because Liam was so preoccupied, racing from one group of cousins to the next. She had definitely felt neglected that evening.

He’s certainly changed his tune since I arrived up here, though, she thought.

How much should I tell Chief Brower when he comes? she asked herself. Even if Earl Bateman put those bells on the graves, there’s nothing inherently illegal about that. But why would he lie about the bells being in the storeroom?

She went into the bedroom and opened the closet door. The only two items that remained hanging there were the blue cocktail suit Nuala had worn that night at the Four Seasons, and the pale gold raincoat that she had rehung in the closet when Neil and his father moved the bed.

Every inch of the closet floor, however, was covered with shoes and slippers and boots, mostly in disarray.

Maggie sat on the floor and began the job of sorting them out. Some of the shoes were quite worn, and those she tossed behind her to discard. But others, like the pair she thought she remembered Nuala wearing at the party, were both new and fairly expensive.

True, Nuala wasn’t a neatnik, but surely she never would have tossed new shoes around like that, Maggie decided. Then she caught her breath. She knew the bureau drawers had been ransacked by the intruder who killed Nuala, but had he even taken the time to rummage through her shoes?

The telephone rang and she jumped. Chief Brower, she thought, and realized she would not be at all sorry to see him.

Instead of Brower, however, it was Detective Jim Haggerty, calling to say that the chief would like to postpone the meeting until first thing in the morning. “Lara Horgan, the state medical examiner, wants to come with him, and they both are out on emergencies right now.”

“That’s all right,” Maggie said. “I’ll be here in the morning.” Then, remembering that she had felt comfortable with Detective Haggerty when he had stopped by to see her, she decided to ask him about Earl Bateman.

“Detective Haggerty,” she said, “this afternoon Earl Bateman invited me to see his museum.” She chose her words carefully. “It’s such an unusual hobby.”

“I’ve been there,” Haggerty said. “Quite a place. I guess it’s not really an unusual hobby for Earl, though, when you consider he’s from a fourth-generation funeral family. His father was mighty disappointed he didn’t go into the business. But you could say that in his own way he has.” He chuckled.

“I guess so.” Again Maggie spoke slowly, measuring what she was about to say. “I know his lectures are very successful, but I gather that there was one unfortunate incident at Latham Manor. Do you know about that?”

“Can’t say as I do, but if I were the age of those folks, I wouldn’t want to hear about funerals, would you?”

“No, I wouldn’t.”

“I’ve never gone to one of his lectures myself,” Haggerty continued, then lowered his voice. “I’m not one to gossip, but folks around here thought that museum idea was crazy. But heck, the Batemans could buy and sell most of the Moores. Earl may not look it or sound it, but he’s got serious money in his own right. Came to him from his father’s side.”

“I see.”

“The Moore clan call him Cousin Weirdo, but I say most of it’s because they’re jealous.”

Maggie thought of Earl as she had seen him today: staring past her at the spot where Nuala’s body had been lying; frenetically charged as he dragged her from exhibit to exhibit; sitting in the hearse, his eyes staring intently after her.

“Or maybe it’s because they know him too well,” she said. “Thanks for calling, Detective Haggerty.”

She hung up, grateful that she had made the decision not to talk about the bells. She was sure Haggerty would have laughingly ascribed their ghoulish appearance on the graves to another eccentricity of a rich man.

Maggie went back to the job of sorting out the shoes. This time she decided that the simplest thing to do was to bundle most of them in garbage bags. Worn shoes in a small, narrow size certainly wouldn’t be much use to anyone else.