Moonlight Becomes You

“That daughter would be Sarah,” Liam said. Then he smiled. “Did Mrs. Bainbridge happen to tell you about the stunt my idiot cousin Earl pulled that sent Sarah into orbit?”

“No.”

“It’s priceless. Earl lectures about funeral customs. You’ve heard that, haven’t you? I swear the guy is batty. When everybody else is off playing golf or sailing, his idea of a good time is to spend hours in cemeteries, taking tombstone rubbings.”

“In cemeteries!” Maggie exclaimed.

“Yes, but that’s only a small part of it. What I’m getting to is the time he lectured on funeral practices to a group at Latham Manor, of all places. Mrs. Bainbridge wasn’t feeling well, but Sarah had been visiting her and attended the lecture.

“Earl included in his little talk the story about the Victorian bell ringers. It seems that wealthy Victorians were so afraid of being buried alive that they had a hole built into the top of their caskets, for an air vent reaching up to the surface of the ground. A string was tied to the finger of the presumed deceased, run through the air vent, and attached to a bell on top of the grave. Then someone was paid to keep watch for a week in case the person in the casket did, in fact, regain consciousness and try ringing the bell.”

“Dear God,” Maggie gasped.

“No, but here’s the best part now, the part about Earl. Believe it or not, he has a sort of museum up here near the funeral home that’s filled with all kinds of funeral symbols and paraphernalia, and he got the brainstorm to have a dozen replicas of a Victorian cemetery bell cast to use to illustrate the lecture. Without telling them what they were, the jerk passed them out to twelve of these ladies, all in their sixties and seventies and eighties, and tied the string attached to them onto their ring fingers. Then he told them to hold the bell in their other hand, wiggle their fingers, and pretend they were in a casket and trying to communicate with the grave watcher.”

“How appalling!” Maggie said.

“One of the old girls actually fainted. Mrs. Bainbridge’s daughter collected Earl’s bells and was so irate she practically threw him and his bells off the premises.”

Liam paused, then in a more somber voice added, “The worrisome part is that I think Earl relishes telling that story himself.”

49

Neil had tried to phone Maggie several times, first from the locker room of the club, and again as soon as he got home. Either she’s been out all day, or she’s in and out, or she’s not answering the phone, he thought. But even if she was in and out, she surely would have seen his note.

Neil accompanied his parents to a neighbor’s home for cocktails, where he tried Maggie again at seven. He then elected to take his own car to dinner so that if he did reach her later, it might be possible to stop by her house for a drink.

There were six people at the table in the dinner party at Canfield House. But even though the lobster Newburg was superb, and his dinner companion, Vicky, the daughter of his parents’ friends, was a very attractive banking executive from Boston, Neil was wildly restless.

Knowing it would be rude to skip the after-dinner drink in the bar, he agonized through the chitchat, and when everyone finally stood up to go at ten-thirty, Neil managed to refuse gracefully Vicky’s invitation to join her and her friends for tennis on Sunday morning. Finally, with a sigh of relief, he was in his own car.

He checked the time; it was quarter of eleven. If Maggie was home and had gone to bed early, he didn’t want to disturb her. He justified his decision to drive by her house by telling himself that he simply wanted to see if her car was in the driveway- just to be sure she was still in Newport.

His initial excitement at seeing that her car was indeed there was tempered when he realized that another car was parked in front of her place, a Jaguar with Massachusetts plates. Neil drove by at a snail’s pace and was rewarded by seeing the front door open. He caught a glimpse of a tall man standing next to Maggie, then, feeling like a voyeur, he accelerated and turned the corner at Ocean Drive, heading back to Portsmouth, his stomach churning with regret and jealousy.

Saturday, October 5th

50

The Requiem for Greta Shipley at Trinity Church was wellattended. As she sat and listened to the familiar prayers, Maggie realized that all the people who had been invited to Nuala’s dinner party were in attendance.

Dr. Lane and his wife, Odile, sat with a number of the guests from the residence, including everyone who had been at Mrs. Shipley’s table on Wednesday evening, with the exception of Mrs. Bainbridge.

Malcolm Norton and his wife, Janice, were there. He had a hangdog look, Maggie thought. When he passed her on the way in, he stopped to say he had been trying to reach her and would like to meet with her after the funeral.

Earl Bateman had come over to speak to her before the service began. “After all this, when you think about Newport, I’m very much afraid that your memories of the place will be of funerals and cemeteries,” he said, his eyes owlish behind lightly tinted round-frame sunglasses.

He hadn’t waited for an answer but had walked past her to take an empty place in the first pew.

Liam arrived halfway through the service and sat down next to her. “Sorry,” he murmured in her ear. “Damn alarm didn’t go off.” He took her hand, but after an instant she withdrew it. She knew that she was the object of many sidelong glances and did not want to have rumors swirling about her and Liam. But, she admitted to herself, her sense of isolation was relieved when his firm shoulder brushed against hers.

When she had filed past the casket at the funeral home, Maggie had studied for an instant the tranquil, lovely face of the woman she had known so briefly yet liked so much. The thought had crossed her mind that Greta Shipley and Nuala and all their other good friends were probably having a joyous reunion.

That thought had brought with it the nagging question of the Victorian bells.

When she passed the three people who had been introduced as Mrs. Shipley’s cousins, their faces were fixed in appropriately serious expressions, but she detected there none of the honest, raw pain that she saw in the eyes and countenances of Mrs. Shipley’s close friends from Latham Manor.

I’ve got to find out when and how each of those women whose graves I visited died, and how many of them had close relatives, Maggie thought, information that she had recognized as pertinent during her visit to Mrs. Bainbridge.

For the next two hours, she felt as if she were operating on some kind of remote control-observing, recording, but not feeling. “I am a camera” was her own reaction to herself as, Liam at her side, she walked away from Greta Shipley’s grave after the interment.

She felt a hand on her arm. A handsome woman with silver hair and remarkably straight carriage stopped her. “Ms. Holloway,” she said, “I’m Sarah Bainbridge Cushing. I want to thank you for visiting Mother yesterday. She so appreciated it.”

Sarah. This was the daughter who had tangled with Earl about his lecture on Victorian bells, Maggie reflected. She wanted to have a chance to talk privately to her.

In the next breath, Sarah Cushing provided the opportunity: “I don’t know how long you’re staying in Newport, but tomorrow morning I’m taking Mother out for brunch, and I’d be delighted if you could join us.”

Maggie agreed readily.

“You’re staying at Nuala’s house, aren’t you? I’ll pick you up at eleven o’clock, if that’s all right.” With a nod,