Moonlight Becomes You

her shaking hands. She stared at it; it was the exact twin of the bell she had taken from Nuala’s grave.

Streaks of dry dirt clung to the rim. Other tiny particles of soft earth crumbled loose on her fingers.

Maggie remembered that there had been dirt in the pocket of the gold raincoat, and she recalled that when she rehung the cocktail suit the other day she had had the impression of something falling.

Nuala was wearing her raincoat when she took this bell off Mrs. Rhinelander’s grave, she thought. It must have frightened her. She left it in her pocket for a reason. Did she find it the day she changed her will, Maggie wondered, the day before she died?

Did it in some way validate suspicions Nuala was beginning to have about the residence?

Earl claimed that the bells he had cast were in the storeroom of the museum. If the twelve he had were still there, someone else might have been placing others on the graves, she reasoned.

Maggie knew that Earl had gone back to Providence. And that the key to the museum was under the planter on the porch. Even if she told the police about the bells, they would have no legal right to go into the museum and look for the twelve Earl said were there, assuming they took her seriously, which they probably wouldn’t.

But he did invite me to let myself into the museum at any time, to try to come up with visuals for his cable programs, Maggie thought. I’ll take my camera with me. That will give me an excuse for being there if anyone happens to see me.

But I don’t want anyone to see me, she told herself. I’ll wait until it’s dark, then I’ll drive over there. There’s only one way to find out for sure. I’ll look in the storeroom for the box with the bells. I’m sure I won’t find more than six of them.

And if that’s all I find, I’ll know he’s a liar. I’ll take pictures so I can compare them with the bells on the graves and the two I have. Then tomorrow, when Chief Brower comes, I’ll give him the roll of film, she decided, and I’ll tell him that I think Earl Bateman has found a way to take revenge on the residents of Latham Manor. And he’s doing it with the help of Nurse Zelda Markey.

Revenge? Maggie froze with the realization of what she was considering. Yes, placing the bells on the graves of women who had been party to his humiliation would be a form of revenge. But would that have been enough for Earl? Or could he possibly, somehow, have been involved with their deaths as well? And that nurse, Zelda Markey-clearly she was tied to Earl somehow. Could she be his accomplice?

69

Although it was well past his normal dinnertime, Chief Brower was still at the station. It had been a hectic and senselessly tragic afternoon, involving two terrible incidents. A carful of teenagers out for a joyride had plowed into an elderly couple, and they were now in critical condition. Then an angry husband had violated a restraining order and shot his wife, from whom he was separated.

“At least we know the wife will make it,” Brower told Haggerty. “And thank God; she’s got three kids.”

Haggerty nodded.

“Where’ve you been?” Brower asked sourly. “Lara Horgan’s waiting to hear what time Maggie Holloway can see us tomorrow morning.”

“She told me she’ll be home all morning,” Haggerty said. “But wait a minute before you call Dr. Horgan. I want to tell you first about a little visit I paid to Sarah Cushing. Her mother, Mrs. Bainbridge, lives at Latham Manor. When I was a kid I was in a Boy Scout troop with Sarah Cushing’s son. Got to know her real well. Nice lady. Very impressive. Very smart.”

Brower knew there was no use rushing Haggerty when he got into one of these accounts. Besides, he looked especially pleased with himself. To speed things along, the chief asked the expected question: “So what made you go see her?”

“Something Maggie Holloway said when I phoned her for you. She mentioned Earl Bateman. I tell you, Chief, that young lady has a real nose for trouble. Anyhow, we nattered a little.”

Like you’re doing right now, Brower thought.

“And I got the distinct impression that Ms. Holloway is very nervous about Bateman, maybe even afraid of him.”

“Of Bateman? He’s harmless,” Brower snapped.

“Now that’s exactly what I would have thought, but maybe Maggie Holloway has a sharp eye when it comes to detecting what makes people tick. She is a photographer, you know. Anyhow, she mentioned a little problem that Bateman had at Latham Manor, a little ‘incident’ that took place not all that long ago, and I called one of my friends whose cousin is a maid there, and one thing led to the other, and she finally told me about a lecture Bateman gave there one afternoon that even caused one of the old girls to pass out, and she told me also how Sarah Cushing happened to be there, and that she gave Bateman hell.”

Haggerty saw the chief’s mouth tighten, his signal that it was time to come to the point. “So that’s why I went to see Mrs. Cushing, and she told me that the reason she hustled Bateman out was for upsetting the guests with his lecture about people worrying about being buried alive, and then handing out replicas of the bells they used to put on graves in Victorian times. Seems there would be a string or wire attached to the bell, and the other end was then tied to the finger of the deceased. The string ran through an air vent from the casket to the surface of the ground. That way if you woke up in the coffin, you could wiggle your finger, the bell would ring on top of the grave, and the guy who was paid to listen for it would start digging.

“Bateman told the ladies to slip their ring finger into the loop at the end of the string, to pretend they’d been buried alive, and then to start ringing the bells.”

“You’re kidding!”

“No, I’m not, Chief. That’s when all hell broke loose apparently. One eighty-year-old who’s claustrophobic started screaming and fainted. Mrs. Cushing said she grabbed the bells, broke up the lecture, and all but threw Bateman out the door. Then she made it her business to find out who had suggested he lecture there.”

Haggerty paused just an instant for effect. “That person was Nurse Zelda Markey, the lady who apparently has a habit of sneaking in and out of rooms. Sarah Cushing heard through the grapevine that Markey took care of Bateman’s aunt in a nursing home years ago, and got real close to the family. She heard also that the Batemans were mighty generous in rewarding her for taking special care of old Auntie.”

He shook his head. “Women do have a way of finding out things, don’t they, Chief? You know how there’s a question now that there just might be a little problem about all those ladies dying in their sleep over at the home? Mrs. Cushing remembers that at least some of them were at that lecture, and she’s not sure, but she thinks all of them who have died recently might have been there.”

Before Haggerty even finished, Brower was on the phone to Coroner Lara Horgan. At the conclusion of his conversation with her, he turned to the detective. “Lara is going to initiate proceedings to have the bodies of both Mrs. Shipley and Mrs. Rhinelander, the two people who died most recently at Latham Manor, exhumed. And that’s just for starters.”

70

Neil checked his watch at eight o’clock. He was passing the Mystic Seaport exit on Route 95. Another hour and he would be in Newport, he thought. He had considered calling Maggie again, but decided against it, not wanting to give her a chance to tell him she didn’t want to see him tonight. If she’s not there, I’ll just park in front of her house until she comes back, he told himself.

He was angry that he hadn’t gotten away earlier. And as if it wasn’t bad enough to hit all the commuter traffic along the way, then he had been stymied by that damned jackknifed semitrailer that brought 95 North to a standstill for over an hour.

It hadn’t been all wasted time, though. He had finally had an opportunity to think through what it was that had nagged at him about his conversation with Mrs. Arlington, his father’s client who had lost just about all her money investing with Hansen. The confirmation of the purchase: something about that had just not seemed right.