Mansions Of The Dead (38 page)

She listened to the wind whistling in her open windows. It didn’t take her long to reach Newport on the empty roads, and she turned onto Bellevue, then left onto Narragansett. In darkness, the big houses and dark drives seemed mysterious and sinister. She turned into Anna’s driveway—she realized that she now thought of it as Anna’s house, whereas the last time she’d thought of it as her grandparents’—and got her bag out of the backseat.

The ocean roared as she walked along the dark path to the front door and pressed the doorbell. When no one came, she pressed it again.

“Hang on, hang on,” came Anna’s voice. Through the glass panels next to the door, Sweeney saw her rush down the stairs in her bathrobe, looking sleepy and afraid.

“Hi,” Sweeney said, when she’d opened the door. “I was thinking maybe I could stay here for a few days.”

When Anna saw who it was, she smiled. “You were born in the middle of the night, you know,” she said. “I should have known you were establishing a pattern.”

“Melissa Putnam was in a hit-and-run accident tonight,” Sweeney said. “It looks like she’s going to be okay, though.”

Anna had made tea and they were sitting on the back patio, a couple of candle torches lighting the pitch black night. It was three in the morning, but miraculously, Sweeney found she wasn’t tired anymore.

“Where did it happen?” Anna asked. In the man’s bathrobe she looked small and sleepy, her gray hair sticking up and her blue eyes fogged with sleep.

“Up on Ocean Drive. Apparently she must have gone for a walk and someone came along and didn’t see her in the dark. At least that’s what the police are saying. I’m wondering if someone didn’t come along and hit her on purpose.”

Anna raised her eyebrows. “It sounds like you’ve gotten involved.”

“Yeah. You don’t know the half of it.”

The eyebrows went up again. “Does your involvement have anything to do with Jack Putnam?”

Sweeney felt herself flush. “Why would you say that?”

“Because he’s your type. And because you just blushed as red as your hair.”

“How do you know what my type is?”

“I’ve known you since the day your parents brought you home from the hospital. I know you better than you think I do. And I met Colm, remember?”

She had forgotten. Anna had been in London for a friend’s daughter’s wedding and had come up to Oxford for the day. They had gone out to lunch and Colm had told Anna about his thesis on Yeats’s role in the Easter Uprising. Sweeney choked up for a second and took a quick gulp of her tea to help it pass.

“I don’t know. Jack’s interesting. Talented. Good-looking. But this
whole thing has gotten so complicated. I don’t think there’s even a possibility of it anymore.”

Anna studied her for a moment, as though she were determining whether Sweeney was strong enough for her question. “Has there been anyone else? Since Colm, I mean?”

Sweeney leaned back in her chair and looked out over the flower beds that edged the backyard, strange in the twirling light from the torch candles. There were late-blooming tulips and the greenery of the daylilies that would bloom later in the summer. The peonies—always Sweeney’s favorite for their fleeting audaciousness and singular scent—were just starting. She could see the tight round buds that would give way to the prettily ragged petals of pale pink. “There was a man I met over Christmas. I went up to Vermont with Toby.” Sweeney told her about Toby’s family, about the murders. “His name is Ian and he lives in London. I thought that . . . I don’t know. There was something there and it could have gone on, but when it came right down to going to London to see him, I couldn’t do it. I told him I’d come visit in the spring.”

“It’s spring now,” Anna said quietly.

“So he tells me.” She took another long sip and looked up at Anna. “How could I?” she asked. “It doesn’t seem possible.”

“You do,” Anna said. “You just do.”

“What about you? Has there been anyone since Julian?” Sweeney tried to put a little bit of challenge in her gaze. Anna liked asking people personal questions but she didn’t like answering them.

But she surprised Sweeney by grinning. “There was a man a couple of years ago. I was doing this studio residency thing and he was too. Gordon. He was from San Francisco.”

“So what happened?”

“We stayed in touch for a while. I even went out there for a weekend.” Sweeney had a vision of her aunt on an airplane, smiling secretly in the air over California. “But we were two old people, set in our ways. Neither of us wanted to move. We reached something of an impasse. I feel sometimes as though I have too many things to do, too
many things to finish. How I will finish them all, I don’t know. I spent so many years making Julian’s art possible and now I just want to paint and never stop.”

Sweeney thought, That’s what would happen with Ian. She had a vision of herself in an airport after a weekend visit, walking alone down an empty hallway.

“So tell me about the English guy. What does he do?”

“He’s an art and antiques dealer. He’s divorced, has a daughter. That part of it scares the bejeezuz out of me. He’s . . . I don’t know. He makes me nervous. I can’t figure out if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. I feel sort of universally unsettled around him.”

“You don’t think that’s because of what happened when you were up there in Vermont?”

“Maybe. That’s the thing. We . . . whatever there was of ‘we’ is so tainted by what happened that I don’t know how we would begin again. But now the same thing may be true of Jack Putnam.”

“Yeah, but it can happen the other way too. I remember when Peter Putnam died, everyone always said that it had brought Melissa and Drew together, strengthened their relationship. They’d always been kind of unsure, I think, but Petey’s death kind of brought them together, made them put aside whatever it was that was the problem with their relationship.”

“You were here when Peter Putnam died, weren’t you?”

Anna looked up at the ceiling as though she were thinking. “Oh yes, of course. It wasn’t that long ago. Everyone in town felt so bad for them. We had all known Petey and the other kids of course. He was a good kid. Mischievous. Very much the youngest child.”

“Who did everyone think had been driving?”

“Well, the family really circled the wagons. The police tried everything but those kids stuck to their story. You had to give them credit. And frankly, I think everyone around here felt that whoever had been driving had already been punished. There wasn’t any point. But the police had had some episodes with the Putnams before, felt the weight of their influence so to speak. They weren’t going to let it go. They
kept bringing them down to the station to question them, kept getting stymied by all the high-priced lawyers, and ultimately they didn’t find out anything. Those kids, it was amazing, it was as though they’d been lying all their lives. They just kind of outlasted them. Of course if it had been anyone else, they probably would have been brought in for not cooperating with the investigation or something, but because it was the Putnams, they finally had to let it go. People in town put a lot of pressure on them too.”

“Was there ever any sense that it was more likely to be one of them? I mean, who did everyone think was being shielded?”

“Well, I always thought that it would be Drew if it was anybody. I guess because he had the most to lose. But of course now that Camille’s running for Congress, she’s got a lot to lose herself. Something like this, well, it would always hang over you, wouldn’t it?”

“But she didn’t know that she would be running back then, did she?”

“Oh, I think Camille Putnam always knew she was going to run for Congress.”

“What about Jack?” Sweeney felt the beginnings of a blush when she said it.

“I felt as though Jack Putnam would have just come out and said it if it had been him. There’s something kind of wild about him. But then again, he’s a Putnam. And his parents might have put their foot down and said that they weren’t going to tell, under any circumstances. I used to teach Jack painting in the summers, you know. He was really good, even then.”

Sweeney had forgotten about Anna’s summer art camp. Sweeney had even participated one summer. She wondered if she’d known Jack then, but of course he was a couple of years older.

“I can’t believe nobody ever said anything. I mean someone must have been in the bar that night who saw who was driving.”

“The police tried.”

Sweeney thought for a moment. “There was something about him . . . about Brad . . . that reminded me of . . . It’s hard to explain.
He was so alive and so dead at the same time. So joyful and so depressed, all in one. You just wanted to save him.”

“He reminded you of your father,” Anna said quietly. She looked at Sweeney and smiled.

Sweeney looked away.

“There’s something I always wanted to say to you, Sweeney.” Anna was looking off in the direction of the water. “The way Ivy always talked about Paul, and the way Paul always talked about Ivy, well, it was—”

“They hated each other,” Sweeney cut in.

“Yeah, after they split up, they really did,” Anna said, smiling regretfully. “But before that, when they met, when they had you. It was magic. It was magic being in the same room with them. They . . . actually, hold on a second. I was going through some old letters the other day and I found something. I was going to send it to you.”

She was gone for a few minutes and when she came back, she handed Sweeney a letter. “Your father wrote it to me when Julian and I were in London. It was just after he’d met your mother. Read it.”

Sweeney recognized her father’s sprawling, untidy handwriting, the frequent cross-outs and ink blots where he’d left pen to paper a little too long. As on her own letters from him, this one had little drawings in the margins, animals and people dancing and strange little ornaments.

“Anna dear sister,” it read. “Isn’t it lovely out today? Well, I suppose it may not be lovely in London, but here in New York, where I am for the weekend (and perhaps longer—read on!), it is glorious and sunny and the birds are singing. Pat and Delia took me to see a show last night, a horrid little modern play about a couple who are in jail together for some crime we never learn about and spend all three acts fighting and needling each other. Quite bad, but the woman playing the wife was terrifically good. Ivy Williston-Mount, her name is. Veddy English, veddy posh, but with a veddy naughty mouth, gorgeous red hair, and perfect little legs. Her family owns some huge estate in Somerset or something, called Summerlands. But she, it seems, is quite the prodigal daughter. Ran away from home for the the-ah-tah when she
was sixteen. Completely estranged from Mummy and Daddy. Don’t you just love it? I was smitten immediately and as it turned out, Pat knew her from somewhere and she came out with us afterward. We met her in her dressing room and everything and when we came in, she was taking off her makeup and Pat introduced me and she turned around and said, “Ah yes, the rising young artist,” in this withering sort of way.

“We caroused and caroused all night and then she spent the night, or rather day, and I’m in love, love, love!!!!! Anna dear, you will meet her soon enough, but until then, just imagine a small, slim, deliciously lovely gal with nice tits, perfect legs, and long straight red hair. She has flashing green eyes, and a huge brain, and she’s so wickedly funny you can’t imagine.

“So love to you and Juli. Hope all’s well. Paul.”

Sweeney put the letter down on the patio table. “He was having a manic episode,” she said. “You can tell from the letter.”

Down on the rocks the waves lapped tentatively, their hushed, watery tread a far away song.

“Sweeney, you big dope.” Anna looked at her with sad eyes. “He was in love.”

AFTER THE LATE NIGHT
, Sweeney slept in until nearly nine. On her way to the bathroom across the hall, she saw Anna working in her studio and poked her head through the half open door.

“I’m a lazy niece.”

“No, we were up late. You must have needed the sleep.” Anna dabbed at a white dress on the canvas propped up on her easel.

“Snow White and Rose Red?” Sweeney asked, looking over her shoulder at the blond girl in a long white dress and her sister, a brunette, in a scarlet one.

“Yeah.” Anna looked up, blinking as though she’d been in a trance. “There’s coffee and toast in the kitchen.”

“Thanks. I’m going to take a quick shower and then go down to the historical society. I’ll see you tonight?”

“Sure. You won’t mind if I don’t make dinner, will you? I’m hoping to get this finished and I think I’ll probably be at it most of the night.”

“Course not. I’ll find something in town.”

Sweeney found Anna’s copy of the
Newport Daily News
out in the newspaper box and read the update on Melissa Putnam’s accident while she had her coffee.

“The investigation into a hit-and-run accident last night on Ocean
Drive continues today as Newport residents express their gratitude that accident victim Melissa Putnam wasn’t killed when she was struck while walking along Ocean Drive near her husband’s family’s Bellevue Avenue home.