45

AS PART OF HIS RESEARCH FOR HIS LECTURE SERIES, EARL Bateman had begun to take rubbings from old tombstones. He had made them the subject of one of his talks.

“Today, minimal information is recorded on gravestones,” he would explain, “only birth and death dates, really. But in other centuries, wonderful histories could be read from headstones. Some are poignant, while some are rather remarkable, as in the case of the sea captain buried with his five wives—none of whom, I might add, lived more than seven years once married.”

At that point, he was usually rewarded by a ripple of laughter.

“Other markers,” he would explain, “are awesome in the majesty and history they convey.”

He would then cite the chapel in Westminster Abbey, where Queen Elizabeth I was entombed only a few feet from the cousin she had ordered beheaded, Mary, Queen of Scots.

“One interesting note,” he would add, “in Ketchakan, Alaska, in the nineteenth century, Tombstone Cemetery, the burial ground there, reserved a special section for the ‘Soiled Doves,’ as they called the young women who resided in bordellos.”

On this Friday morning, Earl was preparing a synopsis of the lectures he proposed to deliver in the potential cable television series. When he came to the subject of tombstone rubbings, he was reminded that he had intended to look for other interesting ones; then, realizing it was a beautiful day, perfect for such an activity, he decided to visit the oldest sections of St. Mary’s and Trinity cemeteries.

He was driving down the road that led to the cemeteries when he saw a black Volvo station wagon come out through the open gates and turn the other way. Maggie Holloway had the same make and color car, he thought. Could she possibly have been here visiting Nuala’s grave?

Instead of going to the old section, he drove to the left and circled up the hill. Pete Brown, a cemetery worker he had come to know from his various meanderings among the old tombstones, was weeding a gravel path in the vicinity of Nuala’s grave.

Earl stopped the car and opened the window. “Pretty quiet around here, Pete,” he offered. It was an old joke they shared.

“Sure is, Professor.”

“I thought I saw Mrs. Moore’s stepdaughter’s car. Was she visiting the grave?” He was sure that everyone knew the details of Nuala’s death. There weren’t that many murders in Newport.

“Nice looking lady, skinny, dark hair, young?”

“That would be Maggie.”

“Yep. And she must know half of our guests,” Pete said, then laughed. “One of the fellows was saying that he saw her go from one plot to another and drop off flowers. All the guys noticed her. She’s a doll.”

Now isn’t that interesting? Earl thought. “Take care, Pete,” he said, then waved as he drove off slowly. Knowing that the all-seeing eyes of Pete Brown were on him, he continued on to the oldest section of Trinity and began wandering among the seventeenth-century headstones there.