56

IT WAS NOON WHEN EARL BATEMAN ARRIVED AT St. Mary’s cemetery. He circled the winding roads slowly, ever anxious to get a look at the kinds of people who were spending a part of their Sunday visiting a loved one.

Not too many out so far today, he noted: a few oldsters, a middle-aged couple, a large family, probably showing up for an anniversary, after which they would have brunch at the restaurant down the road. The typical Sunday crew.

He then drove through to the old section of Trinity cemetery, where he parked and got out. After a quick glance around, he began to scrutinize the tombstones for interesting inscriptions. It had been several years since he took rubbings here, and he knew he might well have missed some.

He prided himself that his awareness of subtleties had heightened considerably since then. Yes, he thought, tombstones definitely would be a subject to outline for the cable series. He would start with a reference from Gone With the Wind, which said that three infant boys, all named Gerald O’Hara, Jr., were buried in the family plot on Tara. Oh, the hopes, and dreams, we see sculpted on stone, fading, ignored, no longer read, but still leaving a message of lasting love. Think of it—three little sons! That’s the way he would begin that lecture.

Of course, he would move quickly from tragic to upbeat by telling about one of the stones he had seen in a Cape Cod cemetery, actually advertising the fact that the business operation that had been run by the deceased was being carried on by his son. It even gave the new address.

Earl frowned as he looked about him. Even though it was a warm and pleasant October day, and even though he thoroughly enjoyed his profitable hobby, he was upset and angry.

As they had arranged, last night Liam had come to his house for drinks and then they had gone out to dinner together. Even though he had left his three-thousand-dollar check right next to the vodka bottle on the bar where it couldn’t possibly be missed, Liam had pointedly ignored it. Instead, he had emphasized yet again that Earl ought to go golfing instead of haunting cemeteries.

“Haunting” indeed, Earl thought, his face darkening. I could show him what haunting is all about, he said to himself.

And he was damned if he would let Liam warn him away from Maggie Holloway again. It simply was none of his business. Liam had asked if he had seen her, and when he told Liam that since Monday night he had seen Maggie only at the cemetery and, of course, at Mrs. Shipley’s funeral, Liam had said, “Earl, you and your cemeteries. I’m getting worried about you. You’re becoming obsessive.”

“He didn’t believe me when I tried to explain my premonitions,” Earl muttered aloud. “He never takes me seriously.” He stopped suddenly and looked about. There was no one. Don’t think about it anymore, he warned himself, at least not now.

He walked along the paths of the oldest section of the cemetery, where some of the barely discernible carvings on the small headstones bore dates from the 1600s. He squatted by one that had almost fallen over, squinting to read the faint lettering. His eyes brightened as he made out the inscription: “Betrothed to Roger Samuels but gathered to the Lord . . .” and the dates.

Earl opened his kit to take a rubbing of the stone. Another angle to discuss in one of his lectures on tombstones would be the tender age at which so many young people were struck down in the old days. There had been no penicillin to treat the pneumonia that resulted when winter cold made its insidious way into chests and lungs . . .

He knelt down, enjoying the feel of the soft earth that sent its cool dampness through his old trousers to his skin. As he began his careful effort to transfer the stone’s poignant sentiment onto thin, almost translucent parchment, he found himself thinking of the young girl who lay beneath him, her body sheltered by the ageless ground.

She had just passed her sixteenth birthday, he calculated.

Had she been pretty? Yes, very pretty, he decided. She had had a cloud of dark curls, and sapphire blue eyes. And she had been small boned.

Maggie Holloway’s face floated before him.

*   *   *

At one-thirty, as he was driving back toward the entrance of the cemetery, Earl passed a vehicle with New York plates parked at the curb. It looks familiar, he thought, then realized that it was Maggie Holloway’s Volvo wagon. What was she doing here again today? he wondered. Greta Shipley’s grave was nearby, but certainly Maggie wasn’t so close to Greta that she would feel the need to visit the grave again, only a day after the funeral.

Slowing his car, he looked about. When he spotted Maggie in the distance, walking toward him, he put his foot on the accelerator. He didn’t want her to see him. Clearly something was going on. He had to think about this.

He did make one decision. Since he did not have classes tomorrow, he would stay an extra day in Newport. And whether Liam liked it or not, tomorrow he was going to visit Maggie Holloway.