A woman’s voice rang out, and “Swing low, sweet chariot” filled the high-ceilinged space. The delivery was so confident as to suggest the voice’s owner was used to filling large spaces with her voice, perhaps more at home on a Broadway stage than St. Willibrod’s choir loft.
When the song ended, the organ music resumed and pallbearers took their places on either side of the coffin. They proceeded down the aisle, bearing the coffin between them, and the congregation followed.
“Nell came,” Bettina whispered to Pamela, as Nell, dressed in a somber suit that looked as if it had seen decades’ worth of funerals, eased her way out of a pew closer to the front and joined the procession.
They caught up with her on the church’s wide slate porch, where she was talking to Caralee’s aunt. Nell was holding one of Margo’s hands in both her own and murmuring condolences, the look in her kind eyes as comforting as her words. Both turned to greet the newcomers, and Bettina introduced Pamela. It was the first time Pamela had laid eyes on Margo, but she barely needed Bettina’s introduction to realize who this tall, thin woman had to be. She looked like Caralee twenty years hence, or even like Caralee made up for the role of a striking woman in her late fifties who had let her naturally jet-black hair turn attractively gray.
“I’m so sorry for your loss,” Pamela said as Bettina hugged her friend. Margo nodded and swallowed hard.
“I have to go,” Nell said. “I volunteer at the women’s shelter in Haversack Friday mornings and they’ll be wondering where I am.” With a final squeeze of Margo’s hand, she was off.
As Nell made her way down the slate steps toward the street, she passed a man in a dark suit heading up. His face wore an expression of deferential sorrow. “Shall we leave for the cemetery now?” he asked after greeting Margo.
The hearse, gleaming black with tasteful touches of chrome, was parked at the curb. The double doors at the back were ajar and the coffin, still adorned with the dramatic arrangement of chrysanthemums, waited nearby on a dolly.
The man touched Margo’s back lightly to direct her toward the steps. She nodded, but paused to speak. “I hope you’ll come to my house,” she said to Pamela. “There’s to be a small reception, starting at noon.”
“Of course,” Pamela said.
“Are you driving up to the cemetery?” said a voice behind Pamela.
Looking momentarily puzzled, Bettina nevertheless responded cordially. “Yes, we are,” she said. “Do you want a ride?”
“I’d love one. I walked here,” the same voice replied.
Pamela turned to see a small curly-haired woman whose round face seemed unused to looking unhappy.
“I’m Caralee’s friend Beth Dalton,” the woman said. “I recognize you—you’re Margo’s friend, the person who was teaching Caralee to knit.”
“And this is another of the knitters,” Bettina said with a gesture in Pamela’s direction. “Pamela Paterson.”
“Are you an actress too?” Pamela asked.
“Oh, nothing like that,” Beth said. She laughed a small laugh that was more like a sigh and twisted her mouth into a half smile. “I never even left Arborville. Caralee was the adventurous one—even in second grade I could see that she was destined for an exciting life.” She shook her head sadly. “I didn’t think she’d end up like this though. What a tragic thing!”
They descended the church steps and walked toward the slate path that led around the side of the church to the parking lot. Many people were claiming their cars and lining up to leave the lot through the one exit. By the time they made it out of the lot and around the corner to the front of the church, the hearse had disappeared, and the Mercedes was last in the mournful procession heading along Arborville Avenue.
The cemetery was nearby, and old. Long ago, when Arborville wasn’t even Arborville yet, but just a collection of orchards and farms, a cemetery had been established at the crest of the hill that formed the backside of the palisades, lofty cliffs overlooking the Hudson River. Wilfred guided the Mercedes up that steep hill, through the section of Arborville people called the Palisades, and followed the procession veering left at the crest. The iron gates that hung from the ancient stone gateposts were open now, and they brought up the rear of the last few cars making their slow way over the gravel road.
They parked and followed a few other stragglers to where the coffin waited near the deep rectangular hole that had been carved to receive it. Margo stood at the head of the grave, next to the minister who had conducted the funeral service. At Margo’s other side was the woman who had read the poem, Margo’s daughter Megan, Bettina had said. About twenty other people were standing about, the Manhattanites clustered on one side of the grave and the Arborville people on the other.
“That chrysanthemum arrangement on the coffin really is striking,” Pamela whispered. “It almost seems a shame to bury it too.”
“It was from Craig Belknap,” Bettina whispered back. “That’s him over there. I met him yesterday afternoon.” She nodded toward a nondescript man, not tall or short, or fat or thin, or dark or fair. But his face looked pleasant and friendly if, at that moment, extremely sad.
“Feeling guilty about arguing with her the night I overheard them, and then the very next night she’s dead? I wonder if they made up before . . . it happened.” Pamela said it half to herself.
Beth Dalton had stuck close, perhaps feeling more kinship with them than with Caralee’s sophisticated Manhattan friends. Now she spoke up. “They argued all the time,” she said. “Ever since they met when she joined the Players. They even had an argument Wednesday night. I stopped by Hyler’s for a bite after work and I could hear voices coming from the kitchen, their voices. Then he came storming out, still wearing his apron, and tore out the front door. It was a little after five. I got the impression from the server that he was supposed to work until seven.”
The minister had begun speaking. Beth made a guilty face and put her hand over her mouth, and Pamela once again yielded to the soothing cadences of the prayer.
* * *
“These sandwiches look just like the ones at Hyler’s.” Pamela surveyed the platters of sandwiches arranged on the crisp linen cloth spread over Margo’s dining room table. Some were ham and cheese on rye, some tuna salad, some roast beef—and some were thick club sandwiches on toast. All were cut into dainty quarters speared with frilled toothpicks. The platters were garnished with pickle slices, cherry tomatoes, and radishes cut into rosettes.
“They are just like the ones at Hyler’s,” Bettina said. “Craig Belknap made them. He bought all the ingredients and Hyler’s let him use their kitchen. He was here yesterday afternoon working things out with Margo.”
At one end of the table, a tray held cans of soft drinks, with straws nearby. At the other end was an assortment of pies, including a lemon meringue, topped with a pouf of egg white beaten with sugar and lightly browned.
“He got the desserts from the same bakery that supplies Hyler’s,” Bettina added.
Some people had already helped themselves to food and arranged themselves in clusters that grouped like with like. Margo’s Arborville friends and neighbors had taken seats in the living room, perching along the edge of her long sofa, on her armchairs, and even on her hassocks. Pamela overheard references to the community gardens, the middle school, and the town listserv as they leaned their graying heads toward one another. But Margo herself stood in the dining room with Megan and a woman who Bettina identified as Caralee’s mother.
The Manhattanites, with their eye-catching hair colors and styles and their sleek ensembles, stood in the dining room too, juggling sandwich plates and cans of soda and talking of agents, auditions, and contracts. At the center of the group was a lanky man with close-cropped hair and an exotic cast to his handsome features that would have made him ideal for a role as a Russian czar. He was the only one in the group wearing a suit, albeit a very fashionable suit, with narrow pants and a jacket that just skimmed his narrow torso. Craig
Belknap stood uncertainly at the fringes of the group, talking to no one. After what Beth had said about what happened at Hyler’s Wednesday evening, Pamela hoped she’d have a chance to talk to him during the reception. Caralee’s death raised questions—at least in Pamela’s mind, even if Detective Clayborn was happy to call it an accident.
“I should have a word with Caralee’s mother before I get started on the food,” Pamela said.
“Her name is Caroline,” Bettina murmured.
Caroline Lorimer was a small prim-looking woman with brown hair arranged in a prim style. She had dressed for her daughter’s funeral in an unremarkable brown pantsuit.
Pamela summoned up her social smile, muted in keeping with the occasion, and turned away from the table toward where Margo stood with Megan and Caroline.
“It’s a lovely event,” Pamela said. Margo nodded sadly. “I’m Pamela Paterson, a longtime Arborville resident,” she added, addressing herself to Caroline. “I’m so sorry about your daughter.”
“She had a way of finding trouble,” Caroline announced, sounding more annoyed than sorrowful, “and now it found her.” She scrutinized Pamela. “I don’t think I knew you when we lived here,” she said. “What street do you live on?”
“Orchard . . .” Pamela wasn’t sure whether to add “next to the church,” but Caroline supplied the words herself. Apparently someone had told Caroline that Bettina and Pamela had been among the first people to learn of Caralee’s death.
Megan spoke up, her voice more confident than when she had read the poem during the service. “Caroline is considering a lawsuit,” she said.
The pained expression that came over Margo’s elegant features made her opinion of the idea—or at least the announcement of it at that moment—clear.
The sound of the front door opening and the slight commotion that ensued drew their attention to the living room. A tall thin man had entered, with patrician features and smooth gray hair swept back dramatically from a high forehead. It was Anthony Wadsworth. Pamela had never met him personally, but she’d seen his photo numerous times in the Advocate, often in connection with articles written by Bettina. He was the Arborville Players’ head and the director of all its productions.
“Wouldn’t you know he’d have to make an entrance,” Bettina sighed. “And couldn’t even be bothered to go to the funeral.”
Margo excused herself and headed toward him, trailed by Caroline and Megan.
“So sorry,” he boomed in a British-accented voice. “Such a busy morning. Theater business, you know. Quite a scramble to recast Madame Defarge, but the understudy turned out to be the best choice. Hidden in plain sight, you might say.”
“The mousy creature at his elbow is his wife, Rue,” Bettina whispered.
As if the music had just started up again in a game of musical chairs, everyone was suddenly on the move. The Manhattanites, perhaps sensing that Anthony Wadsworth would be a useful person for an aspiring actor to get to know, began to migrate toward the living room. The Arborville folks, on the other hand, seemed to decide en masse that their plates needed to be refilled with dainty sandwich quarters speared with frilled toothpicks.
Bettina had darted toward the refreshment table when Margo and the others left the dining room to greet Anthony Wadsworth. Pamela had tried to follow her but was jostled in one direction by a svelte woman with a stiff crest of light pink hair and in another by a portly gray-haired man in a baggy sports jacket. Now she found herself standing face-to-face with the lanky man in the suit, who had been abandoned by his confreres.
Their eyes met and it seemed rude to dart around him without a word. Besides, the expression on his handsome face was so bereft that without even thinking she suddenly heard herself say, “You must have cared very much for her.”
“I adored her,” he said, his voice unsteady. “She was my wife.”
“But, I thought . . .” Pamela paused. She didn’t want to sound like a busybody.
“She left me.”
Pamela didn’t know what to say. Of course, looks aren’t everything in a marriage—or even very much, considering all that goes into living together day by day. But this man was so very handsome, with his finely modeled cheekbones and dark, deep-set eyes and expressive lips. And now that she was talking to him, he seemed so gentle. She asked herself what could have made Caralee decide she’d rather move back to Arborville than remain married to him.
“I was hoping I could win her back,” he added. “But now . . . obviously . . .” He lifted his hands in a despairing gesture. They were handsome too. “I’m not sure I even want to stay alive.”
They were interrupted by one of the Manhattanites. A well-toned woman dressed in a perfectly fitting sleeveless sheath seized the lanky man’s arm. She looked at Pamela and then at him. “Come and listen to Anthony,” she said. “He’s been everywhere and done everything—not like somebody you’d expect to meet in a town like this.” She looked at Pamela again. This time she let her eyes travel down to the low-heeled pumps Pamela had resurrected from the recesses of her closet that morning. They lingered there a moment and then traveled back up, past the many-years-old navy slacks and the utilitarian white shirt. When they reached Pamela’s face, the woman smiled a triumphant smile.
Pamela watched the woman lead her quarry back into the living room, pondering what had just happened. It was almost as if the woman had seen Pamela as a rival for the affections of the lanky man, free to love again—at least in the woman’s mind—now that his ex-wife was truly out of the picture. It had been years since she had viewed herself as anyone’s potential romantic partner.
From the living room came the voice of Anthony Wadsworth, assuring his audience that community theater was not to be spurned as a venue in which to hone one’s craft. “That’s how I got my start,” he went on, “Stratford-on-Avon.” He paused for a laugh that sounded as calculated as his accent. “Not exactly community theater, you might say, but it wasn’t London. Of course that came later.”
“What are your plans for future Arborville productions?” Pamela recognized the voice as that of the woman who had carried the lanky man away.
“Plans!” Anthony Wadsworth said. Pamela was watching him now. He thrust his chin up, closed his eyes dramatically, and flung a hand to his forehead. “So many masterworks for the stage, so little time. But surely another Shakespeare—we did Romeo and Juliet last year—King Lear, perhaps. I haven’t trod the boards for years, but that’s a role I can see myself in. And then for a change, something comic, perhaps . . .”
He was still talking but Pamela was suddenly very hungry, and the crowd at the refreshment table had thinned. She continued in the direction she’d been going before she encountered the lanky man. Despite the great interest in the sandwiches, especially on the part of the Arborville contingent, piles of them remained. Apparently Craig Belknap had been replenishing the platters. As she took a plate and arranged one sandwich quarter of each kind on it, she made a mental note to check for him in the kitchen if she didn’t encounter him as she circulated among the guests.
Bettina was standing at the far end of the dining room, near the window that looked out on Margo’s backyard. Next to her was the mousy woman Bettina had identified as Rue Wadsworth. Each was holding a plate with a slice of lemon meringue pie on it.
“Delicious pie,” Bettina said as she carved off a forkful of the quivering lemony custard topped with a glistening dollop of meringue. “Have you met Rue Wadsworth?” She turned to Rue. “Pamela Paterson is another member of the knitting group.”
Pamela nodded and smiled as best she could with her mouth full of tuna salad. Rue Wadsworth nodded and smiled back. She was a slight woman in her sixties with large eyes and a pointed chin, a pixyish look enhanced by her fine, short hair. Pamela was searching her mind for a sociable thing to say and wondering when she was going to have a chance to concentrate on her food, when a fourth woman joined their group, a genial grandmotherly type.
“Rue Wads
worth!” the woman exclaimed. “How long has it been?” Pamela recognized the newcomer as someone she had seen around town, someone who conversed animatedly with other residents of Arborville as she studied the bulletin board outside the Co-Op, picked up children in front of the grammar school (undoubtedly grandchildren, in her case), or grabbed a bite at Hyler’s.
“Hello.” Rue’s voice was as soft as her husband’s was loud.
“Of course, I always know what Anthony is up to,” the grandmotherly woman said. “I love those Christmas letters you write. Such detail—everything he’s done in the whole past year. He just lives for the Players, doesn’t he? Arborville is so lucky to have him.” She paused for a large bite of roast beef sandwich, then went on. “You’re probably already working on this year’s letter. Christmas will be here before we know it.”
“I am working on it,” Rue said. “There will be lots to report on this year, the Players’ season of course, and Anthony was honored by the Chamber of Commerce, and he gave a talk on Elizabethan theater at the Timberley Library. So well received. And I’ll have to mention the . . . tragedy, but I’m not sure yet how I’ll handle it—I’ll figure something out. Then there’s the move to California next summer, a tiny town. I’ll have him all to myself.” She glanced around. “So many people here. Such a nice tribute to the Players. It shows how highly people value Anthony’s contribution to making Arborville the kind of town it is.”
Pamela caught Bettina’s eyes and stifled a laugh. They concentrated on their food for a few minutes, watching as more people discovered that the pies had been cut into serving pieces and forks and fresh plates supplied. From the kitchen came the smell of coffee being brewed. Megan came by carrying a stack of used plates, collected Bettina’s and Rue’s, and moved off toward the kitchen. Rue leaned down to retrieve a large canvas satchel.
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