Body In The Belfry ff-1

by Katherine Hall Page

  He grew quiet and it seemed the conversation was at an end, but then he seemed to painfully drag an unbidden thought to the surface.

  “You know, Tom, I'm sure that a man is involved in this business. Cindy had no scruples when it came tomen. It's crazy to think it's Sam, but she could have driven him to it. Hell, she could have driven me.

  “I've never told Patricia this, but Cindy used to try to get me interested in her. It's abominable and I told her exactly what she was doing and why. Just like Sam, she wanted to have something on me. Several times when Patricia was up here with the other two and we were alone, she 'd come into the study with next to nothing on and put her arms around me. It makes me want to vomit when I think of it now.

  “I felt sorry for Dave. He didn't know what he was getting into, but it was the happiest day of my life when she told us she was getting married and leaving home. My God, she didn't even leave to go to college, just took a few courses at Chamberlayne. You can't know how much I wanted to get rid of her.”

  Behind her closed eyes, Faith seemed to see the words in boldface type. Get rid of her.

  Tom was murmuring something about the burden Robert had carried and carried alone. The boat was still speeding along, faster than ever—one side almost planing out of the water. The wind was tremendous and now that Tom was speaking Faiths couldn 't hear clearly any more. She looked at. Robert through half-closed eyes. His face was slowly being drained of the angry contortions of a few minutes ago, but his hand was still tightly clenched upon the tiller. He was a large man, a powerful man. Faith felt obscurely afraid and wished they were back on dry land. Surely they were going too fast? It was impossible to distinguish the shoreline anymore, just a blur of greens and grays.

  Suddenly she heard Robert shout to her, " Faith, are you awake ? “

  She sat up, "Yes, do you want me to do something? Lower the mizzen mast or hoist the boom?”

  He laughed. And there they were, just three friends on a pleasant autumn sail. "Well, do you think you could move to the other side of the boat ? Pretty tricky, but I think you can manage. We're coming about.”

  Faith knew what that meant and scampered over to the other side as they swung around. Robert handed the tiller over to Tom and went to get the thermos Patricia had sent along, which proved to be filled with strong, sweet tea, Lapsang Souchong, Patricia 's own favorite, which she drank all day long, scalding hot and strong enough to dissolve the cup. There were chocolate chip cookies too—big chewy ones with plenty of walnuts.

  The rest of the sail was uneventful and after a while they headed for home. The afternoon lay stretched out as flat as the calm water that filled the inlet by the point. The wind was a breeze and they sailed slowly into port.

  Back at the house, Patricia was sitting on the deck swathed in bulky cardigans, stitching away at the quilt in her lap. It was almost finished and Faith admired the beauty of the ' colors—deep purples, smoky blues, and celadon greens with touches of scarlet. The stitching was so fine, it was hard to believe the human hand could accomplish it. Faith thought of her own tribulations with buttons and a ghastly failure at hemming a skirt once.

  “I'd love to be able to make something like this." Faith sighed. "Or rather I think I would, but in all probability I'd try it and hate it. It's like thinking how nice it would be to live on a farm, one of those tidy Scandinavian ones with the white geese, like Carl Larsson 's pictures, but I know deep inside I'm not that kind of person. It's the same with quilting."

  “Nonsense," said Patricia briskly, " Well, maybe not about the farm—I know I always have visions of the same sort that conveniently leave out all the hard work. But about the quilting. You could start with a small hanging to get the idea, then go on from there. If youcan do a running stitch, you can quilt. And if you can do the piecing on your machine, it goes quickly.”

  Faith didn't dare to tell her she didn 't own a sewing machine, but agreed a hanging might be within her range.

  Robert came out with two mugs of hot mulled wine. He and Tom were going to a neighbor's to inspect their new superinsulated Trelleborg house. They would be back soon. Jenny was reading inside and Benjamin was still asleep after an afternoon of unmitigated delight. He clearly adored Jenny, and Faith had high hopes of many happy babysitting hours ahead.

  Patricia and Faith sat in companionable silence watching the lengthening afternoon shadows against the pines. The wine was delicious, and just as Faith was wondering if it would seem either piggy or inappropriate behavior for a minister's wife to ask for more, Patricia got up and took her cup. "I don't know about you, but I could do with a little more of that concoction.”

  Faith smiled. "You read my mind. Thank you."

  “ Are you too cold out here, Faith ? " Patricia said, returning with the steaming mugs.

  “No, it's lovely to drink hot things when it's a bit cool."

  “This is my favorite time of day, not time to think of cooking yet—which I must admit I don't love the way you do—and too late to start any new jobs. Just time to put up your feet and read something frivolous.”

  They talked some more about what constituted frivolous reading. Patricia thought there should be a subcategory called "Hairdresser Reading," which was frivolous, too, of course, but more trivial.

  “People magazine," offered Faith.

  “Exactly," agreed Patricia, "Whereas real frivolous reading is like taking one of Jenny's Nancy Drews.”

  “Or a good murder mystery with no hidden literary value," suggested Faith, realizing as she said it that it was not the most appropriate remark for the occasion. " We don 't really need to read murder mysteries these days—literary or not," Patricia said grimly. "Which reminds me of something I wanted to say to you, Faith. It is undoubtedly none of my business, but I will claim an older woman's prerogative and speak anyway.

  “I know you have been upset over the arrests of Dave and Sam and have been doing a little inquiring on your own, but I think you should stop and leave it to the police.”

  Faith was quite surprised—not that Patricia knew she had been asking questions; this was, to be sure Aleford—but that Patricia would feel strongly enough about it to tell her to stop. Patricia had never spoken to her in this way before.

  “You don 't always know what you are getting into when you start to try to uncover things," Patricia continued, "and you may hurt people you care about. What I mean is that there may be aspects of all this that are better left alone.”

  Was there something in Cindy's box that Patricia wanted to remain hidden ? Robert was having financial problems and the girl had been goading him and his family for years. Given the width of her sward, was she blackmailing them, too ?

  The wine was making Faith feel mellow and benevolent. So be it. Patricia wouldn't be raising all this without a very good reason and certainly these people had suffered enough. What was one murder more or less?

  “ I know you would never do anything intentionally to hurt someone or the family," Patricia went on. "Not to mention that there could be some danger to yourself. We have only known you a short time, Faith, but we love you very much and are so happy Tom lured you to Aleford.”

  Patricia paused and looked down at her quilt as if expecting to find the text of her remarks stitched there. She looked up again.

  “ Of course the shock of finding the body was horrible and I can understand that you might feel you have a responsibility to get to the bottom of things. But please, Faith, leave it all alone now. Detective Dunne and Charley will handle it.”

  Definitely there was something having to do with Robert. Faith was feeling even tipsier and everything suddenly seemed to make sense, although she did have the vague notion that once again the tables were turned. She had thought she was supposed to be consoling Patricia and perhaps offering a few well-chosen words of advice to the bereaved, but this was rapidly becoming the same kind of down-the-rabbit-hole conversation she had had with Pix Miller. Just who was the minister's wife here, anyway ?


  “I would never do anything to hurt anyone, especially not your family, Patricia," she promised solemnly. She could out-Whipple Eleanor on family in this one, she congratulated herself.

  “Good. Well, that's that then. Now we do have to think about food and put all talk, frivolous and otherwise, aside for another time." Patricia looked at Faith gratefully, "You know, Faith, I haven 't decided what to do with this quilt and if you would like it, I'd like you to have it. Maybe it would be an incentive for you. To quilt, that is."

  “ Patricia! I'd love it, but I couldn't possibly accept such a gift. It's taken you ages to do it."

  “Not really ages and I'll start another one the moment this is finished. Besides,' I didn 't know you when we gave you a wedding present, so it was a bit impersonal. This is really for you." She gave Faith a slightly wry smile. "The name of the pattern is Sunshine and Shadow.”

  Faith thanked her profusely and followed her into the kitchen, where she tried very hard to dismiss the nagging thought at the back of her head that whispered "bribery." And what had she meant about an "incentive"? Quilting indeed.

  Neither one of them heard Jenny tiptoe back to her room and then emerge as if she hadn 't heard every word the two of them had been saying for the last half hour. "I think Benjamin 's awake," she reported.

  “You've been reading in dim light again," her mother commented, "Come here and let me see ; your eyes are all red. No, don 't rub them ! That just makes it worse."

  “I'm fine, Mom," Jenny replied, and to prove it gave a very wobbly smile.

  After a delicious supper of bluefish caught that morning and crisply fried in Patricia's huge old iron skillets, the Fairchilds drove back to Aleford. The Moores were staying until the next night. Faith knew Robert had to get in just one more sail and hoped the weather stayed as fine as it had been all day.

  She told Tom what Patricia had said and also that she had been eavesdropping on the boat.

  “I know," he teased her, "I couldn 't imagine you sleeping through such a confessional. But," he continued seriously, "what was it all about? Don't tell me you've added him to your suspect list. You might as well put Robby down too and be done with it. Some smoldering adolescent jibe ignited recently? Nothing easier than to slip into town when everyone thought you were at school." Tom shook his head. “ Will you listen to me ! I 'm getting as bad as you!"

  “ Remember what Charley said, anyone can kill, although I don't see Robert bothering to attach a rose to the body.”

  Faith leaned back into the seat, then sat bolt upright, "But wait a minute—Patricia might ! Do you suppose they did it together ? That would make sense, one as a lookout and Patricia adding the rose to throw in a red herring."

  “Faith, fun is fun, but this is too crazy to even think about," said Tom wearily, "I mean these are my parishioners, God-fearing people. Although I am pretty puzzled about what Patricia was getting at. Maybe she's just concerned for your safety."

  “Then why didn 't she put it that way? It was almost like a threat. No, threat is too strong a word. A hint, a very strong hint."

  “ I think I should call on her next week on some other pretext and give her a chance to talk. Robert certainly seemed to want to and we'll have to get together again. Cindy really led them quite a life and I'm sure they have some guilt about the relief they feel. And that 's all it can possibly be, Faith."

  “There should be a club, a support group for all the people who were tormented by Cindy when she was alive and now feel guiltily blissful that she's gone—Dave, Sam, Oswald, probably Rob and Jenny, the Moores, of course, and Pix. And those are just the ones we know."

  “Exactly, Faith, the ones we know and somewhere there 's someone we don 't know who wanted this relief enough to kill."

  “And what makes you so sure it's someone we don't know ? " Faith asked softly.

  The car was moving steadily down I-95 in the darkness. There weren't a lot of other cars, not like in the summertime when you inched along at the Portsmouth Bridge. It was quiet and Tom took so long in answering that Faith thought he hadn't heard her. Then he spoke.

  “I can 't believe otherwise, Faith. It's too difficult. My intellect tells me all is possible, but my heart and my faith dictate otherwise and for the moment I'm going with them."

  “Well, then I'm coming too," said Faith and wished she didn't know how dangerous it was to travel with your head on the driver's shoulder.

  The next morning in church Faith found it hard to stick to her promise. Her eyes kept scanning the congregation and her thoughts were sinfully secular. The weather had turned colder, but the sun streamed in the high arched windows, making the mums on the altar shimmer like gold. She tried to find a comfortable spot on the thin scarlet padding that was all that separated one from the austere wooden pews. The Women's Alliance had a slowly growing fund for new cushions, but Faith had a suspicion that they felt uneasy spending money for the comforts of the flesh when there were so many more important projects to support. At the moment, with a growing numbness au derrière, Faith would have liked to donate the whole sum herself—anonymously, of course.

  They stood up to sing a hymn—what blessed relief ! The church was almost full. Whether this was a tribute to Tom 's popularity and a growing congregation or an unusual number of uneasy souls, Faith did not know, but church was where she wanted to be today. She needed to think.

  She knew Tom was right and they couldn 't allow themselves to believe it was someone they knew. She scanned the upturned, open-mouthed faces once more as they sang praises to the Lord. All those well-scrubbed, innocent faces.

  But if not someone they knew, then who ?She felt hopelessly confused as she sang, "Amen," sat down, and bowed her head.

  The afternoon passed busily. Tom had calls to make and Faith took Benjamin out into the sunshine while shetidied up the garden. He practiced his baby push-ups on a blanket under one of the maple trees and shrieked with delight every time a leaf fell. It felt good to be outside and have the cobwebs blown away.

  They didn 't talk about the murder at all on Sunday, and when Faith 's mother called that night to find out how they were, Faith realized with a start that she had almost forgotten to tell her the latest developments.

  She was up early on Monday, resolved to do as Patricia asked, not so much because she had asked but because the conversation with Tom had convinced her that practically speaking, and spiritually, she couldn't continue to go around Aleford casting baleful eyes on all the inhabitants and expect to have any peace of mind—or after a while any friends.

  Tom was walking out to the Parish Office and Faith went down the front walk with him to get the mail out of the box. Monday 's mail was usually a bit sparse and there was only a flyer from Sears and a plain envelope that had not gone through the post with Faith's name rather childishly scrawled on it. She opened it with a smile, thinking one of the children from the Sunday School where she sometimes helped had sent her a drawing.

  Tom had gone through the gate and was suddenly startled to find Faith grabbing him desperately, barely able to speak.

  “Tom, look!" she cried in horror.

  He looked.

  Inside the envelope folded in a sheet of white paper was a pressed rose. A pink rose. Just like Cindy's.

  7

  Faith looked out the window and watched Boston rapidly assume the look of one of those relief maps made for a school project : the Charles River carefully painted brownish blue by unsteady hands and Beacon Hill a glorious wad of papier-mâché crowned by the State House 's golden dome. Afterward there would have been an argument over who got to keep it, or rather which attic, closet, or basement it would grow dusty in before someone's mother heartlessly threw it away.

  It seemed only seconds had elapsed between Faith 's finding the rose and finding herself enveloped by a Newark—bound 737 securely buckled in with Benjamin clutched on her lap and a scotch and water clutched in her hand. Normally she didn 't drink on planes, or rathernot since Benjamin was
born. She liked to keep alert, and after discovering that parents traveling with small children were not allowed to sit next to the emergency exits, there was all the more reason. As a matter of course she further protected her urchin by sitting one row back from the door and explaining to one of the people in the row ahead that if they had to evacuate the plane Faith would be passing her baby to him or her. The few startled looks she got were worth the peace of mind and possibly Benjamin 's life, she repeatedly told Tom, who always pretended not to know her at these times and flatly refused to sit ahead of her himself and be the receiver. Anyway all this had been accomplished and Benjamin 's rescuer was a rather serious-looking young man who was reading Kierkegaard, so Faith was pretty sure he wouldn 't be too caught up in the plot to notice the plane was on fire or crashing.

  She leaned back, put one of those tiny cushions stuffed with plaster of paris behind her head, and let the reel of the day 's events pass before her eyes.

  After she had handed him the envelope with the rose, Tom had been like a maniac. He dragged her into the house, shielding her with his body as if there might be an army of machine gun—toting assailants in the shrubbery. He slammed the door, locked it, and called the police all in one motion. Detective Dunne, this time without Charley MacIsaac, was there in minutes.

  Faith remembered sitting bolt upright in the wing chair and agreeing automatically that now was a good time for her to visit her parents. She heard herself speaking in a normal tone of voice and wondered why she wasn 't screaming. After all, someone seemed to want to kill her.

  She decided to mention it to Tom and Detective Lieutenant Dunne, who seemed unduly preoccupied with flight times and at that moment were arguing over New- ark versus Kennedy as an airport. They stopped and looked at her in amazement.

  “ Faith, sweetie, we just finished talking about all that. Don 't you remember ? Oh, my God, I'd better come with you for a while," Tom had cried.

  Faith honestly could not remember the discussion. She knew they had all been talking for what seemed like years, but somehow the gist of it had passed her by. So they started again. This time with hot coffee and sandwiches quickly thrown together by Tom. Faith noted that somewhere along the line, it had become "Tom" and "John," but she was still "Mrs. Fairchild.”