The Body in the Vestibule ff-4 Read online

  The Body in the Vestibule

  ( Faith Fairchild - 4 )

  Katherine Hall Page

  Another thrilling Faith Fairchild adventure from the Agatha Award-winning author of The Body in the Belfry. The Fairchild family is blissfully on sabbatical in Lyon, France, when their peace is interrupted by Faith's discovery of a body in the dumpster. Local author signings.

  The Body in the Vestibule

  (Faith Fairchild #4)

  by Katherine Hall Page

  One

  There are many ghosts in the city of Lyon. Some appear at twilight—on the Place Bellecour when a couple strolling across the large, open square may find the shadows suddenly deepened, the breeze cooled by the memory of the guillotine that once filled the gardens with cries for blood.

  Other ghosts wait until the city is dark and different noises fill the traboules, the long, ancient passageways snaking down from the Croix Rousse colline to the quais below. These are the sounds of the silk workers, hungry, exhausted, leaving the clatter of the looms to carry the richly glowing brocades to the waiting ships.

  Sometimes, the night watchman at the Musee des Beaux-Arts thinks he hears nuns chanting, looks out the window into the ancient cloister, notes the rustling leaves in the birch trees, and quickly crosses himself.

  Then there are the ghosts that are not ghosts, the shadows that move rapidly up the steep stairs from the Place des Terreaux and vanish into the traboules. The next day, a child hastening to school may kick aside an empty syringe, stumble across some broken glass, smell the night smells, and emerge gratefully into the morning air.

  To know the city is to know all the ghosts.

  Faith Sibley Fairchild waited impatiently for the light to change on the Quai St. Antoine so she could get to the open-air market on the other side of the street. Several times, she was tempted to dart across the traffic, yet after a week in Lyon, she had not only learned which baker had the best bread but that French drivers would not hesitate to mow you down if you put so much as a toe in the way of their Renaults and Peugeots—respectable-looking individuals hurling quite unrespectable phrases out the window in the process. It was just like Boston, in fact.

  She swung her empty straw market basket, herpanier, idly back and forth. Despite the delay, she felt a lovely sense of well-being. Her husband, the Reverend Thomas Fair-child, was happily engaged in work; her three-year-old son, Benjamin, was happily playing at nursery school; she'd happily made it through four enervating months of pregnancy and still wanted to have a baby; and—most important of all—she was in France for a month. It had been a wonderful incentive for getting over morning sickness, which in Faith's case came like clockwork at dinnertime. The idea of passing up the fabled food of Lyon was unthinkable. Whatever the reason, this pregnancy had been better than the first, or rather less worse, and now all her appetites were back.

  And at four months, she did not have the sensation of two bodies occupying the same and equal amount of space at one time, which was contrary to somebody's law, and, recalling the experience now, Faith felt, should surely be against whoever's it was. Four months was a little gift from nature, a hiatus of sorts, to allow prospective parents to paint the nursery, read thirty or forty books of baby names, and, if so gifted or inclined—Faith was neither—knit a bootie or two before settling in for the long stretch. It was a time when you thought of soft little bottoms and tiny kissable fingers, not dirty diapers or sleepless nights. Well-being was exactly right. She felt well right down to her toenails and even slightly mellow, edges blurred. This was a very different Faith from the one normally known to her near and dear. That Faith's crisp judgments about the world and its inhabitants were swiftly uttered more often than not. Now they were hidden in some warm, fluffy corner of her brain. She was enjoying this kinder, gentler state for the moment, secure in the knowledge that it wouldn't last long and soon she'd be back in full form.

  It was a long light and the traffic continued to stream by. Faith's mind wandered back to the February afternoon when Tom had come home with the news that he had an opportunity to spend a month in France working on his dissertation. She'd been huddled on the living room sofa, wrapped in a down comforter, trying to convince herself that she had made a wise choice when she left a glittering career as one of Manhattan's most successful caterers to be a parson's wife and mother of one and two-ninths children in the small (and at present very cold) village of Aleford, Massachusetts. Tom, rosy-cheeked from the frosty air, his thick reddish brown hair hatless, his coat unbuttoned, had come bounding through the front door, lustily singing "La Marseillaise" at the top of his voice. The sight of all that energy was so galling, Faith had wanted to throw something at him. But there had been nothing at hand and it would have required too much effort to get up.

  He'd grabbed her and cried, "Faith, ma cherie, we're going to France! Soon! April, if I can swing it!”

  Tom had spent an undergraduate year in Paris, devel- oping a fluency in the language and a permanent love affair with the country. He'd also acquired a number of friends, and if he was currently no longer in touch with a certain Simone, he was with Paul Leblanc, a graduate student who'd lived in the same pension. It was a letter from Paul, now in the history department at the Universite de Lyon, that Tom was waving ecstatically as he told Faith of the proposal. Paul had learned he could bring in visiting scholars to give a lecture or two, offering them a small honorarium and the chance to do research at the university in return. He'd known Tom had been struggling to finish his work on the effects of the Albigensian heresy in twelfth-century France on subsequent Christian practice and he thought his old friend might want to make use of the university's famous library. Tom most certainly did.

  “I've checked the calendar and you know Easter is early this year. I'd have to be here then, of course, but we could leave by the middle of April. I can get people to cover the pulpit for a month. Lord knows, I've done it often enough myself for others."

  “I'm sure He does," Faith agreed, her mind—and body—in a whirl. "But, darling, what about the rest—all the meetings, the hand-holdings, not to mention the serious stuff?”

  Tom had been momentarily perturbed. "I've been wrestling with that all afternoon. The opportunity to finish my doctoral work is important to the parish, certainly, except I know I want to go just for the fun of it, too. Maybe even mostly. I'm sure First Parish could survive for a month without me, probably a whole lot longer, but—”

  Faith had interrupted him there. Lyon was in the southern part of France. It would be warm. Her way was clear.

  As it turned out, the congregation was unanimous in its support and in typical Yankee fashion seemed to be looking forward to coping on its own in novel and inge- nious ways. The lone nay-sayer was Millicent Revere McKinley, better known in the Fairchild household as a strong contender for the world semiprofessional meddler title. Millicent kept an eye on things from her strategically located clapboard house across from the village green, as well as an ear firmly directed toward whatever ground she happened to be treading. And Millicent covered a lot of territory. The sole reason Faith characterized her as "semi-professional" was because of Millicent's oft-stated aversion to paid employment as being, well, slightly declasse. There was no question that she was a pro.

  “We've always been Congregationalists, of course," Millicent would announce to all and sundry in the checkout line at the Shop and Save, or wherever else she could find a captive audience. Her tone clearly indicated that none of the men of her cloth would do such a quixotic thing. The only legitimate reason for a minister to abandon his flock was missionary work, and although she believed the French were no better than they should be, and might we
ll qualify, she doubted that was what the Fair-childs—especially Faith, she'd added to a select few—had planned. "Mind you," she'd told Hattie Johnston, the ex-postmistress, whose former position and generous attitude toward what someone wrote on a postcard—if it was meant to be private, they'd have written a letter—had cemented the friendship between the two women. "Mind you, I'm not criticizing Faith, but you know she's only going there to buy more clothes, and somehow she's convinced poor Tom to go along. Research, my eye. Doesn't he have the Boston Public Library right here?”

  For once in her life, Millicent was wrong. Faith was also going to eat French food.

  But everything had worked out and the plane had left Logan Airport as a light snow was falling. Faith had contentedly watched the lights of Boston harbor and the expressways grow dimmer and dimmer until they disappeared altogether. "Good-bye Boston. Good-bye Aleford." Ben and she had waved out the tiny window, filled with a swirl of snowflakes. "Good-bye goldfish-bowl life," Faith had added in a whisper. As the date for departure had drawn closer, she'd been filled with an even greater than usual longing for anonymity.

  Faith was no stranger to parish life. Her grandfather and father had both been ministers, and despite having lived in a parsonage that was a duplex on New York's Upper East Side and enjoying relative privacy, she'd decided by the time she was twelve there was no way she'd ever marry a minister. But at twelve, she hadn't yet met Tom.

  Brakes were squealing. She was jerked back into sundrenched Lyon—miles and worlds away. She looked at the people on either side of her. The wonderful thing about travel was that on a certain level you ceased to exist. Nobody knew her name—or that she hated baked beans, and sometimes took a Judith Krantz out of the library, or directed meaningful glances at her abdomen, or ...

  It was great.

  The light changed and Faith crossed the street. She'd been to le marche St. Antoine almost every day since she'd arrived and still got excited when she looked down the seemingly endless array of stalls that stretched along the river Saone. She started walking, passing the flower sellers first, who called out, "Bonjour, Madame Fairsheeld" to her. She'd be back later. It was a pleasure, almost an honor, not to be anonymous here. Then past the old lady sitting behind a small card table with her cartons of fresh eggs, a few onions, some herbs, and today some bunches of flowers stuck into ancient tin cans of water. As usual, she was wearing two sweaters under her apron and a black kerchief on her head. She sat quietly, patiently, in contrast to the noise and crowds around her—the cries of other vendors piercing through the din—"Un kilo, dix francs! Super! Un kilo, un kilo ...”

  Faith squeezed by an elegant Lyonnaise ruthlessly bar-I gaining at a fruit stall for a flat of Clementines, her chunky gold bracelets glittering as brightly as the shiny fruit. The lettuce man was next. He had a large beet-red face and wore bright blue workers' overalls. He'd been the first to tell Faith the old chestnut about there being three rivers running through Lyon: the Rhone, the Saone, and the Beaujo-lais. The veins on his nose attested to his familiarity with the latter at least. He greeted her warmly. 'Ah, mon chou, what will it be today?" Then he deftly mixed the varieties she indicated, weighed them, and wrapped them in a square of brown paper.

  Most of the vendors had umbrellas over their tables, which rested on trestles, or, in the case of the larger motorized stalls stocked inside with goods, the side of the truck lifted up to shade the wares. The rows of platane trees lining the river on both sides arched into another awning higher up. Through them all, the strong April sun still managed to find an opening and shone in bright spots on the asphalt strewn with debris—vegetable peel, flower stems, crusts of bread, stubs of the yellow cigarettes favored by the farmers.

  Faith headed for the cheeses. She didn't have time to go over to Fromagerie Richard in Les Halles de Lyon, the large indoor market on the other side of the Rhone. There was no question, mother and daughter Richard, both attractive blondes with unfailing smiles, were the queen and crown princess of cheesemongers. Still, Faith's mouth watered as she looked at the array before her at the quai. If she could get St. Marcellin, perfectly runny as it was today, back in Aleford, she'd never complain about living there again.

  She tucked the package into her panier and moved on. It was too late for the sport of chef-spotting. Other days, she'd been delighted by the regal procession of the area's famous cuisiniers—Bocuse, Lacombe, Chavent—usually in spotless, starched white jackets with names discreetly embroidered over the pocket, selecting just the right melon or string bean. They caressed the fruit, snapped the vegetables for freshness, and moved on with an entourage of kitchen help trailing along to load the purchases into large carts and settle the accounts.

  On the way back through the market, she was distracted by a display of mushrooms. There were so many varieties, it took several minutes to decide—cepes, chanterelles, mousserons, pleurotes, on and on. They had names with music in them. She'd make an omelet for a first course tonight, or pile them up on a sliver of toasted pain de campagne, a dense, crusty, chewy loaf.

  With a final hasty stop for flowers, she walked quickly back toward the apartment the Leblancs had found for them, pausing at the bakery on Place d'Albon to pick up bread for dinner and a baguette that Ben and she would probably finish for lunch. Staff of life, she told herself, and looked down at her rounded abdomen. She could see her shoes, and would for some months—unless they stayed in Lyon. The pregnant French women she saw did not look any different from their American counterparts, except for the style of maternity garb that proudly emphasized with belts and sashes what still tended to be kept under wraps in the States. But with all this food, why didn't they gain a ton? she wondered.

  And with that thought clearly in place, she headed for her butcher, Monsieur Veaux, to buy some of the incomparable chicken from Bresse. Monsieur and Madame Veaux's establishment was located a few steps from the apartment and seemed to function as the information center for the neighborhood. It wasn't just the little three-by-five cards that covered one wall, offering apartments for louer or university etudiants to tutor the garcons and jeune filles of the district. Several chairs had also been thought-fully placed against the wall for weary customers and were usually occupied by one or more of the local residents. They had stopped talking at her approach when Faith first started going there, but now after a week of observation during which it became clear that here was a young woman who knew her cotelettes, she was hailed with great familiarity whenever she passed by, and Benjamin had become a favorite.

  “I don't understand!" Clement Veaux had exclaimed as he stood in front of a cheerful poster issued by the butchers association of France, proclaiming: MON BOUCHER —IL EST UN, ARTISTE! His white apron with the red streaks from the day's work stretched tightly across his round body. "You Americans throw away all the parts we like best."

  “Not this American," Faith had assured him as she scooped up brains, boudin—blood sausage—and even tete de veau—although she still had not acquired a taste for the calf s eyeballs.

  Veaux's wife, Delphine, sat at the cash register all day. She was less round than her husband and wore her dark black hair in a neat Dutch bob, the thick fringe of her bangs reaching the top of the frames of her glasses. The whole effect was of une femme serieuse—until she smiled. She asked Faith endless questions. What did they eat for dinner? Was it true they sold ice cream for dogs in the United States? It was tempting to answer nettles and peanut butter to the first query—Delphine would not have blinked. It would also have been nice to say, "No, of course not!" to the second. But she stuck to the truth.

  After finishing at the Veaux's, Faith walked quickly to the small square in front of her venerable building and went into the dark, cool, sometimes pungent vestibule. The huge dumpsters,poubelles, for the building were at the rear of the narrow hallway.

  The apartment had been a surprise. It belonged to a relative of the Leblancs, both of whom were from old Lyon-nais families, and the cousin—a generic term
for all kin outside the immediate family—was willing to let the Fair-childs use it because he did not dare to rent it. Since the Napoleonic Code, a sitting tenant has had such inalienable rights that it often took years to get rid of one, no matter j what the lease said. Paul's cousin planned to move to this apartment in another year; until then, it was virtually empty. There were a bed, two tables, a few lamps, and some chairs. There was also a phone, since to disconnect service , could mean never getting it restored. The Leblancs had ' produced a child's cot for Ben, some plates, cutlery, and kitchen equipment, and it would suffice for a month.

  When Faith and Tom had struggled with Ben and their f suitcases up the five flights of dizzying circular stone stairs to open the heavy oak door, using three separate keys, they had walked into an immense apartment with high ceilings adorned with intricate plaster bas reliefs and moldings, the walls beautifully painted and papered, ornate fireplaces with carved marble mantels in most rooms, and small balconies outside the almost floor-to-ceiling windows. The windows were tied shut now after Ben had exuberantly flung one open and managed to take a heart-stopping step outside onto the balcony.

  Tom had walked about slowly, then let out a whoop. "Pinch me, Faith—it's like camping out in some corner of Fontainebleau!" he'd exclaimed.

  The room with the bed in it faced the immense fifteenth-century church of St. Nizier directly across the square, and the clock face on one of the steeples seemed close enough to touch, especially at night when it loomed through the windows they were loath to cover with the inside shutters. The statuary on the facade seemed to come alive when illuminated at dusk, the babe in the Madonna's arms wriggling slightly, high above the street.

  After their first enthusiastic impressions, the Fairchilds began to take note of the antique plumbing—the toilet in a closet so tiny that one's knees grazed the shut door once enthroned, and with a chain pull so high that Faith, not a small woman, had to stretch to reach it, producing a cascade of water that threatened never to stop. The bathtub— at the far end of the apartment from the w.c.—had lion's-paw feet and was large enough for all three of them. Faith found it handy for laundry.