The Body in the Bouillon ff-3 Read online

  “So it's certainly a place that has never had a breath of scandal." Faith played her last card.

  “Scandal! I should say not. The Hubbards are one of our finest families and truly devoted to what they do." Millicent had answered too quickly and too emphatically. There was something there, yet she clearly wasn't about to tell Faith.

  Faith realized it wasn't going to be that easy to find out what had upset Howard Perkins. Hubbard House was impeccable, it appeared—but not impregnable. She loaded Ben's toys back into the bag, strapped him into the stroller, and thanked her hostess with what she hoped was the appearance of gratitude before wheeling him down Milli-cent's garden path.

  It had been obvious from the start. There was only one thing to do if she wanted to find out what Howard could possibly have been describing—go to Hubbard House herself.

  Two

  Hubbard House was just as impressive as reports had led Faith to believe—more so, in fact. Two imposing three-story brick mansions sat side by side on a high knoll. Wide verandas with graceful columns suggested something other than a pure New England influence—as if the architect had gone on a junket to magnolia country. But since it was Byford, not Natchez, the columns were severely Doric, and any Corinthian leanings had been held tightly in check. The nursing-care annex connected the two houses. It was also brick—old brick to match the others. It was set slightly back from its neighbors, and a screen of well-kept shrubs extended across the front. The long drive with its fabled rhododendrons bordered precisely trimmed lawns with benches and a belvedere where weary walkers could rest. There was a golf course in the distance.

  There was nothing institutional about Hubbard House from the outside. It had been hard to find the entrance—the sign was so discreet as to be almost invisible. Faith followed a series of wrought-iron arrows and found the parking lot. For a moment she had imagined cars were banned.

  Ben was going to a friend's house to play after school, one of those unexpected reprieves that suddenly make a mother's day seem long, empty, and luxurious. He spilled his milk twice at breakfast, but Faith merely smiled. "You're certainly full of joie de vivre this morning," Tom had commented, rolling his "vivre" out from the back of his throat in an appreciative approximation of Gérard Depardieu. A sophomore year in France had left its mark in the form of a permanent love affair with the country. Faith had debated briefly whether to tell Tom about her plans to visit Hubbard House. She decided to tell him after the fact, that being her usual modus operandi. Besides, she had told him about her conversations with Charley and Millicent and he had not said anything about stopping her investigation.

  But when he had kissed her at the door and asked directly, "What are you up to today? More baking?" she had answered, "I'm not sure," and crossed the fingers of her right hard, which happened to be out of sight in her skirt pocket. Faith felt she was due the occasional absolution crossedfingers supplied because of her ministerial family connections. God knew what a burden that was.

  Now she walked up the stairs nearest to the Hubbard House parking lot and noticed that there were indeed wheelchair ramps and an ambulance entrance at the rear of the nursing wing. She crossed the veranda to the main entrance and noted the big pots of evergreens, which would contain other things in other seasons. There were no rocking chairs, though. Clearly Dr. Hubbard wanted his porch free from any elderly connotations.

  A large, gleaming brass door knocker hung on the front door, but Faith felt a bit awkward at rousing the populace. Instead, she turned the knob and pushed gently. The door swung open, and she walked into a beautifully furnished living room. Deep-blue wall-to-wall carpeting was covered by authentic-looking orientals. Wing chairs, Queen Anne high- and lowboys, and other appropriately aristocratic furniture filled the room. It was completely quiet, and Faith thought it was empty until she realized that a few of the chairs were occupied by individuals engrossed in the day's Christian Science Monitor or Wall Street Journal. There was a reception desk off to the side. A door directly behind the desk bore a plaque with OFFICE etched on it in small Gothic letters.

  Faith moved behind the desk, which was bare except for a crystal bud vase with a stalk of white freesia in it, and knocked at the door. It was instantly flung open by a small woman of a certain age with pinky-red curls, a navy-blue suit, and a kitty-cat-bowed, fuchsia blouse.

  She grabbed Faith by the arm. "Thank goodness you're here! I've been out of my mind trying to get someone. What with Mrs. Pendergast ringing me every other minute from the kitchen and Muriel from the annex, I haven't been able to call my soul my own all morning. Now, come straight along.”

  It took only two seconds for Faith to decide to keep her mouth shut and follow this woman. She couldn't have asked for a better entry to the workings of Hubbard House than to be mistaken for a worker, and it appeared the job was in the kitchen, so there wouldn't be any bedpans.

  She trotted along obediently as the woman sped through the halls and down a flight of stairs, observing that the decor of the living room had been continued throughout, augmented by rows of hunting and botanical prints. It was almost too predictable. She also observed that the place was completely devoid of the smells Faith associated with nursing homes—Lysol, rubber sheets, isopropyl alcohol, yesterday's cabbage.

  Her guide darted through a swinging door and Faith found herself in a cavernous kitchen, not fitted out as she would have arranged, but not bad. Presiding over the cuisine was a middle-aged woman of greater than average proportions on any scale. She was stirring something in a huge marmite on the top of the stove, and when she turned around to greet them, Faith was sure the "Mrs." was an honorary title. Faith had never seen a mud fence and had always thought it would be hard toconstruct one, but "homely as" immediately sprang to mind. Mrs. Pendergast had perhaps tried to compensate for the dun hue of all her features by choosing incongruous black eyeglass frames with rhinestones on the corners, which served only to emphasize the drabness of the rest of her appearance. Still, it suggested a lurking sense of humor—or something. They should get along all right. Two women with the same interest, although at the moment Faith was thinking more of plots than pans.

  “Mrs. Pendergast, here is an angel of mercy! Just in time to help you," dithered the woman with the curls. "Now what was your name again, dear?"

  “My name is Faith, Faith Fairchild." This was no time for aliases. Besides Farley Bowditch, there could be other former Alefordians who would recognize the minister's wife. She reluctantly shelved Deirdre Morgana, Letitia Carberry, and some of her other favorites for another day.

  “Mrs. Pendergast, Mrs. Fairchild. I take it you're all set? Good, now I'll leave you two ladies to your work." After this burst of speech, she scampered out the door and Faith and Mrs. Pendergast stood eye to eye for a moment.

  “Did Miss Vale tell you what was needed?”

  “Not exactly," Faith responded. "Some kitchen help, I gather."

  “Help is right. My lunch regular and her backup have both come down with this flu, and the volunteers so far stay long enough to learn what to do, then leave to finish their Christmas shopping or some such thing. I finally told Miss Vale that if she couldn't find somebody to stay for the next two weeks, they'd have to start sending out to McDonald's. Oh, that got her, you can imagine. Most of these people think a Big Mac is a large truck.”

  Faith shuddered. She was an angel of mercy.

  “Miss Vale"—for apparently that was the redhead's name—"didn't say anything about two weeks, but I'll help all I can."

  “It's getting the food ready and into that contraption there"—she pointed to a dumbwaiter. "You don't have to do pots or dishes. The wheelchair boys and girls do those."

  “Wheelchair boys and girls?"

  “The college kids who work here and go get the people in wheelchairs who live in the cottages for meals or take others out for a spin around the gardens. They serve the meals and clean up."

  “I think I'll be able to help you, but most days only until
eleven thirty, because I have to be home when my little boy comes back from nursery school. And only weekdays, I'm afraid."

  “That will have to do it and it may not be two weeks, but Dr. Hubbard is very particular about the food preparation, and if he thinks there's a chance of passing the flu around with the food, he'll have them stay home longer. Not but that I agree with him. Of course, I'm never sick myself.”

  It would take a mighty germ to fell Mrs. Pendergast, Faith thought, and found herself nodding solemnly—in tacit agreement, she supposed, or just to have some participation in the conversation that continued its one-sided course.

  “Now, don't worry about the cooking. I do all of it. Have been for thirty years—the last fifteen righthere. I need you to chop things, help me get organized, and dish it all out."

  “Like a sous chef," Faith commented.

  “I don't know any Sue chefs. Like another pair of hands is what I mean."

  “Fine." Faith reached for an apron. "Why don't you tell me where to start." She was a firm believer that a woman's kitchen was her queendom. Still, it might be possible to introduce some flavor into the cuisine after a few days. The only cookbook she could see was an ancient edition of Fanny Farmer, and while it made for wonderful bedtime reading—caramel potato cake, and her own personal favorite, Canapés à la Rector: caviar on toast sprinkled with diced cucumber pickles and red pepper, divided into sections, by anchovy fillets—she hoped the inhabitants of Hubbard House weren't subsisting on macaroni and chipped beef and the book's other stick-to-the-ribs staples.

  “We're giving them fish today—scrod and some greens and potatoes. The first thing you could do is start peeling these with this contraption while I trim the beans. The soup's all made and on the back burner." She gestured toward the stove. "There's always some who want soup first, or they can have juice. Then we give them a salad. And I've got last night's pot roast for those who don't want fish."

  “How many people are there?" Faith asked.

  “One hundred and fifteen total, but we never get that many for lunch. The cottages have kitchenettes and some people make their own lunch. And there's usually a few who are traveling or eating out. They mark their meal choices in the morning on those little sheets. There's sixty today and seven trays."

  “Trays?"

  “Yes, for the people in the annex. The wheelchair kids come for those first.”

  Faith worked quickly, but it took a while before the potatoes were on. She looked around to see what was next and clamped her mouth shut as she watched Mrs. Pendergast with an ancient canister of paprika, liberally sprinkling the fish before putting it into the oven to bake. They were assembling salads and Faith was about to start priming the pump to get information more relevant to her investigation than the merits of V-8 juice versus tomato when the door swung open and she heard the click of high heels on the kitchen tile.

  “Do you need some more help, Mrs. P.? I have a spare half hour and it's all yours.”

  The voice belonged to a tall, languid-looking young woman with, depending on one's frame of reference and charitable inclinations, a long Modigliani or Afghanhound-like face and black hair cropped close to her head. As she spoke, she took off the jacket of her suit, an Anne Klein Faith had considered herself last year, and rolled up the sleeves of her silk blouse. She wasn't beautiful, yet everything about her was—the way she walked, her voice, and all the separate parts: luminous gray eyes, smooth glowing skin. It didn't add up, but came close enough.

  “I can always use help, Denise. Grab an apron from the closet and you can finish these salads with Mrs. Fairchild here while I scoop out the Grape Nut pudding for dessert." Mrs. Pendergast spoke in tones bordering on affection.

  “Are you a new Pink Lady?" Denise asked Faith as she slipped on a pair of rubber gloves and grabbed a handful of lettuce.

  “A what?"

  “A Pink Lady. That's what we volunteers are called because of the pink dusters we're supposed to wear. I told them I was happy to come and do whatever they wanted, but nothing could induce me to put that thing on."

  “I don't think I'm one. Nor," she added, "have I ever drunk one. I'm just helping here until the lunch crew recovers from the flu." Faith hoped Miss Vale wouldn't suddenly decide to fling a duster her way to wear in the kitchen. She'd have to be firm and cite Denise as precedent.

  “Do you live in Byford, Mrs. Fairchild?" Denise asked.

  “No, I live in Aleford, and please call me Faith. My husband is the minister at First Parish, and we have a two-and-a-half-year-old boy. How about you?"

  “I live in Byford—for the moment. Try prying a teenager away from the friends he's made. I decided it wasn't fair for Joel to lose both his father and friends, so we're here for at least two more years."

  “I'm sorry to hear about your husband. Was his death recent?" Faith asked, switching into the empathetic minister's wife voice she thought she ought to be cultivating. It was a slight shock to watch Denise explode into laughter. Hysteria?

  “I should only be so lucky. No, the creep is very much alive and living in L.A. with wife number three, formerly mistress number three hundred and three, who didn't want wife number one's kid around. Wife number one didn't want him either. I'd been raising Joel pretty much alone anyway, and I wasn't going to back out on him. Plus we got the house, no problem, and actually both of us have never been happier."

  “It sounds like you didn't exactly have a match made in heaven," Faith commented.

  “I was just plain stupid and not young enough to have age for an excuse—but maybe not that stupid. I never had my wedding silver or towels monogrammed, for instance.”

  Faith laughed. She hoped Denise would be around a lot in the next two weeks. Besides being entertaining, she might have picked up what was going on at Hubbard.

  “What do you do here—as a volunteer?" Faith asked, also wondering why?

  “I started by driving some of the residents to temple for services on Friday nights—the rabbi had asked for volunteers from the congregation, and then when one of the people I drove, Mrs. Rosen, broke a hip and was recuperating in the nursing wing, I visited and read to her. One thing led to another and I became a volunteer. I love being adored and I don't have a whole lot else to do with my time. If I weren't so selfish, I'd go out and get a job, but I don't want someone telling me what time to be there and what to'do.”

  Obviously she didn't need the money, Faith ob- served, looking at her neat little Patek Philippe watch and the heavy gold necklace she wore. Her fingers were conspicuously bare of rings.

  “How about you, Faith, why are you doing this? Christian love?"

  “Nothing so selfless, I'm afraid," Faith answered. "I was on my way to visit a parishioner and Miss Vale mistook me for someone coming to volunteer and brought me here. But since Ben is in nursery school in the mornings, I can help for a while." She decided not to tell Denise about Chat's letter. Until she had more of an idea about what was going on, she wasn't going to mention it to anyone even vaguely associated with Hubbard House.

  “That is so typical of Sylvia—Sylvia Vale—and yet somehow she never puts a foot wrong. Here you are. The problem's solved even though she was completely screwed up about it.”

  The salads were done and only needed dressing, which the residents put on themselves.

  “Do you want us to do the bread, Mrs. P.?" Denise asked.

  “Yes, and I'll mash the potatoes, and then it will be time to get the trays done."

  “You should be doing this instead of me," Faith remarked. "You know so much."

  “Not a chance. Remember I'm selfish. I don't want to have to be here every day at a certain time. Besides, I have a hair appointment tomorrow. With this cut, I have to go all the time. It gives me another purpose in life, and it's almost as nice as the old days in high school when my friend Linda and I used to iron each other's hair, smoke cigarettes we took from her mother, and gossip. Somehow my hairdresser Richard's stories don't seem as interesting as which
cheerleaders went all the way and whether the math teacher was seeing Debbie Jackson outside school, but Richard pampers me and I love it.”

  Faith was still searching for someone who could cut her hair—if not exactly as she'd had it before her northern migration, at least in some approximation. She didn't want Denise's cut, but she recognized the hand of a master. Before she could ask her where Richard wielded his scissors, Denise looked at her watch and exclaimed, "Have to run! 'Bye, Faith. Nice meeting you. 'Bye, Mrs. P. You've got a treasure here. Let her do some of the cooking. I think she knows how." She winked at Faith. "Joel and I love Have Faith's wild berry jam.”

  A faint whiff of Coco lingered after she left, mingling with the smell of the brown bread, Parker House rolls, and cranberry muffins they'd been putting into baskets. Mrs. Pendergast lumbered over.

  “Put a few more muffins in each. We've got them to spare today. And you know these ladies always bring big pocketbooks to meals." She laughed.

  Faith hadn't pictured the stately inhabitants of Hubbard House as the types who filched rolls from the dining room, but then it could also be yet another example of Yankee frugality—she could hear the soft murmurs, "Don't want them to go to waste, you know." She added some more to each basket and went over to help Mrs. Pendergast fill the trays. The tray slips were tucked under the silverware, and she saw that one of them was for Farley Bowditch. He must be in the nursing-care wing.

  “I'm going to have to leave soon, Mrs. Pendergast, but I could bring this tray up on my way out. Mr. Bowditch is a friend."