Body In The Belfry ff-1 Read online

  Just then Robert Moore came into the living room with Charley MacIsaac and said something to the Sven-sons. They all went out into the hall and Faith saw Erik Svenson reach for the phone. Eva Svenson clutched his arm. As if a message had been delivered, those who had been outside in the garden came in and the talking stopped.

  MacIsaac left the hall, went out to his car, switched on the radio, its blare jarring the silence unpleasantly. No one could make out what was being said. Abruptly, Charley drove off.

  Erik put the phone down. With Eva quietly weeping at his side, he came into the room and told them, "Dave is at the police station. That was Detective Dunne. What he said exactly was they're holding him for questioning.”

  Eva stood absolutely still, with a bewildered expression on her face. Her eyes were locked on one of the portraits of Patricia's ancestors and she looked as though she wished her family had never heard of the Moores—or Aleford either. That they could all have stayed on the farm in Sweden and never come across the ocean at all.

  Tom stepped forward. "I'll go down with you, Erik, let me get my coat." He came over to Faith, gave her a kiss, told her he would meet her at home, then left the room. The Svensons waited immobilized, until Tom came back with Robert. Robert took Eva's arm. " I've called another lawyer and he 's meeting us there." That seemed to trigger something and Eva began to sob openly. They hurried out to the cars.

  Those left looked stunned and then all began to talk at once. There was a lot of anger, but also a lot of fear. It had been hard to connect the day 's events with the murder. It had been a funeral like every other funeral. There had been a sense of security in going through the established motions. Now they all remembered. It wasn't just any funeral. The dead woman was a murder victim. And someone, however unlikely, had been picked up by the police.

  Faith went home soon after and sat in Tom's study nursing Benjamin in the big old rocking chair her Aunt Chat had given them when Benjamin was born.

  “You'll use it more than any booties or sweater I could knit," she had said, and it had been true. It was comforting to sit and rock and Faith fell asleep with Benjamin nuzzled close to her breast. When she woke up, it was dark outside and cold. She felt stiff. Tom still wasn't home.

  Faith realized she hadn't eaten anything all day and after she changed and bathed Benjamin, she went into the kitchen to make herself an omelet. She had just broken the first egg when Tom walked in. He looked horrible : His face was drawn and there were circles under his eyes that hadn't been there earlier. She broke some more eggs and got out the remnants of last night's capelli d'angelo and pesto to make a frittata.

  “I can't believe they are putting this kid through all this. They've been at him all afternoon. About Cindy. About the damn photographs. Even the minuscule amount of marijuana .they found.

  Faith had never heard Tom sound so depressed and she quickly left the frittata to put her arms around him.

  “This is too much, Tom. The funeral and now this.”

  She poured him a glass of Puligny-Montrachet.

  “I'll admit I'm totally overwhelmed. They really think he did it ! MacIsaac and Atlas or whoever he is.

  Poetic mother, my foot, more likely straight from Barnum and Bailey's!"

  “Now, Tom, he can't help his genes and he 's really not so big, he simply looks it—big bones.”

  Tom eyed her in astonishment and began to laugh helplessly. "And what, pray, is the difference ? "

  “You know what I mean. He's not fat like those before-and-after ads where the man has his whole family standing in a pair of his old trousers. He 's just big.”

  Faith was drying the lettuce, a thankless task. Tom walked over to the sink. His glass was empty and he was feeling slightly better. He planted several kisses on the back of her neck. She always smelled terrific—if it wasn't the kitchen, it was Guerlain's Mitsouko. He couldn't decide which excited him more. But the day's events crowded in again.

  “Oh, Faith, I kept looking at the Svensons and thinking how we would feel if anything like this happened to Benjamin. I felt so useless. At least Robert had the sense to get on to his law firm and they sent their top criminal lawyer. Fortunately Dave had refused to say anything until his parents got there and by that time, the lawyer was on the way, so he didn't incriminate himself. The way he was going on to us—about being guilty in thought. That's all the police had to hear."

  “What did he know about what was in the box ? "

  “Nothing. He was pretty amazed, in fact. It's not the behavior one expects of one 's betrothed. He did say that they smoked occasionally. Cindy especially liked to smoke before they had sex. Dave didn't."

  “The old impairment theory, no doubt," Faith interjected.

  “Whatever," Tom continued, "Anyway, Dave insists that dope never did much for him. My guess is a stiff shot of aquavit and a jump in the snow is more in the Svensons' line."

  “The police really don't have much of a motive, aside from the fact that he hated her guts. But they do have the fact that he had a quarrel with her shortly before she was killed, a quarrel in the Burger King on Middlesex Turnpike that was witnessed by most of Aleford's teenagers. He also had an appointment to meet her in the place and at the time she was murdered," Tom spoke ruefully.

  “What's going to happen now ? " asked Faith.

  “They'll either formally charge him with murder or keep him as long as they can for questioning. If they don't charge him, they'll have to let him go.”

  They went to bed early, falling wearily, easily, but not straight, to sleep.

  The next morning, Benjamin woke them up at five o'clock, soaked through and hungry. Faith fed and changed him, made a bargain with God that if He would make Benj go back to sleep again, she would try very hard to be a better person, and tumbled gratefully back to bed, God having recognized a good thing when He saw it. Then the phone, not Benjamin, awakened them at seven o'clock. It was Eva Svenson. Dave had been released on personal recognizance the night before, but the police had arrived a few minutes ago to take him in for more questioning. His father had gone with him and they hoped Tom would join them.

  Faith went into the bathroom, threw up, washed her face, and decided enough was enough. She had to get busy.

  She made a hasty breakfast for Tom while he was shaving and told him that while he was gone she was going to take Benjamin for a walk and pay a few calls. She toyed with the notion of going back up to the belfry to get some kind of inspiration from the scene of the crime, but she decided she wasn't desperate enough yet for what was admittedly a slim possibility. There was achance that Cindy 's ghost was moving around restlessly until avenged or whatever, but it was more likely to be haunting the parking lot at Friendly's, where her crowd hung out, than the belfry.

  No, best to concentrate on the living and she figured she ought to start bravely at the source.

  5

  Millicent Revere McKinley was always home in the mornings, seeing to her garden behind the white picket fence surrounding her small, eighteenth-century clapboard house or crocheting endless doilies in an easy chair poised strategically close to her front living room window. Both activities afforded her every opportunity to keep her eye on Aleford and as it was all absolutely necessary work, no one could ever accuse her of nosiness. Was it her fault that her house was smack in the middle of town ? That was where her ancestors had built it, or rather moved it. It seemed as if houses were constantly on the move in those days, presumably as neighborhoods or pastures changed, but Millicent 's would stay where it was now, thank you, if she had anything to say about it and she did.

  Faith approached the gate with not a little trepidation. She knew she had never been number one on Milli-cent's list of favorites and now after the bell-ringing incident, Millicent regarded her as certifiable or worse. Nor was Millicent, who attended the Congregational church as did her fathers before her, a member of the parish, which might have given Faith an opening. No, the only thing to do was throw herself on the floor
(uneven pine) and beg for mercy.

  Millicent answered the door with an assumed look of surprise, not a particularly nice surprise.

  “Why, Mrs. Fairchild ! What brings you to my little cottage so bright and early ? “

  From her expression, one would have thought it was about six o'clock in the morning and Millicent straight from her four-poster. Actually it was after nine and Millicent had been perched in her window as usual. Faith gritted her teeth and leaned down to take Benjamin from his stroller. Wasn 't the old witch even going to ask her in ?

  “I have been wanting to talk with you since last Friday, Mrs. McKinley, and tell you how deeply sorry I am about the whole incident." Faith assumed correctly that Millicent would know she was referring to the bell and not Cindy.

  “I know how upset you have been over the bell ringing and I just wanted you to know that it will never happen again." Faith felt this was a pretty safe promise to make. Another body in Aleford 's belfry was as likely as a Benedict Arnold Fan Club.

  “Well, that 's very sweet of you, dear, but it has nothing to do with me particularly, you know. Well, perhaps a bit more than some since it was my great-great-great- grandfather who east tlle bell," Millicent thawed minutely. "Why don 't you and your baby (she managed to make the words sound dubious, as though Benjamin might perhaps be someone else 's) come in and have some coffee.”

  Cups in hand, they settled down in her living room with its multitude of candle stands, tilt-top tables, card tables, and whatnots, for each of which Millicent hastened to say, "Please dear, not on that surface, antique, you know.”

  Faith could have sworn not a few were Ethan Allen, but she balanced her cup on her knees nonetheless and ate some more crow. Finally she managed to steer Millicent onto the murder itself and most particularly onto Cindy. Faith had a hunch that the key to the whole murder lay in Cindy's noxious personality. After all, someone had disliked her enough to kill her. If that wasn't bad personality, what was it?

  “Mrs. McKinley," she began.

  “Do call me Millicent, everyone does. And I shall call you Faith, or is it Fay ? "

  “Faith, please, Millicent—or" (She couldn't resist) "is it Millie?"

  “ Millicent," she snapped. " And you were saying ? "

  “Yes, well, having discovered the body and since the Svensons are members of our congregation, of course I've been giving Cindy 's murder a lot of thought," Faith said, all of which did not fool Millicent for a minute as one snooper eyed the other. Still it sounded good.

  “ What I've been wondering about is Cindy's other ' friends.' I'm sure Dave was not the only one, and perhaps you saw her with someone else ? “

  Millicent smiled. It was frightening.

  “Oh, I saw Cindy all right. With Dave, of course. On their way to the belfry. And I knew what they were up to. But you're right. He wasn 't the only one. Most of theothers were from the high school or college boys home on vacation. Nobody special. I think they all knew she was going to marry Dave, although for the life of me, I could never figure out what she saw in him."

  “Oh?”

  Faith suddenly realized that Millicent was perhaps the sole person in town who had some admiration for Cindy. Millicent looked at her sharply.

  “Yes, I thought Cindy could do a lot better. She would never have been happy with Dave. She could have had him on toast for breakfast. Not that I liked her," and a scowl crossed her face.

  Ah, thought Faith, another victim.

  “No, she was mean-spirited and selfish, but she was also bright and strong. And what energy ! When she organized anything, you knew it would be done correctly.”

  Faith remembered that Millicent and Cindy had been the driving, very driving, forces behind that big Patriot's Day pancake breakfast every year that raised funds for the DAR and CAR.

  “ She was exactly like her great-grandmother Harriet, full of ambition and energy. It's an interesting family, the Coxes—Cindy's great-great-grandfather was Captain Martin Cox and everybody always referred to the family as “Cox,' even though Patricia's maiden name was Stoddard and they were Eliots before that." Millicent was quick to grab any and all opportunities to show off. Her mind was a familial pursuit Rolodex.

  “Harriet wrote a history of the family, which you might enjoy reading. Of course, I can 't lend you my copy, but the library has one."

  “Thank you, and I wouldn't dream of taking your copy. I'll make a point of getting it from the library," said Faith sweetly. And resolved to add the work to the list of books she would probably never read along with the collected works of Mrs. Humphrey Ward and Sir Walter Scott that stood in leather-bound glory on the parsonage bookshelves.

  Returning to her mission, Faith tried to steer Millicent back on course. "But," she insisted gently, "there was never any one boy you saw Cindy with other than Dave?"

  “Not ' boy,' dear," Millicent said archly, "More like 'man,' but that would be telling and I do not believe in spreading idle gossip.”

  The hell you don't, thought Faith bitterly. This is just to get back at me for the bell again.

  Millicent stubbornly continued on her way and was talking about the Coxes again. It had been madness, Faith thought, to think that she could actually direct the conversation.

  “Of course the Captain, as Martin was always called, did make a fortune, but I believe Harriet's husband added to it considerably. The Captain's money had all gone to Harriet. She was the oldest. It was some whim of his to keep it all intact. The whole will was distinctly original. The Coxes always were. In this generation Patricia got the house because her sister Polly didn 't want it. Polly took the money, though, and it passed to Cindy, or would have."

  “Who will get the money now, then ? " Faith asked boldly.

  “Oh, it will go to Patricia, of course. And just in time, if you ask me.”

  Which Faith did to no avail. Millicent Revere McKinley was more than willing to drop hints, but as for spreading around any real information of the specific "The British are coming" nature of her illustrious forebear, the answer was "Ride on." So Faith did.

  Millicent walked her to the door and continued out down the brick path in front of her house. Faith said good-bye and thanked her nicely for the coffee. She wondered if it was worth it to come back and try again or if Millicent would continue to dangle clues in front of her cat-and-mouse style. Probably the latter. She glanced back over her shoulder. Millicent was picking a few late-blooming roses.

  A few pink Sweetheart roses.

  Faith 's next stop was Eleanor Whipple's pretty white Victorian house. She didn't expect much information here. Eleanor was the soul of innocence and even if she had seen something would probably not know what it meant. Still, her house was at the foot of Belfry Hill and she just might have noticed something, or rather someone.

  Eleanor welcomed her warmly and ushered Faith into her cozy parlor. Faith managed to avoid the horsehair loveseat, which always threatened to land her on the carpet, and chose a low-slung sort of folding chair covered with blue and white striped velvet.

  “Father always called that the “Egyptian chair,' whether because it folds in that interesting way or because of the material, I never remembered to ask him and of course now it is too late.”

  Considering that Miss Whipple's father had been dead for some thirty years, Faith thought it was much too late.

  Faith got some nice digestive biscuits with her coffee this time and she was able to set it on a little découpage table in front of her.

  “This looks much too fragile to use," Faith protested. "Oh, that's just an old piece of clutter that Mother made," Miss Eleanor said. "Don't worry about it." Faith knew it wasn't at all, and managed to find a doily to slip under her cup and saucer. In Aleford, it was usually possible to find a doily someplace—or in certain homes it was, anyway.

  She took a sip of coffee; it was good and strong. She thought of the first time she had visited Eleanor and fought to stifle the giggles that always threatened at the memor
y. It had been teatime and Eleanor had entered the parlor with a heavily laden tray, announcing proudly, "You'll never taste tea like this anywhere else. I make it with my own water," and proceeded to pour a pale, slightly golden stream into Faith 's cup. Was she insane ? Faith wondered as she eyed the brew. Too much tatting? "Yes," Eleanor continued, "When we modernized the kitchen, Mother made them leave the old pump by the sink. The well is right underneath, in the basement. She didn 't like the taste of town water. It's all right for washing, but you don 't know what could have fallen in the reservoir and we never drank it." Faith drained her cup and had to admit the jasmine tea did taste delicious. Afterward Eleanor took her to see the pump. She insisted Faith give it a try, although the whole idea, quaint as it was, filled her with repugnance, raising the possibility of blisters and unsightly muscular development.

  Faith took another sip of coffee and glanced about the room. It was a shrine to Eleanor 's ancestors. There were daguerreotypes perched on the tables and portraits of various sizes hung on the walls. Thick albums covered with velvet attested to still more. Just over Eleanor's head was a faded enlargement of three little girls with fluffy hair, their dresses covered with Fourth of July bunting. Who were they and where were they now ? Faith shivered slightly, pondering the probable answer.

  Eleanor had noticed her apparent interest.

  “I like to be surrounded by my family," she commented, "Of course I didn 't know all these people, but I am proud of them nonetheless. Nothing is more important than your family. This was one of my mother's lessons, Faith, and I'm sure you'd agree.”