The Body In the Belfry (14 page)

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Authors: Katherine Hall Page

BOOK: The Body In the Belfry
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“There are so many suspects at the moment, if we count all the guys in the pictures, it's almost an embarrassment of riches. Well, Oswald makes more sense than Sam, although both are ludicrous.”
“I'm not sure I see how he makes more sense and I don't want to. My brain is so foggy now, I need a beacon to find my way upstairs.”
“Follow me, Tom. Anyway, we can talk about this on the way to the Moores' tomorrow.”
“Swell,” he said and flicked off the kitchen light.
 
 
The next morning as they drove north through Newburyport and Salisbury to the Moores' house perched on the coast with virtually one room in Maine and one in New Hampshire, Faith thought she would always remember this fall as one of the most beautiful and horrible ones of her life.
The town of Aleford was completely panicked. Sam's interrogation had stirred even more indignation than Dave's. Sam had been a Town Meeting member practically since he came of voting age and he had been talking recently of running for selectman. Wives eyed their husbands furtively. If Sam had fallen, what about Dick or Harry? Perfectly innocent men looked full of guilty secrets. But no one except possibly Millicent believed Sam had killed Cindy and that meant there was a murderer among them.
In the car Faith had told Tom about her conversation with Jenny and he had laughed until the tears ran down his cheeks. It was a moment of great comic relief.
“Of course she was always sniffing around me, Faith, particularly when I first came to town. I know she wanted a parson to add to her list, sort of like the Mile High club or whatever it is where two people somehow manage to copulate in one of those airplane toilets where I have trouble just getting myself in to pee. Anyway, I was firmly avuncular and more lately positively nasty to her.”
“Sure, sure,” chided Faith. She could imagine Tom's idea of nastiness. “You probably told her she couldn't have the weenie roast when she wanted it or something like that.”
“A very apt choice of activity, I may say,” said Tom, “but actually you're pretty much on the mark. I was challenging her quite openly at the recent meetings. You know I've always wanted other kids to take charge and
not let Cindy run the show. Last month I said something about a new president and she was very upset. I guess it hadn't occurred to her that once she was married, she wouldn't be the president or in Young People's anymore. Of course there would have been plenty to do in the couples group, but Cindy never liked to let go of anything.”
“Exactly. She always had to be in control. Look at Sam and Dave, and now Oswald. And the way she ran things in town—all those pancake breakfasts. You know she didn't give a damn about any of it, it was just to be in charge. Maybe it was losing her parents at such an early age—she was afraid to let things out of her hearty little grip. You know, love, maybe she did have some deep-rooted psychological problems and we've been a tad insensitive.”
Tom and Faith looked at each other.
“Naaaaah,” they said simultaneously.
“But that explains the hints about a man of the cloth. She was really more angry at me than I supposed. Probably she thought I should make her some kind of president for life.”
“I shudder to think what she had up her sleeve. Some kind of whisper campaign complete with scarlet letters addressed to the parsonage. But eliminating Dave, Sam, Oswald, and you leaves me without a suspect again.”
“Don't worry. I'm sure you'll come up with a new theory soon. Theory, Faith, no more sleuthing, unless you take me too. You know, like ‘You must never go down to the end of the town, if you don't go down with me.'”
“I promise, James James.”
They had felt pretty optimistic, almost normal, for a few minutes, then concern about Sam and the Miller family occupied their conversation.
Faith hoped John Dunne was dissatisfied with Sam as
a suspect. Sam had been allowed to go home, but was summoned back bright and early that morning for more. The ticket to Puerto Rico in his pocket had in fact been for a client, just as he had asserted when they found it. Still he did not deny that he had been with Cindy until eleven-thirty Friday morning, when she had suddenly demanded to be driven back to Aleford, and casually jumped out of the car when he stopped for the light in the center. Her last words to him had been, “So long, sucker.” Faith privately agreed with Jenny that Cindy was definitely not normal. She seemed to be possessed by Mae West, Mata Hari, and Scarlett O'Hara all at the same time.
They were almost to the Moores' house. Faith was looking out the window. Tom had a tape of “Prairie Home Companion” on and Garrison Keillor's hypnotic voice made her feel suspended and sleepy—and safe. A beautiful fall. That was the ironic part. All this was happening in one of the most beautiful falls to hit New England in a lifetime. The air was balmy; sometimes Faith even thought she could smell an ocean breeze and tropical flowers in downtown Aleford. Each morning started in gentle darkness and gave way to brilliant sunshine. The leaves did not seem to want to fall from the trees and when they did, they arranged themselves into exquisite bright mosaics of yellow, orange, and red on the lush green grass. It really was too much, Faith thought. Like Keillor's voice it lulled one into a feeling of safety and security. It made it too easy to forget what was really happening.
There was some banjo music on now. Faith had missed the hootenanny era, but Tom loved bluegrass and she was trying to educate herself for his sake. It was quite an effort. She found it hard to listen to most music. Despite her mother's rigorous training at Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall, as soon as Faith heard the opening
bars, be they Scarlatti or Scruggs, her mind started to wander.
Soon after, they turned off the main road onto the first of many little roads that would eventually land them on the Moores' peninsula.
Patricia had steaming bowls of chowder waiting for them. Robert was anxious to get out on the water before the tide turned, so they sat down to eat right away. After the house in Aleford, the camp was always a surprise.
This was Robert's house. He had discovered the spit of land jutting out just south of Kittery while sailing one day and had fallen in love with it. They used to camp on it when the children were young. At that time, the only structures were a dock and boathouse. Then five years ago they had built a magnificent contemporary house. The architect had been a client of Robert's and Robert had liked him immediately. When he saw the man's work, he knew this was whom he wanted to build his house. This house contained, rather than the hodgepodge of generations that furnished the Aleford house, Robert's collection of twentieth-century photographs; sleek, sublimely comfortable Italian furniture; and some of the beautiful Amish-type quilts Patricia had started making lately. The huge glass windows brought the pines and granite rocks into the house and at times it was hard to tell if you were inside or out.
They were eating on the deck. Patricia ladled the soup into chunky pottery bowls with which they could pleasantly warm their hands. This was followed by a big salad and more sourdough bread, which was Faith's contribution. Jenny had made a blueberry cobbler with blueberries frozen the past summer to finish the meal. It was perfect. Faith would have been content to sit and bask in the sun all afternoon, but Robert was plainly eager to get going.
“Come on, come on,” he complained, “We're going to lose the wind and the tide will be turning before we're started.”
“Good, Daddy,” said Jenny. “Then we can clam!”
He turned to her in mock disgust. “Some sailor.”
Jenny was going to watch Benjamin and at the last minute Patricia decided to stay behind and work on her latest quilt. Faith suspected she wasn't as ardent a sailor as Robert and only went to keep him company.
The three of them set out and before long the house was a pinprick in the midst of the dark green line of pines stretching far up the coast.
Robert let out a sigh of pure animal pleasure.
“Sometimes when I'm out here I wish I never had to go back to shore.”
Clearly he was in a pensive mood. Tom said something noncommittal about wishing things like that himself sometimes. Faith knew his technique well enough by now. He would draw Robert out, unraveling the thread of his discontent, then help him knit it all back up into a more wearable garment. He really was a very good minister. She let their voices play about her and closed her eyes.
Presently she heard Robert say, “I've been pretty stretched to the limit, Tom, what with the two houses to keep up and Robby's tuition. And the wedding was going to set me back a good deal. I won't pretend that the money isn't damn handy.”
Faith kept her eyes closed. She had the feeling that if she showed signs of being awake, Robert would stop talking. They were tearing across the water now at a terrific clip. Robert's voice picked up and the words came faster.
“It sounds horrible, especially now, but I've always hated her. Maybe I resented her coming into the family when she was a child, but I like to think that if it had been a different child, I would have loved it. From the
beginning she did nothing but cause trouble. When Jenny was born, I actually feared she might harm the baby. She was about seven years old then. She knew what she was doing. We had a nurse at first and she left the room for a moment when Cindy was there playing. When she came back a few minutes later, Cindy had taken Jenny from the crib and was balancing her on the windowsill. She said she wanted to see if she could fly like baby Superman, but that was just Cindy covering up. Obviously she resented having another girl around, try as we did to avoid playing favorites. Patricia really has been a saint.
“Cindy never bothered Rob much. Well, he was a little boy to her and she was only interested in older boys. He wasn't any kind of threat to her, although she used to tease him cruelly. I had to speak sternly to her on several occasions and she would look very sorry, then start in on him again when my back was turned. You didn't know him when he was Jenny's age, but he was a bit chubby and Cindy drove him crazy. She had all sorts of names for him. You can imagine.”
Tom could and, remembering a similar phase in his own adolescence, wondered why Rob hadn't killed Cindy then.
Robert had made some minute adjustments to the sail and was back at the tiller. The Moores had an assortment of boats—the inevitable Boston Whaler; rowboats, canoes, and dinghies for the kids to mess around with; Robby's boat, a Snipe, his pride and joy, which he raced, with his father as crew; then this old Dark Harbor sloop lovingly restored and cared for by Robert. Cindy had not been interested in boats, or in New Hampshire much.
“I was glad that Cindy didn't like to come here. She never wanted to rough it, which was all right with us. She didn't have to and she seemed happy to go to camps with less primitive accommodations instead. Maybe we
were two families: the Moores and the Moores plus Cindy. We certainly didn't intend it to be that way in the beginning. Patricia's mother was still alive when we took Cindy and she warned us not to expect her to be like Rob. ‘She's been badly spoiled from the start,' she said, ‘Just do your Christian duty and run for the cellar when trouble comes, because she's going to bring you plenty.' Her grandmother was the only one Cindy minded and I think she was afraid of her.”
“It's too bad she couldn't have taken her then. Maybe that's what Cindy needed—the old-fashioned ‘spare the rod and spoil the child approach.' Not that I think it's right,” Tom said.
“She didn't want her. She knew she didn't have too many years left and I think she wanted to have some peace and quiet. She liked her little house on the corner by the river. We would have been happy to have her in the big house—she had been born there and raised her children there, but she said she wanted a change and her own place. A remarkable woman. Patricia's a lot like her—they look soft, but underneath there's that native bedrock. Besides, Patricia wanted Cindy very much. We had been married for a long time before Rob came along and Patricia always wanted lots of children. We hadn't seen a lot of Cindy. They lived in California, you know. Patricia was terribly upset about losing her sister and she had just had a miscarriage, but here was a ready-made daughter and she was excited about having her. I have to admit I was too, at first. But it didn't last, especially for me.”
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 to
men. 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.

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