The Body In The Bog (9 page)

Faith had one last question. Ben would soon cross the line between anticipation and frustration. The last thing his mother wanted Miss Lora to witness was a full-blown Fairchild fit.

“And the other calls? They've stopped? I know you weren't there, but was there anything on your machine?”

“Nothing, except a lot of hang-ups. But people don't like to leave messages. My mother is the worst. You know, clears her throat several times, then whispers, ‘I'll call you back. It's Mother'—like it's a deep secret—and hangs up fast. That's if she leaves anything. I'll call her tonight. Maybe she's been trying to reach me.”

Faith nodded. The parsonage machine offered a sample of virtually every message-leaving style.

“Mom?” a little voice called out tentatively. “I'm getting overwaited.”

“It's time, Ben,” she called back, and sat well out of the way. If she'd had a stopwatch handy, he might have made the record books.

 

Play-group days always left Faith fatigued, and she'd gone straight to sleep, despite all the thinking she'd
planned to do. Those minutes between head touching the pillow and oblivion tended to be her most productive time of day and she kept a pad and pencil next to the bed to scribble notes for recipes or other projects that every once in a while seemed just as brilliant in the morning. So when she was awakened by the scream of the sirens, she was more than usually cranky. From the sound of them, they were converging in the Fairchilds' driveway.

Closing her eyes tightly, she tried to summon sleep again. Tom, who only woke if one of the children sneezed or whimpered, had not moved a muscle. She hitched the comforter over her ear and then sat up. She wasn't in Manhattan. She was in Aleford. Sirens in the night, especially this many—the noise was continuing unabated—were not a common occurrence. Now, in her old apartment, a night
without
sirens would have been the exception.

She went over to the window and looked across at the green. No activity there and nothing seemed amiss. She walked down the hall and crept into Ben's room, which was at the rear of the house. She could hear shouts from a bullhorn, but not the words. And she could see bright orange light at the end of the block. The whole sky appeared to be in flames. Two figures were in the Millers' backyard, and as she watched, they ran toward the street. Obviously Pix and Sam. She ran, too, back to her room, where she threw on some clothes.

“Darling,” she whispered in her husband's ear. Getting no response, she shook him slightly, then harder. “Darling!” she repeated, and Tom woke up all at once.
“What is it? What's happened?” He reached to turn on the light and the glare flooded the room. He rubbed his eyes. “Faith, what's all that noise?”

“There seems to be a huge fire at the end of the block. You can see it from Ben's room. I'm going to find out where it is.”

“Wait, I'll come with you. No, the kids. But be careful.”

Tom was in a slight state of confusion and had pulled out one of his black clerical jackets instead of his bathrobe from the closet. Faith took it from his hands and effected the change. She left him sitting on the bed, looking at his slippers.

“Go to sleep. I'll come back and tell you what's going on as soon as I can.”

It was cold, yet the color of the sky gave an illusion of warmth as she walked rapidly down the block, joining others similarly awakened from their beds. There was an air of excitement. She had started smelling the smoke as soon as she stepped out the door. Cold was no longer a problem as she got closer. The heat was intense and companies from all the surrounding towns were fighting the blaze. The new wood crackled and went up like the proverbial matchsticks. But no need to be concerned about life or property. This house had never been lived in, and never would be. It was the new spec house the Deanes had almost finished—the house on Whipple Hill Road that the neighbors had often wished would disappear. And now it was—right before their startled eyes.

Faith looked around at the faces in the flickering
light. A fire, especially a large fire, has a peculiar effect on people—mesmerizing, fascinating, beguiling. It brings out the pyromaniac in everyone. The flames were magnificent, beautiful. They shot high up into the night sky; torrents of sparks cascaded to the ground. Faith found herself almost enjoying the spectacle—that is, until Fire Chief O' Halloran's voice shouting instructions to Aleford's Ancient Order of Hook and Ladder Volunteers reminded her that this was real and not
Backdraft
at Universal Studios. The firefighters were struggling desperately to keep the blaze from spreading to the surrounding houses; the street was a river of water as the hoses drenched trees, walls, and chimneys.

How had it started?

Faith knew there would be no answers tonight. The smoke was filling her lungs. She had to leave. The house would be a total loss. But the Deanes would be insured. Insured. Insurance. How much and to whom?

She turned to go home. She could see some of her neighbors gathered in small groups, but she didn't feel like talking to anyone, even the Millers. Fortunate or unfortunate—which was it? The neighborhood would be happy, although the Deanes still owned the land. The Deanes couldn't be, even with insurance. All that work. She looked around to see if any members of the family were here. They would have to be. And they were. Gus and his grandsons were standing with Charley MacIsaac by one of the trucks. They were watching in silence, their faces grim.

How had it started?

A few steps toward home, she was stopped by a loud shout. It was one of the firemen from Byford. He was directing his hose into one of the windows on the first floor. Faith paused. He shouted again.

“Jesus Christ! There's somebody in here!”

Nelson Batcheldor did not find out he was a widower until 4:30
A.M
. It had taken that long for the fire to be extinguished enough to recover the body. There had never been any hope of survival. And the only reason a positive identification was made so quickly was that Margaret had died as she'd lived—binoculars in place.

Chief MacIsaac appeared at the parsonage, where the Fairchilds were waiting. As soon as Faith heard that someone had been trapped inside, she'd hurried home and the two of them sat together, waiting to hear who the victim was. At one point, Tom had walked down to the fire, but soon returned. There was little he could do there, he'd told Faith, except get in the way. She remembered her own first moments of fascination at the sight of the fire and felt sick.

Charley was wearing a heavy firemen's raincoat and his face was streaked with grime. He refused Faith's offer of coffee. He'd been drinking it for hours.

“It was Margaret Batcheldor, and we have to tell Nelson.” Charley seemed to break down for a moment. He cleared his throat, swallowed hard, and went on. “Damn nice woman, even though she did go overboard with the birds. What the hell could she have been doing in the house? No birds there. Unless she thought one was trapped or something….” He sounded utterly defeated.

Tom and Faith were listening intently, but it took a moment for them to register.

“Margaret? Margaret's body?” Tom asked.

Charley nodded and Faith started to cry. “Poor Nelson. What's he going to do without her?” It was impossible to think of one without the other.

“I thought you ought to be there when I tell him, Tom. He's going to need you.”

Faith gave her husband a fierce hug. He and Charley left immediately and she wandered about the house, unable to settle down to anything, certainly not sleep. She had a fleeting impulse to call the Millers, but then decided not to. She didn't feel like spreading this kind of news. Aleford would know soon enough.

Margaret Batcheldor trapped in a fire in the house the Deanes built. Margaret and Nelson, the recipients of a poison-pen letter. Margaret and Nelson, pillars of POW! Finally, Margaret and Nelson in ski masks and out of mufti, emerging from Beecher's Bog. Aleford had had its ups and downs, serious tragedies, a feud or two, but nothing like this. The smoke from the fire seemed to have seeped in through the walls of the house. It was as if some noxious gas were permeating
their lives, carrying distrust and now death throughout the village.

She began to long for the children to wake up. Her thoughts were beginning to terrify her. She picked up a book, a new Barbara Kingsolver, but the words swam in front of her eyes.

“Momeee!” a frightened voice called out, “Where are you? Where's Dad? You're not in your bed? I want to know. Where are you?” It was Ben, and she rushed upstairs to reassure him. Holding him close, reassuring herself.

 

Nelson answered the door. He was in rumpled striped pajamas and had obviously been sound asleep. He seemed extremely surprised to see the two of them and his mouth dropped open at the sight of Charley in his raincoat and Tom clad in dog collar and jacket at such an ungodly hour.

“I'm afraid we have bad news,” Charley said. “Can we come in?”

“Of course, of course,” Nelson said, bewildered. “I'll get Margaret.”

Tom and Charley looked at each other. This was not going to be easy.

“Why don't we sit down over here,” Tom suggested, and led the way to the couch and chairs comfortably arranged in front of a large fieldstone hearth. Bird plates and bird pictures adorned the walls. Carved birds and porcelain birds perched on every surface. Needlepoint bird pillows were carefully arranged wherever one might think to sit.

Charley came straight to the point. “Margaret's had an accident. I'm afraid she's dead, Nelson.”

“Dead! Margaret! That's impossible!” Nelson's voice rose to a high-pitched screech and he jumped up. “She's asleep in her bed. Nothing's happened to Margaret!” When he ran out of the room, they followed. Could he possibly be right?

He wasn't. They found him in a small bedroom crammed with more bird artifacts and shelves of guides and photographic essays. There was a single bed beneath the window, its spread stretched taut. A bed that no one had slept in.

“But I don't understand. Where is she?” He grabbed Charley by the shoulders, and although Nelson was much the weaker man, Tom had all he could do to pry him away. Then Charley took one side, Tom the other, and they forced Nelson to sit on the bed between them.

“When did you last see her?” Charley asked.

“When I went to bed last night. I was tired and went up first. She was going to sleep in here.” For a moment, he seemed embarrassed. “I guess I snore sometimes, and anyway, she was getting up early to go birding and didn't want to disturb me.” He began to sob. “Why didn't I go with her? What was it? Her heart? The doctor said she would be fine if she took her medication. Outlive us all.” He put his face in his hands and let go. Tom and Charley waited a while.

“Is there anyone you want us to call? A relative or neighbor?” Tom asked.

Nelson shook his head. “We're the only family we have, except for some cousins we haven't seen for years. But friends. Everybody was her friend.” His voice broke.

Charley put his hand on Nelson's shoulder. “Want some coffee? Or maybe a shot of something?”

Nelson shook his head again. Charley took a deep breath. “She didn't have a heart attack, or at least we don't know that yet. There's been a fire at the new house the Deanes have put up over on Whipple Hill. Margaret was inside.”

“You mean she burned to death!”

Charley kept his hand on Nelson's shoulder. “There was nothing anybody could have done. By the time she was discovered, it was too late. It was a very bad fire. The whole house is just about gone.”

“But what was she doing there?” Nelson was truly dazed now.

“We were hoping you might have an idea.”

Nelson shook his head. “She was going to leave early and she did say she was meeting someone. But that was normal. I can't imagine why she would have gone into that house. It's not even near any of her spots.” Tears were running out of his puffy red eyes and dripping off his nose. He made an ineffectual wipe at them with his pajama sleeve.

“Did she say who she was meeting?” Tom asked.

“No, but it was probably one of our usual group. They all want to go with Margaret. She's so knowledgeable.”

Tom noticed Nelson was still speaking in the present. For a moment, the three men sat in a row in Margaret's room. Nobody said anything. Charley stood up.

“I have to get down to the station and file a report. Believe me, I realize how painful this is for you, but you'll have to wait for the body to be released before you can have a service. There has to be an autopsy.”

Nelson winced.

“As soon as you feel up to it, we'll talk about plans for the funeral,” Tom said. “Meanwhile, I'm going to go downstairs and get us some coffee, maybe a little breakfast. Come and show me where things are.”

Nelson shuffled off obediently, a pathetic figure in his nightclothes.

“I'll be in touch,” Charley said quietly to Tom. “Let me know if he thinks of any reason at all, however farfetched, why she could have been there, and get him to give you a list of the names of the people who went birding with her.”

“Okay. One question, though. Is an autopsy really necessary? I would have thought he could have been spared that when the cause of death is obvious.”

“We all know it's Margaret because of the binoculars, but the state doesn't, and there could be other things.”

“Like what?”

“I'd rather not say unless I have to,” Charley replied in an uncharacteristically cryptic manner, and Tom had to be satisfied with that.

By dawn, word of Margaret's death had spread as rapidly as the fire had through the fresh lumber the
night before. It wasn't long before friends and neighbors were appearing at Nelson's door with food and words of comfort. He'd changed out of his pajamas, and Tom left him sitting in the kitchen with the Scotts, the Batcheldors' closest friends. Nelson continued to have no idea why Margaret had been roaming about the Deanes' house in the wee hours of the morning. He did give Tom a list of the names of habitual birders, though. He was obviously still in shock, breaking down when each new arrival offered condolences. Tom left, secure in the knowledge that Nelson would be as fine as circumstances permitted now that the well-oiled machinery of care in a small place like Aleford had slipped into gear. By sundown, Nelson Batcheldor would have enough food in his freezer for the rest of the year.

 

The town had just started to react to the shock of Margaret's death and the fire when word leaked out that in addition to Margaret's remains, the police had found remnants of a sizable container of gas by the body.

Margaret Batcheldor, an arsonist!

Tom called Faith from the church office with the news. A parishioner had called him with the rumor and he'd checked it out with the police. Faith was stunned, yet as she hung up the phone, she couldn't help but remember Margaret's odd attire in the woods, as well as her obvious militancy at Friday's POW! meeting. Fighting fire with fire? Could she have intended to destroy one of the Deane properties as a warning against further development? Margaret al
ways made it absolutely clear that she thought birds, and the other inhabitants of Aleford's woods, pastures, and ponds, were just as, if not more, important than people. She certainly thought them more valuable than property. But if so, the gesture had gone wrong—very, very wrong. Faith imagined Margaret, perhaps in her ski mask again, dousing the beams with gas and then igniting them. Unaccustomed to an activity of this sort—it was not like rubbing two sticks together—she must have been terrified by the ferocity of the blaze, then overcome by it. It was too tragic. Faith suddenly felt angry. Why hadn't Margaret's husband or her friends realized how close to the edge she was? Surely Millicent, of all people, must have known.

Millicent. All this business of taking a stand, the constant invocation of the sacred past. Faith had heard that after she and Tom had slipped out of the POW! meeting, there had been a lengthy discussion about possible courses of action, including not-so-subtle allusions to the stores of powder and guns Colonial inhabitants had hidden in these very woods in the weeks preceding that famous April morning. Presumably this was all in reference to the historic nature of Beecher's Bog, but maybe Margaret hadn't seen it that way. Maybe she took it as a call to action. What were the Batcheldors up to? Or Margaret on her own? Faith had heard that Margaret ruled the roost at the Batcheldor house. It was entirely possible this very determined woman had decided to act solo.

Faith strode to the phone. The kids were not due
home for another hour. She wanted to hear what Millicent had to say. Before she could get to it, it rang. Tom's voice sounded weary—more weary than simply from losing last night's sleep. Sleep deprivation was something parents actually began to get used to, or at least pretended to.

“Somebody threw a brick and shattered Lora Deane's living room window last night. She came home about midnight and found it. She's pretty hysterical and has told her grandparents what's been going on. She went there immediately.”

“I was afraid of this. It was only a matter of time before whoever's been calling her would get tired of phone games and move on to more exciting stuff. So, she's going to the police after all.”

“Her grandfather has taken charge and was trying to reach Charley when he got called out to the fire. This morning, they've all been so upset about the house that the brick hasn't seemed as important, but apparently Gus did tell the police. She said her grandfather was mad as hell that she hadn't come to her own family right away.”

“Well, at least she'll be safe with them.”

“I hope so,” Tom said glumly, and hung up.

 

Tuesday morning had dawned gray and gloomy. A fine rain was falling, which observers were sure would soon change to the kind of steady downpour that meant mud season. By midmorning, the few spring bulbs in bloom hardy enough to venture forth had been squashed back to the earth. Aleford was
drenched. It was also scared. Rumors were flying faster than a speeding musket ball. Much faster. Not only theories about the fire and Margaret, but also word about the poison-pen letters. By the time Faith heard about them in the post office, the original seven recipients had grown to fifty and the relatively mild language had become Howard Stern material. She did what she could to correct the story, but no one believed her. No one wanted to believe her. They were battening down the hatches in the face of a storm and they didn't want someone coming along telling them not to worry—especially an outsider, and a New Yorker at that. Probably didn't seem like much to her, New York being the hellhole it was, but Aleford knew better.

They weren't right about the letters—there were only five in all: Scotts, Batcheldors, Millicent, Brad Hallowell, and Pix—but they were right about the depth of the crisis. By evening, there wasn't a house that had not both literally and figuratively set out the emergency candles and flashlights, and cooked up plenty of food—prepared for the worst. The thunderstorm had moved up the coast and more news had spread. Margaret Batcheldor might be a charred corpse, but she hadn't burned to death. A ferocious series of blows on the back of the head had killed her, not the fire.

Margaret had been murdered.

 

Faith sat in the parsonage watching the lights flicker and listening to the hum of the refrigerator go on and
off. She was alone with the kids, who had greeted the wind and rain with delight. Ben had been sorry that the power had managed to stay on through his bedtime. She knew he was upstairs trying to keep himself awake. She pointed out that going to sleep was just like a power outage. Dark was dark. But he failed to see her logic. In her heart, she agreed with him. As a child, it had always been thrilling to lose power during a storm. As an adult she only had visions of spoiled food. And at the moment, not too many of those. There were too many other concerns. Tom was at Nelson Batcheldor's with Charley again, as he had been since late afternoon when the report of how Margaret had died came from the medical examiner's office.