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
“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
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
“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
