and Tom, blissfully ignorant of what a little black dress cost these days, gracefully acceded. She would also be allowed to give him an occasional present, and it was her fervent hope to wean him away from Brooks and a little closer to Armani. Tom was heir to the Yankee pride in the longevity of one's wardrobe. He would gleefully point out articles of clothing from days gone by that Faith would have donated to charity years ago.
Now more than a year and a half later as the Tavern on the Green faded into the grass of the village green, she had Tom. And she had a baby.
Said baby wriggled against her and she felt inexplicably happy. So I'll get the business going again and meanwhile what better way to spend one's time than sitting with this lovely little brown-eyed bundle, she told herself.
Faith had reached the end of her journey and turned to enter the belfry. The doorway was low and she had to duck slightly. Sitting down, she reached into her pocket for the sandwich and .put it on the bench beside her, while she started to unloosen the straps of the Snugli. That was when she realized she wasn't alone.
In the dim light inside, she had not noticed that the bench against the other wall was occupied. Whoever it was was awkwardly slumped over in sleep. Faith stood up to leave. She would eat outside. Benjamin could be waking up any moment and would no doubt disturb him or her. Benj was not an easy waker and protested the abruptness of the transition from sweet dreams to rude awakenings with a particularly lusty cry. She took a step closer to the other bench as she went out and all at once several things became abundantly clear.
First, it wasn't a stranger. It was Cindy Shepherd, a member of the parish and in fact, President of the Young People's Club.
Second, Benjamin wouldn 't disturb her. She was not sleeping. She was dead.
At least Faith assumed she was, since there was a kitchen knife sticking out of her motionless rib cage.
A kitchen knife that also impaled a single pink rose.
Having taken in all these details with the precision of a slow-motion camera, Faith suddenly covered Benjamin 's already closed eyes with her hand while she moved quickly to the center of the belfry.
A murder had occurred and that meant a murderer. There was only one thing to do.
Faith grabbed the bell rope, pulled with all her might, and sounded the alarum.
2
In the days that followed, the actual murder itself was almost eclipsed by the debate that raged within the town over whether Faith should have rung the bell or not. Leading the group that opposed the action was Millicent Revere McKinley, great-great-great-granddaughter of a distant cousin of Paul Revere. It was this progenitor, Ezekiel Revere, who had cast the original bell.
“I don't know what Grandfather would have said,' Millicent remarked in a slightly sad but firm tone that went straight to the hearts of many of her listeners—in the post office, the library, the checkout line at the Shop and Save. Wherever she could gather a crowd. Faith grew accustomed to dead silence and slightly guilty smiles when she entered these places.
Millicent wasn 't smiling, though. It was her belief that Faith could have run down the hill
After the grandfather line, she would generally add, ' It's just not going to be the same on Patriot's Day when we sound the
Best actress in a supporting role, Faith thought bitterly.
This was not Millicent's first foray into local controversy. She was also the main and most impassioned supporter of a proposal, which surfaced at Town Meeting every year, to change the name of Aleford to Haleford. She averred that the
Opponents logically argued that the very earliest town documents recorded the name as Aleford and there was no question in this case of
Any suggestion of this was enough to make Millicent see red, white, and blue. A member of the cold water army from birth, she scorned the base suggestion that either grandfather or the town had anything to do with ale. And so the battle raged.
Tom and Faith privately sided with the Aleford contingent as opposed to the Halefordians, and wished thatthe tavern hadn't burned down one particularly boisterous night. Millicent and friends had managed to prevent the licensing of any others. There was no Ye Olde Groggery in town. If you wanted a drink, you had to go to Byford, the next town. So called because it was near yet another ford, not as Millicent might have contended because of an ancient family named By. More familiarly it was known to some Aleford inhabitants as the Packy Run.
The question of the bell promised to be as engrossing as the Haleford/Aleford issue, and Millicent, or 'Thoroughly Militant Millie' as she had been irreverently tagged, certainly must have felt just a tiny bit grateful to Faith in an unexplored corner of her heart.
For the bell had certainly been rung—furiously, conclusively, and with all the strength Faith could muster from arms that felt like limp strands of pasta. This done, she had raced down the path, literally colliding with the town police chief, Charley MacIsaac, several of his men, and almost everyone else within hearing distance. It was pretty hard to stop on Belfry Hill's sharp incline once you got going.
They were quite surprised to see Faith, having expected to catch some wayward juveniles (not from Ale-ford, of course) fooling around with the bell. And they were flabbergasted when she blurted out, “Cindy Shepherd's been murdered and the body's in the belfry.”
The crowd immediately rushed off, leaving Faith and Benjamin in the dust. No one wanted to be left behind. Murder victims were about as rare in Aleford as Tories.
Faith took one look at the solid phalanx of retreating backs and decided that the safest place for a mother and child was home.
It had apparently not occurred to MacIsaac and his troops that the murderer could still be lurking about concealed in the underbrush, ready to strike again. It did occur to Faith, however, and this is why she left the scene of the crime ; to answer the questions of all those who have audibly wondered why she didn 't stick around and own up to
When the chief got to the belfry, saw Cindy's very obviously dead body, and turned to ask Mrs. Fairchild a question, he realized she wasn 't there. He quickly sent Patrolman Dale Warren, new to the job and pleased as punch at the turn it was taking, outside to find her. Dale never thought that she would simply go home. This explains the brief APB which went out all over the state for Faith and Benjamin after Patrolman Warren made a thorough search of the hill. Rather than being annoyed when she finally heard about it, Faith was terribly pleased that he had subtracted several years from her age—he made her twenty-four.
In any case, everything was straightened out that afternoon. Or, rather, nothing was straightened out about Cindy, but everything was straightened out about Faith.
Except she never did correct Dale. Young people today had few enough illusions to hold on to now that Martha Stewart was doing commercials for K mart.
Tom, meanwhile, had been running errands as a break from pastoral duties, and after leaving the bank was waiting on line in the post office when the person in front of him turned around and seemed mildly interested to see him there.
“Don't suppose you know that your wife found Cindy Shepherd's dead body up in the old belfry ? ' he remarked.
Tom had heard the bell pealing earlier and wondered what was going on, but to say the idea that Faith was ringing it after finding the corpse of the president of his Young People's Club was the farthest thought from his mind would be to place that thought somewhere on Venus. He rushed home, correctly divining Faith's natural instincts. She had locked all the doors and was in the bedroom, shivering, with her down quilt pulled tightly around Benjamin
