bundle boards' or wasn't that for some other purpose ? He smiled and waved and bore a striking resemblance to the Queen Mother, except without the hat. Of course, if Quentin had come to dinner the resemblance might well have been to Jekyll and Hyde. Children were nothing if not mysterious. Like those paper balls you had as a child. You'd unwind yards of tissue paper and end up with a plastic whistle that didn 't work or a beautiful ruby ring you could swear was real. Every day with a baby was like opening a prize ball.
The next morning Faith and Benjamin made their way alone out to Mendham ; Faith getting lost almost
“Faith ! Benjamin ! How dear of you to come all this way. Do you want to sit outside ? I couldn 't resist, it was so lovely and warm.”
Faith, whose lips were beginning to turn blue despite the sunshine, declined. Chat, though quite unathletic, was as hardy as the rest of the Sibleys. It took a minute or two for her to collect all her things—glasses, paper, book, throws, Thermos of tea. The Thermos reminded Faith momentarily of Patricia. It was like the one she had sent along with them on the boat. Faith wondered how she was and realized that last night's flippant Ale-ford humor had not dispelled her deep unease about it all. Patricia 's ambiguous warning, the rose, the murder itself.
“Do I hear a sigh ? How uncharacteristic. Come on, Faith, let 's go inside and I'll light a fire to warm those little bird bones of yours and you can tell me everything while I cuddle Benjamin. And I won 't even mind if he throws up all over me like last time.'
“He doesn 't do that anymore, Aunt Chat, or at least he hasn't lately,' said Faith, slightly aggrieved at the mention of any imperfection in her offspring.
They moved indoors and settled down before the fire in the big stone fireplace that dominated the living room. The house was a complete mishmash. Parts of it dated to the late 1700s, while others were added on in what the owners somewhat benightedly thought was the same style. Rooms trailed on, one after the other, petering off in balconies or stairways. The kitchen had been added on most recently and was enormous. The room they were in now was adjacent to it, but was one of the original ones. Yet somehow the house seemed all of a piece, or maybe it was Chat 's sense of design that unified it. It was American Comfortable—lots of quilts thrown over tables or hanging on the walls, bright fabrics covering soft chairs and footstools, bookcases everywhere, some with books and some with Chat 's collection of folk art animals from all over the world. You assumed she had lived in the house for a lifetime, but it had actually been purchased after her retirement when she had moved out of her New York apartment to the accompaniment of dire predictions of loneliness and vegetation from all her friends. In fact she was seldom without company, except when she chose. The house had every comfort, including sauna and whirlpool. The gardens were lovely and people tended to look at Chat's as a kind of ideal vacation spot. As did she.
Faith stretched her legs toward the fire, glancing out the window toward the paddock where the horses strolled picturesquely.
“This really is wonderful, Chat. But who would have thunk it? I never pictured you as a country girl.' Her aunt laughed. 'You forget I grew up in the country, Faith. Besides I wanted more space so I could finally get everything out of storage. I can't imagine how I lived in that tiny apartment all those years. “
That tiny apartment had been an entire floor in one of the San Remo towers, but Faith supposed compared to this sprawling place it was tiny.
Benjamin was cozily ensconced in Chat's lap—a pretty roomy one. Like all the Sibleys she was tall and was discreetly referred to by the family as a 'big girl.' Her hair was almost completely white and very thick. She had dyed it while she was working and afterward the tidy dark bun had gradually given way to an equally tidy white one.
“Lunch is all made, Faith, or rather bought. And you will probably hate it, seafood quiche from the local gourmet shop and some kind of salad with lots of things in it, but I'll give you a glass of wine and you'll be polite enough not to notice.”
Faith was sorry she had the reputation for being a food snob, but work was work and standards were standards.
“So, love, what the hell is going on in that parish of yours? Are you sure it's not Salem or Stepford or one of those places ? New England is always so unpredictable. You never know what they're going to do—vote for the most radical or the most conservative candidate ; secede and start a new country. Anyway, I'm rambling. Start from the beginning and go to the end.”
Chat looked increasingly serious as Faith related the events of the last two weeks. At some point she put Benjamin down on the floor to give Faith her undivided at- tention. Faith told all. Well, maybe she glossed over Scott Phelan a little, but then he wasn't really in the picture now that Dave was out of the running and her aunt just might react the way Tom had and once was more than enough. When Faith told her about finding the rose in the mailbox, Chat stood up and said, 'Lunch. I want that glass of wine now and so do you.”
At the table over what turned out to be pretty good quiche and really quite a good salad, Faith finished the tale. 'So you see it's not over yet. It won 't be until they find out who killed Cindy, or as far as I'm concerned, who sent the rose.'
“Or Or maybe both,' said Chat.
“Exactly. That 's really what's worrying Tom—and me too, of course, but it all seems so improbable.'
“Faith, honey, the whole thing seems improbable. If I didn 't hear it from your own lips, I would say it was some kind of plot for a novel, a rather farfetched one at that. Really—Millicent Revere McKinley and an oversized detective named John Dunne.'
“His mother liked poetry,' Faith replied automatically.
“ Fine, but there are limits. No, the whole thing is crazy and the craziest part is that you are mixed up in the middle. And a lot of it is your own fault.”
Heavens, thought Faith, another talking to ?
“You don 't have enough to do up there, so you're bored and when a body literally falls into your lap, you treat it as a heaven-sent opportunity for excitement, instead of the dangerous mess it is. Now, do admit Faith, I know Benjamin is a darling, in fact the most darling baby in the world, but don 't you find all these hours with him the teensiest bit enervating?”
You could never hide much from Chat, Faith reflected as she answered her aunt.
“Of course it's boring, but it's also wonderful and besides it's not for long. In fact it's for too short a time. Already I can't remember what he was like the first few weeks. And of course I feel guilty for being restless. Yes,' catching the slightly triumphant look in her aunt's eye, 'you are right, I am. I do admit it. I would like to have my fingers in a pie again, preferably one of my own making. But Chat, this is the choice I made and it's the right one. All my friends with babies either feel guilty because they are home or because they're not. It's a completely no-win situation, so you just have to accept it.'
“Now say you're glad you don 't have to work because you wouldn 't miss this for the world,' said Chat all in one breath.
“No need to be nasty. It's true. And everything else is true, too. I miss New York, and the little part of New Jersey that is forever you, and I miss working, but I wouldn 't miss this for anything.' Benjamin at that moment was fortuitously most engaging. He rolled over and babbled up at them lovingly from the quilt Chat had spread on the floor. A patch of sunlight hung over his head like a halo and Faith felt vindicated.
“I know all this, Faith, and I'm glad I didn't have to make any of these decisions myself. I never missed having children. I had you and Hope whenever I wanted and not when I didn 't. Maybe the best of all worlds, but, you muddleheaded thing, you, all this work or not to work, guilt, and so on is not the real issue here.'
“What do you mean?' Faith asked, feeling truly muddled by Chat's conversational leaps.
“The problem is that when you nipped into the belfry, you stumbled onto something, or somebody thinks you did, and it's very likely that you could be in real danger in Aleford. Playing amateur sleuth didn 't help either and I suppose that's why I am yelling at you.'
“Oh, is that what you're doing?' said Faith.
“I think the only sensible thing for you to do is to come with me to Spain next week. My friends have rented a large villa in Cadaques, which is warm and sunny this time of year. You and Benjamin can come back all nicely browned and in one piece when this business is over. There 's plenty of room and I plan to stay until late November
