Body In The Belfry

anyway. That should give John Dunne and all his troops plenty of time to solve the case.' Chat spoke emphatically and Faith knew she had already made the extra reservations, sent a wire to her friends, found a nice baby nurse from the village, and arranged the schedule for baths in the time it took Faith to answer.

“Oh, Chat, that would be lovely, but I can't leave Tom, especially now. And besides I think you are overreacting to the rose business,' said Faith, forgetting her own sheer panic on Monday.

“I knew you'd say that at first, but I want you to promise me that you will at least talk to Tom about it and not say no until then.'

“1 promise,' said Faith, putting her arms around her aunt's neck, 'and you know if Tom really thought there was any danger, he'd be the first one to get me out of town. And not just for a week.'

“1 know, Faith.' Chat paused. 'We could stop in Paris and eat and shop,' she continued, dangling the possibility before Faith like an especially delicious carotte.

“Not fair! You really are too much. Tom will be so proud of me for resisting all this temptation. Maybe I am turning into a minister's wife after all,' protested Faith.

“What makes you think minister's wives are any different from other wives?' asked Chat, 'Don't tell me you see solving Cindy's murder as some kind of colossally good parish deed ? '

“No, no, of course not. I don 't know what I see it as anymore. Maybe you 're right about the boredom stuff, but once you get involved in something, it's hard to stop. And I don't think minister's wives are different from any others. I know it. Remember, I've had a lot of opportunity to observe them over the years.'

“Well, then, you drew the wrong conclusions.' Chat dismissed the whole thing summarily. 'We'll have to deal with all that another time if you're going to beat the traffic back into Manhattan.”

Faith hadn 't realized how fast the day had gone and quickly changed Benjamin for the trip. Chat gave her a little carved lamb from Equador for Benjamin 's room and the last thing Faith heard as she drove away was, 'Think Paris. Think Spain.”

It took a long time to get back into the city, since she got lost again. All the highways in New Jersey seemed to be eighty something and led to the turnpike. She ended up crossing the George Washington Bridge, or rather crawling across, at six o'clock listening to the ' Eye Over Manhattan' helicopter reporter describe the traffic as 'jam and cram,”

“stall and crawl.' She got so interested in his rhyme schemes that she was home before she knew it.

Her mother had dinner ready—a nice piece of fish and some salad. Faith was happy to go to bed early and fell asleep before she could think too much about what Chat had said. When Tom had called, he had heroically urged her to go to Spain, but was not displeased when she said it was absolutely out of the question. She was very touched by Chat's offer, but it was back to Aleford, and any sun she got would be raking leaves outside her own little clapboard casa.

Friday Jane Sibley took the afternoon off from work and spent the time with Faith. She was sincerely worried about her daughter, but trusted Tom to assess the situa- tion. Faith herself had not seemed upset after the first night and Jane was inclined to ascribe the rose in the letter box to some crank. Something about minister's wives seemed to attract a lot of slings and arrows of an outrageous nature and Jane had had a few herself.

They took Benjamin to the Children's Zoo in Central Park, more for themselves than for him, and had some nice sentimental moments together while Benjamin and the monkeys made faces at each other. Afterward Faith found a winter coat at last, at Bergdorf 's, and they got back to the apartment with an armload of packages at five, weary but with a sense of accomplishment.

The phone was ringing. Faith reached it first and, slightly out of breath, said, ' Hello2”

It was Tom.

Patricia Moore was dead. Poisoned.

Robert had found the body in a small room off the kitchen when he came home from work. There was an empty mug lying on the kitchen floor and the teapot had been laced with enough weed killer to destroy several generations of Moores.

And Dave Svenson had been there all morning working in the garden—mulching the roses for winter. 'I'll take the nine o'clock shuttle,' said Faith, hung up, and burst into bitter tears.

Tom met them at Logan and they drove home almost in silence. Faith could not stop crying and when they reached the parsonage, they went straight to bed. It was too terrible to talk about yet.

Few people were sleeping easily in Aleford that night, but one head drifted off almost as soon as it hit the pillow, smiling drowsily in self-congratulation at one last thought. It had been ridiculously easy. That teapot just sitting on the kitchen counter. Well, better go to sleep. After all, there was still one more to go.

8

Aleford had gone to sleep in profound shock on Friday night and awoke to another on Saturday morning. Dave Svenson had been taken to the police station again.

Erik and Eva Svenson arrived at the parsonage wild-eyed and almost incoherent and Tom rushed off to the station with them. They got there not long after Dave, with Patrolman Dale Warren glued to his side, had been taken from the squad car and hustled into the station past a curious crowd.

While it had been ludicrous. to think of Dave killing Cindy, there was at least a possible love/hate motive. But the idea of Dave, or anyone else, killing Patricia Moore was obscene. He had worked with her in the garden for as long as anyone could remember, learning the names of the plants the way some little boys learn the names of ears. It was she who had first given him his love of the soil, and between the two of them they had made the Moores' garden the beautiful place it was.

Dave had been overwhelmed with grief when he heard she was dead. It never occurred to him that he might be suspected. Mulching the roses was something he had done hundreds of times. When he wasn't at school or home, he was always in the garden. Yesterday he had been in and out of the shed where the Moores kept their gardening tools and supplies. The same shed the police later stripped of all the weed killers and fertilizers for analysis.

Dave had heard all this without connecting it to himself. When they came for him early the next morning, it was like hearing the news all over again. Like the worst bad dream he had ever had and something that could not possibly be happening to him. To be accused of her murder was like death itself.

The entire town was suffering from the same combination of grief and disbelief. But fear was abroad and the fact that someone, anyone, was arrested meant that at least something was being done. Little by little throughout the day, news leaked out and spread through Aleford like a particularly noxious gas.

It seemed Patricia had called the police station on Friday morning and asked to speak to either Charley Mac- Isaac or Detective Lieutenant John Dunne. Neither was available, but Dale Warren told her he could reach them easily. They were up at the county courthouse. She asked him to have one or both of them drop by that afternoon as she had something of particular importance relating to the case which she had decided to tell them.

Her exact words were, Dale recalled later, “ I have decided to tell them something which may help clear things up.' Accordingly Dale left a message with the secretaryat the courthouse and told her it was urgent. But somehow it didn't reach Charley until close to dinner, arriving just before the message of her death. He had in fact been in the cruiser on the way to the Moores' when the news came over the two-way radio.

The police were speculating that Dave overheard Patricia 's conversation with Dale and killed her to prevent whatever it was from coming out. Everyone knew how fond Patricia was of Dave and it was not unlikely that she might have been shielding him in some way. Just as he had killed Cindy in a moment of passion, he killed again.

When Robert found Patricia, she was sprawled out on the floor, a few feet from the phone. Her coral twin set was covered with vomit and one hand was still grasping her mouth in an expression of intense pain. The small daybed in the room was in disarray, the pillows flung to the floor. When the coroner arrived, he told Dunne that she had probably gone to lie down, feeling unwell, then convulsions started. She managed to get up to try to get help, but it was too late and she may have gone into a coma.

They had the answer soon.

Metaldehyde, administered in the strong, hot tea Patricia was so fond of drinking, a habit all Aleford knew about.

Metaldehyde—an unpleasant last meal for snails and slugs. An excruciating one for humans.