and herself. Benjamin was smiling in cozy comfort and blowing little drooly bubbles.
She sobbed, 'Where have you been, Tom? I've been calling the office for hours ! “
Then she burst into tears. It was not unknown for Faith to cry, in anger, sadness, and especially at the movies; but there was a qualitative difference to these sobs and it took Tom a long time to calm her down. Finally all three of them were bundled under the quilt and Faith started to talk.
“You can 't imagine how terrified I was, Tom. I kept expecting some maniac with a meat cleaver to come after us. And the body! I've never seen a dead person not in a coffin!”
Tom was holding her close and making comforting noises.
“All I was going to do was have a picnic,' Faith wailed, “and there she was ! Of course it was lucky it wasn't somebody I liked.”
Tom looked as though he were going to say something and changed his mind.
“You were going to say I shouldn 't be speaking ill of the dead.'
“Maybe something like that, but two things stopped me in time. It sounded inappropriately pontifical and besides I agree with you.”
Faith nestled closer to him. Tom might be a little too pious on occasion, but he was no hypocrite.
She was feeling very drowsy and now that she was safe she found her mind wandering to all kinds of interesting questions, such as who killed Cindy? And given her personality, why had he or she waited so long? Faith started to tell Tom, but when their two heads bent as one toward Benjamin, they both drew back quickly and she spoke first. 'My turn or yours?”
By the time Tom had changed Benjamin, wondering as he often did how one tiny infant could produce such a volume of odiferous
She gave Charley an account of what she had seen or rather hadn't seen. There had been nothing to note that she could think of. They left, then returned an hour later. They had forgotten to fingerprint her and the CPAC unit from the DA's office was screaming for her prints so they could eliminate her. Faith noticed Mac-Isaac's fingers were inky; it looked as if his had had to be eliminated, too.
It was close to nine that night when the phone finally stopped ringing with calls from assorted well-wishers and gossip mongers. Even the most desperately curious would never break that New England taboo and call after nine o 'clock.
Faith was curled up in the blue wing chair next to the fireplace, which she had filled with pots of fiery gold and russet chrysanthemums until the weather called for logs. She was beginning to shake off the feeling of being terribly cold and terribly nauseated at the same time.
Tom walked into the room and threw himself down on the couch.
“ These calls are beginning to drive me crazy, Faith. They start out sympathetically, but somehow everyone manages to work in the bell. I really think they would rather you had put it to a vote at Town Meeting before you rang it.”
Faith had her legs draped gracefully over the arm of the chair. She had poured two glasses of Armagnac while he had been on the phone the last time and she held one in her outstretched hand now. She had been thinking about the murder and was starting to enjoy herself.
“I'm sorry you have to deal with all this, Tom, but think how much worse they'd be to me. Has anybody said anything about suspects? Other than Ben and I?'
“No, a few have mentioned feeling sorry for the Moores, but mostly they ask kindly if you and the baby are all right, then go straight to the bell. Oh, Mrs. Keller did offer the opinion that it was probably a tramp—not Cindy, you understand, but the murderer.'
“Tramps don't usually carry around roses, Tom. That's the part I don't get,' Faith said speculatively. 'Who does something like that—a disappointed lover? A mad botanist ? Somebody who 's read one too many Georgette Heyers ? “
She took a sip of brandy, savored it, and continued. 'And why kill Cindy in the first place? I mean, sure, there were any number of reasons to kill her. Even you, Tom, could have done the deed after a particularly heated Young People 's meeting. But why kill her now when she was about to leave town, presumably for good?'
“Just to set the record straight, I was talking to Mrs. Norris at the register of the Shop and Save. I was in fact returning a quarter I had found on the floor.'
“Are you sure you 're still not an Eagle Scout or something ? I hope you do have to go to court and establish an alibi. There haven 't been too many trials with such exciting testimony lately.”
Tom grinned.
“ Well, she did see me pick it up, Faith. I suppose I could have said I would put it in the plate. Anyway I didn 't kill Cindy, despite the number of times I've said to you I'd really like to kill that girl.”
Cindy Shepherd had arrived in Aleford at age five, when her parents were killed in an automobile accident, to live with her aunt and uncle, Patricia and Robert Moore. Since that time, she had managed to antagonize the majority of the town's inhabitants by ferreting out the one weakness an individual most wished to hide and relentlessly bringing it forth into the light of day with her treacherously sharp tongue. Kids were easy prey and she honed her skills on them. Although she did have friends—anyone who preferred to be in the quiver rather than impaled on the target. These friends also helped in the information-gathering process and loyally elected her to anything she wanted to be—president, director, whatever was in charge.
Adults were not safe; in fact, she enjoyed the challenge. When she was younger she would adopt an air of youthful ingenuousness to deliver her remarks: 'Oh, Mrs. Martin, did I see you in town last week ? Wasn't it on Tremont Street ? Near that cute shop where they sell the wigs ? ' When she got older, she didn't bother with subtlety and adopted the simpler method of pretending not to see that the person was standing nearby before she aimed.
Her behavior was a terrific embarrassment to her aunt, who was acutely aware that, although her female friends pitied her, they were also extremely angry. Women tended to come in for more scorn than men, since as Cindy matured she began to like men very much and women not at all.
Patricia Moore had spent countless hours talking to Cindy about hurting people's feelings, hours that could more productively have been spent filling holes in a dike with sand. After one particularly trying day when Cindy, aged fourteen, referred to the Whipple sisters as'dried-up old maids who needed to get some,' Patricia burst into tears while she was telling Robert.
“I know everyone blames me, but short of preventing the accident, I don't know what I could have done differently.'
“Nothing, my dear, you have done more than enough. The only thing that could have happened that didn 't was Cindy's presence in the car with them,' he said, sighing.
Faith had heard all these stories and new ones continued to circulate. They were all coming back to her now.
“Think, Tom. Even after eliminating one of the town 's most respected members of the clergy who clearly harbored ill will toward her, we can certainly list countless others. It 's not hard to come up with suspects, however unlikely. What keeps puzzling me is the timing. That's a bigger mystery.'
“You're right,' he agreed. 'Who didn't want her to leave, absurd as that seems? Or had she done something recently to someone that was so monstrous he or she had to kill her and the fact that she was leaving is coincidental ? “
Tom was an inveterate mystery reader and he was beginning to enjoy himself too, especially as Faith, slightly flushed from the brandy, was obviously more than all right.
“This is good, Tom; let 's try to think of all the possible connections. How about someone who didn 't want her to get married—an old flame, her future in-laws, or maybe some secret girlfriend of Dave's?”
Cindy was engaged to Dave Svenson, much to the town 's surprise, although they had gone out together for years. The only logical explanation anyone had been able to come up with was that she had cast a spell on him.
It wasn 't a wedding Faith looked forward to. She had already attended one function catered by the firm hired for Cindy's reception and the pathetic attempt at 'continental cuisine ' in the form of Chicken Kiev with what Faith detected as Cheese Whiz in the center had convinced her that it wasn't a moment too soon for
