Body In The Belfry

“Oh, Tom, I feel so cozy, I don't want to budge, but I don 't think I can stay awake any longer.”

They were back on the couch, where they had immediately headed after everyone had gone and the phone had stopped ringing with calls from friends and just about every newspaper in New England. Faith agreed to a press conference together with Charley, Dunne, and Millicent the next morning and begged them to leave her alone for the rest of the night, although she realized the publicity for Have Faith would be worth its weight in gold.

Her parents had gone to stay with Tom's and would be back in the morning. They had seemed uneasy about letting her out of their sight even overnight. Aunt Chat was in Spain as planned and they sent a cable in case some of the news services picked it up for the International Herald Tribune. (They didn't, though, and a much puzzled Chat called the following day to wonder why she had received a message, 'Faith fine. Don 't worry.') Faith was almost asleep and the stairs to the bedroom seemed as impossible to climb as the ones in Eleanor's basement. They had resisted the impulse to wake Benjamin to be sure he was all right and not traumatized in any way. They had talked. And now they were just holding on to each other. For dear life.

“ Faith,' murmured Tom when they were in bed, ' I don't want you ever to do anything like this again. I can 't take it. Promise ?”

Faith's thoughts drifted over the events of the last few weeks. She hadn 't been all that bad as a sleuth, but Tom was undoubtedly right. Besides, it was exceedingly unlikely that anything like this would happen in Ale-ford a second time.

“ I promise, darling,' she said. With her fingers crossed. Just in case.