book, a new Barbara Kingsolver, but the words swam in front of her eyes.
“Momeee!” a frightened voice called out, “Where are you? Where’s Dad? You’re not in your bed? I want to know. Where are you?” It was Ben, and she rushed upstairs to reassure him. Holding him close, reassuring herself.
Nelson answered the door. He was in rumpled striped pajamas and had obviously been sound asleep. He seemed extremely surprised to see the two of them and his mouth dropped open at the sight of Charley in his raincoat and Tom clad in dog collar and jacket at such an ungodly hour.
“I’m afraid we have bad news,” Charley said. “Can we come in?”
“Of course, of course,” Nelson said, bewildered.
“I’ll get Margaret.”
Tom and Charley looked at each other. This was not going to be easy.
“Why don’t we sit down over here,” Tom suggested, and led the way to the couch and chairs comfortably arranged in front of a large fieldstone hearth.
Bird plates and bird pictures adorned the walls.
Carved birds and porcelain birds perched on every surface. Needlepoint bird pillows were carefully arranged wherever one might think to sit.
Charley came straight to the point. “Margaret’s had an accident. I’m afraid she’s dead, Nelson.”
“Dead! Margaret! That’s impossible!” Nelson’s voice rose to a high-pitched screech and he jumped up. “She’s asleep in her bed. Nothing’s happened to Margaret!” When he ran out of the room, they followed. Could he possibly be right?
He wasn’t. They found him in a small bedroom crammed with more bird artifacts and shelves of guides and photographic essays. There was a single bed beneath the window, its spread stretched taut. A bed that no one had slept in.
“But I don’t understand. Where is she?” He grabbed Charley by the shoulders, and although Nelson was much the weaker man, Tom had all he could do to pry him away. Then Charley took one side, Tom the other, and they forced Nelson to sit on the bed between them.
“When did you last see her?” Charley asked.
“When I went to bed last night. I was tired and went up first. She was going to sleep in here.” For a moment, he seemed embarrassed. “I guess I snore sometimes, and anyway, she was getting up early to go birding and didn’t want to disturb me.” He began to sob. “Why didn’t I go with her? What was it? Her heart? The doctor said she would be fine if she took her medication. Outlive us all.” He put his face in his hands and let go. Tom and Charley waited a while.
“Is there anyone you want us to call? A relative or neighbor?” Tom asked.
Nelson shook his head. “We’re the only family we have, except for some cousins we haven’t seen for years. But friends. Everybody was her friend.” His voice broke.
Charley put his hand on Nelson’s shoulder. “Want some coffee? Or maybe a shot of something?” Nelson shook his head again. Charley took a deep breath. “She didn’t have a heart attack, or at least we don’t know that yet. There’s been a fire at the new house the Deanes have put up over on Whipple Hill.
Margaret was inside.”
“You mean she burned to death!”
Charley kept his hand on Nelson’s shoulder. “There was nothing anybody could have done. By the time she was discovered, it was too late. It was a very bad fire. The whole house is just about gone.”
“But what was she doing there?” Nelson was truly dazed now.
“We were hoping you might have an idea.” Nelson shook his head. “She was going to leave early and she did say she was meeting someone. But that was normal. I can’t imagine why she would have gone into that house. It’s not even near any of her spots.” Tears were running out of his puffy red eyes and dripping off his nose. He made an ineffectual wipe at them with his pajama sleeve.
“Did she say who she was meeting?” Tom asked.
“No, but it was probably one of our usual group.
They all want to go with Margaret. She’s so knowl-edgeable.”
Tom noticed Nelson was still speaking in the present. For a moment, the three men sat in a row in Margaret’s room. Nobody said anything. Charley stood up.
“I have to get down to the station and file a report.
Believe me, I realize how painful this is for you, but you’ll have to wait for the body to be released before you can have a service. There has to be an autopsy.” Nelson winced.
“As soon as you feel up to it, we’ll talk about plans for the funeral,” Tom said. “Meanwhile, I’m going to go downstairs and get us some coffee, maybe a little breakfast. Come and show me where things are.” Nelson shuffled off obediently, a pathetic figure in his nightclothes.
“I’ll be in touch,” Charley said quietly to Tom. “Let me know if he thinks of any reason at all, however far- fetched, why she could have been there, and get him to give you a list of the names of the people who went birding with her.”
“Okay. One question, though. Is an autopsy really necessary? I would have thought he could have been spared that when the cause of death is obvious.”
“We all know it’s Margaret because of the binoculars, but the state doesn’t, and there could be other things.”
“Like what?”
“I’d rather not say unless I have to,” Charley replied in an uncharacteristically cryptic manner, and Tom had to be satisfied with that.
By dawn, word of Margaret’s death had spread as rapidly as the fire had through the fresh lumber the night before. It wasn’t long before friends and neighbors were appearing at Nelson’s door with food and words of comfort. He’d changed out of his pajamas, and Tom left him sitting in the kitchen with the Scotts, the Batcheldors’ closest friends. Nelson continued to have no idea why Margaret had been roaming about the Deanes’ house in the wee hours of the morning.
He did give Tom a list of the names of habitual birders, though. He was obviously still in shock, breaking down when each new arrival offered condolences.
Tom left, secure in the knowledge that Nelson would be as fine as circumstances permitted now that the well-oiled machinery of care in a small place like Aleford had slipped into gear. By sundown, Nelson Batcheldor would have enough food in his freezer for the rest of the year.
The town had just started to react to the shock of Margaret’s death and the fire when word leaked out that in addition to Margaret’s remains, the police had found remnants of a sizable container of gas by the body.
Margaret Batcheldor, an arsonist!
Tom called Faith from the church office with the news. A parishioner had called him with the rumor and he’d checked it out with the police. Faith was stunned, yet as she hung up the phone, she couldn’t help but remember Margaret’s odd attire in the woods, as well as her obvious militancy at Friday’s POW!
meeting. Fighting fire with fire? Could she have intended to destroy one of the Deane properties as a warning against further development? Margaret always made it absolutely clear that she thought birds, and the other inhabitants of Aleford’s woods, pas-tures, and ponds, were just as, if not more, important than people. She certainly thought them more valuable than property. But if so, the gesture had gone wrong—very, very wrong. Faith imagined Margaret, perhaps in her ski mask again, dousing the beams with gas and then igniting them. Unaccustomed to an activity of this sort—it was not like rubbing two sticks together—she must have been terrified by the ferocity of the blaze, then overcome by it. It was too tragic.
Faith suddenly felt angry. Why hadn’t Margaret’s husband or her friends realized how close to the edge she was? Surely Millicent, of all people, must have known.
Millicent. All this business of taking a stand, the constant invocation of the sacred past. Faith had heard that after she and Tom had slipped out of the POW!
meeting, there had been a lengthy discussion about possible courses of action, including not-so-subtle allusions to the stores of powder and guns Colonial inhabitants had hidden in these very woods in the weeks preceding that famous April morning. Presumably this was all in reference to the historic nature of Beecher’s Bog, but maybe Margaret hadn’t seen it that way. Maybe she took it as a call to action. What were the Batcheldors up
