Body in the Bog ff-7

by Katherine Hall Page

  Margaret and Nelson, a childless middle-aged couple, were members of First Parish. Nelson worked as a reference librarian in Byford, and, as an amateur woodworker, he occasionally took small carpentry jobs. He’d spent the previous fall putting in shelves and cabinets for the preschool. Miss Lora was pushing for a playhouse next. Margaret devoted herself to birding, as well as a number of community activities.

  But birding was her true avocation, and she often came to church with her binoculars slung around her neck the way other women wore pearls. The Batcheldors looked much alike, either because of many years spent together or due to the simple Prince Valiant hairstyle each sported. Faith had the uncomfortable feeling they probably cut each other’s hair—same bowl.

  “To close our meeting, we have a real treat. Nelson and Margaret are going to show slides of the bog that they’ve taken over the years. When you see these, you will know exactly what we’re fighting for!” The Batcheldors and their neighbor, Ted Scott, struggled to the front, carrying a screen and several carousels filled with slides that Margaret started load-ing into the projector. The lights went off and a slightly out-of-focus frog face appeared. Tom nudged Faith and they ducked out.

  As they left, they could hear Nelson’s voice droning on. Margaret provided a kind of counterpoint, breaking in with a somewhat-desperate cry, “Extinct is forever! These eastern spadefoot toads used to be as common as dirt. Now we’re lucky to see one at all.

  Who will save them if we don’t!”

  Walking hand in hand down Main Street toward the parsonage, the Fairchilds had the carefree, slightly hilarious feeling escape engenders. “Race you,” Tom challenged. Faith looked around. Aleford had taken its toll. If it had been Eighth Avenue, she wouldn’t have cared. But they were alone, so she took off, and they collapsed, laughing, in a heap next to the flagpole on the Common.

  When Faith had caught her breath, she asked,

  “What did you think of the meeting?”

  “Millie was in fine form.” Tom was one of the few people allowed to use the diminutive. “It was pretty much as I expected, except for those old bylaws. I’d be pretty worried if I was Joey.”

  “Yes, especially since he’s already spent so much money on surveys, lawyers. He almost has to keep fighting to try to recoup his loss.” Tom agreed. “And the Deanes still haven’t sold that big house on Whipple Hill Road. You know the one.” Faith did. It was around the corner, and she’d been watching it go up with the children. The construction company had been able to do a considerable amount of work during a freak February thaw, but the house was still nowhere near completion. It was a slightly scaled-down version of what Joey was going to put up in Alefordiana. The neighbors had been aghast at its size. “Something of a cross between Tara and the Flying Dutchman,” one had complained to Faith as they stood gazing at it silhouetted against the horizon. It was the house Lora had mentioned, and Faith was pretty sure that every abutter had been at tonight’s meeting. They hadn’t been able to do anything about the Whipple Hill house, but blocking Alefordiana was a way to get back at Joey.

  “Tom, this does have the potential for becoming extremely ugly, doesn’t it?”

  “I think it already is. Anything that polarizes the town like this is bad.”

  “I feel a sermon coming on,” Faith remarked.

  “Well then, I wish you’d write it.” The Reverend Fairchild tended to get a little testy on Friday nights.

  Faith stood up and straightened her skirt. In deference to the event, she’d changed. Tom looked at her approvingly. “My father said he’d never thought short skirts would come back in his lifetime, which just goes to show . . .”

  “It just goes to show you need to have faith,” she said, well aware of her atrocious pun, “and buy good clothes. If you wait long enough, everything comes back in style—even things that were awful the first time around, like go-go boots and fringed vests.”

  “How much did that tiny little skirt cost, anyway?” Tom asked, eying the black wool Donna Karan swath Faith had now adjusted to her satisfaction.

  “None of your business. Besides, Amy will probably be able to use it. Now, shall we go home?”

  “Given that the sole place open in Aleford at this hour is Patriot Drug, and that only for fifteen minutes more, I’d say yes.”

  Faith looped her arm through Tom’s. “It may not be the Stork Club, but I think I can find a nice bottle of something Chez Nous. And if we’re lucky, there won’t be any floor show.”

  Saturday was always the most relaxed day of the week. No morning rush. True, Tom was usually putting the finishing touches on his sermon, but he tried hard to finish it early in the day.

  It was cold but sunny. The only clouds in the bright blue sky were appropriately white and puffy. Faith decided she would take the kids for that walk through the bog. They weren’t into mud season yet, so she didn’t have to fear that someone’s tiny foot might get trapped in the ooze. The only terror the bog might hold today was prickly brush. By the time they got back, Tom would be done and they could do something.

  Easter had been early this year. Somehow, holidays were always early or late, never on time. Tom had been flat-out since Fat Tuesday, the season culminat-ing in last weekend’s Easter marathon. She knew he was pretty drained and having trouble with this week’s sermon. As he put it, after the congregation has pushed the rafters almost through the roof with

  “Christ the Lord Is Ris’n Today,” all else pales for the next few weeks.

  Taking each child by the hand, she set off, Tom waving cheerfully from the window. Amy was wearing shiny yellow boots with duck-shaped toes; Ben’s were green with frogs. Faith felt like a greeting card.

  “Now, let’s look for signs of spring,” she told the children.

  “Signs of spring, check,” Ben said. He’d recently adopted this way of speaking from whom Faith knew not.

  “Check,” said Amy, bringing the current word count to sixteen. Faith felt they’d made a good start.

  Despite the cold wind that swept across them at intervals, the sun shone steadily and they did find some bright green growing things under last year’s dried grasses. Just before they were into the bog proper, Ben discovered a patch of snowdrops. “I want to pick them for you, Mom,” he cried.

  “Thank you, sweetie,” his mother replied. Sons were so nice. “But we don’t pick wildflowers. We leave them to grow where they belong, and also so other people can enjoy them.”

  Ben seemed satisfied, and they continued on in search of pussy willows. The approach to the bog passed through a densely wooded patch. Thick vines hung from the still-leafless deciduous trees. Small pines were struggling to compete. Amy pulled back, and Faith was surprised to see apprehension on her daughter’s face.

  “Noooo?” Amy asked hopefully.

  Faith picked her up. “There’s nothing to be afraid of. Mommy will hold you. There are so many trees, the sun has a hard time peeking through. It will be a cool place to be in the summer.” If Joey’s chain saws haven’t leveled it, Faith thought dismally.

  “I’m not scared of a bunch of trees,” Ben boasted.

  “Amy is such a baby.”

  “She is a baby,” Faith reminded him.

  Ben gave her a patient look. “That’s what I said.” Faith decided to let it go. She was starting to train early for adolescence. Choosing one’s battlegrounds was an acquired skill.

  “ ‘The woods are lovely, dark and deep,’ ” she quoted from Frost, even though there was no snow, nor did she have a horse. She did, however, have many promises to keep. Amy was getting heavy; Faith took a deep breath—or it may have been a sigh—and hitched her up higher.

  “What’s that noise?” Ben grabbed the corner of Faith’s jacket.

  “I don’t hear anything.” Her respiration hadn’t been that loud. “Probably an animal—a squirrel, or maybe even a deer.”

  Then she heard it, too. Definitely some creature was rustling in the leaves—a good-sized creature.
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  “Don’t move, children,” she whispered. “Maybe we can see it.”

  Like startled deer themselves, the Fairchilds froze in position, and such was the family grouping that presented itself to the two human creatures who came crashing through the brush. Human creatures in quasi-military dress with black ski masks pulled over their faces. For an instant, the whole forest stood still; then Amy opened her mouth and wailed. Quickly, the couple removed their headgear.

  It was the Batcheldors.

  Hugging her daughter tightly and repeating that everything was all right, while Ben twisted her jacket so tightly it began to resemble a tourniquet, Faith said shakily, “Goodness, Margaret and Nelson. Out for a walk?”

  What she wanted to ask was what on earth were they doing out here dressed like Rambo extras, but she opted for a return to normalcy as fast as possible for the sake of the kids.

  “Oh, yes,” Margaret replied cheerily in the birdlike tones she seemed to have copied from the confusing fall warblers. “Such a lovely day, and we were up with the sun.” She waved her binoculars at Ben. “He’s certainly old enough to start his life list. I was three when Mother started me on mine.”

  Faith knew from Pix that said list referred to birds spotted and not some monstrous “To Do” resolutions or other New England folkway. She also knew if Ben was going to start said list, it was going to have to be with another mother or be limited to birds that could be spotted after nine o’clock.

  “Nippy today.” Nelson smiled at the children and waved the woolen helmet, so recently the object of fear. It worked again. Amy started to wimper. Having removed their hats, the couple still looked bizarre—hair standing on end from the static electricity and deep red circles around the eyes and mouth where the elastic had been too tight. Faith could feel Amy’s body get rigid in preparation for another ninety-decibel eruption.

  Faith quickly took refuge in the mother’s standby,

  “I think the children are getting tired. We’ve been out for quite a while.” Before Ben, who had been blessed—or cursed—with total honesty, could point out, as he was wont to do, that they had just started, Faith said good-bye.

  Margaret had found a nest and was focusing her binoculars. She chirped something unintelligible, presumably at the Fairchilds. Nelson waved good-bye with another of his smiles, which seemed destined to have the opposite effect on her children, and Faith turned the troops about-face. She hoped Ben’s clear, high-pitched queries a few yards later did not float back to the two bird-watchers, “But we just came. Why are we going back? I’m not tired. Why did you say we were tired? Amy doesn’t look tired.

  You’re not tired, are you, Amy? Why did you say we’d been out here quite a while? It doesn’t feel like quite a while to me.”

  Faith stopped and put Amy on her own two feet.

  “Believe me, it has been quite a while and I’m tired.”

  “Then you should have—”

  Faith gave her son a look he knew, and he fell to studying the ground, kicking at small hummocks, muttering, “I’m not the tired one.”

  Faith hoped Tom had finished his sermon.

  He had, and they decided to go to the Audubon Society’s Drumlin Farm in nearby Lincoln after Amy’s nap.

  Ben brightened up at the prospect of pigs and Faith was able to settle him in his bed with a book after lunch. She went back downstairs and found Tom putting the food away.

  “I still can’t figure out what Margaret and Nelson were up to,” she said. The encounter with the Batcheldors had been the prime topic of lunch conversation, introduced by Ben as soon as he saw his father emerge from the study. Faith had endeavored to downplay the whole event, while punctuating the salient details with various dramatic facial expressions whenever the kids became distracted by the tri-colored fusili with Gorgonzola sauce she’d made, Ben’s totally unaccountable favorite.

  “Are you sure they were ski masks, not woolen hats pulled down low?” Tom asked.

  “Of course I’m sure. I thought we had stumbled into the middle of some crazed neo-Nazi maneuvers.

  When they got close, I could see they weren’t wearing fatigues, but they were all in green. Now knowing how nuts Margaret is, I wouldn’t put it past her to dress up like a particular bird she was hoping to add to her list, the olive-colored, black-capped bog sucker or some such thing. But given the mood of the meeting last night, I don’t think they were birding today.”

  “But what?” Tom looked extremely troubled. Nelson Batcheldor was a member of the Vestry.

  “Maybe they’re planning some way to blow up the bog if Joey goes ahead with his plans.”

  “How would that help them?”

  “I don’t know, Tom. This is all supposition, and as far as I could tell, the only thing resembling a weapon was Margaret’s heavy set of binoculars. Unless Nelson’s camera is one of those James Bond types.”

  “You were in the woods, so they were coming from the bog itself. Maybe they’re stockpiling things. Oh, this is too crazy. We know they’re a little eccentric.” Tom looked at Faith and amended his words, “Well, very eccentric, and they probably dress like that for bird-watching all the time. We’ve just never seen them before. And it was cold early this morning. I would have worn a ski mask, too, if I’d been out.”

  “You don’t have a mask like that. Only robbers do.

  In fact, I wonder where you’d even get one.” Faith was getting sidetracked into a realm of speculation she’d explored before. You’re about to engage in criminal activity. Where do you shop? Walk into house-wares at Jordan Marsh and ask for a good, long, sharp kitchen knife? And these masks. Soldier of Fortune mail order? For those necessities not covered by the Victoria’s Secret catalog? She was about to expound on all this when the phone rang.

  Faith answered it, and whatever she had planned to say about the Batcheldors’ proclivities went clear out of her mind.

  It was Pix and she was definitely agitated.

  “Faith, is Tom home? I’ve got to talk to you both right away! You know Sam’s in California; otherwise I wouldn’t bother you.”

  This didn’t sound either college- or middle school–related.

  “What is it? What’s happened?” Faith asked anxiously.

  “I’ve just gotten a poison-pen letter,” Pix answered, and burst into tears.

  Three

  Pix Miller was not a woman who cried without provocation—funerals, illnesses, seeing The Yearling once again. As soon as Pix had arrived, Faith put her arm around her friend and led her to the couch with only a fleeting thought to the number of females who seemed to be drenching the parsonage with their tears lately.

  “It’s the shock, I suppose.” Pix reached around in her pocket, produced a crumpled handkerchief, and dabbed her eyes. “I was opening the mail and there was this thin envelope, and at first I thought, Oh dear, Samantha’s been rejected. Then I noticed there wasn’t a return address, and I opened it and . . . well, here it is.”

  She handed the envelope, which she had clutched in her other hand, to Faith. Tom leaned over the back of the couch, reading over his wife’s shoulder. It was a plain white business envelope addressed in ballpoint pen, block letters, to “Mrs. Samuel Miller,” with the address.

  Faith paused and put the envelope down. “It’s hard to get prints from paper, but I think we should be careful anyway.” She went into the kitchen and returned with a clean dust cloth, which she used to hold the paper by one corner as she eased it out of the envelope.

  There was no doubt. It was venomous—a classic of its sort, the letters neatly cut from magazines and newspapers. Occasionally, the writer had been fortunate enough to find an entire word. A few of the pieces were colored type, producing a collage effect.

  But it was not a work of art.

  “CINDY” ’S NOT DEAD. SAM IS BETRAYING YOU.

  DON’T TRUST YOUR HUSBAND.

  A FRIEND

  “I know one thing”—Pix had given her eyes one final swipe and was giving an aw
ard–winning performance of her old self—“whoever wrote this horrible letter is certainly not a friend. The idea!” Faith was staring at the letter.

  “It really is strangely worded—‘A friend’ . . . ‘betraying.’ As if the person has some sort of quirky Victorian manual on how to write nasty letters—or watches a lot of daytime TV. And of course you don’t believe it,” Faith quickly reassured Pix.

  Sam Miller had, in fact, had one brief, disastrous affair during his particularly bumpy ride into middle age, but that had been several years ago. The young woman, Cindy, with whom Sam had chosen to dally had later ended up as a corpse in Aleford’s own historic belfry, discovered, in fact, by Faith. The suggestion of current adultery was horrible by itself. Bringing up the murder was particularly loathsome.

  “Not for a minute,” Pix said staunchly. “Still, I wish he was home.” Pix was incapable of lying. Coupled with her tendency to speak her mind, it often resulted in revealing self-confession. Faith did not have this problem.

  Tom sat down on Pix’s other side and took her hand. “There’s no question that Sam is totally devoted—and faithful—to you. But letters like this are intended to plant seeds of doubt. It’s only natural to want him right here. When will he be back?”

  “Tomorrow night. But don’t worry. Of course I want to look him straight in the eye, but even more, I just want him home. Who would do this to us?”

  “That’s what we should be talking about.” Faith thought it was time to get down to business. If they began to dwell too much on Sam, Pix would get weepy again and water those malicious seeds Tom had mentioned. “Do you have any idea at all?” Pix shook her head slowly. “I never thought I had any enemies. You know, Tom, when you preached that sermon, ‘Who Is My Enemy?’ I thought it was going to be about what we fight against in ourselves. Oh, I agreed with what you said, that we can become our enemy—the thief, the slanderer, now the poison-pen wielder—if we don’t forgive him, yet I truly can’t think of anyone who would want to harm me.” Faith had to agree. Pix was one of the best-liked people in Aleford and one of the few about whom Faith had never heard a negative word. It was astonishing. Still volunteering in all sorts of organizations her children had outgrown—Pix had only recently stepped down as head of the cookie drive for the Girl Scouts, even though Samantha’s uniform probably wouldn’t even fit over her head—Pix was the person Aleford called for help, ideas, and comfort. Which reminded Faith, who said, “I heard you were running St.