Body in the Bog ff-7

by Katherine Hall Page

  “Number one. Don’t think we haven’t been hearing all day that we set the fire ourselves for the insurance money and that Mrs. Batcheldor got herself killed when she wandered in on us. Now this is bullshit”—

  another bleep—“and you all know it. There’s no way the insurance is going to cover our loss. And as for the poor woman, why not ask what in God’s name she was doing there? And who put her up to it? So, number one, I don’t want to hear any more about the Deanes setting fires or knocking people off. If the police were doing their job, they’d have figured out the facts by now. I have.”

  Charley’s expression didn’t change a bit as the camera panned slowly over his face.

  “Number two.” Gus raised his index and middle fingers. Somehow it seemed as if only one was up.

  “Whatever scum is bothering my granddaughter—and you know who you are—is going to answer to me, and I will find you.” No one watching doubted otherwise. “Until I do, I am holding the Aleford Police Department and the Massachusetts State Police responsible for her safety and for the safety of her property.

  “Now.” He seemed to be winding up for a big finish. His broad forehead was so furrowed that the white bristles of his eyebrows jutted out toward the group in one defiant straight line. “None of these things happened until the formation of this cockamamy POW! group. It seems to me”—he turned to address Charley—“this is no coincidence. They’ve got it in for us and we’re not going to turn tail. We have as much right to be here as they do, even if we didn’t step onto Plymouth Rock or whatever.” Brad Hallowell jumped up from the front row. Millicent, to her credit, futilely grabbed at the back of his sweatshirt. “But you don’t have the right to rape the land! You don’t have the right to destroy the earth for a few bucks! You don’t—”

  It wasn’t clear what Gus roared out. Some said it was “You little swine”; others opted for a more color-ful expression. What was clear was that Gus lunged at Brad, who met him, fists raised. Charley moved rapidly toward the pair, surprising those who thought Chief MacIsaac was less nimble than he used to be.

  Nimble or not, it was all over before he reached them.

  Millicent placed her skinny but resilient frame between the two men and Penny pounded the gavel so hard, the handle broke and went flying across the room, missing Cheryl Hardy by a few inches. Cheryl looked stunned, got up, and left, vowing to watch the meetings on TV in the future—at home, where she would be safe and might even finish the elaborate argyle sweater she had started for her husband when they were courting ten years earlier.

  “This meeting is adjourned. Please clear the room,” Penny shouted above the din. “Clear the room immediately!”

  Several people had come to Charley and Millicent’s aid. Gus was being pushed out one door, still yelling at Brad. Brad was being detained in his seat.

  “I guess he’s blown any chance he might have had with Lora,” Pix commented to Faith. They were staying put.

  “I think those chances went out the window long ago, but if I were he, I’d make that visit to Nepal or somewhere farther away about now.”

  “He can’t. Millicent’s got him so busy doing things for Patriots’ Day that it would take more than Gus Deane to convince her to let Brad leave town. And he’s the only one the Minutemen have at the moment who can drum the call to arms.”

  “But Gus Deane plays Captain Sewall! And isn’t he the current company commander?”

  “Yes, but don’t worry. They really do become the figures they play. And Captain Sewall has no quarrel with young Tom Havers. It’s 1775 for a brief moment.

  You’ll see. Nothing will happen.”

  Looking at the glowering youth sitting with his arms stiff at his sides, clenching the chair, eyes straight ahead, apparently oblivious to Millicent’s soothing words, Faith sincerely hoped Pix was right.

  Patriots’ Day was less than a week away. Not much time to cool off.

  Margaret’s funeral was held Friday morning. Nelson had spent time with Tom the day before going over the service. It was surprising, he told Faith, how many references to birds there were in the Bible. They had settled on Psalm 104, some appropriate hymns, and Margaret’s favorite poem, Shelley’s “To a Skylark,” to be read at the graveside. This had been the only request her husband remembered that she’d ever made about her funeral.

  Faith took out her funeral dress, a black Ralph Lau-ren wool knit she’d bought when she’d first arrived in Aleford and assumed the duties of a ministerial spouse. Before they were married, Tom had been insistent that she would be able to go her own way. “It’s my job, not yours,” he’d told her. So sweet, so naïve.

  She’d kissed him and gone out to buy the dress. It had since witnessed so many obsequies that she could never wear it anyplace else without instinctively looking about for a casket.

  She slipped the dress over her head and stood by the window. It was pouring—not a drizzle, not a sun shower, but a steady curtain of solid precipitation that obliterated the landscape, turning the early spring into a monochrome. There had been so much rain this year after a curiously snowless winter. So much rain, but not on Monday night. Not on the fire.

  Ben was at school and Amy was at a friend’s house.

  There would be the funeral, the interment, then back to the house for thimbles of sherry and lots and lots of those triangle sandwiches.

  Was this what Margaret would have liked? It was going to be pretty sedate, although not without tears.

  What would Faith herself want? Faith pictured her own funeral and wished for some serious wailing and gnashing of teeth. Tom had promised to go at the same time, so presumably the kids, elderly people themselves by then, would be pretty broken up. Faith wanted a funeral where people would feel free to throw themselves on the thin red carpet that went up the center aisle of the church. Maybe roll around a little. She wanted hymns that could be belted out. She wanted “Amazing Grace” the way it ought to be sung.

  It wasn’t very likely, particularly if her sister, Hope, outlived her, as she no doubt planned. Hope would not be scandalized by such a display of raw emotion; she would simply say it wouldn’t do, and that would be that. At least Faith could leave instructions about the food. Maybe champagne and caviar. We die as we live. Or was it the other way around?

  As she searched for some dark hose, she realized she hadn’t known Margaret very well. Such different interests. Such different schedules. Margaret, a murder victim. So unlikely. This friend of feathered friends. Tom had mentioned that neither Nelson nor Margaret had any family to speak of. She wondered why they hadn’t had children. Margaret had spoken of her mother with obvious affection, a mother who set those feet, so sensibly clad in sturdy brown Oxfords, on the path through hill and dale in search of birdsongs. A pretty picture. Wouldn’t Margaret have liked to perform the same role? She remembered seeing Nelson installing some shelves at the preschool one morning. Miss Lora and the children were at his side.

  Faith had never seen the man so animated, so obviously happy.

  There was always something a bit wistful about the Batcheldors. Margaret had not had a career, but she’d been born in that sliver of time between the assump-tion that a woman’s place was in the home and the exodus into the workforce. She would have had a foot in each era, and that must have been confusing, as indeed such a picture presented. Faith tried to think about what Margaret actually had done. Nelson was more active in the church than she’d been, although she was a member of the Alliance. She’d done some volunteer work and was prominent in the Aleford Conservation Commission. She’d definitely had organizational skills, but seemed content with her life out-doors, field guide in hand. Tom had told Faith that a signed photo of Roger Tory Peterson was hanging on the wall in Margaret’s room. Maybe Nelson didn’t want her to work. Fortunately, Faith wasn’t married to someone with this problem.

  She was going to the funeral with Pix. Pix would have a hat. So would Millicent and most of the other women. Faith looked in her closet.
A large Virginia Woolf straw was certainly not suitable, nor a floppy velvet beret, even though it was black. Besides, it was raining. She got out her umbrella, raincoat, and a pair of gloves. Pix would appreciate the effort and Aleford would have to lump the hat.

  “Poor Margaret! Such a terrible day,” Pix remarked after they had shaken the water from their coats like spaniels and assumed their seats in one of the First Parish pews.

  Faith knew what her friend meant. It was bad enough to have died the way she did; the least God could have done was to make the sun shineth upon her.

  “Not too many people. Maybe the weather has kept some of their older friends away,” Pix commented, turning around to scan the mourners. She had the uncanny ability to estimate a crowd, and Faith pictured embedded in Pix’s frontal lobe one of those little de-vices the Museum of Fine Arts had at the entrance to count people. “I’d say there can’t be more than twenty-three people, maybe twenty-four.” Faith looked, too. She would have thought more would have come, if only out of ghoulish curiosity.

  There were people she didn’t recognize, but some of them were probably from the library where Nelson worked.

  “Her world was pretty small—the bird-watchers, the members of the Conservation Commission. I’ve never even been inside their house,” Pix said. Now this was a surprise. Pix under the aegis of one organization or another, or simply for pleasure, had been in and out of most of the homes in Aleford. Her tone of voice indicated she was mildly surprised herself.

  “Well, you didn’t miss anything.” Faith had been there with Tom on parish calls. “Lots of knotty pine, bird things, of course, and that’s about it. We had Triscuits and tomato juice.” Faith tended to remember what she had been served even more clearly than where.

  The organist began to play the first hymn. Everyone stood up. Tom mounted the pulpit and they began to sing, “Where ancient forests widely spread.” By the time they got to “Till death the gates of heaven unfold,” Faith knew she was depressed. Dear God, how she hated funerals.

  It got better when Tom began to speak and there was comfort in the familiar words of the service. He was reading from John, “In my Father’s house are many mansions.” To comfort the bereaved—that was the whole point of the service.

  Nelson had pulled himself together and was sitting dry-eyed in the front pew, close to the casket. There was a large basket of flowers on top with a few small artificial birds perched on the sprays of inevitable gladioli. Nelson was flanked by the Scotts. Louise’s nose was bright red and she seemed closer to breaking down than the next of kin. Nelson squeezed her hand, which only served to start the tears again. Faith thought of Amy’s reaction to Nelson in the woods.

  The poor man seemed to be better at provoking tears than stanching them lately.

  They read Psalm 104 responsively. Tom had done a good job, and it was filled with birds. Some ancient pro-genitor of Margaret’s, with a life list in hand, may well have authored it—at the very least, a kindred spirit: The trees of the Lord are full of sap; the cedars of Lebanon, which he planted.

  In them the birds make their nests; as for the stork, the fir trees are her house.

  Faith began to feel uneasy. She was having trouble concentrating. Church sometimes had this effect on her. What was Margaret doing in the new house?

  What was Margaret doing in the woods?

  Let the sinners be consumed from the earth, and let the wicked be no more.

  Bless the Lord, O my soul!

  Praise the Lord!

  She was jolted from her thoughts but not her anxi-ety. Tom’s voice, as he read the last verse, had assumed a totally different quality. He was not just stern but angry. Suddenly, everyone in the church was reminded of the way Margaret died. And the sinner still walked among them.

  Tom’s homily touched upon Margaret’s love of nature and service to the community. He spoke of the deep sorrow that inevitably follows when a life is cut off before its time and the test this presents for one’s faith. Faith, his wife, heard him and took the words literally—as a challenge.

  The last hymn was one of those that changed key frequently, making it difficult to sing, and by the third verse only Tom and a few other diehards were trying.

  Everyone else came in for the “Amen” and then trooped out into the rain to the cemetery.

  The cemetery next to the church had long since filled up and now it was mostly visited by those interested in Aleford history and earnest souls who found delight in hanging rubbings with pithy epitaphs such as “Death is a debt, to Nature due,/I’ve paid the debt, and so must you” on their walls. The new cemetery, dedicated shortly after the Civil War, was across town.

  As need arose, the grounds had been extended, and it was like a large park, a park with headstones. The heavy carpet of moss and abundance of willows lent a suitably doleful air to the surroundings. On most days it was a pleasant walk from First Parish, but not today.

  Faith got into Pix’s car and they joined the cortege. It wasn’t a very long one.

  There were even fewer people than had been at the church and they clustered together, umbrellas overlapping, trying to keep dry. The tree trunks were streaked with black and beneath the leafless branches the ground was a sea of mud. The wind was picking up. The people from the funeral home had quickly gotten back into the hearse after depositing the casket. Tom struggled to hold both his prayer book and umbrella until Faith came to his rescue, shielding him from the elements with her large umbrella.

  Giving her a grateful look, he started the service with Shelley’s poem, and never had “Hail to thee, blithe spirit!” seemed more inappropriate. Tom perse-vered. Faith had forgotten how long the ode was. By the time he got to:

  Teach me half the gladness

  That thy brain must know;

  Such harmonious madness

  From my lips would flow,

  The world should listen then, as I am listening now.

  Faith’s feet were soaked and the arm holding the umbrella had gone to sleep.

  “Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust . . .” Tom dropped a handful of dirt on top of the casket as his deep voice, so well suited to his calling, repeated the familiar words. Familiar words, yet however often Faith heard them, they always produced the same effect on her. A door was being shut. Another one might be opening, but this life was over. When were you ready? Sixty, eighty, a hundred? Never? Margaret hadn’t been ready. Margaret had been denied all thought at the end. It was horrible.

  Faith heard the mourners start, “Our Father,” and she joined in. Margaret Batcheldor’s funeral was over.

  Pix dropped her off at one o’clock and Faith immediately called Lora to tell her she was on her way over to pick up Ben. Lora ran an extended day program twice a week and this had fortunately been one of the days.

  As Faith hurried down the stairs into the church base-ment, where the nursery school was located, she realized that of course no one from the Deane family, nor any of their friends, had attended Margaret’s funeral.

  Faith had half-expected Gus to show up. It was the kind of thing he did. Lest anyone have any doubts.

  What kind of murderer would go to the victim’s funeral? she could almost hear him say. But perhaps his wife had encouraged him to stay home. Lillian didn’t like the spotlight. Perhaps he hadn’t thought to go at all. And it wasn’t true, Faith thought. About murderers. They often did go to their victim’s funerals—out of bravado, or to make sure the deed was well and truly done. Maybe remorse?

  It had been a small group back at the Batcheldors’

  house. The rain was still coming down hard, and even with all the lights turned on, the atmosphere was gloomy. They lived in a small stone Arts and Crafts–

  style cottage that had been built in the twenties. Today the stone walls and small-paned windows did not seem cozy. The Scotts were there, acting as hosts, keeping everyone supplied with sherry and, yes, those sandwiches. Millicent grabbed Pix and, as Pix reported later, filled her in
on what would be presented at tonight’s POW! meeting. Charley MacIsaac sat morosely in a bare wood Stickley-type chair next to Nelson. Charley was not drinking sherry; he had managed to find something quite a different color that filled half a tumbler. He was avoiding the sandwiches, too.

  Conversation tended toward the repetitive: “I can’t believe she’s gone.” “She was a very special person.” No one mentioned the fire. No one mentioned the time of night.

  “Mom, hey, Mom, look what I made!” Ben tackled her, effectively pulling her into the present tense.

  “He is so talented, Faith. I think you may have a real artist here,” Miss Lora said seriously. “He is unusually gifted.” She was holding a dripping-wet painting. It looked like a rainbow done by a nearly five-year-old child. Faith took a chance.

  “What a beautiful rainbow, sweetheart. When it dries, we can take it home and put it up on the fridge.”

  “Oh, Mom, it’s not a rainbow. See the legs? It’s a zebra from Magic Land and here’s the boy who rides him in the sky and here’s . . .”

  Swearing for the ninety-ninth time that she would never guess what a child had drawn until given either an extremely obvious hint or the answer, Faith managed to get Ben away without the painting by explaining the rain might damage it. This made sense to both Ben and Miss Lora, who was as insistent that the mas-terpiece grace the Fairchild home as soon as possible as Ben had been.

  Lora did not look like someone who was resting easy in the comfort and security of her grandparents’

  home. She had deep circles under her eyes. Faith asked her how things were going as Ben left to get his raincoat and froggy boots.

  “Oh, everything’s fine. Well, I mean it’s not great living at Grandma and Grandpa’s, but at least no one’s throwing stuff through my windows.”

  “Do you have any idea who it could have been?” Tom had already reported that she did not. He and Charley had been spending quite a lot of time together lately and evidently, as Faith had suspected, covered much ground. Still, maybe Miss Lora would spill the beans to Faith, a sympathetic woman, far removed from an official capacity.