Body in the Bog ff-7

by Katherine Hall Page

  “It’s hard to say. Maybe somewhere deep inside, he was conflicted about his attraction to you and wanted the temptation removed? Or more likely, he hoped if you moved away, he’d be able to see you without the whole town knowing.”

  “He probably doesn’t know himself. Kind of an approach-avoidance thing.” It seemed Lora was reading more than Dr. Seuss.

  Faith took a bite of her southwestern chicken salad.

  Lora had perked up considerably during their foray into the unconscious. Now was as good a time as any.

  “Why have you been living in two apartments?” Miss Lora blushed.

  “This is very embarrassing—especially because you’re one of my mothers.” Faith presumed she was referring to the preschool and not any special devotion on Lora’s part.

  “I have a certain image in Aleford. ‘Miss Lora’—she’s so good with kids, never gave her parents or grandparents a moment’s worry. Will make some nice man the perfect little Betty Crocker wife someday. Sure, she’s a bit homely, but some men don’t care about those things.”

  All of it was true. Each item had crossed Faith’s mind at some point or been introduced into conversation. There was no doubt—in Aleford’s collective conscious, Lora Deane was Miss Goody Two-Shoes come to life.

  “I love to dance. When I went off to college, I discovered that music did something to me, released something, and I felt so free. One of my roommates was really good with makeup and clothes. She encouraged me to get contacts, but I don’t see as well with them as with my glasses. Still, well enough for a date. Well enough to dance.”

  “But why the double life? Why not just be who you are all the time?”

  Lora appeared to be about to go into her “give me a break” routine, but stopped. She sighed instead.

  “First, I would have caught hell at home. My dad was still alive, and he was just like his father. My brothers are the same way. They all actually thought it might be a good idea for me to be a nun when I was deciding where to go to school! Then Dad died so suddenly and everybody was a mess. I couldn’t upset them then.”

  “And the money? Weren’t you afraid Gus might not give it to you if he disapproved of the way you were behaving?”

  Lora hesitated. She pushed a piece of eggplant that had escaped from the overstuffed sandwich around her plate with a fork.

  “Well, yes, that did cross my mind.” She ate the eggplant. “Okay, I thought about it a lot and it didn’t seem fair. He never said anything when my brothers sowed their wild oats, and believe me, it was quite a crop. When I got the money, I used some of it for rent here and I really did use some for tuition. It’s true that I’m working on my master’s.”

  Faith was glad to hear it. Miss Lora was so good with children.

  “And no one knew about Chandler Street?”

  “No. I left a letter in the box where I keep all my important papers in the Aleford apartment—in case I got hit by a car or something.”

  There were so many somethings going on lately that Faith thought an explanatory letter showed foresight.

  “What are you going to do now?”

  “I’m not sure. I don’t want to keep deceiving people, especially my grandparents. But I don’t want them to get mad at me, either. My mom won’t care.

  She has a whole new life and she’d probably be glad I was having one, too. She used to get a little fed up with being one of the Deanes all the time.”

  “And you?”

  “I’m proud of the family, but we are pretty old-fashioned.”

  It was time for Miss Lora to grow up and become Ms. Lora.

  “Why don’t you start by telling them you want to leave the Aleford apartment and move into the city.

  Say that you found the perfect place.” Faith didn’t think Lora had to be too precise about when she had found it.

  “Then gradually start changing your appearance.

  Wear the plum-colored dress, then immediately go back to a jumper the next day. After a while, everyone will have forgotten how you looked before. They might say, ‘Have you cut your hair?’ or ‘There’s something different about you; I can’t quite put my finger on it.’ ” Faith thought she had worked the whole thing out rather neatly.

  Maybe not.

  “How do you know I have a purple dress? I’ve never worn it in Aleford.”

  Faith gave a hasty and abbreviated account of the day the Fairchild family shadowed Ben’s teacher, then suggested dessert.

  “I’m not seeing Eduardo anymore. Things were getting too heavy. Maybe I should go back with Brad.

  What do you think?”

  Faith had a strict rule about giving advice to the lovelorn, and she stuck to it now. The person involved usually ended up blaming you if it didn’t work out, and sometimes if it did. She had the same policy when it came to discussing husbands.

  Lora was eating a huge piece of chocolate truffle mousse cake. Faith was drinking espresso with a twist of lemon.

  “The only thing we don’t know is who threw the brick.”

  “I suppose there has to be some mystery left,” Lora commented complacently. Mrs. Fairchild knew all about her now. It hadn’t been too weird.

  They went to see Bridey Murphy, who expressed great delight in the drama of the situation. She’d read about the murders in Aleford and seemed to feel she had played a small role in solving them. Faith wasn’t sure of her reasoning, yet she did not disabuse her of the notion. Bridey was a wonderful lady. Then Lora insisted that they both see her apartment and advise her about window treatments—advice Faith did feel comfortable offering. And she always liked to see where other people lived.

  Lora’s apartment was more sparsely furnished than Bridey’s, but bright and cheerful. There were stuffed animals on the bed and in an old rocking chair Lora had painted blue. Combining the animal collection from the two dwellings might pose a serious design problem.

  Faith got home about five. After being greeted by her family, somewhat picturesquely engaged in planting a flat of Johnny-jump-ups along the front path, Faith went inside and noticed the light on the message machine was blinking.

  It was Brad Hallowell. “Um, this is Brad. Um, Brad Hallowell. Could you give me a call, Mrs. Fairchild?

  Faith, I mean? Um, maybe I could come over? Or you could come here—no, that wouldn’t be good. Look, just call me, okay? I want to tell you something.” Apparently, this was the day for true confessions.

  Faith dug out the Aleford phone book from the stack in the cabinet next to the phone. Brad had either forgotten to leave his number or assumed that she knew it by heart. She didn’t.

  He answered after the first ring.

  “Hello, Brad? This is Faith. I got your message.” Never one to mince words, he dispensed with any small talk. “Look, this is kind of embarrassing.” She’d heard that before today, too. Was Brad Hallowell also leading a double life? Maybe he actually hated computers and was secretly holing up in a garret in Cambridge writing his coming-of-age novel in longhand.

  “I know I should be telling the police, but . . . well, it’s my mother, and she didn’t mean any harm.” Mother, harm, police. This was getting interesting.

  “What has she done?”

  “She threw the brick through Lora’s window.”

  “Your mother!” Faith couldn’t help herself—her voice rose near a screech.

  “After I left the Millers’ last night, the brick thing kept bothering me. I mean, everybody there thought I did it. I guess I was pretty steamed by the time I got home, and Mom was waiting up for me, as usual.” He sounded resigned but not pleased. “I told her all about what had happened to you and also about the brick business. She got terribly upset and told me she’d done it.”

  “All because Lora broke up with you?”

  “Basically, yes. I had been taking it badly, especially at first. I knew she was mad at Lora and I guess she just kept thinking about it. She was edging a new bed she’d put in the garden and somehow got the idea that heavi
ng a brick at Lora’s house would make her feel better. She didn’t intend to break the window; Mom has terrible aim.”

  Faith was pretty sure Mrs. Hallowell’s aim was much better than her son believed. But then, apparently he was willing to believe anything.

  “Let me get this straight. Your mother was out putting bricks in her garden in the dark of night and had an extra, so she drove over to Lora’s and let it fly?”

  “We have floodlights in the back. Mom often gardens late at night. She likes to hear the crickets.” No more mysteries. Except for a few that would forever surround Mrs. Hallowell.

  “She’s outside now; otherwise, I wouldn’t be able to talk. She doesn’t want anyone to know about this, but I don’t want the cops, or Lora, to go on thinking I did it.”

  So much for Mom.

  “I’m glad you called me, but shouldn’t you be telling this to Chief MacIsaac?”

  “I have the feeling he’s a little antagonistic toward me. You know I kind of lost it at the selectmen’s meeting that time.”

  This was true, and now Faith knew what was coming—and why Brad had called her.

  “I was hoping you could talk to him. Maybe Mom wouldn’t even have to know.” He was wheedling and sounded exactly like Danny Miller when he wanted to get out of doing his homework.

  “I’ll talk to him—but your mom will have to know,” Faith told him.

  No more mysteries.

  Eleven

  The morning of one’s child’s birthday always dawns with joy. There’s a moment of thanks, a moment of quiet reflection: looking back over the years, anticipating the years to come. Then the day comes gallop-ing in, starting in Ben’s case with a flying leap into his parents’ bed. “Happy Birthday! Happy Birthday to me!”

  Night brings a return of that morning mood and the supine position. May tenth was drawing to a close and Ben was five years old. Faith was lying down on the couch. Tom was in the study working on a sermon entitled “Beginning Anew.” “I can work in spring and the quality of mercy,” he’d told her.

  Sticking to the formula of one guest for each year of the child’s life, Faith had still found Ben’s birthday party more enervating than the large society wedding she’d catered recently. The children seemed to multi-ply and were everywhere at once. Fortunately, it had been a beautiful, warm day and the party was outside.

  Tom had been on the other end of the camcorder most of the time—why he was working now. Pix brought the dogs over at Ben’s request, as a special treat, then left with them soon after, when one child reacted with terror, not delight.

  Faith sat up. Ben would start kindergarten in the fall. It was going too fast. Although, in a few more years, she wouldn’t have to worry so much about day care. . . .

  She missed Tom. It had been sixteen days since Nelson had tried to kill her. She had found herself counting immediately afterward and hadn’t stopped.

  She and Tom had instinctively been spending as much time as possible together and with the kids. Maybe he’d like a beer. Maybe he was ready to go to bed.

  She walked into his study and came up behind his chair, kissing the top of his head.

  “That’s nice,” he murmured, then stood and took her in his arms. The study door burst open. They sprang apart like guilty lovers. It was déjà vu all over again, except the woman in Tom’s arms was his wife and the woman at the door wasn’t.

  It was Millicent Revere McKinley.

  “You’ll never guess!”

  That was obvious.

  “Oh, the front door was open and I saw the light on in here when I came up the sidewalk. I assumed you were working.” She gave them both a reproving look.

  “Such wonderful news!”

  Faith didn’t mind playing along. It had to be pretty important for Millicent to come barging in like this.

  “What is it?”

  “We own Beecher’s Bog! That is, the town owns it, always has!”

  “But why didn’t we know before?” Tom asked.

  “I’ll start from the beginning. Apparently, the town only leased the land to the Turners. Originally, it was going to be the site for the Poor Farm, which was why the town didn’t want to sell it all. The Turner family could build a farmhouse on the small lot they did own and would retain ownership of that, but the rest was to revert back to the town after Roland Turner’s death.

  He could leave his house to his heirs, but not Beecher’s Bog and the surrounding fields. He was farming it in those days and getting cranberries from the bog. Later descendants made quite a profitable business of it.”

  “How could it have taken so long to discover this?” Faith was extremely disappointed in Millicent—Millicent, who had ferreted out virtually every detail of Aleford life since the town was incorporated in 1713.

  “Roland lived to be a very, very old man. Ninety-eight or ninety-nine. By then, the Poor Farm was located elsewhere. Anyway, during his life, neither he nor anyone else in his family brought up the life-tenancy question, in the hope that the town would forget about it, which it did. During the war, many papers were destroyed and there must have been a great deal of confusion.” When Millicent said “the war,” it was not WW II, the Big One, or the Vietnam War, but the one and only one as far as she was concerned—the War of Independence.

  This was all very interesting, but Faith was still in the dark.

  “It would certainly have changed things if we’d known about this sooner,” she said bitterly.

  “But they only found the papers today!” Millicent protested.

  “Who found what papers, where?” Tom asked.

  “The Turners were too honest, or too nervous, to destroy the papers detailing the agreement. They hid them in the house, in one of the kitchen walls. You know the restoration work has been continuing. Today they were replacing some of the plaster and found the tin box with the documents.”

  “You mean the men working for the Deanes?” Faith was astonished.

  “I mean Eddie Deane himself. Gus just called.” There was a Bronze Musket plaque in here for somebody, maybe the whole family.

  “Now, I have a million more people to tell. Isn’t it thrilling?” And she was off into the night to spread the news, not unlike her illustrious ancestor.

  Faith and Tom went back to what they had been doing. After a while, Faith observed, “That does it, then.

  The bog has been saved. The identity of the poison-pen writer and murderer revealed. The mystery of Lora’s double life solved. The only thing we’ll probably never know is what was in Millicent’s letter, her guilty secret.”

  “I think I can help solve this one, if you promise not to get mad at me for not telling you sooner. Believe it or not, the whole thing completely slipped my mind.”

  “I believe it. Now tell! I knew Charley was giving you all sorts of inside information!”

  “The letter contained no words, only a number, Seventy-four.”

  “Of course. I should have known. Her age! Seventy-four. Her guilty secret! She should be shouting it from the top of her gabled rooftop. Besides, these days it’s nothing. Millicent will still be Millicent twenty years from now.”

  Faith paused a moment to reflect on this daunting thought—with the happy realization also that Millicent’s secret was hers. No more vague allusions to the 1940s as dark ages.

  She settled back into Tom’s arms, another thought uppermost in her mind.

  “You know, we made a very good team, darling, although you tended to be a little too cautious—and forgetful.”

  “A team?”

  “As in Nick and Nora Charles, for instance.” Tom made a face. “I could never drink that many martinis and still function, but now that the kids are older, we might consider getting a dog—say a wire-haired terrier?”

  Faith smiled. Definitely a very good team.

  Author’s Note

  Next to eating good dinners, a healthy man with a benevolent turn of mind, must like, I think, to read about them.

  —
W. M. THACKERAY

  Faith and I would add “and woman” to the sentence, but Thackeray was definitely onto something. We enjoy reading about food. And for many of us, reading about food and murder is the real frosting on the cake. Why is the pairing of gastronomy and crime so seductive?

  Dorothy L. Sayers delights us with her descriptions of Lord Peter Wimsey’s meals, with perhaps the best title in the annals of culinary crime: “The Bibulous Business of the Matter of Taste.” That short story describes a six-course dinner, with the emphasis on the identification of the wines accompanying each course.

  Only the real Lord Peter is able to correctly name all of them. I like the breakfasts best and entertain fantasies of Bunter appearing at the door of my bedchamber, tray laden with tea, kippers, coddled eggs, and a rack of toast.

  Meanwhile, across the Channel, Madame Maigret is taking excellent care of her husband, preparing traditional French dishes that Simenon writes about in mouthwatering detail. It is no wonder Maigret tries to get home for lunch so often. I would, too, if someone was whipping up coq au vin and a tarte à la frangi-pane (a particularly sinful custard pastry) for me.

  On our own shores, we have Nero Wolfe, whose attention to food is as obsessive as his devotion to his orchids. He and Fritz Brenner, his chef, range over a number of cuisines in the pursuit of their art. Fritz is so gifted that he even makes milk toast “superbly.” Why on earth would Archie ever look for his own apartment? Would you?

  It would be simple to say that each author uses food as a way of characterizing each sleuth, a way of extending our knowledge of the kinds of people they are, and leave it at that. An idiosyncrasy perhaps? But it’s more.

  We get hungry when we read these books, and I’m sure the authors did, too, as they wrote. How could it be otherwise, given the emphasis they place on the joys of the table? Food is important. It makes a statement on its own. Whodunit is irrevocably joined to whoateit.

  Faith doesn’t have a cook, nor do I. If we want something tasty, we have to make it ourselves—something, fortunately, both of us like to do. We hope you will enjoy these recipes, and when you’re ready to sit down to the fruits of your labor, prop a good mystery up in front of your plate!