Body In The Belfry

“I can't live this way. I'm going to tell Pix myself.”

“And what about your partners ? " Cindy asked mildly.

“They screw around all the time. This isn't going to change anything, and even if it does, I don't care anymore," Sam said wearily.

Cindy just smiled. It made him a whole lot more nervous than any of her threats.

“Just think about it, Sammy. Really think about it. And I need some more wine to go with the lobster." He was home before midnight and slept with the blessed relief of someone about to be let out of jail. The next morning Cindy called the house at seven o'clock. Fortunately he happened to pick it up. "Hello, Sam, is Samantha there? This is Cindy. There 's something I want to tell her—and show her." Sam's throat closed and at first he could not speak. Stupidly, of all the things he thought she could do to him, this was the one that he had never considered. His kids. Perhaps he thought she had had some humanity after all. Defeated, he said, "All right, what do you want?"

“ I'll tell you on the lovely drive we're going to take this morning."

“I'm afraid today is impossible." He was trying to keep his voice neutral. This was a call, just a routine business call for all anyone sitting around the table eating Cap 'n Crunch and Lucky Charms could tell.

She cut him off. "Nothing's impossible, Sam, as you've just learned. See you at the corner in an hour. Maybe we should go to the beach ? “

Sam hung up. He wanted to kill her, and later that day when he heard someone had, he would have given anything to undo it.

Of course Sam and Cindy had been seen Friday and all those months previously. Millicent knew.

And Jenny Moore knew.

She had come to the Fairchilds' with her mother late in the afternoon, just as Tom was returning from what was becoming an increasingly familiar police station. They had stopped by to invite Faith and Tom—and Ben—to spend the following day at their place in New Hampshire. "The camp" Patricia called it, though Faith knew it bore as much resemblance to the camps of her youth as a Mercedes to a Volkswagen Beetle.

“This is our last weekend before shutting everything up and we plan to spend it quietly. It would be nice to have you with us. Robert hopes to get one last sail in if the weather holds. So bring your long johns."

“Oh, please come," Jenny chimed in, "Then I can play with Benjamin all day ! “

Faith looked at Tom. " It's up to you, sweetheart, or rather up to your sermon.”

Tom tried very hard to keep Saturdays clear for Faith and Benjamin. It was his day off, if a minister can be said to have a day off, but in practice he was sometimes hastily polishing the next day 's sermon. Faith couldn't imagine writing one of these things every week and heartily admired him for doing so.

“There seems to be a lot of food for thought these days," Tom said glumly. "And the sermons are almost writing themselves. There should be no problem about going."

“ Good. That's settled then," Patricia said, " We'll see you sometime in the morning ? “

Tom took Patricia outside to get her opinion on the wisdom of fall pruning for a line of straggly yews and Faith and Jenny sat at the kitchen table consuming oatmeal cookies and drinking black currant tea. Benjamin had stopped his post-nap fussing and was swinging placidly in the wind-up swing.

Jenny Moore was a small, slender girl with pretty brown eyes and what used to be described in another era as "nut-brown hair." In other words, not many people would have looked at her twice with Cindy in the room.

It was Jenny who brought up the subject of Sam and Cindy.

“You just don't know what she was like, Mrs. Fairchild. Sometimes I think she wasn't really normal. She used to talk a lot about all the guys she had. I couldn't believe it about Mr. Miller at first. I thought it was just Cindy boasting again. She did a lot of that too, but after awhile, she knew too much about the family. Like when they were going to be away in Maine and stuff. Samantha is my best friend and I haven't been able to go to their house for months. I was afraid I'd see Mr. Miller. How could he do that to them ? "

“I don 't know, Jenny. I think he was pretty upset about it and wanted to end it. He just got in over his head. It's no excuse, I know, but sometimes even older people do pretty dumb things."

“ Yeah, but Cindy. I mean, couldn't he have picked somebody better ? “

“I think she picked him," Faith said gently.

Jenny had been dangling an Ambi mirror block in front of Benjamin's pudgy face and said, "Poor Mr. Miller."

“Jenny," questioned Faith, "when I was talking to you at the house I had the feeling you weren 't telling me everything. Was there anything else besides this business with Sam ? "

“No," said Jenny quickly. Too quickly? "This was what was bothering me. I couldn 't tell anyone because of Samantha."

“So there wasn 't anyone else Cindy might have been seeing ? "

“Well, I think there was someone new, but it was pretty recent. She was still at the hinting around stage. That everyone would be surprised if they knew and how no one was without sin—I thought that was a funny way to put it. Almost like it was a priest or something. Oh my gosh, Mrs. Fairchild, I'm sorry." Jenny put her hand to her mouth.

“That's all right, Jenny, don 't worry. I know Tom has plenty of sins, but Cindy wasn't one of them. Of course there are other clergymen in town, or in the greater Boston area for that matter. Cindy didn 't always stay close to home, did she ? " Faith mused.

“No," sighed Jenny.

This is going to be harder than I imagined, thought Faith. And it always looks so easy in the books. Of course it would be ridiculous to think that Tom ever had the slightest notion of Cindy except as something that crawled out from under a rock.

If Tom noticed the two of them eyeing him with particular intensity when he walked in the back door with Patricia a few minutes later, he didn't let on.

The Moores left and the doorbell rang.

“Does life seem to be taking on a disturbingly frantic quality?" Faith asked. "Not that I 'm complaining."

“I'11 let you know after I see who it is," Tom replied.

It was Oswald Pearson and as he ushered him into the living room, Tom gave an imperceptible nod to Faith. The last thing he felt like was being interviewed by the press on the day 's twists and turns. But Oswald was a loyal parishioner, so he dredged up a welcoming smile. "Nice to see you. We were just going to start a fire. Would you like to join us?”

Faith knew what she was supposed to say and chimed in, " How about a glass of wine or some coffee ? “

However, Oswald was not paying a social call. He turned to Tom and seemed a bit embarrassed by the hospitality.

“ Actually, I had wanted a few words with Reverend Fairchild in private." He cleared his throat. It occurred to Faith that now she knew what "harumph" sounded like. Not that she could spell it.

“I'm here on a personal matter," Oswald explained.

Faith looked at Tom bleakly. Don 't tell me Cindy was harumphing him too, she transmitted silently and excused herself to go play patty-cake with Benjamin or whatever.

Tom was mystified. Oswald seemed a well-balanced sort. A little smarmy and self-important for Tom 's taste, but maybe that was the tabloid influence.

After gazing intently at Tom's bookshelves, Oswald got straight to the point.

“You probably don 't know this—not many people do, especially in Aleford—but I'm gay." He paused to gauge Tom's reaction, was apparently reassured, and continued. " I've known ever since I was in college and I'm not here to talk about my decision. I 'm comfortable with it, but I feel it is my own private business. I've never felt the need to be active in gay rights, but I 'mcertainly not ashamed of being a homosexual. It's like the color of my hair or eyes—a part of me and I'm much more interested in having people judge me on my newspaper than on my sexual preferences.”

Tom thought he knew where this was going. "Oswald, did Cindy know about this?”

Oswald looked very tired and the Liberty paisley bow tie under his blue pinstriped collar seemed to wilt.

“She saw me in Boston one afternoon and decided to follow me, just for the hell of it, I guess. Well, she struck pay dirt. I was on my way to meet a friend at a bar on Tremont Street. It 's pretty well known as a gay bar. She waited until I came out with my friend, then snapped a picture. He grabbed the camera and tore out the film. She just smirked. `I don 't need evidence, though, do I, Mr. Pearson ? You'd find it awfully hard to lie to your mother, wouldn 't you ?' I wanted to kill her on the spot, but we went to a luncheonette and she told me what she wanted."

“Money 1" Tom guessed.

Oswald laughed, a quick burst of laughter that sounded more like a dog barking. “ This might be hard to believe, but we're talking about Cindy Shepherd here and she was beyond the scope of the ordinary imagination. She wanted publicity. She wanted to be sure that anything she did—sneeze, cross the street, fart—would be in the paper, and with a picture.”

Tom had always been pleased with the amount of coverage the paper had devoted to the Young People 's activities. Now that turned to ashes in his mouth. He remembered all the pictures of Cindy. She must have been crazy.

“She had me where she wanted me. My mother would have found a gay son quite unacceptable. Even without a photograph, just the suggestion would have been enough to make serious trouble.”

And, Tom recalled, Mother had covered the paper 's losses for years, had, in fact, bought the thing for her son.

“But your mother died last summer. Surely you don't think the police would suspect you ? " Tom was beginning to wonder what the point of all this revelation was.

“After Mother died, I told Cindy the deal was off, but she wasn 't very happy about it. She informed me that she was glad I didn 't mind my fellow townspeople knowing and she was sure that I could keep on coaching the youth soccer league.”

Tom leaned forward and exploded. "She was diabolical, Oswald. I wish I had known what you were going through ! "

“ I wish I had told you. It never occurred to me that my position in the town would be affected—what people thought of me. So I renewed the contract. I figured she was getting married and after that she'd find bigger fish.

“But it's like she's reaching from the grave. The police asked me to take a look at some photos they're trying to identify. I'm sure you've heard about them. Anyway, they thought because of the newspaper, I might know more people around here than most. Those cameras of hers. I only knew one person^—me. It's from the rear and I'm walking next to my friend into that bar. She must have finished her previous roll of film with that first photo. I could take the chance that they won't be able to make a positive identification, although they must have tracked down the location by now. I thought maybe they were trying to trap me into saying something, but nothing has happened. I'm a nervous wreck. Well, I have been since she died. I don't know what to do now. Would there be any point in going to the police ? And how would people here react if they knew ? Please, Reverend, help me decide what to do ! “

Thirty minutes later, Tom poked his head in the kitchen.

“Darling, I'll explain when I get back, but I have to go to the police station for a while."

“ Tom ! This is getting ridiculous."

“ I know, Faith, believe me, I know." He rolled his eyes upward in supplication or confusion and left, but not before Faith grabbed him for a hasty kiss and whispered in his ear, "Whatever you do, don 't eat any more of those submarine sandwiches. I'll have dinner no matter how late it is.”

It wasn't too late, and over a mustardy salade lyonnaise, followed by a smoked trout soufflé, Tom filled Faith in, Oswald having decided to let this part of his life be revealed, albeit in as subtle a way as possible.

“In other words," said Faith, "we tell people like Pix, not people like Millicent."

“Precisely. He had to tell the police, of course, and it 's bound to get out, so far better to have it originate with him. Somehow, I don't think people are going to care very much. Charley and Dunne didn't bat an eye and after questioning him for a while, just told him to go home and if he had to leave town to let them know."

“ There are so many suspects at the moment, if we count all the guys in the pictures, it's almost an embarrassment of riches. Well, Oswald makes more sense than Sam, although both are ludicrous."

“I'm not sure I see how he makes more sense and I don 't want to. My brain is so foggy now, I need a beacon to find my way upstairs."

“ Follow me, Tom. Anyway, we can talk about this on the way to the Moores' tomorrow."

“Swell," he said and flicked off the kitchen light.

The next morning as they drove north through Newburyport and Salisbury to the Moores' house perched on the coast with virtually one room in Maine and one in New Hampshire, Faith thought she would always remember this fall as one of the most beautiful and horrible ones of her life.

The town of Aleford was completely panicked. Sam's interrogation had stirred even more indignation than Dave's. Sam had been a Town Meeting member practically since he came of voting age and he had been talking recently of running for selectman. Wives eyed their husbands furtively. If Sam had fallen, what about Dick or Harry? Perfectly innocent men looked full of guilty secrets. But no one except possibly Millicent believed Sam had killed Cindy and that meant there was a murderer among them.

In the car Faith had told Tom about her conversation with Jenny and he had laughed until the tears ran down his cheeks. It was a moment of great comic relief.

“Of course she was always sniffing around me, Faith, particularly when I first came to town. I know she wanted a parson to add to her list, sort of like the Mile High club or whatever it is where two people somehow manage to copulate in one of those airplane toilets where I have trouble just getting myself in to pee. Anyway, I was firmly avuncular and more lately positively nasty to her."

“Sure, sure," chided Faith. She could imagine Tom's idea of nastiness. " You probably told her she couldn't have the weenie roast when she wanted it or something like that."

“ A very apt choice of activity, I may say," said Tom, "but actually you're pretty much on the mark. I was challenging her quite openly at the recent meetings. You know I've always wanted other kids to take charge andnot let Cindy run the show. Last month I said something about a new president and she was very upset. I guess it hadn't occurred to her that once she was married, she wouldn't be the president or in Young People's anymore. Of course there would have been plenty to do in the couples group, but Cindy never liked to let go of anything."

“Exactly. She always had to be in control. Look at Sam and Dave, and now Oswald. And the way she ran things in town—all those pancake breakfasts. You know she didn't give a damn about any of it, it was just to be in charge. Maybe it was losing her parents at such an early age—she was afraid to let things out of her hearty little grip. You know, love, maybe she did have some deep-rooted psychological problems and we've been a tad insensitive.”

Tom and Faith looked at each other.

“ Naaaaah," they said simultaneously.

“But that explains the hints about a man of the cloth. She was really more angry at me than I supposed. Probably she thought I should make her some kind of president for life."

“I shudder to think what she had up her sleeve. Some kind of whisper campaign complete with scarlet letters addressed to the parsonage. But eliminating Dave, Sam, Oswald, and you leaves me without a suspect again."

“Don't worry. I'm sure you'll come up with a new theory soon. Theory, Faith, no more sleuthing, unless you take me too. You know, like ' You must never go down to the end of the town, if you don't go down with me.' "

“I promise, James James.”

They had felt pretty optimistic, almost normal, for a few minutes, then concern about Sam and the Miller family occupied their conversation.

Faith hoped John Dunne was dissatisfied with Sam as a suspect. Sam had been allowed to go home, but was summoned back bright and early that morning for more. The ticket to Puerto Rico in his pocket had in fact been for a client, just as he had asserted when they found it. Still he did not deny that he had been with Cindy until eleven-thirty Friday morning, when she had suddenly demanded to be driven back to Aleford, and casually jumped out of the car when he stopped for the light in the center. Her last words to him had been, "So long, sucker." Faith privately agreed with Jenny that Cindy was definitely not normal. She seemed to be possessed by Mae West, Mata Hari, and Scarlett O'Hara all at the same time.

They were almost to the Moores' house. Faith was looking out the window. Tom had a tape of "Prairie Home Companion" on and Garrison Keillor's hypnotic voice made her feel suspended and sleepy—and safe. A beautiful fall. That was the ironic part. All this was happening in one of the most beautiful falls to hit New England in a lifetime. The air was balmy; sometimes Faith even thought she could smell an ocean breeze and tropical flowers in downtown Aleford. Each morning started in gentle darkness and gave way to brilliant sunshine. The leaves did not seem to want to fall from the trees and when they did, they arranged themselves into exquisite bright mosaics of yellow, orange, and red on the lush green grass. It really was too much, Faith thought. Like Keillor 's voice it lulled one into a feeling of safety and security. It made it too easy to forget what was really happening.

There was some banjo music on now. Faith had missed the hootenanny era, but Tom loved bluegrass and she was trying to educate herself for his sake. It was quite an effort. She found it hard to listen to most music. Despite her mother's rigorous training at Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall, as soon as Faith heard the openingbars, be they Scarlatti or Scruggs, her mind started to wander.

Soon after, they turned off the main road onto the first of many little roads that would eventually land them on the Moores' peninsula.

Patricia had steaming bowls of chowder waiting for them. Robert was anxious to get out on the water before the tide turned, so they sat down to eat right away. After the house in Aleford, the camp was always a surprise.

This was Robert's house. He had discovered the spit of land jutting out just south of Kittery while sailing one day and had fallen in love with it. They used to camp on it when the children were young. At that time, the only structures were a dock and boathouse. Then five years ago they had built a magnificent contemporary house. The architect had been a client of Robert's and Robert had liked him immediately. When he saw the man's work, he knew this was whom he wanted to build his house. This house contained, rather than the hodgepodge of generations that furnished the Aleford house, Robert's collection of twentieth-century photographs; sleek, sublimely comfortable Italian furniture; and some of the beautiful Amish-type quilts Patricia had started making lately. The huge glass windows brought the pines and granite rocks into the house and at times it was hard to tell if you were inside or out.

They were eating on the deck. Patricia ladled the soup into chunky pottery bowls with which they could pleasantly warm their hands. This was followed by a big salad and more sourdough bread, which was Faith's contribution. Jenny had made a blueberry cobbler with blueberries frozen the past summer to finish the meal. It was perfect. Faith would have been content to sit and bask in the sun all afternoon, but Robert was plainly eager to get going.

“Come on, come on," he complained, "We're going to lose the wind and the tide will be turning before we're started."

“ Good, Daddy," said Jenny. " Then we can clam ! “

He turned to her in mock disgust. " Some sailor.”

Jenny was going to watch Benjamin and at the last minute Patricia decided to stay behind and work on her latest quilt. Faith suspected she wasn't as ardent a sailor as Robert and only went to keep him company.

The three of them set out and before long the house was a pinprick in the midst of the dark green line of pines stretching far up the coast.

Robert let out a sigh of pure animal pleasure. "Sometimes when I 'm out here I wish I never had to go back to shore.”

Clearly he was in a pensive mood. Tom said something noncommittal about wishing things like that himself sometimes. Faith knew his technique well enough by now. He would draw Robert out, unraveling the thread of his discontent, then help him knit it all back up into a more wearable garment. He really was a very good minister. She let their voices play about her and closed her eyes.

Presently she heard Robert say, " I've been pretty stretched to the limit, Tom, what with the two houses to keep up and Robby 's tuition. And the wedding was going to set me back a good deal. I won't pretend that the money isn 't damn handy.”

Faith kept her eyes closed. She had the feeling that if she showed signs of being awake, Robert would stop talking. They were tearing across the water now at a terrific clip. Robert 's voice picked up and the words came faster.

“It sounds horrible, especially now, but I've always hated her. Maybe I resented her coming into the family when she was a child, but I like to think that if it had been a different child, I would have loved it. From thebeginning she did nothing but cause trouble. When Jenny was born, I actually feared she might harm the baby. She was about seven years old then. She knew what she was doing. We had a nurse at first and she left the room for a moment when Cindy was there playing. When she came back a few minutes later, Cindy had taken Jenny from the crib and was balancing her on the windowsill. She said she wanted to see if she could fly like baby Superman, but that was just Cindy covering up. Obviously she resented having another girl around, try as we did to avoid playing favorites. Patricia really has been a saint.

“Cindy never bothered Rob much. Well, he was a little boy to her and she was only interested in older boys. He wasn't any kind of threat to her, although she used to tease him cruelly. I had to speak sternly to her on several occasions and she would look very sorry, then start in on him again when my back was turned. You didn't know him when he was Jenny's age, but he was a bit chubby and Cindy drove him crazy. She had all sorts of names for him. You can imagine.”

Tom could and, remembering a similar phase in his own adolescence, wondered why Rob hadn't killed Cindy then.

Robert had made some minute adjustments to the sail and was back at the tiller. The Moores had an assortment of boats—the inevitable Boston Whaler ; rowboats, canoes, and dinghies for the kids to mess around with ; Robby 's boat, a Snipe, his pride and joy, which he raced, with his father as crew ; then this old Dark Harbor sloop lovingly restored and cared for by Robert. Cindy had not been interested in boats, or in New Hampshire much.

“ I was glad that Cindy didn't like to come here. She never wanted to rough it, which was all right with us. She didn 't have to and she seemed happy to go to camps with less primitive accommodations instead. Maybe we were two families : the Moores and the Moores plus Cindy. We certainly didn't intend it to be that way in the beginning. Patricia 's mother was still alive when we took Cindy and she warned us not to expect her to be like Rob. `She's been badly spoiled from the start,' she said, `Just do your Christian duty and run for the cellar when trouble comes, because she's going to bring you plenty.' Her grandmother was the only one Cindy minded and I think she was afraid of her."

“It's too bad she couldn 't have taken her then. Maybe that 's what Cindy needed—the old-fashioned `spare the rod and spoil the child approach.' Not that I think it's right," Tom said.

“ She didn 't want her. She knew she didn 't have too many years left and I think she wanted to have some peace and quiet. She liked her little house on the corner by the river. We would have been happy to have her in the big house—she had been born there and raised her children there, but she said she wanted a change and her own place. A remarkable woman. Patricia 's a lot like her—they look soft, but underneath there's that native bedrock. Besides, Patricia wanted Cindy very much. We had been married for a long time before Rob came along and Patricia always wanted lots of children. We hadn't seen a lot of Cindy. They lived in California, you know. Patricia was terribly upset about losing her sister and she had just had a miscarriage, but here was a ready-made daughter and she was excited about having her. I have to admit I was too, at first. But it didn't last, especially for me.”

He grew quiet and it seemed the conversation was at an end, but then he seemed to painfully drag an unbidden thought to the surface.

“You know, Tom, I'm sure that a man is involved in this business. Cindy had no scruples when it came tomen. It's crazy to think it's Sam, but she could have driven him to it. Hell, she could have driven me.

“I've never told Patricia this, but Cindy used to try to get me interested in her. It's abominable and I told her exactly what she was doing and why. Just like Sam, she wanted to have something on me. Several times when Patricia was up here with the other two and we were alone, she 'd come into the study with next to nothing on and put her arms around me. It makes me want to vomit when I think of it now.

“I felt sorry for Dave. He didn't know what he was getting into, but it was the happiest day of my life when she told us she was getting married and leaving home. My God, she didn't even leave to go to college, just took a few courses at Chamberlayne. You can't know how much I wanted to get rid of her.”

Behind her closed eyes, Faith seemed to see the words in boldface type. Get rid of her.

Tom was murmuring something about the burden Robert had carried and carried alone. The boat was still speeding along, faster than ever—one side almost planing out of the water. The wind was tremendous and now that Tom was speaking Faiths couldn 't hear clearly any more. She looked at. Robert through half-closed eyes. His face was slowly being drained of the angry contortions of a few minutes ago, but his hand was still tightly clenched upon the tiller. He was a large man, a powerful man. Faith felt obscurely afraid and wished they were back on dry land. Surely they were going too fast? It was impossible to distinguish the shoreline anymore, just a blur of greens and grays.

Suddenly she heard Robert shout to her, " Faith, are you awake ? “

She sat up, "Yes, do you want me to do something? Lower the mizzen mast or hoist the boom?”

He laughed. And there they were, just three friends on a pleasant autumn sail. "Well, do you think you could move to the other side of the boat ? Pretty tricky, but I think you can manage. We're coming about.”

Faith knew what that meant and scampered over to the other side as they swung around. Robert handed the tiller over to Tom and went to get the thermos Patricia had sent along, which proved to be filled with strong, sweet tea, Lapsang Souchong, Patricia 's own favorite, which she drank all day long, scalding hot and strong enough to dissolve the cup. There were chocolate chip cookies too—big chewy ones with plenty of walnuts.

The rest of the sail was uneventful and after a while they headed for home. The afternoon lay stretched out as flat as the calm water that filled the inlet by the point. The wind was a breeze and they sailed slowly into port.

Back at the house, Patricia was sitting on the deck swathed in bulky cardigans, stitching away at the quilt in her lap. It was almost finished and Faith admired the beauty of the ' colors—deep purples, smoky blues, and celadon greens with touches of scarlet. The stitching was so fine, it was hard to believe the human hand could accomplish it. Faith thought of her own tribulations with buttons and a ghastly failure at hemming a skirt once.

“I'd love to be able to make something like this." Faith sighed. "Or rather I think I would, but in all probability I'd try it and hate it. It's like thinking how nice it would be to live on a farm, one of those tidy Scandinavian ones with the white geese, like Carl Larsson 's pictures, but I know deep inside I'm not that kind of person. It's the same with quilting."

“Nonsense," said Patricia briskly, " Well, maybe not about the farm—I know I always have visions of the same sort that conveniently leave out all the hard work. But about the quilting. You could start with a small hanging to get the idea, then go on from there. If youcan do a running stitch, you can quilt. And if you can do the piecing on your machine, it goes quickly.”

Faith didn't dare to tell her she didn 't own a sewing machine, but agreed a hanging might be within her range.

Robert came out with two mugs of hot mulled wine. He and Tom were going to a neighbor's to inspect their new superinsulated Trelleborg house. They would be back soon. Jenny was reading inside and Benjamin was still asleep after an afternoon of unmitigated delight. He clearly adored Jenny, and Faith had high hopes of many happy babysitting hours ahead.

Patricia and Faith sat in companionable silence watching the lengthening afternoon shadows against the pines. The wine was delicious, and just as Faith was wondering if it would seem either piggy or inappropriate behavior for a minister's wife to ask for more, Patricia got up and took her cup. "I don't know about you, but I could do with a little more of that concoction.”

Faith smiled. "You read my mind. Thank you."

“ Are you too cold out here, Faith ? " Patricia said, returning with the steaming mugs.

“No, it's lovely to drink hot things when it's a bit cool."

“This is my favorite time of day, not time to think of cooking yet—which I must admit I don't love the way you do—and too late to start any new jobs. Just time to put up your feet and read something frivolous.”

They talked some more about what constituted frivolous reading. Patricia thought there should be a subcategory called "Hairdresser Reading," which was frivolous, too, of course, but more trivial.

“People magazine," offered Faith.

“Exactly," agreed Patricia, "Whereas real frivolous reading is like taking one of Jenny's Nancy Drews.”

“Or a good murder mystery with no hidden literary value," suggested Faith, realizing as she said it that it was not the most appropriate remark for the occasion. " We don 't really need to read murder mysteries these days—literary or not," Patricia said grimly. "Which reminds me of something I wanted to say to you, Faith. It is undoubtedly none of my business, but I will claim an older woman's prerogative and speak anyway.

“I know you have been upset over the arrests of Dave and Sam and have been doing a little inquiring on your own, but I think you should stop and leave it to the police.”

Faith was quite surprised—not that Patricia knew she had been asking questions; this was, to be sure Aleford—but that Patricia would feel strongly enough about it to tell her to stop. Patricia had never spoken to her in this way before.

“You don 't always know what you are getting into when you start to try to uncover things," Patricia continued, "and you may hurt people you care about. What I mean is that there may be aspects of all this that are better left alone.”

Was there something in Cindy's box that Patricia wanted to remain hidden ? Robert was having financial problems and the girl had been goading him and his family for years. Given the width of her sward, was she blackmailing them, too ?

The wine was making Faith feel mellow and benevolent. So be it. Patricia wouldn't be raising all this without a very good reason and certainly these people had suffered enough. What was one murder more or less?

“ I know you would never do anything intentionally to hurt someone or the family," Patricia went on. "Not to mention that there could be some danger to yourself. We have only known you a short time, Faith, but we love you very much and are so happy Tom lured you to Aleford.”

Patricia paused and looked down at her quilt as if expecting to find the text of her remarks stitched there. She looked up again.

“ Of course the shock of finding the body was horrible and I can understand that you might feel you have a responsibility to get to the bottom of things. But please, Faith, leave it all alone now. Detective Dunne and Charley will handle it.”

Definitely there was something having to do with Robert. Faith was feeling even tipsier and everything suddenly seemed to make sense, although she did have the vague notion that once again the tables were turned. She had thought she was supposed to be consoling Patricia and perhaps offering a few well-chosen words of advice to the bereaved, but this was rapidly becoming the same kind of down-the-rabbit-hole conversation she had had with Pix Miller. Just who was the minister's wife here, anyway ?

“I would never do anything to hurt anyone, especially not your family, Patricia," she promised solemnly. She could out-Whipple Eleanor on family in this one, she congratulated herself.

“Good. Well, that's that then. Now we do have to think about food and put all talk, frivolous and otherwise, aside for another time." Patricia looked at Faith gratefully, "You know, Faith, I haven 't decided what to do with this quilt and if you would like it, I'd like you to have it. Maybe it would be an incentive for you. To quilt, that is."

“ Patricia! I'd love it, but I couldn't possibly accept such a gift. It's taken you ages to do it."

“Not really ages and I'll start another one the moment this is finished. Besides,' I didn 't know you when we gave you a wedding present, so it was a bit impersonal. This is really for you." She gave Faith a slightly wry smile. "The name of the pattern is Sunshine and Shadow.”

Faith thanked her profusely and followed her into the kitchen, where she tried very hard to dismiss the nagging thought at the back of her head that whispered "bribery." And what had she meant about an "incentive"? Quilting indeed.

Neither one of them heard Jenny tiptoe back to her room and then emerge as if she hadn 't heard every word the two of them had been saying for the last half hour. "I think Benjamin 's awake," she reported.

“You've been reading in dim light again," her mother commented, "Come here and let me see ; your eyes are all red. No, don 't rub them ! That just makes it worse."

“I'm fine, Mom," Jenny replied, and to prove it gave a very wobbly smile.

After a delicious supper of bluefish caught that morning and crisply fried in Patricia's huge old iron skillets, the Fairchilds drove back to Aleford. The Moores were staying until the next night. Faith knew Robert had to get in just one more sail and hoped the weather stayed as fine as it had been all day.

She told Tom what Patricia had said and also that she had been eavesdropping on the boat.

“I know," he teased her, "I couldn 't imagine you sleeping through such a confessional. But," he continued seriously, "what was it all about? Don't tell me you've added him to your suspect list. You might as well put Robby down too and be done with it. Some smoldering adolescent jibe ignited recently? Nothing easier than to slip into town when everyone thought you were at school." Tom shook his head. “ Will you listen to me ! I 'm getting as bad as you!"

“ Remember what Charley said, anyone can kill, although I don't see Robert bothering to attach a rose to the body.”

Faith leaned back into the seat, then sat bolt upright, "But wait a minute—Patricia might ! Do you suppose they did it together ? That would make sense, one as a lookout and Patricia adding the rose to throw in a red herring."

“Faith, fun is fun, but this is too crazy to even think about," said Tom wearily, "I mean these are my parishioners, God-fearing people. Although I am pretty puzzled about what Patricia was getting at. Maybe she's just concerned for your safety."

“Then why didn 't she put it that way? It was almost like a threat. No, threat is too strong a word. A hint, a very strong hint."

“ I think I should call on her next week on some other pretext and give her a chance to talk. Robert certainly seemed to want to and we'll have to get together again. Cindy really led them quite a life and I'm sure they have some guilt about the relief they feel. And that 's all it can possibly be, Faith."

“There should be a club, a support group for all the people who were tormented by Cindy when she was alive and now feel guiltily blissful that she's gone—Dave, Sam, Oswald, probably Rob and Jenny, the Moores, of course, and Pix. And those are just the ones we know."

“Exactly, Faith, the ones we know and somewhere there 's someone we don 't know who wanted this relief enough to kill."

“And what makes you so sure it's someone we don't know ? " Faith asked softly.

The car was moving steadily down I-95 in the darkness. There weren't a lot of other cars, not like in the summertime when you inched along at the Portsmouth Bridge. It was quiet and Tom took so long in answering that Faith thought he hadn't heard her. Then he spoke.

“I can 't believe otherwise, Faith. It's too difficult. My intellect tells me all is possible, but my heart and my faith dictate otherwise and for the moment I'm going with them."

“Well, then I'm coming too," said Faith and wished she didn't know how dangerous it was to travel with your head on the driver's shoulder.

The next morning in church Faith found it hard to stick to her promise. Her eyes kept scanning the congregation and her thoughts were sinfully secular. The weather had turned colder, but the sun streamed in the high arched windows, making the mums on the altar shimmer like gold. She tried to find a comfortable spot on the thin scarlet padding that was all that separated one from the austere wooden pews. The Women's Alliance had a slowly growing fund for new cushions, but Faith had a suspicion that they felt uneasy spending money for the comforts of the flesh when there were so many more important projects to support. At the moment, with a growing numbness au derrière, Faith would have liked to donate the whole sum herself—anonymously, of course.

They stood up to sing a hymn—what blessed relief ! The church was almost full. Whether this was a tribute to Tom 's popularity and a growing congregation or an unusual number of uneasy souls, Faith did not know, but church was where she wanted to be today. She needed to think.

She knew Tom was right and they couldn 't allow themselves to believe it was someone they knew. She scanned the upturned, open-mouthed faces once more as they sang praises to the Lord. All those well-scrubbed, innocent faces.

But if not someone they knew, then who ?She felt hopelessly confused as she sang, "Amen," sat down, and bowed her head.

The afternoon passed busily. Tom had calls to make and Faith took Benjamin out into the sunshine while shetidied up the garden. He practiced his baby push-ups on a blanket under one of the maple trees and shrieked with delight every time a leaf fell. It felt good to be outside and have the cobwebs blown away.

They didn 't talk about the murder at all on Sunday, and when Faith 's mother called that night to find out how they were, Faith realized with a start that she had almost forgotten to tell her the latest developments.

She was up early on Monday, resolved to do as Patricia asked, not so much because she had asked but because the conversation with Tom had convinced her that practically speaking, and spiritually, she couldn't continue to go around Aleford casting baleful eyes on all the inhabitants and expect to have any peace of mind—or after a while any friends.

Tom was walking out to the Parish Office and Faith went down the front walk with him to get the mail out of the box. Monday 's mail was usually a bit sparse and there was only a flyer from Sears and a plain envelope that had not gone through the post with Faith's name rather childishly scrawled on it. She opened it with a smile, thinking one of the children from the Sunday School where she sometimes helped had sent her a drawing.

Tom had gone through the gate and was suddenly startled to find Faith grabbing him desperately, barely able to speak.

“Tom, look!" she cried in horror.

He looked.

Inside the envelope folded in a sheet of white paper was a pressed rose. A pink rose. Just like Cindy's.

7

Faith looked out the window and watched Boston rapidly assume the look of one of those relief maps made for a school project : the Charles River carefully painted brownish blue by unsteady hands and Beacon Hill a glorious wad of papier-mâché crowned by the State House 's golden dome. Afterward there would have been an argument over who got to keep it, or rather which attic, closet, or basement it would grow dusty in before someone's mother heartlessly threw it away.

It seemed only seconds had elapsed between Faith 's finding the rose and finding herself enveloped by a Newark—bound 737 securely buckled in with Benjamin clutched on her lap and a scotch and water clutched in her hand. Normally she didn 't drink on planes, or rathernot since Benjamin was born. She liked to keep alert, and after discovering that parents traveling with small children were not allowed to sit next to the emergency exits, there was all the more reason. As a matter of course she further protected her urchin by sitting one row back from the door and explaining to one of the people in the row ahead that if they had to evacuate the plane Faith would be passing her baby to him or her. The few startled looks she got were worth the peace of mind and possibly Benjamin 's life, she repeatedly told Tom, who always pretended not to know her at these times and flatly refused to sit ahead of her himself and be the receiver. Anyway all this had been accomplished and Benjamin 's rescuer was a rather serious-looking young man who was reading Kierkegaard, so Faith was pretty sure he wouldn 't be too caught up in the plot to notice the plane was on fire or crashing.

She leaned back, put one of those tiny cushions stuffed with plaster of paris behind her head, and let the reel of the day 's events pass before her eyes.

After she had handed him the envelope with the rose, Tom had been like a maniac. He dragged her into the house, shielding her with his body as if there might be an army of machine gun—toting assailants in the shrubbery. He slammed the door, locked it, and called the police all in one motion. Detective Dunne, this time without Charley MacIsaac, was there in minutes.

Faith remembered sitting bolt upright in the wing chair and agreeing automatically that now was a good time for her to visit her parents. She heard herself speaking in a normal tone of voice and wondered why she wasn 't screaming. After all, someone seemed to want to kill her.

She decided to mention it to Tom and Detective Lieutenant Dunne, who seemed unduly preoccupied with flight times and at that moment were arguing over New- ark versus Kennedy as an airport. They stopped and looked at her in amazement.

“ Faith, sweetie, we just finished talking about all that. Don 't you remember ? Oh, my God, I'd better come with you for a while," Tom had cried.

Faith honestly could not remember the discussion. She knew they had all been talking for what seemed like years, but somehow the gist of it had passed her by. So they started again. This time with hot coffee and sandwiches quickly thrown together by Tom. Faith noted that somewhere along the line, it had become "Tom" and "John," but she was still "Mrs. Fairchild.”

Dunne took a bite out of his ham sandwich, thereby consuming all but a small part of the crust, " Now, Mrs. Fairchild, this business could be any number of things—a prank by someone with a very warped sense of humor or a forcible hint from someone who genuinely cares about you and is afraid you might be too involved.

“However, we can't rule out that it could be from the murderer, who may also think you are too involved, but who might possibly not have your best interests at heart.”

Faith appreciated the attempt at humor and also the way Dunne 's voice dropped several octaves, putting it somewhere in the basement of C below low C, when he mentioned the last possibility.

He continued, " It has not escaped our notice that you have been asking people questions and in general hinting around that you'd like to find the murderer yourself.”

He looked at her sternly.

Not another talking to, thought Faith, I just can't take all this advice.

Dunne 's expression lightened up to a mere threat of showers, “ Not that I'd mind someone else solving this. It's no secret that we aren't satisfied with the case against Sam Miller and even if we were, the entire lawprofession of the Greater Boston area has been bombarding us with so many calls, threats, and writs that it would take years to try the damned thing. But I'd prefer the someone else to be a police officer. It looks bad if the Spensers, Peter Wimseys, and Miss Pinkertons of the world show us up too often.”

Faith was surprised. " I never would have guessed that you read mysteries, " she said, momentarily diverted by the idea of John Dunne tucked up in an emperor-sized bed eagerly trying to figure out whodunit.

“I don 't, but my wife does. She says it's more interesting than my job and she thrives on crime.”

Tom jumped in. He knew his Faith and the moment Dunne had said "wife" her eyes lit up. The next question was bound to be size-oriented or worse. " Faith, you see why it makes sense for you to leave now, don't you ? Aside from easing my mind about your safety ? “

Faith knew what he was doing and shot him a glance that said "later" all over it.

Now that she was calmer and fed, parts of the previous conversation were coming back to her. She agreed. "Yes, of course—to make the murderer, if that's who sent it, feel secure and relaxed, thereby committing some kind of blunder, like mentioning in the Shop and Save that he or she killed Cindy.

“If it wasn 't the murderer, it doesn 't matter so much, but don 't worry. I would just as soon absent myself from the scene at the moment. Not," she added hastily for Dunne's benefit, "that I was ever so involved in it.”

He looked at her and raised one eyebrow skeptically. This was a man who had definitely gone to the right movies as a kid.

Then Faith remembered what she had wanted to ask him. " Why did you say before that it would be virtually impossible to trace the letter ? "

“Well, first of all the stationery is sold everywhere- in CVS or places like it. You've probably got some yourself to use when you pay bills.”

Faith didn 't, but that was neither here nor there. "Then there's the handwriting. Of course, we'll give it to the analysts, but I'll bet you a jar of Ubet 's syrup that it was written with an ordinary #2 Ticonderoga yellow pencil with the left hand. Pretty impossible to trace, short of demanding a handwriting sample from everyone in Aleford. And the person may not even be local. We've discovered that the field of Cindy's, shall we say ‘acquaintances,' ranged pretty much over the greater Boston area. She was luckier than we've been, though ; they all seem to have alibis and pretty good ones.”

“ So · you still suspect someone local ? " Tom asked quietly.

“ We do. Of course we'll take handwriting samples from Sam Miller and Dave Svenson, Oswald Pearson too, but I doubt they'll prove anything."

“I really wish you wouldn't bother them. It's ridiculous to think one of them did this. Even if he was worried, Dave or Sam would come right out and tell me—or tell Tom."

“ Please, Mrs. Fairchild, Faith if I may, let us go about this in our own way."

“Yes, you may—call me Faith that is, but I still don't like the idea of your grilling my friends and neighbors."

“ Well, we'll try to make it more of a sauté," Dunne quipped.

“Not funny, John," said Faith, but she was smiling. He really was a charmer when he tried. She wondered what his wife was like, probably five feet tall and a pistol.

“Before you get ready to go, let's go over everyone you've talked to about the murder again, in the last fewdays especially. Maybe we can figure out who got the wind up.”

That reminded Faith of the sail on Saturday. Should she tell him about the conversation with Patricia? And what about Robert 's confession in the boat? She looked at Tom uneasily and he understood.

“He means everything, Faith, this isn't a time to hold back, thinking you might be betraying a confidence. I certainly don't intend to."

“Good," said John, eyeing Tom appreciatively. He'd never been involved in a case with a minister before and he hadn't known what to expect. It had been a long time since he had been in church himself.

Sitting in the plane, thinking about it all, Faith felt far removed and as light as the air she was speeding through. It almost seemed to have happened to someone else, or in a book she read. She sipped her scotch slowly. Benjamin wasn't asleep, but he wasn't really awake either. She had given him a bottle at takeoff so his little ears wouldn't hurt and since then he seemed content to stare out the window and listen to the muffled roar of the engines.

She returned to her thoughts. They had gone over everybody without any significant results and finally she had hurried upstairs to pack, which roughly meant putting everything Benjamin owned in a bag with a few things for herself. Until she had a baby, she never realized how fast they went through clothes. She had expected to change a lot of diapers, of course, but Benjamin turned out to be a champion at what one of the books coyly referred to as "projectile vomiting"—like something from the space program. He was pretty much out of the stage now, but while it lasted Faith be- gan to think his childhood would be one long laundry cycle.

Tom had been downstairs phoning the airlines. They had decided that Faith could go alone after all. She had felt better and had longed for the relative safety of the Big Apple ; besides, she hadn 't known what she would do with Tom in the city, since her plan was to fill out her winter wardrobe. She had also thought he should stay in Aleford so he could tell her what was happening. As he called her mother at work she could hear his voice while he tried to explain to her that her daughter had just received what amounted to a botanical death threat in the mail. Well, if anyone could do it, Tom could, Faith thought, and realized she was going to have to keep a firm nonhysterical hand on herself.

Detective Dunne had left with the letter carefully wrapped in some kind of plastic envelope. Faith supposed they would test it for everything in the world—fingerprints, sweat, and so on. She had pointed out to Dunne that, as with the murder, the most logical suspect was Cindy herself. Poison pen letters or the equivalent were certainly in Cindy's line, but she was undoubtedly in no condition to go around pressing flowers these days.

Dunne had wished her a good trip and told her to bring back some decent corned beef. Although they hadn 't really gotten anywhere, at least something had happened and that seemed to cheer him up. Just pack little Mrs. Fairchild off to her mother's, solve the case, and then she could come home again.

John Dunne had been born and raised in the Pelham Bay section of the Bronx. When his father died, the whole neighborhood, plus relatives on both sides, jumped in to fill the gap. John knew his Bronx wasn't the Bronx of his mother's childhood—she was constantly lamenting the passing of certain landmarks—but it was a good place to grow up. The fires that would erupt later werejust beginning to smolder and a long subway ride away in any case. Orchard Beach and City Island were nearby and if he wasn 't at one or the other for a family picnic, he was there to swim and hang out with his friends. Everybody knew everybody else in the few blocks that constituted his world. Then he learned to cross the bridge and discovered Manhattan. By the time he graduated from high school, there wasn't an inch of that island he hadn 't explored.

He met his wife while she was on her senior class trip to New York City, the culmination of thousands of bake sales, car washes, and raffles. Betsy was from the potato fields in northern Maine, a stone 's throw away from the Canadian border. It took Dunne months to understand everything she said and years to decipher her family's accent. On the New York trip, she had become separated from her classmates and had no idea where she was, so she walked into the closest police station, as instructed by Mrs. Greenlaw, the chaperone. Mrs. Greenlaw 's greatest fear was to lose one of her charges to the white slave trade and she understood that the latest tactic was using grandmotherly-looking old ladies in gloves and hats to lure unsuspecting girls astray.

Out of all the police stations in New York, it had to be Dunne 's. It wasn 't that Betsy was particularly beautiful, but she had something that appealed to him immediately. It was his first year on the force and his mother was after him to settle down. When Betsy walked in and asked how she could find the hotel they were staying at, he knew he'd be taking her there personally and buying her lunch on the way. Later she told him how intimidated she had been. He assumed she meant by his size, or because he was a policeman, but she confessed it was because he had been to college. His size never bothered her and if anyone thought they looked mismatched—Betsy was just a little over five feet and indeed a pistol—it wasn't something they said to John's face.

He sent Mrs. Greenlaw a dozen American Beauty roses the day they got engaged.

He'd never regretted marrying Betsy, even though she wouldn 't live in New York. She made him laugh, was a terrific mother, and understood him better than anyone ever had. But there was scarcely a day he didn 't miss the city. It wasn't Faith's city he missed, although a few of the quadrants intersected ; it was one of the other hundreds of New York Citys people construct for themselves. He was sorry Faith had to leave Aleford for the reason she did, but he had to admit he'd like to have been on the plane with her.

Faith 's scotch was almost gone and they would be landing in Newark soon. She was on the wrong side of the plane to see the Statue of Liberty as it descended but she did get a pretty impressive panoramic view of the New Jersey Turnpike.

She tightened the seatbelt, which she had never removed, and took the cushion from behind her head. She was thinking again about who could possibly have put the envelope in her mailbox—or rather she had been thinking about it all the time except on the rare occasions when another thought managed to creep through. Not Dave. Not Sam. So who else ? That was the question that kept nagging at her. Maybe she should have taken the Aleford phone directory and gone household by household.

Faith had ruled out Patricia after classifying her under the heading of interested worried friend. Patricia wouldn 't have spoken to Faith the way she had on Saturday if she had planned to scare her off the case with the rose.

Pix ? It just didn 't seem to be her style.

Style was the key to it—style and personality. It was someone who read too many bad novels. Someone with time on his or her hands. Someone like Cindy or someone who liked Cindy ? Faith was playing around with the words. Someone like Millicent Revere McKinley ?

As Faith brought this to the front of her mind, she realized it had been lurking behind the parlor curtains for a while. Millicent was the type, all right. She didn't like Faith and certainly wouldn 't mind alarming her, but was it such a strong dislike ? And how to classify her ? Murderer ? Worried friend ? Nut ?

Faith couldn 't believe Millicent was the murderer ; she had been one of Cindy's few supporters, but as for sending the rose, it seemed just up her white-picketfenced alley. And not because she was worried about Faith. Nor did Faith think she was nuts—well, maybe a little nuts. No, Millicent resented somebody else having a poke in her pond. This conclusion made Faith feel a lot better and she resolved to call Tom as soon as she got to the apartment and ask him to tell Dunne—somehow she still couldn 't think of him as "John." It was too simple.

Faith 's father was waiting for her at the gate and until she saw his tall, calm figure looking completely out of place in the airport chaos, she hadn 't realized how happy she was to be out of things for a while. To let go and be a child again. He caught her up in a bear hug that threatened to squish Benjamin and said, "Faith, what on earth is going on up there ? “

She spent the trip into the city filling him in on the Peyton Place details that had become everyday life in Aleford, while also keeping a sharp eye on his driving. The Sibley car stayed in the garage for weeks at a time, since they didn't use it in the city, and Lawrence had a tendency to forget that he was driving and not riding in a cab.

They swung down the ramp approaching the Lincoln Tunnel and Faith feasted her eyes on the skyline, now becoming sadly crowded with banal glass and concrete boxes, but still the most exciting sight in the world. The Chrysler Building, her favorite, was gleaming like something from Oz in the late afternoon sunshine. At the bottom curve of the ramp there was the same enormous billboard that she remembered from her childhood. It always seemed to be advertising some kind of alcoholic beverage related to outdoor activities totally inappropriate to the surroundings—alpine skiing or Hawaiian surfboarding.

They pulled into the tunnel and Faith automatically looked for the tiles proclaiming the New York/New Jersey line. When they had gone to the Sibleys, it had beèn a contest with Hope to see who would spot it first. Were all children so competitive or just in her family, she wondered ? There were the tiles now. She had seen them first.

She continued talking to her father. Some of their best and/or most momentous conversations had taken place in the car as he either drove her to or fetched her from the airport. They seemed to be able to communicate best when not face to face, yet still in some physical proximity. Faith had asked her psychology professor at school about this one time, prodded no doubt by finding herself in an elevator with her. The class they had just left had touched upon father/daughter relationships and, carefully couching her question in nonidentifying terms, she revealed herself in the elevator. Her professor had smiled and remarked that many of her closest conversations with her father had been on similar occasions, something about a captive audience and enforced closeness. That made sense, but it also had to do with the lack of interruptions—Hope, her mother, the phone. Her father had always been a very busy man, except when he picked her up or drove her to the airport.

Before long they were at the apartment. Her mother had just gotten home from work and she folded Faith in a long, close embrace that left Faith smelling slightly of Arpège. Hope arrived a few minutes later. She had moved into her own apartment the summer before and from the contented look lurking below the expression of concern, Faith suspected she might have a "fella" at last. She resolved to get her alone for a sister-to-sister talk after dinner.

It was lovely to be back in the apartment with everyone wrapping her in cotton wool, admonishing her not to talk about “ it" unless she felt like it, and then asking a lot of questions. She began to cheer up.

Just before dinner, Faith called Tom to tell him about Millicent.

“ I really don't know why it didn't occur to me before, Tom. But it could be tricky getting a handwriting sample. Maybe Dunne could get his wife to pretend to be doing a survey. They could also check the envelope for her perfume, Mary Chess. There can't be too many people wearing that anymore. She must have bought a crate of it.”

Tom had been equally enthusiastic, but he quelled the suggestion about the survey by saying that the police had their methods.

“Honestly, Tom," Faith retorted, "you're beginning to sound just like them."

“Glad you are feeling so much better, dear," he had replied sweetly.

“At least tell them about the perfume," she pleaded. "That I will and I'm sure they will be very grateful for your highly educated nose."

“I miss you, Tom. This is our first long separation. Did you realize that?" said Faith, just realizing it herself.

“Of course, and you can't imagine how empty the house feels, not to mention how empty the bed is going to be. "

“And better be."

“Actually this would lie a good time for me to fool around. Everyone's so caught up with the murder that they wouldn 't notice if I had twenty chorus girls living in the parsonage."

“I don't think men fool around with chorus girls anymore, Tom. They'd be pretty hard to find, and I wouldn 't sell the town so short. I think the residents of Aleford are more than capable of concentrating on several scandals at once, so give it up.”

And after some more nonsense and a good-night gurgle from Benjamin, they hung up.

After dinner Faith went into her old room to nurse Benjamin. He had taken wholeheartedly to solid foods and she knew she would be weaning him completely soon. He loved his little "teacher beaker" cup and it would not be long before he would use that full time. Then he'd be off to college.

She looked around at the familiar surroundings. The walls were a soft gray, the trim white, and the carpet one of her grandparents' cast-off Orientals with beautiful shades of rose. Rose ! She shook her head—better make that pink. The room had gone through several metamorphoses from a Laura Ashley bower in her childhood to an ascetic black, white, and chrome cell in adolescence to its present incarnation, which had been gently demanded by her mother after Faith had been at college for a year and which was spurred no doubt by the nightmares of the guests who occupied the room in her absence.

She thought she had taken all her books with her to Aleford, but on the top shelf of the bookcase a few still lingered, an incongruous mixture : Judy Blume and C. S. Lewis, Camus and Agatha Christie. There was a thickvolume of Jane Austen, which she thought she might take to bed that night as a pretty poor second best to Tom. Faith had always found Jane Austen 's heroines comforting in times of physical illness or when her mind was diseased. Wondering whether the army was going to stay in town for the winter season, deciding what to wear at the Pump Room in Bath, or the gentle settling of all the complications and humiliations of matchmaking always made Faith feel her problems were small stuff. It also tended to put her to sleep.

She did miss Tom, though, more after speaking with him, and she wondered if he had spoken with Dunne or Charley MacIsaac yet.

She had her answer an hour later. Hope had gone home early, after arranging to meet Faith for lunch the next day. She said she was tired, but Faith thought it more likely a late date with whoever this new man was. Her parents always went to bed early and she was just getting ready to settle down with the Bennets when the phone rang.

It was Tom. He had not been able to reach Detective Lieutenant Dunne, but Charley was at the station. He had listened to Tom carefully and thanked him, but expressed a cautious disbelief.

“I've known Millicent for over thirty years," he told Tom, "And I'm not saying she doesn't have a few screwy ideas—hell, a lot of screwy ideas—but this isn't like her. She'd be more likely to write to The Aleford Chronicle complaining about Faith than stick a dried-up old rose in her mailbox. Still, somebody 's behaving peculiarly and we can 't rule anyone out.”

He said he 'd get through to Dunne at home and be in touch in the morning.

“And tell Faith to go to bed," MacIsaac added before he hung up, "You too, Tom.”

So they did.

s * w For the next two days Faith basked in the late autumn New York sunshine and walked her feet off pushing Benjamin up Madison Avenue to see what was new in the boutiques, then down Fifth to the department stores. She even managed to squeeze in lunch with an old friend at a restaurant she wanted to try while Ben stayed with a sitter.

On Wednesday she and Hope got enormous sandwiches and hot coffee at the Carnegie Deli and took a cab to the park. It was chilly, but not too cold to eat lunch out in the sun. Faith wasn't interested in eating in a restaurant with Benjamin at this stage and the sitter the other day had cost what good Beluga was bringing. Wait until he can order for himself, she told Hope, who had generously offered to take Faith to Bellini's.

They sat on a bench by the lake and Hope went first. She was in love—and so desperately that she had even started doing crazy things at work like almost forgetting important meetings ! Faith realized this must be serious. Missing a meeting for Hope was tantamount to waking up one morning to find Tama Janowitz had taken over her body sometime in the night.

Hope and her beloved had met at the tie counter at Barney's, which further proved Faith 's adage, "Bergdorf's with your mother; Barney 's with a man." Hope had been selecting a tie for a co-worker 's birthday. Quentin (that really was his name) had been buying for himself. Advice was sought and given. Then lunch. Then dinner. The next day it was the squash court and now only a matter of time before they were head over heels in prenuptial agreements.

It was relaxing to sit in the cool October sun and listen to her sister outline their plans—not hopes and dreams, but plans. Faith was attending with part of her mind while the rest wandered foolishly around constructing names for the happy couple 's brokerage—Hope and Hopemore; Hopeful and Lee—when she realized that the child screaming was hers. Benjamin had grown tired of the entire contents of FAO Schwartz strung in and around his MacLaren Baby Lie-Back Buggy and wanted a new diversion. Hope picked him up and he rewarded her with a grin.

“ Quentin wants children, of course, and so do I ; but not immediately." She paused. “ And Fay, maybe we should wait until Benj is a little older before the two meet. Quentin hasn't actually seen many babies. He thinks Thirtysomething' is a figment of some fiendish television executive's imagination and it might be best if the whole thing were approached gradually."

“I 'd say Benjamin 's high school graduation should be soon enough if we want to be sure of halfway civilized behavior and even then we might be taking a chance," Faith replied and they laughed. But it wasn't unreasonable. The last thing you want a would-be spouse and father to observe is a screaming infant who will not be quiet no matter what the entire room full of intelligent loving adults do—an infant who carries some of the same genes as your own would.

Hope asked Faith some questions about the murder, but Faith was reluctant to think about recent events and regaled her sister instead with some of the funnier adventures she had been having as a minister 's wife, like Eleanor Whipple 's water and, last month, Mrs. Lawton 's Siamese cockfighter 's chair.

Mrs. Lawton was a globetrotter and had brought back numerous exotic souvenirs, which she had been proudly showing Faith. She had pulled forward an elaborately carved thronelike chair with a compartment underneath saying, "And here we have a cockfighter's chair, the man sits here," she sat, "and keeps his cock down here." She ducked her head down and slid the compartment open, leaving Faith gasping for a moment as she sought to stifle her hysterical laughter. She could give way to it now with Hope.

When Hope went back to work, Faith decided to sit a while longer. Benjamin was lying back in the lie-back and she thought he might go to sleep. She watched her sister walk purposefully across the park. A woman with a definite place to go and definite things to do. How could two children in one family be so different? They even looked different. Hope was tall and dark, like the Sibleys. She had rather exotic green eyes, which didn't come from anyone in the family. Faith had always thought they were some kind of attribute dreamed up by Hope herself. Faith wouldn 't have minded having those green eyes herself. She was sure Hope had been turning heads on Wall Street and not just rolling them, but Quentin was the first man her sister had ever been serious about. He'd better be good to her, Faith thought fiercely. If it took a BMW to make her little sister happy, then so be it.

Faith and Hope had one of those typical close sister relationships : love, hate ; defense, attack ; pride, jealousy. Today was a loving, protective, admiring day and Faith was happy. Someday she'd find a way to tell her sister how much she loathed being called " Fay." Fortunately, Hope was the only one who did so.

Benjamin was asleep. As Faith sat on the bench watching passersby, she mused about families. " For better or worse" should be on one's birth certificate as well as in one's wedding vows. All those inextricable—or was it inexplicable ?—bonds. "Family" brought her back to Aleford, where these ties were not only tight, but sacred. More than a birthright. Generation after generation defined by who you were: "One of the Appletons" or " I'm a Forbes, you know." Quiet pride, or in cases like Millicent's, something a bit more extreme. In Aleford even the skeletons in the closet were reverentially dusted, although usually years later. Faith realized she was feeling a slight twinge of nostalgia for the town's leisurely pace, which she quelled immediately by leaping to her feet and heading for Bloomingdale's.

That night she decided to call her Aunt Chat and see if she wanted visitors the next day. Charity Sibley was Lawrence's oldest sister and lived in Mendham, New Jersey. She had been divorced for so long that Faith couldn 't remember what her husband had been like. Chat had retired some years ago after a highly successful career on Madison Avenue, breaking in at a time when few women were working there. Eventually she had started her own agency, which she sold when she retired for Tom's veritable "beaucoup de bacon." Now, when she wasn't traveling, she lived in the country complete with horses, pond for swimming, and a tennis court she didn't use. "But people always want to play," she explained to Faith, who had been surprised to see it the first time she visited. Aunt Chat's idea of vigorous exercise was a stately breaststroke across and back some small body of water.

Charity said she would be delighted to see Faith and Benjamin the next day for lunch. Faith hung up and started to prepare dinner. Hope was coming and Faith had promised to get her out in time for her date with Quentin.

She began to deftly fill some wonton skins with a mixture of finely ground smoked turkey and scallions, which would serve as their first course, floating in a light broth with crème fraîche for those who wanted a dollop. As she worked, she began to think about Aleford, which had receded to the background these last few days, except for the feeling of unease with which she awoke each morning, not altogether explained by the absence of Tom's familiar warm body in the bed beside her. He called every night and there was nothing new to report. Dunne had been more interested in Millicent as a possibility than MacIsaac had, and planned to pay her a visit. Faith wondered where on earth he was going to sit, if he could even get in the house.

Faith planned to stay in New York until Sunday night or Monday morning. She didn 't want to miss seeing her Sibley grandmother and the whole family was going out there on Saturday. It was good to have had a break, but she was getting restless in exile. And she missed Tom.

The wontons were done and Faith took out the rack of lamb she had bought as a surprise for her father. It was his favorite and Faith was pretty sure he wasn't eating it every night for dinner, her mother 's idea of nourishment being a piece of fish and a nice salad.

As she rubbed the lamb with a clove of garlic, she wondered what Aunt Chat would have to say about everything tomorrow. Chats with Chat had been a childhood joke, but very important to Faith. Her aunt had also been one of her main supporters when she wanted to start Have Faith and everyone else thought she was crazy.

She washed some greens for her mother 's salad and made a gratinée of winter fruits with calvados to be whisked under the broiler at the last minute. There was still plenty of time before dinner to play with Benjamin and nibble at his tiny toes.

Faith had hoped her father might be free to go with her to Mendham, but at dinner he told her he couldn't get away, although if she stayed around and kept cooking the way she was, he might be unable to refuse her anything.

It was a slightly uproarious meal, especially for them, Faith reflected. They indulged in some gallows humor at Aleford 's expense and Tom's, what with his parishionersin a revolving door situation at the police station and worse. Faith felt better than she had in days. It really did seem a long way away and not of such earth-shaking importance at that.

Benjamin reclined in his little tilted seat. Faith never knew what these things were called—baby holders ? bundle boards' or wasn't that for some other purpose ? He smiled and waved and bore a striking resemblance to the Queen Mother, except without the hat. Of course, if Quentin had come to dinner the resemblance might well have been to Jekyll and Hyde. Children were nothing if not mysterious. Like those paper balls you had as a child. You'd unwind yards of tissue paper and end up with a plastic whistle that didn 't work or a beautiful ruby ring you could swear was real. Every day with a baby was like opening a prize ball.

The next morning Faith and Benjamin made their way alone out to Mendham ; Faith getting lost almost as soon as she crossed the Hudson just like any other self-respecting New Yorker. They arrived at Aunt Chat's at around eleven. She was in the garden reading, quite buried under a huge hat and a mountain of coats and shawls.

“Faith ! Benjamin ! How dear of you to come all this way. Do you want to sit outside ? I couldn 't resist, it was so lovely and warm.”

Faith, whose lips were beginning to turn blue despite the sunshine, declined. Chat, though quite unathletic, was as hardy as the rest of the Sibleys. It took a minute or two for her to collect all her things—glasses, paper, book, throws, Thermos of tea. The Thermos reminded Faith momentarily of Patricia. It was like the one she had sent along with them on the boat. Faith wondered how she was and realized that last night's flippant Ale-ford humor had not dispelled her deep unease about it all. Patricia 's ambiguous warning, the rose, the murder itself.

“Do I hear a sigh ? How uncharacteristic. Come on, Faith, let 's go inside and I'll light a fire to warm those little bird bones of yours and you can tell me everything while I cuddle Benjamin. And I won 't even mind if he throws up all over me like last time."

“He doesn 't do that anymore, Aunt Chat, or at least he hasn't lately," said Faith, slightly aggrieved at the mention of any imperfection in her offspring.

They moved indoors and settled down before the fire in the big stone fireplace that dominated the living room. The house was a complete mishmash. Parts of it dated to the late 1700s, while others were added on in what the owners somewhat benightedly thought was the same style. Rooms trailed on, one after the other, petering off in balconies or stairways. The kitchen had been added on most recently and was enormous. The room they were in now was adjacent to it, but was one of the original ones. Yet somehow the house seemed all of a piece, or maybe it was Chat 's sense of design that unified it. It was American Comfortable—lots of quilts thrown over tables or hanging on the walls, bright fabrics covering soft chairs and footstools, bookcases everywhere, some with books and some with Chat 's collection of folk art animals from all over the world. You assumed she had lived in the house for a lifetime, but it had actually been purchased after her retirement when she had moved out of her New York apartment to the accompaniment of dire predictions of loneliness and vegetation from all her friends. In fact she was seldom without company, except when she chose. The house had every comfort, including sauna and whirlpool. The gardens were lovely and people tended to look at Chat's as a kind of ideal vacation spot. As did she.

Faith stretched her legs toward the fire, glancing out the window toward the paddock where the horses strolled picturesquely.

“This really is wonderful, Chat. But who would have thunk it? I never pictured you as a country girl." Her aunt laughed. "You forget I grew up in the country, Faith. Besides I wanted more space so I could finally get everything out of storage. I can't imagine how I lived in that tiny apartment all those years. “

That tiny apartment had been an entire floor in one of the San Remo towers, but Faith supposed compared to this sprawling place it was tiny.

Benjamin was cozily ensconced in Chat's lap—a pretty roomy one. Like all the Sibleys she was tall and was discreetly referred to by the family as a "big girl." Her hair was almost completely white and very thick. She had dyed it while she was working and afterward the tidy dark bun had gradually given way to an equally tidy white one.

“Lunch is all made, Faith, or rather bought. And you will probably hate it, seafood quiche from the local gourmet shop and some kind of salad with lots of things in it, but I'll give you a glass of wine and you'll be polite enough not to notice.”

Faith was sorry she had the reputation for being a food snob, but work was work and standards were standards.

“So, love, what the hell is going on in that parish of yours? Are you sure it's not Salem or Stepford or one of those places ? New England is always so unpredictable. You never know what they're going to do—vote for the most radical or the most conservative candidate ; secede and start a new country. Anyway, I'm rambling. Start from the beginning and go to the end.”

Chat looked increasingly serious as Faith related the events of the last two weeks. At some point she put Benjamin down on the floor to give Faith her undivided at- tention. Faith told all. Well, maybe she glossed over Scott Phelan a little, but then he wasn't really in the picture now that Dave was out of the running and her aunt just might react the way Tom had and once was more than enough. When Faith told her about finding the rose in the mailbox, Chat stood up and said, "Lunch. I want that glass of wine now and so do you.”

At the table over what turned out to be pretty good quiche and really quite a good salad, Faith finished the tale. "So you see it's not over yet. It won 't be until they find out who killed Cindy, or as far as I'm concerned, who sent the rose."

“Or Or maybe both," said Chat.

“Exactly. That 's really what's worrying Tom—and me too, of course, but it all seems so improbable."

“Faith, honey, the whole thing seems improbable. If I didn 't hear it from your own lips, I would say it was some kind of plot for a novel, a rather farfetched one at that. Really—Millicent Revere McKinley and an oversized detective named John Dunne."

“His mother liked poetry," Faith replied automatically.

“ Fine, but there are limits. No, the whole thing is crazy and the craziest part is that you are mixed up in the middle. And a lot of it is your own fault.”

Heavens, thought Faith, another talking to ?

“You don 't have enough to do up there, so you're bored and when a body literally falls into your lap, you treat it as a heaven-sent opportunity for excitement, instead of the dangerous mess it is. Now, do admit Faith, I know Benjamin is a darling, in fact the most darling baby in the world, but don 't you find all these hours with him the teensiest bit enervating?”

You could never hide much from Chat, Faith reflected as she answered her aunt.

“Of course it's boring, but it's also wonderful and besides it's not for long. In fact it's for too short a time. Already I can't remember what he was like the first few weeks. And of course I feel guilty for being restless. Yes," catching the slightly triumphant look in her aunt's eye, "you are right, I am. I do admit it. I would like to have my fingers in a pie again, preferably one of my own making. But Chat, this is the choice I made and it's the right one. All my friends with babies either feel guilty because they are home or because they're not. It's a completely no-win situation, so you just have to accept it."

“Now say you're glad you don 't have to work because you wouldn 't miss this for the world," said Chat all in one breath.

“No need to be nasty. It's true. And everything else is true, too. I miss New York, and the little part of New Jersey that is forever you, and I miss working, but I wouldn 't miss this for anything." Benjamin at that moment was fortuitously most engaging. He rolled over and babbled up at them lovingly from the quilt Chat had spread on the floor. A patch of sunlight hung over his head like a halo and Faith felt vindicated.

“I know all this, Faith, and I'm glad I didn't have to make any of these decisions myself. I never missed having children. I had you and Hope whenever I wanted and not when I didn 't. Maybe the best of all worlds, but, you muddleheaded thing, you, all this work or not to work, guilt, and so on is not the real issue here."

“What do you mean?" Faith asked, feeling truly muddled by Chat's conversational leaps.

“The problem is that when you nipped into the belfry, you stumbled onto something, or somebody thinks you did, and it's very likely that you could be in real danger in Aleford. Playing amateur sleuth didn 't help either and I suppose that's why I am yelling at you."

“Oh, is that what you're doing?" said Faith.

“I think the only sensible thing for you to do is to come with me to Spain next week. My friends have rented a large villa in Cadaqués, which is warm and sunny this time of year. You and Benjamin can come back all nicely browned and in one piece when this business is over. There 's plenty of room and I plan to stay until late November anyway. That should give John Dunne and all his troops plenty of time to solve the case." Chat spoke emphatically and Faith knew she had already made the extra reservations, sent a wire to her friends, found a nice baby nurse from the village, and arranged the schedule for baths in the time it took Faith to answer.

“Oh, Chat, that would be lovely, but I can't leave Tom, especially now. And besides I think you are overreacting to the rose business," said Faith, forgetting her own sheer panic on Monday.

“I knew you'd say that at first, but I want you to promise me that you will at least talk to Tom about it and not say no until then."

“1 promise," said Faith, putting her arms around her aunt's neck, "and you know if Tom really thought there was any danger, he'd be the first one to get me out of town. And not just for a week."

“1 know, Faith." Chat paused. "We could stop in Paris and eat and shop," she continued, dangling the possibility before Faith like an especially delicious carotte.

“Not fair! You really are too much. Tom will be so proud of me for resisting all this temptation. Maybe I am turning into a minister's wife after all," protested Faith.

“What makes you think minister's wives are any different from other wives?" asked Chat, "Don't tell me you see solving Cindy's murder as some kind of colossally good parish deed ? "

“No, no, of course not. I don 't know what I see it as anymore. Maybe you 're right about the boredom stuff, but once you get involved in something, it's hard to stop. And I don't think minister's wives are different from any others. I know it. Remember, I've had a lot of opportunity to observe them over the years."

“Well, then, you drew the wrong conclusions." Chat dismissed the whole thing summarily. "We'll have to deal with all that another time if you're going to beat the traffic back into Manhattan.”

Faith hadn 't realized how fast the day had gone and quickly changed Benjamin for the trip. Chat gave her a little carved lamb from Equador for Benjamin 's room and the last thing Faith heard as she drove away was, "Think Paris. Think Spain.”

It took a long time to get back into the city, since she got lost again. All the highways in New Jersey seemed to be eighty something and led to the turnpike. She ended up crossing the George Washington Bridge, or rather crawling across, at six o'clock listening to the " Eye Over Manhattan" helicopter reporter describe the traffic as "jam and cram,”

“stall and crawl." She got so interested in his rhyme schemes that she was home before she knew it.

Her mother had dinner ready—a nice piece of fish and some salad. Faith was happy to go to bed early and fell asleep before she could think too much about what Chat had said. When Tom had called, he had heroically urged her to go to Spain, but was not displeased when she said it was absolutely out of the question. She was very touched by Chat's offer, but it was back to Aleford, and any sun she got would be raking leaves outside her own little clapboard casa.

Friday Jane Sibley took the afternoon off from work and spent the time with Faith. She was sincerely worried about her daughter, but trusted Tom to assess the situa- tion. Faith herself had not seemed upset after the first night and Jane was inclined to ascribe the rose in the letter box to some crank. Something about minister's wives seemed to attract a lot of slings and arrows of an outrageous nature and Jane had had a few herself.

They took Benjamin to the Children's Zoo in Central Park, more for themselves than for him, and had some nice sentimental moments together while Benjamin and the monkeys made faces at each other. Afterward Faith found a winter coat at last, at Bergdorf 's, and they got back to the apartment with an armload of packages at five, weary but with a sense of accomplishment.

The phone was ringing. Faith reached it first and, slightly out of breath, said, " Hello2”

It was Tom.

Patricia Moore was dead. Poisoned.

Robert had found the body in a small room off the kitchen when he came home from work. There was an empty mug lying on the kitchen floor and the teapot had been laced with enough weed killer to destroy several generations of Moores.

And Dave Svenson had been there all morning working in the garden—mulching the roses for winter. "I'll take the nine o'clock shuttle," said Faith, hung up, and burst into bitter tears.

Tom met them at Logan and they drove home almost in silence. Faith could not stop crying and when they reached the parsonage, they went straight to bed. It was too terrible to talk about yet.

Few people were sleeping easily in Aleford that night, but one head drifted off almost as soon as it hit the pillow, smiling drowsily in self-congratulation at one last thought. It had been ridiculously easy. That teapot just sitting on the kitchen counter. Well, better go to sleep. After all, there was still one more to go.

8

Aleford had gone to sleep in profound shock on Friday night and awoke to another on Saturday morning. Dave Svenson had been taken to the police station again.

Erik and Eva Svenson arrived at the parsonage wild-eyed and almost incoherent and Tom rushed off to the station with them. They got there not long after Dave, with Patrolman Dale Warren glued to his side, had been taken from the squad car and hustled into the station past a curious crowd.

While it had been ludicrous. to think of Dave killing Cindy, there was at least a possible love/hate motive. But the idea of Dave, or anyone else, killing Patricia Moore was obscene. He had worked with her in the garden for as long as anyone could remember, learning the names of the plants the way some little boys learn the names of ears. It was she who had first given him his love of the soil, and between the two of them they had made the Moores' garden the beautiful place it was.

Dave had been overwhelmed with grief when he heard she was dead. It never occurred to him that he might be suspected. Mulching the roses was something he had done hundreds of times. When he wasn't at school or home, he was always in the garden. Yesterday he had been in and out of the shed where the Moores kept their gardening tools and supplies. The same shed the police later stripped of all the weed killers and fertilizers for analysis.

Dave had heard all this without connecting it to himself. When they came for him early the next morning, it was like hearing the news all over again. Like the worst bad dream he had ever had and something that could not possibly be happening to him. To be accused of her murder was like death itself.

The entire town was suffering from the same combination of grief and disbelief. But fear was abroad and the fact that someone, anyone, was arrested meant that at least something was being done. Little by little throughout the day, news leaked out and spread through Aleford like a particularly noxious gas.

It seemed Patricia had called the police station on Friday morning and asked to speak to either Charley Mac-Isaac or Detective Lieutenant John Dunne. Neither was available, but Dale Warren told her he could reach them easily. They were up at the county courthouse. She asked him to have one or both of them drop by that afternoon as she had something of particular importance relating to the case which she had decided to tell them.

Her exact words were, Dale recalled later, “ I have decided to tell them something which may help clear things up." Accordingly Dale left a message with the secretaryat the courthouse and told her it was urgent. But somehow it didn't reach Charley until close to dinner, arriving just before the message of her death. He had in fact been in the cruiser on the way to the Moores' when the news came over the two-way radio.

The police were speculating that Dave overheard Patricia 's conversation with Dale and killed her to prevent whatever it was from coming out. Everyone knew how fond Patricia was of Dave and it was not unlikely that she might have been shielding him in some way. Just as he had killed Cindy in a moment of passion, he killed again.

When Robert found Patricia, she was sprawled out on the floor, a few feet from the phone. Her coral twin set was covered with vomit and one hand was still grasping her mouth in an expression of intense pain. The small daybed in the room was in disarray, the pillows flung to the floor. When the coroner arrived, he told Dunne that she had probably gone to lie down, feeling unwell, then convulsions started. She managed to get up to try to get help, but it was too late and she may have gone into a coma.

They had the answer soon.

Metaldehyde, administered in the strong, hot tea Patricia was so fond of drinking, a habit all Aleford knew about.

Metaldehyde—an unpleasant last meal for snails and slugs. An excruciating one for humans.

So it was Dave again. He met all the classic tests : means, motive, and opportunity. The snag was personality and Charley tried hard to convince himself that indeed anyone could kill, as he had so emphatically told Faith.

Dave had, by his own report, left the Moores' at noon, which was the approximate time the poison was administered, according to the coroner. Friday noon for Cindy and Friday noon for Patricia. Could it be simply coincidence?

Dave had gone home, eaten lunch, and left for an afternoon class. Just a normal day. The next morning he was hauled in for the murder of the woman he had loved best next to his own mother.

When Dave entered the police station, Charley could hardly bear to look at him. He tried to put a comforting hand on Dave's shoulder, but it was shrugged away—not so much in anger as sadness. Charley thought he had never seen anyone look more tragically defeated than Dave sitting slumped over, his eyes fixed on the concrete floor, waiting.

Tom and the Svensons arrived and Dave broke into noisy sobs. But they didn't last long. The lawyer came soon after and tried to talk with him, but Dave wasn't saying much. It was as though he was afraid that if one word escaped, a whole torrent would gush out and he'd never regain control. Finally a statement was taken.

Torn turned to the Svensons. " Why don't you go home for a while ? The others will want to know what is happening and I'll stay with Dave. I'll call if there's anything new to report. We know Dave didn't do this, so it's a question of sitting tight until the police find the real murderer.”

The Svensons reluctantly left and a few minutes later Dunne asked Dave and his lawyer to come with him to review and sign Dave 's statement. Charley and Tom looked at each other wearily.

“Thanks for getting rid of the Svensons, Tom. The way Eva was staring at me, I was beginning to feel so guilty I almost confessed myself just to get that look off her face."

“I know," Tom agreed, shaking his head. He was sitting in a swivel chair across from Charley's desk. He was becoming horribly familiar with the decor of the Aleford police station and it left a lot to be desired. The calendar from the Patriot Fuel Oil Company appeared to be the only thing that wasn't gray or dark green.

“Charley, I know this probably isn't necessary to say, but I hope when I have to leave, you'll keep a close eye on Dave.”

The chief looked surprised.

“I don't think he's going to try to escape," Tom said. "Or at least not in the way you're thinking. I'm afraid he 's so depressed now ; he might try to take his own life."

“It's crossed my mind, too, Tom. He 's never been a high-strung kid, but Lord knows what's happened in the last two weeks would do it to anyone. Dale has known him for a long time and I'll make sure he 's with him all the time. Once he starts to really talk, the danger will be past. I've seen it before."

“Maybe he'll talk to Dale. Of course the one person he would have opened up to isn't here." Tom looked grave.

“You know, Tom, I simply can't make any sense of this one. Patricia Moore was just about the finest woman I've ever known and if it does turn out to be Dave, it would have to have been insanity. Maybe Millicent is right and there is some sort of lunatic loose. Last night I was awake all night. What did Patricia have to tell us and why didn't she tell us sooner? Why didn 't she tell Robert, her own husband ? He says something was definitely bothering her lately, but when he asked her what was wrong she told him it was something she had to work out herself. It all ties in with what she was saying to Faith last weekend, too. Obviously she knew something, but what? I know it wasn't Dale's fault, or the secretary 's. We were in closed court, but dear God if only she had called yesterday—I was at the station all day. She might be alive now.”

Tom had never heard Charley speak at such length.

He got up, went around the desk, and put his arm around MacIsaac 's shoulder. Charley didn 't shrug it off. "Charley, don 't forget the strain you're under, too. The answer will come in time. The pieces are all here in Aleford in front of our noses, I 'm convinced of that."

“So am I. I just hope Dunne and I can put them together without breaking the town up too much." Charley was verging on metaphorical, Tom thought. It looked like he was being stretched to the limit. "I 'll be going now. Faith is meeting me at the Moores'. She wants to take Jenny back to our house for the next few days and maybe that would be the best thing for her. You can reach me there if you need me.”

“We'll be in touch, Tom, and thanks for all your help.”

Faith was waiting at the foot of the Moores' driveway. She wore a black wool dress quite unbecoming to her and her eyes were puffy from crying, yet there was a kind of wild beauty to her and Tom was momentarily startled. Faith was very, very angry.

“Everything is different now, Tom. Somewhere in Aleford there is a completely amoral, degenerate person who must be stopped. We could treat the whole thing with Cindy a bit lightly, but I understand now that it was just as bad. It was the taking of a life. I know you think I should stay out of it, but I cannot. Patricia was a dear friend. I 'm not going to lock the door and hope whoever it is confesses.”

Tom took her in his arms and held her tightly. "Faith, Faith, my darling. I know. I feel that same way. Patricia stood for a lot of things for me, and not the least of them was her own personal courage and unselfishness ; but Patricia herself was worried that something might happen. She didn't realize it might happen to herself and not you. Still, she must have had a good reason for thinkingit might be you, and what good will you be to me and Benjamin dead?"

“I'm not going to die, Tom. What I am going to do is be very, very careful. You are the only person I am going to tell this to. As far as everyone else is concerned, including Dunne and MacIsaac, Mrs. Fairchild is scared silly and minding her own business."

“So So what do you plan to do then ? "

“Just watch, Tom, just watch.”

He looked at her resolute face and they went up to the Moores'.

Patricia's house when Patricia had gone from it was like the husk of one of the milkweed pods in the nearby meadow when all the strands of shiny silk had blown away in the wind. Faith walked down the hall past the familiar ship pictures, the Queen Anne lowboy on which Patricia had placed a huge bowl of chrysanthemums only yesterday morning. They were as fresh as when she had gathered them and bore the mark of her own distinctive way of arranging flowers—tendrils of ivy and wild flowers mixed with their more cultivated neighbors. Faith knew she was going to start crying again.

Robert took them into his study. He was shivering and Tom immediately lit the fire, which had been laid but not started. Faith went into the kitchen to make some tea. She filled the kettle, put it on the stove, then reached for the teapot before remembering that of course it wouldn't be in its usual place. She opened a cabinet to look for another one and felt totally overwhelmed at the sight of Patricia's neat shelves, her blue and white cups hanging from their hooks. Faith found it impossible to believe that she wouldn't ever sit down and look across one of these cups at Patricia. She closed the door and went into the dining room for some brandy instead.

When she returned, Robert's head was bowed and he was mumbling to Tom. She left the decanter and went to find Jenny.

She was in her room with Rob. Both of them were momentarily cried out and sitting silently by the window leaning against one another. Jenny ran to Faith and put her arms around her and started to sob. There was really nothing Faith could think of to say, so she just sat and held the girl, stroking her soft hair. After a while, Jenny was calmer and Faith looked over her head at Rob still sitting in the window seat and apparently engrossed by the design on the cushion.

He looked up at her and spoke first, "It's not Dave, Mrs. Fairchild. You believe that, don't you ? “

“Yes, I do."

“But who ? It had to be someone who knew her pretty well—and knew the house.

Jenny 's room was flooded with sunlight and Faith was stunned by a sense of unreality as she sat with these two children talking about murder amidst Jenny 's collection of foreign dolls and horse books. Their mother 's murder.

Rob continued to speculate. Faith realized he was trying to cope with the whole thing by organizing it like a term paper. She half expected him to produce a card file—and maybe it wasn 't such a bad approach.

“The thing to figure out is what linked Mom with Cindy? Did she see something or did somebody tell her something ? She was in town at the Museum of Fine Arts that day, so she couldn 't have actually seen anything. I think it had to have been something somebody said later and Mom realized it didn't sound right.

“She's been pretty tense lately," he continued, "And talking a lot about not judging people harshly. I thought she meant me, because of how I felt about Cindy. I know it is horrible, but I was almost glad she was dead. But maybe Mom was talking about somebody else."

“Did she have any visitors lately? Especially anyonewho didn't come normally ? " Faith asked, addressing the question to Jenny. Rob wouldn't have known who had been there that week.

“Jenny and I have been all over that." He smiled for a moment and Jenny managed a faint replica in turn. "Mom always had a lot of visitors. This house is like the Grand Central Station of Aleford. You know that. Her quilting group met here on Wednesday and it was their turn for the Bridge Club Thursday night. This doesn't include all the people dropping in and out.”

Faith knew it was true. She had been in the habit of dropping in herself when she was up that way, to see Patricia, walk in the garden and likely as not leave with some flowers or a jar of jam. On paper Patricia would have sounded too good to be true. In real life you thanked God she was.

Faith offered to take Jenny for the next few days, but as she suspected the kids wanted to stay together and with their father.

“You know we don't have much family. Dad was an only child and now there 's no one left in Mom's family, so we have to stick together," Rob said matter-of-factly, then added in a voice a little less controlled, "Dad has been pretty bad and he doesn't want to see anybody but us. We don't want to leave him.”

Faith had only met Rob a few times before and although she had been slightly amused at the refined punk image he had adopted in defense against the preppiness of Williams, she didn't have much impression of him. Now she felt that he was going to keep things under control here. The numbness of grief would come later, but first there was anger and a lot to do.

With Jenny it was different. She looked completely devastated and Faith noticed that she was almost unable to speak. When Rob walked downstairs alone with Faith, she was glad to hear that Doctor Kane had given Jenny a tranquilizer the night before and had been checking in on them throughout the day. Jenny was going to try to sleep a little now—it was the best escape Faith could think of for her.

“If you need anything at all, Rob, please call—or just come over. For a meal, or talk, whatever helps.”

“Thanks, Mrs. Fairchild, we will; although, it won 't be for a meal unless we bring the food. If I could get all this stuff in the freezer, we 'd have enough for a year or two. Plus the Minuteman Café phoned this morning and offered to bring a hot meal whenever we wanted. And of course none of us can eat a thing.”

They went into the study. Robert and Tom were sitting before the fire. Robert looked a little better and Rob went over to his father and put his arms around him.

They left father and son soon after and went out to the car. As they were getting in they heard an insistent tapping on the upstairs window. It was Jenny. She was struggling to lift the heavy sash. Faith called up to her, then, realizing she couldn't be heard, went back in the house and up the stairs. Jenny was standing in the doorway of her room, her arms filled with a quilt—Patricia's last quilt.

“Mom wanted to give this to you. It's not finished. She was going to add another row of these quilted feathers ... " Jenny could barely say the words.

Faith held her closely. "Oh, Jenny, it would be one of my greatest treasures, but I think you ought to keep it." Jenny interrupted her as fiercely as her shaky voice would allow, "No, Mom wanted you to have it ! "

“Then I will take it with great thanks. It is very beautiful, like your mother, but I am going to leave it with you to keep for me—just for now." Faith took Jenny's hand and led her back into her room, tucked her into bed, and spread the quilt over her—the deep blues and purples with flashes of red were like jewels inthe sun and she hoped it would blanket Jenny with a little of the warmth and comfort of that other irreplaceable warmth. She closed the door softly and let herself out without disturbing Robert and Rob, noting as she did so what an easy house it was to slip in and out of unnoticed.

On the way back to the parsonage Faith told Tom what Jenny had done.

“Of course you know what this means?”

Tom knew exactly. " It means she was listening."

“ Got it in one, sweetie. And it means she probably heard the whole conversation on the deck, not just the part about the quilt.”

They swung into the driveway next to their house, a maneuver that had to be done decisively with one sharp turn of the wheel, since the drive itself was about the width of a footpath and bordered on one side by the Miller 's arborvitae hedge and on the other side by their own protected-by-the-Historical-Society stone wall. Faith and Tom had each dislodged a stone or two, which they hastily and guiltily replaced. So far the arborvitae stood untouched.

Having safely reached the garage, Tom stopped the car and felt free to say what had been on his mind since the turn from Main Street.

“ And yours may not have been the only conversation she overheard.”

They entered the house, paid Samantha for babysitting after hearing what a perfect doll Benjamin had been, and then collapsed in front of their own hearth—a cold one, which Tom quickly filled with a roaring fire. He leaned back in the big wing chair and Faith sat on the floor, her head resting against his knees. He put his hand on her hair and absentmindedly twisted the strands between his fingers. Benjamin was on the floor next to Faith and Tom thought they must look like a scene straight out of Norman Rockwell—which was the whole point. What was going on beneath the surface of tranquil Aleford bore absolutely no resemblance to the picture on top. In one case, the discrepancy was deadly.

Patricia's funeral would be on Monday. Robert had left all the arrangements to Tom, as he was in no shape to plan anything at the moment. Tom thought he would go back to the house after church the next day and speak to each of them briefly with some suggestions. The children in particular might want something read. He already knew what Patricia had wanted ; Aleford would have to listen to Wordsworth again, this time for real.

Faith told him about her talk with Rob and Tom was glad to hear he was taking charge of his father and sister. Then she stood up and stretched before bending down to scoop up Benjamin in her arms.

She turned to face Tom. “ Now it's time to really talk and we need something to eat, so let's move into the kitchen.”

Tom was completely exhausted and had planned to spend the evening as close to the position he presently occupied as possible, with perhaps a brief foray into the kitchen for some kind of sustenance, preferably something that took less than three minutes to prepare.

Faith looked at him sympathetically. "I know, I know—you're very tired, but we'll rest when the whole thing is over. Now we have work to do.”

She put Benjamin in his beloved swing, wound it up, and made a mental note once more to nominate the inventor for the Nobel Peace Prize. Benj smiled up at her and began to move sedately to and fro.

When he was born, Faith swore she would make all his baby food and never buy the jars ; but after she discovered how much it was costing her to purée pears out of season she succumbed and only made applesauce andvegetables. She reached for a jar of apricots now and quickly made some cereal and warm milk which she handed to Tom. A shadow crossed Benjamin 's face when the swing was stopped, but as soon as he saw his little Peter Rabbit dish, he began to wave his hands in greedy anticipation. "Ah, my little gourmand, my petit chou," cooed Tom. He loved to feed his son. It was so direct and satisfying.

Faith meanwhile was bustling around, putting together a rich béarnaise sauce for the steaks and layering potatoes for a hasty Pommes Anna. " We need rich food, Tom, and a good Côtes-du-Rhône.”

Tom could see Faith meant business.

An hour later Benjamin was asleep in the swing and Tom and Faith were savoring the last mouthfuls of Jack Savenor 's steaks and what Faith had done with them.

Tom noticed that a yellow legal pad had materialized by Faith 's side and she was starting to make a list. Tom didn't know whether it was the wine, food, or what, but he had begun to think that Faith was right. Between the two of them, they had a great deal of knowledge about the town and the case. Maybe if they went at it in a systematic way, they'd hit on something everyone else had missed.

Patricia's death had changed everything. It wasn't amateur sleuthing any more. It was his—and he unwillingly conceded, their—responsibility to try to find the killer.

“Now I know this sounds a lot like a novel—you know, the heroine sits in her bedroom in some drafty country house, writes down a list of suspects, realizes that the only one that makes sense is the very man she's in love with, then wakes up the next morning to find out the butler did it, of course."

“But," interrupted Tom, "the man you're in love with is sitting here and nobody in Aleford has butlers, so we'll just have to go on with the list."

“Exactly," said Faith, "There must he something to it, since you keep reading about it all the time and even Dunne carries that notebook."

“Let's start by treating the two murders as one," Tom suggested. " We'll list all the possible suspects and see who was where at the time of each and what motives exist."

“And what about the break-in? I think we have to assume that the murderer was looking for something in the tin box."

“Good point, and since it occurred while we were all in church, we should be able to remember where everyone was."

“Two things are wrong with that theory, Tom, although we have to try it. One, the murderer may not have been acting alone, and two, it's very hard to recall if someone was in church or not, particularly if he or she attends regularly. We're so used to seeing someone there, that we assume they were."

“And three, my love, the person who broke into the house may not be the murderer, but merely one of Cindy's pigeons."

“Tom, if we're this confused before we even start, we'll never get anywhere. Let's stick to the two deaths and go on from there.”

Accordingly, Faith folded the paper in three lengthwise columns and wrote, "Suspects,”

“Murder 1," and "Murder 2" at the top of each column. Somehow it wouldn't have bothered her to write "Cindy's Murder," but it would to write "Patricia's." If she started to think about Patricia, she knew she would never be able to write anything.

By the end of an hour they had exhausted the possibilities and the paper looked a little sparse :

Suspects Murder 1 Murder 2

Dave Svenson At RR tracks; seen by Phelan At the scene

Motives: Cindy was driving him crazy with her cruel behavior and what amounted to sexual blackmail. Despite his denial, was she blackmailing him about something else? Was he more drug involved than he admitted and she had further proof ? They thought they knew Dave and it seemed unlikely, but he had already surprised them. Patricia knew he had killed Cindy and maybe even why, so he had to kill her, too. As for means, he could have done both easily ; although, as MacIsaac had revealed, whoever killed Cindy must have been lucky or had some rudimentary medical knowledge to get the knife exactly where it was.

Sam Miller Unverifiable alibi Airtight alibi

Motives: Cindy was definitely blackmailing him and would no doubt keep escalating with further demands and humiliations. He hated her, but enough to kill her? Patricia had discovered something that definitely linked him to the murder, so he had to kill her too.

His alibi for Murder 1 was pretty slim. His car was seen near the center at 11:30 the day Cindy was killed and she was next to him. No one saw her get out at the light as he claimed. He was seen later at D 'Angelo 's Sandwich Shop in Bedford, but this was at 12:30, plenty of time to get up to the belfry with Cindy, kill her, and get down again. But where was his car ? No one had seen it parked in the center (no one being Millicent McKinley and Eleanor Whipple, both of whose houses commanded a bird 's-eye, or in Millicent 's case, an eagle 's-eye view of the approach to the belfry). And there was no way even a Porsche could drive up that hill.

Sam did have a strong alibi for Murder 2. He was in court at the time in full view of judge and jury. Faith suggested that the poison could have been put into the empty teapot the night or morning before, but Tom reminded her that Patricia always scalded it with boiling water before she made the tea and the poison would have been rinsed out. Still, they made a note to ask MacIsaac or Dunne if enough could have remained.

Virtually anyone in town had the means to kill Cindy. Easy enough to slip a knife from the kitchen drawer and Sam might also have known just where to place it. His hobby was medicine and he not only read the Harvard Medical School Healthletter from cover to cover each month, but had rows of medical texts in his study. Faith once asked him why he hadn't become a doctor and was surprised at the simplicity of the answer.

“I can't stand the sight of blood," Sam had replied. No blood with poison, and Cindy's wound had been remarkably neat.

Piz Miller No alibi for Murder 1 or Murder 2

Pix reported that she was shopping at the mall at the time of Cindy's death. She had been buying shoes and the saleswoman had remembered her, but not the exact time, other than that it was after lunch and before break. When Patricia was killed, Pix had been doing housework, always a solitary and unverifiable occupation. It was only noticeable when one didn't do it.

Motives: She discovered what Cindy was doing and killed to protect her husband 's reputation and their marriage. Again she killed Patricia to prevent her from linking the Millers to the original crime.

Oswald Pearson No alibi for Murder 1 or Murder 2 Pearson claimed he was in and out of his office both days working on stories. Faith remembered passing him on her way to the belfry, so he was in the area.

Motives: Cindy was definitely blackmailing him, but with his mother's death, it had lost most of its force. Unless there was more to it than he revealed. Again, she was leaving town soon and would be out of his thinning hair presumably for good. The only motive for killing Patricia was if she had known he killed Cindy.

Millicent Revere McKinley (this was Faith's contribution). No alibi for either day, or any other day.

She was certainly in close vicinity of the belfry on the day of Cindy's murder and had easy access to the roses, as did anyone strolling by her fente, but Millicent no doubt had them counted. Any murderer would certainly bring one along rather than risk the wrath of Millicent before even getting to kill Cindy. Faith made a note to check the roses in the Svenson 's and Miller's gardens. And since Millicent didn't attend the Fairchilds' church, her absence would not have been noted. She could have broken into the Moores' house.

Motives: She was crazed by the use to which Cindy was putting the belfry, Dave apparently not being the only one to enjoy its timbered pleasures, and then she had to kill Patricia to prevent her from revealing what Millicent had done ? Tom grudgingly agreed to include her in the list, but felt it was a pretty weak reed.

Robert Moore. Faith wrote this and looked at Tom. " It doesn't seem possible that he would kill Patricia, but maybe he killed Cindy and someone else killed Patricia?”

Tom disagreed. "I think the same person killed both of them, and I know Robert doesn 't have alibis for either time. Few people would—it was lunch time, hard to prove you were someplace as opposed to being in your office with your secretary or whatever. And we don't know the extent of his money worries. I'm not saying I consider him a strong suspect." Tom ran his fingers through his hair in a gesture of fatigue and irritation. "Holy merde, Faith, I can 't seriously consider any of these people as suspects, they're my friends, not to mention parishioners, except for Millicent.”

Faith said skeptically, "I'm not so sure I would actually call her a friend either. But as for Robert, we have to put everything down. We do know he wasn 't terribly grieved over Cindy 's death. Patricia inherited everything and now it goes to him. Maybe he has a secret life. A cozy mistress on Beacon Hill?

“ You know, Tom," she continued, "1 'm convinced that Jenny knows something. Of course she would be reacting this way simply on account of her mother's death, but I can't help but feel that there is something more. Something she overheard maybe and then there was that strange remark Patricia made about family. Family, now what does that remind me of ? Something Rob said." Faith shook her head impatiently.

“Don 't worry, you'll remember," assured Tom. "Now, for the life of me, I can't think of anyone else to put on the list."

“ Well, there are the quilters, bridge club members, and friends, but I don 't see how any of them would have benefited from either or both deaths. Sam seems to have been the only prey for Cindy in town. At least that we know of to date.

“Pix is a member of the Bridge Club and I'll ask her for the names. Casually, Tom," she emphasized, seeing Tom 's expression, "Believe me, I am not risking life and limb, or your peace of mind by going around asking a lot of questions. The words are `low profile.' “

She wrinkled her forehead. " I wonder if there could be anything in what Trishia said ? You know, some girl who lost her boyfriend to Cindy going berserk and stalking her. But then how would Patricia fit in ? Still, maybe I should talk to Scott again." She smiled wickedly. "With Trishia and anyone else you might want to have along to keep an eye on me."

“That's a pretty loose definition of `low profile,' but as it happens I think it's not a bad idea. And since it's our only idea, I think we can follow it up. Scott called the Svensons, incidentally, and has talked to the lawyer."

“ I knew he would come through." Faith felt somewhat vindicated.

Benjamin was snoring softly in his swing ; lying in lopsided comfort. Faith reached across the table and took Tom's nice warm hand.

“I really can't think of any other suspects. Well, there's us, MacIsaac, and Dunne, but we can't get too crazy. Besides, if Cindy had had something on Dunne, he would have been more likely to tan her hide than kill her, and the same goes for Charley."

“What about the way they were killed ? Cindy 's was quick ; she wouldn 't have known what was happening after the initial stab of pain, but Patricia 's death was truly agonizing. Unless," he stopped and appeared even more puzzled, "unless the murderer thought the poison would just put her to sleep. A gentle death. But in any case a death he or she wouldn 't have to see."

“ That would tell us that it was Robert or Dave. Someone who loved her.”

Tom looked at Faith and drank the last of his wine. "Robert or Dave—or one of her kids ?

Faith stared back at him. She had a sudden image of Rob at the Willow Tree. She had forgotten all about it, assuming he was there on a date or whatever. But it wasn 't a usual haunt for Aleford kids. Much more likely to be a place you'd go if you didn't want to run into anyone you knew. This and Jenny's hysterical grief smacked into her consciousness. It was like walking into a door. She told Tom about it and he was inclined to dismiss it, but added the information to the sheet.

“All right, put them on the list," Faith said, "And then let 's burn the damn thing.”

Tom didn 't burn it, but put it carefully into one of his files. Then he followed Faith upstairs where she was changing Benjamin's diaper. He got out a fresh sleeper and they found some solace in the everyday routine of putting the baby to bed.

They got into their own bed and Faith snuggled up against Tom. " I don't feel much like a heroine," she said.

“Just wait a moment," he replied.

Overnight, winter descended on Aleford. By Sunday morning the trees had dropped all their remaining leaves in unsightly heaps, which a freezing wind made impossible to rake up. At eleven, as Tom was stepping into the pulpit, a heavy rain splattered against the windows like a barrage of gunshots. The congregation stiffened and it seemed to Faith that no one relaxed again during the rest of the service. Not that church was necessarily a place to relax, but it was as if they had all gasped collectively and then did not let the air out.

And it was freezing, at least it was to Faith, and she was sorry she hadn 't worn her new winter coat. She had noticed last winter that New Englanders seemed to take some sort of perverse pride in how long they could go before they turned on the heat and, having done so, howlow they set their thermostats. It was a common cocktail party conversational gambit, " Turned the heat on yet ? " She fully expected to hear someone tell her one of these days that they had gone until January. Now she sat and shivered her way through the service, finding it hard to pay attention to even Tom's sermon. She felt out of sorts, as if she was coming down with the flu, but it was a flu of the mind, of the soul, and she didn 't doubt that she shared it with most of the people in the church. When Tom mentioned the time of Patricia's funeral the next day, several handkerchiefs came out, and despite the atrocious weather, few lingered to talk to their friends at coffee hour. For once, no one wanted to exchange news. All the news was bad.

The Svensons' usual spot, six rows back and to the right, had been conspicuously empty. Dave had been arraigned late on Saturday at the District Court and taken to the Billerica House of Correction. His parents were working to arrange bail and meanwhile one or the other of them tried to be at his side.

The Moores' pew had been empty also. Tom found himself staring at the space in the middle of the second row where Patricia always sat, her face turned upward in expectation. It was hard to get through the sermon.

By Monday the rain had stopped, but the cold had settled in. There had been a killing frost during the night that left all the remaining flowers blackened stalks. It was hard to believe that only two weeks ago they had gathered in the same cemetery in light clothing surrounded by lush gold and scarlet leaves. Faith felt vaguely thankful to whatever meteorological quirk had ordained the change. It was all in keeping. Nature was mourning, too, with providentially gray skies blocking out the sun.

The church had been filled and afterward a large crowd gathered around the open grave. Patricia had known so many people, and not just from Aleford. Faith saw John Dunne 's mountainous form looming over the crowd. He was wearing a well-cut black topcoat and she was surprised to see how sad he looked. She assumed cops weren 't supposed to show their emotions. Charley was different. He had known Patricia since his first day in Aleford and Faith could understand why he was so upset, but Dunne ?

In fact John Dunne was thinking of Dave Svenson. Dunne was remembering how startled the boy had been the day of Cindy's funeral when he came upon him on the ridge above the cemetery. He knew how Dave felt about Patricia. It had come out during the questioning about Cindy the first time. Dunne shook his head. The whole thing stank. He looked over at Charley and then at Faith. It never feels good to have one murder follow another and in this case it had felt worse than usual. Patricia was a close friend of Charley's and he had taken it hard, felt responsible. And maybe he—and Dunne himself—were.

Rob Moore had read "A slumber did my spirit seal" at the church service and said a few words about his mother. He was remarkably composed, but Faith noticed when he went to sit down between Jenny and his father, neither of whom were able to speak, he took their hands in a viselike grip. She wondered when he would break down and let some of the pain he was feeling out. Some of the Moores' friends had read things, Tom spoke, and they sang Patricia's favorite hymn, "For the Beauty of the Earth.'' Now at the grave, Faith heard her husband reciting the words for the burial of the dead in a voice filled with sorrow. She seemed to be hearing everything from far away as though she were standing in a tunnel, then certain phrases would leap out assuming sudden clarity : "Thou knowest, Lord, the secrets of our hearts, shut not thy merciful ears to our prayer." What secrets had been in Patricia's heart, the hearts around her?

Tom's voice had momentarily lost its ceremonial tone and sounded almost conversational.

“My friends, I want to pause at this time so that we may have a moment of private prayer, but before we do I want to say good-bye to Patricia with a few more lines of her favorite Wordsworth—lines that remind me of her, her deep love of family, friends, growing things, and all this world can offer.”

It was the last section of "The immortality ode" and when he reached the final lines,

“Thanks to the human heart by which we live,

Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,

To me the meanest flower that blows can give

Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.”

There were tears.

After the silence, a long one in the cold grayness, they threw the clods of earth on the coffin, which so impossibly held the body of the woman most of them had seen a few days ago busily preparing for the church fair or buying groceries at the Shop and Save or answering the hotline at the drug crisis center.

They listened to Tom as he repeated the phrases that were so familiar, but to which no one ever became accustomed—"earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust ...”

Then it was " Our Father " and they turned away quickly, reluctant to stay, whether from cold or disbelief, Faith couldn 't tell. She looked up and just as the trees had so rapidly dropped their leaves, the cemetery was empty of its mourners.

The Moores were the first to go. Jenny had started to scream when she saw the earth hit the coffin and her father picked her up in his arms and took her to the car. Rob followed at the end of the service with slow steps, unwilling to let go of even that much of his mother that still remained on earth.

There were no sherry and sandwiches this time. Those who had to hurried off to work and others went home. A few gravitated toward the parsonage and Faith found herself sitting in the living room with Sam, Pix and a few other parishioners. The Svensons, she knew, were going to see Dave. They were spending as much time as possible with him, trying to share his unshareable nightmare. Tom was at the Moores for much the same reason.

Faith had made some coffee and put out an assortment of things from the refrigerator : cheeses, some smoky Virginia ham, chutney, and duck rillettes. She had baked bread the day before and kept some of the baguettes out of the freezer, thinking at least the Millers would come back after the funeral. Pix brought over a huge pot of thick pea soup. There was plenty to eat, but so far no one had touched a thing. They were drinking a lot of coffee, though, and Faith was just about to get another pot when the doorbell rang.

“ Pix, could you get the door ? " she called. A moment later John Dunne and Charley entered the kitchen. Somehow she wasn't surprised to see them. They were so much a part of this whole cast of characters that any gathering seemed odd without them.

“Hello, Faith," Detective Dunne said, "Could I have a cup?"

“Of course, and please help yourself to some lunch. It's on the table in the dining room."

“It was a beautiful service, Faith," Charley said. Hestill had a catch in his voice and looked very, very tired. Faith remembered trying to pump him for information after Cindy 's funeral. Dave had been the chief suspect then, too. She had the feeling she was repeating virtually the same words. "You can 't honestly believe that Dave killed Patricia—or Cindy either." Faith faced them both squarely. " I really don 't understand what's going on. Are you trying to smoke somebody else out ? Is that why he's been charged ? If so, it's a cruel and immoral thing to do.”

Charley didn 't say anything. Dunne looked at her sadly, "Faith, you must understand there's a great deal of evidence against Dave. In Cindy 's case, he had a powerful motive ; she was certainly driving him close to insanity and his alibi for the time in question is dependent on someone the police do not regard as a reliable witness. In the case of Patricia Moore, we are assuming that he overheard her call and knew he faced exposure. He was at the house at the time of death and had access to the poison used. Perhaps he couldn 't bear for her to know that he had killed Cindy, but that's getting very speculative."

“I'm sorry. I'm not buying it at all." Then, as she caught a glance between the two, she hastily added, "Oh, don 't worry, I'm not getting my magnifying glass and fingerprint kit out. You can do the job yourselves." She moved toward the door into the living room with the pot of fresh coffee. "Just do it, is all I ask," she tossed over her shoulder.

“Let's have a sandwich, Charley," Dunne said. "Good idea, then I suppose we'd better get back to work before Faith reports us.”

John Dunne smiled. He had heard about Faith's cooking and if the coffee was anything to go by, what was in the dining room should be pretty tasty.

Charley returned to the living room first and took a seat next to old Daniel Eliot, who had settled into the wing chair for the winter. Charley wasn 't surprised to see him. Dan never missed a funeral. He was close to ninety and lived at the Peabody Home near the center of town. You had to be somewhat hale and hearty to stay there. It wasn 't a nursing home so much as a residence for elderly people who didn't want to cope with a house. Daniel had never liked his house much and was only too happy to move his pared-down possessions into a bed/sitting room and let somebody else worry about what to cook. This had been twenty years ago and he'd been worrying about what to cook for a good twenty before that after his mother died. Daniel had never married and he was proud of his misogyny.

“How are you doing, Dan ? " Charley asked. "About as good as you, I expect," he replied. Charley tried a different tack. "A very sad business.”

He sighed.

“Yup, the women in this family are going like flies. Her mother—she was my cousin, you know—just the other day and now Patty. Well, they always did want things their way. It's a lesson, Charley." Daniel nodded emphatically.

MacIsaac had no idea what the old geezer was talking about, but he nodded in return. Patricia 's mother had died over ten years ago, which was not exactly last week. Might be an opening at the Peabody House soon.

He spotted Dunne with an empty plate motioning to him and he excused himself. They said good-bye to Faith and slipped out under her gimlet eye.

When Faith tumbled into bed that night, the last thing she would have thought was that she would have trouble falling asleep, but she did. Normally she carefully arranged herself in a fetal position under the duvet, put her head on a big square down pillow and was instantly asleep. Now she tried reading, got some warmmilk, which she loathed even with nutmeg in it, and was still wide awake. She wandered around the house, checked Benjamin an unnecessary number of times, and finally settled onto the couch in front of a lifeless fireplace.

They had done some good thinking there, as well as other less cerebral things, for she knew why she couldn't sleep. There was something she had said or someone else had that she was sure was important, but she couldn't remember. She had driven Tom crazy all evening trying to dredge it up, but now perhaps if she just closed her eyes and let her mind drift it would come of its own accord. She thought of all the people, the scenes—funerals, kitchen table confidences, the sail in New Hampshire, the Moores' house.

All right, it was something to do with the Moores' house. She went room by room, then suddenly clear as a bell she heard Rob say, "Dad was an only child and now there's no one left in Mom's family.”

Faith sat up with a start and ran upstairs to shake Tom 's peacefully sleeping shoulder.

“ Tom, Tom, I've got it. What we've been missing ! “

“Oh, Faith, can't it wait until morning?”

Well, it could have, Faith thought guiltily. She had been so elated she had forgotten how exhausted Tom was.

“I'm sorry, sweetheart." She looked so crestfallen that Tom reached out and pulled her under the covers.

“Come on, tell me, otherwise I know I won't be able to sleep."

“Family, Tom, it has to have something to do with family. We've been concentrating on sex and money, admittedly more interesting in most cases than family, but we've lost sight of the fact that Cindy and Patricia were members of the same family. There's got to be a tie-in that way, not through Dave, Robert, and company."

“ I'm not sure I get you, honey. Don 't you think the police have explored this angle ? "

“I'm not sure I get me either, Tom. It's a hunch, but it feels right. Maybe I have been living in New England too long, but it seems more in keeping with both crimes—roses and poisoned teapots instead of love nests and murder for hire like in the Daily News."

“Okay, I see your point, but don't be too quick to stereotype Aleford. I'm sure there are plenty of love nests around."

“That's a relief," Faith said, curling up into her own.

9

Just as Faith dropped off to sleep at last, she remembered the book Millicent McKinley had mentioned, a family history by one of Patricia's ancestors. She resolved to go to the library as soon as possible to get it. She also had to figure out a way to get a look at Patricia's will—and Cindy's, if one existed.

Accordingly, the next afternoon after Benjamin 's nap, she strapped him into his Snugli for the short walk, dropped a goodly supply of zwiebacks into his diaper bag and set off for the Aleford Public Library, or rather the Turner Memorial Library, named after Ezra Turner who had given it a much needed boost around 1910 by leaving his extensive private library to Aleford rather than Harvard. After stocking the hitherto sparse shelves, the town sold off some of the more valuable works, most of them to Harvard, and everybody was happy. Well, maybe not Harvard, which did not like to buy what it could have received for nothing, not to mention tacitly acknowledging the foolhardy practice of non-Harvardian bequests.

At the moment, Faith was standing under the imposing portrait of Ezra that dominated the reading room, talking to Peg Bartlett, the head librarian. Ezra looked like Thomas Carlyle with more neatly combed hair and Peg looked like a Scottish farmer 's wife who has just come in after delivering a calf with not a wisp of hair out of place or a wrinkle in her tweeds. She was a terrifically enthusiastic person who took her vocation, the dovetailing of person to book, with the utmost seriousness. Whenever Faith asked her to recommend something to read, Peg would cock her head to one side and eye Faith reflectively as if measuring her for a dress and murmur, "Maybe the Iris Murdoch, no wait, there's a new Anne Tyler," until she would suddenly straighten up and lead Faith to the exact book she wanted. Faith thought she was rather extraordinary, although a little intimidating. When Faith wanted to read a Judith Krantz, she would slink surreptitiously to the counter and slide it to one of the high school kids to check out.

Peg was replying to Faith's query about the book Millicent mentioned.

“Certainly I know the book, A Ship Captain's Daughter, by Harriet Cox Eliot. She was Patricia's grandmother and the literary one of the family. She wrote quite a few books, mostly about her family and local history. Harriet was the oldest of the Cox girls, as they were called all their lives. Captain Cox used to take his family with him on board his ships whenever he could. He wasn't at all superstitious and never had a ship go down. Harriet's book is all about her travels and in-eludes a great deal of family history. Her mother was Persis Dudley, you know.”

Faith didn 't know but somehow with a librarian she found it easier to admit ignorance than with other people. They were so used to answering questions.

“ I'm sorry, Peg, who was Persis Dudley ? "

“No, I'm sorry, Faith, I keep assuming you've lived here all your life.”

My God, thought Faith, momentarily panicked, has the Big Apple bloom rubbed off already ?

“Not that anyone would mistake you for a New Englander," added Peg with an eye on Faith 's agnès b. outfit, "But it just seems you belong here."

“Thank you," said Faith, she knew not for what.

“Anyway, as a young woman, Persis Dudley was a close friend of Lucy Stone's and an ardent worker for women 's rights. I'm sure she would have been terribly annoyed at Harriet's choice of title had she lived to see the book. But Harriet also wrote a reminiscence of her mother, A Daughter Remembers, which reprinted many of her mother 's speeches. Persis was quite in demand as an orator and was evidently quite effective in stirring up an audience. She was also a Lucy Stoner.”

This was something Faith did know. " Oh, so she kept her maiden name ? "

“Yes, she was always known as Persis Dudley, never Persis Cox, although the children were named Cox.

“And of course there was her will. Really she was quite advanced for her time. The money was left in trust to the women in the family for five generations. She thought men could make their own money and by leaving money to the women of the family she would give them some independence. She hoped that after five generations women would have the same opportunities as men and the stipulation wouldn 't be necessary."

“ So when she died the estate passed to her daughters and not her sons ? "

“Well, there weren 't any sons and I have the feeling that if there had been, Captain Cox might not have agreed to have his hard-earned money left the way it was, but yes, it went to the eldest daughter. He did insist that the estate not be split up. He made provisions for each, but the bulk went to Harriet, lucky girl. There 's a chapter on the will and its meaning for women in her book. She was, of course, pretty enthusiastic about the idea."

“I'd like to read the books, Peg, could you tell me where they are ? "

“ Of course," and she led Faith to a shelf set aside for local history.

“Now that 's odd. I saw them both just the other day when I was shelving some other books and now it seems they're out. Let me just double-check that, Faith.”

Peg went to the desk and Faith sat down to wait, quite disappointed. This had been her big brainstorm and she wasn't sure what she would do next. Although aside from the will, there didn 't seem to be much more to mine in stories about ocean voyages or reprints of women's rights speeches.

Peg was back in minutes, "I'm afraid you're out of luck. They have both been checked out, but I can put a reserve on them for you."

“Thank you very much, Peg, I'd appreciate that.”

Faith left the library and slowly walked down the wide front stairs to the street. So somebody else was interested in Patricia and Cindy 's roots. Who could it possibly be ?

She walked along Main Street toward the green and thought about begging Millicent to lend her her copies, but she knew just what would happen. She, Faith, would grovel all over the threadbare Orientals and Millicentwould find a way to say "No" with the suggestion in her voice that it was because Faith would break the bindings or spill jam all over the pages.

Faith looked across the Green and tried to decide what to do next. As if in reply, Eleanor Whipple 's house snapped into focus and Faith realized she could ask her if she had copies of the books. Eleanor was related to Patricia somehow and perhaps it was on the Cox-Dudley side. And if that didn 't work out, she would have to go into town to the Massachusetts Historical Society or Boston Public Library.

It was a beautiful day and Faith strolled across the green basking in the late afternoon sun. She took a deep breath of Aleford fresh air as she crossed the street to Eleanor's. Missing the crunch of people on the crowded sidewalks of Manhattan—and the store windows everyone was trying to look at—she still felt a surge of wellbeing. She would have to be careful, she realized. Aleford was growing on her. Like some tenacious lichen.

She walked down the front path and climbed the stairs to Eleanor's porch. In the summer, one pot of red geraniums stood neatly at the end of each step with two Bar Harbor rockers facing each other in unvarying positions on either side of the front door. All these things were presumably spending the winter in Eleanor's potting shed to appear like clockwork on the first of May.

Faith didn't doubt that Eleanor was home, probably working on one of her projects for the church fair. She didn 't go out much, just to church and occasionally to a friend's. Eleanor didn 't drive, but then Faith knew quite a few New Yorkers who had never learned either. The reason was the same—they didn't need to. Eleanor walked to the center every day or so and bought her groceries at the Shop and Save. Faith had never heard her talk about buying clothes. They looked like they had grown on her and Faith imagined she just replenished them with similar ones from the trunks in her attic, adding a little of her own tatted lace here and there, those "touches of white at the throat and cuffs" so beloved of ladies of a certain class and age. Every few months someone drove her to the hairdresser's for the permanent that kept her short white hair in soft ringlets. Faith thought of her as a very old lady, but as she rang the bell, she realized Eleanor might not be that old, probably not much older than Aunt Chat. It was all in the way one dressed. Faith gave a small interior nod as one of her most basic beliefs was yet again confirmed.

Eleanor answered the door immediately.

“ Faith—and Benjamin—this is a nice surprise ! Come in and have a cup of tea with me.”

Eleanor was so glad to see them that Faith felt a twinge of guilt at not coming more often.

Poor soul, she's probably very lonely, she thought as she followed her down the hall.

Eleanor brushed aside Faith's offer to help and told her to make herself comfortable in the parlor instead. " I won 't be a moment, dear.”

Faith sat down, glad to loosen the Snugli. She suspected Benjamin might be getting ready to cut his first tooth. He had been drooling a little more than usual lately and was apt to get fussy if moved from one comfortable position to another not immediately rewarding, so she kept him on her lap and let her eyes wander around the room. Eleanor's parlor was a little like the Moores' in that you felt nothing that entered the house had ever gone out again. The big difference was in the kinds of things that came in. Where Patricia's sideboard held a well-rubbed and often used Georgian silver tea service, Rose Medallion bowls, and a bevy of Battersea boxes, Eleanor's Victorian veneer table set in front of the bay window held a few large pieces of cut glass and a small case of what looked like some souvenir spoons fromvacations long past. An intricate arrangement of wax flowers and stuffed birds in gravity-defying poses beneath a huge glass dome stood in solitary splendor on a marble-topped sideboard. There was a slightly pathetic dignity to the room. It tried very hard and sought to cover up any mistakes with antimacassars and embroidered centerpieces.

A bookcase that looked to be the major repository of the Whipple book collection stood against one wall. Advice on gardening elbowed Hawthorne and Thoreau. There was an exhaustive edition of Joseph C. Lincoln, which looked well read, and scores of old children's books. Between Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm and Lad, a Dog, was The Ship Captain's Daughter.

Faith felt a little thrill of discovery. She called out to Eleanor, " May I look at one of your books?”

“Certainly," she replied, "help yourself. We're almost ready. I don't know why it should be true that a watched pot won 't boil, but it is. I hope Lapsang Souchong is all right ? "

“Yes, of course," she answered, shivering slightly, because it wasn 't. She knew she would never be able to drink the tea without thinking of Patricia.

While she was waiting, Faith stood up and took the book from the shelf. She was just opening it when Eleanor appeared carrying a tray with the tea things. By now Faith had mastered the art of managing the tea strainer, hot water pitcher and all the accoutrements that accompanied tea in Aleford. At first she had tended to make a cup that was either hot water or pure tannic acid.

Eleanor put the tray on the table in front of Faith. "Would you like me to hold Benjamin while you pour yourself a cup ? That way you can make it the way you like it."

“Thank you." Faith smiled and started to close the book she had been holding when her gaze was pulled down sharply by the frontispiece. It was a reproduction of the three ship paintings that hung in the hallway at the Moores'. The Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria, Patricia had said they called them when they were children. But that wasn't what they were called at all. No, they were the Harriet, the Elnora, and the Rose. Another rose. And Elnora. Another Eleanor Eleanor Whipple was looking at her speculatively. Faith felt suddenly uneasy. This wasn 't Peg Bartlett's genial musing, but more like the look a poker player casts across the table before asking for a card.

She's wondering what I have in my hand, Faith thought in surprise.

“I see you've been looking at Aunt Hattie 's book," Eleanor said carefully.

“Aunt Hattie's book?" Faith countered.

“Why, yes. Harriet Cox Eliot was my aunt.”

The whole thing is going to be clear in a moment, Faith thought, but I'm not sure that I want it to be. And with the feeling of a person who finds himself alone in an unfamiliar bog at midnight, tentatively squelching along trying to avoid the holes that will engulf him, Faith stood up slowly and tightened the straps of the Snugli around her shoulders.

“Eleanor, if you don 't mind, I'd like to take a rain-check on the tea. I'm suddenly feeling a little tired and I think I'd better go home."

“I'm terribly sorry, Faith," Eleanor replied gently, "but I think you had better sit down again. You see, I'm afraid I can't let you go now."

“ What on earth do you mean ? " Faith was genuinely aghast.

“You may not have figured it all out yet, my dear, but you are so clever that I 'm sure you will and I really can 't have that. You never should have taken the bookdown." She eyed Faith reprovingly much as she would have if Faith had been caught taking pennies from her purse.

“ Well, really, Eleanor, I can't imagine what you are talking about and I only took the book because I am getting interested in local history and heard it mentioned. Now I really must go. Tom will be wondering where I am." Faith walked toward the door firmly, but was stopped by the sound of a drawer opening followed by a small steely click and the even steelier tone of sweet Eleanor's voice.

“Faith, if you don't sit down, I'll have to shoot you. And Benjamin.”

Faith managed to make her way back to the chair, where her wobbling legs collapsed beneath her. This couldn't really be happening. She was in Aleford, sitting in Eleanor Whipple 's sunny parlor, facing a tiny but menacing-looking gun firmly clutched in the hand of the woman who held the record for top sales of needlework at the church bazaar. It had to be a dream.

“ It's father's gun. He always believed a house should be armed, though he never had occasion to use it himself. “

Eleanor 's poker face was gone, yet the one Faith knew so well, the gentle, slightly bemused pleasant face she was accustomed to see in church, was not in evidence either. Eleanor looked tired, a little sad, and very determined.

Faith realized she had absolutely no idea in the world what to do. Screaming was useless. She couldn 't pretend that Tom was arriving soon as she had so fatally revealed that he didn 't know where she was only a few minutes before. She remembered you were supposed to try to keep an attacker talking until help arrived and, failing anything else, she figured she might as well try it.

“ Eleanor, don 't you think you could put that away or at least hold it lower ? “

At the moment the gun was aimed just where Faith's eyebrows met, or would meet but for assiduous tweezing. Slightly hysterically, Faith wondered if she would ever tweeze her eyebrows again, before forcing herself to concentrate on getting out of the parlor alive. Eleanor lowered the gun, but did not loosen her grip.

Would Eleanor really kill her? Faith wondered. And an innocent little baby ? Was it worth the risk to make a run for the porch? Unfortunately Eleanor's house was set far back from the sidewalk and further obscured by a tall Canadian hemlock hedge. But surely she wouldn't shoot them both ? Maybe the gun wasn 't really loaded.

Of course, Faith reflected, as the numbing realization that Eleanor had already killed two people hit her, two more murders at this stage might not seem to matter much. She decided to stay where she was for the moment and play dumb.

“Perhaps you'd like to tell me what you imagine I know? Eleanor, really, I don't know what is going on and things seem to be getting a little out of hand."

“ Now Faith, you do know what it is about and I will excuse the minister 's wife from a lie in view of the circumstances, but I do so wish you had not interfered in all this. I will miss you at our Alliance meetings.”

Eleanor sounded a bit peevish and the allusion to missed Alliance meetings had not escaped Faith. And by now Eleanor was right. Faith knew exactly what was going on.

First Eleanor had killed Cindy, then two weeks later Patricia, and now Faith and Benjamin had ingenuously walked into her parlor to be the third and fourth victims. Spilled curds and whey were nothing compared to what Eleanor had in mind.

Eleanor was thinking out loud.

“ It's a shame I never learned to drive. It really makes things awkward." She paused.

Faith could feel her heart beating against her chest. She was surprised it didn't send Benjamin bouncing up and down. Talk. She must keep Eleanor talking. Murderers always liked to discuss their crimes, she had read. So be it.

“Eleanor, can you really be saying that you killed Cindy and Patricia and that this is what I have figured out ? “

Maybe she would deny it and this whole business would turn out to be some sort of passing dementia. Faith half expected Eleanor to laugh and hand over the gun. But only half.

“Why, yes, Faith. You see, I knew you knew," Eleanor sounded triumphant.

“But why? What possible reason could you have for killing them ? " Faith found herself looking forward to Eleanor's explanation in spite of everything, although the circumstances were not what she would have wished. Better to have had Eleanor explaining from a straitjacket.

“Why ? " Eleanor sounded puzzled, " For the money, of course. I thought you would realize that. For Grandmother's money.”

Faith realized she had missed an episode.

“ Grandmother's money ? “

Eleanor sighed. Faith had not been as clever as she thought.

“You see, Faith, my grandfather and great-grandfather made rather a lot of money with their ships. My grandmother was a very forward-thinking woman who realized that men make much more money in this world than women do, so she had better take care of her female descendants. Unfortunately Grandfather didn 't want to have his estate divided. He wanted the money to go with the house, so whoever had it would always be able to keep it up. As if there wasn't plenty," Eleanor gave what could only be described as a snort of disgust.

“Yes, I heard all this," Faith said, "But forgive me, what does it have to do with killing Cindy and Patricia'?'' As she spoke, Faith suddenly understood exactly what it had to do with killing them. She knew what Eleanor would say now. She owed Tom a dinner. And the sooner the better.

“ My grandmother always intended the money to be shared equally, no matter what the will said. But when she died Hattie got everything. Elnora, for whom I am named, never married and lived with them, so she never needed any money. I suppose in a way she did get her share. But my poor mother, Rose, didn 't get anything much." Eleanor was beginning to speak a bit dreamily. Faith watched and waited for her chance.

“You know I didn't grow up in Aleford, Faith. Oh, no. My father was just a poor country doctor who worked hard every day of his life for us. We had to move to this house when he died. It belongs, or I should say, belonged to Patricia. We have life tenancy. Tenants ! " Eleanor spat the word out.

“You never knew Mother, of course. She was much more suited for the Captain 's house than the Moores. After Hattie died, it should by rights have gone to her and that was what grandmother had intended. Patricia and Polly 's mother, Phoebe, was nice enough, but she wasn't a real lady like mother. And her husband, Lewis, was just a common boy.

“Mother died two years after we moved here and I think part of what caused her death was seeing what had happened to all her things and having to live in this pokey little house. Then everything went to Polly, but she just wanted the money. So much for Grandfather 's idea. She was happy to let Patricia and Robert live inthe house while she and that husband of hers flitted all over the place. I remember when my sister Rose and I heard the news that they had been killed. Rose just looked at me from where you are sitting now and I knew what she meant. There is some justice in this life after all." Eleanor sat up straighter with a complacent smile on her face.

“ You know I am a very devout woman, Faith, but it did give me just the tiniest bit of pleasure to kill Cindy. She was an extremely wicked girl and she hurt Rose's feelings terribly one time. No, it was necessary to kill her so I could inherit, but it wasn 't exactly a disagreeable thing to do. I used to see her go up there," Eleanor waved the gun toward the belfry, then swung it immediately back toward Faith.

“That Friday when I saw her, I knew she would be meeting somebody and I'd have to go quickly, so I just nipped off one of my roses and slipped out the kitchen door. She was inside on one of the benches and didn 't even bother to get up when I entered.”

Eleanor was indignant and Faith resolved if she ever got out of this to teach Benjamin all the social amenities. One never knew when manners might save one 's life.

“Really," Eleanor sounded surprised, "she made it so easy. I didn't have to think. I just stabbed her. I have been studying father 's medical books, so I could get it right and I did," Eleanor sounded proud. "The rose was in memory of Rose, and Mother too, of course. I wish I had thought to do all this when they could have been here to enjoy it with me. I know Rose especially would have been glad that Cindy was dead."

“But Patricia ? I thought you liked her ? "

“Of course I liked Patricia. She was a very good woman, but Faith, dear, don't you see, I wouldn't get the money if Patricia was alive. I didn 't want to hurt her, so I just put the snail killer in her tea. Dave Sven- son was in the back talking to her about her garden. Not that he ever thought to help me with mine. I knew the police would suspect him again. It was really very lucky.”

Faith saw everything now and spoke aloud a thought better left alone, " So you plan to kill Jennifer as well ?" Eleanor was quiet for a few moments.

“ I don't think you ought to be asking so many questions. You know I saw you go up the hill that day and was glad we hadn 't met. I certainly never intended for you to be involved in all this. And sweet little Benjamin. It never concerned you." Eleanor looked at Faith reproachfully, using the tone of voice she might have if Faith had been asking her for whom she was going to vote in the next election.

“ And now it's too late."

“So you sent me that rose to stop me from getting involved," Faith said, hoping to distract her from the implications of that last remark.

“ Rose, what rose ? I never sent you any roses, Faith, although it was a splendid year for them." She glanced out to the garden where the stalks stood stripped of leaves and flowers in lethal thorniness.

“You didn 't put a pressed rose in my mailbox ! ?" Eleanor looked at Faith kindly, "No, of course not. What an odd notion!”

Odd notions seemed to be on a rampage.

Faith could not resist one more question before she acted.

“But why do you need the money ?”

Eleanor looked at her as if to say, You of all people.

“ Why does anyone `need' money ? I want to buy nice things and travel and mostly get out of this house. You have no idea how noisy it is living so near the green and the center. Plus it's very damp. No, the Captain's house is much healthier.”

At the word healthier," Faith seized her chance. She leaped up suddenly and overturned the loaded tea table directly onto Eleanor's lap. Then she sprinted for the door. As she raced down the hall to the front door she could hear Eleanor 's enraged cries behind her.

At the door, she grabbed the lock, twisted the bolt free, and reached for the ornate brass door knob. She turned hard, heard a click, but the door wouldn 't budge. In vain she pulled with all her strength as she realized that Eleanor must have locked the door with another key and taken it.

There was still the kitchen door, which might not be locked at all. Faith turned and ran down the hall. Eleanor was presumably buried under a mound of broken English ironstone and soggy digestive biscuits, but it wouldn 't be for long.

She quickly pulled the kitchen door behind her. Damn, there was no way to lock it. The outside door was also locked, but Faith could see through the door that a key hung conveniently on a nail under the porch eaves, well within reach if she smashed the glass. Eleanor's shadowy backyard and Belfry Hill behind it never looked better and she grabbed an iron skillet from the top of Eleanor's stove to break the pane.

It was too late. Eleanor, wet and furious, strode rapidly across the room and shoved the gun against the small of Faith 's back. It did not feel pleasant and Faith began to sob in fear and frustration.

“Put that pan down, Faith. You have made a horrible shambles and broken some of my treasures. Now it ap^pears you are about to cause further damage." She nudged Faith toward the other end of the kitchen. Faith put the pan down on the table, abandoning any thought of using it to smack Eleanor over the head. The gun would surely go off and the bullet travel straight through her body into Benjamin's. Eleanor herself seemed to have grown a foot and any previous hint of frailty had disappeared. Faith began to suspect Eleanor was both a lot younger and a lot stronger than she had thought.

“I should have done this immediately and not let you sit and talk so long. Now, open the door on my left slowly and go down the stairs," Eleanor said in a commanding voice, "Remember, I will shoot you both if you try anything else.”

Faith was crying again as she moved toward the door she knew must lead to Eleanor's basement. There didn't seem to be anything else to do, although she had little hope of melting Eleanor's heart with her tears. Slowly they moved down the steep wooden stairs.

Faith figured she had nothing more to lose and when they got to the bottom, resolved to throw herself against Eleanor and try to get the gun. But at the foot of the stairs, Eleanor suddenly leaned forward and turned on a light switch. Faith was momentarily disoriented and it was enough time for Eleanor to push her along into another room.

The basement was a rabbit warren of rooms, each for a distinct purpose : the laundry room, the lumber room, the trunk room, the furnace room, and so on. Before she could think what to do and with Eleanor 's pistol jabbing her in the back, Faith was standing outside a sturdy-looking door with the key in the lock.

“ I told you I didn 't enjoy the killing part, Faith, and have no wish to shoot you and dear Benjamin." Faith couldn't believe her ears. Hope sprang anew. "But you will have to die." Eleanor sounded unpleas- antly definite.

She turned the key and pushed Faith into a pitch-dark closet.

“Now dear, I have to go upstairs and clean up all the mess you made.”

It looked like that was to be Faith's epitaph. Eleanor Whipple had locked them in her airless preserves cupboard and left them to die. She wasn't going to kill them. She would let time do it for her and since this was perhaps the last place anyone would think to look in the search that would undoubtably take place, time was on her side. Faith felt her palms sweat and a dizzy nausea overcome her as the terror of the situation became real. She was alive, but as good as buried. Buried ! How would Eleanor get rid of their bodies? Then she remembered the well. There was nothing funny about it now.

Eleanor would never crack. No, she would be as genuinely concerned and grieved as she had been at Patricia's funeral. She would no doubt help, tramping through the woods, making pots of tea, and offering advice about where to look. It would never occur to anyone that this sweet little old lady was well on her way to mass murder.

Benjamin was awake and babbling. In spite of the absolute darkness Faith knew exactly what his face looked like. Would she ever see it in the light again ? Hopelessness took over as she pictured their lifeless bodies falling down the well and she began to cry.

Somewhere around the fiftieth sob, she stopped suddenly. It didn't seem possible to be in any greater fear, but here it was.

There was a sound in the tiny room and it wasn't coming from her or Benjamin or the countless jars of rose-hip jelly, pickles, tomatoes, and corn relish.

There was something or someone else there. The sound was breathing. Very heavy breathing. Faith put her foot out cautiously in the direction of the sound. Nothing. Then she remembered she had the diaper bag with her purse in it. Matches. Picked up last week, only last week ? in New York, so she could remember the name of a restaurant, Bouley. She reached into the bag and pulled them out. She lit one and the warm glow filled the room, bringing a momentary sense of safety.

There were no mysteries lurking in the corners now, only rows and rows of tidy jars filled with the fruits of summer, and under one shelf, sprawled in what must be a drugged sleep, was Jenny Moore. The match flickered out and Faith stumbled over to the child.

She didn't know whether to be relieved that Jennifer was still alive or in despair at what lay ahead for them all. She sat down on the cold earthen floor and cradled Jenny's head in her lap.

There wasn't long to wait. Jenny woke up slowly and understandably it took a moment for her to grasp that Faith and Benjamin were in Cousin Eleanor's pantry with her. After a while she was able to tell Faith what had happened.

“I came home from school and the phone was ringing. It was Cousin Eleanor. She wanted me to come over to get a pie she had baked for us and some of her preserves. I didn't want to go, but Mom always told us to be especially nice to her, so I said I would be right there. She gave me a glass of lemonade. She always does and I hate it because she never puts in enough sugar, but this time it was really sweet.”

To mask the drug, Faith thought. Eleanor had really been very clever. Nothing to make Jenny suspect anything, just a visit to Cousin Eleanor's like any other, except there wouldn't be any other.

“ I was really tired and wanted to go home, but she insisted that I get the preserves, so we went into the basement and in here. She began to put a lot of jars in a basket and I don 't remember anything after that.

Jenny began to cry. She was completely conscious now.

“ What's going on, Mrs. Fairchild, why did she put me in here and what are you and Benjamin doing here?”

Faith put her arm around Jenny and pulled her closer. She felt as if the three of them were huddled on a raft.

“Jenny, everything is going to be all right and you mustn't be afraid, but Eleanor is the person who killed Cindy and your mother. She put me in here too, because I found out.”

Jenny shrieked. "Cousin Eleanor killed Mom ! Why ? She must be crazy ! “

Jenny was frantically struggling to get up and Faith held her tighter. "Eleanor is very, very crazy and she got the idea that if she murdered all the women in your family, she would inherit the money and the house.”

Jenny pulled out of Faith's grasp, "You mean she wants to kill me, too ? Oh, Mrs. Fairchild, we've got to get out of here ! " She stumbled against Faith as she tried to find the door in the dark.

“Jenny, sit down. We can't panic"—at least not yet, Faith thought. " Eleanor has locked the door, so we have to concentrate on finding a way out or staying in and keeping her out until someone finds us.”

A brave hope, but not totally impossible. Faith realized she had been momentarily diverted from her own terror. Having another person to take care of, especially one who could speak, was doing a lot to quell her fears. Someone had to be the grown-up—and there weren 't too many candidates.

Faith lit another match. The closet was about nine feet square and lined with deep shelves from just above the floor to the ceiling. The door was between two narrower shelves and opened in. When Faith held the match to the keyhole, she could see the key was in it. But even if they succeeded in pushing it to the ground, there was no room for it to pass under the door. It was a tight seal, guaranteed to keep the jars cool and dry. The door itself was backed with tin. The match started to scorch her fingers and she blew it out. it was depressing to be back in the darkness again.

“ I think the best thing is for us to sit to one side of the door, so we would be behind it if she opens it.”

“Yeah, and then we can knock her out with one of these jars," Jenny responded enthusiastically.

Ah, for the optimism of youth, thought Faith. Because there was very little to be optimistic about. The tour of the room had shown her what she had feared from the moment Eleanor closed the door. There was no way for any air to get in and when what they were sharing now was exhausted, they'd be dead. She squeezed her eyes shut on her panic. This was no time to hyperventilate.

She insistently pushed any calculations about how long it would be before they used up the air in the room back to the word problems that had plagued her in Algebra I. "Two women and an infant are locked in a closet. A train traveling to Chicago passes the house. What time will it be in Milwaukee when there is no more oxygen left for them to breathe ? " Instead she tried to remember Biology I.

“Jenny, just in case it takes some time for them to find us, I think we should try to use as little air as possible. So that means we shouldn 't talk much or move around. But first let 's see what we have here. You take Benjamin and I'll open the diaper bag.”

It was a veritable bonanza. This will teach Tom to laugh at all the stuff I put in here, thought Faith. It was nice to be right, although she might not have the chance to tell him.

There was a rubberized pad for changing Benjamin, which they spread on the cold floor with one of his receiving blankets over it. In addition there were a bottle of juice, a bottle of formula, a banana, zwieback, a package of baby wipes, diaper pins, two disposable diapers, a complete change of clothes for Benjamin, an apple, sometoys, a cloth diaper, a bib, two fairly large slices of pumpkin pinon bread with cream cheese, and miraculously a small penlite flashlight Benjamin 's doctor had given her. It was from some drug company and Faith resolved to write a fervent note of thanks to the president when and if she ever saw the light of day. It was for checking Benjamin at night and Faith pressed it and turned it on him now. He was smiling happily in Jenny's arms. Faith rapidly concluded her inventory. She had tucked her small purse in the outside pocket of the bag, along with a novel she was reading. The novel could wait, but she checked her purse : comb, lipstick, blusher—at least her looks wouldn 't have to go—about fifteen dollars and some change, not enough to bribe Eleanor when she was going for the big money, the matches, her Swiss Army knife, a clean handkerchief—mother would like that—and a small notepad and pencil, which someone had brought her from Florence and that she carried because it was so elegant, but rarely used. She could leave a note for Tom. A note he would never get. She felt a lump in her throat and quickly turned to Jenny. They were in the dark so as not to waste the penlite battery, but she still didn't want to transmit her deep fears. Fears as deep as a well.

“Jenny, do you have anything in your coat pockets?”

Fortunately they both had their coats, Eleanor wouldn't have wanted them hanging in her hall. Jenny evidently had never taken hers off and Faith had picked hers up when she'd first tried to leave. So they weren 't cold—not yet anyway.

“I'm sorry, Mrs. Fairchild, I just ran out of the house quickly. All I have is my house key, some tissues, and half a Milky Way."

“ Well, you might as well eat that if you want and when we get out of here, I'll give you some really good chocolate.”

Obviously the Moores had not been teaching their children much about food. Today's Milky Ways were too sweet. Faith would get her some Côte d'Or chocolate to start. Starvation was not their problem in any case. Aside from their own provisions, there were all these jars. Faith hoped she would live long enough to be forced to open a few. She might even choke down some watermelon pickles.

“Jenny, you keep holding Benjamin—he's not messy, is he?"

“No. At least I don't think so."

“You'd know it. I'd just as soon wait as long as possible before changing him. I'll have to feed him soon, though. But maybe there's a window behind one of the rows of jars. It's dark now, so we wouldn't see the light. You sit still and I'll look.”

Before she tackled the shelves, Faith examined the door. She took the awl on her knife and poked the key to the floor. No light was showing and she realized the amount of air that was admitted through the tiny hole was negligible, but it made her feel as if she was doing something and slightly less claustrophobic. Then she dug away at the earth at the bottom of the door to see if she could let in more air, but she came up against cement almost immediately. It was as if Eleanor had had the closet especially constructed for their imprisonment.

She turned to the shelves. It was not an easy task. They were built onto the wall and didn't move. Faith concentrated on taking jars from the top of the shelves down to the middle. It wasn 't likely that there would be a window on the bottom. After thirty minutes of fruitless effort, but more than enough fruit, she stopped to feed Benjamin and rest. She knew she was moving around too much, but she had to try.

“How can she possibly eat all this?" Faith wondered aloud.

“I don't think she does. She just likes to have it. And it's all really terrible. I hope we don't have to eat any. She doesn 't put enough sugar in the jam and she puts too much salt in the tomatoes. Oh, I don't want to think about it ! I'm beginning to get hungry.”

Faith was hungry too, and Benjamin was eagerly sucking away. They could eat the apple, banana, and bread for now.

Jenny was calmer, Faith noted. She seemed to have no doubt that Mrs. Fairchild would find a way out and Mrs. Fairchild did not intend to disabuse her of this notion, a notion that was fast becoming an impossible one.

They ate and Jenny began to confide in Faith, " It's kind of a relief to know Eleanor did it. I mean it means it's not who I thought it was.”

Faith was puzzled. Surely Jenny couldn't have suspected her father.

“ I know this doesn't make any sense, but in the beginning I thought maybe Dad had killed Cindy by accident. There were a lot of things going on. I heard him arguing with her one night and she was threatening him. It was horrible. Mom was crying and Cindy was screaming. Dad didn't want to pay for the wedding and he wanted Cindy out of the house. Then after Cindy was killed, Mom seemed afraid of something. And Rob was acting weird, too.”

Her voice became slightly muffled, "I put the rose in your mailbox, Mrs. Fairchild. I read about somebody doing it in a book once and I was afraid you'd find out that it was Dad who killed Cindy.”

Faith felt irrationally relieved. So no one had been trying to kill her after all. At least not then.

“But you couldn 't have thought your father had anything to do with your mother's death," Faith said gently.

Jenny started to cry—grief, fear, and exhaustion.

“Never. I thought that it must have been a maniac." She cried harder. "I don't know what I thought, but not Dad.”

They finished eating. For a short while it had seemed cozy and warm, as if they were on some sort of Girl Scout camp-out. Jenny giggled when Benjamin gave one of his mighty burps and if they could have just turned the latch and walked out, the whole thing might have seemed a perverse sort of fun. One of those "My Most Unforgettable Experiences.”

Faith began to systematically take the rest of the jars off the shelves. It appeared that the closet was built into the side of Belfry Hill. Still, she figured she might as well look. There was nothing else to do.

Jenny was rocking Benjamin and crooning softly to him. Faith looked at her watch, thanking her stars that she had worn it today, although she wasn't sure why it was so important to note the passing of time. It was eight o'clock. She had arrived at Eleanor's doorstep about four o'clock. They had been locked in for over three hours, Jenny for four. It seemed like weeks.

“Jenny, do you want to take over for a while ? " Faith struggled to keep her voice calm. The thought of all these jars suddenly overwhelmed her and she thought if she had to lift one more, she would start throwing them instead.

“Sure," replied Jenny.

Faith sat down and pulled Benjamin onto her lap. She was very tired and wished she could sleep, but there was always the possibility that Eleanor could catch them unawares. She might have changed her mind about the "killing part." A few shots followed by a speedy descent in that well would tie up all the loose ends and the money would be hers. "Why, what a surprise ! Do I get all this?" Faith was sure she already had stacks oftravel brochures and charge account applications tucked away in some lavender-scented drawer.

As she thought this, she realized she was getting slightly hysterical. She patted the two quart jars of dill pickles they had placed close to hand and wished desperately for the chance to hurl them at Eleanor. It was becoming sickeningly clear that unless Eleanor did come in, they had no chance of getting out.

Jenny wasn't having any luck with her search either. "Mrs. Fairchild, what if there isn 't a window? What are we going to do?" Her voice rose in alarm.

“There are a lot more shelves, Jenny. Let me take over again," Faith said wearily.

By nine-thirty, Faith gave up searching for a window. There wasn't any.

The brief feeling of coziness vanished. In its place desperation and a particularly pungent diaper of Benjamin 's, which she had changed an hour before, gave an acrid scent to the air. The earthen floor that had reminded Faith of what was just outside and freedom now called forth only thoughts of entombment.

Benjamin suddenly and emphatically decided he was tired of this game and wanted to go home. Faith tried in vain to stop his cries. It seemed as though each wail used up half the remaining air. Finally he cried himself to sleep. She had some idea that there would be more oxygen at the top of the room and cleared a shelf for him to sleep on, barricaded by the jars, but now she didn 't want to move him. In any case, what was the point? He might live a little longer than they would, but what good would it do him ?

Jenny was nodding. Faith made her a pillow of the diaper bag and held the girl close until she felt her limbs relax in slumber. The sweet escape. Then she slipped Benjamin from under the receiving blanket and lowered him into the Snugli, strapping him onto her chest. They were both warmer that way and thank goodness he didn't wake up. She put the tiny blanket on Jenny. The minutes began to crawl.

She went back to the door and tried desperately to chip away at the concrete with her awl. It snapped off and she tried with one of the knife blades. Finally she leaned up against it and sobbed.

She could hear the two children's regular breathing and felt complete despair.

They were all going to die.

A few feet away, Scott Phelan stood in Eleanor Whipple's backyard looking up at the sky. It was a clear night and the stars shone brightly. He could see other beams, flashlights, darting through the trees of Belfry Hill behind him. They had all started together at the top and systematically were searching their way to the bottom. It was very quiet. The flickering lights were moving steadily. No one was stopping for a closer look. No one was calling for the others to come.

Nothing. No sign of them. Not a button off a coat or a bent branch to show some struggle.

He decided to go back to the church, where they had set up a command post, to check in and find out if there was any news. There had to be. Three people couldn 't just disappear. He looked to the moon for a clue.

Where the hell could they be ?

10

Faith sat up with a start. She had fallen asleep. Her heart was racing madly and a scream rose in her throat. She knew where she was.

She covered her mouth with her hand and bit her palm. It hurt. So she must be alive.

The children were still asleep. She could hear them and dug into her pocket for the light to shine on their faces. There wasn 't much point in trying to save the battery anymore. Then she looked at her watch. It was six o'clock. Morning.

The tears began to stream down her face. Dawn was breaking. But not for them.

There was still some zwieback left and she took one, savoring each crumb. The darkness began to look a little less dark and the top of her head was feeling lighter. She knew that it must be the beginning of the effects of the lack of oxygen, but for the moment it felt good. Just float. Eat and float. Food. That was something she knew about. Something she had accomplished. She must be hungry. The zwieback had gone straight to her stomach and was saying, "Send more. Send better.”

All those meals she had cooked. Even the failures weren 't bad. Like Mrs. Haveabite 's quiche. She knew her mind was wandering. There wasn 't anything else to do except follow.

It was in the business's early days and Faith had been thrilled to get Mrs. H. as a customer. She was a wealthy parishioner of Faith's father and one of those ladies who lunched—and gave lunches. Soon Faith was catering all of them and the nickname arose out of the lady in question 's irritating habit of hovering over a perfectly arranged platter, asking as she picked up the choicest morsel, "Oh, Faith, this looks delicious! May I just have a bite?”

The woman's other habit was worse. In those days Faith had charged by the job and not by the person. It was Mrs. Haveabite who changed her policy. A select luncheon for ten dear friends usually meant twelve and Faith would use up all the reserves she had brought. Then came the day when the ten turned into fourteen and no matter how she sliced it, the main course, tarte à l'oignon, was not going to stretch. Mrs. H. had thoughtfully told her about the additional guests when she arrived, so there was time to make another tarte, and that 's what she did, using Mrs. Haveabite 's own frugal supplies—margarine crust and yogurt instead of heavy cream. She made sure the hostess got a hefty slice of the emergency dish. She followed up the lunch with a polite note explaining the change in billing. She wasn 't askedback until Mrs. H. realized she had lost the hottest caterer in town and by then Faith seldom had an opening.

There had been other times as well. Like going into the wilds of Connecticut with her staff and after unpacking the van discovering that three perfect charlottes aux poires reposed in the refrigerator in New York, leaving them with absolutely nothing for dessert. She had dashed out to the 7-Eleven for inspiration and come back with vanilla ice cream, baking chocolate, heavy cream—all the ingredients for old-fashioned hot fudge sundaes, complete with nuts and maraschino cherries (horrid, but authentic) in bowls for those who wanted them. And everybody wanted them. After that the sundaes became a specialty. A big success. Some evocation of childhood? Forbidden calories? She never could figure it out.

She was dreaming, though not asleep.

And all the triumphs. That dinner at the U.N. with not one or two, but six exquisitely authentic cuisines.

She began to smell mushrooms—big, juicy porcini mushrooms, gently simmering in butter. Succulent mushrooms. Sexy mushrooms.

Someone was screaming.

It was Jenny.

“No No ! No ! No ! I don't want to die ! I don't want to die ! I don 't want to die ! I don't ... " Faith turned the dimming beam of the penlite on the whirlwind that was Jenny. Jenny sweeping jars from the shelves heedless of the wreckage. A stench of rotten vegetables and overripe fruit. She grabbed the girl's flailing arms.

It took all the strength she had left to pull Jenny down to the floor again, where she collapsed sobbing on Faith, and on Benjamin, who was awake and wailing himself.

“Oh, Jenny, darling, please, please try to stop. We have got to try not to give up. We can't ! Come pray with me. Just say the words with me, `Our Father who art in Heaven ...' “

Jenny stopped and after a moment repeated the words with Faith. Repeated them over and over. The three of them clung to each other and after a while the storm had passed.

“Faith," said Jenny, "Do you think we have a chance ? "

“I don 't know," Faith said slowly, "but I think we have to believe there is one. We have to try to stay alive."

“All right." Faith heard her take a deep breath and let it out. "In that case I'm going to eat some of this stuff and figure out a way to pee into one of the jars. I'll put the lid on and maybe Cousin Eleanor will think it's honey." She started to laugh a little wildly.

“Jenny, hush now. It's a good idea. I think the applesauce is the best bet. You take the light and find us some. I'm going to nurse Benjamin and change his diaper and clothes." For the last time, she added mentally.

While Benjamin ate, heedless of his peril, and Jenny consumed what was probably the worst applesauce ever made in New England, Faith sat and thought of Tom or rather sat and said " Tom" over and over to herself. Tom, Tom, where are you ?

Tom was at the altar rail. He had left the parish hall, which looked like a kind of campaign headquarters with people streaming in and out with information, food, comfort, and offers of help. The phone rang constantly. His parents were there. Faith's were on the way. He looked at the simple cross in front of him.

Dear God, don't forsake me now, he prayed over and over. But he was beginning to doubt he would ever see them alive.

* They had fallen asleep again, Faith realized. She listened a moment. Yes, they were all breathing.

Faith had been trying desperately to stay awake. She was terrified that she would slip obliviously into the night. She wanted that for the children, but not for herself. She had to know when it was the end. Still, she had fallen asleep. Like someone lost in a snowstorm. Drowsiness crept up on her like a warm quilt and she had finally pulled it over her head. Yet she had awakened. This time.

She reached for the light. Where was it? She couldn 't remember. Her pocket. Yes, her pocket. Why did she want it? Yes, the time. What time was it?

It was noon. The Congregational church bells were ringing. She had heard them the day Cindy died. She couldn't hear them now. But she and the children were still alive. Was it a record ? She'd never know.

At twelve-one the door opened.

Faith watched it and knew she was supposed to do something.

The jars.

She picked up the jar and got unsteadily to her feet. Benjamin was still strapped to her chest and she pitched forward.

The door opened wider.

She straightened up and threw the jar at the opening with all her might. Pickle spices and rubbery undersized cucumbers flew in all directions as the missile fell short of the target, crashing on the floor instead. Light flooded in. Light silhouetting an enormous figure clad in a Burberry raincoat now spattered with vinegar. There was a smaller figure behind him, gabbling away.

Faith swayed and fell toward the door into John Dunne's arms. He dragged her into the open air and someone darted in for Jenny.

The fog began to clear. Benjamin began to cry. Faith took a deep breath.

Of course it was John Dunne. And he was crying or at least there were tears in his eyes. But who was that holding Jenny, exclaiming in what would have been a triumphant tone of voice if it had not also been so complacent, "You see ? I told you they'd be in here ? “

It was like a dose of ammonia salts. It was Millicent Revere McKinley.

Millicent Revere McKinley and John Dunne. Faith had never been so happy to see two people in her life. She turned to Jenny and they clutched each other tightly. There weren't any words now that they could safely speak.

Then Detective Dunne was guiding them up the stairs like some kind of oversized sheep dog. They got to the top just in time to see Eleanor. She was putting on her coat and hat under the close watch of two state policemen. She looked right through Jenny, Faith, and Benjamin as if they had been some particularly distasteful panes of glass. She did give an involuntary glance at John Dunne. It was hard not to. But the full force of her venom was reserved for Millicent.

“Rose never did trust you, Millicent. And to think I stood up for you all those years ! “

Millicent never turned a hair ; she simply gazed back steadily, and said, " I think these gentlemen are waiting for you, Eleanor, and we'd all like to get by if you don't mind.”

Faith began to giggle. They might have been trying to get out of a crowded theater aisle for all the emotion Millicent put into her voice. Here she was where hours before the woman slowly putting on what Faith knew was her Sunday best coat had held a gun to her back and everyone was behaving like Emily Post. Or age before beauty. Or evil before good.

Then before she thought about it, she blurted out the question that had been nagging at her all night, " Eleanor, was the gun loaded ? “

Eleanor acknowledged her presence with a look one might have given an adult asking who was buried in Grant's Tomb. "Of course the gun was loaded," she snapped, " What on earth is the use of an unloaded gun?”

Faith 's legs gave way under her and she heard John Dunne say, "Get that woman out of here. What are you all waiting for?”

After that Faith knew she was in a police car and that Jenny was being taken home in another. She also knew she was pulling into the parsonage driveway, but she didn't really believe she was home until Tom flung open the front door and crushed her in his arms. Oxygen and Tom. That was all anyone needed. She wouldn't have believed a few hours ago that she would ever feel this way again. Alive. Just plain alive. Then Benjamin in the Snugli, whom Faith had begun to think of as a somewhat smaller Siamese twin, was detached and taken upstairs by Pix.

Tom and Faith hugged, kissed, and cried, then hugged, kissed, and cried some more. After a while Faith found her legs, and other parts of her body seemed to be under her control again, and she said plaintively, "Tom, darling, I'm so hungry ! “

He beamed. Faith was back.

Before Tom could answer, Dunne's deep voice called out from the kitchen, "I don't know how to cook any of the stuff in here, so I sent one of the guys for pizza. I told them to put everything on it and you can pick off what you don't like."

“Tom," said Faith, "that man thinks of everything."

“ And so," replied Tom steering Faith through the kitchen door, "does that woman. Thank God for us.”

It hadn 't really occurred to Faith to wonder what Millicent was doing with John Dunne at Eleanor Whipple 's house. But it did occur to her to wonder why Millicent was sitting with Dunne so chummily at Faith's kitchen table. As was most of Faith 's known world. Her parents. Tom's parents. Hope. Dave Svenson. Tricia. And last but not least, Scott Phelan.

After another round of hugging and kissing and crying and hugging and kissing and crying some more, Tom returned to the point, " It was Millicent who figured out where you were, Faith."

“Millicent ! " Faith was stunned. It wasn't that long ago that she had tapped Ms. McKinley as suspect number one.

Millicent smiled wickedly. "Yes, dear, and I suppose now you're going to tell me you thought I killed Cindy and Patricia.”

Really the woman was as irritating as ever, but Faith began to think she might come to like her someday. In ten or twelve years maybe.

Faith sat down next to her and Tom hovered above with his hands anchoring her shoulders, just in case.

Pix walked in and reported that Benjamin was playing happily with Samantha.

“Now," she said, "why don't I get a bottle of champagne and you can tell all."

“The telling is a great idea," agreed Faith, looking hard at Millicent, "but champagne and pizza?"

“ Why not ? " asked Pix. " I thought champagne went with everything.”