"Is there anyone you want us to call? A relative or neighbor?" Tom asked.
Nelson shook his head. "We"re the only family we have, except for some cousins we haven"t seen for years. But friends. Everybody was her friend." His voice broke.
Charley put his hand on Nelson"s shoulder. "Want some coffee? Or maybe a shot of something?"
Nelson shook his head again. Charley took a deep breath. "She didn"t have a heart attack, or at least we don"t know that yet. There"s been a fire at the new house the Deanes have put up over on Whipple Hill. Margaret was inside."
"You mean she burned to death!"
Charley kept his hand on Nelson"s shoulder. "There was nothing anybody could have done. By the time she was discovered, it was too late. It was a very bad fire. The whole house is just about gone."
"But what was she doing there?" Nelson was truly dazed now.
"We were hoping you might have an idea."
Nelson shook his head. "She was going to leave early and she did say she was meeting someone. But that was normal. I can"t imagine why she would have gone into that house. It"s not even near any of her spots." Tears were running out of his puffy red eyes and dripping off his nose. He made an ineffectual wipe at them with his pajama sleeve.
"Did she say who she was meeting?" Tom asked.
"No, but it was probably one of our usual group. They all want to go with Margaret. She"s so knowledgeable."
Tom noticed Nelson was still speaking in the present. For a moment, the three men sat in a row in Margaret"s room. n.o.body said anything. Charley stood up.
"I have to get down to the station and file a report. Believe me, I realize how painful this is for you, but you"ll have to wait for the body to be released before you can have a service. There has to be an autopsy."
Nelson winced.
"As soon as you feel up to it, we"ll talk about plans for
75.
the funeral," Tom said. "Meanwhile, I"m going to go downstairs and get us some coffee, maybe a little breakfast. Come and show me where things are."
Nelson shuffled off obediently, a pathetic figure in his nightclothes.
"I"ll be in touch," Charley said quietly to Tom. "Let me know if he thinks of any reason at all, however farfetched, why she could have been there, and get him to give you a list of the names of the people who went birding with her."
"Okay. One question, though. Is an autopsy really necessary? I would have thought he could have been spared that when the cause of death is obvious."
"We all know it"s Margaret because of the binoculars, but the state doesn"t, and there could be other things."
"Like what?"
"I"d rather not say unless I have to," Charley replied in an uncharacteristically cryptic manner, and Tom had to be satisfied with that.
By dawn, word of Margaret"s death had spread as rapidly as the fire had through the fresh lumber the night before. It wasn"t long before friends and neighbors were appearing at Nelson"s door with food and words of comfort. He"d changed out of his pajamas, and Tom left him sitting in the kitchen with the Scotts, the Batcheldors" closest friends. Nelson continued to have no idea why Margaret had been roaming about the Deanes" house in the wee hours of the morning. He did give Tom a list of the names of habitual birders, though. He was obviously still in shock, breaking down when each new arrival offered condolences. Tom left, secure in the knowledge that Nelson would be as fine as circ.u.mstances permitted now that the well-oiled machinery of care in a small place like Aleford had slipped into gear. By sundown, Nelson Batcheldor would have enough food in his freezer for the rest of the year.
The town had just started to react to the shock of Margaret"s death and the fire when word leaked out that in addition
76.
to Margaret"s remains, the police had found remnants of a sizable container of gas by the body.
Margaret Batcheldor, an arsonist!
Tom called Faith from the church office with the news. A parishioner had called him with the rumor and he"d checked it out with the police. Faith was stunned, yet as she hung up the phone, she couldn"t help but remember Margaret"s odd attire in the woods, as well as her obvious militancy at Friday"s POW! meeting. Fighting fire with fire? Could she have intended to destroy one of the Deane properties as a warning against further development? Margaret always made it absolutely clear that she thought birds, and the other inhabitants of Aleford"s woods, pastures, and ponds, were just as, if not more, important than people. She certainly thought them more valuable than property. But if so, the gesture had gone wrong-very, very wrong. Faith imagined Margaret, perhaps in her ski mask again, dousing the beams with gas and then igniting them. Unaccustomed to an activity of this sort-it was not like rubbing two sticks together-she must have been terrified by the ferocity of the blaze, then overcome by it. It was too tragic. Faith suddenly felt angry. Why hadn"t Margaret"s husband or her friends realized how close to the edge she was? Surely Mil-licent, of all people, must have known.
Millicent. All this business of taking a stand, the constant invocation of the sacred past. Faith had heard that after she and Tom had slipped out of the POW! meeting, there had been a lengthy discussion about possible courses of action, including not-so-subtle allusions to the stores of powder and guns Colonial inhabitants had hidden in these very woods in the weeks preceding that famous April morning. Presumably this was all in reference to the historic nature of Beecher"s Bog, but maybe Margaret hadn"t seen it that way. Maybe she took it as a call to action. What were the Batcheldors up to? Or Margaret on her own? Faith had heard that Margaret ruled the roost at the Batcheldor house. It was entirely possible this very determined woman had decided to act solo.
77.
Faith strode to the phone. The kids were not due home for another hour. She wanted to hear what Millicent had to say. Before she could get to it, it rang. Tom"s voice sounded weary-more weary than simply from losing last night"s sleep. Sleep deprivation was something parents actually began to get used to, or at least pretended to.
"Somebody threw a brick and shattered Lora Deane"s living room window last night. She came home about midnight and found it. She"s pretty hysterical and has told her grandparents what"s been going on. She went there immediately."
"I was afraid of this. It was only a matter of time before whoever"s been calling her would get tired of phone games and move on to more exciting stuff. So, she"s going to the police after all."
"Her grandfather has taken charge and was trying to reach Charley when he got called out to the fire. This morning, they"ve all been so upset about the house that the brick hasn"t seemed as important, but apparently Gus did tell the police. She said her grandfather was mad as h.e.l.l that she hadn"t come to her own family right away."
"Well, at least she"ll be safe with them."
"I hope so," Tom said glumly, and hung up.
Tuesday morning had dawned gray and gloomy. A fine rain was falling, which observers were sure would soon change to the kind of steady downpour that meant mud season. By midmorning, the few spring bulbs in bloom hardy enough to venture forth had been squashed back to the earth. Ale-ford was drenched. It was also scared. Rumors were flying faster than a speeding musket ball. Much faster. Not only theories about the fire and Margaret, but also word about the poison-pen letters. By the time Faith heard about them in the post office, the original seven recipients had grown to fifty and the relatively mild language had become Howard Stern material. She did what she could to correct the story, but no one believed her. No one wanted to believe her. They were battening down the hatches in the face of
78.
a storm and they didn"t want someone coming along telling them not to worry-especially an outsider, and a New Yorker at that. Probably didn"t seem like much to her, New York being the h.e.l.lhole it was, but Aleford knew better.
They weren"t right about the letters-there were only five in all: Scotts, Batcheldors, Millicent, Brad Hallowell, and Fix-but they were right about the depth of the crisis. By evening, there wasn"t a house that had not both literally and figuratively set out the emergency candles and flashlights, and cooked up plenty of food-prepared for the worst. The thunderstorm had moved up the coast and more news had spread. Margaret Batcheldor might be a charred corpse, but she hadn"t burned to death. A ferocious series of blows on the back of the head had killed her, not the fire.
Margaret had been murdered.
Faith sat in the parsonage watching the lights flicker and listening to the hum of the refrigerator go on and off. She was alone with the kids, who had greeted the wind and rain with delight. Ben had been sorry that the power had managed to stay on through his bedtime. She knew he was upstairs trying to keep himself awake. She pointed out that going to sleep was just like a power outage. Dark was dark. But he failed to see her logic. In her heart, she agreed with him. As a child, it had always been thrilling to lose power during a storm. As an adult she only had visions of spoiled food. And at the moment, not too many of those. There were too many other concerns. Tom was at Nelson Batcheldor"s with Charley again, as he had been since late afternoon when the report of how Margaret had died came from the medical examiner"s office.
Faith realized she was feeling a little annoyed. Tom, by virtue of his profession, was getting in on all the action. And Charley was probably revealing far more to him than he ever told her. Male bonding or whatever. At least she"d be able to hear about it when Tom came home. Meanwhile,
79.
she was stuck with the threat of no electricity and a mind she couldn"t shut off.
Fortunately, they had gas heat. Still, she felt chilled. But it wasn"t the kind of cold another layer of clothing would help. Margaret, sweet, dotty Margaret. Had she come upon the arsonist and been killed to prevent her from talking? Or was she setting the house on fire, and killed by whom? The only suspects who made sense were the Deanes. But why wouldn"t they put the fire out or at least call the fire department before the house was a total wreck?
Because Margaret was dead. It all came back to that. Maybe the blow was intended to stun her, stop her. Yet it had been more than one, Charley told Tom. Someone had been extremely vicious.
Who had called the fire department? she wondered. It hadn"t been important to know before; now it was. The new house was wedged between two older houses. Someone must have seen something. Margaret would have had a flashlight. But then, this was a town that ate at six o"clock and was in bed no later than ten. No night owl looking out a window, no late-night dog walkers.
She heard the car in the driveway and rushed to the kitchen door. Torn came in and folded her in his arms.
"Kids asleep?"
"That or a good imitation on Ben"s part. Are you hungry?"
"Starving. You can"t imagine how much food there is at Nelson"s, but somehow you don"t like to interrupt a man"s grief and ask for some lasagna or a bowl of pea soup."
These were Aleford"s standard funereal offerings, along with platters of small, triangular, spongy white-bread sandwiches spread with minuscule amounts of fillings Faith didn"t even like to think about-anchovy paste for one.
She started by slicing a large wedge of rosemary focaccia in half, then drizzled it liberally with extra virgin olive oil, sprinkling a combination of ground Romano and Parmesan cheese on top. She quickly layered thin slices of green and
80.
red peppers with cappicola and added more cheese. The whole thing went into the oven to warm while she heated up some soup-cream of broccoli with a dash of curry powder. She placed the food in front of her husband and was rewarded with a big grin.
"Boy, did I marry the right woman."
Faith loved to feed people, especially her family. She sat close to him at the big round table that was the gravitational center of the house-the place where they ate most meals, the kids drew pictures, and friends automatically headed. Faith had religiously avoided anything suggesting either Colonial New England or neocountry in her kitchen, opting instead for the sunny colors of the south of France and bright Souleido cotton prints on the chairs and at the windows, with nary a cow or pewter charger in sight.
"Now tell me everything," she demanded.
Tom"s mouth was full and she waited impatiently. Maybe she should have grilled him before the sandwich.
"There"s not a lot to tell," he said finally, and seeing the look on her face, he put the sandwich down for a moment. "Person or persons unknown killed her and left her in the fire. There"s no way of finding out whether she was setting the fire or whether the fire was set to cover up the murder."
"And n.o.body heard or saw anything?"
"Ed Ferguson, who lives next door, thinks he heard a car around eleven. He"d gotten up to pee, but he"s not too sure about the time. It couldn"t have been Margaret"s car, because she didn"t take it. She was on foot."
"Which seems to eliminate her as the arsonist. Surely she couldn"t walk all the way from her house to Whipple Hill Road lugging a can of gas without attracting some notice. Plus, it"s quite a distance."
"Not if you cut through the woods, which of course she probably did. And even if she walked down Main Street at that time of night, n.o.body would have been around to notice."
This was true. The woman could have been naked and
81.
on horseback without a single observer. And if she came through the woods, might she have hidden the gas in some thicket on one of her previous maneuvers?
Tom munched away.
"Who reported the fire?"
"The Fergusons again. I guess Ed gets up frequently. He saw the flames and by the time O"Halloran got there, it was the inferno you saw. The Deanes had planned to put in the insulation this week, so the place was filled with that, plus wallboard. It made for great fuel. Any more soup?"
Faith went to get the pot and ladled more into Tom"s cup, then decided to have some herself.
"What about the brick? Was there a note wrapped around it? Why throw it, unless you had a message to deliver?"
"Nope, nothing. Just a plain old brick. Gus went to the state police headquarters today. Told them about the calls, too, and is demanding police protection for his granddaughter. Charley says Gus seems to think it"s Millicent and her group."
"Calling Lora?"
"Yes, Gus thinks they"re too cowardly to confront him or his grandsons, so they"re going after Lora."
Faith was thinking about the brick. Brad Hallowell had thrown a punch at his wall. A fist. A brick. She frowned. "The last time we walked by the construction site, there were a lot of bricks lying around. They"d finished the chimney ages ago, but maybe they planned to use them for the steps or walk."
"So whoever killed Margaret decided to pick up a brick and heave it through Lora"s window for the h.e.l.l of it on his or her way home?"