Katherine Page - Body in the Bog

KATHERINE

HALL PAGE

BODY

i n t h e

BOG

To my friend Mimi Garrett,

and in memory of her dear mother, Marion Mullison Ellis

Accidents will occur in the best-regulated families.

—CHARLES DICKENS

One

Seeing another woman in the Reverend Thomas Fairchild’s arms was not a sight his wife, Faith, had expected. She’d flung open the door to her husband’s study prepared to deliver an impassioned account of the infuriating selectmen’s meeting she’d just attended this April evening. Instead, she stood frozen on the threshold, perversely embarrassed at having walked in on something. Then the anger so conveniently close to the surface veered toward another target and she made her presence known by slamming the door—hard.

As a matter of course, Tom had to comfort the afflicted in mind, particularly the bereaved, and Faith could only hope that the woman, whoever she was, had lost her entire family to the bubonic plague, or else there would be some serious explaining due.

While she was considering whether to grab said woman by the hair, wrenching her from the good reverend’s grasp, Tom spoke.

“Faith, you’re home!”

“Yes, dear,” she replied, quelling the impulse to add, “obviously.”

She’d no sooner spoken when the woman turned around and abruptly threw herself into Faith’s arms.

“I’m so glad you’re here!” she cried. So was Faith.

It was Miss Lora, almost-five-year-old Benjamin Fairchild’s beloved nursery school teacher and sometime weekend sitter for Ben and his younger sister, Amy. Miss Lora was crying. Miss Lora was upset.

Faith patted Miss Lora’s back, the fleeting earlier notion of clocking her one totally obscured. This was the woman who provided her son with quality care and—possibly more important—actually enabled the elder Fairchilds to get away for a few weekends alone together.

Faith looked at Tom over Miss Lora’s heaving shoulders. It was a bit difficult to read his expression since, Janus-like, one side of his face was registering deep concern while the other displayed acute embarrassment. He repeated his earlier cogent remark. “Ah, honey, you’re home,” adding, “and early. Good, good, good.”

Faith again opted for brevity. “Yes,” she replied, trusting that after six years of marriage, Tom could read the volumes between the lines, volumes entitled,

“What the Hell Is Going on Here?”

“Lora came to discuss a problem, and I’ve been trying to convince her that it really is a police matter.” Things were looking up. Faith loved nothing better than poking her nose into police matters. But Miss Lora? What on earth could be going on?

“Absolutely not! No police,” Lora said, fishing around in her pocket for a tissue, with which she proceeded to blow her already-red nose noisily.

Faith regarded the teacher and thought, not for the first time, that Miss Lora needed to look to a fashion beacon other than Raggedy Ann. Lora wasn’t wearing red-and-white-striped tights and a ruffled apron at the moment, but these were staples of her wardrobe, which also included a number of shapeless denim and corduroy jumpers, gingham blouses, and the like. She had an abundance of mousy brown hair, worn pulled back with a scrunch. Unlike the doll, however, she did not have even a hint of red on her lips or cheeks. What paint there was lay under her fingernails, the result of active participation with her young charges.

“Why don’t we go into the kitchen and have something to eat while you tell me all about it?” Faith suggested. The makeover could wait. “I assume,” she said to Tom, “that the children are asleep.”

“Naturally,” he replied, adopting an attitude of injured dignity as he led the way into the parsonage kitchen.

A parsonage was the last place Faith Sibley Fairchild had expected to be spending her adult years. It had been bad enough growing up in one. Tradition-bound, Faith’s father, the Reverend Lawrence Sibley, donned the cloth, as had his grandfather and father before him. He also clung to Sibley family mores by naming his daughters Faith and Hope. Charity might have followed had not his wife, Jane Sibley, a real estate lawyer, put her well-shod little foot down. Enough was enough.

Faith had chafed at the fishbowl existence as a “preacher’s kid”—the freely offered, “well-meant” remarks at the way the Sibleys raised their children, ate, drank, even slept, if it was too late. The fishbowl was, however, nicely located on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, and that had helped.

Spurred by her younger sister’s meteoric rise in the world of finance, Faith had finally found her own true calling—as a caterer—and Have Faith was born. After glowing reviews and by much deliciously satisfied word of mouth, she became the caterer of choice for the Big Apple’s glitterati. Have Faith jams, jellies, chutneys, and sauces followed. Then, at a wedding reception, while checking to see whether a tray of the smoked trout wrapped in an herbed crêpe topped with a soupçon of caviar and crème fraîche was holding out, Faith met Tom Fairchild. He’d changed collars, and it wasn’t until they’d talked into the wee hours of the morning that the fact that she’d fallen head over heels in love with a minister hit her full force. It hit her again when she found herself in the small village of Aleford, Massachusetts, after their own wedding.

She was acutely homesick—and bored.

She was determined not to sacrifice her standards, and kept her wardrobe and haircut up-to-date. At present, her thick blond hair was chin-length, parted on the side, enabling her to let the curtain fall strategically across her face. Trips home always included the three B ’s—Barneys, Bergdorf, and Bloomingdale’s—along with two others—Bendel, and Balducci’s for food, if she had time.

Yet, the years in Aleford had proved more eventful than she could have predicted. The place was beginning to grow on her, like the ivy and old mosses attacking the brick parsonage walls. Not only had she produced two children and started Have Faith again, but she’d also demonstrated an uncanny knack for getting involved in crime. Getting involved after the fact, that is, having literally stumbled across several bodies and, as she liked to remind herself, in each case beaten the police to the denouement.

Police matter. The moment Tom referred to the boys in blue—although Chief Charley MacIsaac, thirty-four years in Aleford alone, could scarcely be referred to as a boy—Faith found herself drawn to Miss Lora as never before. Certainly it was interesting to hear that Ben was truly gifted when it came to block building, but nowhere near as riveting as the possibility that Miss Lora might need Faith’s detective skills.

All in good time. Faith made fresh coffee, the drug of choice in places like Aleford, and cut some thick slices of the Scandinavian cardamom raisin bread (see recipe on page 337) she’d made the day before. Cardamom and coffee went well together and transformed the kitchen into an instant replica of the one in I Remember Mama . Faith had to watch that she didn’t start to nod at Lora’s every word and say, “Ja.” It was an atmosphere calculated to encourage confidences.

Miss Lora was hungry and slathered her bread thickly with sweet butter. Twenty-two-year-olds didn’t worry about cholesterol, Faith reflected from her vantage point ten—soon to be eleven—years ahead. In your early twenties, you didn’t worry about much. Maybe boyfriend/girlfriend troubles, finding a job, small stuff, but nothing like clogged arteries. So what was Lora worried about? She was eating heartily, yet her face, kittenlike behind the huge horn-rimmed glasses she wore, was still troubled.