Katherine Page - Body In The Belfry

“What's going to happen now ? " asked Faith.

“They'll either formally charge him with murder or keep him as long as they can for questioning. If they don't charge him, they'll have to let him go.”

They went to bed early, falling wearily, easily, but not straight, to sleep.

The next morning, Benjamin woke them up at five o'clock, soaked through and hungry. Faith fed and changed him, made a bargain with God that if He would make Benj go back to sleep again, she would try very hard to be a better person, and tumbled gratefully back to bed, God having recognized a good thing when He saw it. Then the phone, not Benjamin, awakened them at seven o'clock. It was Eva Svenson. Dave had been released on personal recognizance the night before, but the police had arrived a few minutes ago to take him in for more questioning. His father had gone with him and they hoped Tom would join them.

Faith went into the bathroom, threw up, washed her face, and decided enough was enough. She had to get busy.

She made a hasty breakfast for Tom while he was shaving and told him that while he was gone she was going to take Benjamin for a walk and pay a few calls. She toyed with the notion of going back up to the belfry to get some kind of inspiration from the scene of the crime, but she decided she wasn't desperate enough yet for what was admittedly a slim possibility. There was achance that Cindy 's ghost was moving around restlessly until avenged or whatever, but it was more likely to be haunting the parking lot at Friendly's, where her crowd hung out, than the belfry.

No, best to concentrate on the living and she figured she ought to start bravely at the source.

5

Millicent Revere McKinley was always home in the mornings, seeing to her garden behind the white picket fence surrounding her small, eighteenth-century clapboard house or crocheting endless doilies in an easy chair poised strategically close to her front living room window. Both activities afforded her every opportunity to keep her eye on Aleford and as it was all absolutely necessary work, no one could ever accuse her of nosiness. Was it her fault that her house was smack in the middle of town ? That was where her ancestors had built it, or rather moved it. It seemed as if houses were constantly on the move in those days, presumably as neighborhoods or pastures changed, but Millicent 's would stay where it was now, thank you, if she had anything to say about it and she did.

Faith approached the gate with not a little trepidation. She knew she had never been number one on Milli-cent's list of favorites and now after the bell-ringing incident, Millicent regarded her as certifiable or worse. Nor was Millicent, who attended the Congregational church as did her fathers before her, a member of the parish, which might have given Faith an opening. No, the only thing to do was throw herself on the floor (uneven pine) and beg for mercy.

Millicent answered the door with an assumed look of surprise, not a particularly nice surprise.

“Why, Mrs. Fairchild ! What brings you to my little cottage so bright and early ? “

From her expression, one would have thought it was about six o'clock in the morning and Millicent straight from her four-poster. Actually it was after nine and Millicent had been perched in her window as usual. Faith gritted her teeth and leaned down to take Benjamin from his stroller. Wasn 't the old witch even going to ask her in ?

“I have been wanting to talk with you since last Friday, Mrs. McKinley, and tell you how deeply sorry I am about the whole incident." Faith assumed correctly that Millicent would know she was referring to the bell and not Cindy.

“I know how upset you have been over the bell ringing and I just wanted you to know that it will never happen again." Faith felt this was a pretty safe promise to make. Another body in Aleford 's belfry was as likely as a Benedict Arnold Fan Club.

“Well, that 's very sweet of you, dear, but it has nothing to do with me particularly, you know. Well, perhaps a bit more than some since it was my great-great-great- grandfather who east tlle bell," Millicent thawed minutely. "Why don 't you and your baby (she managed to make the words sound dubious, as though Benjamin might perhaps be someone else 's) come in and have some coffee.”

Cups in hand, they settled down in her living room with its multitude of candle stands, tilt-top tables, card tables, and whatnots, for each of which Millicent hastened to say, "Please dear, not on that surface, antique, you know.”

Faith could have sworn not a few were Ethan Allen, but she balanced her cup on her knees nonetheless and ate some more crow. Finally she managed to steer Millicent onto the murder itself and most particularly onto Cindy. Faith had a hunch that the key to the whole murder lay in Cindy's noxious personality. After all, someone had disliked her enough to kill her. If that wasn't bad personality, what was it?

“Mrs. McKinley," she began.

“Do call me Millicent, everyone does. And I shall call you Faith, or is it Fay ? "

“Faith, please, Millicent—or" (She couldn't resist) "is it Millie?"

“ Millicent," she snapped. " And you were saying ? "

“Yes, well, having discovered the body and since the Svensons are members of our congregation, of course I've been giving Cindy 's murder a lot of thought," Faith said, all of which did not fool Millicent for a minute as one snooper eyed the other. Still it sounded good.

“ What I've been wondering about is Cindy's other ' friends.' I'm sure Dave was not the only one, and perhaps you saw her with someone else ? “

Millicent smiled. It was frightening.

“Oh, I saw Cindy all right. With Dave, of course. On their way to the belfry. And I knew what they were up to. But you're right. He wasn 't the only one. Most of theothers were from the high school or college boys home on vacation. Nobody special. I think they all knew she was going to marry Dave, although for the life of me, I could never figure out what she saw in him."

“Oh?”

Faith suddenly realized that Millicent was perhaps the sole person in town who had some admiration for Cindy. Millicent looked at her sharply.

“Yes, I thought Cindy could do a lot better. She would never have been happy with Dave. She could have had him on toast for breakfast. Not that I liked her," and a scowl crossed her face.

Ah, thought Faith, another victim.

“No, she was mean-spirited and selfish, but she was also bright and strong. And what energy ! When she organized anything, you knew it would be done correctly.”

Faith remembered that Millicent and Cindy had been the driving, very driving, forces behind that big Patriot's Day pancake breakfast every year that raised funds for the DAR and CAR.

“ She was exactly like her great-grandmother Harriet, full of ambition and energy. It's an interesting family, the Coxes—Cindy's great-great-grandfather was Captain Martin Cox and everybody always referred to the family as “Cox,' even though Patricia's maiden name was Stoddard and they were Eliots before that." Millicent was quick to grab any and all opportunities to show off. Her mind was a familial pursuit Rolodex.

“Harriet wrote a history of the family, which you might enjoy reading. Of course, I can 't lend you my copy, but the library has one."

“Thank you, and I wouldn't dream of taking your copy. I'll make a point of getting it from the library," said Faith sweetly. And resolved to add the work to the list of books she would probably never read along with the collected works of Mrs. Humphrey Ward and Sir Walter Scott that stood in leather-bound glory on the parsonage bookshelves.

Returning to her mission, Faith tried to steer Millicent back on course. "But," she insisted gently, "there was never any one boy you saw Cindy with other than Dave?"