The Body in the Boudoir (16 page)

After some desultory conversation, the Walfort sisters turned in, as did Jane Sibley.

“Faith, you must be exhausted. Come to bed,” her mother said.

“I will. I just want to try the Todds again. I haven't been able to reach them.” She'd called twice.

Third time was a charm and after a brief and extremely unpleasant conversation with Gertrude, who answered the phone, Faith returned to the library. Tammy was its only occupant and was heading upstairs carrying a nightcap.

“They'll be making the funeral arrangements, and they're private,” Faith told her.

“Sky will be upset, but I can't say I am. The plot is getting pretty crowded, plus I had enough of her dirty looks when she was alive without suffering them through all eternity. Guess I won't have to worry about minding my
p
s and
q
s so much now.”

One thing about Tammy. She could always make you laugh.

Faith went around and turned out the lights, making sure the doors were locked. It was what Danny would normally have done. Why hadn't she locked the back door last night? The question kept returning. The housekeeper was a stickler for details like this and would never have been careless about something so essential. As far-fetched as it seemed to Faith, it had to be that Mrs. Danforth was expecting someone. But who?

E
ven with the extra guests and the need for its mistress to vacate her boudoir for the night, the house offered a wide range of choices for Faith to bed down. She selected the room she and Hope loved best. It was on the top floor in one of the turrets that graced The Cliff's four corners. She'd spent many rainy days curled up on the curved window seat reading the old-fashioned books left by young females from previous generations:
What Katy Did,
The Little Colonel,
and
Elsie Dinsmore
. Tonight she didn't need reading material to fall asleep and drifted off as soon as she pulled the covers up.

What she hadn't pulled were the drapes, and when she turned over in her sleep toward the windows, the moon's bright rays shone directly on the pillow, forcing her eyes open. She got up to block the light and instead stood looking out, entranced by the scene in front of her. She could just make out the shore below and was filled with a sudden impulse to go see more of it from the attic.

A terrible thing had happened, but the moon, the sea, and the shore were still there, unchanged and unchanging. She was filled with a mild euphoria. She was going to be married to her true love on this very spot. They would watch moonrises, and sunrises, for the rest of their lives together. She slipped on her robe and slippers, opened the door quietly, although she was the only one sleeping in this part of the house, and made her way to the attic. Still, she tiptoed. Halfway up its stairs she heard something and paused, listening. It wasn't coming from above. A door closing, a footstep? Whatever it was, it had stopped. She waited a bit longer and then continued, chiding herself for being spooked by what was probably a tree branch blowing against the side of the house or some other act of nature.

The moonlight eliminated the need for any other illumination. She squeezed past boxes, trunks, wardrobes, a rocking horse, and a dressmaker's dummy for a full-figured gal to the chair that had been placed at one of the front windows. She sat down as she had done the week before, enjoying the vista spread out beneath her. It was like being in a treetop. She felt her body relax as she thought about bringing Tom here, as well as showing him the rest of the house and grounds. Her eyelids began to get heavy. In a moment she'd fall asleep in the chair, even though the seat was caned and the back hard as a rock. She leaned forward on the sill for one last parting look, her mind filled with pleasant reveries. Her foot grazed the baseboard, picking up what she thought at first was a large dust bunny. Bending over to pull it off her slipper, she saw that it wasn't dust but a feather. A bright red feather. A fluffy marabou feather. It hadn't been here on the floor on Thursday. She would have spotted it, as incongruous in this setting as it would have been anywhere else in the house save Tammy's boudoir.

Chilled, she pulled her robe more tightly closed.

Danny had been here. When? Last night? Sitting in the chair alone with her thoughts? Sitting in the chair keeping watch?

Or had it been Great-aunt Tammy? She'd been at the house until Saturday.

Could the simplest explanation be the right one? That one woman or the other had felt the same urge Faith had and wanted to gaze out at the landscape from the house's highest point?

Quickly moving to the switches by the stairs, Faith flicked on all the lights. Shadowed forms took reassuring shapes. She began to circle the entire floor, going from window to window, slowly working her way around the attic. No more feathers. At the rear, there was a large window that opened out, high above the back door. Unlike the other sills that were in need of a spring cleaning, this one showed signs of activity, as if someone had been here recently. Faith unlocked the window and pushed. It swung freely on well-oiled hinges. She examined the oval frame carefully. There was a small, frayed piece of rope, like the kind used for clotheslines, caught in a crack in the outer sill where the bottom of the window rested. She worked the scrap free and looked at it in stronger light, noting a faint streak of orange dust that rubbed off on her fingers.

It was the same kind of rope that had been around the brickwork she had so recently dodged. Attached to it was a minuscule piece of fishing line. She almost missed the transparent filament. The chunk she had barely avoided hadn't fallen from a chimney. It had been dropped from here.

S
omeone was in her room. The drapes were opening. Sunlight streamed in. Faith sat up, completely wide awake.

“I didn't mean to startle you, darling, but it's almost ten o'clock and I thought you might not want to sleep too late, although you certainly needed it.”

It was her mother and she was holding a steaming cup.

“Coffee. And when you're ready, come down for breakfast. There's an extremely pleasant lady in the kitchen who will make whatever you want. I had poached eggs.”

Her mother always had poached eggs—two instead of one on special occasions—with wheat toast and marmalade.

She handed Faith the mug and sat down on the side of the bed. It was infinitely comforting seeing her there, and Faith wished they could stay like that all day, her mother making forays for something to eat on a tray and more up-to-date reading material than
Highlights
magazine, but sequestered as if she'd been transported back to a childhood bout with the flu. She had a sudden craving for flat ginger ale and cinnamon toast, her mother's sickroom staples.

The coffee was good and strong.

“How is everyone?”

“As you might expect. Mother and Aunt Frances have been up since dawn and already taken a walk. They're going to go back with us later this afternoon. I admit I suggested it—Sky and Tammy need some time to themselves after all this. I haven't seen Sky this morning, but Tammy has been a whirlwind, organizing the cleaners and interviewing housekeepers by phone. She's got two coming in person this afternoon, and she's also considering hiring the woman the agency sent. The one who's here now.”

Faith finished her coffee, set it down, and stretched. When it came to organizational skills, you couldn't beat those Delta women.

The rest of the morning passed quickly as Faith showered and had a light breakfast. The tasting was scheduled for one o'clock, so she didn't want to eat much. Her visit to the attic the night before had taken on the quality of a dream, no, make that a nightmare. And there was no one to tell. She put on a smiling face and went off with the mother of the bride to the next town, where the caterers were. The tasting was a pleasant interlude. Nothing more stressful than deciding between things like raw shrimp or lightly battered (they decided on both). When they returned, everyone was in the conservatory and things seemed, on the surface, to be back to normal. Uncle Sky got up and kissed her.

“Are you going to be well and truly fed as well as well and truly wed?”

Faith was happy to see the change in his mood. If he was up to a bad rhyme, he was definitely over the worst of his grief.

“It will be both a palate pleaser and pleasing for the eye.” He tended to elicit this kind of remark in others, too. She
had
been impressed at the tasting, however. The food was even better than she had hoped it would be and the presentation perfect—attractive without being silly, four slivers of something on a tray gussied up with orchids from the Amazon.

Sky rubbed his hands together. “Good, good, good. And remember, as ‘father of the bride,' I'm providing the potent potables. Don't want the caterers to palm off some Cold Duck disguised as champagne. The horror!”

Feeling bridal indeed—the caterers had presented her with a lovely nuptial nosegay—Faith went upstairs to get the small overnight bag she had brought, never imagining what that night would bring. When she returned, her mother, her grandmother, and Aunt Frances were in the hall saying good-bye.

“Now don't forget about my tea for Faith, Tammy,” Nana said. “And it's ladies only, Sky. Don't try to crash the way you did at Faith's shower.”

“Poppy would have been happy to let me stay. Rules like this are made to be broken! Faith is a modern bride.”

“That may be, but I am not a modern woman and I'm the one giving the engagement party.” Her grandmother tempered her words by kissing her brother's cheek, a demonstrative gesture in this family akin to a bear hug and busses on both cheeks in another.

Back in the city after dropping the others off, Faith refused her mother's invitation for dinner—the ubiquitous nice piece of something and salad—planning to indulge in carb-laden Chinese takeout. Garlic lo mein with plenty of veggies and pot stickers. Comfort food.

The phone was ringing as she opened her door and she ran to answer it. She'd talked to Tom when she'd gotten up this morning and he said he'd call her apartment around now. Never had she been so in need of hearing his voice. Another kind of comfort food.

“Hello?”

“Darling,” he said. “How are you? Have you been home long?”

“I just walked in. Literally.”

“Good. I'll be there in less than an hour.”

“Tom! Where are you?”

“At a rest stop in Connecticut. Not sure what town.”

“You're crazy.”

“No, I'm not. And let's eat in. Should I stop and pick something up?”

Faith laughed. She couldn't imagine what Tom would bring and was almost tempted to say yes just to see, but told him she'd been about to order Chinese and would order a whole lot more. She made a mental note to nix the garlic and go for ginger.

“Get me some spareribs. Oh, and sweet-and-sour something. I love that stuff.”

Clearly there was work to do here, but she'd indulge him with the cloying red dye #2 dish for now—and probably later as well. Faith was a food snob and proud of it, but she realized with a slight shock that she would jettison all her strongly held culinary principles for the man she loved. Well, maybe not the one about canned bread crumbs.

The timing was perfect; Tom arrived a few minutes after the food had been delivered. As they ate, Faith started at the beginning and told him everything that had happened over the last few days, only omitting her visit to the attic and the piece of rope. She hadn't told him about the falling brickwork. She was still trying to figure out what it meant herself. When she'd returned to her room last night, she'd lain awake thinking about Thursday's incident. Aunt Tammy hadn't arrived home yet from her spa vacation and Sky had left before Faith did, which meant only the housekeeper was in the house. Was this some kind of
Jane Eyre
/madwoman-in-the-attic scenario? Danny heaving the rock down at Faith in a crazed fit of jealousy, never having been a bride herself ? But why had she tied the rope around the missile? Had it all been rigged up earlier and suspended out the window, scheduled somehow to fall on a different victim? One of the Walforts? Who else used that door?

No, there had been enough drama to last a lifetime and she didn't want to add to it, spoiling any more of her precious time, this beautiful unexpected time, with Tom. And it didn't.

T
he next morning Tom made a few calls and decided that First Parish could spare him for one more day and night. Faith was ecstatic, and besides, she pointed out to him, the parish would soon be getting a kind of twofer—and the work she would do wouldn't cost them anything.

“I've told you that this is
my
job, Faith,” Tom protested. “I'd like you to come to church on Sundays, but that's it.”

Having been on-site all her life, Faith knew better, and at this point, she welcomed her new role. Except for the church school Christmas pageant. There were limits.

“I have to drop off a fabric sample that I picked out for Hope's dress at her office, and it's a nice crosstown walk. And maybe my father is free. We could stop at the church before or after and talk some more about the ceremony.”

“Sounds perfect,” Tom said, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a Day Runner. “I've jotted down a few possibilities for readings.”

“We don't want too many; people will get restless,” Faith said. “We're going by the book, yes, the King James one?”

Tom laughed. “Absolutely. I've been at those weddings where if one more person gets up to read from Khalil Gibran, I begin to wish I hadn't held my peace at the start. And don't worry, honey, I haven't changed my mind about our vows. I'm not going to stand on the seashore and describe you as a lighthouse, your beacon of light shining through the fog of my life, or some other maritime metaphor.”