The Body in the Bouillon (12 page)

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Authors: Katherine Hall Page

BOOK: The Body in the Bouillon
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But Faith was happy with her discovery. It almost made having to spend the night worthwhile. She turned out the flashlight and prepared to go to her well-deserved rest. As she opened the door, she heard a sound from the direction of the stairs and darted back. Someone else was up.
She ducked into the closet in case it was Dr. Hubbard and waited. Nothing happened. After what she judged to have been ten minutes—she'd left her watch next to the sink upstairs—she tried again. No noises this time, and she crept quietly to the bottom of the stairs. She had her headache story in case she ran into anybody there. It would have been harder to explain why she was coming out of Dr. Hubbard's office.
She heard more noises at the end of the hall upstairs and slipped into her room in relief. It looked like a busy night at Hubbard House. She took off her robe and decided not to turn on the light in case it shone beneath the door. She didn't want any insomniac visitors asking her why she was up too. She crawled up the stepladder, slid beneath the icy sheets, and reached over to the other side of the bed to pull the covers closer.
But instead of the quilted spread, her hand touched flesh. Wet flesh.
She screamed and turned on the light. Her hand was covered with blood, and lying beside her where he had no doubt dreamed of being was Eddie Russell.
Only Eddie wasn't going to get any action tonight or ever.
Eddie was dead.
Faith screamed again. Eddie's wrists were bound to the bedpost behind his head with a black silk cord, and his ankles were tied together with more of the same. In between, his body was bare except for two knives sticking straight up—one from his throat and one from his chest. The brass trim on the handles picked up the light and glittered menacingly. Blood had seeped out around each wound and dripped onto the spread.
She jumped out of the bed, nearly breaking an ankle in the precipitous descent, and raced for the door. She was down the stairs before she paused to think what to do first.
Eddie had been murdered—and recently. Whoever had done it was still under Hubbard House's roof someplace, unless he or she had left by dogsled. No one had
responded to her screams, which meant either she hadn't been heard or someone didn't want to be noticed. Faith shook her head to drive away the feeling of faintness and disbelief that threatened suddenly to overwhelm her.
This couldn't be happening.
She went back into Dr. Hubbard's office and called Charley Maclsaac, trying to keep her eyes from the blood on her right hand. She let the phone ring, and finally he answered in the tone of someone who had planned to sleep until spring. As soon as she explained what had happened, he was fully awake.
“Now, Faith, you go get Roland and don't move from his side. The two of you sit outside that door until you see me or someone else from the police. I'll be there as soon as I can. No nosing around. When you hang up, just go straight to Roland. You'll be safe with him.”
Faith hung up. What did Charley think? She had had no desire to join Eddie while he was alive and considerably less now that he was dead. She wanted to scream again at the thought of the dead body lying next to her in bed.
She went to the rear of the house and, by opening several doors, came across what was obviously a living room. There was a closed door to one side, and she guessed this must be Dr. Hubbard's bedroom. She walked across the room and knocked loudly. She was shivering without the bathrobe, and the cold winter light coming through the windows was like a shower of ice. She knocked again and heard someone stir.
“Dr. Hubbard,” she called, opening the door a crack, “Dr. Hubbard, it's Faith Fairchild, and I'm afraid there's been an accident.”
Roland Hubbard appeared at the door. He was wearing a flannel nightshirt and struggling into a voluminous navy-blue bathrobe.
“What's happened?” he asked briskly, not at all drowsy. Faith imagined doctors must be used to waking up in a state of complete alertness. Like mothers.
“Eddie Russell is dead. He's been murdered. I've called the police and they'll be here soon.”
“What!”
Faith could understand his expression of total bewilderment. She felt that way herself.
She repeated herself. “Eddie Russell is dead. He's been murdered. I called the chief of police in Aleford and someone will be here as soon as possible. Chief MacIsaac said we were to sit outside the door and wait.”
“What door?” he asked.
Faith felt foolish. Of course, “What door?”
“The door to the guest room in the front of the house upstairs.” This was getting trickier. She was going to have to use the aspirin ploy after all. “Actually, I was sleeping there—my car went into a snowbank and I had to spend the night here. I woke up with a headache and left the room to try to find some aspirin.”
“You mean the body is in your bed?”
“Well, yes. But I wasn't.” Faith took Dr. Hubbard's arm and steered him toward the door. “I think we'd better get upstairs. I can explain while we wait.” Although there really wasn't anything more to explain—at least not to Dr. Hubbard.
As they were about to enter the corridor, Faith glanced at her hand.
“I've got to wash this off—and maybe you could find me a blanket. I'm freezing.”
“Of course, of course.” Roland was all business and soon the damned spot was washed away—though not the memory of the location—and Faith was bundled up in a heavy Hudson's Bay blanket.
They reached the door of the guest room and Roland stretched his hand out toward the ornate brass knob.
“Chief MacIsaac said we weren't to go back in the room, just sit outside.” He hadn't exactly said so, but after two other murder investigations Faith knew what they liked you to do. Stay put and don't touch.
They sat side by side companionably on the floor with their backs against the thick door. Faith hoped whoever was coming wouldn't be long. It wasn't that the position was so uncomfortable. She had no wish to get back into bed, but it was a challenge to all her social skills to come up with adequate small talk. The one question she wanted to ask besides the obvious “Who killed Eddie?” was “So, Dr. Hubbard, what's the story with your son James?” and that hardly seemed appropriate. In the end, it was Roland who broke the silence.
“I've known Edsel Russell since he was a boy. He's always had his problems, but I can't believe he's come to the end of his life in this manner. He had a decent, hardworking mother who married the wrong man. Oh, Stanley was good-looking—like Eddie—and had a lot of flash.” Dr. Hubbard sounded so bitter that Faith wondered if he had been one of Mrs. Russell's rejected suitors. “Those two boys never really had a father. Even before he abandoned the family, he was always off someplace on various dubious get-rich-quick schemes.” The bitter tone in Dr. Hubbard's voice had distilled into acid. “Stanley Junior, the older one, went into the service. He's been all right, but Eddie never found his feet, and the tragedy is he had so much influence on other, weaker people he came into contact with.” His voice changed and now he sounded tired. He paused a moment. “I like to think his work here had changed all that, and we had no complaints. I don't suppose it could have been suicide? Although he wasn't despondent to my knowledge.”
Evidently wishful thinking, and Faith was sorry to disappoint him. It wasn't going to be pleasant, or good for public relations, to have a full-scale murder investigation at Hubbard House. She pictured the knives sticking straight up like soldiers at attention from Eddie's body.
“It wasn't suicide, Dr. Hubbard.”
He was silent after that. They heard the clock strike
two. Was it only an hour since she had crept down the stairs to conduct her investigation?
“Well, Mrs. Fairchild, with this storm, we could be here a fair amount of time. You start with your life story and I'll tell you mine.”
Faith would have preferred that he go first, but he was right. They were going to be waiting a while, and she obediently sketched in the salient details of her life to date. He was very interested in all the clergy in her family. It led to a lengthy digression on his part concerning his maternal grandfather, who was a Congregationalist minister in western Massachusetts, and Roland's boyhood days in the Berkshires. Faith was trying to move him along when they heard someone pounding vigorously at the front door.
“It must be the police, and the door is locked,” Dr. Hubbard said.
“I'll be all right here. You go and let them in.” Faith wasn't altogether sure that he wouldn't take advantage of her absence to nip into the room for a quick look.
It didn't take long, and a few minutes later she heard him say, “Up here” and then there were footsteps on the stairs. One pair was reverberating throughout the house. Faith closed her eyes. When she opened them, an enormous figure—dwarfing Dr. Hubbard, who stood respectfully to one side—loomed over her. She was right. It was him again.
“Aren't we getting a little long in the tooth to be a candy striper, Mrs. Fairchild?” It was Detective Lieutenant John Dunne of the state police.
John Dunne hated being called out at night—especially winter nights—and Faith Fairchild was the last thing he needed in an investigation that had already gotten him ticked off before he'd even started.
“Why, Detective Dunne. This is a surprise. I didn't know Charley was calling you.”
“He did. Now, if you'll kindly step aside. I presume the victim is in here.”
He entered the room followed by a younger—and smaller—man also in plain clothes carrying a camera and a large briefcase. Dunne came out soon after.
“I understand the name of the deceased is Edsel Russell and that he was in your employ, Dr. Hubbard?”
“Yes, he was the head of buildings and grounds. He's been working here for two years.”
They were interrupted by the arrival of several more police officers—two in uniform hovering over a frail man wearing a badge pinned crookedly onto his down parka. He looked to be in his late eighties and had a woolen watch cap pulled over his ears. Erratic tufts of white hair on his cheeks and chin indicated he had missed the same spots while shaving for several months. He was walking slowly and careened first toward one wall, then the other. He stopped in front of them, took off his gold wire-rimmed glasses, which had fogged over, wiped them carefully on a large white handkerchief pulled from a pocket, replaced them, and put out his hand to Dr. Hubbard.
“Bad business, Roland. They tell me young Russell is dead. Very bad business. Probably a vagrant driven in by the storm. Seen anybody like that about?”
Who could this possibly be? Faith wondered. It had to be a mistake.
It wasn't. It was Francis Coffin, Byford's venerable chief of police.
“No, no strangers around.” Dr. Hubbard looked at Faith. “Mrs. Fairchild here is not a resident but a volunteer stranded by the storm. She was sleeping in the room.”
“And didn't notice anything? Young woman, you must be a sound sleeper indeed.”
“I wasn't in the room when the murder took place.” Faith hastened to correct any possible impression that she might be the most likely to perpetrate.
John Dunne was getting impatient. Francis Coffin was the reason Charley MacIsaac had called him. Francis Coffin
was the reason he wasn't home lying next to his wife under an emperor-sized down comforter.
Dunne was from the Bronx and had moved to this alien territory to please his wife. She was from Maine—up near the Canadian border—but she knew she could push him only so far from his native turf. When Charley had called to tell him there was a problem in Byford, a murder no less, Dunne had moved heaven and earth to get there before the locals. Quaint, picturesque, whatever, but Francis should be in a rocker at Hubbard House, not investigating a murder there. Dunne found it typical of New England that the residents of Byford insisted Coffin keep his post, never thinking about what this might mean for their own health and well-being, just because he'd been there for fifty years. Francis Coffin was a living legend, with an increasing likelihood of the legend part overtaking the living.
Dunne took charge. No one objected.
“Dr. Hubbard, the state police are cooperating with the Byford police in this matter, and a crime prevention and control unit from the district attorney's office will be joining us soon. I'd like to wake the residents in turn, starting with this section. Is there a room we can use for questioning?”
“Certainly. You may use my office downstairs if you like.”
“I'll start with Mrs. Fairchild, and perhaps one of the officers here could drive her home afterward.” He looked at her sternly. Sure, thought Faith, find out what I know, then pack me off. She was used to Dunne's ways. It hadn't stopped her before.
“I'll show you my office, then. Francis?” Dr. Hubbard stepped forward, but Chief Coffin didn't follow.
“I haven't seen the body yet, man. Can't start asking questions until I've seen what happened.” He rubbed his hands together. Francis enjoyed being a cop. Retirement wouldn't have been any fun. Not that much ever happened in Byford, but whatever did came his way.
Dunne had been afraid of this. If he let the old codger in, they'd have his prints—along with Faith's—to eliminate from everything.

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