The Body in the Bouillon (13 page)

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Authors: Katherine Hall Page

BOOK: The Body in the Bouillon
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“Detective Sullivan is going over the room now, and the CPAC guys will be here soon with the medical examiner, Frank. I'd appreciate it if you would come with me and assist, since your knowledge of the local scene is so much more extensive than mine.” It might work.
Faith caught his eye. Dunne couldn't help a slight grimace, which on his very much less than handsome face contorted the expression into death throes. She took it for what it was and did her part.
“If there is some way of getting me home, I would appreciate it very much.” And she would. She was struck with a longing for the parsonage, Tom, Ben, and her own safe, warm bed, for which she didn't need a ladder.
Her words got them moving. Dunne took the hall in two strides and was quickly out of sight while the rest straggled on behind Chief Coffin. Roland sprinted ahead to lead the detective to the office.
The clock struck three as they descended the stairs. Time was creeping by.
Faith felt a bit odd upon entering the room she had so recently been casing. All the lights were turned on and it was full of people now.
“Would you like to question Mrs. Pendergast, our cook, after Mrs. Fairchild? She too was forced to spend the night here and is in another room upstairs. When you are finished, she could provide us with some coffee.”
Dunne looked at Dr. Hubbard gratefully. This must be why everybody thought he walked on water.
“Great idea. Perhaps one of your guys would like to go with him, Frank.”
“I'm sure the good doctor knows the way, Johnny,” Chief Coffin said, and smiled at Roland.
Detective Dunne gritted his teeth, whether at being
called Johnny or Coffin's ineptitude Faith couldn't be sure. Probably both.
One of the Byford officers stepped into the breach. “I'll go, Chief. No problem.” He ambled out with the doctor. They were used to scenes like this.
Dunne sat down at the desk and Faith took one of the chairs in front. But this was no doctor-patient consultation.
“Now, Mrs. Fairchild. Faith,” he said wearily. “What are you doing here?”
“There's a flu epidemic and most of the kitchen staff is out sick. I'm helping for a few weeks. When I left today, my car went off the road and I had to come back and spend the night.” She looked him straight in the eye. Had Charley told him about Howard Perkins' letter?
Charley hadn't taken the time, but had said that Faith was over at Hubbard House snooping around like usual. Dunne looked straight back at Faith.
“I'm sure you are anxious to get home after the shock you've been through. I'll be by in the morning to talk to you further.”
So he did know, Faith guessed, but didn't want the others to know. Francis looked like a babbler.
“However, I do need a few more facts. What time was it when you left your room and how long were you gone? And”—it seemed to have occurred to him suddenly—“where were you going?”
“I woke up with a headache”—Faith was almost beginning to believe this herself—“and went to find some aspirin. I heard the clock strike one just before I left my room. I came downstairs to see if by chance Dr. Hubbard or someone else was still up, but there was no one around. I was probably gone no longer than thirty minutes.”
She saw Dunne lift an eyebrow. It was one of his endearing gestures.
“Thirty minutes to find an aspirin?”
“Well, I'm not sure of my way around yet,” she demurred.
“I'll bet.” He jotted something down. “Then you came back to your room, and tell us please exactly what you saw.”
“I couldn't see anything. The room was dark.”
“You didn't turn on the light?” he interrupted.
Faith flushed slightly, “No, I didn't want to disturb anyone.”
“I see.”
“Besides, there was so much light from the windows, I didn't need a light. I got into bed and reached over to pull the blanket closer.”
She shuddered. “Only I touched Eddie's neck instead. My hand was wet. Then I did turn the light on and I saw the blood and the knives and I think I screamed. I jumped out of bed and I know I screamed. Then I ran downstairs, called Charley, and went to get Dr. Hubbard.”
“Was the door open or closed when you went back upstairs the first time?”
“It was closed. And I had closed it when I left.”
Dunne wrote some more. “Was there anything else you noticed? Take your time.”
Faith thought. “I did think I heard someone in the hall when I was downstairs shortly before I went back to my room, and again upstairs in the rear of the house when I got to my door,” she reported.
Dunne started to ask something, paused, and seemed to reconsider. He stood up without asking anything further.
“I will need you to have another look at the room.” He meant the body and Faith knew it. “We have to be sure nothing was apparently moved during the time you were away from the door.”
They went up the stairs. Faith felt like a small rowboat being guided down the Hudson by Big Toot. Dunne knocked at the door and Detective Sullivan answered.
“Just about finished here, John. And the others should be here any moment. No forced entry at the window and
nothing odd. Some women's clothes in the closet. His are on the floor next to the bed.”
“The clothes in the closet are mine,” Faith said, glad she had been tidy. Old admonitions about clean underwear and not using safety pins to hold up your hem came floating back incongruously into her head.
Dunne ushered her into the room. “We'll go over this later, Ted. For now, I want Mrs. Fairchild to tell us if she notices whether anything has been disturbed.”
“I didn't really see much,” she said.
“I know. Take a quick look at Eddie and tell me if somebody's been here.”
Faith did. He looked garishly white in the dim light in the room. The two knives were still standing stiffly erect. The black bondage cords looked tight enough to cut off his circulation—if he'd had any. His eyes were closed and his lips parted. His face looked exactly the same as it had when they had danced together briefly at the Holly Ball.
“Nothing's been changed that I can see,” she told them.
“Okay, take a look in the bathroom.”
Faith walked across the room and looked in.
“One of the towels is gone,” she said immediately. “There were two on the rack. But I didn't go in here when I came back, so it could have been taken by the murderer either the first time or while I was getting Dr. Hubbard. Probably the first time. He must have needed to wash his hands.” She rubbed at the spot on her own hand so recently despoiled. “Which reminds me. I used the towel from Dr. Hubbard's bathroom to dry my hands after washing the blood off there, so you can eliminate that one.”
“Good girl. Now let's get you out of here and you can tell me what's really going on tomorrow. By the way, Charley was going to call Tom.”
Faith was relieved. She'd been rehearsing various ways to tell him—and they all stank.
Mrs. Pendergast and Dr. Hubbard were waiting inside
his office with the Byford police. Faith remembered Mrs. P. had come prepared to spend the night. No one at Hubbard House could have had a bathrobe of such proportions, or such style—turquoise, orange, and yellow parrots perched in a quilted jungle. She looked like an exotic tea cozy. She greeted Faith with some confusion and possibly an attempt at humor in a grim situation: “Another body? Didn't give him any of your bouillon, did you?”
“Bouillon? Another body? What's this all about?”
Before Faith had a chance to reply to John Dunne's query, Roland Hubbard spoke. “Mrs. Pendergast is a little upset—as are we all. She's referring to the unfortunate death of one of our residents of heart failure a week ago. He had been eating some of Mrs. Fairchild's delicious soup at the time he was stricken.”
Dunne looked incredulous. He had half a mind to take Faith into the office and find out what she knew, but he wanted to see her alone.
“Tomorrow,” he muttered, then remembered all his dear mother's chidings and held out his hand. “Thank you for your help, Mrs. Fairchild. We will be in touch.”
Faith left with one of the officers, and as the door closed behind them, Francis Coffin jumped up excitedly.
“Piece of cake, eh, boys? ‘Shersay the femme.' It's obvious they had a lovers' quarrel and she did him in. And what about the story about being asleep when it happened!” He began to laugh helplessly. “Did you have that soup of hers tested, Roland? Maybe we've got a typhoon Mary on our hands. Well, no need to look further. We've got the killer.”
Dunne nodded his head toward Mrs. Pendergast, whose mouth had dropped open to the carpet. “Shut up, Frank. I know Mrs. Fairchild. Her husband's the minister over in Aleford and she's not a suspect at the moment. Why don't we get on with this and perhaps—Mrs. Pendergast, is it?—could make a pot of coffee?” He'd had it with the
niceties, and he knew Chief Coffin wouldn't even notice the difference.
“Don't see what a minister husband has to do with it. Their wives are just like anybody's else's. Put their pants on one leg at a time.”
Dunne was trying very hard not to listen. It crossed his mind that he might have a difficult time conducting the investigation with Coffin in the same room, since at the moment he was ready to throw the chief up against the wall and listen happily to the sound of all his brittle bones breaking. One of the officers from Byford picked up on the mood. It wasn't hard.
“Chief, maybe the lieutenant could spare us for a minute and we could get a few winks out in the living room. I know I could use them, and we're going to have a lot to do in the morning.”
Dunne made a mental note of the man's name. He definitely deserved a promotion.
 
Faith felt like a schoolgirl as she drove home through the chill winter night in the Byford squad car. And tomorrow's detention was one she wasn't going to get out of no matter how many apples she brought the teacher.
They passed the spot where she had gone off the road and she pointed her car out to the officer, who told her he would get someone to take care of it the next day. She continued to think about what she would tell and not tell John Dunne in the morning. She knew it would be morning and as early as he could get there. She'd gotten to know him very well during what she chose to remember as the time she'd solved the case of Cindy Shepherd's murder with some help from the police. It was unlikely that this was how Dunne characterized the events.
Faith walked through the snow up the front path, or where she knew the path to be. The snow was piled high against the storm door and she tugged valiantly trying to get it open. Just as she was considering going around to the
back, where the door was sheltered by a small porch, the tiny opening she'd achieved was widened by a mighty shove from inside. The Maine balsam wreath her friends from Sanpere, the Fraziers, had sent went flying off into the snow-covered bushes.
Tom. He was up. Granted, it was a rare husband who could sleep after learning that his wife had been about to spend the night with a corpse.
She was a little apprehensive. He might be annoyed, but she also knew he'd be so glad to see her that the annoyance would melt at contact.
“Faith! Are you all right! What in hell is going on!”
She was right—it was all mixed up together and she was in his arms for a long minute before he remembered to be upset again.
“Faith …”
“I know what you're going to say and I'm as shocked and upset as you are. Let's go to bed and I'll tell you all about it, if I can keep awake. Besides, I've never been so cold in my life.”
Faith had been able to supplement Julia Cabot's nightgown and the blanket with her own parka, which she had found in the coat closet off the living room together with her shoes, but it was not enough. Something like what Admiral Byrd and his men had worn would have been a closer approximation.
At last nestled snuggly in their not-so-wee little bed, she found the more she talked, the wider awake she got. It was Tom who began to nod off.
“So you see, I'm not in any danger. Nobody except the Cabots and Leandra Rhodes knew I was sleeping in that room. Perhaps some of the people I saw at dinner assumed so, since it was the guest room, but they wouldn't have known for sure. Which means that I wasn't the intended victim, unless Leandra's kleptomania transforms itself into other aberrations.”
“Leandra's what?” Light was beginning to streak in the
window, and Tom realized he wasn't going to get any sleep. Maybe Faith would make waffles.
Faith told him about her conversation with Julia Cabot and moved on.

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