The Body in the Bouillon (24 page)

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Authors: Katherine Hall Page

BOOK: The Body in the Bouillon
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“Best give me your keys now, my dear. I'll be driving at first.”
She took them out of her prized Judith Leiber bag, which still swung from her shoulder. It had been an engagement present from Hope, and Faith had followed suit and given her one also. Hope! The wedding! She had one more fitting for her matron of honor dress! It wasn't your whole life that flashed before you in terminal moments, but ludicrous and totally inappropriate bits and pieces.
Dr. Hubbard unlocked the door and was reaching for the knob when a knock came.
It was Tom. It had to be Tom. She was safe.
Hubbard opened the closet door and shoved her inside. The same closet she had ducked into a week earlier. The same closet she'd been able to duck out of. A key was pushed into the keyhole, obliterating the light from the room. She heard it turn with a disheartening click. She started to scream and pounded on the door with all her strength. Why wasn't Tom coming? What could be happening? It seemed like hours and her screams were getting hoarser and hoarser.
The door opened at last and she rushed straight into the arms of—Dr. Hubbard.
“Dear Sylvia. Worried about me and wanted me to know I was missed. It sounds like a lovely party, but I told her I wasn't quite up to it. Of course she understood.” He looked at his watch. “I just might be able to get back for
some of my claret cup if we hurry. My great-grandmother's recipe. I do hope you had some.”
Faith was sobbing.
“This closet was the strong room. Tinned on the inside, you know. And these doors are very solid.”
He opened the door to the hall, closed it firmly behind them, and poked the gun in her back. It was obviously the signal to start walking, and she did.
They started down the corridor toward the rear of the house. He walked, as he always did, with a measured tread, head erect. His long overcoat billowed out behind him like the robes of some crazed medieval king.
Near the stairs Faith turned to him and said beseechingly, “Dr. Hubbard, I am going to have a baby.” She was crying so hard she could barely get the words out.
“Are you, my dear? Congratulations are in order! How unfortunate that it should come at a time like this.”
There was no hope whatsoever.
He steered her to an outside door that she remembered led to stairs going down to the parking lot. She stopped crying. This was time not for Niobe but for one of her relatives—Athena or Hera.
At the top of the stairs Faith silently kicked off the high heels she had been wearing. The cold from the icy ground shot painfully through her feet to her legs. She walked on tiptoes, so he wouldn't notice the sudden change in her height. It was excruciating.
“Mind your step here, it's treacherous. We certainly have had a cold winter, haven't we?” Roland sounded as though he were escorting her to the prom and worried she might turn an ankle.
Faith didn't reply. It was one thing for the murderer to be so civilized; she the victim didn't have to follow suit. And she'd be damned if talking about the weather would be her last act.
It wasn't.
At the bottom of the stairs she took off, sprinted a yard
or two ahead of him, tore off the coat and threw it over his head—she was close enough to aim correctly, but far enough away so he couldn't grab her. Then she sped off away from the lampposts toward the darkest part of the shrubbery.
“Faith! Faith! Come back here! You can't get away from me!” He was enraged. The last words were clearer, and presumably he'd gotten out from under the coat, but Faith didn't turn around to look.
There was a series of paths and small terraces that sloped down from the parking lot alongside the steep front driveway. She headed for these and the direction of the main road. Going down the drive itself would give him a clear shot, and she had no doubt that he would use the gun now, no matter who saw or heard. He was beyond whatever reason he'd managed to retain.
“Faith!” he screamed at the top of his voice. He wasn't far away.
She left the path and ran closer to the drive near the mountainous rhododendron bushes, bordered by Canadian hemlocks. There was only one thing to do. She dove into the center of the largest clump and ducked down in the middle of the branches. They were covered with snow and ice, and as she pushed through, they rattled like castanets. The sharp needles of the hemlocks cut into her face, bare forearms, and legs, but her whole body was so numb from the cold, she could scarely feel the pain.
“Faith!”
She held her breath as he came closer and closer. The branches were silent. He was only a few feet away. Thank God she had worn the dark-blue dress.
“You can't hide from me. I know you're in these bushes someplace.”
She let out the breath slowly and took another. She was in a tight fetal position and dared not try to make herself yet smaller. The slightest movement would start the branches clacking together.
“Be reasonable, Faith! It's cold out here. I've changed my mind. I'm not going to hurt you, dear.” His voice, calm now and almost convincing, came from farther away. Then there was silence. All she could hear was the hideously loud beating of her own heart.
Then a sharp crack followed by a regular thwacking noise. Dr. Hubbard had broken off a branch and was beating the bushes.
Thwack! Thwack!
It was coming closer. She shut her eyes and pictured him bringing the stick down on her head with all his manic force.
Thwack! Thwack!
He took his time. He was thorough. She opened her eyes. She wanted to see him coming.
She started to edge cautiously out from under the bush to one farther along, and as she did so she heard a car coming up the drive. Scarcely believing, she waited until it was almost even with her hiding place, then she stood up and broke through the branches the short distance to the pavement.
It was Tom. He stopped the car abruptly and jumped out.
“Faith! What's—”
“Get down,” she screamed as she ran out of range to the driver's side of the car. “He's got a gun.”
She flung herself next to Tom. “It's Dr. Hubbard. He's trying to kill me. He's killed all these people. We've got to get out of here!”
Tom didn't hesitate. Without standing up, he opened the back door and pushed Faith in, then got in the front himself and started the engine.
Faith pulled Ben from the car seat where he had been obliviously sound asleep and shoved him beneath her on the floor. He didn't like it.
Tom executed a rapid U turn and started down the drive.
A few feet away Roland Hubbard came leaping from
the bushes and froze in the car headlights like a deer straying at midnight from the safety of the woods. For an instant he stayed like that, then raised the gun to his temple and pulled the trigger.
Tom put down the phone. Faith was putting the finishing touches to a platter of small open-faced sandwiches she was preparing for a high tea she was serving before the Sunday-school pageant. It was Christmas Eve.
She raised an eyebrow. John Dunne did it so well, she thought she might give it a try too.
“You don't want to know.”
Faith sighed. “I already do and it's the bell all over again. It goes something like this: ‘How is Faith and, of course, dear little Benjamin? It's too bad she had to bring about the collapse of a fine old institution like Hubbard House, not to mention bringing Dr. Hubbard to ruin as well, why bless me, the man delivered half the town.' Millicent has this all down pat, am I right?”
“Essentially, although I think even Millicent is having a little trouble reconciling Roland Hubbard's rewrite of the Hippocratic oath with his otherwise impeccable reputation.”
Aunt Chat walked into the kitchen with Ben trailing closely behind. She'd arrived that morning along with reporters from every major and minor news agency in the northeast. Chat had immediately appointed herself Faith's public relations person and handled them all with great aplomb. They were gone now, and for the last half hour she'd been sitting by the fire playing an intense game of animal dominos with Ben. She was flushed, whether from the flames or her probable triumph Faith wasn't sure, though if childhood memory served, Chat had never let Hope and her win either.
“It's time to stop talking about all this and start a little holiday celebration. I know I started the whole thing, but you didn't listen to me, and if you had, you wouldn't have gotten into the mess you did.” She was hugging Faith tightly as she spoke, which took some of the asperity away from her words.
“But Chat, if I—we that is—hadn't done anything, Dr. Hubbard could have continued for years.” She shuddered.
“I know, you silly girl, and that's why this whole thing is such a mess. You ought to be spanked, yet you probably saved a good many lives. Besides, you're too grown up.”
Faith had heard from Julia Cabot earlier, and the reaction at Hubbard House the night before had been one of shocked disbelief accompanied by profound relief at having escaped alive. Geoffrey Gordon, who had been slated to join the angels, made a miraculous recovery and was leaving for the Riviera later that day.
Faith reluctantly left her aunt's embrace. After last night she had been spending most of her time hugging anyone in sight. But time and tide—or in this case hungry parishioners—wait for no one, and she had to get the rest of the food out. Tom was taking care of the libations—vin
chaud, cider, and tea, definitely no claret cup. Or bouillon.
As she checked the phyllo triangles filled with ricotta and prosciutto browning nicely in the oven, she told Chat, “But there is a grain of truth in what Millicent is spreading all over town, though I will not admit it to anyone other than you two. Hubbard House was a wonderful place—save for that one little problem.”
Faith felt a bit giddy. What was she saying? It was the perfect retirement home, except you might be killed in your sleep?
She continued, “Obviously it got completely warped in his twisted mind, but Roland Hubbard did create a fine community. Do you think it can possibly keep going?”
“I don't claim to understand this part of the world very well,” replied Chat, which was more than modest—she tended to view New England with great bewilderment as a place that banned books, probably still believed in burning witches, and elected some of the most liberal politicians in the country with no apparent regard for consistency. “However, it's always been my impression that once an institution, always an institution here. I'd be willing to bet they won't even change the name, and in future only the most rude boor will ever mention Dr. Hubbard's peccadillo.”
“Chat's right, and I have it on good authority. Cyle dropped by to tell me that he is taking a leave of absence, which news I was able to receive with a relatively sober face. Thank you, Faith.” Tom kissed her and she kissed him back. They had slept very little the night before. In the midst of clutching each other and Ben in thanks at being alive, rejoicing at the news of the possible pregnancy, and starting Faith's circulation going again in various congenial ways, she'd almost forgotten Bootsie's blurted remarks. After she'd told him, Tom had leaped out of bed and done a jig.
“His mother had had a call from Leandra. It looks like the two pillars are going to indeed hold the temple up. The
residents want to run Hubbard House as a cooperative and buy it from Donald, retaining him as chief physician.”
Chat nodded, “You see, just as I said. His whole family turns out to be certifiable, but until he starts talking to the furniture—although even then it might be dismissed as eccentric—no one would think of not retaining him.” She deftly grabbed Ben's hand as he was about to reach for a bottom one of the Comice pears Faith had arranged in a pyramid next to a large wedge of ripe Stilton. “No, no, sweetheart, that's for the company. Aunt Chat will get one especially for you.”
Faith gave her a grateful look and took the tray into the dining room. The table looked very pretty. She'd covered it with shiny gold paper and put candles everywhere. She'd filled every vase she could find with greens and red carnations, then tied trailing gold moire ribbons around the bases. The dining room had a fireplace too, and she went back into the kitchen to tell Tom it was time to light the fire.
She came in on the tail end of a joke. Tom, Chat, and Ben—who was joining in just to be merry—were in gales of laughter.
“Tell Faith,” Tom said as he wiped his eyes. “She needs some comic relief.”
“I told Tom that now there was absolutely no reason for you to feel guilty. Hubbard House was going on, and the next time Millicent said anything, you should look past her and say sweetly, ‘I was merely finishing what I started two years ago—now I have the bats in the belfry.'”
Faith jotted it down next to the phone.
The Millers were the first to arrive, and Samantha promptly took charge of Ben and the children's table set up in the kitchen after first exclaiming how precious he looked. He did look pretty precious in navy-blue velvet short pants and a shirt with tiny trains embroidered on the collar that Chat had given him.
“What will I do when she discovers older boys?” Faith wailed to the Millers.
“Bite your tongue,” said Sam. “Now we older boys”—he put an arm over each of his sons' shoulders—“want to know where all the edibles are.”
Faith steered them into the dining room, where Chat was doing the honors—a teapot in one hand, her own mug of vin chaud in the other. Pix followed her in, and followed her out again as the front doorbell sounded. She had been there for several hours earlier, but still appeared to need to shepherd her friend around.
The parsonage filled quickly, and soon guests were happily munching and sipping. Millicent had arrived, and Chat was managing to keep her away from Faith by waving a plate of brandy snaps someone had brought in front of her face. Millicent wasn't a member of First Parish—she was a Congregationalist, as were her ancestors back to the flood—but she moved with ecumenical fluency from the functions of one religious institution to another, putting an oar in wherever possible—welcome or unwelcome.
Pix wasn't the only one attached to Faith, and she found that whenever she went into the kitchen to replenish supplies, she was accompanied by a dozen or so people who seemed not to want to let her out of their sight. This was terribly reassuring, though rather inconvenient. Tom and Charley MacIsaac had been among their number until Faith pulled them aside and swore she wouldn't even go to the bathroom without telling one of them.
The children were decorating gingerbread cookies under Samantha and Jenny Moore's watchful eyes. The Nutcracker was on the CD player and Faith took a moment to let the feeling of the holiday wash over her. It was Christmas Eve, a time of magic and promise. And despite a few scratches, she was here to enjoy it.
 
Two hours later she and Chat were sitting in the family pew waiting for the pageant to start. It was very cold out, and the few steps from the parsonage to the church had felt like the Iditarod. Faith hugged her coat close to her and
moved an inch or two nearer to Chat's ample frame. The three Advent candles burned brightly on the altar. The choir began to sing “Silent Night” while the children walked down the aisle dressed in sheets, cut-down bathrobes, old drapes, looking for all the world like real angels, shepherds, kings, queens, and the Holy Family. Eight-year-old William Carpenter stepped forward and started to read slowly and clearly: “And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree …”
Ben was one of the angels and did not fidget too much until it was time for him to appear to the shepherds keeping watch over their flock by night. Faith thought of her own public debut, a nonspeaking role as a tree in first grade. She'd felt she was destined for better things. Ben seemed to be handling his first foray with an equal lack of stagefright. The only hitch had been when he had removed his halo during the processional, saying loudly that it itched him. Tom was watching his flock while seated to one side of the pulpit, and his eyes searched for Faith's as Ben's group started to sing “The First Nowell.” There seemed to be a tear or two in his and she knew there were in hers. Chat squeezed her hand.
It was a lovely pageant, and Pamela Albright, kneeling unobtrusively in front of the children and gently supplying a line here and there, deserved a medal. The kings arrived and the congregation welcomed them with a rousing rendition of “We Three Kings.” More than one dear friend of Faith's seemed to stumble over the “Sealed in the stone-cold tomb” line, and the lady herself skipped the verse altogether.
Near the end of the pageant the three Queens arrived, an addition Pamela had suggested after discovering Norma Farber's poem “The Queens Came Late.” Samantha Miller stepped forward and read it now:
The Queens came late, but the Queens were there
with gifts in their hands and crowns on their hair.
They'd come, these three like the Kings, from far,
following, yes, that guiding star.
They'd left their ladles, linens, looms,
their children playing in nursery rooms,
and told their sitters: “Take charge! For this
is a marvelous sight we must not miss!”
Faith thought she would have felt the same way: not wanting to miss anything. It was what life was all about. She listened to the gifts the Queens brought—“a homespun gown of blue, and chicken soup—with noodles, too—and a lingering, lasting cradle-song.” Then she heard the last lines:
The Queens came late and stayed not long,
for their thoughts already were straining far—
past manger and mother and guiding star
and child a-glow as a morning sun—
toward home and children and chores undone.
Faith folded her hands over her for-the-moment flat belly and said thank you, then stood up with the rest of the congregation to sing “Joy to the World.”
 
“How about Sophie?”
“How about Sophie who? Sophie Tucker? Hagia Sophia?”
Tom had been on the edge of sleep and he was tired. A few hours after the pageant there had been the candlelight service; then when they got home, Chat was waiting with champagne, ginger ale for Faith, and some caviar from Petrossian's she'd secreted in the back of the refrigerator. The three of them had sat by the tree talking and savoring until late. There was the Christmas Day service tomorrow and Ben would be rousing them in what seemed like a few minutes to see what Santa had brought.
“How about Sophie as a name for the baby? Like a little
French schoolgirl? Or maybe Emma? Emma Woodhouse? Emma Bovary? Emma the Laura Ashley perfume?”
“What makes you so sure this is going to be a girl?”
“I don't know. It just feels like it's going to be a girl.”
Tom rolled over and drew Faith close to him. “Well then, why don't we name her Pandora after her mother and be done with it?”

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