The Body in the Gazebo (22 page)

Tom had his hand raised to ring again. She didn’t want to think how fast he must have been driving, although Aleford wasn’t that far from Somerville, a straight shot out Route 2.

“It’s been Lily and Albert all the time,” Faith said, “and I’ve only got five minutes before I have to leave for my appointment with Mrs. Jessup. Come on.” She pulled him into the living room, skirting the Starbucks tray. The ice in the coffee was no doubt melting, but Faith had changed her mind. She didn’t like mochas that much anyway.

“Why don’t you tell me what’s going on, or rather what’s been going on.” Tom addressed the two of them. He looked very tired and very stern.

Lily released Albert and he sat up straighter.

“It was all my idea. Albert has nothing to do with it.” She looked a lot like Sydney Carton approaching the guillotine.

“I’m assuming you’re talking about taking the money from the church’s account.”

Albert’s face was ashen. He croaked out, “It wasn’t just Lily. I’m equally to blame. More so.” He cleared his throat; his next words came out louder and stronger.

“You shouldn’t have treated Lily the way you did, Tom. Talked to her the way you did. It wasn’t fair. She was just trying to do her job, and in my opinion, she was doing a damn fine one!”

“Wait a minute.” Faith hated to leave, but she had to get going. Before she did, she needed to inject a little reality into the situation.

“The two of you stole ten thousand dollars from the church, cast the blame on an innocent person, and somehow it’s my husband’s fault?”

It was Lily’s turn.

“You bet it is! We wanted to turn the tables on him. See how he felt being treated like a criminal. And aside from what he did to me—I was committed to my calling before he sowed all those seeds of doubt—the parish needed to see that their emperor had no clothes. He’s fooled parents into thinking he’s so in touch with their kids, but he has no idea what’s going on with them and the issues they have. I heard that his own kid was in trouble at school, too. The way Tom is alienating the younger generation, his sainted First Parish is going to find itself without a congregation when all his suck-ups die off. And he had no right to rake
me
over the coals. I have a father who does that!”

Seeing the look that passed between Tom and Faith, Lily added, “And don’t start with any psychobabble. This has nothing to do with what’s happened between my father and me. It’s all Tom’s fault. Period.”

During Lily’s diatribe, the Reverend Thomas Preston Fairchild had turned beet red. Faith had seen him lose his temper a few times. It was scary. When Lily had mentioned Ben’s trouble at school, Faith thought Tom was going to explode, but he’d waited. Steam rising from the center of Vesuvius, but not the main event. That was coming now. He was going to lose it. And he did. For the next few minutes the “sanctimonious prig” let Albert, still cowering, and Lily, suddenly sobbing, have it. About the laws of man, and yes, God, that they had broken. About their self-centeredness. About the betrayal of their calling, and on and on.

“We didn’t spend the money,” Lily interrupted at one point.

Faith had been wondering about this. Starbucks was pricey, but Albert had had the car before the thefts and Lily wasn’t shopping on Newbury Street, except maybe at the Second Time Around. What had they done with the loot?

Albert brightened. “Yes, it’s all here. In an envelope with the withdrawal slips under Lily’s mattress. We’d always intended to give it back.”

Tom blew up again. The lava flow wasn’t quite as monumental as before, but still very impressive, fed by the force of the anguish he and Faith had suffered over the last twelve days. The idea that they had been toying with his life—with the life of his church—was intolerable. Under the mattress, indeed!

Reluctantly Faith took her leave as Tom was calling Sam. It was like skipping out before the last act of a play, a play like
The Mousetrap
. Tom would tell her about it later. She couldn’t keep Mrs. Jessup waiting. She couldn’t let Ursula down. Not at this point.

M
rs. Schuyler Jessup was wearing a daffodil-yellow nubby wool suit over a delphinium-blue and white striped silk blouse. Faith was immediately reminded of the flowers she’d seen as she walked from the Common to the Mt. Vernon Street address. Everything bloomed earlier in Boston and it had been a nice reminder of what was to come in Aleford.

Introductions were made and Mrs. Jessup instructed Faith to call her “Babs.”

“My family called me ‘Babby’ for many years, but I put a stop to that when I married Scooter. It was bad enough being Babs and Scooter. Will you have coffee or tea?”

Faith hesitated. From the look of the room—the export porcelain, Chippendale and Sheraton furniture, damask upholstery, walls crammed with artwork collected by many generations—she was sure the tray would be loaded down with the appropriate sterling vessels. If she chose coffee and Babs normally had tea, the companion, a pleasant-looking, slight middle-aged woman hovering at the door, would never be able to carry it all.

“If you’re wondering what I take, it’s coffee. I know ‘elevenses’ is a British custom, but I’ve never been a tea drinker. Besides, there’s all that fuss with strainers, lemon slices, and extra hot water pots.”

“Coffee is fine—it’s what I prefer, too.”

Entering the room, Faith had been struck by the thought that ninety really is the new seventy when it came to Ursula and now the woman before her. She recalled that Babs had been described as athletic in her youth and she looked as if she were still scoring below par. Her spine was ramrod straight and the only softness evident were her skin and snowy white curls, kept away from her face by a headband that picked up the blue in her blouse. She was wearing pearls the size of pigeon eggs.

Coffee and a plate of tasty-looking macaroons arrived. The companion poured out and then discreetly disappeared.

“I’m sorry to hear that Ursula has been ill. Our families knew each other, but I’m afraid we lost touch when the Lymans moved out west.”

If Faith hadn’t known Babs was referring to Aleford, a twenty-minute drive, she would have assumed the woman meant the Territories.

“She’s on the mend and I’m sure will make a full recovery.”

“There. We’ve taken care of all the niceties, so why don’t you tell me what she’s sent you to see me about?”

Faith had been afraid she’d have trouble changing gears from larceny to murder. The present to the past. Driving over, she’d been euphoric—and furious. She’d called Tom as she was walking down Charles Street. Sam was sending one of the firm’s associates over. No crime had been reported, so Tom couldn’t call the police in at this point, nor did he want to—however, a crime had been committed. He didn’t know how to proceed. Sam was trying to get on an earlier flight and meanwhile had told Tom to stay put. Lily and Albert were definite flight risks. The associate would be reinforcement, and a witness. Tom told her that Albert had stopped cowering and started crying. He was continuing to break into tears at regular intervals. Lily, however, had regained her composure and had refused to say anything further except to call Tom several names that were not going to help with Saint Peter, should she get that far. The scene was pretty much what Faith had thought it would be.

At the Jessup house, the turmoil of the morning receded the moment she’d stepped into the downstairs hall and walked up the curved stairs, the mahogany banister soft and gleaming after centuries of use. By the time she was ushered into the sun-dappled living room, Faith was imagining herself stepping into a Henry James novel or Marquand’s
The Late George Apley
.

“It has to do with the death of Ursula’s brother, Theo.”

Babs put her cup down. “We loved Theo. He was my husband’s best friend. Scooter never got over his death. We were so young and this sort of thing had never happened to us—I mean, a tragic accident, a death, illnesses. Those were supposed to come later in life, and at that point we didn’t think past the next week.”

“You do know what happened afterward? About the way Arnold Rowe was cleared?”

“Oh yes. I must confess that I didn’t really notice Ursula much at the Vineyard. She was just Theo’s little sister, although now the age difference scarcely matters. At the time, there was a great deal of talk about the way she marched into the jail and some people were rather scandalized. It all died down quickly. There was other, bigger news during those Depression years and then the war.”

Faith went on to tell her about the letters and handed over the copies she’d made for Babs to read herself. She handed them back, holding the papers in her fingertips as if they were contaminated with something.

“I’m afraid I still don’t understand why you’re here. Pleasant as it is. What does Ursula want?”

“Any information you might have about Violet Winthrop. That’s who she thinks is sending these. She doesn’t know anything about her, or her husband, except that he was transferred to New York some time in the thirties. I’m going to New York tomorrow to speak with her.”

Babs gave a wry smile. “And since, unfortunately, we are related by marriage, I’m the one to fill you in.”

“Yes. We’re trying to figure out why she might be doing this. Ursula thinks it could be boredom. I’m not so sure.”

“And you would be right, knowing Violet. I doubt it’s that simple. Let’s get some hot coffee. I need another cup and it’s time for some sandwiches.” She pressed a spot in the design on the Oriental rug and the companion appeared so quickly she must have been sitting near the door. She said she’d brew some fresh coffee and bring another tray, whisking away the one on the table in front of Babs.

The old lady settled back in her chair. Faith noticed a malacca cane next to it, the only indication that Mrs. Jessup needed help getting around.

“Tell me about yourself while we’re waiting. I know your husband is a minister. I’m afraid I would have been quite inadequate as a clerical spouse. For one thing, I have a tendency to laugh in church.”

Babs was a kindred spirit and Faith soon had her laughing with stories of Faith’s life.

The sandwiches were egg salad, freshly made, with a little chive, on sourdough—not the usual WASP equivalent of Wonder bread with the crusts removed. More coffee was poured and Babs started talking about Violet Winthrop, née Hammond.

“She was quite a piece of work. I disliked her intensely and we were thrown together quite a bit because Theo was madly in love with her, as was Charlie Winthrop. Neither of them would have married her. She was a fling, and common sense, plus family pressure, would have prevailed. I still don’t know how she managed to get Charlie to propose, but he did, very shortly after Theo was killed. Perhaps he was feeling his own mortality. And Violet was extremely beautiful. It was something to walk down the street with her. People, men and women both, would stop to stare at her. And oh, how she loved the attention.

“She had been considered fast at school. I think it was Miss Porter’s, maybe Rosemary Hall. My mother wasn’t happy about my going around with her, but I told her I couldn’t very well not, since Scooter was such good friends with the men she dated. Mother needn’t have worried and I told her so. Violet liked men. Period. She didn’t have, or want, girlfriends. She certainly wouldn’t have had any influence over me. We were both females, yes, but chalk and cheese—you can decide which was which. This doesn’t help you, though. Ancient history.

“They moved to New York soon after they were married. It was a small wedding at her people’s out in Chicago. Charlie wasn’t terribly bright and he was in the way in the office here, according to one of our Winthrop cousins. The New York office had a spot for him where he couldn’t cause much damage. Essentially it was a place to go every day—the family taking care of one of its own. The Winthrops did make rather a lot of money during the war years and he came in for a great deal of it just by being one. There’s a daughter, Marguerite. Charlie wanted Scooter to be her godfather, but I told him absolutely not. I think he said he was an agnostic or something and wouldn’t do a good job. It wouldn’t have fooled anybody else, but probably fooled Charlie, who wouldn’t have paused to consider that at the time Scooter was a junior warden at church. There were no other children and Marguerite never married to my knowledge. Charlie died many years ago and the last I heard mother and daughter were still living in the same town house they’d been living in at his death. On the East Side somewhere. You have to understand, I didn’t just dislike Violet because she was always quite awful to me—made me feel like a kind of freak because I enjoyed sports, terrible catty remarks about my muscular calves. Those things hurt when you’re young and insecure. No, I also disliked her because I thought she was completely amoral. No heart. However you want to put it. She used people. The only person she cared about was herself. Poor Charlie.”

And poor Theo, Faith thought, and said, “This helps a great deal.” They hadn’t known about Marguerite Winthrop. Could she be responsible for the letters?

“Although,” she said, “I still don’t know why she, or perhaps her daughter, would decide to torment Ursula at this point. Malicious mischief? She wants some kind of last thrill?”

“Dear Faith, don’t kid yourself. Violet did a lot of things for thrills, but I doubt this is her object now.”

“Then what?”

“Money, of course.”

“Ursula and I talked about the possibility that it was blackmail of some sort, that the letters were veiled threats to bring the whole thing up again. But she’s a wealthy woman. Why would she need money?”

“Not ‘need,’ ‘want.’ When you go to see her, how about a little wager that she has one of those needlepoint pillows with
YOU CAN NEVER BE TOO RICH OR TOO THIN
on it.”

It was a sucker bet. Faith politely declined and, after a heartfelt promise to visit again, took her leave. She had a great deal to think about.

T
here was a time when flying had been fun. That time was long past. First there had been a long wait in the security line, then a further wait when someone’s laptop case strap got caught in the conveyer belt, bringing everything to a halt, and finally a wait by the gate while the plane—late arriving—was serviced. The wad of gum below the window and crumpled napkins at her feet were evidence to the contrary, but Faith didn’t care. She just wanted to get to the city.