The Body in the Ivy (28 page)

Faith put her arms around Chris. “It must have been terrible. You were so young.”

“Maybe I would have chosen the same way out or had the baby and given it up for adoption. It was the not choosing! Prin chose. Sandy chose. I wasn't given the chance to say what
I
wanted. What
my
choice would have been.”

Faith nodded.

“He, I'm sure he wasn't a doctor, didn't do a very good
job. I was quite ill for the next few days and it got so bad that I had to consult a real doctor. That's when I learned I would never be able to have children. They yelled at me, the doctor and his nurse. I was lucky to be alive. I was—so many didn't make it. Young women today have no idea…

“All I could think of was Prin. What she had done to me. How much I hated her.” Chris sounded exhausted. “We all hated her. Every single one of us here. Even Elaine, I'm sure. I would see her look at her sister sometimes and there was a kind of fury that frightened me. Adolescents—that's what we were, not adults—feel things so intensely. And commit desperate acts out of real or imagined despair.”

Faith didn't want to leave Chris and told her so.

“I'm all right. I feel safe here. Come get me when the boat arrives. Don't leave me on the island.”

“I would never do that.”

“I know, just my craziness. She made us crazy. That was Prin's gift to us all and why she had to die.”

Reluctantly Faith retraced her steps. She'd left the smaller of the two flashlights she'd brought with Chris and wished she'd taken the time to pack her some food, but Chris had assured her she wouldn't be able to eat anything.

Faith could understand why.

 

It was still light. Back on the path, Faith decided to follow it a bit farther, and her hunch proved correct. Off to one side was a snug little cabin with the kind of vertical siding Faith associated with Scandinavian dwellings. A thatched roof completed the picture. The
door was locked. Faith looked about for a key. There was no doormat, too obvious in any case, nor any flowerpots. A crushed stone path led to the door from the wooded path. Hostas, flattened by the storm, lined the way. Pobbles, those round rocks created by the crashing surf, were placed at intervals. The author had had various words inscribed on them: believe, dream, and hope, persevere. Rather trite, Faith thought judgmentally. Surely the writer could have come up with others, not these obvious sentiments. This thought led to another, and sure enough, the key was under seek.

Barbara Bailey Bishop's refuge was as Spartan as her handyman's, but then it was not her main abode. A woodstove, a large table stacked with yellow legal-sized pads, and a Dundee marmalade jar stuffed with sharpened pencils furnished the room. The only indication of the owner's wealth and status was an Aeron desk chair. The room had a closed-up feel, and Faith doubted anyone had been here since the author was here on Friday, the day of their arrival.

She looked at the pad in front of the chair. It was covered in Bailey's neat script, nothing crossed out. The dialogue was similar to that in the book Faith had brought to read, only this conversation involved an eighteenth-century married woman's rejection of her true love in order to remain faithful to her wedding vows, as opposed to the twentieth-century woman in the one Faith was reading.

If the room had secrets, it was keeping them. No sign of Brent, or anyone else. She had one more place to check and then she had to go back inside the main
house. She hoped nothing of a gingham dog and calico cat nature had happened in her absence. The women were so tightly wound that it wouldn't take much to set them off, clawing at each other, or worse.

Soon she could make out the greenhouses and left the path, heading for them. Chris had been right about the damage. Faith circled them and shone her light through the glass. No one—dead or alive. From there she headed toward the house and the patio outside the pool room, backing against the door to the spot from which she'd looked out, trying to remember where the grass had been tamped down. She headed in that direction, but the storm had obliterated any traces of something or someone being dragged along. As she walked she was both afraid of what she might find and eager to do so. A few minutes' walk brought her to the end of the grass. There was a short drop to the water below and she was glad she had her flashlight trained steadily in front of her. At high tide, which it was now, stepping off would land you directly into the frigid water. Is that where Brent ended up? Dragged to this spot? Or was he hiding out, having constructed something like Chris's lean-to. Suddenly Faith wished she had forced Chris to come back with her. Safety in numbers. Rachel, too. As the night drew nigh, staying alone outside on the island seemed like a very, very bad idea.

 

The women must have turned on every light in the living room. The porch lights and outside lights were on, too. Through the mist, the house looked like a ghostly galleon, seeming to float above the ground. Faith walked up the front stairs and across the wide porch.
She didn't want to startle anyone, so she called out, “It's Faith Fairchild!” before knocking at the door and showing her face through the glass. Even so, as she walked in, she could tell that Phoebe, for one, had reacted. Her knitting was on the floor and she was standing up, poised for flight.

“Where have you been?” Maggie asked angrily. “We've been worried sick about you!”

Faith took the flag from beneath her jacket, where she had been protecting it from the damp, and said, “I told you I was going to try to find Brent Justice.”

“Did you?” Maggie asked.

“No. No, there's no sign of him,” Faith said.

“Rachel was right. You did send him away—with the only boat and whatever you use to communicate with the outside world. I never bought that, not for a moment,” Lucy said, facing Elaine, who was seated in one of the large armchairs on either side of the fireplace. Someone had started a fire, but it was sputtering out now.

“What?” Elaine appeared to have been thinking of something else. “What are you talking about, Lucy?”

“Snap out of it! You sent your handyman off on the first day to trap us all here. Don't try to deny it.”

Faith wondered whether Elaine had slipped some kind of pills into her pocket when she'd gone into her room. If she had, it had been adroitly done. Faith hadn't spotted it. But she appeared to be on something now. Almost in a trance.

“I have no idea where Brent is, Mrs. Fairchild. You were going to look for him. Did you find him?”

“She just said she didn't!” Lucy was enraged. “What's wrong with you!”

Elaine sat up in the chair. “Nothing's wrong with me; what's wrong with
you
?” She'd snapped out of it, whatever it was—at least for the moment.

Faith decided it was time to take charge, although Maggie had been doing a creditable job.

“I'm going to change out of these things, then make up a tray of soup and sandwiches. We all need to eat something. I'll start the coffee, too.”

“Just don't leave the food unattended. Wait until you come downstairs to make the coffee,” Phoebe said.

Faith raised an eyebrow, but the woman was making a good point.

“You didn't find Brent Justice, but how about Chris and Rachel?” Maggie asked.

Faith wasn't exactly sure why, but it seemed best to answer no, and in fact, she hadn't seen Rachel, only her guitar.

Before she went upstairs, she went into the pantry and checked the flour canister with the keys. They were all there in the Baggie, as she had left them. She shook the flour from the bundle, slipped it into her pocket, and replaced the canister. In her room, as she changed as rapidly as possible, Faith cast a longing look at the deep tub and promised herself both an undisturbed soak and undisturbed sleep when this was all over—back in Aleford. Then she walked quietly to Elaine's room at the end of the hall. She wanted to see what was on the piece of paper that Elaine had hidden when Faith had come in to tell her about Bobbi Dolan's death. It wasn't work. The author hadn't been writing on one of her legal pads. It had been a sheet of white paper, similar to the kind
on which she'd written that initial arrival note to Faith.

Unlocking the door and closing it behind her, Faith went straight to the desk. There was nothing on the surface, save a blotter edged with Turkish marbleized paper. The same paper covered a pencil holder, the pencils themselves, and a small notepad. There was only one drawer, a large one that extended below the full length of the desk. It held various kinds of writing paper, an address book, stamps, but nothing revealing. There wasn't time to search the room further. Faith closed the drawer and started to leave, then went back to the desk and lifted the blotter. There were three sheets of paper beneath. Two were letters, one to her agent complaining about a delay in payment and instructing him to get onto the publisher immediately. The other was to someone named Kay Lyon thanking her for the expert help she had provided with some research. The tone of the letter was warm, even effusive, and it was clear that Kay was someone Elaine liked and admired very much. But it was the third sheet that drew Faith's attention. It was the third sheet she'd seen the other day—a list, as she had thought from her glimpse of it. Names, numbered from 1 to 9. All their names, even Brent's and Faith's own. What chilled her to the bone was the fact that Brent's, Bobbi's, and Gwen's all had a line drawn through them. They'd been eliminated. Three names, three vases shattered. What could be easier than to creep down your private staircase and tip over the roses, tip them over to spread fear among the survivors? And survivors for how long? Was this all a vendetta? Since Elaine didn't know who had killed
her sister, was she going to kill
all
the suspects? Faith thought about the way she had seemed when Faith first entered the living room a short time ago. The author had been out of it. Was the woman truly insane?

She put the sheets of paper back and hastened out the door, locking it behind her. Just one night. Stay close to everyone and never be alone with Elaine. Joining Chris was a tempting notion, but Faith was afraid that would trigger Elaine's suspicions and she would track them down. A plot after the writer's own heart. She knew the island better than any of them and Faith had no doubt she would find them. Better to behave as if everything were normal. Normal! She almost laughed.

Why Brent Justice? Why had he been “crossed off”? He must have seen her when she'd killed Bobbi. If Elaine had sent him away, she wouldn't have had his name on the list. A list, Faith forced herself to remember, the writer had in hand before Faith told her about Bobbi Dolan's death.

 

“Soup anyone? It's piping hot. It's seafood chowder, but if anyone would prefer split pea, I have that, as well.” Faith set the tray with mugs of the soup, warm breads, and some cheeses on a glass-topped table.

“I'm sure the chowder will be fine,” Elaine said, yet she didn't move in the direction of the food. No one did.

“I'll get the coffee,” Faith said. “I don't suppose anyone wants some of the cake I made earlier today. The Pelham Fudge Cake?”

“The cake that's been sitting on the counter all day,” Phoebe said. “No, thank you.”

“Oh, really,” Maggie said. “What do you think? One of us is walking around with a hypodermic full of cyanide to squirt into some baked goods? I'd love a piece.”

Faith gave her full marks for guts and went to fetch the food.

It was only eight o'clock, although it seemed like two o'clock in the morning. Faith had eaten some soup, bread, and cheese, although she wasn't hungry, and was now drinking her second cup of coffee. Phoebe had stuck to coffee and her knitting, which appeared to be a dog sweater. She, like everyone else, was saying almost nothing. Maggie had eaten some soup, then, rather defiantly, a large slice of cake that she declared to be a perfect duplicate of the college favorite. Elaine hadn't moved from her chair, or moved much at all. Faith had built the fire up and was keeping it going. There was a large supply of wood. One side of the fireplace had been fashioned to store wood, each log cut perfectly to size and stacked in an orderly fashion. Brent Justice's work, Faith supposed.

Lucy had gone to the bookshelves and was apparently absorbed in Nancy Mitford's
Love in a Cold Climate
. She'd had some soup and was nursing a cup of coffee.

“Well,” said Maggie briskly. “How do you want to do this? When should we start our vigils?” She'd brought her voluminous briefcase from her room, along with a heavy sweater, and had been devoting herself to reading what were important papers relating to college business, judging from the serious expression on her face. Faith wondered about Elaine's beneficent gift. What would happen now?

“It's a little early,” Lucy said, looking up from her book. “Why don't we start at ten and do two three-hour shifts, then one last two-hour one. If the fog clears, it should be light at six, maybe even earlier. Mrs. Fairchild should choose which one she wants, since she'll be alone.”

Maggie nodded. Phoebe and Elaine appeared to be thinking of other things. In Phoebe's case, Faith was pretty sure it was the little doggie for which she was knitting. In Elaine's…?

“Phoebe? Elaine? What do you think?” Maggie said sharply.

“Whatever you decide is fine with me,” Phoebe said.

“I concur.” Elaine's voice was unexpected. So was her next move. She got up and walked behind the chair to the door and started to ascend the stairs.

“Just a minute! We said no one was to leave the room!” Lucy called out.

Elaine turned around. “I'm just getting some Tylenol. You can all come with me if you want. I don't have a gun in my medicine cabinet, if that's what you think.”

Syringes of cyanide, guns in medicine cabinets. Things were so far out of hand Faith couldn't think of a metaphor to describe them.