Katherine Hall Page - The Body in the Gazebo: A Faith Fairchild Mystery (Faith Fairchild Mysteries)

K ATHERINE H ALL P AGE is the author of eighteen previous Faith Fairchild mysteries, the first ofwhich received the Agatha Award for best first mystery. The Body in the Snowdrift was honored with the Agatha Award for best novelof 2006. Page also won an Agatha for her short story The Would-Be Widower.She lives in Massachusetts with her husband and son.

www.katherine-hall-page.org

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My thanks to Dr. Robert DeMartino, Jean Fogelberg, Nicholas Hein, Amalie Kass, Kathy and Peter Winham, Valerie Wolzien, and the Poison Lady, Luci Zahray, for help from their various areas of expertise. Also many thanks to my agent, Faith Hamlin, and to my editor, Wendy Lee.

The idea for this book originated during a glorious week on Marthas Vineyard with my friends of over forty years, Kate Danforth, Mimi Garrett, Virginia Pick, and Margaret Stuart. Always, my thanks to them.

The Body in theGazebo

The Body in theSleigh

The Body in theGallery

The Body in theIvy

The Body in theSnowdrift

The Body in theAttic

The Body in theLighthouse

The Body in theBonfire

The Body in theMoonlight

The Body in the BigApple

The Body in theBookcase

The Body in theFjord

The Body in theBog

The Body in theBasement

The Body in theCast

The Body in theVestibule

The Body in theBouillon

The Body in theKelp

The Body in theBelfry

T he first letter arrived on a Tuesday. Ursula Rowe had no need to read the brittle, yellowed newspaper clippings that were enclosed. She knew what they said. But the few words on the single sheet of white stationery in the envelope were new. New and succinct:

Are you sure you were right?

She went upstairs to her bedroomhers alone for too many yearsand sat down on the antique four-poster bed theyd bought when, newly married, theyd moved into this house. The bed had pineapples carved on the finialssymbols of hospitality. She reached up and traced the intricately carved wood with her fingers. Pineapples. A great luxury for those early colonistsher long-ago ancestors. How had such exotic fruit made its way to New England? Shed never considered this before. Wouldnt they have rotted in the hold of a ship on the voyage from South America? Perhaps the pineapples came from the Southern colonies. That must have been it.

Her mind was wandering. No, her mind was trying to take her away from what was clutched in her other hand. The letter. She closed her eyes. Arnold had joked that the pineapples were fertility symbols. Certainly the bed had borne fruittwo childrenand been the site of years of pleasure. He had been gone for such a long time, but she could still recall his touch, his whispered endearments, the passion. Shed never wanted anyone else.

Ursula read the words againa single sentence written in a shaky hand. You couldnt duplicate it; it came only with age. So, the writer was old. She looked at her own hand. The raised blue veins were so close to the surface of her powdery, thin skin that it seemed they would burst through. Her fingers, once long and straight, were knobbed and for some years shed removed all her rings except her wedding band, worn thin. An old womans hands. The change had come so graduallythe brown spots first appearing as summer freckles to her mindthat even now she could scarcely believe her age. She loosened her grip and put everything back in the envelope, tucking the flap in securely.

Where could she hide it? It wouldnt do to have her daughter come across it. Not that Pix was nosy, but she sometimes put Ursulas wash away, so the Sheraton chest of drawers was out. And the blanket chest at the foot of the bed that had been her grandmothers was out, too. Pix regularly aired the contents. There wasnt much furniture in the room. Some years after Arnold died, Ursula had removed his marble-topped nightstandthe repository of books, eyeglasses, reading lamp, alarm clock, and eventually pill bottlesreplacing it with a chaise and small candlestick table, angled into the room. It felt wrong to get into bed during the day, but shed wanted a place to stretch out to read and, increasingly, to nap. Somehow the chaise made her feel a bit more like a grande dame than an old one. There was a nightstand on her side of the bed, but her granddaughter, Samantha, often left little notes in the drawer and might notice the envelope. Ursula always saved the notesbits of poetry Samantha liked or just a few words, Have sweet dreams, Granny. Generally Ursula did. Her days had been good ones and she felt blessed. Arnold, the two children, although Arnold junior lived in Santa Fe and she only saw him and his wife during the summer in Maine and on her annual visit out there. Three grandchildren, all healthy and finding their ways without too much difficulty so far. But you never know what life will hand you. She stood up, chiding herself. The six wordsAre you sure you were right?had entered her system like a poison, seeping into the very marrow of her bones and replacing her normal optimism with dark thoughts.

The mail had come at noon when the bright sun was still high in the clear blue sky. She walked to the arched window that overlooked the backyard. It was why they had chosen this room for their own, although it was not as large as the master bedroom across the hall. Each morning this uncurtained window beckoned them to a new day. And it had a window seat. The window seat! She slid the envelope under the cushion. Done. She gazed out the window, feeling herself slowly relax. The yard sloped down to the Concord River, which occasionally overflowed, flooding the swing set that was still in place. Arnie and Pix had gleefully waded out to it as children, getting gloriously wet sliding down the slide into the shallow water. The family had always kept canoes there, too, under the majestic oak planted by design or perhaps a squirrel. It didnt matter. The tree was perfect for climbing, and a succession of tree houses. The grandchildren had added kayaks to the fleet and given her a fancy new one for her eightieth birthday, or had it been her eighty-fifth? Today the river flowed gently, its slightly rippled surface like the glass in the windows of Alefords oldest houses. A good day to be on the water. However, shed promised Pix never to go out for a paddle alone. Perhaps shed do some gardening. Yes, that was the thing. Start to clear some of the dead leaves left by winters ravages from the perennial border around the gazebo that Arnold had insisted they build near the riverbank. Shed been reluctant about itno, not reluctant. That was the wrong word. Too mild. Opposed. That was more like it.

Ursula had never wanted to see another gazebo again, not after that earlier summer. Not after the image that had still appeared unbidden and unwanted in nightmaresand her waking thoughts. Arnold had told her this one would replace that other gazebo. It would be a symbol of their new life and their future together, blotting out the horror forever. She could call it a pergola or a garden house instead if she liked. Shed given in. And hed been right, of course. It had brought the family much pleasureespecially, screened in, as a refuge from the mosquitoes and other insects that living by the river brought. The grandchildren loved it, too.