The Body in the Lighthouse (9 page)

“Tree house off to one side? No, too contrived. Maybe she could be sleeping on the roof of the trailer?” Linda proposed

Faith was doubtful. “I don't think people do that. What about something like the Pines and the other houses here from that period—sprawling Victorians with sleeping porches on the second floor? We could just paint most of it as a backdrop and construct the porch, then put a ladder against it—like an elopement.”

“Perfect!” Linda exclaimed. “The Capulets would live in a big house—you're right. We'll do a simple backdrop and Romeo can climb a ladder instead of a tree. It will be easy to construct the sleeping porch/balcony from the scaffolding we've been using to paint the sets.”

Happy to have been of service, and not a little pleased with her growing sense of stagecraft, Faith went to get the containers, brushes, and paint she had left in a storeroom behind the stage the day before. She'd just switched off the light and was about to leave, when she heard voices in the hall. It was Roland and Juliet—Becky. They were arguing heatedly. Surprised, Faith stepped back in and pulled the door almost shut.

“I will not have the entire production sabotaged because of your hormones!”

Roland had raised his voice, and from the tone, Faith expected Becky to fall to pieces. Becky was apparently made of very stern stuff, however.

“My hormones are none of your business, and I don't know what you mean anyway. We happen to live in a free country, Mr. Hayes, and I can be in love with anyone I please. Not that I'm saying I am.”

“No, you can't. Not until this play is over. If your family and Ted's find out about you two, we'll be lucky to have ten people in the audience. No Hamilton or Prescott will come,
nor
any of their relations,
nor
anyone who knows them—which takes care of the entire island population
except for the summer people, and you never know if they'll turn up for something or not.”

“What makes you so sure Ted and I are…you know, that hormone thing?”

“I have eyes. And while you're both good actors, you're not that good.”

Becky sounded relieved. “Well, you don't have to worry. We
are
just acting. I guess you haven't been giving us enough credit.”

“All right,” Roland said in a resigned voice. “Make sure it stays that way—acting.”

“It's just a play, Mr. Hayes. And Ted Hamilton is just a friend.”

Standing in the storeroom, Faith thought it was a good thing Roland Hayes didn't have X-ray vision like so many schoolteachers. Otherwise, he'd have been able to see Miss Becky Prescott's crossed fingers behind her back.

 

The highlight of the morning was Persis Sanford's triumphant return to the company. Faith had seen her in blooming health at the funeral, but prior to that, Persis had been recuperating at home. She'd probably gotten bored, with no one except Kenny around. So far, the only words Faith had heard issuing from his lips were “Hi” and “'Scuse me,” not exactly scintillating conversation. This lack of communication skills would be understandable if Persis's mother had been anything like her daughter; growing up, Kenny would never have been able to get a word in edgewise. Like Ursula, Faith found herself feeling
sorry for the boy—or rather, the man. Except Kenny, even as his name suggested, would always be a boy—Kenny, never Ken.

“I'm back!” Persis called, stretching the word out and plainly enjoying the effect as everyone rushed to greet her. Almost everyone. Linda looked positively terror-stricken and took a giant step toward the rear of the stage, ducking behind the curtain.

“Welcome, welcome,” Roland said. “I don't know what we would have done. You are irreplaceable, my dear.”

“Thank you,” Persis purred. “It takes more than a dollop of turpentine to do me in. Up to the hospital, they said it was pure luck that I spat it right out. Must have been an accident,
they
said. Painting scenery and using any old container to hold the turps. I know they called our stage manager about it.”

She pierced the curtain Linda was hiding behind with her eyes. Faith fully expected another Polonius, but Linda neither cried out nor fell forward from the arras.

“'Cept everybody knows I always take a drink of tonic after my scenes. Whatever's handy.”

“Be that as it may, let's get to work.” Roland was clearly uncomfortable at the turn the conversation had taken.

Persis wasn't done. “Oh, I know who did it all right. We all know. KSS. Well, Kiss is right. Kiss my you-know-what! And the brakes on my car giving out in July. I know all about that, too!” She
flounced off, returning with the sunhat that served as her wimple and holding her script. With all her recent downtime, Faith thought, the woman surely should have learned her lines by now, but apparently not. She had the kiss line down pat, though.

Everyone got back to business and Roland started rehearsing the scene concerning nuptials with Juliet, her mother, and the Nurse. It was a perfect showcase for Persis's talents, and Faith couldn't keep herself from laughing at the broad sallies. Linda had crept from behind the curtain and was busy painting faux mausoleums and other funerary statuary. She wasn't laughing; her grim face was suited to the task. What is wrong with her? Faith wondered. Why has she been afraid to greet Persis? The hospital probably did caution Linda about the proper storage and labeling of potentially lethal materials, but no one could hold her responsible. Why would Persis?

“Wonderful, ladies,” Roland enthused. “May I hear the last speech, Lady Capulet? And at the end of it, you come in a little sooner, Nurse. As soon as she says, ‘By having him making yourself no less,” jump on the line with your ‘No less? Nay, bigger! Women grow by men.' Then leave a pause for a laugh. You might give a slight suggestion of a wink to the audience, too, Persis, or even make a gesture of a swelling belly. But you keep playing it straight, Lady Capulet.”

Lady Capulet was wearing a housedress and bib apron—her own wardrobe. Offstage, she was
Sharon McDonald, married to a fisherman who thought his wife—part-time at the bank—had taken leave of her senses and hoped she wouldn't get any fool notions about going to Hollywood from all this playacting.

 

“Why would Persis be so certain that KSS was trying to poison her?” Faith asked Ursula. “The whole business is getting truly Shakespearean. She kept muttering about previous attempts and having to keep her guard up during the entire rehearsal.”

Faith had brought the kids back to the Pines after the level of activity at their own house convinced her they'd be very much in the way—and she certainly didn't want to put them off their stride. Tom was happily shingling and said not to wait dinner for him—that he'd work as long as there was light. The transformation from
This Old Testament
to
This Old House
was somewhat astonishing. Well, whatever the calling, Faith had promised to go whither he went, and she would. She'd already gone to Aleford, and what could be more of a sacrifice than that?

“I don't know about any attempts to poison her or other accidents, but they do hate Persis—and all the other Realtors, developers, builders, and anyone who doesn't agree with them. Still, I wouldn't have supposed they'd try to kill any of them. From what I know, KSS and similar groups want to make their statements by attacking property, not people. Besides, if they killed off people
like Persis, they'd have no one to attack. Then what would they do with their time?”

Faith nodded. Her thoughts exactly. Especially the notion of how such people needed targets like that to give life meaning—or, as Ursula had so succinctly put it, to fill up their time.

The two women were sitting on the beach at the foot of the long sloping lawn in front of the house while the kids were exploring the tide pools. Faith kept a sharp eye on Amy. The tide was out, but the rocks were treacherously slippery.

“Why would Linda Forsythe have run away when Persis appeared? The woman looked as if she'd seen a ghost.” Again, she noted, this time to herself, it was getting too, too Elizabethan. They weren't doing
Hamlet
—or
Macbeth
.

“That's easy. Linda's a member of KSS, and she certainly would not have wanted to see Persis after Persis has been blaming them all over the island since she got out of the hospital.”

“Linda's a member of KSS! But she wouldn't have put turpentine in the props bottle. She's the stage manager and would be the obvious suspect if KSS did turn out to be responsible. They'd have someone else do it, if they did, which you doubt.” Faith was aware that she was tying herself up in pronouns. “Who are they, anyway, and how many of them are there? Anybody else I know?”

“Not all the members want to go public, so it's hard to say who's in and who's not. The Osborns, I think you know who they are—Terri and Donald—started the group and roped in their friends. A lot
of the members live near them in South Beach. That's where Harold—Harold Hapswell—is putting what he calls Sanpere Shores. The lots are all laid out, and he's put roads in. I don't know how many have been sold, but it's going to be a separate gated community—a world apart—with an indoor pool, tennis courts, and who knows what.”

“Lyle told me about it, and it sounds absolutely horrible!” Faith exclaimed, thinking if anyone was going to find turpentine in his Moxie, it should have been this guy. “The island hasn't been able to raise the money for a pool to teach people
here
how to swim, and he's putting one in for these fat cats.” She stopped, arrested by her choice of words, and realized she'd automatically modified her speech for Ursula's ears. “And isn't that where the big swimming beach is? The only one around other than the smaller one on our point with fine white sand?”

“Yes, and now yours will be the sole place open to the public.” Tom and Faith had given it to the Heritage Trust when the point had more or less fallen into their laps a few years earlier.

“There's no way to stop this Hapswell guy?” Faith asked dismally. KSS was beginning to sound attractive.

“I'm afraid not. He's in compliance. We may not like it—it's a crime—but it's all legal.”

“And Persis is probably in on it with him.”

“That, I would strongly doubt. The two hate each other like…well, like poison. They haven't spoken in years.”

“Competitors?” Faith remembered Lyle had said they were “archrivals.”

“That—and maybe something else.”

Whatever the something else was, it would have to wait. Faith sprinted to the edge of the shore a few seconds short of pulling Amy back from attempting a belly flop into the mud.

After cleaning up her daughter, Faith packed some juice boxes, granola bars, plenty of sunscreen, and the kids into the car. She was curious to see the site of Sanpere Shores for herself. Ursula declined. “It will just make me madder—or sicker.”

She drove across the causeway that separated Little Sanpere, where Ursula was, from the rest of the island. The barely two-lane road was lined on either side with large boulders, painted white. Today it was fine, but in bad weather or at night, even with the reflective boulders, the road was rough going and had been the scene of too many accidents. Faith looked at her children. They'd want to drive someday, she supposed. Massachusetts kept upping the age and placing restrictions on junior licenses. With any luck, she could keep them out of the driver's seat until she was too senile to notice.

It was impossible to miss the turn for Sanpere Shores. It was marked by a sign as big as a billboard, on which was sketched out not only the placement of the lots but the pool, courts, and several of the “dream” houses. As Faith had suspected, they were the kind of McMansions cur
rently in vogue:
grande
French provincials with porches, tremendous Tudors with porches, and mammoth Mediterraneans with porches. Porches were the thing now. A nod to a bygone way of life, when everyone sat on the front porch after supper, watched the children catch lightning bugs, and listened to the whir, whir of lawn mowers drift across the summer evening. She doubted if any of the occupants of these houses would ever sit on their porches. Yet front porches they had to have—and decks in the rear. Also windows that didn't match. Round ones, eyebrows, octagonals, two-story plate-glass Palladians, and, of course, bays—large bays to accommodate window seats, where no one would ever sit and read.

She pulled off the road, figuring as long as they were there, they might as well walk on the beach. It might be the last time. She was surprised the way wasn't barred already. No
NO TRESPASSING
signs and a chain-link fence. She handed each child a pail and shovel and grabbed the provisions. Ursula had been right: Faith felt mad—and sick.

Who was Harold Hapswell? She'd never met him. The name conjured up a silent-movie villain with handlebar mustache gleefully tying peril-stricken Pauline to the railroad tracks. Was Harold, like Persis, from here, or from away?

The beautiful long sandy beach looked straight out to Isle au Haut across an expanse of water presently teeming with activity: lobster boats, sailboats, small motorboats, and one grande
dame of a windjammer, majestically moving into sight from behind the shorter point of land opposite this one. The opposite point was near enough for Faith to see that it had a number of cottages and a lobster pound with a small pier. The contrast with what would be going up across from it was ludicrous. The lords and the serfs? At any rate, it would be authentic Down East color for the new home owners and far enough away so there wouldn't be any authentic Down East bait smell.

The kids began to dig straight down to China, as children automatically do on a beach. Faith reached for her book and was soon lost in the pages of
Who Killed the Curate?
—British writer Joan Coggin's hilarious 1944 mystery. Where was Lady Lupin, Coggin's improbable sleuth, when the world needed her now?