The Body in the Moonlight by Katherine Hall Page

Author:Katherine Hall Page [Page, Katherine Hall]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: General, Fiction, Detective and Mystery Stories, Mystery & Detective, Women Sleuths, Large Type Books, Massachusetts, Cooking, Cookery, Caterers and Catering, Women in the food industry, Fairchild; Faith Sibley (Fictitious character)
ISBN: 9780380813841
Google: lWtyPwAACAAJ
Amazon: 038081384X
Publisher: Avon
Published: 1998-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

Jared had selected only two readings. Parts of Keats’s Endymion, including “A thing of beauty is a joy forever,” which was no surprise and certainly apt.

The psalm was also appropriate, but for different reasons. Psalm 55—not a lyrical psalm, nor a psalm of consolation—a psalm of raw grief, of revenge and the recognition of betrayal. Faith could hardly bear to listen to the pain in Tom’s voice,

“Fearfulness and trembling are come upon me, and horror hath overwhelmed me.

And I said, ‘Oh that I had wings like a dove!

I would fly away, and be at rest.’ ”

Jared had chosen an indictment, a gauntlet thrown down.

“The words of his mouth were smoother than butter,

but war was in his heart . . .”

161

Murder had been in someone’s heart. Did Jared suspect someone? Someone close to Gwen?

By the end of the reading, Tom was almost shouting from the pulpit, like an avenging prophet of old.

“But thou, O God, shalt bring them down

into the pit of destruction;

bloody and deceitful men

shall not live out half their days.

But I will trust in thee.”

The last line was uttered so bitterly that a number of heads jerked up in surprise. Pix reached for Faith’s hand and gave it a hard squeeze. They stood to sing “I Cannot Think of Them As Dead,” and Faith was shivering under her thick coat. But not from the cold. Tom had been so passionate. So . . . so involved. His face was flushed.

It wasn’t an ordinary funeral.

There was a brief, almost hurried prayer. Then Jared came down from the choir loft and placed one perfect white rose on the coffin. It was over.

“You have to go to the reception,” Pix said.

“I know.” It wasn’t what Faith wanted to do at all.

She wanted to go home, crawl under the covers, and try to sort out all the conflicting emotions she was feeling. Sorrow and fear predominated. It was unutterably sad. And horrible. And frightening. And threatening.

Tom and Jared had left the sanctuary immediately.

Tom and Jared, the chief mourners?

162

“I’ll take care of the kids. Go.” Pix gave her a gentle shove in the direction of the Parish Hall, where, Faith knew, a caterer—obviously not Have Faith, under the circumstances—had laid the New England equivalent of funeral baked meats: small white-bread sandwiches with anchovy paste, a millimeter of chicken or egg salad, and perhaps cucumber; trays of orange cheddar cheese cubes, Triscuits, and grapes; some butter cookies. And coffee, lots of coffee. She stopped at the ladies’ room to postpone the inevitable.

Even under the best conditions—the deceased age ninety-something, hale and hearty to a mercifully swift end—Faith hated funerals. And she’d had to attend an enormous number of them over the years. It went with the territory. Making her peace with death was something she planned to do in old age, and until then, she preferred not to think about it. Of course she knew she was going to die. It would be unnatural not to, and when she did, she wanted Ben, Amy, their spouses, her grandchildren, whoever was around, to display noisy, no-holding-back, proper grief.

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