I guessed, “But no Ernie?”
“But, as you say, no Ernie. Ephraim turned on the lights and walked all around, but apparently Ernie had already left. So he went home and called Ernie’s house, but got no answer.”
“Well,” I said, “it’s perfectly clear what happened.”
“Oh?” said Hanna. “What happened?”
“Ernie got to the church early and hid himself in one of the box pews.”
I explained to Hanna, “We still have box pews in our church, where the grandees sit, avoiding contamination from the hoi-polloi.”
Hanna said that was nice. In the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, apparently, God has to pick out the rich from the rabble by their clothes.
“Anyway,” I went on, “Silvio came a bit ahead of time, too, and found Ernie spying, and killed him. Well, that’s a relief.”
“Here’s a question for you, Lord Peter Wimsey,” said Hanna. “Why?”
“Well, maybe it was later. Maybe Ernie overheard something Silvio said to the Rev., a threat or something, and when Silvio realized he had been overheard, then he killed him.”
“He just told the minister, ‘Pardon me a minute, there’s somebody back here I’ve got to kill,’ whipped out one of your father’s pin punches, which he always carried in a pocket, just in case, stabbed Ernie, came back, sat down, and said, ‘Now, where were we?’”
“Well, how about this? Silvio hears a noise while he’s talking to the Rev., but he doesn’t say anything, and then, when the Rev. sees him driving away, he really just goes around the block and he comes back and gets Ernie then.”
“Think again,” said Hanna. “Ernie had left the church when the Rev. went inside.”
“Well, maybe he wasn’t killed in the church. The only thing we have that points to the church is Ernie’s hat and the fact that he was clutching an offertory envelope. Maybe they were planted.”
Hanson nodded. “That’s a good point. The police told me they haven’t, at least so far, found any traces of blood in the church, although that may be because any superficial stains were wiped away. We have no absolute proof, so far, that Ernie was attacked there. But we are left with Miss Klovack’s earlier question, ‘Why?’ If Dominic Silvio had any motive to kill anyone, it might have been Ephraim Wylie, not Ernie Struthers.”
“The first thing to determine,” Hanna jumped in, “is where Ernie was attacked.”
“The police will no doubt do a forensic check of the church in due course,” said Hanson, “perhaps they’ll turn something up.”
“The police?” Hanna was scornful. “I think we should go and have a look ourselves.”
“Not at all a bad idea,” Hanson replied, “and if you’ll wait a few minutes, I’ll join you. First,” he smiled ruefully, “I have to do the dishes.”
Well, of course, we couldn’t have that, so Hanna said she and I would do the dishes, and Hanson could get right up to the church and we’d join him there later. Which we did, in about five minutes, leaving behind a pile of dishes—washing by C. Withers, drying by H. Klovack—that were not, to put it mildly, exactly scoured.
The church is just one block from Hanson’s; nip up to Forest Road and turn left. You can’t miss it. When we got there, Hanson was outside, fooling around with his walking stick, poking around the bushes under the windows.
There was a flatfoot on duty, sitting in a chair by the door, which was blocked off, if you could call it that, by one of those yellow tapes the cops string up to ward off the vulgar crowds, but Hanson had obviously been given the all-clear, and the flatfoot paid no attention to us whatever. He was engrossed in a well-thumbed copy of a paperback entitled, Ravished by Love.
“Find anything?” Hanna asked Hanson, in a stage whisper.
He replied in his normal voice, “Well, I haven’t been inside yet. One thing I learned on the force was to do things thoroughly, so I’ve been checking around out here.”
“Gadzooks,” I said, “looking for footprints.”
“Footprints, or anything else that might prove useful. I’ve had a look at the door here to see if it was forced at any time.”
“What would that prove?” Hanna wanted to know.
“I have no idea,” Hanson replied, “but I think it is better to collect facts first, and form theories afterwards.” He went methodically back to work.
That ought to have crushed the creature, but it didn’t, of course. She sauntered right into the church and let out a low whistle. “Boy,” she said, “snappy church. Are those the box pews?”
Indeed they were. The Bosky Dell church is an impressive edifice, not large, but impressive, a hexagon constructed entirely of wood, with large glass windows on all sides. The effect is that of a church which is part of its surroundings. Inside, there is the same simple design. The sanctuary is really nothing more than a raised platform on which sits the altar, one of those moveable affairs, made of pine. There is a font off to one side, which is where the infant C. Withers was dunked and christened. Most of the pews are simply long wooden benches, stretching in restful silence across the broad plank floor. The benches are hard and narrow, to keep the parishioners from dozing off during the sermons. There is nothing much in the way of art about the church, since so much of it is given over to windows; a couple of crucifixes and one plaque memorializing the generosity of Sir John Flannery while hushing up all the dirty work he did to get to the point where he could afford to be generous, and that’s about it.
The most unusual feature about this plain wooden structure is the clutch of old box pews, three on each side of the church. They are in the first row, each large enough to shield one upper-crust family from the jostling of the rude mob. These are made of basswood—the rabble gets pine—about three feet high and open only at the front, where there is a half-door through which you enter. This means that the occupants are on view from the waist up, more or less, but what old Mrs. Flannery used to refer to as “the nether limbs” are concealed from sight, thus preventing riots. Inside each box pew is a bench, just like the ones outside, except that this one is covered with a cushion. The general effect is that of the penalty box in one of the higher-toned hockey arenas, and when I was a kid I always wondered what the well-dressed folks inside had done to merit such punishment. It was from these box pews that the swells of Bosky Dell used to purge their sins every Sunday.
The boxes are shunned nowadays, except on those rare occasions when the church is jammed, because to enter one is to invite accusations of snobbery. Only Margot Flannery, the elderly granddaughter of Sir John, still uses the family box regularly. When Margot has a ticket-of-leave from Homewood Sanatorium and appears for religious duty, large sniffs of disapproval emanate from her box, along with the mixed fumes of camphor and rum.
When I was a kid, the trick was to get into a pew behind one of the box pews, where you could duck down far enough to escape detection from the altar, and, thus strategically situated, lob spitballs at your more exposed enemies on the naked benches.
By the time I had explained all this to Hanna, who didn’t seem to care much, she was prowling around inside the boxes, and her triumphant “Aha!” which made me bite my tongue, came from the middle of the Flannery box itself.
“A clue, by golly,” said Hanna, “or I’ll eat my shirt.”
Hanson had drifted inside the church by this time, and we both rushed over to the Flannery pew. Hanna was clutching a bit of torn cloth, and, attached to it, a Rotary pin.
“Was Ernie a Rotarian?” asked Hanna.
“Oh, Lord, yes,” I replied, “you can’t sell nails and light bulbs to the citizens without belonging to the Rotary. He was a vice president.”
“Well, then?”
“You may be right, Miss Klovack,” said Hanson, “this may indeed be an important clue, but more likely it will turn out to have no connection whatever to the case.”
“Hey, wait a minute,” Hanna protested, “how come the cops didn’t spot this earlier?”
“Be fair,” said Hanson, “they gave the place the most cursory look. A proper scene-of-the-crime crew will do all this later.”
I raised another point, “Yeah, but then, how come Harry Franklin didn’t see it?”
“Where exactly was this, Hanna?” asked Hanson.
“Right down in the corner, between the seat and the wall.”
“Didn’t you say Harry was looking for cigarette butts?”
I nodded.
“That explains it, then . . .”
“Sloppy police work,” Hanna complained.
“What do you expect?” I asked. “This is not Toronto.”
Hanson went out, bearing Hanna’s find, to interrupt the cop on duty outside. He didn’t like it much—I guess he’d hit the part in the book where the ravishing begins—but he agreed to get on the radio at once to the OPP in Silver Falls.
“Whatever can be done to check it out will be done,” Hanson said, when he came back in. “However, the fact that Ernie was a Rotarian and that a Rotary pin turned up in the Flannery box may mean nothing. The police will have to do a cross-match with his jacket to see if that’s where the material with the pin came from.”
“Ernie was here, all right,” I said. “Between the hat and the pin and the offertory envelope and the fact that he arranged with the Rev. to be here, what more do you want?”
“Yes, but it doesn’t look as if he was killed here,” Hanna pointed out.
Hanson agreed. “It rather looks as if he were not. The killer would hardly have cleaned up a pool of blood and left behind both the hat and the Rotary pin.”
“Maybe he was knocked on the head here, and hauled away afterwards,” I said.
“Perhaps. That is certainly what the autopsy report suggests. At least, it’s something for the police to check on.”
We pottered around some more, without finding any other clues. I wondered if there was any point in checking out the supply of offertory envelopes in the chancel in case there was some sort of clue there.
Hanson was sure that would be a waste of time, at least and until the police had compiled a full report on the one envelope they had.
“There is a great danger,” Hanson explained, “in assuming that because some object is found near the victim of a crime, it is related to the crime. I think when all this is over, we’ll discover that the envelope is only marginally connected with this case.”
As we walked up the aisle to leave the church, I asked Hanson, “Why would somebody knock Ernie on the head here and then haul him over to my place to stab him?”
Hanna butted in again, one of her many failings. “Probably nobody did. He probably walked, or staggered, over to your place.”
“You mean he was hit on the head here, taken outside, stabbed, and then left there?” Hanson sounded dubious.
“Yeah, and he woke up, realized that he was dying, and for some reason went over to Carlton’s place.”
“Nonsense,” I said, “why should he do that?”
“To give you a warning, or a message. To pass over that clipping. To ask for help. Who knows?”
Klovack, as usual, was talking balderdash. Ernie and I were not chums, and if he wanted help, why stagger several blocks to get it when there were friendlier doors close at hand?
“Mr. Eberley . . .” Hanna interrupted my musing.
“Call me, Hanson, please, or you’ll make me feel old.”
“Well then, Hanson, if Ernie was hit on the head here and then, for some reason, taken over to Carlton’s place . . .”
“We don’t know that he was,” Hanson interrupted mildly.
“Yes, but if he was, that means that, besides the pin punch, there is another weapon around somewhere that the police haven’t found.”
“That is a very shrewd remark,” Hanson said. “I’m glad you’re on our side.”
Lord, she would be worse than ever.
Chapter 11
When we reached Hanson’s cottage and said goodbye to him, I noticed with surprise that it was getting on for 3:30 p.m. We strolled back towards my place, and I was pointing out some of the historic sights to Hanna (here is where I smoked my first cigarette, there where I lost my lunch as a result thereof, etc.) and the atmosphere was getting, if not matey, at least slightly less hostile than it had been between us, when up came the Widow Golden, scampering or as close to scampering as her figure would allow.
“Wait right there, Carlton,” she said, and, as she heaved alongside, puffing, she added, “I don’t think you want to go back to your cottage right now.”
“Why not?”
“Well, after Melville left, I went back to my place and a few minutes later another car pulled up and a very large man got out. It was someone I’ve seen in town, but I don’t know his name. Anyway, he began stamping around your house, banging on the doors. I got the feeling that he was very anxious to talk to you about something.”
“Moose’s friend, what was it, Clarence?”
“I don’t think so. This man is quite as large as Moose, but he seemed to be in a much worse temper. I didn’t like to speak to him.”
I had never heard of the Widow going shy; this new visitor must be a brute indeed.
“Well, whoever he is, he’s got a long wait,” Hanna said, “Carlton’s coming with me; I need someone to help me lug my stuff from the Lancer offices to my new apartment.”
Hanna had had her worldly goods shipped to the newspaper, apparently, and now she imagined I was going to spend the rest of the day shifting it for her. In ordinary circumstances, I would have told off the peremptory female; the Witherses do not take orders from forward young women. However, in this case it seemed shrewd to fall in with her plans. I told Hanna I would wait for her here, outside the village fire hall, thus avoiding what might prove to be an embarrassing encounter, while she went back to my place to get the car. After all, I said, I didn’t want to have to rough up this stranger, whoever he was. Hanna said Uh-huh, she understood perfectly, and she and Emma walked off. Minutes later, Hanna returned in the car—roared to a halt, actually, in her usual headlong way, looking pleased with herself.
I got in and as we streaked off for Silver Falls, Hanna remarked casually, “It was Dominic Silvio.”
“Who was? The murderer?”
“No. Well, maybe. Anyway, it was Dominic Silvio waiting for you outside your house.”
“How do you know?”
“How do you think? I asked him. I went up to him and asked who he was, and what was he doing stamping on your dandelions. I told him that, much as you didn’t want to, you would probably have to rough him up if you found him on the premises when you got home, and for some reason he didn’t take too kindly to that. Sort of swelled up, and said we would see about that in due course. Then he told me he was Mr. Dominic Silvio—big shot calls himself ‘Mr.’—and that he needed to see you at once on a matter touching both our interests.’ That’s how he put it, which I thought was a pretty classy way to talk, for a hood.”
I groaned. “He’s not a hood, he’s a developer.”
“Same thing.”
“And now he’ll be even madder at me than he was before. Thanks a lot. Did he say anything more?”
“Nope. I asked him if he was the one who had stabbed Ernie Struthers, and he looked sort of startled, but he didn’t say anything. Then I told him that if he hoped to see you, he was going to be hanging around for a long time, because I happened to know that you had gone to town. He let rip with a few ripe expressions, when Mrs. Golden, who was standing around drinking all this in, told him that she was a friend of yours, and that he could get his language in order or get out. He looked at her, obviously liked what he saw, and got all smarmy right away. Called her ‘my dear lady’ and apologized. They ended up chu
mmy as sailors on shore leave, and before I left, Mrs. Golden had invited him over to her place to ‘freshen up,’ which I always think is a funny way of saying ‘to take a leak.’”
The woman has no delicacy. No tact and no delicacy. She fell into a thoughtful silence which lasted until we arrived at the Lancer offices. Then I told her I couldn’t help her until after I had written the Ramblin’ John column for the week’s issue, and she stomped away, muttering to herself.
Ramblin’ John is a colourful, folksy, down-home character who drops a lot of his “g’s” just to show how folksy he is, and who seems to think highly, as he rambles up and down the streets of Silver Falls, of anything he spots in one of the store windows of any of our major advertisers. Ramblin’ John does not, of course, actually exist; he was breathed into life by our advertising department, and I keep him ramblin’.
By the time I had finished dropping g’s, Hanna had been over to her new, furnished apartment and cleaned it up—the woman is a fanatic—so it was ready to receive the stack of suitcases, parcels, and boxes that had arrived earlier, and were now cluttering up the enlarged closet that constitutes our photo studio. However, I insisted on eating first, so we dropped into the O.K. Café—my request, Hanna wanted to take her chances at Wong’s Chinese Deli—where Belinda Huntingdon gave us a couple of incinerated hamburgers and her synopsis of the movie playing at the Bijou. The Thing That Stalks By Night.
Of course, that ended with Hanna and I nipping over to the Bijou and taking in the show. All in all, a cultural evening, until we headed back for the Lancer to pick up Hanna’s worldly goods.
I wanted to know why this couldn’t wait until tomorrow.
“I need my stuff,” said Hanna, shortly. “Anyway, I checked out of the motel this morning. And besides, you may be in jail tomorrow.”
“Oh.”
The office was closed, of course, the time now being well after 10 p.m., but I carry a key, so we dashed up the stairs and I started to grab boxes.
Right Church, Wrong Pew Page 8
