Right Church, Wrong Pew

by Walter Stewart

  “I see.”

  I had, I admit, another and ulterior motive in putting forth this suggestion. The police may or may not have told Hanson about this, but if they hadn’t, it would have a different and better sound to it, coming from Helen Wylie. Besides which, I wouldn’t have to tell Hanson myself.

  She sat there a moment, thinking. “Perhaps you’re right,” she said. “I’ll call him right away.”

  So, we left it at that, and I drove home, feeling sorry for myself. Had I overlooked one of Nora’s flimsy garments in my cleanup the other night? Was that why she had come calling again? If so, she must have found it, or the cops would certainly have been waving it under my nose long before this.

  The cottage seemed emptier than it had ever felt to me, except for the dreadful few weeks after my parents’ death. With its superficial neatness, thanks to the police search, it no longer even seemed like my own place. Oh, hell, I thought, in for a penny, in for a pound, and I went to work and scrubbed the place from top to bottom, piling out for pickup some of the accumulated garbage of the last two years. Harry Burns, the local collector, was going to get a kick—if not a hernia—out of this.

  The Widow Golden turned up at about seven o’clock, with a pot of stew and an apple pie. So we ate that and gabbed a little, and I told her that Hanna Klovack was a pie-faced little fathead, and that it was no doubt a matter of the greatest good fortune that our relationship—what relationship?—had come to an end with no harm done.

  “There, there,” she said. I had a feeling she didn’t believe me.

  I went back to work and by about eleven-thirty, the cottage was clean for the first time in two years, and I was all mimsy, and physically pooped. I decided to take a shower. What with the spell in jail and the house cleaning, I had accumulated an outer layer of grime about four inches thick. I went to work on that with a bar of soap, and, after a while, scrubbing away, I began to feel a trifle better. Crushed, you understand, a veritable toad beneath the harrow, but not a completely mournful toad. In fact, a singing toad. I sang “When Cockle Shells Turn Silver Bells” and “The Water Is Wide,” and I was just starting in on “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face,” when I thought I heard, over the sound of the shower, the slamming of the kitchen door.

  I switched off the vocal. It was now somewhere close to midnight in a village where lights out is normally about ten o’clock. Johnny Carson doesn’t live here. The water—I had been in the shower for quite a time by now—was beginning to cool off a bit. That must have been why my teeth were suddenly chattering together. The kitchen door didn’t slam itself it is one of those old-fashioned jobs, with a heavy spring on it, not likely to get frisky because of a passing breeze. There flashed through my mind that scene from Psycho—you know the one—where the killer comes creeping up on the girl in the shower with a knife in his hand and murder in his heart. Well, this was it, all over again.

  “Anybody there?” I called out. Let the killer know I’m onto him, see, maybe he’ll slink away. No response. I started to sing again, although no one could call it robust, “When roses, gro-o-o-ow, in winter sno-o-o-ow, Then will my love re-tu-ur-ur-urn to me,” and then I heard something go Thump! in the bedroom. Which is to say, the room next to the bathroom. That was when I remembered—who can think of everything?—that I had not even bothered to close, much less lock, the bathroom door.

  What was really getting me down was that I felt so silly. I mean, there I was, naked. What was I going to say when the killer came through the curtain, “Take one more step and I’ll soap you”? I wondered, briefly, if I could get out the tiny bathroom window behind me—yep, right in the middle of the shower, one of my dad’s inventions—before the psychopath came through the door, and I had just decided that I couldn’t, when the lights went out.

  No fooling around, now. That slamming door I heard, that could have been someone else’s door, that thump on the bedroom floor, that could have been my overwrought imagination, but the lights going out, that was real. I was going to be carved up in my own bathroom, probably with one of my dad’s own tools, and the only comforting thought I had to cling to was that, this time, they couldn’t blame it on me.

  I moved to the back of the shower. The fiend was going to have to come in after me, by God, I wasn’t going to stand there and take it. I heard the bathroom door squeak back—it was now fully open. The killer was inside. There was a soft footstep on the mat. I reached up onto the shelf of the small window at the back of the shower, looking for something, a razor, anything, with which to defend myself. I came up with a sponge. That was nice. I’d give the bugger a rub-down. I turned the showerhead towards the curtain-opening. Not much, but it might surprise the foul fiend if he caught about a quart of water in his face. Another footstep, closer, this time, just outside the shower. I ducked down. When the killer came in, he’d probably have a weapon of some sort thrust out in front of him. A knife, a gun, whatever. No, not a gun. If he had a gun, he’d just stand back and let me have it through the curtain. Hell, if he had a gun, he would never have turned out the lights.

  I thought, briefly, of calling for help. Who would hear me? If anybody could hear me, there’d have been complaints about my singing before now. I was going to die, but before I did, I was going to crouch down here and when the killer came through the curtain, I was going to jump him. He was going to be as blind as I in this dark. I’d grab the weapon, and then we’d see.

  The curtain—I couldn’t see it, but I could feel it stir—was moving aside, and a figure—blacker, even, than the surrounding blackness, stepped into the shower stall. This was it. I pounced.

  “Ye gods and little fishes, Carlton, is that any way to greet a guest?”

  What I clutched, it appeared, was Miss Klovack, formerly of Toronto, currently residing in Silver Falls, Ont. Miss Klovack, starkers. That, she told me later, was why she had turned out the light. Shy little thing. Never reckoning what she was going to do to my nerves by creeping up on me like this—or, not giving a tinker’s dam—she had decided to announce the fact that, on due reflection, she had concluded that maybe it wouldn’t hurt too much to get just a little involved, and jumped into her car to bring the glad tidings out to Bosky Dell. I nearly killed her in that first pounce, of course, and richly she’d have deserved it, but, once I realized what I had in hand, so to speak, I perked up considerably. I even forgot to bug her again about that damned clipping.

  And what happened after that is none of your damn business.

  Chapter 22

  The next morning, we walked, hand in hand, over to Hanson’s place. I was a bit embarrassed, not about what we had been doing—hell, I was proud of that—but over the fact that I knew that Hanson knew that his wife had been seen sneaking out of my cottage last Friday morning, for some mysterious reason, which, I hoped, had all been made clear by now. I, for one, was not going to bring the subject up. I gave a guilty start when I recognized the two homicide cops, Thuggy and Smiley, emerging from the Eberley porch. Smiley gave me a curt nod; Thuggy stared straight ahead.

  “Keep up the good work, officers,” I told them, as we walked to where Hanson was holding the door open. He was smiling broadly.

  “Well,” he said, “I see you two are getting quite friendly. Come in, come in. There have been,” he went on as we sat, together, on the couch facing his big tub chair, “some developments.”

  “Yes, well, Hanson, before we get into that, I should tell you that the Lancer has fired me. Again,” I added. “So I guess the project is off.”

  “Never mind that.” He waved a generous hand. “Nobody’s going to shut me out of the investigation at this point. Heavens, I’d almost forgotten what fun it is, working on a murder case.”

  Fun? Well, look at the man; he was beaming. “Now I’m in, and that’s all that matters. As a matter of fact, I’m beginning to get a glimmer about this case . . .” he held up his hand as I started to yammer “. . . just
the beginnings of a glimmer, nothing to get excited about, but I may have something for you pretty soon. In the meantime, those two from Toronto keep telling me that they’re keeping me informed as a courtesy only—it’s their show—but I gather the inspector has made it clear that I am to get whatever information I want, provided I don’t interfere.”

  “And what information have you got?”

  “Well sir, the boys have been through Ernie Struthers’s little black book, the one that, er, turned up at your place the other day, Carlton. There were initials, a series of numbers that probably referred to dates, and another series of numbers, probably payments.”

  “And the initials?”

  “They didn’t mean anything to the Toronto cops, but they did to me. Actually, that’s why they brought it to me.”

  Hanna asked, “How many were there?”

  “There were three sets of initials, or, at least, three pages with initials at the top, and what appear to be records of payment underneath.”

  “Whose initials?” asked Hanna.

  “I’ll bet one of them was HF,” I said. “Harry Franklin.”

  “It was.”

  “And TM?”

  “Right again. Tommy Macklin. Well, we’d had hints about those two, but there was another one that’ll interest you. DS.”

  “DS? Dominic Silvio?”

  He nodded. “Looks like it.”

  “So one of those three might be the murderer, rather than yours truly? Boy, I hope it’s Tommy.”

  “We’ll soon know. The homicide boys are off to interview him now. They’ve already talked to Harry Franklin, and I gather the local OPP spoke to Silvio.”

  “They have? What was Harry Franklin being blackmailed about?”

  “Harry Franklin was having an affair,” Hanson said, “with Lillian Wentworth.”

  “Lillian the librarian?”

  “Uh-huh.” Wonders never cease. Lillian Wentworth is a cheerful, outgoing, helpful soul but not exactly a sex kitten. Actually, when you come to think of it, Lillian looks quite a lot like Bernice Franklin, and I couldn’t help wondering why, if this was the type that lit Harry’s fire, he didn’t just check around his own bedroom one night, and see what turned up. We are probably not meant to understand these things. Anyway, it cleared up one mystery for me. Every time I went into the library in Silver Falls, Harry was there. I thought he was thirsting for knowledge, and here all the time, he was thirsting for Lillian. Hanna seemed to find all this amusing, when I explained it to her. She said, “I thought the boondocks were boring, and it turns out they’re a cesspit of simmering sexuality.”

  “Silently simmering sexuality,” I pointed out, and that was the issue. “If Lillian Wentworth was even mentioned in connection with a divorce suit, she’d be paraded in front of the library board and defrocked, or whatever it is you do to librarians.”

  “I think you cancel their cards,” said Hanna, “but you aren’t serious?”

  “Darn right,” I said. “Librarians may live a hell of a life down in torrid Toronto, but up here, by golly, they’re classed with Sunday school teachers, and if word gets around that they’re having fun on Saturday nights, the moral fibre of the whole community is seen to be under attack.”

  “Which means . . .”

  “. . . which means that if Ernie was onto the romance, which I guess was no great accomplishment, there would be hell to pay.”

  Hanna was dubious. “Surely even in a place like this, extra-marital affairs are not unheard of?”

  “Oh, they happen, all right. But yes, they’re unheard of. Or, at least, the trouble doesn’t start until they’re heard of.”

  “Why?”

  “A little hanky-panky is okay, but if the affair came up at, say, the Daughters of Rebekah, or the Women’s Institute, or one of the other pillars of rectitude, and was spoken about out loud, as opposed to mere behind-the-hand whispering, why, then, Bernice would have to kick Harry out, maybe even sue him for divorce, whether she wanted to or not.”

  “And they call it ‘the simple life,’” said Hanna. “Why would Bernice have to dump Harry if she didn’t want to?”

  “Face,” I said, and Hanson nodded agreement. “Ubangi tribesmen,” I went on, “Chinese diplomats, and small-town citizens everywhere put great value on face. It doesn’t matter so much what you’ve done that counts, as what you can no longer ignore admitting has been done to you.”

  “My sainted aunt,” commented Hanna, “you do live. But this suggests that Harry did have a motive, bizarre though it seems to me, for killing Ernie, and . . .”

  “Yes, well,” Hanson interjected, “that’s where it breaks down. When the police spoke to Harry, he told them that he wasn’t in Bosky Dell last Monday night. Couldn’t have been. He was in Silver Falls.”

  “That’s what he says,” Hanna snorted. “Have the cops checked his alibi?”

  “I’m afraid they have.”

  “And?”

  “It was Chugalug and Chowder Evening at the Dominion Hotel, and Harry stayed the night,” Hanson explained.

  “He stayed the night?” Hanna sounded doubtful. “Again, that’s what he says. He probably dropped a rope out the window, slid down out of sight of the desk clerk, drove over to Bosky Dell, stabbed Ernie, and was back in bed before anybody knew he’d gone.”

  “No,” I said sadly, and Hanson chimed in, “No.”

  “How come?”

  “Stayed the night. That’s local talk,” I explained. “Unless I’ve got it wrong . . .” Hanson shook his head; I didn’t have it wrong, “ . . . it means, translated, that Harry got himself so zonked on Chugalugs and Chowder that he couldn’t go home. Not wouldn’t, but couldn’t. Right?”

  “Right,” Hanson confirmed. “Apparently, Harry drank several rum and cokes, tried to pick a fight with Quarter to Three Winston, threw up in a lobster pot, and passed out in the Hearts of Oak Lounge. They put him to bed, and he didn’t come back here until early Tuesday morning.”

  “You mean he went up and cleaned up the church with a hangover? What devotion to duty!”

  “Strong drink, my mother says,” Hanna commented, “is the curse of mankind.”

  I added, “It is also the alibi of Harry Franklin. He may have trifled with Lillian Wentworth, he may even have been blackmailed by Ernie Struthers, but he was too paralyzed to kill him. Well, never mind, we’ve still got Dominic.”

  “Couldn’t have been Dominic,” Hanna said. “He put up your bail.”

  I’d been thinking about that. “Maybe that was just to put people off the scent. Maybe Ernie found out something about Dominic that was going to queer his development plans. So he killed Ernie, and then, because the Rev. was opposed to the development, he decided to kill him, too.”

  “Doesn’t sound likely,” said Hanson. “Men like Silvio don’t go around stabbing people any more. They hire lawyers.”

  “Lawyers go around stabbing people?” This was new to me. “Does the Upper Canada Law Society approve?”

  “No, silly,” Hanna said. “Mr. Eberley is quite right. They hire lawyers to tie everything up in court and then they go ahead and do whatever it is they want to do while all the lawyers scream at each other. And then it’s too late.”

  I was beginning to get discouraged. “It’ll probably turn out that Tommy and Dominic Silvio were attending evening mass together on the night in question, in full view of thousands. The way this thing keeps pointing to me,” I added, “I’m starting to think I must have committed the murders in a fit of absent-mindedness, and forgotten all about it.”

  “Never mind, love,” said Hanna, “I’ve got a little surprise for you.”

  “Something you picked up in Toronto, that surprise?”

  She nodded.

  “Well?”

  “Not yet. Soon. Not yet.”

  “Oh, Hanna�
��Criminy!”

  Hanna turned to Hanson, who was fingering his ascot and looking thoughtful. “Criminy. Do they really say that around here?”

  “Um. Carlton does.”

  Hanna said, “Well, enough of this idle chitchat; we’ve got to get to town and check up on those alibis.”

  “I think you can safely leave that to the police,” said Hanson, mildly.

  “Nuts to that,” Hanna responded. “The police are sure Carlton did it. They’re just going through the motions. We’ve already picked up a few things they don’t know, haven’t we, Carlton?”

  This was accompanied by an arch look. Hanson looked a bit surprised, but he didn’t say anything, and Hanna went on, “Well, Carlton, let’s get the show on the road. Is your car working yet?”

  “That I can’t say. With Marchepas, it’s a matter of mood.”

  “Okay. My car doesn’t have moods. We’ll take it.”

  I ought, properly; to have insisted on staying behind for another chat with Hanson about the case, but a certain constraint seemed to have sprung up between us, and I was glad enough to get out of there without having to discuss the matter of his wife’s visitations with him. So we drove off to clear the sacred Withers name by destroying the alibis of the three suspects in Ernie’s blackmail book.

  Waste of time, of course.

  We tackled Dominic Silvio first, in his office, which is in the back of a warehouse. The warehouse looks tacky, and is tacky, but at the end is a suite of offices that looks like something out of a movie. The picture window feasts the eye on a comely stretch of the Silver Falls River. We passed through two batteries of secretaries, but Dominic agreed to see us at once. Probably he hadn’t heard about my being fired from the Lancer, and was keeping on friendly terms, just in case. He offered us espresso, which was delicious, but not much else. He had already been through an interview with the cops, so he was pretty well primed on what to say. He told us that he denied that Ernie Struthers had been blackmailing him, and if we told anybody anything to the contrary, he’d sue us for libel.