Right Church, Wrong Pew

by Walter Stewart

  “Well, uh . . .”

  Hanna was on it like a swooping hawk. “Carlton? What is all this?”

  “Um, nothing.”

  “You’re going to do a story boosting this project, aren’t you? I might have guessed.”

  That did it. “Sit down, Hanna. Sit down and shut up.”

  She did, too. Surprised me so much, I nearly forgot what I wanted to say.

  “No. I’m not going to write a story boosting a condominium development for Bosky Dell.”

  Tommy began to wave his arms about, like a semaphore instructor who had forgotten to bring along his flags, and Dominic began to splutter. I silenced them with an imperious gesture, copied, as a matter of fact, from my VCR edition of Charles Laughton in Mutiny on the Bounty.

  “I was thinking about it. We talked about it. But no, of course not. Do you think I’d sell out my journalistic principles for a mess of pottage?”

  Got her. She did, of course, think I’d sell out my journalistic principles for a mess of pottage, and so, until about thirty seconds before, did I. But the damn woman had gotten under my skin to the point where even a trip to California didn’t seem worth having to explain to her why I was taking it.

  “My hero,” she murmured, and while she didn’t flutter any eyelashes, she did give me a big kiss, although she rather spoiled the effect by saying, quite accurately, “I’ll bet you would have, though, about a week ago.”

  The woman ought to be suppressed by official order. Tommy kicked up quite a stink, of course, and so did Dominic; but the condominium project was chancy, anyway, so that was the end of it, right there.

  When we broke up the clinch and started to move off, we came up against Smiley and Thuggy. Thuggy was looking truculent, his favourite expression, while Smiley looked a trifle embarrassed.

  “We aren’t finished with you,” said Thuggy.

  “There’s a bit of a problem,” added Smiley. “The other murder.”

  “I thought we were all clear on that,” I replied. “The Rev. must have found out, somehow, that Hanson stabbed Ernie, so he had to be killed, too.”

  “The trouble with that theory,” Smiley told me, “is that, according to your statement in the matter of the Rev. Mr. Wylie’s death, he called you about 11 a.m., and you went at once up to the church, where you found him dead.”

  “So what?”

  “So,” snarled Thuggy, “between nine-thirty and eleven-fifteen that day, Hanson Eberley was with us, first at his own house and then later at your place, while we were conducting our search.”

  “I didn’t see him there that day.”

  “He slipped out the kitchen door when we saw you coming down the street. So, you see, we still have an unsolved murder.”

  “But why would I kill the Rev.?”

  “That we haven’t worked out, yet,” said Thuggy, and Smiley explained, more kindly, “We’re not saying that you did, Mr. Withers. We’re just explaining to you that this matter is not yet concluded.”

  “Yeah, well, it damn soon will be,” said Hanna, and her statement filled me with a nameless dread. The girl had obviously got it up her nose, and was seeing herself as a latter-day Nancy Drew, girl detective.

  “Do me a favour, Hanna,” I begged her, “let the cops do the detecting this time. We’re all terrifically impressed with the way you solved the puzzle, but don’t start plotting.”

  “Oh, as to that,” she answered airily, “my plans are already in motion.”

  Chapter 26

  The rest of that day is a bit of a blur in my memory. Tommy Macklin said that, as we were back on the payroll again, Hanna and I should do some work—it was not, he said pointedly, five o’clock yet—so we went over to Silver Falls. Hanna’s car had been left outside the office, but Marchepas, ever ready to surprise, thundered into life on command, and bore us in style to the Lancer. We arrived about 4 p.m. and I went to work on a column of Neighbourly Notes, while Hanna disappeared in the direction of her darkroom. Actually, she didn’t emerge again until well after five, when she came tripping up the stairs from the street.

  “Where have you been?” I asked her.

  “Oh, I just thought I should run down and have a little chat with Belinda Huntingdon,” she replied. And laughed. I did not like that laugh, and I was glad when she suggested that, instead of eating at the O.K., we should go over to her apartment for supper. Good, healthy food, it was, well-prepared, pretty revolting, come to think of it. Afterwards, we sat around listening to music for a couple of hours, and then I invited her to join me back at the Dell for a little fun and frolic.

  “No, Carlton,” she said, “that would only spoil things. You run along home.”

  “Spoil what?”

  “You know. Things.”

  There was no moving her, so, after a while, home I went, Marchepas being still operational. It was after dark when I got there, and all the lights were out at the cottage, as usual, but I didn’t care. I stumbled into the bedroom, donned the PJs, and crawled into bed. About fifteen hours of sleep, I figured, was just what a body needed about now.

  Then I sat up and said, “Mrs. Eberley, we’re going to have to stop meeting like this.”

  It was her. She. Whatever. In my bed, as before, clad in filmy night things, as before. The damn moon was shining, as before, and I could make her out quite clearly.

  “Carlton,” she murmured, giving me the old up and down, “how sweet of you to want to warn me.”

  “Um, ah, yes.” Warn her? Warn her about what? Had the woman stripped her gears? All the tension, Hanson’s arrest

  . . . no doubt that was it.

  “This, um, warning,” I said smoothly, clutching the bedsheets under my chin, “did I give you any hint as to what exactly . . .”

  “Oh, Carlton,” she gave me a roguish push with her left hand, her right one being, I noted, behind her back. “You know.”

  I didn’t, of course. So I kind of gawked at her, but made no reply. The situation was not covered, dammit, in Journalism 104.

  The silence seemed to peeve Nora, for some reason. Her eyebrows drew together.

  “Is this some sort of trick?” she wanted to know. “Did you get me down here under false pretenses?”

  Not knowing under which pretenses I had got her down here—could I have invited her to drop in for a midnight chat and somehow have forgotten?—I continued my policy as before, to wit, a watchful silence.

  For some reason, this ticked Nora off completely. Her voice went into the old, familiar screech.

  “It is! It’s a trick! It’s some kind of blackmail scheme again! Well, I won’t have it!”

  Saying which, she uncorked the right arm, the one that had been behind her up to this point, and it was then that I noticed something different about her on this trip to my boudoir. She looked, well, a lot less sexy than before, a lot less appealing and a lot more, now that I came to check it out, a lot more knife-laden, than on that previous occasion. This looked like one of Hanson’s hunting knives. There was, on the one hand, relief that it was not yet another of my dad’s pin punches that was going to be incriminated, and, on the other, a certain chagrin that it was not, apparently, because of my enormous sex appeal that she had come calling again, but with other, less friendly, motives in mind. We were facing what looked to be a very embarrassing moment when, suddenly, the lights went on and cops—it seemed to me there were about ten of them, but only two, as it turned out—came boiling into the room.

  Behind them I heard a cheery cry, “Surprise!”

  Klovack, again, riding to the rescue.

  Nora gaped, then quickly reversed the knife and handed it to me, butt foremost. “Darling, I believe this is yours,” she said.

  However, the cops were having none of it, and Detective Thurston produced a pair of handcuffs, which he slapped on Nora. She didn’t like it much. Then Serge
ant Smollett phoned in a report. Very terse—“We got her,” is all I heard. They were about to give us a merry good evening, when Hanna said, “Hey, wait a minute!”

  “Ma’am?” he said, on a rising note.

  “You’re not going to just sail out of here,” said Hanna, “not until we get the story. After all, if it hadn’t been for me, you wouldn’t have a collar.”

  Smiley looked at Thuggy, who nodded.

  “I think maybe you have a point,” said Smiley, and we all sat down. Thuggy, still holding onto Nora, sat beside me on the couch, and Smiley and Hanna occupied the two chairs.

  I was just about to ask what in the name of tarnation this was all about, when the front door blammed open. The Widow Golden, alerted by the sudden burst of light and noise, had arrived, clad in a becoming chiffon robe. She quickly sized up the situation, then rushed out to the kitchen and began making coffee. It seemed a good idea.

  “Okay, give,” I said. “Hanna, you said something about ‘If it hadn’t been for me’—what’s that all about?”

  She was looking very pleased with herself. “You see, Carlton,” Hanna explained, “as soon as the detectives here,” thumb jerk towards Smiley and Thuggy, still on the job, and earning overtime, I’ll bet, “made it clear that there had to be another murderer involved, I knew it must have been Nora.”

  “How did you know that? And, come to that, how did you come to be here?”

  “I followed you out. Simplest thing in the world.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, I had to be here. After all, I arranged this party.”

  “You mean, you knew that Nora was a killer, so you arranged for her to call on me?”

  “Of course. Any idiot could have figured out that she had killed Wylie, once we knew it couldn’t be Hanson. Well, maybe not you, Carlton, but any other idiot. It was the only explanation that made sense. If Hanson didn’t kill the Rev., and you didn’t, then Nora must have. You remember he saw her sneaking out of your cottage on Friday morning. She was there planting the blackmail book—that part of it wasn’t Hanson at all? That right?”

  The question was addressed to Nora, who nodded, slowly.

  “But that was no reason to kill the Rev., just because he saw her.”

  “Yes, it was. The Rev. thought at first that Nora was there because of some extra-marital hanky-panky, but that explanation wouldn’t hold up long. I mean, you weren’t even there. He was bound to bring the subject up with you, and you were going to tell him that you and Nora were just good friends. Or, maybe, not so good.”

  “So, if he talked to the police, they would realize that she must have come here to plant the blackmail book?”

  “You get a gold star.”

  “And the only reason for her to plant it there was to cover up a murder. Is that right, Nora? You killed the Rev. for Hanson’s sake, just as he killed Ernie for yours?”

  Nora grimaced, grimly. “You see, I knew that Hanson had killed Ernie, because the day you found his body, I found your dad’s tool kit, out in our shed. I never go in the shed, so Hanson must have thought it was safe there, but Jim Sampson came around to borrow the lawn mower because his is on the fritz. Hanson wasn’t around, so I took him out to the shed. He got the lawn mower, but when he pulled it out, I saw something fall down, up against the wall. I went back in and there was the tool kit. I guess he’d picked it up at your place, just in case. At first I didn’t know what it was, so I didn’t do anything with it. But later I heard about the murder and put two and two together.”

  She looked up and me and gave a winsome sigh. “I knew that Hanson must have killed Ernie. Not that I blamed him a bit. If ever a person was begging for a pin punch in the kidneys, it was Ernie Struthers.”

  She sat there for a moment, thinking about Ernie Struthers. “He only agreed to take the blame for me for money, you know, Carlton.” She put out one hand, and touched me, softly, on the arm. She said, quietly, “Oh, Carlton, I’m so sorry. That’s why I came to see you the other night. I was going to tell you about what really happened the night your parents died. That and, well, perhaps other reasons. But mainly that.”

  I looked up at a movement beside me. It was Hanna, holding her nose. A person quite without the finer feelings.

  Nora took my hand in hers, as she went on. “I was drunk the day of the accident. I was driving Ernie’s truck. We were in town, at the hotel, Hanson and I, and we’d been drinking most of the afternoon. When we came out, and saw Ernie getting ready to drive home, we decided to leave our car—we used to have a car in those days, we sold it afterwards—in town and ride with him. So sensible, we thought.” She laughed bitterly.

  “But Ernie was drunker than we were. He didn’t look it, but he was. We got in and started to drive home and the first thing you know, he ran right off the road and hit a fence post. He was out cold for a few minutes. So we changed places. Hanson doesn’t like to drive, as you know, and after that business in Toronto, there was no way he was going to get behind the wheel when he’d had a few. It was just the natural thing for me to take over. And I did. And then, when we were almost here, oh, God, suddenly there was this other car coming right at us—I guess I veered right over the middle of the road—and there was this horrible crash. I never intended . . .”

  Her voice trailed off. “If you believe that malarkey, Carlton,” came the cynical voice of young H. Klovack, “I believe I have a bridge I can sell you.”

  Nora looked up, timid and frightened. “Why, Hanna, why do you hate me so?” she said.

  “Because you’re such a bloody awful liar,” Hanna replied. “Dry your tears, Carlton. The reason Nora came calling the other night was to plant Ernie’s sunglasses on you. She obviously had something else in mind, too, but that was the main thing. Then, you turned up with the damn things—it was like that song, “The Cat Came Back the Very Next Day”—so she had to set you up again, this time with the blackmail book. Is that right? Or did Hanson handle the sunglasses?”

  “No. I did all the planting,” said Nora. She sounded faintly horticultural. “Actually, we had quite a fight about that. Hanson didn’t know I was doing it, and when he realized it, after first the hat and then the Rotary pin turned up at the church, he was quite cross with me. He said it was amateurish, and would only get him into more trouble. He said all you had to do was to leave a little hint, here and there, and the police could be counted on to put it together.

  “Hah! The police. He forgets I worked for the police for years, and I know why they call them ‘leadheads.’ So I paid no attention. I got the glasses out of Ernie’s new truck. He must have held onto them for some reason and I found them there. The police were watching his house, of course, but the truck’s away out back. They probably didn’t even think about it.”

  Sergeant Smollett asked, “Didn’t you realize what a risk you were running if somebody saw you in any of your expeditions?”

  “What risk? I was covered for the night of Ernie’s death—Hanson’s police pal saw that I was, uh, indisposed that night—so, if somebody saw me, they’d just assume it was a little hanky-panky, and pay no attention. That was what I thought, anyway. Hanson didn’t even know about it. He’d have tried to stop me, I’m sure.

  “You know,” she went on, very seriously, “that must have been the hardest thing of all for Hanson to bear, when it all started to unravel and all you people kept explaining in such a clever way all the dumb mistakes he had made. He didn’t make them, I did. But he didn’t say a word.

  “Anyway, I didn’t see a clear chance to plant the notebook until the Friday morning. Hanson told me they were bound to come out that day with a search warrant and they did. So, while they were all sitting around drinking coffee and talking about the case, I slipped out the back door and popped into your place, Carlton. I assumed you were at work, in any event, you weren’t around when I knocked on the side door. So, I just slipped in
and did it. I wasn’t gone more than a couple of minutes.”

  I said I was impressed by her efficiency, and she gave me a vacant smile in return.

  “But when Ephraim saw me leaving your cottage, well, he was the one person who wouldn’t just let it go at that. He was bound to ask you about it, and he would learn that there was no reason—no sexual reason, anyway—for me to be there. That could lead to a very awkward situation, if he mentioned it to the police.”

  I asked, “Yes, but how did you know he’d seen you?”

  “He told me. It worried him, you see, but he was not a very clever person, and the notion that there might be more to it than just hanky-panky never occurred to him. He thought you and I were having an affair, at least, that is what I gathered from his very broad hints when he telephoned last Friday morning, almost the minute I got home. He said he wanted to see me up at the church, to speak about what he called ‘matters spiritual and physical.’ When I pressed him, he told me he had seen me leaving your place. I told him I had been there to leave a note inviting you to dinner. I said you were in town at work, but he said your car was still in the drive, and he didn’t believe me. I don’t see how you can be a clergyman,” she said petulantly, “when you don’t have faith in people. Anyway, he said the only fair thing was for the three of us to have what he called ‘a little chat.’ Naturally, I agreed. I told him that I would come up to the church right away.

  “The only thing I could think of was that I had to get rid of Ephraim, somehow; before he got hold of you. I knew you weren’t at home, because I’d just been to your home, so that probably gave me a little time. I knew I had to kill Ephraim.”

  My flesh crept.

  “Hanson had murdered for me, Carlton, don’t you see? So I would murder for him, and that would make it even.”

  This was an equal rights killing.

  She laughed, a small laugh, with no humour in it. “Poor Ephraim. Poor, poor, lamb. He thought it was his Christian duty to give me a chance to explain myself, and you to explain yourself. Which would not have done, Carlton. Would not have done at all.”