She sighed. “He really was a nice man, if a bit of a simpleton. Hanson and the officers were still sitting around gassing, which is what policemen do most of the time, in my experience . . .”
“We were trying to draw Hanson out,” said Detective Thurston, ruefully.
“And getting nowhere fast,” added Sergeant Smollett.
“Well, while they were drawing Hanson out and drinking coffee, I went out the back door again. I took one of those things, punches, out of the package in the shed, put on gardening gloves, and went up to the church. When I got there, there was Ephraim, sitting in that box pew. I guess he thought that was a good place to talk things out, better than an ordinary pew. More discreet. So I just walked up, gave him my best smile, and stuck that thing in him.”
She shuddered. “He jumped around quite a bit. In the movies, they always just fall down, but he clutched himself and gurgled and made horrible faces. It was quite unpleasant. Then he sat down, and I knew it was all right. He sighed, and then his eyes closed. I knew he must be dead. So, I left one of your pens there—there must be half a dozen around the house, here—and went back home and back in the kitchen door. The police and Hanson, they were still in the living room, talking.”
There was a silence, and then Hanna jumped in, “Weren’t you taking a terrific chance that someone would see you kill Ephraim?”
“What choice did I have? When I told Hanson what I had done, he was quite shocked, I could see that. But he said he was sure it would be all right in the end. We thought it would be when you were arrested, and, since Hanson was helping the police, we figured that if it looked as if they decided Carlton couldn’t have done it, we’d know right away. We’d have time to clear out.
“But you were let out on bail. Then, of course, Mrs. Wylie phoned yesterday, and told Hanson, not only that Ephraim had spoken to her about seeing me leave your cottage—which, I, personally, think was quite wrong for a priest to divulge—but that she had told the police about it. Well, we knew it was all going to come out.
“We only had one chance, and that was to panic you, Carlton. Hanson said you were the kind of person who would break and run. We thought,” she said, in a perfectly calm, normal voice, “there was a pretty good chance the police would shoot you trying to escape.”
“Sorry to disappoint you.”
“Then, of course, when that didn’t happen, and Hanson was arrested instead, I thought, ‘Well, poor Hanson,’ but I knew he would never tell about Ephraim. That was why I was so concerned, Carlton, when I got your note.”
“My note? What note?”
“This one.” She reached down into the front of her nightgown and extracted a slip of paper, which she laid in front of me. It was one of my memo pad pages, and it contained a short, cryptic message in that dotty little writing that comes off a computer.
It said:
Nora:
I must see you. New developments. Police suspect another involved in Ephraim’s killing. Come to my place tonight.
Carlton
Even I could figure out where this had to come from. I waved it at Hanna.
“This is your doing.”
Was she abashed? Of course not.
“You bet,” said Hanna. “After this morning’s little charade, I whipped that note up over at the newspaper, and while you were busy writing drivel, I stuck it in an envelope and drove over here and gave it to Nora. I told her it was from you, that it was apparently something you didn’t want to say over the phone for fear of being overheard, but as I knew that she was a good friend of yours, Carlton,”—big rolling of eyes, here—“I presumed it was something urgent and private. I couldn’t imagine what.” Business with eyes again. “I said I was sure you would tell me about it later, if it was something I needed to know.” She added, “And she believed me.”
Of course she did. Hanna has the clear gaze, straight-forward manner, and innocent air that mark the really successful liar. I was dumbfounded.
“So, you figured she’d read this note and come gunning for me . . .”
“Not gunning, Carlton . . .”
“Knifing for me, whatever, and you didn’t even warn me?”
“That would have spoiled it,” said Hanna, but then Smiley cut in, soothingly.
“There was never any real danger, Mr. Withers,” he said. “Hanna spoke to me on the telephone this afternoon, and you have been under surveillance ever since. You see, we came to the same conclusion that she did about Mrs. Eberley, but there wasn’t any real hard evidence. So, if we could get her to commit . . .”
“Mayhem on my body . . .”
“. . . herself in some way, perhaps verbally, perhaps, er, more physically . . .”
“You mean, if she had rammed me with that knife, you’d have a pretty fair notion that I wasn’t the killer after all.”
A small smile, the first since World War II, illuminated the face of Thuggy.
“There was never a chance of that happening. Mrs. Eberley is not exactly a trained killer, Mr. Withers, but she was in a desperate situation, and becoming somewhat, ahem, emotionally unstable . . .”
“Oh, fine. I was not to worry because she wasn’t one of the Mafia, she was just a homicidal maniac. How,” I asked Nora, “were you going to get away with killing me?”
“I never expected it to come to that, Carlton. I just wanted to know what you knew. I only brought the knife out when you got silly.”
“But how was my death going to be explained?”
Smiley cut in, “My guess is that you were going to commit suicide.”
“I was going to stab myself?”
Hanna said, “Why not? You were all out of pin punches. The police might be suspicious, might even be quite sure, but the evidence they had showed that Hanson couldn’t have killed the Rev., but you might have. As before, Nora had to take the chance.”
“After all that trouble,” Nora said with a small shudder, “if you were going to undo all of Hanson’s hard work, Carlton . . . well, you see that I had to stop that, don’t you?”
Loopy to the gills, of course. The combination of booze, suspense, and life with Hanson under the constant threat of exposure had unhinged the poor creature.
So, the day wound to a weary close. The cops exited with Nora Eberley in tow, and the Widow Golden washed up the coffee cups, rolled her eyes, and made her ostentatious way to the threshold.
“Well,” she said, “I guess I can leave you two alone.” And she banged the door.
That left Hanna and self in the living room.
“It was a set-up, this whole evening,” I said.
“That’s right.”
“Like one of those Indian things.”
“What Indian things?”
“You know, those Indian things. In India. With a goat.”
“Ah yes. Where they tether a goat below the tree and wait for the tiger.”
“Exactly. Nora was the tiger, and you cast me in the role of goat.” I was sore as a boil. Two boils.
“But a nice goat, Carlton,” Hanna said. “A cuddly goat.”
She gave me the eye.
“Say,” she went on, “what are you going to do with your ten thousand?”
“My ten . . . holy smokes, I’d forgotten all about it.” I thought about it. “To tell you the truth, Hanna, I don’t think I can take the money.”
“Why not?”
“Well, it was really Ernie’s way of trying to square things, wasn’t it? Of trying to say, ‘Well, your parents are dead, but here’s ten thousand dollars,’ and it would be ten thousand dollars he had squeezed out of the husband of the woman who killed them. In the end, it would be blood money. I don’t want it.”
“That,” she said, “was the right answer.” She gave me another look.
“Boy, Carlton, you really do look a fright in those PJs.
”
“Then why,” I said, reaching for the light switch with one hand and for Hanna with the other, “don’t we take them off?”
So we did.
About the Author
Walter Stewart was a Canadian writer, editor, and veteran journalist. Over the course of his career, Stewart worked for the Toronto Telegram, Star Weekly (published by the Toronto Star,) Maclean’s magazine, and the Toronto Sun, and was a regular guest on the CBC’s As It Happens. A prolific writer, Stewart penned more than twenty works, including Shrug: Trudeau in Power, Towers of Gold, Feet of Clay: The Canadian Banks, The Life and Political Times of Tommy Douglas, and the fictional Right Church, Wrong Pew and Hole in One, featuring reporter-turned-sleuth Carlton Withers. Stewart died of cancer in 2004.
Copyright
Right Church, Wrong Pew © 1990 Walter Stewart
All rights reserved under all applicable International Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen.
No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
EPub Edition © November 2014 ISBN: 9781443441810
Published by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
Originally published by Macmillan of Canada in 1990. First published by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd in this ePub edition in 2014.
HarperCollins books may be purchased for educational, business, or sales promotional use through our Special Markets Department.
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
2 Bloor Street East, 20th Floor
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
M4W 1A8
www.harpercollins.ca
About the Publisher
HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd.
Level 13, 201 Elizabeth Street
Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia
http://www.harpercollins.com.au
HarperCollins Publishers (Canada) Ltd.
2 Bloor Street East - 20th Floor
Toronto, ON, M4W 1A8, Canada
http://www.harpercollins.ca
HarperCollins Publishers (New Zealand) Limited
P.O. Box 1
Auckland, New Zealand
http://www.harpercollins.co.nz
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
77-85 Fulham Palace Road
London, W6 8JB, UK
http://www.harpercollins.co.uk
HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
10 East 53rd Street
New York, NY 10022
http://www.harpercollins.com
Right Church, Wrong Pew Page 22
