Fallen Angels

by Alice Duncan

  Chloe looked a question at me.

  Smiling brightly, I said, “I plan to attend services at the Angelica Gospel Hall!”

  Chloe nearly fainted.

  * * * * *

  Nevertheless, two days after that conversation, and after reading articles about the place and studying pictures of people who attended the Angelica Gospel Hall—it doesn’t do to attend a function somewhere unless you know how the inhabitants thereof dress—I got into one of my Boston Sunday suits, a blue number crafted of all-wool Poiret twill. It had no decoration other than bands of striped Poiret twill. It had been wildly expensive—all my Boston clothes were—but unless you knew clothes, you wouldn’t know that. The dress was simple and discreet, and it kind of matched my eyes. I wore a simple bone-colored hat, gloves, and shoes, and snatched up my handbag in the same color. I knew Chloe would tell me I appeared dull and drab, but that’s exactly the image I was striving for: dullness.

  As soon as I descended the staircase, preceded by a rapturously happy Buttercup, who didn’t know she was going to be left alone that morning, I saw Chloe in the breakfast room, nibbling on a soda cracker and with a steaming cup of tea before her. She looked me up and down with a frown on her pretty face.

  “You really meant it, didn’t you? You actually are going to that dreadful woman’s church this morning. You haven’t looked that gawd-awful boring since you arrived here from Boston.”

  I let her comment slide. “You betcha,” said I, going to the sideboard to see what goodies Mrs. Biddle had prepared for our morning meal. No soda crackers for me, by gum, especially since I had to fuel myself for a brand-new adventure. “Didn’t I tell you about Mrs. Persephone Chalmers and her association with the Angelica Gospel Hall?”

  Chloe nodded. “Yes, but what does that have to do with you?”

  I turned upon my sister, astounded by her question. “What does it have to do with me? I’m the one who found the woman’s dead body! I’m the one whose boss is the prime suspect! If the real killer isn’t found, and found fast, the coppers are going to pin the crime on Ernie! The lead detective on the case already hates Ernie’s guts.” Guts was a disgusting word. I’m not sure why I used it on Chloe that morning except that I was repeating what Ernie had told me.

  “Well, yes. I know that—about Ernie being at the scene. Not about the detective who hates him. But I bet Ernie doesn’t want you prying into the case. He hates it when you do that.”

  “I know he does,” I grumbled. “But I’ll bet I can get more information about the Chalmers woman from going to the Angelica Gospel Hall than Detective O’Reilly and all his policemen will get from the members of that congregation.”

  “Who’s Detective O’Reilly?”

  “The detective who’s going to lead the case instead of Phil Bigelow. The one who hates Ernie’s guts.” Shoot. There I went again.

  Chloe didn’t seem to mind about the word. “Lord. Mother will croak if she ever finds out you went to that place.”

  The thought held some appeal, actually, but I said, “Then don’t tell her.”

  Chloe heaved a large-sized sigh. “I’ll try not to. But you know how she gets, and when she stares at me with those eyes of hers . . .” My sister shuddered eloquently, and I forgave her ahead of time for telling Mother about my morning’s churchgoing activities.

  Mind you, Mother would have been happy if her children were to go to the right church. In other words, if Chloe and I attended services at an Episcopal Church, she’d be delighted—or as delighted as Mother ever got about anything. But she’d have all sorts of vile things to say to me when Chloe told her about my visit to the Angelica Gospel Hall. I decided to change the subject.

  “Whom did you get to come to dinner? What stars do you have in mind for our mother’s delectation—or deploration, I guess. Is that a word?” I took my plate, filled with scrambled eggs, bacon, and a muffin to the table.

  “I don’t know.” Chloe looked at my plate and shuddered again, but I was hungry.

  Tossing Buttercup a piece of bacon, I headed back to the sideboard to get a dish of strawberries and some coffee.

  “Renee Adoree and John Gilbert.”

  My eyes widened, and I darned near stepped on Buttercup. “My goodness, Chloe! They’re really famous! I mean, they’re really stars!”

  I got the impression my sister’s ennui that morning was unfeigned. She didn’t look well, and she eyed me wearily.

  “I know it. That’s why I invited them. Fortunately, they’re both between pictures at the moment.”

  “Are you going to serve wine?” Although I was still goggling at Chloe, I managed to get some scrambled eggs and muffin into my mouth. There wasn’t much that could keep me from my food.

  Chloe shrugged. “Have to. It’s what you do at a dinner party these days.”

  “Won’t Mother screech?”

  “She’d better not if she ever expects to be invited to another dinner party at my house.”

  “I thought she’d invited herself this time.” But I smiled broadly at my sister, whose last comment had been spoken with the firmness of strict truth.

  “Well, she did, but I’m fully capable of thwarting future attempts if she misbehaves. Especially now, when I feel so puny.”

  “Good for you! I mean, good for you for standing up to Mother. I’m awfully sorry you’re feeling puny.”

  “It’s all right. I know what you meant.”

  Since Buttercup was performing one of her adorable tricks by sitting on her rump and waving her paws at me, I tossed her a bite of muffin. Which reminded me. “What color poodle do you want?”

  “Color? Poodle?” Chloe blinked at me slowly.

  “What’s wrong, Chloe.” I was really beginning to worry about her. “Are you sick?”

  She shook her head. “No. Not really. I just feel sick to my stomach in the mornings. The feeling usually goes away by ten or so. But I’m tired all the time. I hope that passes.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Not as sorry as I am.”

  I’m sure that was the strict truth, too. I also reminded myself once again how lucky I was to have a job to which I could escape. Being around a sick Chloe for several hours every morning would dampen anyone’s spirits, even those of a fond sister.

  “Well?” I prodded.

  “I’m thinking. What colors do poodles come in?”

  “Well, I’ve seen a black one, and I think there are white ones, and rusty-red ones. Besides the blondies like Buttercup, of course.” I tossed my wonderful dog another tidbit, telling myself even as I did so that I probably shouldn’t feed her at the table. If Mother ever found out, she’d never stop scolding me.

  Mother. Ever the problem.

  Harvey showed up just then. He hurried to Chloe’s chair and rubbed her shoulders. “Still feeling sick, honey?”

  Chloe put a hand on his. “Yes, but don’t worry about me. They tell me this sort of thing is normal when a woman is in the family way.”

  Distressing thought. Maybe I’d stick to poodles and never get married and have children.

  “I’m so sorry, honey.” Harvey meant it. He and Chloe were the perfect couple. I mean that sincerely. They absolutely belonged together, which made me happy since . . . well, since they were together, if you know what I mean.

  Chloe tried to put on a brighter expression. “Mercy’s getting us a toy poodle for Christmas, Harvey. What color do you want?”

  Harvey, continuing to massage Chloe’s shoulders, looked from me to Buttercup and back again, his eyebrows lifting, whether in delight or surprise I couldn’t tell. “That’s nice of you, Mercy, but . . . They come in different colors?”

  “Tell him, Mercy.” Chloe allowed her head to fall forward as she enjoyed Harvey’s massaging fingers.

  “Black, reddish-brown, white, and golden like Buttercup.”

  “I like Buttercup a lot,” said the ever-diplomatic Harvey, “but I’d kind of like a black one. Maybe.”

  “Black is a v
ery sophisticated color,” I told him. Chloe had enlightened me on that important reality of life; otherwise I wouldn’t have known. “In fact, the very first toy poodle I ever met was black, and she was the reason I decided to get Buttercup.”

  “Black it is, then,” said Chloe.

  By that time, Buttercup and I had finished breakfast, so I led her out to the backyard where she did her duty as a dog, and then I left the house for the Angelica Gospel Hall. I’d called ahead for a taxicab, and when I told him my destination, he said he didn’t need me to tell him the address.

  “Everybody’s going there these days,” he said, trying, I’m sure, to make friendly conversation on our journey.

  “That’s what I hear. I figured I’d go and see what all the fuss is about.”

  I could tell he was grinning even though I sat in the back seat. “Hellfire and brimstone, I imagine.”

  “Maybe. Actually, I’ve read that Mrs. Emmanuel preaches more about joy and happiness than hellfire and brimstone.”

  “Yeah? Well, that’d be a new approach, huh?”

  “Indeed it would.”

  In actual fact, once I got there and Mrs. Emmanuel began preaching, I discovered both the cabbie and I had been right to one degree or another. I’d never seen a minister preach in so . . . boisterous a manner. Boisterousness isn’t a word one associates with Episcopalians, and that’s what my family is. Was. Oh, bother. You know what I mean.

  I’d never been in a church where the members of the congregation felt free to vent their feelings with loud calls of “Amen!” and the waving of hands in the air, either. Sister Emmanuel seemed to eat up the enthusiasm, and I could almost understand the attraction of a happy and loving faith in one’s god, although my stubborn Bostonian breeding kept me glued to my pew, and I only opened my mouth in order to sing the hymns, most of which were new to me. The entire experience was most enlightening as far as understanding the appeal to so many of the Angelica Gospel Hall and its leader, but I didn’t know how attending this service was going to help me solve the murder of Mrs. Chalmers. There I was, stuck in a pew, and there wasn’t an appealing suspect in sight. Even if there had been, I was in no position to interrogate him or her.

  The worst part was yet to come. After the final amen sounded from His people again, as the old hymn puts it, people stood up, turned in their pews, and began cheerfully embracing and blessing one another. Never, in my entire life, had I imagined that such activities could take place in a church.

  The lady beside me said, “God bless you, sister!”

  I gulped and said, “God bless you . . . sister.”

  Then she grabbed me in a big, fat hug. After a second or two spent being appalled and stiff, I unbent and hugged her back. What the heck. I was there, and this was clearly the conduct expected of anyone who was there. My mother was going to freeze into a block of ice when she heard about this latest instance of what she would term unruly behavior on my part.

  The hug knocked my pew mate’s hat askew, so when she ultimately released me, she straightened it, smiled brightly upon me, and said, “I haven’t seen you here before, sister. Did you hear the call?”

  The call? “Um . . .”

  She evidently didn’t need anyone to respond to her questions in order for her to carry on a conversation, because she went on as if she hadn’t expected a reply from me. “So many people are being called by the Lord to come to Jesus through Sister Emmanuel.” Enthusiasm. The woman definitely had enthusiasm for this new breed of evangelism.

  I tried again. “Um . . .”

  “Isn’t Sister Emmanuel wonderful? Why, I can hear Jesus speaking right through her! I’m sure you could, too.”

  “Um . . .”

  “The Angelica Gospel Hall and Sister Emmanuel have changed my life since I began coming here.” She clasped her hands in a frenzy of worshipful ecstasy.

  It had changed Mrs. Chalmers’ life a whole lot, too, thought I, rather more cynically than was normal for me. However, I was truly unaccustomed to this sort of freewheeling behavior in church. I knew even then that my distaste was primarily due to my stuffy upbringing, but some personality traits are difficult to change when they’ve been drummed into one from the cradle. It was one thing for me to move to Los Angeles and secure employment. It was an entirely other thing for me to jump up and down and holler in church, for heaven’s sake. Or embrace perfect strangers.

  “Please,” said the woman, still floating on a cloud of glory, “won’t you tell me your name and why you chose to come to the light today?”

  “Um . . . why, yes. My name is Miss Mercedes Allcutt. Everyone calls me Mercy. I actually came to this church today because a . . . an acquaintance of mine had started attending here not long ago.” That was true. In a way. I’d met Mrs. Chalmers a time or two before she was murdered.

  “Oh?” The woman seemed even more enthusiastic at hearing I had a congregation member as a friend than she was before. I wouldn’t have believed such a thing to be possible unless I’d seen it for myself. “Who is that?”

  I cleared my throat. “Mrs. Persephone Chalmers.”

  “One of my dearest friends!” squealed the woman. Then she lowered her voice. “My name is Elizabeth Pinkney. Mrs. Gaylord Pinkney. He—Mr. Pinkney—doesn’t attend church with me.” She appeared downcast for a moment, as if regretting that Gaylord wouldn’t end up in heaven with her when God blew his golden trump. Or was it one of his archangels who was going to blow the trump? Well, I don’t suppose it matters.

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” I said, sensing that perhaps I could actually learn something from this trip to church after all. “I don’t believe Mr. Chalmers attended with Mrs. Chalmers, either.”

  “I don’t believe he did, but I don’t think he dislikes the place as poor Mr. Pinkney does.”

  Aha! I was getting somewhere! Maybe. “I’m sorry your husband doesn’t . . . appreciate Sister Emmanuel’s message.” There. That had been tactful, and it was even the truth.

  “It’s a shame. But I’m sure he’ll come ’round in the end. I pray for him every day.”

  “How very kind of you.” I hoped she did her praying in private and didn’t do so in front of the poor man. If the latter situation prevailed, it wouldn’t have surprised me to discover an article about the decease of Mrs. Gaylord Pinkney in the Times one day.

  “It’s all I can do, pray for him. I think he’s weakening.”

  I said, “Let us all hope so,” although I kind of felt sorry for Mr. Pinkney.

  Fortunately, Mrs. Pinkney dropped the subject of the prayed-over Mr. Pinkney and looked around at the milling throng. People had begun to exit the sanctuary. “I don’t see Mrs. Chalmers in church today. We usually sit together, so that rather surprises me. Did you say you’d planned on meeting her here?”

  Oh, dear. This poor woman hadn’t heard about Mrs. Chalmers’ death yet. I’d read the obituary in the Los Angeles Times this morning, but since she’d died on Thursday and I hadn’t discovered her body until the afternoon, and the police were involved and all, I guess the news didn’t hit the Saturday paper. Naturally, the obituary hadn’t mentioned anything about murder. It had only mentioned a “sudden and untimely” death.

  So I decided that, if I couldn’t honestly get as excited about this Angelica Gospel Hall thing as Mrs. Chalmers and Mrs. Pinkney, at least I could darned well act. Therefore, I put on a tragic expression, took hold of Mrs. Pinkney’s arm and whispered in the most morose tone I could summon, “Oh, my dear, you haven’t heard?”

  Blinking and losing some of her gusto, Mrs. Pinkney said, “Heard what?”

  I glanced around as if to make sure we weren’t being overheard and then whispered even more morosely, “Mrs. Chalmers has passed on.”

  “P-passed on?” Mrs. Pinkney swallowed. “Whatever do you mean? I spoke with her on the telephone last Thursday morning.”

  “The very day of her death,” said I in the voice of doom.

  Mrs. Pinkney’s hand flew to her bosom
, where it remained. Her eyes widened, and I felt awful when I saw tears building in them. “How . . . how did she die?”

  After glancing around one last time, I leaned toward Mrs. Pinkney and muttered, “She was murdered.”

  Mrs. Pinkney let out a scream that might have torn the ceiling off the Angelica Gospel Hall. Then she fainted.

  Chapter Seven

  “Oh, dear, I’m so very sorry!” I whispered, appalled as I stared down at the gentleman who’d rushed over at Mrs. Pinkney’s blood-curdling scream.

  “Whatever in the world happened to her?”

  A deacon, or whatever the folks at the Angelica Gospel Hall called those fellows, was chafing Mrs. Pinkney’s hands and looking worried. It was he who’d asked the question, and he looked none too pleased. As for me, I was wishing frantically that I’d followed my mother’s strict instruction always to carry a vial of smelling salts with me. Since I’d never fainted in my life and didn’t intend to begin doing so any time soon, I hadn’t thought I’d needed to follow her orders on my way to church that morning. Shows how much I knew.

  “I . . . um, I told her that Mrs. Chalmers—she attended services here, and I guess Mrs. Pinkney knew her—had passed away. Then she screamed and fainted.” I left out the part about Mrs. Chalmers having been murdered, which was what had actually brought on the shriek and the faint. I hoped God would forgive me for committing the sin of omission in church.

  The deacon’s neck nearly snapped when his head jerked up and he stared at me. “You know Mrs. Chalmers?” He was a gaunt-looking fellow, and my news didn’t do a thing for his looks. I felt guilty. “You mean Mrs. Persephone Chalmers?”

  There it was again. The Mrs. Persephone Chalmers thing. I’d wondered ever since I’d met her why Mrs. Chalmers didn’t call herself Mrs. Franchot Chalmers, Franchot being her husband’s first name. Not that I’d want to be called Mrs. Franchot anything at all, but I didn’t think Franchot was any worse than Persephone. Or Clovilla or Mercedes, for that matter.

  However, that is neither here nor there. I knew to whom he referred, and I nodded unhappily. “Yes. Mrs. Chalmers was . . .” Should I use the M word? Well, why not? I doubted this fellow would scream, and if he fainted, he was already pretty close to the floor. “She was murdered, actually. Last Thursday. In the late morning or the early afternoon.” I didn’t know the time of her death yet, but I’d deduced it from Ernie’s statement.