by Alice Duncan
“Murdered! Surely, you’re mistaken.” The word had so shaken him, he allowed poor Mrs. Pinkney’s head to drop onto the tiled floor once more. I winced in sympathy at the dull thunk, but answered, annoyed by this fellow’s suggestion that I was a liar.
“I am not mistaken,” I said, bringing a little Boston ice to bear in my voice. “I found her body myself. It was a most unpleasant discovery, I can tell you.”
“Oh, my dear Lord.”
“Indeed.”
“Whatever is the matter, Brother Everett?” said a new voice.
It was a voice I recognized. Turning in astonishment, I beheld, standing before me in her white robe and looking every bit as dramatic up close as she had upon the chancel behind her pulpit, Sister Adelaide Burkhard Emmanuel. I admit to being a trifle tongue-tied and star-stricken for a moment. I, who had been introduced to John Barrymore, Mary Pickford, and Douglas Fairbanks, and who would be dining with Renee Adoree and John Gilbert that very evening, for Pete’s sake!
“Sister Emmanuel,” said Brother Everett—I mean Mr. Everett, “this lady just told me that Sister Chalmers has been . . . murdered.” He hadn’t wanted to say the word any more than I’d wanted to.
“Sweet Lord, have mercy!” cried Sister Emmanuel, lifting her arms toward the church’s ceiling and, therefore (I think), toward heaven. I also think she didn’t mean the Lord to have me personally, which is why I didn’t capitalize “mercy.” “Let us pray, Brother Everett. Let us pray. Please join with us, young woman.”
And darned if she didn’t take my hand and pretty much force me to my knees. Personally, my attention was divided. I mean, Mrs. Pinkney might well be as dead as Mrs. Chalmers, as she still lay on the floor in a faint, but having my hands held by Sister Emmanuel and Brother Everett as Sister Emmanuel sent up an eloquent and very loud prayer also captured my interest.
I don’t know how long Sister Emmanuel would have continued praying if Mrs. Pinkney hadn’t let out a pained-sounding moan.
“Amen!” shouted Sister Emmanuel. Then she reached for Mrs. Pinkney and lifted her head into her lap.
Did you understand those pronouns? The English language suffers from severe pronominal deficiencies in my opinion. Not that my opinion matters. What I meant was that Sister Emmanuel lifted Mrs. Pinkney’s head and placed it on Sister Emmanuel’s lap. I thought that was quite a generous and democratic thing for her to do. Yet another difference between Sister Emmanuel and my mother, who wasn’t democratic about anything at all. Dictatorial is what she was. And she wasn’t even a preacher. My mother, I mean, not Sister Emmanuel. Pronouns. They can be so confusing.
But enough of that. Mrs. Pinkney was beginning to come around. She blinked once or twice, and her eyes looked kind of blank for a moment, and then she caught sight of me. I was still on the floor, kneeling, confused about what to do since I wasn’t sure it would be polite to stand before Sister Emmanuel did—kind of like you wouldn’t stand in the presence of a queen if she were sitting or, as in this case, kneeling. When Mrs. Pinkney saw me, she snapped to attention, cried, “Oh, my goodness gracious!” and fainted again.
I was beginning to think I’d never get out of that place.
But I did. Eventually.
“Please lift our fallen sister, Brother Everett,” said Sister Emmanuel, achieving remarkable results with a sugar-and-honey voice. This points out another reason one needn’t be impolite to get one’s meaning across. If I dared, I’d have mentioned this salient tip to my mother. “You may take her to my office and lay her on the sofa there until she’s feeling better. I believe I have some smelling salts in the desk drawer. And I’m sure a strong, sweet cup of tea won’t be amiss.”
“I will, Sister Emmanuel,” said Mr. Everett.
He was kind of a scrawny fellow, but he was certainly obedient. He lifted Mrs. Pinkney right up off the floor and staggered up the central aisle of the sanctuary, where he made a right turn and disappeared from sight.
Sister Emmanuel turned to me and I stiffened, expecting some sort of rebuke for having caused a ruckus in her sanctuary. But I’d underestimated Adelaide Burkhard Emmanuel. She held out her hand and said, “My poor dear woman. I’m so very sorry you had to bring us this distressing news. Won’t you please come with me to my office and take a cup of tea?”
My goodness, I was actually going to be allowed into the inner sanctum! This turn of events was a far better one than I’d hoped for. In fact, there had been times during Sister Emmanuel’s fervent sermon when I’d considered trying to sneak out of the place. No longer. By gum, this was my chance to do some honest-to-goodness sleuthing. I hoped. I followed in her regal wake as she walked in the same direction Mr. Everett had carried Mrs. Pinkney, turned right down another hallway, and made another right turn into an office.
Sister Emmanuel’s office was fairly large, which didn’t surprise me, as the Angelica Gospel Hall itself was an immense structure. She hadn’t gone overboard on the furnishings, though, which comported with the message she tried to impart to her congregation, which was one of cheerful service to the Lord and not the accumulation of personal wealth. It was pleasant to discover that the woman practiced what she preached, in her case literally. There was a desk, a telephone, a couple of easy chairs and a sofa, upon which resided poor Mrs. Pinkney, who was stirring and looking as if she were embarrassed about that faint. I mean those faints.
“Brother Everett,” said Sister Emmanuel when she ushered me into her office, “will you please ask Sister Everett to bring some tea here? I believe these two ladies could use a brace-up, as can I.”
“I certainly will,” said Brother Everett, ever helpful, and he bustled off.
“Please, my dear,” said Sister Emmanuel to me. “Won’t you please tell me who you are and what you know about this terrible business regarding Sister Chalmers? I was surprised when I didn’t see her face in the congregation this morning.”
She was? Shoot, the place was so big and so crammed with people, I didn’t know how she’d ever keep track of one smallish woman. However, if she’d just told me the truth, and I had no real reason to doubt her, her words impressed me. You know, she being the shepherd and the congregation being her lambs, it was her duty to look out for them and know where each one was. In a way. It seemed a pretty large task to shepherd a flock of several hundred human beings who might occasionally behave like sheep, but not so often that you’d notice if the people I knew were any example.
I cleared my throat and glanced at Mrs. Pinkney, thinking Sister Emmanuel should be spending her time comforting her rather than questioning me. But that was the Boston in me thinking. I was here on investigatorial duties, and Sister Emmanuel had just given me an opportunity to practice the few skills I’d learned from Ernie.
“Yes. My name is Miss Mercedes Allcutt, Mrs. . . . er, Sister Emmanuel.”
She bestowed a sweet smile upon me. “We don’t care to use earthly titles here, Sister Allcutt. We’re all equal in God’s eyes and, therefore, in our own eyes. You’ll become accustomed to our ways if you join our flock. And I most earnestly pray that you will.”
“Um . . . thank you, ma’am. Sister Emmanuel, I mean.” Oh, boy. This was going to be tougher than I’d expected. “To get back to Mrs.—I mean Sister Chalmers. I paid a call on her on Thursday afternoon, around three or three-thirty, I believe it was. No one answered the door, which I thought was rather odd, since—”
“You mean Mrs. Hanratty wasn’t there?”
It was Mrs. Pinkney who’d interrupted my narrative. When I glanced at the sofa, I saw that she’d managed to sit up, although she was rubbing the back of her head. I imagine that part of her anatomy hurt a good deal, having come into sudden and painful contact with a tile floor not once, but twice, in the recent past.
Before I continued my narrative, I asked, “Are you feeling better now, Mrs. Pinkney? I’m awfully sorry to have caused you such distress. I shouldn’t have broken the news to you so abruptly.”
Sister Emmanuel took over
. I guess she didn’t like losing the limelight for too long at any given moment.
“Yes, Sister Pinkney. Sister Everett will be bringing some tea for us in a moment. I’m sure that will perk you right up.”
“Yes. Thank you.” Mrs. Pinkney’s voice sounded weak. Shock and pain will do that to a person.
“Please, Sister Allcutt, continue with your story.”
“Very well.” I cleared my throat again. “Anyhow, I rang the doorbell and no one answered my ring.” Deciding I might as well throw another name into the room to make these women think I knew Mrs. Chalmers better than I did—and, anyhow, Mrs. Pinkney had asked—I added, “Neither Mrs. Hanratty nor Susan was there. I thought that odd, as I’d believed Mrs. Chalmers was expecting me.” There it was: a bald-faced lie right there in the middle of a church. Oh, well. I’d ask forgiveness later. “For some reason—I know it was bold of me, but I was beginning to worry a bit—I turned the doorknob, and discovered the door was unlocked. I thought that was strange, too.”
“Goodness, yes,” said Mrs. Pinkney, whose voice, while still a trifle breathy, was stronger now. “Especially now, since she’s been having so much trouble.”
I managed to keep my eyebrows from soaring. “Oh, my, I didn’t know about that. What kind of trouble?”
“What? You mean she didn’t tell you?”
Mrs. Pinkney squinted at me. I think the squint was from pain and not suspicion, but I decided I’d better make myself clear. “Well, I knew she’d lost some jewelry—”
“She’d had some jewelry stolen,” declared Mrs. Pinkney. “And then there were the threatening letters.”
“Oh, my,” I said, my own voice a trifle weak at this news. “I didn’t know about any threatening letters.”
Mrs. Pinkney nodded once vigorously, then grabbed her head again and stopped doing that. I grimaced in sympathy.
“How many threatening letters did she get?” I asked, feeling as though I might have finally stumbled upon a real, honest-to-goodness detectival trail for once in my life as a P.I.’s assistant . . . I mean secretary.
“Two or three, I think.”
“Goodness gracious,” I said, hoping Sister Emmanuel wouldn’t butt in any time soon. “What did they say? The letters, I mean.”
“That she’d better stop throwing her money at the Angelica Gospel Hall, or she’d regret it.”
“Throwing her money at the Angelica Gospel Hall?”
I couldn’t honestly blame Sister Emmanuel for hopping into the conversation at that point.
“Oh, dear,” I said, hoping to mitigate Sister Emmanuel’s rage.
But I’d wronged the woman. She wasn’t enraged. In fact, when I glanced at her, I saw genuine grief on her countenance and tears in her eyes. “Oh, my dear, sweet Lord, I can’t believe that anyone could take our message and twist it so horribly that they’d threaten a lovely woman for supporting such important work. If our work played any role whatsoever in her death . . .”
I decided to plop something into the conversation that might cheer her up some. “You never know what the devil will do next. Satan is right here among us, twisting people’s minds and souls.” I’d read that Sister Emmanuel believed Satan was real and did stuff like that.
It had been the right thing to say. Although she still appeared horrified that someone might have been harmed because of an affiliation with her church, Sister Emmanuel did bestow a nod and a smile upon me. “You’re very wise for someone so young, Sister Allcutt.”
Fortunately for me, who doesn’t accept compliments very well from sources I don’t know, Mrs. Pinkney spoke next. “I wonder if the person who wrote the letters is the one who killed her.”
“How did the poor woman die?” asked Sister Emmanuel.
We were interrupted by Sister Everett, who didn’t look at all like Brother Everett, so I assumed they were husband and wife and not literally brother and sister. Much more heavily built than her husband, she was a good deal taller than he, and had a face that reminded me of a withered peach, perhaps because it was wrinkled and she had yellowish-gray hair. She looked as though she might heave a good-sized cow over a fence if she’d been of a mind to, and it was difficult for me to imagine the couple as . . . well, as a couple. You know. Because her husband was such a weedy-looking fellow. Ah, well. There’s no accounting for when and where love will strike, I reckon. I also reckon she didn’t believe in using bluing to whiten her hair. She laid a tray on Sister Emmanuel’s desk. I expected her to pour tea and hand teacups around, but she didn’t. It was Sister Emmanuel herself who said, “Thank you so much, Sister Everett. You may go on about your duties and I’ll pour. These poor ladies have suffered a severe shock.”
Sister Everett shook her head in sympathy, although her face didn’t betray the same emotion. She sounded sincere, though, when she said, “Brother Everett told me about Sister Chalmers. I’m so sorry.” And she backed out of the room like a trained maid. My mother would have approved.
As she poured and handed out teacups—they were pretty although not, I could tell, anything out of the ordinary, but probably purchased at a five-and-dime somewhere, which constituted prudent use of the church’s funds to my mind—Sister Emmanuel said, “Please continue your story, Sister Allcutt. You say you found poor Sister Chalmers yourself? That must have been a terrible shock for you.”
I nodded and said with real feeling, “It was.” I took a sip of tea and continued my interrupted story. “I spoke her name when I entered the vestibule, but the house was strangely silent.” Might as well put a little drama into my story, after all. Besides, it had been an eerie experience, so why not say so? “Everything was so quiet. I learned later that Mrs. Hanratty and Susan—the hired help—had gone out, which explains the silence, but I didn’t know that at the time. I didn’t know what to do, but I was feeling rather ill at ease by that time, so I . . . well, I tiptoed from room to room. There wasn’t a single soul there. That much I could tell, and I wondered where the servants were. Then I got to the hallway, and . . .”
And I couldn’t go on for a moment. The memory of that huddle of filmy cloth at the foot of the staircase stopped my tongue. I swallowed another sip of tea, and then another one, and cleared my throat.
“I’m sorry, my dear. I can tell this recitation is difficult for you.”
Chalk up another point for Sister Emmanuel. She knew what to say to people. I was impressed anew. “Thank you.”
“Can you go on now?” she asked kindly.
I nodded. “Yes, I think so. Anyhow, I finally walked into the big hallway—” I shot a look at Mrs. Pinkney and said, “You know the one I mean? The one where the staircase comes down?”
She nodded mutely, staring at me in what I presumed was horror or dread or some similar emotion.
“Well, there I found her. Mrs. Chalmers. At the foot of the stairs. I . . . at first I thought she must have tumbled down the stairs, but then I . . .”
Boy, I hadn’t realized how difficult it was going to be to relate this string of events to strangers. At the time, when I’d been talking to Phil and Ernie, I was so caught up in the moment that I just blurted it all out. But a couple of days had passed since then, the memories were coming back, and I didn’t like them one little bit.
“But . . . well, I went over to see if she was all right, and I saw that she . . . she’d been struck a vicious blow to the back of the head. There was . . . a good deal of blood. On the carpet. Under her head.”
That was it for Mrs. Pinkney. Fortunately, when she fainted this time, she did so on a soft surface. Sister Emmanuel rushed over to her and administered soothing words and tea. And smelling salts, too, which I presume she’d got from one of her desk drawers. Wherever she’d retrieved them from, they did the trick. Mrs. Pinkney sat bolt upright and sneezed. Then her hands flew to the back of her head again. Poor thing. She’d had a hard day, and it was barely after one o’clock in the afternoon. Again, I felt guilty, even though I’d only been doing my job. A job my boss had
strictly forbidden me to do.
Oh, dear . . .
At any rate, after she’d administered first aid, Sister Emmanuel returned to her desk and sat once more. “I’m so very sorry about all of this,” she said softly. “Will you please pray with me? We must pray for the soul of our dear departed loved one and for the quick apprehension of the person who committed the dreadful deed. I don’t believe anyone, however wicked his acts on this earth, is beyond redemption. We can pray that the perpetrator will come to see the light.”
Sounded about right to me. And if whoever the perpetrator was didn’t see the light, I’d be happy if he was caught quickly, then locked up and fried. Boy, that sounds terrible, doesn’t it? Perhaps my stint as a private I’s secretary was beginning to have a deleterious effect on my character, even as my mother believed.
Yet again, Sister Emmanuel demonstrated her strength of character. Rather than making the shaky Mrs. Pinkney come to her, Sister Emmanuel went to her. “You just sit there, dear. Sister Allcutt and I will join you.”
So there I was, on my knees again, only this time we knelt on a carpeted surface, and the prayer didn’t last very long.
My goodness. When I finally managed to extricate myself from Sister Emmanuel and the Angelica Gospel Hall, my head was positively spinning, and I could scarcely wait to go to work the next morning so I could tell Ernie what I’d learned. Which, I thought, frowning, wasn’t a whole lot. Still, maybe he didn’t already know about the threatening letters Sister—I mean Mrs. Chalmers had been receiving.
I took a taxicab home, thereby having spent my entire week’s pay on transportation by Sunday afternoon. And I’d only been paid on Friday. I decided I really needed to economize if I truly wanted to become an honest member of the working classes.
