I crossed the basement and went outside. When my eyes got used to the moonlight I saw them. They were waiting by a tree in back of the temple. I recognized Chief Piper and Grayson. About five detectives were there, too.
“We thought you weren't coming,” the chief said.
Grayson asked: “Where's Penelope?”
“She's safe.”
“Where?” he growled.
I spoke to the chief. “You got the place covered?”
“Yeah. There's a dozen men around.”
“Good.”
I led them to the temple's basement door. I saw a man standing by the front of the temple; one of the chief's men. We left one of our detectives at the back door.
“Grab anybody that tries to come in,” I told him.
“Okay.”
We went into the basement. I punched on the flashlight. We went across to the other door. I nudged Grayson. “Here she is,” I whispered. I flashed the light on the spot where I'd left her. All I could see was the brick wall and the cement floor. Brother, my heart stood still, as the song says.
Grayson said: “What the hell is this?”
I swung the flashlight around the basement. On the other side I caught a movement. I went that way. She was moving with her face to the brick wall, feeling it with her hand; looking, I guess, for a place to get out.
“Penelope!” Grayson called.
“Shut up,” I said.
We went over to her. Grayson took her arm rind turned her around. Her eyes didn't look quite so bad. There was a trace of surprise in them. “Where...?” she began.
Grayson said “Penelope, don't you know me?”
We left a detective with her. I led the chief and Grayson and the three other dicks to the inside door and up the stairs. I opened the upper door. The first room looked just as I'd left it, candles still burning in front of the cross.
“Come on,” I whispered.
We tiptoed across the room to the door. The Princess was lying on the litter in front of the altar, the white cloth in a pile at her feet. I couldn't see the tall man. We went over to the a tar. I heard Grayson's breath rush through his nose, the Princess's left breast was smeared with blood. “That's where Penelope would have been,” I told Grayson.
I looked for the gold dagger, but it wasn't on the altar. The others were staring down at the Princess. “God! What a babe!” one of the detectives whispered. I saw bloody handprints on her thighs.
A deep voice said: “Who desecrates my temple?”
The tall man was coming towards the altar from a corner of the room. He had the dagger in his hand and his eyes were a bright blue, almost as though they were lit up from the inside. He came slowly, his long legs stiff, as though he wasn't used to walking. His face, below the wild eyes, was grim.
“Jesus God!” Chief Piper said. “It's Solomon!”
The man kept on coming. He raised the dagger, holding it in his clenched fist. I saw blood on the blade. Chief Piper screamed, the way a rabbit does when it's being killed, and turned and ran. I felt like running, too. Solomon took two more slow steps and then four of us cut loose at him. The flash of powder blinded me; the reports echoed crazily, hurt my cars. Solomon staggered, as though someone had pushed him, and then, hunched over, ran towards his coffin. We all fired at him, making a noise like a tommy-gun going full blast, but he reached the coffin and fell headlong inside. I guess that was where he wanted to be. We stood with our guns, looking at the coffin.
Chief Piper came back from where he had run to, his face chalk white, his eyes too big for his head. He asked: “Is he dead, boys?”
We walked over to the coffin, keeping the pistols in our hands. Solomon lay on his side. Blood made the robe red in a dozen places, and there was a mess of blood where the lower part of his jaw had been shot away. The gold knife was still in his fist.
I said: “Dead as a mackerel.”
The stink was terrible. I looked around the coffin, but I couldn't see where it was coming from. It reminded me again of the Kansas City stockyards.
“What the hell was his idea?” the chief said. “Living in a temple for five years. In a coffin.”
One of the detectives began to nose around the altar. I got the white cloth and threw it over the Princess. Grayson went downstairs to Penelope. There was a sound of voices outside the temple, and I went to the door and peeked out. About thirty Elders and Brothers had gathered by the steps, but the chief's men were keeping them back. I suppose they had heard the shooting. The cop by the altar called me, and I went back.
“What is it?”
He put his shoulder against the wall back of the altar and a door swung open. I went in behind him and the chief. Our flashlights showed a small room with a couple of tiny windows near the ceiling. There was a bed, a chair, a bookcase with some books and a dresser. In the dresser the detective found some black robes, sandals, and a rifle with a silencer.
“Remember a guy named Johnson?” I asked the chief.
“The one who was murdered?”
I nodded. “There's the gun that killed him.”
We went out into the big room again, the cop carrying the silenced rifle. The chief said: “I think you got some explaining to do.”
“Not here,” I said. “Bodies always give me goose pimples.”
After we'd left Penelope at St Ann's Hospital, we went to an all-night bar. Over a whisky and a steak sandwich I made things as clear as I thought I ought. I told Grayson and the chief I'd found from the records that McGee was the Vineyard's business manager. Pug Banta had killed him, I said, because McGee was trying to get rid of him. I showed them the Legion button I'd found in the temple basement.
“I figured Oke Johnson was killed,” I said, “by someone who didn't like him nosing around the temple.”
And when I found from Jeliff, the butcher, that he was sending old meat to the Vineyard, I said, I had a pretty good idea Solomon was still alive. “What else would they want decayed meat for but to make a stink?” And if Solomon was alive he'd want to keep it a secret, even if he had to kill Johnson.
“Then old Solomon was still behind everything?” the chief asked.
“Sure.”
“How the hell did he get his food?”
“I suppose a couple of Elders fed him. They probably didn't know whether he was really dead or alive.”
“He was sure crazy,” the chief said. While Grayson told the chief how he'd happened to hire me and Oke Johnson and then went on to some of the things I'd told him at the Arkady, I ate steak and drought about what I'd done. Usually Justice was supposed to be a tall dame in a white robe, but in Paulton, I decided, if the citizens ever stuck a statue of Justice on the courthouse steps, it would have to be a fat, red-faced guy with a scar on his belly.
That was a laugh, but a funny thing: I'd always played on the Justice team. Even now. Nobody could deny that Banta, the Princess and even McGee had it coming. I felt sorry for Caryle Waterman, but it was his own fault. And I had saved Penelope Grayson. I tried to think how I might have got her out in some other way, but I couldn't. It was a case, as the saying goes, of fighting fire with fire.
Grayson turned to me from the chief and asked: “Would Penelope actually have been the Bride if that poor woman hadn't...?”
I said: “Yeah.”
Chief Piper scowled at me. “That brings up the one thing I don't understand.”
I drank the rest of my whisky. “What?”
“Why'd the Princess take Miss Grayson's place?”
They both stared at me. “Oh,” I said; “she just... just wanted to help out.”
“Didn't she know Solomon ... uh ... and killed the Bride?”
“Neither of us knew that,” I said earnestly. “Otherwise she'd never done it.” I took a bite of steak. “I'd never have let her. The Princess... well, I went for her in a big way.”
Grayson said: “You don't seem exactly stricken with grief.”
“Well,” I said, “being a detective t
oughens a fellow up, Mr. Grayson.”
FB2 document info
Document ID: 1c772251-5e49-4f2b-8c81-5e1acff620ad
Document version: 1
Document creation date: 16.8.2012
Created using: calibre 0.8.63, FictionBook Editor Release 2.6.6 software
Document authors :
Jonathan Latimer
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Solomon's Vineyard Page 18
