The Alto Wore Tweed (The Liturgical Mysteries) Page 7

  Yes, she had the moves all right, but the voice was all wrong. I slid the drawer closed, catching my fingers at the first knuckle, and muttered a curse from the Second Book of Esdras.

  I looked up to see if she was shocked. She hadn’t moved. Either she hadn’t heard me or she was very familiar with Apocryphal anathemas. And I had a feeling her hearing was very good. I lit my cigar and pulled my hat down low over my eyes.

  I threw her a hymnal and she caught it on the first bounce.

  “What’s your favorite hymn?” I asked her through cigar-nched teeth, puffs of smoke accentuating each syllable like the exhaust of a finely tuned automobile.

  She threw the hymnal back to me without opening it.

  “Es flog ein kleins Waldvögelein,” she said, a dry smile playing on her lips.

  Ah, the Woodbird. I knew the hymn. It was one of my favorites. A subtle tune, majestic in nature yet somehow humble, with just a hint of familiarity. I also knew it wasn’t in this hymnal. She was toying with me, that much was obvious.

  “What about ‘How Great Thou Art?’” I asked slowly, trying to draw her into a trap of her own design.

  “A Danish drinking song.”

  My eyes narrowed to the size of two small oysters. “O Sacred Head?”

  “Bach chorales are not hymns. They don’t belong in a hymnal.”

  Suddenly I knew who she was. It was obvious. Why hadn’t I recognized her? She had graced the front cover of the Journal of Anglican Musicians Swimsuit Edition for four years running, although, to her credit, the pictorial essay didn’t do her justice.

  “Hello, Isabel.”

  “Hello, handsome. I was wondering when you’d recognize me.”

  Isabel Gerhardt. Great-great granddaughter of Paul Gerhardt, the German hymnodist, and wanted by the police in connection with the recent spectacular murder of the chairman of the Bishop’s Commission on Church Music. She was also the foremost expert on 18th-Century German hymnody alive today. Her lectures were sold out until the murder. Scalpers got two hundred dollars a ticket.

  “I didn’t do it,” she sobbed, turning on the tears as easily as some people turn on their radios. “You’ve got to believe me. I need your help.”

  They all need my help.

  • • •

  I got to church early on Sunday and headed to the office. The whole murder was still a puzzle, but I expected the lab report, which would be delivered tomorrow morning, to clear up quite a few things. This was the first murder to take place in St. Germaine since my administration and although I had a Criminal Justice degree and didn’t skip all that many classes, I had been inventing our police procedure on the fly.

  I took the first installment of The Alto Wore Tweed into the office and made enough copies for the choir. My usual modus operandi was to put a copy of what I termed “interesting reading” into each of the choir folders behind the first anthem.

  I began the service with the Karg-Elert Marche Triomphale and the rest of the liturgy followed without incident until the sermon. It was at this point that Elaine Hixon, the Junior Warden’s wife and one of the back row altos (a quasi-militant feminist group which we, in the choir, refer to as the BRAs) decided that the choir loft was just a bit warmer than she had thought it would be and began to take her sweater off. I have to presume that she wasn’t wearing a blouse under her sweater because it was her objective to remove her garment while remaining vested in her black robe and white surplice. This is a Houdiniesque maneuver that women ostensibly do fairly regularly, but unfortunately for Elaine, while her arms were inside her robe, her bra somehow got caught on her sweater which was, at that point, already over her head. The ensuing struggle resembled a couple of woodchucks mugging a nun.

  What was quite amusing for the choir also became very amusing for the congregation when an unnamed tenor, reading The Alto Wore Tweed, let loose a guffaw just as Herself reached the pinnacle of her sermon. Most of the parishioners turned and looked up. It was at this point that Elaine’s head popped through her choir robe. She saw the congregation looking up at her, tipped her chair sideways, and, with her arms totally immobile and no way to keep herself upright, fell onto the floor. Luckily she wasn’t hurt, but the whole episode caused her and the rest of the alto section, to break into hysterical muffled laughter—the kind of laughter that, once started, probably couldn’t be stopped unless I pulled out “Old Betsy” from underneath the organ bench. I admit I thought about it.

  “Don’t do it,” said Meg, in a hushed whisper, seeing my eyes shift.

  Other than this small flaw in the warp and woof of the tapestry of our devotion, the service finished up with no incidents. I put the final touches on the Bach Meine Seele erhebt den Herren fugue and Meg and I made our exit out the front doors, skipping coffee time and thereby avoiding, until tomorrow at least, the inevitable caustic comments from Herself. We were heading out for a quick picnic lunch before Darlene’s funeral, scheduled for three o’clock at the Mountainview Cemetery.

  We swung by The Slab, where they had our sandwiches waiting for us. I had taken advantage of the disrupted sermon to call in a quick to-go order on Meg’s cell. Luckily she had The Slab on the auto dial.

  “You have to set a better example for the choir,” Meg said, as we stood at the counter and picked out a bottle of chilled chardonnay and some pasta to go with the chicken salad. “Calling in a lunch order during the sermon just will not do.”

  “Yes, you’re right. I am suitably chastised,” I said, paying for the lunch and ushering Meg out the door.

  • • •

  We had a nice spot picked out that we hadn’t yet tried on our search for the perfect alfresco locale. Our culinary quest was hardly what you’d call “roughing it.” In her trunk, Meg kept a folding table for two, a couple of chairs, a complete set of flatware and china, various condiments, a crystal vase that we placed on the table filled with whatever wildflowers were handy, cloth napkins, two wine glasses and a portable CD player.

  “This is a great sandwich,” said Meg between bites of the hard crusted bread surrounding a delicious chicken and chutney salad and eaten to the strains of a Haydn string quartet. “I’m glad you didn’t shoot the altos.”

  “It never crossed my mind,” I said laughing.

  “It’s almost a little too chilly for picnicking any more.”

  “I’m afraid so,” I said. Shall we call it quits till next year?”

  “Not yet. We may get one or two chances in November if we’re lucky. If not, I’ll put the picnicteria into winter storage and put my spare tire back into the trunk.”

  The wind was picking up and despite the sunshine, the temperature was beginning to drop as the cold front moved across the mountains.

  As we finished our meal and were cleaning up, I suggested we swing by my place and pick up a couple of coats before the graveside service.

  • • •

  We arrived at the cemetery at about a quarter to three. The coffin was suspended over the hole in the ground and thanks to the recent good weather, the funeral home had dispensed with the tent that usually covered funeral parties. The temperature had already dropped into the low forties and the wind was beginning to pick up. We were glad to have our jackets.

  Meg and I stood in the back and did a visual who’s-who. The guest of honor had obviously arrived but the family wasn’t here yet. I was sort of surprised to see Arlen Pearl. I didn’t figure Arlen to be a sentimental kind of guy. There were a number of people from the Puckett’s Sunday school class at St. Germaine Baptist Church and a few from The Antique Barn, where Darlene worked. Maybell Lewis was in attendance. She was a member of Darlene’s ecumenical prayer group and attended Friendship Baptist Temple, a Black congregation in Boone. I had talked to her on a number of occasions while shopping for antiques.

  The limousine pulled up at five minutes before three. The funeral home in charge of the burial was Swallow’s Mortuary, one of several that operated in Boone and made routine visits to the Mountainv
iew Cemetery. Carlton Puckett and some folks who I suspected were Darlene’s family got out first. Brother Ralph Simpson from St. Germaine Baptist and a couple of funeral suits, who I recognized but didn’t know by name, followed closely and made their way to the seats. Brother Ralph assumed the helm.

  “Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today...”

  Meg elbowed me. “I think he’s doing a wedding,” she whispered.

  “Shhh.”

  “...to bid farewell to our sister Darlene.”

  “Whew,” whispered Meg out of the side of her mouth. “That was close.”

  “But as sad as we are to lose Darlene we know that she leaped out of that sunroof and STRAIGHT INTO THE ARMS OF JESUS!” shouted Brother Ralph. “Halleluia!”

  “Yooooowwwww,” howled Maybell, putting a handkerchief over her face.

  “She is now walking the streets of gold. There are no potholes in those streets. There is no hunger on those streets. And do you know why?” Brother Ralph asked, getting into a rhythm.

  I don’t know if he was expecting a response, but Maybell was from a denomination that answered questions that were asked from the pulpit.

  “‘Cause, those are the STREETS OF GLORY!” Maybell shrieked as she fell into a half swoon.

  Brother Ralph, not used to such interaction, now had an audible congregation of one, and he wasn’t about to let this opportunity pass. The sermon went on for a good thirty minutes, touching on the apocalypse, the last judgment, the rapture, the four-step plan of salvation, the parable of the mustard seed, and Noah’s Ark. I was pretty sure it wasn’t a scripted sermon, but it was heartfelt and Maybell lent her vocal stylings as punctuation to the high points.

  “Yes! Yes! Tell it all, brother!”

  Brother Ralph was preaching up to a grand finale when the funeral director noticed something amiss. He was standing off to the left of the makeshift pulpit, facing the mourners and nodding his head at appropriate moments when suddenly his focus changed. His eyes narrowed and he squinted up into the sun which, at this time of year, was fairly low in the sky and directly behind us. His mouth dropped open and he pulled a pair of sunglasses out of his inside suit pocket and put them on, his eyes never leaving the spot above our heads.

  Brother Ralph stopped his sermon in mid-invitation for the first time in his preaching career—a career which he began at age twelve as a child evangelist and which he assumed would continue until the day he died. “I’ll quit telling people about Jesus when I’ve drawn my last breath,” he would say. I believed him.

  He stopped preaching because he was having a vision. Directly behind us, about thirty feet in the air and coming out of the sun right toward Brother Ralph, was a woman. A naked woman, her form surrounded and illuminated by the sun’s deepening rays. This was the vision that stopped him in midsentence. We all turned and looked up.

  After three days of drifting on the autumn thermals, one of the missing dolls was coming down quickly thanks to the wind which had picked up and, I suspected, the drastic change in temperature.

  “Hey, she’s one of mine,” Arlen said to Meg under his breath.

  “Really,” said Meg, hissing back. “Can you prove it? I’m sure there are lots of helium-filled sex toys floating around the mountain.”

  “No, she’s mine all right. I got the receipt.”

  Meg rolled her eyes.

  The doll floated directly above our heads. Arlen leaped up into the air, grabbed the doll by its foot, pulled her down and tucked her under one arm.

  Brother Ralph was at a loss for words for perhaps the first time in his life. He couldn’t quite remember what he was talking about.

  “Um...and so therefore sisters and brothers...let us praise the Lord. Amen.”

  “Amen. Halleluia!” sang out Maybell.

  “He wrapped it up nicely,” I noted.

  • • •

  That evening I received a call from Nancy. Meg was at her house and I took the opportunity to enjoy a Cuban—a Romeo y Julietta—my cigar of choice, illegal in this country due to the embargo, but smuggled in for me by a member of the St. Barnabas Youth Group coming home from a mission trip in Costa Rica.

  “I heard about the funeral.”

  “It was something,” I said, puffing away and trying to be as circumspect as possible.

  “Anyway,” she said, “I was just on the phone with Kent Murphee in Boone.”

  Kent was the coroner.

  “And he wants to meet with you tomorrow at 8:30.”

  “8:30? What for?”

  “Something about the lab report on Willie Boyd.”

  “Jeez,” I whined. “8:30?”

  Nancy laughed. “8:30 in the morning. ’Night, boss.”

  • • •

  The next morning found me in Kent’s office at 8:32. It was early for me, but I was nothing if not a dedicated professional.

  “Good morning, Hayden. How ’bout a drink?” asked Kent as I walked in.

  “It’s 8:30 in the morning,” I said. “And I’m a dedicated professional. What have you got?”

  “Bourbon okay?”

  “Fine with me. Just one though.”

  Kent poured a couple of fingers of Maker’s Mark into two of his old fashioned specimen glasses that I knew he kept on hand for just such occasions. Kent was always in a vest and a tweed jacket, summer or winter, and sucking on a pipe which, most of the time, remained unlit.

  “Give me the good news,” I said, sipping my breakfast cocktail.

  “Interesting stuff,” Kent said, pulling out a file and opening it on his desk. “The food you sent over was clean—although some of it was quite old. The wine in the bottle was negative for poison. It was just wine. And not very good wine either. I’d say about six dollars a bottle.”

  “They can tell that with an analysis?” I asked.

  “Yep. Plus I saw the price on the bottom of the bottle.”

  “Very funny,” I chuckled. “What else?”

  “The wine in Mr. Boyd’s stomach was negative for poison also. In fact, he had no poison in his stomach at all.”

  “So how did he die?”

  “Poison.”

  “Brought on by poison, I suppose,” I said, laughing. “You know,” I said, taking another sip, “whenever I walk in here, I feel like I’ve fallen into an Abbott and Costello routine.”

  It was Kent’s turn to chuckle. “In point of fact, he died of a heart attack. But it was the poison that caused his heart to stop. The report on the stomach contents shows no poison present, but his blood contained cardiac glycosides—specifically oleandrin, nerin, digitoxigenin, and olinerin of which oleandrin is the principal toxin. Also present was rosagenin, which has definite strychnine effects.”

  “In English please, Kent,” I begged.

  “In English,” said Kent, “Mr. Boyd was killed by one of the oldest techniques for ending an unhappy marriage known in these hills. Oleander poisoning. I would say yellow oleander, the leaves as well as the bark which would be indicated by the presence of the rosagenin. Nasty and potent stuff.”

  “What do you mean ‘for ending an unhappy marriage’?” I asked.

  “Well, before divorce became the legal institution it is today, it was very difficult for a woman to rid herself of an unfaithful or abusive husband. Generally a cup of oleander tea would take care of the problem. The heart attack that resulted was very rarely diagnosed as poison. Although the deceased would generally vomit and there would be an agonized expression on the corpse’s face....”

  “Like Willie.”

  “Exactly. But usually the expression could be relaxed and the body would be cleaned and dressed by the family before the undertaker ever arrived. Here’s the interesting thing. When a woman could file for no-fault divorce herself, the mortality rate of married males ages twenty to fifty went down sixty percent.”

  “You’re kidding,” I said.

  “I’m not,” Kent replied. “There wasn’t any poison in the stomach so we checked his mouth. Su
re enough, the membranes inside were covered with the stuff. And the oral membranes can absorb substances very quickly.”

  “But he didn’t swallow it?”

  “Nope.”

  “This is curiouser and curiouser,” I said, quoting Mr. Dodgson.

  • • •

  On my way home I got a page from Marilyn Forbis, the church secretary.

  “I don’t know if this means anything,” she said when I called herack, “but Willie came in to get some keys on the Friday morning before he was killed.”

  “He did?”

  “I remember the time, because he came into the office while I was typing the bulletin. I had to get it finished, so I gave him the whole ring. He said he’d lost his.”

  “Did he bring them back?”

  “After about an hour.”

  “Were they all there?”

  “Yeah. I checked. They’re all here.” She paused. “Sorry, Hayden. I forgot all about it till last night. Does it mean anything?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe.”

  Chapter 7

  Denver was content to let me figure out the puzzle as she settled into a Naugahyde chair across from my desk. My mind traveled back to the year before--or maybe the year before that.

  The air was cold--cold as the shoulder Isabel gave me when I invited her out to share a cigar. As I walked down the deserted street, pulling my hat down over my eyes and heading for my favorite fern-bar, I mentally reviewed the case as Isabel laid it out.

  It was a new priest causing all the trouble. One thing about this guy--he wasn’t afraid to fire people and that included choir members. In his church, if you didn’t sing professionally, you didn’t sing. It wasn’t my cup of tea, but I’ve had paid choirs before and there’s something to be said for singing the Byrd “Sacerdotes Domini” with one six-minute rehearsal right before the service.