Spirit (14 page)

‘Wally Grierson,' she said. ‘What
do you
want? Zif things aint troubled enough.'

‘Hallo, May,' said Sheriff Grierson. ‘I've come to take a look around, that's all. Study, kitchen. You didn't touch nothing, did you?'

‘That cheeky young deputy of yours, the one with the spots, he said not to, so I didn't.'

‘Thanks, May.'

Grierson stepped inside the rectory. He took off his hat, and looked around.

‘Kitchen's this way,' said May, crossly, and shuffled ahead of him. She swung open the door and said, ‘Help yourself.'

‘You sure you didn't touch nothing?' asked Sheriff Grierson.

‘Touch anything? Are you kidding me? Do you think I want to risk the wrath of Wally Grierson, class of '25? Pie-eating champeen, weren't you, two years running?'

‘That's enough, May,' he admonished her. ‘This is the house of God.'

‘This is the house of God-knows-what, you mean.'

She went shuffling off and left him alone in the kitchen where the Reverend Dick Bracewaite had been found dying. He stood still for a moment, taking in the pine table and the cream-painted hutch with its jars of sugar and salt and Sanka coffee and the packets of Flako Pie Crust and Nunso Dehydrated corn. A blowfly droned and droned around the room. The electric clock on the wall had stopped at 5:07.

He had looked over the kitchen yesterday, when he had first
been called here, but he had seen nothing at all which had told him how Dick Bracewaite could have been frostbitten. Only Dick Bracewaite himself, blackened and shaking and lapsing in and out of unconsciousness.

He paced around the kitchen, frowning, looking, touching things. On the upper shelves of the hutch, there stood a row of china jugs, as well as cups and saucers and tea plates. Below them, there stood a row of copper saucepans, but the odd thing about the saucepans was that they were all crowded to one side of the shelf. So were a sugar-shaker and a tinplate tea caddy on the shelf underneath.

Sheriff Grierson went over to the hutch and opened the drawers, one by one. In each of them, all the cutlery and the kitchen tools were crammed over to the left. He stood looking at them for a long time, and then at the stopped clock. The last time he had seen anything like this was when the Dixon house over at Gaylordsville was struck by lightning. Everything metal had tumbled into the living-room, where the lightning had struck, and all the clocks had stopped. A massive wave of magnetic energy, that was what had caused it. But that had been lightning. What could have caused a massive wave of magnetic energy in Dick Bracewaite's kitchen?

He left the kitchen and walked across to the study. The morning was beginning to warm up now, and he could hear the vireos warbling in the trees. He picked up Dick Bracewaite's Sunday sermon and read a few lines.
Stay silent, or say something sweeter than silence
. Well, he thought, Dick Bracewaite was surely going to be silent now. He look up at the photograph of Dick Bracewaite as a theology student, and at
Susanna and the Elders
. Kind of fruity for a Reverend, he thought; but a Reverend could hardly put up a picture of Betty Grable.

He opened the middle drawer of the desk. Just the usual stuff, pens, ink, paperclips, a small silver crucifix on a chain, a half-eaten roll of mint. Life Savers.

He looked in the side drawers, one by one. He found nothing but neatly-arranged envelopes and notepaper, and an ecclesiastical calendar for 1942.

The bottom drawer, however, was locked. He tugged it and rattled it without success, then he looked around for a key. One of the mysteries about Dick Bracewaite's death (apart from the mystery of his frostbite) was the whereabouts of his clothes and personal belongings, like his keys and his wallet. He had been found buck-naked without any discarded underwear around him, no wristwatch, nothing. That could have meant that Doctor Ferris' abduction theory was right, and that Dick Bracewaite had been taken over to New Milford or somewhere else where they had access to a freezer. He could have been stripped, frozen, and then driven back here and dumped on his kitchen floor. Good theory, except that the chronology was all wrong. Too many people had seen Dick Bracewaite too close to the time that Lizzie Buchanan had found him.

Other theory: somehow they had managed to freeze him here in the rectory, and then taken his clothes away with them. Only trouble with
that
theory: no discernible motive and no known means of carrying it out.

Sheriff Grierson searched all around the study for the key to the desk. In the end he took out his clasp knife, listened for a moment to make sure that May the housekeeper couldn't hear him, then slid the blade into the desk, just above the drawer. He wasn't a lockpicking expert, but what he lacked in expertise he made up for in sheer strength. He pried the lock away from the front of the drawer, and with one sharp satisfying crack it was open. Inside he found a document-case, made of black calfskin, with a brass-plated clasp. This, too, was locked, but it only needed one twist from the knife to break it.

Sheriff Grierson stood up and emptied the contents across the desk. He spread them around, and said. ‘Holy God almighty.'

He hardly ever swore, and up until now he had never blasphemed. But he had never seen anything like this before-nothing that shocked him so much nor fascinated him so much and at the same time made his stomach churn in disgust.

The document-case had been crammed with scores of black-and-white photographs and pencil drawings. There were a few scenes of rural Connecticut, and a drawing of the church of Christ the King in the centre of New Milford, but the rest of them depicted naked or semi-naked children, mostly girls but some pretty-looking boys, too. The photographs were pale and pearly-grey, like children seen through a fog, beautifully but indecently posed. The drawings were mostly in ochre-coloured pastels or very soft pencil, and executed with a lewd and meticulous attention to detail.

The children had half-closed dreamy eyes, and seductive smiles, as if they were enjoying what Dick Bracewaite was doing to them. What was most shocking of all, though, was that Sheriff Grierson recognized at least five of them: Janie McReady, Jimmy Phillips, Sue-Ann Messenger, Polly Womack and Laura Buchanan.

He stared at the pictures for a very long time. His disgust and shock finally subsided, to be replaced by a terrible and suffocating anger – anger that Dick Bracewaite could have used these children to satisfy his own revolting lust – anger that he himself hadn't found out about it, and stopped it, and protected the community that he was pledged to protect.

He sniffed, and took a deep, steadying breath. Then he shuffled the pictures straight, and slid them back into the document-case. Evidence, exhibit one. But Sheriff Grierson almost felt like letting the perpetrator go free. Whoever had killed Dick Bracewaite, and however they had managed to kill
him, they had been doing the community of Sherman a considerable favour.

May appeared in the study doorway and stared. ‘Wally?' she said. ‘You want a lemonade? You look like you're sick.'

Sheriff Grierson ignored the comment and said, ‘Tell me, May, what was the Reverend Bracewaite like with children?'

‘Children? Why, he adored children. Do you know what he used to say to me? “A man has no need of angels, when he has children”.'

Sheriff Grierson tucked the document-case under his arm. ‘He don't have neither now, children nor angels.'

May looked perplexed, but Grierson laid a hand on her shoulder and smiled at her. ‘There aint no angels where the Reverend Bracewaite's going.'

 

 

Aunt Beverley arrived on Saturday morning, in a fine summer rain that turned the driveway into molten gold. She had been driven up from New York by a big-nosed man in a startling brown check suit and yellow spats. She said his name was Moe and he was something to do with wartime baseball. He perpetually shifted an unlit cheroot from one side of his mouth to the other, and when he did speak he was mostly unintelligible. Aunt Beverley said he had money to burn.

The atmosphere in the house was tense and strange. In some ways, it was worse than it had been when Peggy had died. Ever since Sheriff Grierson had come around on Tuesday evening to talk to father, and then to Laura and Elizabeth, they had been scarcely able to speak to each other, any of them, because of the absolute awfulness of what had happened.

How could you go on chatting normally about horses or lunch or meeting your friends in Endicott's when all you could think of was your own sister or your own daughter, without any clothes on, being touched and photographed and even doing
that
with the Reverend Bracewaite?

Father had a haunted pinched-up look on his face. He had been forced to postpone his trip to New York, and had paced around his desk all day, waiting for the phone to ring with news of grandfather. He had talked to Laura for a long, long time with the door closed, over an hour, and when Laura came out of the study her eyes were scarlet-rimmed and swimming with tears. Upstairs, in her bedroom, she said that father hadn't been cross with her, but he had been deeply hurt that she hadn't felt able to tell him what Dick Bracewaite had been
doing to her. Why hadn't she trusted him? How had he failed her? Why in God's name had somebody else managed to kill Dick Bracewaite before father himself had been given the chance to have his revenge?

Father had made them both solemnly promise not to mention a word to mommy. Mommy was improving every day: they didn't want her to go off the rails again, not now.

Elizabeth had stood pale-faced at the end of the bed and watched Laura sniffing and talking and twiddling with the fringes of her bedspread.

After a while, she said, ‘You're not sorry, are you?'

Laura had frowned at her sharply. ‘What are you talking about? Why should I be sorry?'

‘But you're not sorry that it happened. You
liked
it.'

‘Don't be so horrible,' Laura had retorted. She had lifted her bedspread and hidden her face in it. For a while she had tried to make a noise that sounded like sobbing; but after a while she had lowered the bedspread a little so that only one blue eye was visible, and the corner of a smile.

‘You
liked
it,' Elizabeth breathed, in complete horror. ‘You actually, actually
liked
it!'

But now Aunt Beverley was here to take Laura away for a while. Away from scandal, away from small-town disapproval, and most of all away from men. Seamus opened the front door for her, and took her umbrella, and Aunt Beverley came striding into the hallway, pulling off her beige summer gloves like long strings of raw pastry, and swivelling her large head imperiously from side to side. She was dressed in a beige jacket, a spotted beige blouse, and a beige hat that looked like a tureen-lid.

Elizabeth hadn't seen her since Peggy's funeral, and she thought that she looked even more waxy and made-up and older than ever, although her hair had turned to a vivid ginger.

Seamus dutifully shook out her wet umbrella over her feet.

‘Well, thank
you
,' she declared.

‘Cuffs and coats,' he replied, with a smile.

Moe brushed rain off his sleeves. ‘This is alpaca, it shrinks.'

‘Isn't that the loudest suit you ever saw?' Aunt Beverley remarked, stepping across the hallway and taking out her cigarette-case. ‘That suit's so loud it keeps people awake at night.'

‘How are you doing, Beverley?' their father asked her, holding out his hand.

‘Better than
you
, I imagine,' Beverley replied.

‘Are you staying for lunch? Mrs Patrick's managed to find us a couple of Cornish rock hens.'

‘Well, that's sweet of you, but we'll probably stop off at Danbury, on the way back. Moe has to get to his game.'

Moe said, ‘You know something, the Giants are playing the Phillies today, and they're both so bad, I don't think
either
team can win.'

‘The Phutile Phillies,' said Laura.

Moe looked down at her, his cheroot travelling swiftly from one side of his mouth to the other. His eyes bulged in appreciation. ‘Here's a girl who knows her stuff,' he declared. ‘The Phutile Phillies, that's right. They brought in that lardbutt Jimmie Foxx out of retirement and what did they get? Sixteen flops on the trot.'

Father laid his hand on Laura's shoulder. ‘Sweetheart . . . are you all packed now? Aunt Beverley wants to get you back to New York.'

‘I think I have time for a drink,' said Aunt Beverley. ‘Where's your lovely wife today? Isn't she joining us? I thought she was making progress.'

‘Margaret's been resting,' father told her. ‘She
has
been making progress, for sure. But it hasn't been easy. That's why I don't want her to know about any of this. I've said that Laura's been offered the chance of a screen audition, that's all, just a small part. And of course she's thrilled about
that.
'

Moe lit Aunt Beverley's cigarette and almost lit his own cheroot, but then appeared to think better of it.

‘As a matter of fact,' said Aunt Beverley, ‘there may be a chance of a real screen test. Robert Lowenstein is making a picture about the Home Front. What's it called, Moe?'

‘I Piped My Eye In My Old Apple Pie, how should I know?'

‘That's nearly it.
The Apple Pie Patrol
. It's a picture about wives and sweethearts doing their bit. And they're looking for pretty little blonde girls like you, Laura.'

Father looked even more pinched than ever. ‘Beverley . . . you know why you're looking after Laura, don't you? I want her away from all that. I want her to have quiet and normality and strictly-supervised bedtimes.'

‘You're right,' Moe nodded, with exaggerated enthusiasm. ‘That's exactly what I could do with. Especially the strictly-supervised bedtimes.'