Jack C. Ferguson had never stopped drinking, but he had been able to taper off and go for up to three days without a drop. This was the third day. He wanted a drink, but he wasn’t going to have one. He had come too close to falter. Too close, but not close enough.
Bullshit. If he didn’t find the tea set, nothing mattered.
He rolled off his pallet of newspapers and got up. They had spent the night in one of Ferguson’s hideouts, a deserted warehouse near Dover Street. If Rulick sent men after them, Ferguson wanted to be in his own territory, and he didn’t want to endanger the Fallon family any further.
Ferguson looked out the window. A few blocks away, the modern Herald-American newspaper building covered most of his old South End neighborhood. Beyond that, the downtown skyline glinted in the June sun. Another scorcher. Ferguson thought about the snowy days when he had sat in Phil Cawley’s room and gazed out at this same view. He remembered that the Customs House Tower, now dwarfed by glass, steel, and red granite, had dominated the city.
Old Phil Cawley and his tale of buried treasure and his quotation from Paradise Lost. Damn the quotations, thought Ferguson. Damn the one they didn’t have.
They had spent most of the night piecing together the quotations. At an old desk in the warehouse office, with Ferguson’s kerosene lamp giving light, they had arranged the quotations before them in ascending order, from Book II to Book XII. Occasionally, a rat would scuttle across the floor, and Ferguson, thinking he heard Rulick’s men, would reach for his .45, or a police siren would wail past the warehouse, but sounds served only to punctuate the silence in the mouldering old building.
The first quotation, which Ferguson had gotten from a woman in California, appeared in Book II. It told of a “boiling gulf” over which a bridge stretched from hell to earth. They wondered if Abigail was referring to a bridge. The quotation also mentioned the tracks of Satan, which led them to speculate briefly that the treasure was buried near a bridge over the Boston and Maine tracks.
Evangeline pointed out that it was the only quotation containing a word which might be taken as a homonym for a Back Bay street. “Boiling,” she suggested, could easily become “Boylston,” Boylston Street, the main commercial thoroughfare in the Back Bay. They agreed.
The next set of lines came from Katherine Carrington. They were part of the prose argument, or introductory synopsis, for Book IV. “Uriel descending on a Sunbeam warns Gabriel, who had in charge the Gate of Paradise, that some evil spirit had escap’d the Deep…” The quotation ended in midsentence. Fallon thought that the rest of the lines in Book IV might refer to the depth at which the tea set was buried, since “Deep” was the last word in the passage. They decided to look at the succeeding quotations with that in mind.
Dr. William Pratt’s quotation, which had hung over his desk at the Massachusetts General Hospital, came next in Book IV. It referred to Adam and Eve, “two of far nobler shape.”
The next set of lines was the quotation Ferguson had shown to Fallon and Evangeline when he had first appeared on Evangeline’s roof. In it, the Archangel Gabriel heard the “tread of nimble feet” as three spirits, including Satan, approached him.
“Like I said the other night, are we supposed to read the unit of measure or the number?”
“Use both of them and put this quotation together with the one before it,” said Fallon. “You get two feet three, which doesn’t help us if she’s talking about the depth at which the tea set is buried.”
They read the next quotation. It was another which Katherine Pratt Carrington had given them at the airport. “So wise he judges it to fly from pain/However, and to ’scape his punishment./So judge thou still, presumptuous, till the wrath,/Which thou incurr’st by flying, meet thy flight/Sev’nfold, and scourge that wisdom back to Hell,/Which taught thee yet no better, that no pain/Can equal anger infinite provk’t.”
Evangeline read the context. “It’s Gabriel talking to Satan again.”
“A Calvinist world view for sure,” said Fallon. “Run away from punishment now, and you’ll get it sevenfold in the ass when the Lord catches up with you.”
“Okay,” said Ferguson. “We’ve now got a ‘sev’nfold,’ a ‘two,’ a ‘three,’ and we think we’re talking about feet and depth. Do we put the ‘two’ together with the ‘sev’nfold’ and come up with fourteen feet?”
“Not if we’re talking about depth,” said Fallon. “The average depth of the landfill is twenty and a half feet, and we know the tea set was buried in the mud under the landfill.”
“What about ‘feet,’ ‘three,’ and ‘sev’nfold’? Twenty-one feet?”
Fallon shook his head. “That would leave the tea set in six inches of mud. Even if water did cover it for most of that time, I don’t think the tea set could lie there for fifty years and not be found. If Abigail is telling us how deep the thing is buried, I think she wants us to read ‘sev’nfold’ simply as the number seven. That gives us ‘two’ and ‘seven’ sandwiched around the word ‘feet.’ Twenty-seven feet.”
“What about the number ‘three’ in the ‘nimble feet’ passage?”
“If the tea set is buried thirty-seven feet down, I don’t think anyone is going to find it. The tea set sank into the mud and was covered over by a layer of dirt and gravel. I say that the tea set is buried from twenty-three to twenty-seven feet down.”
Another quotation, from Book VII, was more general in its reference. “But they, or under ground, or circuit wide/With Serpent error wand’ring, found their way,/And on the washy Ooze deep Channels wore;/Easy, ere God had bid the ground be dry…”
Katherine wrote that this had been her quotation, coming to her through her granduncle, Henry Pratt. The reference was obvious—a channel in the ooze before God filled the land. The Easterly Channel.
Fallon, Evangeline, and Ferguson kept working until five in the morning. Anticipation and frustration struggled within them as they deciphered. It was not difficult to draw a single clue from each quotation; Abigail had been careful to make the individual meanings clear. But they were not always certain if they were arranging the clues in the correct order. At times, she seemed to follow a sequence—in Book IV and later, when she gave directional clues—but quotations like the “boiling gulf” appeared to have been chosen without reference to the other lines.
They agreed that the lines on the tombstones of Horace Pratt and Abigail were not clues, but exhortations to succeeding generations. They did not consider them.
They pushed the other clues around until they found a logical sequence for the words and phrases. They thought that the tea set was now within their grasp. They stepped back, like artisans admiring their handiwork, and read, “In the channel beneath the fill; Boylston; twenty-three to twenty-seven feet deep; ten paces east on southwest corner.”
Fallon cursed softly.
“Southwest corner of what?” asked Evangeline.
The vital clue was missing. Fallon sank into a sitting position on the floor. He realized that he was too exhausted to be disappointed.
Ferguson looked out the window. The sky was already light. “I rode the rails for three weeks back in seventy-six. I found an old woman named Mary Korbel in a seedy Hollywood apartment, I knew just lookin’ at her that she didn’t have much time. Cancer. She showed me this sampler that the quotation was embroidered onto, the one about boiling abysses. I tried to buy it off her, but she wouldn’t sell. She said her daughter was a godless prostitute, and someday the message on the sampler might lead her to salvation. All along, I’ve been figuring that this was the clue the Pratts didn’t have, and once I had the Pratt clues, I’d find the tea set.”
“Maybe they don’t have it,” offered Evangeline. She didn’t care how they found it now, as long as they found it. “Maybe they have another one. They might be willing to make a deal.”
“No deals,” Ferguson growled.
“No deals,” agreed Peter. “There’s another quotation out there. Either that or we’ve deciphered these things all wrong. Let’s get some sleep and try again in the morning.”
Standing now in the bright sunlight, Ferguson began to wonder if he would ever see the Golden Eagle. He had searched for years, and he was not much closer than he’d been that day Phil Cawley told him the story. He could hear Phil Cawley’s rasping voice. He could almost taste Phil Cawley’s alky split. He took some money from Evangeline’s purse, stepped past the tin-can alarms, and went down the fire escape.
It was eight o’clock. Philip Pratt sat in his study and watched two tree sparrows chase each other in the elm outside his window. He had been up for an hour, since Soames had called to tell him of his aunt’s disappearance. They had already decided that a report to the police would be unwise. Pratt heard the elevator door open down the hall. He was expecting Soames and James Buckley, who had been dispatched onto Fallon’s trail the day before and had disappeared for the night. Pratt swiveled around to face the door.
Isabelle walked into the room. She was wearing Philip’s terrycloth bathrobe and a gold necklace. She was carrying a tray of coffee, juice, and croissants. She had spent the night in the Back Bay mansion, and there was only one bed for the maid to make up in the morning. “You’ll feel better if you have a little breakfast, Philip.”
“I’ll feel better when I know what’s going to happen.”
“Soon enough.”
He watched her pour the coffee. She seemed serene, unworried. He asked her if she was concerned about her mother.
“Not really. I know where she’s gone.”
“Where?”
“Hawaii.” She sat back on her heels, exposing her muscular thighs. “It’s always been one of her fantasies. I’ll bet she’s on a plane right now.”
“Hawaii.” He said the word dreamily, then said, “I’m still worried about her.”
“We both know that Evangeline got her out with the help of the Fallons, and she’s fully competent. She wasn’t for a day or so after Christopher died. None of us were. But she knew that we were keeping her there because it served our convenience.”
“And her safety.”
“She didn’t accept that, and I’m not sure I do, either. But in any event, I’m quite certain that she hates us both.”
He looked again at the sparrows chattering at each other. “Would she hate us more if she knew about last night?”
“She’d give me the same motherly advice she dispensed thirty years ago, when we first started going for long walks on the beach; don’t.”
“Are we wrong?”
“I suppose.” She did not want to think about morality. She simply wanted to enjoy him. “But I’m too old to have children. We’re both alone. And I was brought up in such a rarefied atmosphere that I’ve never found a man outside the Pratt family worth my time, and that includes my late husband.”
Isabelle Carrington Howe was not beautiful in the way that Melissa Pike was beautiful. Her hair was turning gray, her nose was rather prominent, and when she was unhappy, her look was stern and severe, instead of pouty and little-girl sexy, like Melissa’s. But Isabelle comforted Philip. No one had comforted him in years.
“I have the feeling,” he said, “that rather soon I am going to be unemployed.”
“You mustn’t think that way.”
“I’m beginning to enjoy the prospect. I’m thinking of loading up the Gay Head IV and just sailing away. I’ve always wanted to do it. Now that I owe a personal apology to your mother, I think I’ll aim for Hawaii.”
“In the Gay Head?”
“The original Gay Head wasn’t much larger, and Horace Taylor Pratt built an empire on its keel.” He paused for a moment and looked at Isabelle. “If I should turn the empire over to someone else, I’ll be free to go where I please and with whom I please. Would you be interested in sailing to Hawaii with me?”
She knew he was serious. She liked the idea, but it frightened her. She didn’t know what to say. The sound of the elevator distracted them.
Soames and Buckley entered the study. Buckley looked like a schoolboy come to see the principal.
“Good morning, Bennett,” said Pratt.
“He was never able to pick up the Fallons, either in South Boston or the South End, so he called his girlfriend and spent the night with her.” Soames spoke as though Buckley were not in the room.
“I hope he realizes that while he was screwing, he might have been providing us with valuable information,” said Pratt.
“Give a guy a break,” protested Buckley. “I been so damn busy followin’ that Fallon around I ain’t been on the rack in three weeks.”
Pratt smiled. He was in no position to criticize. “One break is extended. Two weeks ago, you followed Peter Fallon to a wake. It is very important that you tell us everything that you remember about it.”
“Can I have a cup of coffee?”
Isabelle poured, and James Buckley took a small notebook from his pocket. It contained names, addresses, and extra notes on Peter Fallon’s activities.
Evangeline felt something crawling on her leg. She kicked violently, knocking Peter awake.
“What? What’s wrong?”
“A cockroach!” She jumped up from the sleeping bag, and the cockroach streaked off into a corner. She would have stepped on it, but she wasn’t wearing shoes. She had slept in T-shirt, panties and socks.
“Be glad it wasn’t a rat,” said Fallon.
“I’ve had it. I don’t know why on earth we couldn’t spend the night in a hotel instead of in this hole.”
“We’re running scared,” Fallon explained, as though he were reciting the rules of a game. “Ferguson’s been doing it for a few years, so I guess he ought to know how.”
“Speaking of whom, where is he?”
“He took some money and went out. He probably needs a drink. I could use one myself.”
A rat scurried into the room. It stopped and studied them dispassionately for a moment, then disappeared into a hole in the wall.
“This is it, Peter,” she said firmly. “I’ve run scared for the last night. I don’t care whether we find the tea set or not. Tonight I sleep in my own bed.” She sat down crosslegged on the rumpled sleeping bag and picked nervously at the lint on her socks.
“You care, Evangeline.” He laid his hand on her knee. “You care as much as I do.”
“Ferguson told me my father’s story, what there is of it. And the reasons for my brother’s death are still speculation. We may never know what happened to him. I just want it all to end.” She put her hand on his. “I’d like to get to know you under normal circumstances.”
“Until we dig up that tea set, nothing in our lives can be normal.”
She picked at her socks and stared at the floor. She knew that she would stay. She was too close to turn back. “How do we figure out the missing clue?”
“We start by rereading the ones we have.”
“Could we determine the area on Boylston Street that intersects with the old Easterly Channel bed?”
“I suppose, but what if it’s a business block? What if the channel intersects at a diagonal? You could have six or seven buildings on Boylston above the channel.” Fallon shook his head in frustration. “If the Pratts have all these clues, and they don’t have the tea set yet, that last clue is absolutely vital.”
“Morning, kids.” Ferguson stepped over the tin cans. He felt better after a walk. “I bought us doughnuts and coffee and the Sunday Globe.” He flung the paper to Fallon. “Your apartment hallway made the front page.”
Fallon flipped back the comics and glanced at the story. Then he looked at the picture. It was a mug shot of a man with a gaunt, skeletal face, pockmarks, and a receding hairline.
“Jesus Christ,” said Fallon softly. “This is the guy. I knew I recognized him yesterday.”
“What guy?” asked Ferguson.
“The guy who shot Kenny Gallagher.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m positive. Could you forget that face?”
Ferguson looked at the picture. “He was an ugly fucker, wasn’t he?”
“Why the hell did he kill Kenny Gallagher?”
“Maybe it was another job,” said Ferguson. “Didn’t they say Gallagher was knocked off for bookin’ horses and ballgames?”
Fallon studied the article. He learned that the police wanted to question him, since the murder had taken place in his apartment. However, it reported, Tom Fallon had told the police that Peter had been out of town for several days. Nice work, thought Peter.
“This has to tie in, Jack. It has to.”
“I think you should talk to your mother,” said Evangeline. “She seemed to know a lot about this Kenny Gallagher. She told me about him the other night. I was looking at a crucifix on the wall in the bedroom. She told me it was Kenny’s proudest possession. He had a pair of them. He gave one to her when your brother was sick, and he gave the other to an old priest.”
“That’s it!” Fallon jumped out of the sleeping bag. “The priest. It’s been there all along and I never saw it. The old priest who said the Rosary at Kenny Gallagher’s wake. He gave me a ride from the funeral home to Broadway Station.”
He had reached the center of the web. He was certain. Two hundred years of striving led, ultimately, through a South Boston bartender to a lonely old parish priest. The astonishment filled him.
“Somehow or other the priest managed to tell me his life story while he drove. He was in love with Kenny’s mother, but he never married her.”
“You’re losing me,” said Evangeline.
“The priest said how much he loved Kenny’s mother. He called her his ‘poor, dear Mary Mannion.’ ”
Evangeline still didn’t get it. Neither did Ferguson.
“Mannion!” screamed Fallon loudly enough to knock plaster off the walls. “Abigail Pratt Bentley’s servant—the one she writes about in the diary—his name was Sean Mannion!”
Fallon, Evangeline, and Ferguson arrived at St. Basil’s Church just before ten o’clock. The parking lot was jammed for the nine-thirty Mass.
St. Basil’s was a purely functional building. No prim, austere New England steeple. No soaring Gothic extravagance. Like the summer cottages in its parish, it was a one-story clapboard shell; long and low, painted white with black trim, topped by a small cupola that housed the bell.
Fallon opened the rear door and peered into the church. Father Gerry Hale, looking tiny and frail before a large summer Sunday congregation, was saying Mass. It was the season of Pentecost, and he was wearing green vestments. The sun poured in the east windows, illuminating the dark knots in the pine paneling and the rough beams that supported the structure.
Fallon turned to the others. “The Mass will be over in a while. Let’s wait for him in the sacristy.”
They walked to the sacristy door at the rear of the building. The temperature was already nearing ninety degrees, and the sun reflected off the side of the white church with a vengeance. Evangeline noticed that the geraniums and pansies along the path were wilting in the heat.
Fallon opened the sacristy door and stopped. The small eyes were staring at him from behind wire-rimmed glasses. A pistol appeared in the hand.
James Buckley’s notes on the Gallagher funeral had included a reference to Father Gerry Hale, an old family friend of the Gallaghers. The Pratts had decided to visit him fifteen minutes before Fallon saw the newspaper.
Fallon slammed the door and pushed Evangeline and Ferguson away. “Into the church.”
Evangeline and Ferguson didn’t ask questions. They ducked into a side door with Fallon right behind them. There were angry glances and disapproving stares for the latecomers. The consecration was over, and the congregation was saying the Lord’s Prayer. Fallon shoved the other two into a pew.
“What’s wrong?” whispered Evangeline.
The woman sitting in front of her glared at Evangeline.
Fallon flashed an apologetic smile, and the woman turned around. “Pratt, Soames, and Buckley are in the sacristy.”
“How the hell did they figure this out?” whispered Ferguson.
“I don’t know, but Soames pulled a gun on me.”
“My uncle wouldn’t kill an old priest,” said Evangeline.
“Maybe not, but that little bastard with the glasses would,” said Ferguson.
The woman in front of them looked around again, as did several others.
Fallon picked up a prayer book and pretended to read it. Evangeline gazed up at the altar. She noticed a silver crucifix mounted on the tabernacle. She elbowed Fallon. He was watching the priest open the tabernacle behind the altar and remove the ciborium, which contained the communion wafers.
“We’ve got to get to him before they do,” he said.
From the sacristy, Pratt and Soames were studying the altar. Their attention was focused on the priest’s chalice, a beautifully engraved work of silver.
“We’ve got to get to him first,” said Pratt.
Soames looked around the sacristy. His eyes settled on a closet. He opened it. “We will.”
Father Hale stepped to the altar rail, and the communicants began to form a line in the center aisle. He held a host in front of the first communicant. “Body of Christ.”
“Amen,” came the reply. An old woman received Communion, stepped aside, and a child stepped up to the rail.
Father Hale once calculated that, in fifty years of priest-hood, he had given the Holy Eucharist almost 400,000 times. He sometimes had difficulty concentrating on the mystical nature of his duty. “Body of Christ.”
“Amen.”
I wonder if Mrs. Donovan is cooking muffins for breakfast. “Body of Christ.”
“Amen.”
Why must they stick their tongues out so far? All I need is the tip. “Body of Christ.”
“Amen.”
I wonder who’s pitching for the Sox today. “Body of Christ.”
“Amen.”
What bridgework. “Body of Christ.”
“Amen.”
This young man looks familiar. “Body of Christ.”
“Your life may be in danger. Don’t go into the sacristy after the Mass.”
The priest almost dropped the ciborium. His pupils closed down and his eyes fixed on Fallon.
“I was a friend of Kenny Gallagher’s,” whispered Fallon. “We met at the wake. There are people in the sacristy who may be dangerous.”
Father Hale’s eyes shifted toward the sacristy door, then back to Fallon.
“Leave by the center aisle. I’ll be outside to give you protection.”
Fallon didn’t open his mouth. He didn’t feel quite stainless enough to receive Communion. He turned and went back to his seat.
As the last communicants reached Father Hale, another priest walked onto the altar behind him. Fallon found it strange that a priest would arrive to help dispense the Sacrament when Communion was almost over. Then, he recognized Bennett Soames in cassock, surplice, and stole. Soames knelt and studied the priest’s chalice, which was sitting on the altar.
“It’s on the chalice,” hissed Fallon. “The last set of lines is on the chalice.”
“They must have seen the engraving from the sacristy,” said Ferguson.
“I think we’ve lost,” whispered Evangeline.
Soames read the line on the chalice and he returned to the sacristy. Father Hale had not even noticed him. He pulled off the vestments he had found in the closet. “I think we have what we want.”
“Let’s go, then,” said Pratt.
Soames hesitated. He did not want to leave. He wanted to end Fallon’s interference for good. To do that, he would have to eliminate the girl as well. Pratt would not approve, but Soames no longer cared about Pratt’s approval. He stepped to the sacristy door and looked into the church. The Mass was almost over. The priest was cleansing the chalice of any remaining droplets of wine and shooting nervous glances toward Soames.
Fallon, Evangeline, and Ferguson were sitting about halfway down the left side of the crowded church.
“They’re going to present a problem later,” said Soames.
“We’ll deal with it when it happens,” said Pratt impatiently. “I don’t intend to stay around here.”
“Do you see their car in the parking lot, Mr. Buckley?”
“I don’t know what they’re driving.”
“Gentlemen,” said Pratt, “I am leaving, and I have the keys.”
“Don’t be too hasty, Mr. Pratt.” Soames peered out at Fallon. “I think we should face our problems when they present themselves.”
The priest looked again toward the sacristy. He was polishing the Communion plate. His hands stopped in mid-motion, he pulled out of his old man’s slouch, and he bellowed with a voice that rumbled from deep inside him. “Leave my church! Get you out of the House of the Lord!”
Pratt headed for his car. Soames decided to deal with Fallon later.
“I haven’t yelled like that in years,” said Father Hale in the living room of his rectory after Mass. He was still shaking. “It’s good to know that you still have the voice of the prophets when you need it.”
“You were wonderful,” said Evangeline.
The old man beamed.
“May we look at the chalice, Father?” asked Ferguson.
The priest removed the chalice veil and burse. Christ knelt in the garden, carried the Cross, and was crucified in Samuel Blossom’s engravings.
“It’s beautiful.” Evangeline reached out to touch it.
Ferguson grabbed her wrist gently. “Only the priest can touch the chalice. It’s consecrated.”
“Indeed,” said Father Hale. “Consecrated over fifty years ago. Given to me by my poor dear Mary Mannion. It was her ordination gift to me, a family heirloom that she wanted me to have. She had tears in her eyes when she gave it to me. I never knew if she was happy for my happiness, or crying because she knew we could never be together.” He paused, then added wistfully, “She was so beautiful.”
“Could you read the inscription?” asked Fallon gently.
Father Hale picked up the chalice. “It’s from Milton. Paraside Lost. ‘Some natural tears they dropp’d, but wip’d them soon.’ ”
Fallon repeated the line. It offered them nothing.
“It’s not often that you find a chalice, especially one from pre-Vatican II days, engraved with an English phrase from a Puritan poet,” said Father Hale. “It’s not often you find a chalice with any sort of engraving on it. Usually, chalices are raised when young priests take their vows. I needed special dispensation from Cardinal O’Connell himself before I could use this. However, Mary’s grandfather, who had given her the chalice, was an important Boston bricklayer, very influential with the church. He said that he wanted to see his family treasure used in the Sacrifice of the Mass, and so it was done. His name was Joseph Mannion.”
“He would have been Sean’s son,” said Fallon.
“Did he ever say where he got the chalice?” asked Ferguson.
The old priest took a moment to dig back into his memory. “From some Back Bay dowager who had employed his father. It was her token of appreciation for a lifetime of service.”
They were certain that this was the final clue.
“What is the context of this line, Father?” asked Evangeline.
“It comes at the very end of Paraside Lost. Adam and Eve are being cast from the Garden of Eden because they have sinned. They cry for what they have lost, a perfect world, a world of everlasting happiness. Before sending them out of the Garden, the Archangel Michael has told them of the things that will befall their descendants. They cry for that, too. But he has also given them God’s promise—that one of their descendants will be God’s Son, and He will bring Redemption. That knowledge, and that alone, gives them the fortitude to go forth.”
He lifted the chalice with reverence, awe. As he spoke, he seemed to be reminding himself of the things he had believed for so long. “The contents of the saving cup is the fulfillment of the promise, the Blood of Christ. It gives hope to all men. It offers all men a chance to renew their lives, to wipe away the tears and go on with living.”
Fallon was in no mood for a sermon. His mind was racing. He didn’t know what they should try next, but he thought they should be on the road. Ferguson was sitting in the corner repeating the line to himself, looking for some significance to it. Evangeline was listening closely to the old priest.
“ ‘Some natural tears they dropp’d, but wip’d them soon,’ ” said Father Hale again. “Wonderfully epigrammatic.”
Evangeline asked the priest if he owned a copy of Paradise Lost. She had an idea.
“Certainly, dear.” Father Hale went to the bookcase and took down a leatherbound volume of Milton. “Read many times in a long life.”
Evangeline opened to Book XII. Fallon saw the purpose in her motion.
She read the line, but her eye did not stop at the semicolon. It traveled across the page to the line number at the outer margin. In most editions, there are guide numbers every five lines for scholarly reference. The quotation on the chalice, the only single-line clue they had encountered, appeared on line 645 of the final book.
Evangeline tried it in her head. 645 Boylston Street. It worked. She knew where the tea set was buried.
Number 645 Boylston Street. The New Old South Church on Copley Square: completed in 1875, built of stone in the Italian Gothic style—campanile, gargoyles, stained-glass windows. Compared with the red-brick simplicity of the Old South Meeting House, the congregation’s previous home, the New Old South looked more Catholic than Congregational.
In any other part of the city, its size and beauty would have dominated everything around it. Anchored on the corner of Copley Square, it was like a bishop on a great chessboard. On the space next to it was the granite bulk of the Boston Public Library. Beside that, the Copley Plaza Hotel. And on the far side of the square, the Romanesque Trinity Church.
It was eleven-thirty, and the congregation had gathered at the New Old South.
Peter Fallon drove the rented car slowly past the church. He saw James Buckley and Henry Dill standing in the portico. He swung left onto Dartmouth Street, then left again into the service alley that ran behind the church. Geoffrey Harrison was standing at the rear entrance. Fallon backed quickly out of the alley, then drove around the block and parked on the far side of Copley Square.
He looked at Ferguson, who was sitting in the back seat. “You’ve spent almost five years of your life searching for that thing. Now that you’re about a hundred yards away from it, give or take twenty-seven feet, you got any ideas?”
Ferguson shook his head. “It looks like the Pratts beat us to the church. They may get the bride.”
“It’s not buried under the church,” said Evangeline.
“Isn’t that Number 645 Boylston Street?”
“It is, but only about two-thirds of the structure is the church. You enter the church by turning right off the campanile.”
“The what?”
“The campanile, the bell tower. If you turn left, you’re in a lovely little chapel. Walk through the chapel building, and you enter a library of religious literature which was once part of the pastor’s house. There are offices on the floors above the library and function rooms above the chapel. It’s all part of the same structure.”
“What are you saying?” asked Ferguson.
“That the tea set is buried beneath Number 645B Boylston Street. In her set of clues, Abigail says the tea set is buried ten paces east of the southwest corner of the building. I’d bet she means the whole structure. If we look at the clues again, we may find some sort of reference to a dwelling place or maybe something that pertains to the letter B.”
“There might be something we missed,” said Ferguson.
“Do you know what’s in the basement of 645B?” asked Fallon.
“They have a big seminar room in the basement. I once worked with church members who were visiting the local prisons, and we used to have our meetings there. They lend the room out to civic groups, high schools, different charitable organizations. It’s always busy.”
“We should find out if it’s busy today,” said Fallon.
“You think the Pratts are gonna let us dig a hole right next to theirs?” asked Ferguson sarcastically.
“You sound like you’re losing your nerve, Jack,” said Fallon.
Ferguson grabbed Fallon by the collar and almost pulled him into the back seat. “If it wasn’t for my nerve, you’d be stone cold dead right now, and you know it.”
Evangeline put her hand on Ferguson’s. She thought perhaps he needed a drink. She needed one herself. “Nobody’s losing his nerve, Jack. We’re all getting a little too nervous.”
Ferguson released Fallon.
“I meant nothing by it,” said Fallon unconvincingly.
Evangeline could tell that he wasn’t even thinking about Ferguson. He was staring over at the church.
“Don’t ever say it again.” Ferguson sounded more offended than angry. “Now, how do you plan to get at that tea set with Pratt men at every entrance?”
“We do it,” said Fallon, “without going into the building at all.”