CHAPTER 43

The devil, too, has his amusement and pleasure.

Martin Luther

Sleeping in pews was one thing. Vandalizing pipe organs was quite another.

At first the disasters were random and unrelated. Barbara Inch’s trouble, for example, seemed to be her own fault. It was a Sunday in the middle of March. Alan Starr was sick with the flu, and therefore Barbara accompanied the choir and Pip Tower was hired as a substitute to play the prelude. In the middle of the anthem Barbara’s feet blundered on the pedals and the tenors were thrown off-key.

She glanced down in horror, but her feet seemed to be in the right places. Then on the repeat the same thing happened. How could she be so clumsy? Normally her hands and feet were deft and nimble. Once she had mastered a passage it stayed mastered.

After the service Edith Frederick hurried up to Martin Kraeger and professed herself deeply disappointed. “She had such excellent credentials. I feel myself responsible. We should have chosen someone else as interim choir director, the Throstle girl, or Arthur Washington.”

“Oh, no, surely not,” said Martin, suddenly finding himself a partisan of Barbara Inch. “She’s never made a mistake before.” After shaking the hand of the last parishioner at the door, he went to look for her.

In the balcony he could hear her voice from inside the organ. “You mean they’re all right, all of them? Well, then, it has to be my fault. Damn.”

Kraeger put his head in the narrow opening and called out, “Hello, in there.” He had never looked inside before. He was astonished to see the organized complexity of the interior. It was like a city of pipes above a forest of wooden connecting rods, delicately hinged and jointed.

“Is that you, Martin?” Barbara came out, bending her tall frame, acutely conscious of his hand on her side, helping her through. She was followed by the substitute organist. Barbara introduced him. “Martin, have you met Philip Tower?”

“Good morning,” said Kraeger. “Were you expecting to find something wrong in there?”

Pip shrugged his shoulders. “Barbara thought some of the pipes might have been switched by mistake, but they looked all right to me.”

Barbara shook her head unhappily. “So it was my fault. I played a couple of wrong notes, that’s all.”

“Well, nobody’s perfect.” Martin smiled at her, and the idiot words made her laugh.

But in other churches the malevolence was more evident. At the Church of the Advent someone slit the leathers of the bellows with a knife. At Saint John the Evangelist hundreds of fragile tracker rods were crushed with a sledgehammer. At King’s Chapel holes were drilled in a whole row of Brustwerk pipes. Even the enormous electropneumatic organ at the Mother Church was attacked—the solenoids on the solid-state switchboard were smashed.

A malicious vandal was at work. The alarm spread from church to church. And everybody said the same thing: Oates, Harold Oates.

The rector of the Church of the Advent called the rector of Emmanuel. “Did Harold Oates give a concert there? He did, didn’t he? And he had a key?”

The rector of Emmanuel called the minister of King’s Chapel. “Didn’t Oates play for you?” And then the King’s Chapel minister called the First Reader at the Mother Church. “You had a concert for Harold Oates, didn’t you? I thought so. Every place he plays, the pipe organ is seriously damaged. The man’s got to be stopped.”

In the meantime the vandalized organs had to be fixed. Alan Starr rose from his sickbed, coughing and sneezing, and scrambled from one church to another, making emergency repairs. He had to cancel some of his afternoon excursions with Charley Hall, and Deborah Buffington was miffed.

Three weeks before Easter he called Marblehead to order new pipes for King’s Chapel. “And, hey, how about my Contra Bombardes? You keep saying they’re nearly ready, and then they don’t come.”

“Oh, don’t worry, we’ll be loading the truck in a day or two.”

Alan hung up, and at once the phone rang again. This time it was Martin Kraeger, sounding troubled. “Alan, could you get over here right away?”

He found Martin in another quandary about Harold Oates. “All those churches with damaged organs, they’re the same ones where Oates has been giving concerts. They’re blaming him. He’s got keys to all those churches and all those organs. He could have done it, that’s what they think. Well, you know what Oates is like. He doesn’t exactly ingratiate himself. I’m afraid his nuttiness has become notorious.”

“Well, my God, no wonder.”

“I can’t really say I put it past him.” Kraeger stared disconsolately into his crystal ball, which was glassy and blank, empty of prophetic advice. “I mean, the man’s so—” Kraeger held up his hands in a gesture signifying Oates’s flagrant eccentricity.

“Oh, I know. But the fact that he has keys to those places doesn’t mean anything. All the organists in Boston have keys.” Alan looked out the window at the pale spring leaves on the trees along the avenue. “Castle had keys, I know that.”

“Surely you don’t think Jim Castle—?”

“Of course not. I don’t suppose you have any news about when he’ll be back? Pip Tower thinks Castle’s back in Boston. He said he caught a glimpse of him on Boylston Street. So I tried calling Castle at home, but his phone’s still disconnected.”

“It sounds like those sightings of famous dead people. You know, the way Elvis Presley keeps coming back to father babies. Oh, excuse me.” Kraeger’s telephone was ringing.

“Reverend Kraeger?” The voice on the line was loud and overbearing. “My name is O’Rourke. I’m a prosecuting attorney for Suffolk County. My office has been asked to investigate the vandalism of a number of pipe organs in the vicinity of Copley Square. Several people have mentioned the name of an organist named Harold Oates. Are you acquainted with Mr. Oates?”

Martin raised his eyebrows at Alan. “Yes, I know Harold Oates.”

“Can you tell us how to get in touch with Mr. Oates?”

“No, I’m afraid not.” It occurred to Kraeger at once that his ignorance was lucky for Oates. The only way to keep the man out of jail was to prevent his being seen at all. An interview would land him in prison as a menace to civilized society. Martin summoned his stuffiest manner. “I can’t tell you where he lives, but I can tell you that Harold Oates is the greatest organist in the world.” He went on in this vein, implying that Oates was the living embodiment of Johann Sebastian Bach and Albert Schweitzer. “He has played for the crowned heads of Europe and for His Holiness in the Vatican.”

“His Holiness?” O’Rourke was obviously impressed. “No kidding.”

Martin suppressed his own doubts about Oates. “So you see, Mr. O’Rourke, he couldn’t possibly have done any of those criminally foolish things.”

“Oh, right, I can certainly see that.” O’Rourke hung up, apparently satisfied.

Alan grinned at Kraeger. “You got him off the hook?”

“For now.” Kraeger shook his head ruefully. “Maybe I shouldn’t be protecting him. Maybe he should be locked up. Maybe the man’s a menace. Did you know he’s been thrown out of that place on Worthington Street?”

Alan was flabbergasted. “He has? What for?”

“He was using a blowtorch, repairing a pipe. He said you hadn’t voiced it right. Somebody’s got to keep an eye on him and find him another place to stay.”

“Oh, God, I’ll try.” A solution to the Harold Oates housing problem arose in Alan’s mind, a vision of Rosie Hall’s beautiful apartment, but he squashed it at once.

“One more thing,” said Kraeger. “All the clergy in the area are setting up vigils. You know, volunteers guarding the organs day and night, just until this thing blows over. Will you talk to Woody about it?”

“Well, of course. Good idea. I’ll see him right away.”

Alan found Woody in his basement office, adjusting the lights over his bushy little seedlings. He explained Kraeger’s suggestion about keeping watch over the organ.

Woody was way ahead of him. “The night sexton’s already spending all his time in the balcony. And I plan to do the night watch on weekends.”

“But that’s too much. Why don’t I take Saturday night?”

“Well, okay, thanks a lot. That’s great.”

Alan walked around Woody’s office, admiring everything, peering into the clear water of the fish tank. “Nice goldfish. What are those striped ones?”

“Angelfish. The fluorescent ones are neon tetras.”

“Oh, I see. They’re really pretty. Well, so long, Woody. I’ll be here on Saturday night.” Alan said goodbye and walked out of the basement office, his feet jingling the metal lids in the floor. Like Donald Woody he paid them no mind.