CHAPTER 59

I will do whatever the Lord gives me to do, and, God willing, never will I be afraid.

Martin Luther

It was a Saturday morning rehearsal for the soloists.

“That’s right,” said Barbara Inch, pushing back her hair, “just free and easy. Take your time.”

The tenor Evangelist put his foot on the balcony railing and sang one of the narrative passages from Bach’s St. John Passion, “The soldiers platted then for Him a crown out of thorns.” He broke off to complain that he couldn’t see the damn music. He’d lost one of his contact lenses.

“And put it upon his head,” prompted Barbara.

“Oh, right.” The soloist closed his eyes and went on singing, “And put it upon His head and put on Him a purple robe.”

Homer Kelly sat below the balcony in a pew halfway to the pulpit, looking at the bowed back of Martin Kraeger a dozen rows in front of him. Was Kraeger listening or praying? Whichever it was, his own crown of thorns must be sticking into him like one of Mrs. Garboyle’s cactuses, with the blood trickling down over his ears. Mary had reported to Homer what she had learned about the Pansy affair. It wasn’t helping. Kraeger’s malicious wife was obviously a screwball, but she still had the upper hand. You couldn’t laugh off a putrid lawsuit like this one.

The alto soloist came puffing onto the balcony, a large woman in mammoth blue jeans. Barbara sent the tenor home for a pair of glasses, and the contralto took a deep breath and let loose with a rippling succession of deep trills, “From the shackles of my vices to liberate me, to liberate me, they have bound my Saviour.”

Kraeger stood up, nodded gravely at Homer, and walked out through the door behind the pulpit, passing the portrait of Reverend Wigglesworth without a glance, although it offered him DIVINE INSPIRATION. In the gloom the gold letters on Wigglesworth’s book sparkled with uncouth exaggeration. Above the painting half the wall was freshly painted, the other half a labyrinth of patching plaster.

Homer turned in his pew and looked up at the balcony, where Barbara and the soloist were crouched over the music, talking in low voices. Above them the pipes of the new organ rose in profusion on either side of the window of Moses and the Burning Bush. The fire in the bush was a tour de force of colored and painted glass. The late afternoon sunlight slanting through the dancing boughs along the avenue made the flames flicker as though the window were really on fire.

On fire. Homer focused his mind on all the fires he had heard about lately. There had been the one in the church balcony, the fire that had destroyed the old organ and killed Mr. Plummer. Kraeger had taken the blame for that, but perhaps he had been wrong. Castle had been there with him, and they had left together, leaving behind them, perhaps, a smoldering cigarette. But suppose there had been no cigarette, and Castle came back later and started the fire by himself, in order to destroy the organ and get himself a new one? Of course if Rosie Hall had been practicing in the church later on, both Kraeger and Castle were in the clear.

Fire number two was the car fire, the one that had destroyed the body of an anonymous woman, a substitute for Rosie.

Fire number three was in Castle’s own house, which had been partly destroyed by fire a couple of years back.

Fire number four wasn’t a major conflagration, it was the general carelessness of Harold Oates. For one thing he had used a blowtorch in his rented room, and for another his sloppy smoking habits made him a walking incendiary bomb.

For the first time Homer decided to take seriously the strangeness and unpredictability of the great Harold Oates. Suppose he really was the culprit? Suppose it was really Oates who had vandalized all those organs, the way most people thought? Perhaps the destruction of the old organ at the Church of the Commonwealth last spring had been the first in the series. It was true that Alan Starr hadn’t discovered Oates until last January, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t hanging around town before that.

But why in hell would he be burning up bodies in cars? Or destroying Castle’s house? Could it be that he raged against the competition? He was of course the greatest organist within a thousand miles, but James Castle and Rosie Hall were next best. Had he tried to finish them off, in order to reign supreme? No, no, it was impossible. Homer scoffed at his own conjecture. Surely Oates was too erratic to carry out anything as complex as the burning of the body in Rosie’s car.

Homer stood up and stretched, and walked out of the church. On the way to his car he was surprised to see Martin Kraeger sitting on a park bench across the street. He wondered if Martin was neglecting his duties. Maybe he should be writing a sermon or visiting shut-ins.

Probably the poor man was always doing something he shouldn’t be doing, or not doing something he should be. It must be god-awful to be a clergyman.