CHAPTER 61

The mouth of fools doth God confess,

But while their lips draw nigh him

Their heart is full of wickedness

And all their deeds deny him.

Hymn by Martin Luther

Homer had his hands full. Ninety-eight of his students had written final papers, and they had to be graded by Friday. He could dump half of them on Mary, but forty-nine undergraduate papers were still a hell of a lot of papers. The whole terrifying heap was stacked on the back seat of his car, along with a potted Easter lily, a present from a graduate student who was sweet on Mary.

He parked his car on Clarendon Street—the sign said NO PARKING, but surely it didn’t mean it. Homer locked the car and peered over the fence at the excavation, where everything still seemed to be on hold. Then he walked across Clarendon to the Church of the Commonwealth. He had an appointment with Alan Starr.

Alan wasn’t going to like what he had to say, the news about the two churches in which Rosalind Hall had started a couple of merry little fires. He wasn’t going to like it at all.

As Homer walked into the church he felt the floor shiver under his feet. A huge dull booming resounded from the sanctuary. “My God, what’s that?” he asked Donald Woody, who was shouldering a tall ladder.

Woody grinned at him. “The thirty-two-foot pipes have come. Listen to that, did you ever hear anything like that? Shakes the whole building. My plaster wall, the cracks keep opening up. I have to keep fixing ’em all over again.”

Homer ran up to the balcony and found it cluttered with long wooden pipes. “Wow,” he said, “so this is what you’ve been waiting for.”

“I’ve got to work fast,” said Alan. “They’ve got to be mounted and voiced and tuned before next Sunday. We don’t need the new ones for the concert on Friday and Saturday, but I’ve promised the complete organ for the Easter service. Hey, listen to this.” With his feet on the pedals he played MANY BRAVE HEARTS ARE ASLEEP IN THE DEEP, SO BEWARE, BEE-EE-EE-EE-WARE.

The floor trembled. “Look here,” said Homer, gripping the back of a pew, “I’m afraid I’ve got bad news.”

Alan listened soberly to his account of Rosie’s previous involvements with burning churches. As Homer had expected, he brushed them aside. “That’s ridiculous. It’s just a coincidence. Those fires were accidents. They didn’t amount to anything anyway.”

“And there’s another thing. Mrs. Garboyle tells me Rosie used to practice in the middle of the night. Maybe she was here on the night of the fire. If she came in to use the organ after Martin and Castle left, it would mean they weren’t responsible for what happened. If they had accidentally started a fire, she would have seen it. She wouldn’t have sat here innocently playing scales with flames shooting up around the organ. Does anybody keep a practice schedule? Might her practice times be listed somewhere?”

“Yes, Loretta keeps an organ schedule. Loretta Fawcett, Martin’s secretary.”

“Superb! Where is the magnificent Loretta?”

Alan made a face and got up from the bench. “She’s not very magnificent, I’m afraid. Don’t get your hopes up.”

They found Loretta at her desk. She was working on her needlepoint cabbage. It was leafy and green and enormous.

“Good morning, Loretta,” said Alan. “Might we have a look at the organ schedule?”

“Certainly.” Loretta stuck her needle into the cabbage and groped in the drawers of her desk. After a few wrong drawers she found the right one, and pulled out a piece of paper. “This is for March. April must be in here somewhere.”

“That’s all right,” said Alan. “I just want to show Homer Kelly how it works. See here, Homer, the days of the month are along the top, and the times of day down the side.” Alan looked up at Loretta. “But it’s hardly filled in at all.”

“Oh, well, I didn’t put you in because everybody knows you’re there from eight in the morning till noon.”

“But what about the choir? They’re not marked down for Thursday night.”

Loretta turned huffy. “Well, everybody knows that too. Look, see this line here? It’s all filled in, midnight to one in the morning, because that’s Peggy Throstle, and not everybody knows about Peggy Throstle.”

Homer put his big hands on Loretta’s desk and looked at her keenly. “What about last year, Miz Fawcett? Do you have the schedules for last year? For the night of the fire in the church, for instance?”

Loretta looked blank. Swivelling on her chair she made a pawing motion at the empty shelves behind her desk, then turned and whisked away the crumbs of yesterday with a sweep of her arm. “Oh, I don’t keep the old schedules. Out they go! Out with past history! No room for useless old stuff. Get rid of it before it multiplies, that’s what I always say.”

Homer was disappointed. He had been hoping to provide proof that Martin Kraeger was innocent. Then maybe all those old fusspots in his congregation would calm down.

Alan too was chagrined, having hoped to prove to Homer that the fire could not have been started by Rosie.

Silently they parted company. Homer found his way outdoors and headed for his car, depressed by Loretta Fawcett’s cavalier attitude toward history. No room for useless old stuff! Nothing mattered to Loretta but the passing moment, this instant right now, this fleeting second. Now, as I put down my right foot. No, now, as I put down my left foot. No, forget about my left foot, the only important moment is now as my right foot comes down on this manhole cover in the street.

Homer paused in his metaphysical speculations on the nature of history and the passage of time, and stopped to listen. He could hear a throbbing noise coming from somewhere, deep down under the iron disk of the manhole cover. What was going on down there? Was it part of the past or part of the future? Well, what did it matter? Only this instant mattered, right now, as he put his left foot up on the curb.

He found a meter maid standing beside his car. She had a pad of ticket forms in her hand. “Oh, please,” said Homer, “I’m really sorry. I’ll never do it again.”

Heartlessly the meter maid wrote out a ticket for fifty dollars and handed it to him, grinning.