I was the last to be called into the sanctuary to be questioned. Being last left me alone in the church with Geof and Ailey, all the other committee members having gone home and all the other police officers having finished their distasteful chores. Even Atheneum McGee had departed in more than a spiritual sense: the only remaining trace of him was an outline on the floor where he had fallen, and a surprisingly small spilling of blood.
I sat in Hardy’s high-backed chair at the front of the church; Geof’s long legs were sprawled out in front of him as he sat beside me in the assistant pastor’s chair. Ailey Mason rode the choir rail like a cowboy on a horse.
“Well, this in one for the books,” Geof said to Ailey. “What’ll we say to his relatives? The good news is your cousin didn’t die in Vietnam; the bad news is he didn’t live long enough to tell you so.”
“What have we got?” Ailey asked rhetorically. “As far as I can tell, Ms. Cain here is the only person who stayed in one place the whole time.” His glance at me was no more or less friendly than usual. “At least she says she did.”
“You’re our ballast, Jenny,” Geof said. “You’re the only rock in the moving stream of suspects. My God, they’re a peripatetic bunch! Not one of them can stand still for more than five minutes at a time. They were in and out of that choir room like flies. To the John. To the drinking fountain. Outdoors for a smoke. Indoors to use the phone. Downstairs for a cup of coffee. Into the John. Back to the choir room. Drop in on you in the study. Meet in the corridor to confer. Back into the choir room. Back to the John.” He threw up his hands. “I think they’ve all got urinary infections.”
“That’s disgusting,” I said, and tried to laugh.
“And the door was always locked,” Ailey said.
“Sounds like the title to a murder mystery,” I said, “And the Door Was Always Locked.”
He ignored me. “The lock was thrown so that every time somebody closed the door, it locked from the inside. That means the killer could have done it anytime he happened to find himself alone in the room with McGee.”
“Or,” Geof amended, “he might have waited at that side door with the cross, until he heard everyone else leave the room, then gone in and killed him.”
“How’d Mary get in that last time,” I asked, “if the door was locked and the only person inside was dead?”
“She and her husband have keys to the church,” was the simple explanation from Geof. “When she knocked repeatedly and no one came to the door, she opened it herself.”
“The way I see it,” Ailey hypothesized, “is that the killer could have ingressed either through the front or the side door, but he must have egressed through the side door, then come around the sanctuary to join the rest of the committee in the pastor’s study.”
“I know who the killer was,” I said.
They looked at me expectantly.
“Just look for the bureaucrat among the group,” I advised them, “and you’ll have your killer. Only bureaucrats ingress and egress; everybody else goes in and out.”
Mason flushed, but Geof laughed.
“This seems to support Webster Helms’ feelings about sabotage,” he said. “Because McGee was killed only after he agreed to leave the project and the town out of it and to seek redress from his relatives. And no, Jenny, redress is not something you do when you ingress.” He smiled. “But I digress.”
“What do you think of Hardy’s feelings about a racial motivation?” I wanted to know.
“I think it’s an idea,” he said neutrally.
“So was the notion that the Earth is flat.”
“Yes. Although I am not forgetting about the phone calls you and he received. Maybe they’re connected to all this, or maybe they were just the work of a lone crank.”
“I suspect all cranks are lone,” I said seriously, “even when they’re in a group. What other motives do we have?”
“Other motives have we none,” Geof sighed.
“So who was alone in the room with him at any time?” I asked.
“Do you really think that anybody is going to tell us that?” Ailey asked sarcastically. “We figure he was probably killed in the last five minutes before your whole committee was gathered back in the study. And during that time . . .”—he pulled out a little notebook, flipped it open and studied it—“Shattuck says he was getting a drink of water in the hall. Sullivan was having a smoke on the front steps. Pete Tower was calling his taco stand. Mary Eberhardt was in the study with you, and her husband had just left there. Jack Fenton was getting a cup of coffee from the canteen in the basement. The mayor was on the phone to her press manager. That little architect was in the men’s room. And we know where you say you were.”
“And,” I added, “Miss Scarlet was in the study with the revolver, Colonel Pickering was in the conservatory with the rope, and someone’s in the kitchen with Dinah.”
Geof laughed. “That’s about it.”
“Did anybody have blood on him? Or her?”
“Please.” Geof was still chuckling. “If they did, do you think we’d still be here? And no, we didn’t find any splinters from the cross stock under their fingernails,” He suddenly sobered, remembering where he was and what he was doing. “We’re just funny as hell, aren’t we?”
“Geof, while my committee was running hither and yon, where were you and the other cops?”
“Not,” he said disgustedly, “outside the side door to the choir room.”
“Well, where do you go from here?”
“Home,” he said. “Ailey, get something to eat, then find out where McGee was staying while he was here in town. Check with the station to see if they found a motel key on him, and if they found his car. Then go through all his stuff to find the name of a wife we ought to call. It’s damn sure his other relatives won’t be any help, since they think he’s dead.” Geof shook his head. “He is dead. This is complicated.” He tugged at my hand, pulling me to my feet. “Come on, Jenny, let’s go home and I’ll get a quick sandwich. McGee’s not going to be any less dead for my going hungry.”
We walked down the center aisle together, each lost in thought. I was musing over how . . . odd . . . the day had been: a stranger appeared out of nowhere, then disappeared into the great beyond. He came, he tried to conquer, he died.
“Odd,” I said aloud. Then I realized I was staring straight into the face of Ailey Mason who had preceded us down the aisle.
He looked hurt.
“Not you, Ailey.” It being a church, and Sunday, I smiled. He registered surprise, then smiled back.
It was the day’s only miracle.