The Choirboy
THE MUSICIANS HAD TAPED THEIR TRACKS AND DEPARTED the studio, heading for wherever musicians go in Toronto on a July morning. Now Barry Latchford was alone in the soundproof room, adding his voice to the prerecorded background.
In the control room, Norman Inch pressed the intercom button. “You’re a disappointment, Barry,” he said.
Latchford was a sinewy man in his thirties with shoulder length blond hair and a sinister-looking mustache. Padded earphones gripped his head. He wore a striped freight-engineer’s cap to go with his vagabond outfit of leather vest and stovepipe jeans. His boots were army surplus—parachute corps.
Barry Latchford resembled more a villain out of a spaghetti western than the best singer of TV and radio commercial music in Canada. The drummer on the gig had been awarded the laugh of the morning when he said Latchford looked like a tall angry Muppet.
When the producer from the advertising agency told him he was a disappointment, Latchford sat erect while a jolt of fear emptied his eyes. “What’s the problem?” He was perfectionist enough to believe that criticism was always justified. Once, years ago, he had become a hermit for weeks, practicing his scales and breathing to be ready for the December night when the choir would perform the Messiah.
Behind the glass, Inch put a hand on the shoulder of his companion, Steve Pullman, the copywriter. “We were hoping we could stretch this session into an extra day,” he said, his voice booming through the speaker. “But if you keep delivering the goods on the first take, we’ll be on our way back to Montreal tonight.”
Latchford relaxed. He slipped off the stool, eased the “cans” from his head, and hung them on the music stand.
“My wife complains about the same thing,” he said. “I’m fabulous but I’m a little too quick.”
“We’ll hear a playback of everything so far,” Inch proclaimed, “then we’ll buy you a drink.”
They went into a place near the studio. After drinking and talking baseball for a few minutes, Pullman said to Inch, “Tell Barry the idea. Let’s not waste time.”
“Mysterioso,” Latchford said, taking an invisible sip of whisky.
“We write songs,” Inch said dogmatically. “You’ve never heard of us because our commercial success to date has been the square root of nothing at all.”
“Welcome to the club.”
“Come on, you were in the charts with ‘Apple Dreams’ a couple of years ago.”
“The Canadian charts—and even that was a struggle. I’ve never made it with a pop single in the U.S.”
“So let’s get together and create some prosperity,” Pullman said. “Tell him the idea, Norman.”
“The idea is you come down to Montreal and record one of our songs.”
Latchford could feel remorse rising about him like ground mist in a horror film. God protect him from amateur songwriters. “Cutting a side is an expensive business,” he said in the gloomy voice of a businessman.
Pullman’s impatience was beginning to peak. “Will you tell him the idea, Norman?”
“We do it through my company, Inchworm Productions. The recording studio will be Carlo’s—he owes us a couple of favors, so there’ll be no studio charges. As for musicians, we do it on half scale. If the song takes off, everybody gets paid.”
Latchford looked for a way out. “I’ll have to check it out with Carol. My wife—she’s my business manager.”
“Do it and let us know as soon as you can.” Inch directed glances around the room like a marked man watching out for assassins.
“Even if you make the record and it’s okay,” Latchford persisted, “you’re only half way there. If the stations won’t play it, you’re dead.”
“Leave that to me,” Pullman said. “I worked for three years as a DJ at CBAY.”
“Baytown?” Years ago, on vacation, Latchford had spent an eventful thirty seconds driving through the town.
“The voice of Crystal Bay,” Pullman intoned, cupping his ear pseudo-professionally. “I know how the hit parade can be rigged.”
“Providing it’s a good song,” Latchford said. “You can’t sell garbage.”
“We won’t give you garbage to record,” Inch said patiently. “Be a good boy and check with your wife.”
Carol Latchford sat at the kitchen table in one of the old cinema seats Barry had bought when the neighborhood Palace gave up and became a block of shops. Four maroon-plush recliners were now bolted to the vinyl floor, two on either side of the low pine table.
“I think you should record their song,” Carol said. She was drinking beer from a bottle and smoking a thin brown cigarette.
Latchford was playing around with a wok on the gas stove, throwing in green peppers and mushrooms and slivers of chicken, being a virtuoso chef. “These are two little businessmen from the minor leagues,” he said. “The writer is from Baytown—do you believe that? It’s amateur night.”
“What are you doing otherwise that’s so important?” Carol was a short plump woman in her late twenties. She had a pussycat mouth, a turned-up nose, and green eyes with brows that arched in permanent astonishment. If faces had to be assigned countries, hers was Irish. “Something may come of it. You never can tell.”
“You don’t know these guys,” Latchford insisted.
“Take me to meet them then,” she said, finishing her beer, dropping the empty bottle into the case on the floor at her feet and flicking out a full one with a deft backhand movement.
Latchford frowned at the hiss of the bottlecap. “Could you manage to be sober if I did?”
“I can’t remember the last time you took me somewhere.”
“That’s where you have the advantage. I can remember.”
“Loosen up then. Have a drink with me—we’ll have some fun.”
“You call this fun?”
Steve Pullman was setting out a meager bar in Inch’s hotel room: a bottle of Scotch, a bottle of gin, some tonic, four glasses, and a bucket of ice. “Why couldn’t they ask us up to their place?” he whined. He felt poor, as if he was back in his parents’ shabby house near the bay.
“His wife probably wanted to come out,” Inch said. He was accustomed to pacifying his partner. Writers were all the same—if they weren’t bitching about how terrible everything was, they were going over the top with enthusiasm over some minor success.
“I don’t think he likes our idea,” Pullman said.
“Then we’ll sell it to him.”
“Maybe we should line up another singer.”
“Latchford’s the best. We agreed we’d start with the best.”
“I’m worried about how we finish,” Pullman said grimly.
The Latchfords arrived in a mood of manufactured euphoria. Carol was wearing a crimson-silk jersey dress and charcoal nylons above plastic shoes without backs. Pullman fell in love with her legs immediately. He ordered the beer she requested and, when it came and he had opened one, placed himself where he could see every one of the frequent crossings of those smooth, shiny legs.
Everybody except Latchford drank a lot and the party was a reasonable success. By midnight when they were devouring room-service sandwiches and Carol was into her seventh pint of beer, Pullman was referring to her as the small-town girl. She was like the girls he remembered from the tea dances in the gymnasium at Baytown High School. Carol was flattered. “Let this guy write your lyrics, Barry,” she said. “He’s a magician with words.”
Latchford tossed his head back, pretending to laugh without actually producing any sound.
In the taxi on the way home he grumbled, “I should go see a psychiatrist, agreeing to do this.”
“We’ll go to Montreal. We’ll have some fun for a few days,” Carol said. Her head was back on the upholstery, her eyes closed. “What can you lose?”
“You’ll have fun. I saw you encouraging that bush-league lover. I should put you across my knee.”
“Right now, I’d be grateful for even that.”
Flora Inch, Norman’s wife, selected the song that Latchford would record. She came out of her study in the bungalow across the river in St. Lambert with the portable cassette player in one hand and a page of notes in the other. “Here’s my choice,” she said.
“ ‘Summer Silence,’ ” Norman read from the list. He tried not to look too pleased. “I like that one too.”
Flora moved a flower pot so she could perch on a window ledge. Her broad shape obscured most of the view of the Montreal highrise panorama in the distance. Richelieu, a tiny dog of indeterminate breed, limped from the kitchen, saw the woman he loved, took a skittering run, and leaped onto a lap that barely existed. Flora saved the dog from falling and cuddled it to her tank-topped bosom. She had the shoulders of a Channel swimmer, the cropped hair of a woman who wants a rest. Her face was as pretty as a doll’s.
“Richie, Richie,” she crooned. Then, after a pause in which her eyes went out of focus, “The lyric could use a little fixing. Would you like me to do it?”
“I don’t want a hassle with Steve.”
“You want a good lyric. Steve Pullman has blind spots. I know—I wrote copy in the next office for three years.”
“You may be right, but leave it alone. We have a delicate operation here. Stay home and write your novel.”
“God help me, I’ve written it three times. Let me up.”
“You’re the one who cried out for artistic freedom. Write the book.”
“I’m coming to that recording session. I’m not going to miss the rematch between Latchford’s wife and our little Stevie!”
Carlo’s Recording Center was a compact set of rooms engineered and hand-built by the owner. Carlo sat at the console, straight-backed, Spanish eyes alert, watching Barry Latchford through the glass partition as if the singer might fly at any minute and it would be his responsibility to trap him in a net. Norman Inch lounged beside Carlo in the producer’s chair.
Steve Pullman and the two women were crowded onto the visitors’ settee. Flora Inch had always been like a sister to Steve, taking him under her wing on his first day at the ad agency. She sat on his left now, bending occasionally to feed a chocolate tidbit to the carpet remnant she called a dog. “This is your best work, Steve,” she commented after the first take. “Be proud of this song.”
On his right, Carol Latchford crossed her legs, bringing a stiletto heel down across Pullman’s trousers. “Sorry,” she said, brushing her hand firmly and repeatedly over his calf.
By the third take, everybody agreed Latchford had done his best. Carlo had a paying client coming in, so the session had to end. “Everybody come over to St. Lambert,” Flora said briskly, scooping up Richelieu. “Can we all squeeze into my car?”
They straggled out of the control room. “Looks like you’re on my lap, Carol,” Pullman said.
Inch directed a weak grin at Barry Latchford, who looked right through him as he unwrapped two sticks of gum and stuffed them into his mouth.
Flora Inch’s food was late but meanwhile the wine flowed and the house filled with the aroma of roasting beef and salad dressing spiked with garlic and dry mustard. When the inebriated guests sat down at the table and fell on the meal, they all told the hostess it was the most delicious they had ever eaten.
“Have some more beef, Steve,” Flora said. She was drifting to and from the kitchen beyond a waist-high divider lined with a cherry cheesecake and a pecan pie. “I don’t want to end up feeding sirloin to that piggy Richelieu.”
“You aren’t eating, Barry,” Inch scolded the singer.
“I’m always down after a session,” Latchford mumbled, looking into space. “Don’t mind me.”
“Don’t mind him,” Carol echoed. “Barry-baby will retire to the wilderness shortly and communicate with his inner spirit. One Magnificat, two Te Deums, and a fast chorus of Panis Angelicus, and he’ll be as good as new.”
“Don’t give that lady any more to drink,” Latchford said with a false smile.
“Are you a choirboy?” Flora asked. “I used to pipe away with the altos at St. James the Apostle on Ste. Catherine Street. If this was Saturday night, we could drive over tomorrow morning for matins.”
“I wouldn’t mind that,” Latchford said, his pale eyes staring through the window into the twinkling black mass of the Montreal skyline.
In the weeks that followed, after the Barry Latchford recording of “Summer Silence” was released, some of the euphoria began to wear off. They had a good song, but pessimism arose as they listened to it for the 150th time. Inch lifted the tone arm. “Where do we go from here?” he said. They were using the agency studio for their private business.
“To church,” Pullman said drily, “like your wife keeps saying. Only we go to pray, not to sing.”
“Pray, hell. The whole idea, your idea, is that we don’t leave things to chance.”
“It’s in the lap of the gods.”
“You were going to rig the charts. Line up a crowd of little girls to phone the stations all day asking for Barry Latchford’s new single.”
“It isn’t that easy. Latchford’s nobody to these kids. They only request what everybody else is requesting—Michael Jackson, the Bee Gees.”
“Pay them then.”
“It gets complicated. What if some parents wonder where the kids are getting the money? Our involvement comes out, Latchford looks terrible, and so do Inch and Pullman.”
“Why didn’t you think of this in the beginning?”
“I was being optimistic. Forgive me.”
The telephone rang beside Inch. He picked it up. “Studio.”
“A call from Toronto, Mr. Inch. Barry Latchford.”
“Put him on.” He said to Pullman, “It’s Russ Columbo. Our troubles are just beginning.”
Pullman closed his eyes and sighed.
“We were just talking about you, Barry. Did you get the record I sent you?” Inch listened for half a minute. “Feel free to do whatever you can to promote it up there. Meanwhile, we’re going ahead as discussed.” When the call was finished, Inch let the telephone drop into its cradle as if it was something wet.
“He’s over the moon,” he said. “We’d better produce some evidence that we’re trying to sell his song.”
In Toronto, Barry Latchford went through the house looking for Carol. He found her in the television room. The set was playing with the sound off. She was placed in a chair in viewing position, trying to read a newspaper by the light from the screen. Her knitting rested on the carpet. Beside it was an ashtray full of cigarette ends and an empty beer bottle.
“Your trouble is you don’t have anything to do,” he said.
“Wrong,” she said. “It says here Imperial Tobacco and Molson’s Brewery have increased production. I’ll never catch up.”
He sat on the floor. “That sounds like an unhappy woman.”
“You always had a good ear.”
He took the newspaper from her and snapped off the television, leaving only one source of light—the lamp in the hall outside the open door. “I really don’t like to see you unhappy.”
“I’m sorry. I can’t please you with satisfaction I don’t possess.” She lit another cigarette. “It probably isn’t your fault. Different things make us happy. I like dance halls—they call them discos now—and I hardly ever see the inside of one. I’d like to wear some of those wild leather clothes the kids are into, but you’d think I was crazy.”
He looked away, hoping she wouldn’t go on. If she turned herself into one of those freaks he couldn’t imagine how he’d react.
“You fooled me. First time I saw you singing in the club I thought you were a swinger. We should never have got married.” She blew a fierce shaft of smoke.
“Are you in love with that writer character?”
Carol picked up her knitting, held the needles poised, and stared at the particle of space between their tips. “Steve Pullman? Am I in love with him? Not quite.”
“He never takes his eyes off you.”
“Better not say that. You’re making me all excited.”
“He wants to take you away to Baytown or wherever the hell he comes from.”
“Small-town bliss. Now there’s a dream.”
Latchford put a firm hand on his wife’s knee. “Don’t leave me, Carol.”
“Message noted,” she said, and the knitting needles began to click like a machine.
The Montreal promotion never did get off the ground. But as things turned out Pullman’s failure to deliver didn’t matter. Latchford took his copy of “Summer Silence” to a DJ friend at the top station in Toronto. He loved it, played it three times on one morning show, and the telephone began to ring. The process didn’t stop for two months as the song reached the top of the charts and stayed there. The distributor told the factory to press another 50,000, and began spreading the word to radio stations and dealers across Canada. He also telephoned a connection in New York. They had a phenomenon on their hands—a song that couldn’t fail to make it big.
Indian summer is always a special time in Montreal. Bonfires send pungent smoke trailing upward into hazy blue skies. The bittersweet afternoons are silent in memory of the days of warmth and comfort that are gone forever.
Barry and Carol Latchford came down for the celebration at the Inch residence on the south shore. It was clearly time to open the champagne; the record was now the top-selling single in the history of Canadian pop music. Better still, a deal was set for distribution in the States. Latchford’s dream had come true.
The party was one of those Saturday affairs where the few people not invited turn up anyway, bringing bottles as admission. Every room was crowded, as were the back garden, the front lawn, the stairs, the garage, even the cars parked in the driveway. All the doors were open, the music system was on full volume; the sophisticated party dominated the entire neighborhood.
Norman Inch finally managed to manoeuvre his wife out of the kitchen and into a quiet corner. “I’m worried about Steve,” he said.
“I told him not to follow wine with beer.”
“I mean the way he keeps after Carol Latchford. Barry’s starting to look at him.”
Flora’s eyes grew large and innocent. “So?”
“So all we need is a fistfight between the guest of honor and the lyricist.”
“It might be just what the party needs.”
“I don’t know why I bother talking to you.”
“People should be allowed to go where their actions take them. It helps the plot develop.”
“These are not characters in your bloody novel.”
“Real people can live or die just like fictional characters.” Flora blinked at her husband. “And I don’t like your tone of voice. My novel one day will surpass any of your so-called successes with chintzy songs about summer love.”
By two o’clock on Sunday morning the police had paid two polite visits, the music was now turned low, most of the guests had gone home, and those few who remained were caged inside the house. The Latchfords had come with luggage for a long weekend. Barry had removed his turtleneck sweater and suede jacket some time after midnight and was now wearing his pajama top. He was sitting on a couch beside his hostess, swallowing cognac from a tumbler.
“We’ve got to do it, Barry,” Flora said. She crossed her legs and Richelieu repositioned himself on her lap without opening his eyes.
“Do what?” Latchford was looking through a doorway at his wife dancing with Pullman in the next room. Carol was a lot shorter than Steve; her cheek was pressed against his chest, her skirt riding up in back, showing plenty of rounded calf. Pullman’s chin rested on the top of her curly head. He saw Latchford watching them and gave him a sleepy grin.
“We have to go to St. James the Apostle tomorrow morning,” Flora said. “We have to show them how to sing.”
“I haven’t been to church in ten years,” he said.
Latchford and his brothers had been the foundation of the choir for a long time. When they matured and went professional, their gospel quartet was good enough to hold a radio series on the Dominion Network. They even did a summer series on television. His chance to go single, to do club dates, had seemed like the beginning of a fabulous career. Now, even with the U.S. hit in the pipeline, he found himself longing for the uncomplicated delight of standing around the piano with his brothers rehearsing “This Little Light of Mine.”
“You haven’t been to church in ten years? I haven’t been in twenty. I’d say we’re both overdue.” Flora followed Barry’s gaze to see what was distracting him. She raised her glass and her voice. “Yoo-hoo, Stevie! Here’s to young love!”
Later, Inch was unloading a tray of glasses in the kitchen. The party had gone quiet. Suddenly Latchford’s voice rang out in a tone heavy with warning. “Steve!”
The command was so threatening Inch’s heart began to pound. He moved quickly from the kitchen into the room that had been cleared for dancing. Nobody was there. Through the door way he could see a tableau at the couch in the front room. Latchford had risen, his glass in one hand, his eyes focused on the French doors leading to the garden. Flora was holding a restraining hand on his wrist while she pressed Richelieu down on her lap. The dog’s ears were up—he was tense, alert.
After this frozen moment, things began to move quickly. Latchford broke away, dropping the glass on the carpet and vanishing swiftly through the French doors. Flora struggled up and the dog went scampering.
“What’s happening?”
“Steve and Carol stopped dancing and went out back.”
Inch showed his wife a hopeless face. “I’m not happy stopping fights.”
“Steve has it coming. He’s been socking it in with that little slut all evening.”
Carol Latchford’s voice rang out in the garden. “Don’t you start, Barry—I’m warning you!” Then she screamed “Stop! Somebody stop him!”
When Inch reached the end of the garden he could hardly see in the darkness. He could faintly make out Latchford’s pajama clad arm rising and falling as he knelt across Steve Pullman. Forcing himself to intervene, he put a hand on Barry’s shoulder. It was like touching a button on a machine. The beating ended abruptly and Latchford sat back on his haunches.
“Call the police,” Carol said. Her voice was outraged, like that of a parent who has seen a child go too far.
Inch’s eyes were accustomed to the darkness now. He leaned down and looked at what had been Steve Pullman’s face. “We need an ambulance,” he said.
Latchford got up and walked away. He discovered he was holding a rock in his hand. He let it fall. Behind him he could hear the panic, the excitement, people running into each other, voices shouting, somebody trying to start a car and calling a girl to come on because he wanted to get going.
His arms ached. He remembered the day when he was ten years old and he tried to walk home from the supermarket carrying two paper bags of groceries against this chest. The bags seemed light enough at the start but before he was halfway home he knew he couldn’t support them longer than another few seconds. There was no place to set them down and he felt such a sense of failure and embarrassment he began to cry. When he finally made it to the house, after spilling the contents of one of the bags in the gutter, his arms throbbed for the rest of the afternoon.
The lights of Inch’s house were getting farther away. Latchford turned and blundered back through a low hedge, across a flower bed. He went inside and hurried up the stairs to the guest room, where he stripped off the blood-spattered pajama top and changed into a shirt. He paused, then felt impelled to put on a necktie and his suede jacket.
As he was leaving the house by the front door, he was confronted by Carol. Her face was streaked with tears and dirt. “Where are you going? The police are coming.”
“Bye-bye, Carol.”
“You’re crazy.”
“I told you to stop fooling around.”
“Why did you keep hitting him? Once was enough.”
“Why did you drink so much?”
She held him by the arm as he tried to walk away. He twisted free, feeling skin from his forearm collecting under her fingernails as he released himself. “Feel better?”
“Where are you going?’
Latchford had no idea.
He followed curving streets and found himself close to the river. The metropolis lay on the other side, humming, vibrating like a starship just landed after a voyage across the universe. To his right, a gigantic bridge connected the south shore with the city. He began walking in that direction.
Halfway across the bridge, he stopped and stared out at the night past a barrier of steel struts and girders. He was like a prisoner in a cage, but he felt safe, protected rather than confined. The considerable amount of alcohol he had consumed was beginning to wear off. Latchford realized now, for the first time, that he had deliberately killed Steve Pullman, beaten him to death, murdered him. He tried to recall the event but it wasn’t clear in his mind. He had a suspicion he had enjoyed it.
Carol’s question had been “Why did you keep hitting him?” Latchford stood in his cage and tried to think of an answer. Hardly a day went by in which he was not tense as a spring, racing from here to there, doing what everybody else wanted, singing their nonsensical jingles, taking their money and their praise when he knew he was guilty of conspiring to produce rubbish.
What should he be doing then? What sort of life would have converted him into a satisfied man who did not beat rivals to death at parties? The days of singing with his brothers—were those not happy times? Latchford tried to recapture the feeling that went with standing around the piano in the family living room, harmonizing gospel hymns —“Throw Out The Lifeline,” “What a Friend We Have in Jesus.” The memory of the music brought tears to his eyes but he could identify no sense of inner peace from that faraway life.
Perhaps he had always been driven to go further and try new things. Maybe that was why he’d left the quartet and pursued a commercial career. Latchford didn’t really understand why he did what he did. For as long as he could remember, he had been carrying a giant rage. Maybe he deserved credit for containing it till now. The question was not really why he had killed but how everybody else kept the blood off their hands.
A giant bus frightened him as it hissed its brakes going past on the road behind him. With his heart pounding, Latchford began walking toward the city.
The police arrived at the Inch residence promptly and were disturbed to learn that the assailant had been allowed to walk away from the scene. They took a description and spent half an hour checking out the neighborhood gardens with flashlights.
“He’s miles away by now,” one of them said with satisfaction as they slammed the doors of the police car and followed the ambulance carrying Pullman’s body.
Nobody slept. By nine-thirty in the morning Flora had washed three loads of dishes. Carol was drying and stacking. Norman was sitting at the table, smoking, staring out the window at the glorious morning, shaking his head solemnly every now and then, like a baseball pitcher shrugging off his catcher’s signals. They were all waiting for the phone to ring.
At last Carol said, “Can we have the radio on?”
Norman reached out and snapped the switch of the transistor. An announcer read the weather, gave the time, then an organ played an introduction and a lugubrious male voice began to sing.
“Sweet hour of prayer, sweet hour of prayer
That calls us from a world of care...”
Flora raised her head from the detergent bubbles. “I know where Barry is,” she said. “He’s at church.”
“He hasn’t gone since we’ve been married,” Carol said.
“I told him last night about St. James the Apostle.” She began drying her hands.
“I’ll get the car out,” Norman said.
“No, I’ll drive myself. You haven’t shaved.”
“Wouldn’t it be better to call the police?” Carol said.
Flora stared at her, then turned to the door. “Wash your face, child. We’re going to find your husband and bring him home.”
In the car, Carol said, “I guess I sounded inhuman back there.”
“My husband has never killed anybody,” Flora said, “so I don’t know how I’d behave in your place.” She gunned illegally past a line of cars on the bridge. “As far as I know he’s never killed anybody.”
“It can’t get any worse for me. I’ve been misrable for most of the last six years. Barry is bound to go to jail for a long time and I know I’ll be happier without him.” They were off the bridge now, moving through the narrow streets of east Montreal. “I’m a bitch, eh?”
Flora gave Carol a speculative glance. “Yes, I’d say a bitch.”
Parking spaces were plentiful on a Sunday morning. Flora stopped on Crescent Street, locked the car, then led the way at a fast pace toward the gray-stone church. The fine weather showed no signs of breaking. Flora’s cream straw hat sparkled in the sunlight. She had offered to lend a hat to Carol but the Torontonian declined and wrapped her head in a scarf. Small-town girl, was Flora’s assessment of that decision.
They were just in time for the service. The church was filled. An usher helped them cram into a pew near the back. Flora, a choir-trained Anglican, genuflected and said a silent prayer, then sat back. In every direction she saw massed heads and shoulders. Carol leaned close to whisper, “We’ll never find him, even if he is here.”
“Don’t worry, he’s here.”
The service began with the choir chanting what to Flora were familiar notes, but there was no response from the congregation so she remained silent. Then the minister announced the opening hymn and as the organ played the seventeenth-century tune, “Nun Danket,” the congregation and choir rose, shuffling and coughing.
“Now thank we all our God,
With heart and hands and voices....”
It was at the beginning of the second verse that she realized something unusual was happening. The congregation had fallen silent and many of the choir members had their eyes raised to the balcony. Above her, out of Flora’s sight, Barry Latchford was singing as if it had been rehearsed this way.
“Oh, may this bounteous God
Through all our life be near us...”
Gradually the choir stopped singing until, by the last quatrain, it was Barry alone accompanied by the organ. His tone was fuller than anything Flora had heard in Carlo’s studio all those months ago. She felt she was listening to a different voice.
“And keep us in His grace,
And guide us when perplexed,
And free us from all ills
In this world and the next.”
The women waited for Latchford in the sunlight outside the church. He made no attempt to walk away. He was unshaven and red-eyed but he was smiling. This boyish smile was different from the cynical one Flora had come to think of as typically Latchford. Carol didn’t move to him nor did he approach her.
Flora watched them for a few seconds, squinting into the sun. “Let’s go home,” she said at last.
“Are the police there?”
“No. I thought we’d have lunch, you can clean up and rest for a while, then we’ll call them.”
He nodded. In the car he said, “Not a bad ending.”
“What ending?” Flora said. “You won’t be in forever. You’ll come out and start singing the proper music, the way you sang this morning.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Why not?”
“I killed that man. All he did was play a little game with Carol and I took his life. That can’t be right.”
The police took Latchford away at four. By five, Carol had departed in a taxi for the airport, refusing a lift. The house was tidy—Norman had been busy. He came into Flora’s study carrying two drinks; she was in her swivel chair, staring at the typewriter.
Norman handed her a glass and sat down. “I wouldn’t want to go through that again,” he said.
“You won’t. Not with Steve, anyway.”
“I could do without the smart answers. He was my partner.”
“You’ll find somebody better. Carol will settle down with a small-town boy who suits her. Latchford will sing the roof off the prison chapel. Everybody’s ahead.”
“Except Steven Pullman.”
The telephone rang and Norman went down the hall to answer it. When he came back a couple of minutes later, the glass in his hand was empty. “That was somebody from the police. Latchford is dead.”
“I don’t believe it.” Flora looked stunned. “What happened?”
“They didn’t handcuff him because he was so quiet, the way he gave himself up. In the station he knocked over a cop, managed to get hold of his gun, and turned it on himself.”
Flora reached under the desk and lifted Richelieu from the basket. She cradled him on her lap, rocking back and forth in the swivel chair.
“That’s how right you were about Latchford,” Norman said bitterly. “I wonder about the rest of us.”