Steeplechase: A Homer Kelly Mystery Part 12

On the third Sat.u.r.day in August, the sun shone as always through the remaining trees in the woodlot, dappling the clearing with round spots of light. And once again at noon, the rugs and tablecloths were spread out all over the rough gra.s.s. Abby Whittey leaned against a stump, sh.e.l.ling hard-boiled eggs. On a checkered shawl, Eloise Stearns opened a napkin and handed warm rolls to the little girls curled up beside her, their skirts flounced out like china dolls.

Eben's sister Ida had come from Concord to watch her husband as he worked in his s.h.i.+rtsleeves with the others. She was amused to see the awkwardness of Alexander's clever doctoring hands. The saws of the other men whizzed swiftly through board or beam, while Alexander's bucked and stuck fast.

Smiling, Ida laid Gussie down on the blanket in the shade while Horace romped with the other little boys, screaming joyfully in the discovery that there were other beings in the world like himself.

Professor Eaton came nearly every day to inspire the builders with architectural examples from cla.s.sical times. He brought no food for himself, but he was always well supplied with delicacies from the women's baskets. Yesterday, brus.h.i.+ng cake crumbs from his coat, he had taken Eben aside in order to describe in detail the Tuscan villa of Pliny the Younger. Later, he enlightened Samuel Brooks on the history of Grecian temple construction while Mr. Brooks cut to size the last long boards for the floor. And throughout the long afternoon, as David Kibbee sat patiently riving s.h.i.+ngles with a drawknife, he was lectured on the tepidarium, calidarium, and frigidarium of the Baths of Caracalla.

Today the food was laid out and ready on the blankets, but the work did not stop. With a count of "One, two, three," ten men hoisted the entire framework of the south side halfway up, supported on their humped backs, and then at the shout of "Now," they heaved it upright and braced it to the sill. Then, hooting and laughing, they walked across Sam's new-laid floor, wiping their hands on their pants. Josiah folded up his long legs and sat down beside Isabelle.

Only Eben Flint did not join the others. He stayed high on a ladder, augering a hole for a mortised joint.

Isabelle watched his intent face and deft hands. Ella Viles watched, too, but she was tired of waiting. Jumping up from her pretty display of cold tongue and sponge cake, she called out sweetly, "Eben, dear, come down."

The other women stared at her in surprise, but Eben did not look her way. Instead, he darted a quick glance at Isabelle. His face was hot and red as he lifted a heavy beetle to drive the treenail home and pin the joint together.

The nooning was over. The ladies scrubbed the sticky faces of their children, gathered up their pickle jars and eggsh.e.l.ls and leftover cakes, shook out their blankets, and set off for home.

Ella's good things had not been tasted, but she giggled as she repacked her basket. Then she took Isabelle's arm as if they were the greatest of chums and whispered secrets in her ear all the way home.

Behind them in the clearing, the men went back to work. Axes were honed, window frames roughed out, holes drilled with brace and bit. Eben was pleased to discover that George Blood knew how to clamp a narrow board in a curve. "You can't have a house of wors.h.i.+p without you got pointy windows," said George. "Ain't that right, Eben?"

Eben laughed and said it was right; in fact he had drawn pointed windows on his plan. "See there?" Then Eben and Josiah were surprised when another carpenter appeared just as the other men gathered up their tools and set off down the Acton Turnpike.

It was old d.i.c.kie Doll from the Nashoba Home Farm. "The pulpit, Reverend Gideon," said d.i.c.kie, taking Josiah by the front of his s.h.i.+rt. "I'll make you the grandest pulpit ever was seen."

Is Humanity Depraved?

Ingeborg Biddle was a woman of spirit, fearless in her pursuit of the truth. Surely in this case it would prevail, she told herself. But so far, the pursuit had been stalled-her investigation of the history of the burying ground and the actual owners.h.i.+p of the precious wood from the fallen tree. To whom did it actually belong? The parish records went back only as far as the year 1828, when a fire had destroyed the first edifice. That avenue was closed. And her research into the rights of the town in this case was hindered because the town clerk was a fool.

"We got nothing here, ma'am," he told Ingeborg. "Guess you'll have to consult the Registry of Deeds."

"And where, pray, is the Registry of Deeds?"

The town clerk gestured vaguely at the window. "It's in Cambridge, ma'am, way to the east in Cambridge. Never been that far myself. Boston coach don't go that way. Of course, ma'am, you could take the train at the Concord depot, but the cars don't go that way, neither. You have to change someplace or other." He threw up his hands. "I fear I am not acquainted with Cambridge transport."

Scornfully, Ingeborg retorted, "You make it sound as impossible as finding the Northwest Pa.s.sage."

"Where's that, ma'am? Never been there myself."

Ingeborg stalked out of the town hall. Surely the human mind had devised a way of crossing the barren wastes of the city of Cambridge from one side to the other. But for now, the journey must wait. There was too much to do at home.

For one thing, there was the next meeting of her conversazione. What subject should the ladies be told to discuss? Ingeborg sat at her desk, sucking the feathery tip of her pen, and at once a topic occurred to her. Swiftly, she scribbled it down: "Is humanity depraved, or is there a potential for goodness in every human breast?"

It didn't take long to make up her own mind about human depravity. The next church service settled the matter.

The weather continued fine, which was lucky for the work on Josiah Gideon's rambunctious new church, but unlucky for everything else. Wells threatened to go dry. Crops lay parched in the field. But Josiah's little building grew taller in the suns.h.i.+ne every day, like the growing tree it had once been. On the last Sunday morning in August, a small bell was swayed up in the new steeple, complete with bell rope and wheel.

Eben had found it among the effects of a dismantled church in Watertown and bought it, he said, for a song. Now he knelt in the open bell chamber and fed the end of the rope through the opening in the ceiling. Josiah reached up from below and pulled it down.

The bell jangled, competing with another loud reverberation from farther up the road. The bell in the steeple of the First Parish was ringing to summon the congregation. That bell was bigger than this one, and its peal was louder and more musical, sounding far over the town and the surrounding fields, bonging dimly even in the robing room of the Reverend Horatio Biddle.

But as Horatio adjusted the folds of his ministerial gown, he stiffened at the sound of an unfamiliar clanging from the direction of the Acton Turnpike, a rude noise that interfered with the n.o.ble chiming of the bell in his own steeple. At once he guessed that Josiah Gideon was ringing a mutinous bell in the crude little shack he called a church. Listening to the crisscrossing clash of the two bells, Horatio told himself that he had nothing to fear. The G.o.d-fearing citizens of Nashoba would surely know which bell was calling them to blessedness and which to G.o.dlessness and anarchy. Timidly, he peered at his congregation through a peephole in the door.

Something was terribly wrong. Where were they? Horatio could see only a scattering of elderly women and the sad relics who walked to church every Sunday from the Home Farm. His wife was there, of course, sitting firmly upright in the Biddle family pew. She was staring straight ahead, contemplating the nature of human depravity.

Well, at least his old friend Professor Jedediah Eaton was walking into his pew, just as usual. Like Horatio, Jedediah was an ardent Latin scholar. The two of them enjoyed exchanging jocular Latin tags-Caesar's famous exclamation when he saw his friend Brutus among the a.s.sa.s.sins, Et tu, Brute? or some cutting remark by Cicero. Oh, yes, thank G.o.d for Jedediah, but where was everyone else?

Horatio pulled out his watch and held it to his ear. Had it stopped? No, but surely it was running too fast. Perhaps the actual time was only half-past ten? Usually by quarter to eleven, he could hear the shuffle of feet, the subdued murmur of voices, and the creaking of pews as his paris.h.i.+oners sat down. In the winter, there was also the cheerful noise of wood being chucked into the stoves and the pinging of the stovepipe as it expanded with hot air, but this morning the stoves were cold and the stovepipe silent.

In fact, there was no noise at all from the sanctuary. Horatio jumped back as the door opened and his wife slipped in, her tight smile vanis.h.i.+ng as she closed the door behind her.

Ingeborg's face was white, her hands were shaking, and her whisper was hoa.r.s.e and desperate. "It's that wicked traitor Gideon. He's kidnapped the congregation."

The Doom of Leaders.h.i.+p.

The Reverend Horatio Biddle sat alone in his study, the door closed against his wife and the servant girl. Once again, he was looking for a certain half-remembered pa.s.sage, but in what book had he seen it? His desk was heaped with weighty volumes.

Turning the pages of one after another, he found it at last in Charles Cuthbert Hall's great spiritual outpouring, Ministerial Power.

He who has borne the burden and heat of the day learns in bitterness of soul the doom of leaders.h.i.+p. To stand in the midst of the ecclesia, with the ordinary vicissitudes of man's life transpiring upon one's self from day to day, its variations of mental activity, its episodes of spiritual depression, its yoke of earthly care, its fettering relations.h.i.+ps, and yet to behold a thousand souls a.s.sembled and waiting for inspiration ... that is the doom of leaders.h.i.+p.

Oh, yes, that was Horatio Biddle's present case-"bitterness of soul, the doom of leaders.h.i.+p." Horatio put his palms down flat on the open book and lowered his forehead until it rested on his hands, for his condition was even worse.

If only there had been in his own congregation that morning "a thousand souls a.s.sembled and waiting for inspiration." Alas, the only souls waiting for inspiration from Horatio Biddle had been the flotsam from the Home Farm, the Widow Poole, the Misses Rochester, deaf old Dora Mills, the s.e.xton, and, of course, dear Jedediah Eaton. Horatio's wife, Ingeborg, didn't count. Even the choirmistress had played hooky, along with every one of her screeching sopranos, tenors, altos, and ba.s.ses.

How dared they abandon him? As their pastor, did he not have a lofty claim on all those people? Were not their souls his to entreat, to teach, to enn.o.ble? And did not they, in their turn, have a loving stake in the church of their fathers, and in the pews of which they were proprietors? Even in the stabling of their horses?

That thieving scoundrel Josiah Gideon had alienated the affections of Horatio's favorite paris.h.i.+oners, the leading men and women of the congregation. Could it possibly be true that he had captured Frank and Martha Wheeler? George Blood and his wife, Pearl? Stalwart Samuel Brooks? Sweet Abigail Whittey? And what about Horatio's old friend District Court Judge Bigelow and his entire family? "Oh, no, dear G.o.d," prayed Horatio, "let it not be true that Sam Bigelow has followed the beckoning finger of Josiah Gideon."

Then Horatio grasped at a straw. What if Josiah had no legal right to ensnare a congregation? He called himself "the Reverend," but what if he had never been ordained?

Once again, Horatio riffled the pages of his books until he found an excellent pa.s.sage in a splendid work by Dr. Ross: "The local churches are the only organs of the Spirit provided for this work of ordination. They have consequently the highest reasons for keeping out of the ministry all whom the Lord has not qualified and called."

Keeping that fiend in human flesh, Josiah Gideon, out of the ministry, that was what it meant. Horatio stood up eagerly and s.n.a.t.c.hed off the shelf The Handbook of the Congregational Ministry in Ma.s.sachusetts. It was a useful compendium. Horatio often ran his finger down the lists of pastors to find the names of colleagues here and there. Now his finger raced down a page and stopped abruptly at Josiah Gideon's name. Josiah had been ordained in the year 1840 in the First Parish Church of Hemingford, Connecticut. The man was actually a clergyman. He did indeed have the right to an ecclesiastical t.i.tle.

Disappointed, Horatio threw the book on the floor. He couldn't bear it. He rose from his chair and paced around the room. In his despair, he would have torn his garments, had they not been woven of stout Boston broadcloth. Instead, he laid his suffering head against the plaster forehead of Marcus Tullius Cicero and wept.

How much further, Catiline, will you carry your abuse of our forbearance? What bounds will you set to this display of your uncontrolled audacity?

Alas! What degenerate days are these!

-Marcus Tullius Cicero, "First Oration Against Catiline"

Another Bitter Pill.

Even worse than the humiliating church service on Sunday was Ingeborg's conversazione the following Thursday.

Wilhelmina Wilder sent a note by her kitchen maid. "Dearest Ingeborg, I am so sorry, but I am indisposed this afternoon, having taken to my bed."

A creamy envelope from Eugenia Hunt was delivered by her husband's hired man. He arrived at the parsonage door just as Abigail Whittey came up the steps of the front porch. Ingeborg took the envelope, Abigail opened her mouth to say something, then closed it again, and Ingeborg's maid, Millie, scurried past with the cake stand.

"My dear Ingeborg," said Eugenia's note, "I am desolee that I cannot attend this afternoon, being afflicted with one of my frightful migraines. I shall spend the afternoon in bed in stygian darkness, having drawn the shades."

"Well, it's too bad," said Ingeborg to Abigail, rallying her forces, "it appears that our circle will be a little diminished this afternoon. Minnie and Eugenia have both been taken ill."

"Eugenia?" said Abigail in surprise. "But I saw Eugenia's buggy careering down Quarry Pond Road only a moment ago." Abigail realized at once that she should not have said this, but she went on bravely to deliver her own regrets. "I'm dreadfully sorry, Ingeborg, but I've only stopped by to tell you that a very important engagement has come up, which will prevent my attendance this afternoon."

Abigail had rehea.r.s.ed this speech, mumbling it over and over on the way to the parsonage, but it did not have the hoped-for effect. Ingeborg's company face changed. She glowered at Abigail, who then whipped out something from under her shawl, thrust it at Ingeborg, and fled, explaining as she scuttled out the door, "I just wondered if you'd seen this."

"Seen what?" Ingeborg stared at the Boston Evening Transcript. But at once, two more of her ladies fluttered in and had to be welcomed. With her heart clenched in foreboding, Ingeborg laid the Transcript on the hall table and led them into the sitting room, where the topic of the afternoon had been changed from the question about depraved humanity-it was depraved; it most certainly was-to a safer subject: "Poetry sublime."

A circle of three was too small to be called a conversazione, especially since Eugenia and Abigail, the cleverest of Ingeborg's friends, were missing. Even frivolous young Ella Viles had not come, although she had failed to send an excuse.

"Cynthia," said Ingeborg, pulling herself together, "I hope you will favor us with your opinion?"

Cynthia Smith jerked upright in her chair and tried to remember the first line of "Ode on a Grecian Urn." She had committed the entire poem to memory, but now under the gelid eye of Ingeborg Biddle, she could remember only one line. "O Attic shape!" gibbered Cynthia, then faltered to a stop. "I'll just read it from the book," she whispered timidly.

Pity Ingeborg Biddle! She was not a stupid woman, and her efforts to raise the intellectual aspirations of the women of Nashoba were surely worthy of praise. Heroically, she explained to silly Cynthia Smith and foolish Dora Mills that the discussion this afternoon was supposed to be concerned with the meaning and value of the poetic instinct, not merely a recitation of favorite verses.

Eugenia and Abigail would have been up to it, but not Cynthia and Dora. They were struck dumb. In desperation, Cynthia reared up from her chair, seized the cake stand, and rushed it across the room to Dora, who stopped up her mouth with macaroons, and then to Ingeborg, who waved it away.

The afternoon was a failure. Not until her guests had made their farewells could Ingeborg plump herself down on the sofa with the newspaper and a piece of cake.

Only then did she understand the pitiful excuses of Minnie, Eugenia, and Abigail. The subject of the afternoon's discussion had been poetry, and this, too, was a poem, but it was a bitter blow.

On the first page of the Transcript, the lofty view of Nashoba's burial ground appeared once again, with the white scar of the chestnut stump showing clearly among the tombstones. But this time, there was also a poem by Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes. It was a parody of Longfellow's "The Village Blacksmith," but at the same time it was a villainous attack on a nameless person who could be none other than the Reverend Horatio Biddle.

Under the spreading chestnut tree A vicious killer stands; He looks up at the branches free, A great ax in his hands.

The tree flings wide its glorious crown, Its leaves the winds caress.

Two hundred years the burial ground By this tree has been blessed.

But now the madman lifts his ax To play the devil's part.

The keen blade strikes and strikes again To burst that mighty heart.

Great nature weeps, Nashoba's jewel Lies shattered on the ground, Broken, the hearts of young and old In all the country round.

Let good men curse the vandal vile Who killed our ancient tree.

May this foul deed afflict his soul Till he shall cease to be.

Ingeborg couldn't believe her eyes. Anguished, she read the dreadful poem again. The "vandal vile" had been her own distinguished husband. Everyone in Nashoba knew it, and soon everyone in the great cities of Cambridge and Boston would know it, too. The name of the Reverend Horatio Biddle would be a byword and a hissing throughout the land-or at least throughout the Ma.s.sachusetts counties of Suffolk and Middles.e.x, which were all of the land that mattered.

Of course it was the fault of Josiah Gideon. And yet-how strange!-Ingeborg felt a curious hunger rising in her heart. She longed to run down the hill and across the road, knock on the Gideons' door, and fling herself into the open arms of Mrs. Julia Gideon.

Had Horatio seen today's Transcript? How wretched it would make him! The poor man was spending most of his time sequestered in his study.

Horatio was there today, hiding away from Ingeborg and her ladies, from the tea party and the high tone of the conversation. Once again, he sat at his desk reading Cicero, his spectacles hooked over his ears. Here he could recover from the perfidy of the outside world and be almost happy. As always, Marcus Tullius Cicero could be depended upon to open wide his marble arms and take Horatio to his breast.

The Purloined Parish.

Week after week the kidnapping went on, during which time the roof of Josiah's church was s.h.i.+ngled, the gla.s.s fitted in the window openings, and many other crucial details completed under the direction of Eben Flint.

One dismal Sunday morning, Ingeborg hurried in desperation from the parsonage to the Home Farm and roused out every one of the elderly residents, the slackers as well as the faithful. Old d.i.c.kie Doll was not among them, but a dozen others shambled after Ingeborg across the green and into the church.

To them and to another handful of wors.h.i.+pers-Ingeborg's maid, Millie, her cook, the church s.e.xton, and the keeper of the grounds-Horatio Biddle preached. These days, he no longer had the heart to compose new thoughts and order them into a homily that began with Scripture, went on to state a thesis that rose to a rousing climax, and fell away softly to a gentle restatement and a final scriptural pa.s.sage. This morning, his wife, Ingeborg, winced as she recognized the opening words of Horatio's discourse on the virtues of temperance.

Half a mile away in the clearing beside the Acton Turnpike, the absconding congregation walked into their new house of wors.h.i.+p to celebrate its completion. The structure that had been only a visionary shape in the air last June was now sheathed and sealed from the weather. A ladder in one corner led to the bell chamber. The entrance door had been hung in place, and now it carried a wooden s.h.i.+eld carved with a tree, the work of d.i.c.kie Doll. The interior was still unplastered and the pews were only rough boards, but there were splendid finis.h.i.+ng touches. Eudocia Flint had contributed her reed organ, the choirmistress of Horatio Biddle's church had made off with a set of hymnbooks, and David Kibbee had fitted up an iron stove and had hung from the rafters a stovepipe that wrapped itself around three sides of the chamber.

But it was the pulpit that was everyone's pride. d.i.c.kie Doll had made it from leftover ends and pieces of chestnut boards. He had cut them to size, clamped them in the jaws of his vise, mitered the edges, and polished the surfaces until they were silk under his hand. Then with buckets of hoof parings from the local smithy, he had boiled up a foul-smelling pot of glue to seal the separate elements into one substance, never to come asunder. Then d.i.c.kie's pleasure had begun in earnest. His decorative carving for the pulpit was his masterpiece. The swags of flowers and fruit, the bearded prophets supporting the pediment, and the channeled colonettes at the corners would have done credit to Grinling Gibbons, if d.i.c.kie had ever heard of Grinling Gibbons, but of course he had not. The clever fingers chiseling the fine-grained wood had followed pictures in d.i.c.kie's own head.

The men and women of the purloined congregation smiled as they sat down on the benches facing this wonder of art. All were in their Sunday best-the men in black coats, the women in bonnets and shawls. In spite of the fine clothes, there was an atmosphere of cutting school, of throwing off a burdensome yoke. In place of churchgoing gravity in a pious hush, there were joyful greetings, shakings of hands, clappings on backs. The small rough building might have been a towering church with a steeple as high as the sky.

This first Sunday in October was as warm as a day in August. Pine knots in a basket were ready to hand, but today there was no need for David Kibbee to set a fire going in the stove. The cheerful members of the new congregation settled themselves on the benches in the fragrance of newly sawn boards. They picked up their hymnbooks, adjusted their coattails, smoothed their skirts, and hushed their children. Professor Eaton had no children, but there were smiles of approval as he sat down. His gray whiskers were an ornament and his distinguished presence flattered the congregation.

Ida and Alexander Clock belonged to the First Parish in Concord, and so did Ida's mother, Eudocia, but they had come with Eben to celebrate the first gathering of the new parish. Young Horace was there, too, wedged between his mother and stepfather. Horace was overawed. He sat in rigid stillness until Mr. Kibbee took hold of the bell rope and pulled it down with all his strength. Then Horace squirmed around to watch Mr. Kibbee's arms rise and fall to make the bell ring harsh and loud.

It rang and rang. Mr. Kibbee was tireless. In the meantime, the rest of the congregation faced forward, looking at the pulpit. In its magnificence, it was like a seal of approval or a doc.u.ment declaring the right of this church to exist.

The bell stopped ringing. Josiah Gideon stood up from the bench where he had been sitting with his wife, stepped forward to the pulpit, and called for prayer.

If the Spratt brothers had been floating over the new building in their balloon, reaching out from the basket to catch prayers drifting up through the newly s.h.i.+ngled roof, they would have netted dozens that called for a blessing on the new congregation. The only personal supplication was the fervent appeal of Julia Gideon.