Fallen Angels (28 page)

Lifting her chin a bit, Sister Everett said,
“I couldn’t say. All I’m saying is that she got a good deal more
than her fair share of attention with her antics.”

“What kinds of antics? Besides fainting, I
mean.” For that matter, Mrs. Pinkney did her fair share of
fainting, although I believed she could be acquitted of doing so in
order to grab attention. The poor woman was, as Lulu had so
astutely judged, merely lost.

“Oh, those silly clothes she wore, and the
flighty way she had about her. And she’d fall into what she called
‘ecstasies’ during the sermons. Ecstasies, my foot.”

Without meaning to, I glanced at Sister
Everett’s feet. They were big. Really big. They went well with the
rest of her. Feet aside, once again I gathered the impression that
Sister Everett hadn’t cared for Sister Chalmers. At all. Could it
be that Brother Everett . . . ? Thinking about the short, slightly
bald man who was this woman’s husband and who, from all accounts,
adored her, I decided that was a no-go, as Ernie might have said.
Not that Brother Everett couldn’t have been taken with Sister
Chalmers, but that Sister Chalmers had returned his favor? No. In
fact, the thought was vaguely revolting. Because I couldn’t think
of anything else to say, I said, “I see” again.

By that time we’d reached the back of the
sanctuary, and Sister Everett led me to the stairs to the upper
gallery, which had been packed both of the Sundays I’d gone to the
Hall, as had the lower sanctuary, where Mrs. Pinkney, Lulu, and I
had sat. “We’ll tidy up the gallery last. Sister Emmanuel holds
services most evenings, you know, so this is a never-ending job for
me.”

“You do it very well,” I said, hoping to make
her warm to me. She sniffed, so I guess my ploy didn’t work.
Therefore, I decided to probe a bit more on the Chalmers’ theme.
“What else did Sister Chalmers do? I mean, I always thought she was
kind of . . . overly dramatic, I guess. When I saw her, I mean.
When she came to Mr. Templeton’s office about her stolen
jewelry.”

I nearly jumped out of my skin when Sister
Everett turned on me, her face red with fury. She was kind of scary
when she got mad, probably because she was so big. She looked kind
of like a lady wrestler, actually.

“Stolen jewelry! She donated that jewelry to
the church, and then she lied about it!”

“Oh, you knew about that?” I said, not really
surprised but a trifle stunned by her anger over the matter. By
that time, we’d entered the gallery and started tidying the first
row of pews.

“Everyone knows about that. She donated the
jewelry to the church and then lied and said it had been stolen.
Brazen, lying, sinner!”

My goodness.

Her eyes narrowing, Sister Everett
maneuvered so that she was behind me. “Why are you asking me all
these questions, anyway? I don’t believe you came here to speak
with Sister Emmanuel at all. I think you’re here to talk to
me
. Why is that,
Sister
Allcutt?”

It was then I began to get the sickening
feeling in the pit of my stomach that I might just be in the
presence of a madwoman.

Chapter Sixteen

Feeling slightly panicky, I looked out over
the balcony to the sanctuary, which seemed an awfully long way down
from up there in the gallery. Rats. Everyone seemed to have
deserted the Hall. Just when I might need one of them.

Or maybe not. After all, I
didn’t
know
this woman was
crazy. Not for a fact. Although she appeared pretty darned nuts to
me at that moment. But even if she was as crazy as a loon, she
wasn’t a threat to me. Was she? I sure hoped not. She was so big,
she could probably squash me like a bug if she took it into her
head to do so.

“Um . . . I really want to speak with Sister
Emmanuel, Sister Everett. That’s why I came here today. Don’t you
remember? I asked for her when I first arrived. I was hoping she
might give me some insight into Mrs. Chalmers’ character. I think
it’s important to ascertain the character of a person who was
murdered in order to gain insight into who might have murdered
her.” Very well, so I was babbling. You try interrogating someone
you suspect of being a madwoman someday and see how well you do
it.

“Character? Bah. The woman had no
character.”

“Oh.” So much for that. “But I did ask to see
Sister Emmanuel, if you’ll recall.”

Sister Everett seemed to creep toward me, so
I backed up a little. Not that I was scared. Well, all right, I was
scared, although I wasn’t yet sure why.

“I remember you asked, but I didn’t believe
you then, and I don’t believe you now.”

I decided to put on my Boston clothes and see
how they fitted. Straightening and looking Sister Everett straight
in the eyes, which was a stretch—literally—I demanded, “Do you
routinely accuse people who attend the Angelica Gospel Hall of
lying, Sister Everett? Perhaps Sister Emmanuel might have something
to say about that.”

“Ha. Sister Emmanuel is as gullible as anyone
else with a clean conscience. She believed that Chalmers fiend’s
fancy airs and her lies, and I’m sure she’ll believe you. If you
ever get the chance to speak with her.”

Oh, my. This situation was becoming
quite disconcerting. I tried lifting an eyebrow in the imperious
gesture my mother used to such good effect. “I’m sure Sister
Emmanuel is as good and clean of conscience as you believe her to
be. But
you
must be hiding
some pretty ghastly sins if you can imagine things about people
that she can’t. I meant exactly what I said when I came here today.
I wanted to speak with Sister Emmanuel, yet you persist on
believing I lied. Why is that,
Sister
Everett?”

She started snarling at me, and I
decided Boston wasn’t going to work in this case. “You know why.
Yes, I have sins on my conscience. But I also saved Sister Emmanuel
from the clutches of an evil, deceitful woman! I saved the church!
It was
I
who did that!
I
!”

Goodness gracious. I swallowed and said
in a small voice, Boston completely forgotten, “You mean
you
. . .” For some reason, the end
of the sentence got stuck in my throat.

“I am a good and loyal daughter of the Lord,”
she said, still snarling.

“Are you? Do good and loyal daughters of the
Lord routinely accuse other church attendees of being wicked and
sinful?”

“Don’t you talk to me like that, you wretched
sinner!”

“You don’t even know me! How do you know I’m
a sinner?”

“I know. I can tell.”

“I thought it was up to God to judge.” I’d
been backing up steadily, but she’d been stalking me. Unfortunately
she had a bigger stride than I, and she was gaining on me. It
occurred to me that perhaps I shouldn’t be baiting the woman. On
the other hand, I could probably run faster than she, being younger
and, with luck, more agile.

“God uses his minions here on earth to carry
out His will.”

“And you think it was God’s will that
somebody murder Mrs. Chalmers?” Good grief. The woman truly was a
nut case, as Ernie might have said.

“I know it was His will,” she said
firmly.

“How do you know that?” I thought it was a
good question. Did God speak to this woman on a daily basis? If He
did, He was a lot more kindhearted than I was. All I wanted was to
get away from her.

“I know. God told me so.”

Very well. That answered my last question.
“Um . . . He did?”

“Yes. He did.”

“He said she needed killing?” I’d heard
people say that some people needed killing, but I’d never heard
them say God wanted them to do the deed.

“Yes.”

“Um . . . and what did you say when God told
you that?” I wasn’t sure I really wanted to know. Or maybe I was
only nervous because I thought I knew the answer already.

I was right about that.

“I killed her,” Sister Everett said baldly.
“And I saved the church by doing it.”

“Oh.”

This would never do. That squeaky “oh” shamed
me. Squaring my shoulders yet one more time, I said, “And you
drugged Mrs. Chalmers and my boss, Ernest Templeton? And you tied
my boss up and gagged him and dragged him upstairs?”

She sneered. “Yes. Yes, I did those
things. Your
boss
! What’s a
young lady like you doing with a
boss
? You should be home with your family until
you marry some poor man who’ll watch out for you and take care of
you. You have no business with a
boss
.”

“He must have been really heavy.”

Her smile was truly ghastly. “I’m a
very strong woman,
Sister
Allcutt.”

Oh, dear. I hope she hadn’t received any
messages from God regarding me. “Um . . . is that so?”

“Yes. That’s so. And he’s told me what to do
about you, too.”

Golly, she sounded like my mother. Only more
sinister.

“Well, you won’t get away with it. I won’t
see my bo—Mr. Templeton framed for a murder he didn’t commit.”

She started coming at me again. Since I was
standing at the middle of the first pew, I decided to try for some
kind of escape. The stairs down from the gallery seemed a long way
off, but not as far down as the path straight through the air to
the pews in the sanctuary. Therefore, although I felt cowardly
about it, I ran up the stairs in the center aisle. Naturally, this
didn’t daunt Sister Everett, who was a good deal better acquainted
with the Hall than was I.

“Did you drag Mrs. Chalmers up the stairs,
too?” I asked, trying to keep her talking in the hope that she’d
stop and consider her answers. Didn’t work.

“Yes. They were both asleep. Drugged. I saw
to that.” She giggled. Coming from such a huge woman, a giggle
sounded truly insane. “She was light compared to him. I just
carried her. Then I hit her on the head with a poker and threw her
down the stairs.”

Oh, my goodness gracious sakes alive. “You .
. . Sister Everett, that makes you a murderer. Murder is a sin. You
must know that.”

“It wasn’t murder. You don’t accuse men who
rid houses of rats of murder, do you? You don’t call doctors
murderers when they kill the germs infecting sick people, do you?
You don’t call bug exterminators murderers, do you? That’s what I
did for Sister Emmanuel. I rid her of a rat. A germ. A cockroach.
That woman was evil, and she was bringing evil to the Hall, and I
stopped her.”

Okay, the jury was in, and the verdict was
that Sister Everett was stark, staring out of her mind. Not that
the verdict helped me any. I picked up a hymnal. “Don’t come any
closer, Sister Everett!”

“Or what? You’ll throw a hymnal at me? Go
ahead. I’ll get you, and I’ll stop your lying tongue, too!”

“I haven’t lied about anything!” I
protested.

“You’re lying right now!” she screeched. She
started to run after me, and I skedaddled as fast as I could. Up. I
tried to go up. But once I was up as far as the gallery went, I
didn’t know where to go next. I ran toward the stairs we’d come up,
but the madwoman was quick, and she got there first. So I ran in
the other direction. Surely there was another stairway on the other
side. There was. Sister Everett got there first, too, and she
loomed there like the wrath of God—an image I wished I hadn’t
thought of at that moment. Oh, boy. We seemed to be kind of stuck,
and it didn’t look good for yours truly.

Then Sister Everett started up the gallery’s
center aisle. Every time I darted one direction, she did the same
thing, but somehow or other, she seemed to be catching up with me,
climbing higher and higher, while I was as high up as I could get,
and there didn’t seem to be any way down, except in a way I didn’t
want to go. Maybe she was quicker than I because she wasn’t
burdened with a hymnal. I heaved it at her, hoping to hit her in
the head. Missed by a mile. Drat!

She shrieked with laughter. “God is on
my side, young woman. You’re as evil and wicked as
she
was! You can’t escape from
God!”

“I don’t want to escape from God!” I panted.
“I want to get away from you. You’re not God! You’re crazy! You’re
mad! God would hate that you killed an innocent woman!”

“That Chalmers witch wasn’t an innocent
woman!”

“But
I
am!” I said desperately.

“Huh. You’re just another silly
flapper
, pretending to be as good as
a man and forsaking your upbringing. You and your
boss
. You’re as evil as she was.
Maybe more.”

“I am not!” Now I was indignant as well as
frightened.

She didn’t bother to answer. She didn’t have
to. She was coming ever closer. So I picked up another hymnal. This
time my aim was better. The book actually connected with her head,
staggering her.

Leaping to take advantage of the situation, I
raced for the side aisle, hoping to run down those stairs and get
help, wishing for a banister I could slide down.

Unfortunately, Sister Everett regained her
footing before I got to the door. Just as I had almost reached the
staircase, I felt a grip like iron go round my arm. I spun around,
my fist clenched, and whacked the side of Sister Everett’s head.
She didn’t seem to be noticeably weakened thereby.

“You fool!” she shrieked. “You evil
bitch!”

The foul word shocked me, even in that
precarious situation. “Don’t you call me names!” I said, doing some
screeching of my own.

It was a good thing I’d had my hair bobbed. I
could grab Sister Emmanuel’s long locks, which she’d wound into a
knot at the back of her head, but all she could do was flail
helplessly at my shorn head. She hollered in pain when I yanked at
her knot. It came undone in my hand, scattering hairpins hither and
yon, and I pulled harder. She yelled again.