Murder Among the Angels (12 page)

The little girl tugged at her mother’s sweatpants. “Ma, can I have my dinner now?” she asked.

“Just a minute, Jenny,” her mother replied.

“Just one more question,” Jerry said. “Do you know anything about her background? Where she originally came from? Where she lived before she came here? Her interests, and so on?”

She shook her head again.

“Ma,” the girl implored.

“Why don’t you try the landlord?” she suggested. “The question about previous residences is on the rental application. He would probably know if she had a job or not too. She had to be able to show she could pay the rent.”

“What’s his name?”

She gave Jerry the landlord’s name, which was Peter De Vries, and told him that he could usually be found at the Zion Hill Church, where he worked as the sexton. He lived in rooms at the back of the Parish Hall.

Then they thanked her and left.

When they got back to the police car, Jerry radioed headquarters and asked the dispatcher to find out who the Honda was registered to. Then they headed back out to the Albany Post Road. At the intersection with the Zion Hill Road, they turned left and followed the road up what Charlotte presumed was Zion Hill to the church, which was set on a high lawn overlooking the town. At the sign for the church, they pulled into a driveway lined with old yews and holly trees that led to a parking lot. After parking the car, they climbed a set of stone stairs that led up to the lawn of the church. At the top of the stairs, they paused at the balustrade at the foot of the lawn to admire the view, which was magnificent. Charlotte guessed that the panorama extended for twenty-five miles in either direction: the New York skyline could be seen to the south, and the distant domes of the rugged Hudson Highlands to the north. In front of them, the waters of the Hudson spread out to fill the basins of the Tappan Zee and Haverstraw Bay, and on the western horizon, beyond the hills on the opposite shore, the distant ridge of the Catskill Mountains stood out against the western sky. Immediately below, the misty greens and fairways of the local country club stretched down to the Albany Post Road, and beyond the road, the hamlet of Zion Hill clung to the riverbank.

From their vantage point, Charlotte could see the tower of Archfield Hall, and the Octagon House sitting primly on its little green knob of a hill overlooking the river. “What a view!” she exclaimed.

“Yes,” Jerry agreed. “My grandfather thought it was the finest view he had ever seen outside of the Bay of Naples.”

“Your grandfather?” she said.

“Yes,” said Jerry. “He was also an Archibald serf. It’s an old family tradition. He was a stonemason who came here to work on the New Croton Dam and ended up working for Edward Archibald. He helped build this church. As well as the dry walls along the Albany Post Road.”

“I thought you were from Bensonhurst.”

“I moved there with my parents when I was ten,” he said. “But until then, we lived with my grandparents in Corinth.”

“Corinth!” she said.

“Right around the corner from Sebastian’s, as a matter of fact,” he said. “Though there wasn’t anything chic about Corinth in those days. That’s why I decided to take the job here—it certainly wasn’t because of the pay,” he added. “Some of my happiest memories are of growing up in this area.”

For a moment, they leaned on the balustrade, gazing out at the view.

“My grandfather died just after we moved to Bensonhurst,” Jerry continued after a while. “But I still remember driving with him along the Albany Post Road. He was so proud of those dry walls. He used to say, ‘A full-grown man can jump up and down on top of them, and they won’t budge an inch.’”

“I’ve always admired those walls,” she said. “Nobody can do that kind of work anymore. It’s a lost art.”

“It certainly is,” he agreed.

“Jerry,” Charlotte asked, “why are all the roofs blue?” Though she hadn’t noticed it from ground level, it was readily apparent from their vantage point high above the town that the roofs of half the houses in Zion Hill were shingled with unusual blue roofing tiles.

“They took their cue from the church, I guess,” Jerry said. Turning, he pointed out the blue tiles on the roof of the picturesque stone church.

The effect was lovely; it was like the varying shades of blue of the mountains on the distant horizon.

“Edward Archibald had the tiles specially made,” he explained. “There are sixteen different shades of blue, applied in specific percentages. The idea was to simulate the heavenly empyrean. The architecture in Zion Hill is very symbolic, though in most cases I couldn’t tell you of what.”

“It’s a beautiful place,” Charlotte commented.

“Yes, it is,” Jerry agreed. “Edward Archibald wanted to make this the most beautiful spot on earth, and I think he did a pretty good job of it.”

As they stood there, they could hear another person trudging up the stairs, and in a moment, a gray head appeared on the stairs just below them. It was Lothian Archibald, who was there, she explained when she joined them at the top, for her daily bell-ringing duties.

Together, they headed across the lawn to the church, which stood on the brow of the hill. It was in the Gothic Revival style, with narrow lancet windows, and heavy stone buttresses supporting the exterior walls. A crenelated bell tower stood to the south of the entrance.

As they walked, they asked Miss Archibald where they could find Peter. When they arrived at the church, she led them around to the south side, where a cloister connected the transept to the neighboring Parish Hall.

“There he is,” she said. She pointed to a man with long blond hair who was working on a platform that had been erected over the door to the south transept. Then she excused herself and headed back in the direction of the door at the foot of the soaring bell tower.

A moment later, they had entered the cloister. At closer hand, they could see that Peter was installing a plastic sheet over the opening for the center window of a stained-glass triplet. The window had been removed, and lay on the bed of an old red pickup that was backed up to the other side of the cloister.

Jerry walked up to the foot of the scaffolding. “Hello,” he called up to the man. “We’re looking for Peter De Vries.”

The man turned around. “That’s me,” he said, and proceeded to start down the ladder that was affixed to the scaffolding.

As he did so, Charlotte noticed that he had only one arm.

“Hello,” he said, as he dismounted the ladder. He extended his right hand. “Peter De Vries.” The left sleeve of his plaid flannel shirt, which was pinned up where the elbow should have been, swung free. “What can I do for you?”

He was a thickset man in his late twenties—handsome in a rough-hewn sort of way—with a lantern jaw and dark blue eyes that were set close together in his face. He wore a full-length leather apron over his jeans and shirt, the pockets of which were stuffed with tools.

Jerry returned his handshake. “Hello,” he said. “I’m Jerry D’Angelo, chief of the Zion Hill Police Department, and this is my friend, Mrs. Lundstrom, who’s visiting from New York.”

Charlotte stepped forward to shake his hand.

“So you came for the tour,” he said.

Jerry paused for a moment, undecided about whether to take Peter up on his offer of a tour or get right down to business. He checked his watch. “We only have a few minutes,” he said. “Could you give us an abbreviated version?”

“Sure,” Peter said.

“I was just telling Mrs. Lundstrom that much of the architecture of Zion Hill is symbolic, though I’m not sure of what.”

Peter nodded. He led them back out to the south side of the church and looked up at the bell tower. “We can start with the symbolism of the church bells,” he said, looking up at the bells that hung in the open belfry. “These bells have a very profound symbolic significance.”

He paused, and Jerry and Charlotte patiently awaited his explanation. He had a very slow, distracted manner of speaking, almost as if he had forgotten what it was that he was about to say next.

Finally, he spoke: “The church bells ring every evening at six o’clock, signaling to the inhabitants of Zion Hill that it is time to participate in one of the most important religious rituals of the day.”

“And what is that?” asked Charlotte.

“The cocktail hour,” Peter responded with a deadpan delivery.

Charlotte and Jerry smiled.

“I speak only partly in jest,” he continued. “The residents of Zion Hill take their cocktail hour very seriously.”

“As well they should,” said Charlotte, for whom the sanctity of the cocktail hour was also inviolable.

“On a more serious note,” Peter continued, “the church was built from 1909 to 1911 by Edward Archibald. The model was a thirteenth-century English parish church. Archibald chose a preindustrial model because he believed that a house of God should express the artistry of men, not machines.”

“It seems like an odd attitude for someone who made his fortune in railroads to take,” Charlotte commented.

“Yes,” he agreed. “But not an uncommon one for that period. The arts and crafts movement, which advocated a return to craftsmanship in design, was very influential, and Archibald subscribed to their ideas. He insisted that his workmen use only preindustrial tools, but I suspect they cheated.”

“I know they cheated,” Jerry said. “My grandfather was a stonemason who came here to work for Edward Archibald.”

“Actually, I know they cheated too,” he said. “I used to be apprenticed to a glassblower who came from England to work for Archibald. That’s where I learned about stained glass. He came from Stourbridge, England, which was famous for its glassworks. Now I take care of all the stained glass.”

“And he admitted to cheating?” Jerry asked.

“Not so much him, because the glassblowing art wasn’t amenable to twentieth-century techniques. But he told me that others did. Anyway, the end product was preindustrial, even if the workmen sometimes did use modern tools.” He continued with his lecture: “Archibald also felt the Gothic model was the best expression of Swedenborg’s Doctrine of Uses, which holds that each man is put on earth to play an individual role, but that the role of the individual should be subservient to the harmony of the whole.”

Jerry looked over at Charlotte, reminding her of their discussion earlier that day about this aspect of the New Church’s beliefs.

“The idea was that the work of no one individual would stand out from that of any other; it was a communal undertaking. Which is not to say that individual contributions weren’t recognized. They were, and the way they were recognized was through the concept of freedom in variety.”

At their puzzled expressions, he led them back through the cloister into the Parish Hall, where he paused before a large glass-fronted armoire. A quote from Isaiah was carved along the top: “And the key of the house of David will I lay upon his shoulder.”

Then he opened the door of the armoire, which contained a display of large, hand-tooled metal keys hanging on hooks mounted on a background of purple velvet. Each key was a work of art, and each one was different.

“This is our key cabinet,” he said, “which I always show to visitors to illustrate the concept of freedom in variety. No two details of this church are the same. No two windows are exactly alike, no two doors, no two keys. Even the length of each individual pew varies slightly.”

Leaning forward for a better look, Charlotte could see keys with heads in the shape of a castle turret, a rosette, a Gothic trefoil, a Celtic cross, a Star of David, and ornamental knot.

“This one is modeled after the key to the great west door of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris,” Peter said, pointing out one of the larger keys.

“They’re beautiful,” Charlotte said.

“We have twenty-two doors, and each one is different: different shapes, different latches, and different keys. Freedom in variety. In the case of the doors, the differences also have another symbolic meaning,” he went on. “They also symbolize the many ways to the divine truth.”

“Fascinating,” said Jerry, who was studying the keys.

Peter went on: “The New Church is unusual in that it believes that all world religions have their own validity.”

“What’s the metal?” Charlotte asked, admiring the silvery white sheen of the heads of the keys on display.

“It’s called monel,” he replied. “It’s a natural alloy of nickel and copper. It’s used throughout the church. It’s very difficult to work with, but its virtue is that it doesn’t rust, and, as you can see from the heads of the keys, it develops this lovely patina where it’s been touched.”

“It’s very beautiful,” she said.

“Would you like to go into the church now?” he asked.

As he spoke, the church bells overhead started to peal. Charlotte recognized the melody as that of a lovely old English hymn.

“It’s the cocktail hour!” Jerry announced. Then he addressed Peter: “I think we’d better skip it. Maybe we could come back another time. We actually came here on another mission, and our time is running out. Thank you, though. I think Mrs. Lundstrom enjoyed the tour very much,” he said. “As did I.”

Charlotte nodded in agreement.

“We came here to ask you about one of your tenants,” Jerry continued. “A young woman named Doreen Mileski, who resides in a two-family house that you own at 33 Liberty Street in Corinth.”

“What would you like to know?” Peter asked.

“Anything you can tell us,” Jerry said.

“I’ll have to get my files,” he said. “They’re inside.” He nodded toward his rooms at the back. “Would you like to take a seat?” he asked, gesturing toward the Gothic-style chairs that flanked a large table displaying a collection of Swedenborgian literature.

Charlotte and Jerry sat down, and Peter disappeared down a hallway at the back of the Parish Hall.

As they awaited his return, Charlotte scanned the titles of the booklets:
Our Eternal Home, Through the Valley of Death, Hell: Its Origins and Nature
, and
The Presence of Spirits in Madness
. She would have liked to look at some of them, but Peter was back momentarily with his files.

Pulling up another chair, he sat down and opened the file folder. “She moved in last November. Her full name is Doreen Marie Mileski. Birth date: April 16, 1967. Birthplace: Detroit, Michigan.”