Inside, there was soft organ music playing, but the service had not yet begun. The place was packed and everybody was whispering. There was the feeling of suppressed excitement and the whispers sounded like wind in a dry meadow just before a thunderstorm.
Aunt Susan had saved us a seat near the back. We slipped into the pew—a rough wooden bench, really, no prayer books or hymnals to be seen. The seat was hard. Being a Holy Lamber, I suspected, was hard too.
On a platform at the front was a casket, closed understandably and covered in lilies. Beyond it was a podium, and behind that a stained glass window of the generic, abstract variety, all surging arcs and crayon colours. Francy would have hated it.
A thin, hot-eyed man with a bushy moustache got up and lifted his hands for silence.
“Brothers and sisters, we are gathered here today to mark the passing of our sister in Christ, Francine Grace Travers, née Delaney. Francy is in the arms of Jesus now, but those she left behind have a duty to mourn her, to share their love for her and to keep Christ alive in her memory.”
In the front pew, Francy’s mother, Mrs. Delaney, began sobbing loudly. Carla Schreier, next to her, put an arm around her and held on. Eddie, on the other side of Mrs. Delaney, hung his head and edged away.
The man at the podium continued. “I will now call on Samson Schreier, Francine’s mentor in the Lord, to say a few words.”
“Mentor in the Lord??” I hissed to George. “Golly.”
Samson Schreier was a short man, powerfully built, with a face baked red by the sun and a belly which hung over his belt like a sack of Shur-Gain. He looked distressed, as if there were an unpleasant smell lodged in his nostrils. He stood slowly and walked to the podium as if he carried a great weight with him. When he turned and faced the gathering, I could feel the tension mount in the room. Samson Schreier had something important to say. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly in a hiss which sounded like hellfire to me.
“Brothers and sisters, Francine was an innocent child, easily led astray,” he said. “When she came to us, she came in trust from the bosom of her mother here, and she was as pure white as the first snow, washed clean in the blood of the lamb.”
“Wouldn’t that make her pink?” I whispered to George. Funerals always make me silly. The woman in front of us turned around and frowned at me.
Samson continued. “She tended our boy Eddie with a loving heart, worshipped with us, shared bread with us, and we rejoiced in her young, fresh life.”
Eddie had sunk so far down in his seat that his head was barely visible.
Samson inhaled through his nose, as if he required extra oxygen for the next bit. “Then she met a man of the world, a man who showed her a path that forked, brothers and sisters, forked away from the true path like the forked tongue of Satan that was his master. Oh, he put on the clothes of the lamb for a short time, he pretended to be one of the chosen. He has done this before, brothers and sisters. He married her right here in God’s house. But soon he convinced her that the path of Satan was more interesting, and he spirited her away from us. John Travers was the right hand man of Satan himself. He chose lambs and led them to the slaughter. He led our Francine to her death.”
His voice had risen, he was spitting a little, and the people gathered in the chapel shifted in their seats, as if they were watching an exciting movie. I risked a quick look behind me to the door, where Becker and Morrison were leaning, staring at Samson with narrowed eyes.
“See?” I wanted to shout. “See? There’s more here than you ever dreamed of. Maybe Samson did it. You probably never even questioned him.”
Samson seemed to have talked himself out. His shoulders sagged and he returned to his seat in the front row. The thin man mounted the platform again.
“Thank you, Brother Schreier. Next we will hear from Brother Einarson, who has asked me if he may speak.”
Freddy stood. Freddy? Freddy of the dump, Freddy of the late-night hooch-fests and the gutted squirrel? Freddy was a Holy Lamber? Gosh. Their rules must be pretty flexible. The room hushed for a moment. Obviously, Brother Einarson’s request was a surprise to more than just me. There was a burst of hissing as neighbour whispered to neighbour.
He made his way to the podium and stood, waiting for quiet. He swayed slightly, and I wondered if he had been hanging around with Otis Dermott and the rye-bottle.
“Brothers and sisters in the Lord,” he said. “I have strayed from the true path and I have done many things I’m sorry for. But I’m back now, and I want to make a confession to you, here, while you are gathered in love to send Francine’s soul to heaven.”
At the word confession, everybody sat up a little straighter in their seats. I could feel Becker and Morrison behind me take a step or two forward. Freddy, I thought. Freddy did it. Not Samson. Freddy.
“Let me tell you a story. Once upon a time there was a little boy who was very unhappy. Nobody knew he was unhappy except me, but I couldn’t do anything about it except love him from far away. The people in this little boy’s life were hard on him, always wanting him to be something he wasn’t. Then, one day, an angel appeared. An angel straight from heaven, Francy Delaney. She took this little boy by the hand and guided him. She protected him from the demons that he was doing battle with. She loved him as I loved him and taught him right from wrong. I will always thank the Lord for Francy Delaney and what she did for my son, Eddie.” Freddy, tears running down his cheeks, left the podium and ran out of the room, through a back door which led God knows where. Carla Schreier sat motionless, the stunned eyes of the room on her back.
Samson, to whom this revelation did not seem to come as a surprise, sat still also. Eddie, who had sunk so low in his seat he was almost on the floor, scrambled to his feet and ran for the main exit, where Morrison and Becker grabbed him and hustled him outside. Eddie? Francy’s young friend Eddie? What were they grabbing him for? He wouldn’t hurt a flea, for Chrissakes. I stood and hurried outside myself. Morrison and Becker were putting Eddie into the back of the cruiser and I ran over.
“What are you doing?” I said. Becker shut the door—the one with no handles on the inside. Eddie sat in the back seat, tears streaming down his face.
“I am taking this kid in for questioning, that’s all,” Becker said. His face was grim. “What’s your problem, Ms. Deacon?”
“Don’t you dare call me Ms. Deacon, Mark Becker. What about Freddy? What about Samson Schreier?”
“We think the kid did it, Polly. He probably hated Travers for taking her away from him. Then Mrs. Travers was killed to cover it up. She trusted him. She drank with him. He made it look like suicide.”
“I thought you were sure Francy had hung herself.”
“That was before the post-mortem. There were enough Seconals in her blood to knock out a horse. And besides, the suicide note was a fake. We checked.” Becker was so smug. He had worked it out, and he was bragging, trying to make me realize that he’d had everything in hand, right from the beginning. Too bad he was wrong.
“Eddie got the pills from home,” Becker said. “We know Mrs. Schreier had a prescription. We checked. And the marks on your friend’s neck indicated that she was hanged long after she went off to la-la land.”
“You think Eddie knocked her out with pills, then hanged her? Eddie?”
“Eddie. We found a scrap of that lilac notepaper in his bedroom wastebasket last night, Polly, when we went to question him again about the night of John Travers’s murder. Guy at Kelso’s tipped us off. Said John and Eddie had a yelling match one night. Eddie said he was going to kill him. It all fits.
“He did your squirrel, or he got his real dad, Freddy Einarson to do it. That guy would do anything for his son, eh? We even found a newspaper with the letters cut out of it. As to the note, we know it’s not Mrs. Delaney’s