“Real space-age stuff.” Mr. McPherson of Sioux Falls nodded his approval.
“I guess you could call it that,” our guide said. “We aren’t trying to be fancy here, but Barney feels many churches today don’t involve their congregations enough. He’s always coming up with new ways to get his points across. For instance, you’ll notice that the pulpit is actually up on a theater-type stage. Barney had the tabernacle designed with a stage rather than the traditional altar, because he likes the flexibility of sometimes having a playlet or a drama as part of the Sunday service. And the pulpit itself can be lowered hydraulically into the floor of the stage so that it’s totally out of sight when not being used.”
“Not what I usually think of as a church,” said the moon-faced lady from Kentucky, shaking her head, “but I guess it must work.”
“We like to think so,” Nella replied, trying unsuccessfully to sound modest. “But we also know there are many paths to the Lord.”
“Amen.” That came from the Prince Valiant lady, the one who had been to Las Vegas twice. “Does Barnabas Bay work here during the week?”
Our hostess nodded vigorously. “Oh, yes, every day. We have a whole wing devoted to offices and to Christian Education—classrooms for both children’s and adult Sunday school, as well as for classes that are held on weekday evenings. And we have a day-care center, too, for more than three hundred children.”
“The offices—that’s where that man who worked here was …” Mrs. McPherson, looking self-conscious and getting a stern eyeballing from her husband, let the sentence trail off.
“Yes.” Nella pressed her lips together and studied her serviceable low-heeled black pumps. “That’s where Mr. Meade was killed by that private detective. A tragedy, awful.”
I started to respond to that trial-by-tour-guide remark, but stifled myself. Sobered at the mention of Meade’s murder, we shuffled out of the huge sanctuary and moved on to the office-and-classroom wing. Nella showed us a couple of the classrooms, which would have made most universities envious, and as we walked along the hallway, a stunning brunette approached. “Hi, Nella,” she said with a smile that could melt the polar ice cap. “How’re those lovely grandchildren of yours?”
“Just fine thanks, Elise,” she answered as the brunette moved fluidly away down the hall. Already my life seemed emptier.
“Who was that beautiful woman?” the Kentucky lady whispered, asking the question for all of us.
“Elise Bay, Barney’s wife,” Nella said. “And she’s every bit as nice as she is beautiful. She’s very active in the tabernacle’s work. She was Miss North Carolina once, and from what’s been said, she should have been Miss America instead of second runner-up, but, well, there were politics involved. You know how that can be.”
We all nodded and continued on along the hall. I considered hanging back and drifting away from the group to do a little further solo exploring of the premises, but I took a pass. Wolfe has told me more than once that I lack patience, and after all, he had a plan. Or so he said.
SEVEN
BY THE TIME I ARRIVED back at the brownstone, Wolfe had finished lunch and was in the office with coffee and his book. Fritz, bless him, had saved me a plate of rice fritters with black currant jam, so I voted my priorities by sitting in the kitchen and polishing off the fritters, then chasing them with two wedges of blueberry pie before reporting. Besides, if I had gone straight in to see Wolfe, he would have refused to hear me out until I’d eaten anyway. If he had a motto, it would be something like “Food first, all else in due course.”
When I did get to the office, carrying a cup of java, he was ready to listen. I gave him a fill-in, including my tour of the buildings and grounds. He kept his eyes shut throughout my report, scowling a couple of times and grimacing when I told him that Nella the tour guide had tried and convicted Fred. When I finished, he drew in air, letting it out slowly.
“Confound it,” he grumped, ringing for beer, “get that minister on the phone.” Wolfe always assumes I can reach anybody instantly just by picking up the phone, dialing, and declaring that Nero Wolfe is the caller. I punched the church’s number, and the redhead who sits in the splashy lobby answered again. I asked for Bay, and she put me through without any questions.
“Doctor Bay’s office,” a pleasant female voice answered.
“Nero Wolfe calling,” I told her, nodding to Wolfe, who picked up his instrument.
“What is this in reference to?” she asked politely.
“I think he’ll know,” I replied, and we got put on hold. For the next thirty seconds, we both were treated to the strains of “Holy, Holy, Holy,” which for me brought memories of my Sunday-school days in Chillicothe. I’m not sure what it brought Wolfe, who doesn’t like using telephones and likes hearing recorded music on them even less, but the hymn got interrupted in midverse by a voice only slightly tinged with a southern drawl. “Barney Bay here,” it said. I stayed on the line.
“Mr. Bay, this is Nero Wolfe. I believe you know of me.”
“I do indeed,” the reverend replied evenly, “by reputation.”
“I am drawing on that reputation to impose upon you, sir. I need to talk to you, preferably today.”
“Well, I have a few minutes right now …”
“This conversation must be in person, and at the risk of further imposition, I request that it be held in my house, as I rarely leave it.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Wolfe,” Bay said, his voice still even, “but I have a meeting in less than a half-hour, and I’m teaching an adult class here at the church tonight.”
“Tomorrow, then.” It wasn’t a question.
I could hear Bay breathing, then sighing. “I assume this has to do with Roy Meade’s death and your Durkin fellow.”
“It does, sir, and it would be in the best interests of both you and your church if you spoke with me. I assure you I will not prolong the discussion unnecessarily. My time, like yours, has immutable value.”
Another sigh. “All right, I can come tomorrow, in the midmorning. Ten-thirty?”
“Eleven,” Wolfe corrected, then gave him our address. Bay agreed without enthusiasm.
“Okay, you’ve pulled it off,” I said after we cradled our receivers. “I would’ve bet three-to-two against. Congratulations.”
Although you’ll never get him to admit it, Wolfe enjoys praise as much as the next guy. His mouth formed what passes for a smile, and he went back to his beer and his reading, while I swiveled to my desk, where orchid-germination records awaited updating.
The next morning, Wolfe beat Bay to the office, but only by half a length. It was precisely eleven when the groaning elevator announced the great man’s descent from the plant rooms. He was crossing the sill into the office as the doorbell rang. “Get yourself comfortable,” I told him, “while I play butler.”
Viewed through the one-way glass in the front door, Barnabas Bay, clad in a light gray suit that made me want to ask the name of his tailor, looked surprisingly like the painting I’d seen twenty-four hours earlier in the tabernacle, right down to the warm-but-not-smug half-smile. He was alone on the stoop, although I could see someone behind the wheel of the modest dark blue sedan parked at the curb.
I opened the door and gestured him in. “Mr. Bay, I’m Archie Goodwin, Nero Wolfe’s assistant.”
“Oh yes, of course, Lloyd has spoken of you,” he said in his gentle drawl, giving me a firm handshake. “In fact, he said you were at the tabernacle yesterday. Sorry I couldn’t see you, but I had meetings all day. If I had known in advance …”
I told him not to worry about it, that I’d taken a tour. By then, we were entering the office, where I made introductions. Bay, who sensed Wolfe isn’t big on shaking hands, nodded a greeting and eased into the red leather chair.
Wolfe leaned back and considered his guest. “Would you like anything to drink? I’m having beer.”
“Ice water, please,” Bay responded. Like Morgan, he had one of those spire
-shaped pins on his lapel.
“Your given name is Robert Bailey,” Wolfe went on after he’d touched the buzzer under his desk, summoning Fritz. “Why did you change it?”
If the question caught Bay off balance, he didn’t let it show. “I’m afraid ministers are not without their vanities,” he said with a shrug. I could see how he would project well on television. He had the looks, to be sure, and all his gestures seemed natural and fluid. “As a seminarian in Georgia, I grew to admire Barnabas very much. He worked closely with Paul in Antioch, and—”
“I am aware of who he was.” Wolfe was taking the biblical lecture with his usual good grace. “A good man, full of the Holy Spirit and faith, and a great number of people were brought to the Lord.”
Bay nodded, and his grin revealed teeth that could light up a revival tent. “Acts 11:24. You know your Bible well.”
“It is literature,” Wolfe responded. “Why the altered surname?”
“You seem very interested in my names,” Bay answered good-naturedly. “I could tell you that I thought Bay seemed more dramatic than Bailey, which I suppose is partly the case. The main reason, though, is that my father deserted the family when I was eight. None of us ever saw him again. My mother raised four of us by working two full-time jobs, which probably took at least ten years off her life. I couldn’t forgive him, and I didn’t want to carry his name.”
“Yet you are a highly visible representative of a faith in which forgiveness is among the most exalted of virtues.”
Bay chuckled and slapped his thigh with a palm. “I like your direct approach, Mr. Wolfe,” he said without resentment. “You are right, of course. My failure to come to terms with the anger I felt at my father has pained me for years. It’s only recently that I’ve been able to work my way through it, at least to some extent. But,” he added with a slight smile, “after all these years, I’m stuck now with the name I gave myself in seminary. I know you didn’t ask me here to talk about my past, though.”
“Indeed. Our business is very much of the present. It is my intention to prove that Fred Durkin did not dispatch your associate.”
“The evidence would seem to indicate otherwise,” Bay said, lowering his voice theatrically.
“How would you describe your relationship with Mr. Meade?” Wolfe asked after giving Fritz Bay’s drink order and requesting beer for himself.
“We were close, of course.”
“One of the newspapers suggested that he was your heir apparent.”
Bay, folded his arms over his chest and closed his eyes for several seconds. I wondered if he was always onstage. “Mr. Wolfe, it’s difficult for me to even talk about Roy right now, so soon after … well, so soon after what happened. And you can’t believe all the newspaper and TV people that have been in the church the last few days. Lights and cameras everywhere. And of course the police. I wasn’t even going to come here when you asked, but given that Lloyd approached you originally because of those notes, I felt that in a strange way I owed it to you.”
“You owe me nothing, sir. But since you have raised the subject, what is your opinion about the origin of the notes?”
“My guess is, an eccentric. Sad to say, every church gets them once in a while. I even had a few back in my little parish in New Jersey.”
“Have you received any other hostile missives since you’ve been in your present location?”
Bay looked at the ceiling as if in contemplation, then leveled his blue eyes at Wolfe. “Oh, just a handful, mostly complaining about the content of a sermon, or about the hymns we sang, or my theology. But never a whole series like this. And never so threatening. I suppose that’s the underlying reason I agreed to let Lloyd come to see you. But honestly, they—the notes—didn’t concern me much. I’m not easily frightened, Mr. Wolfe. And after all, we get more than twelve thousand worshipers at the Silver Spire every Sunday; a few of them are bound to be, well, unusual.”
“What do you think of Mr. Durkin’s theory that the notes came from someone on the church staff?”
“Unthinkable!” Bay snorted, waving the idea away as if it were a gnat. “That outlandish comment of his is what started the whole furor. If he hadn’t said that, Roy would be alive today.”
Wolfe drank beer and dabbed his lips with a handkerchief. “Was Mr. Meade in fact your designated successor?”
Bay calmed himself and shifted in the red chair while his television smile returned. “As I told that police inspector, Cramer, we’d never actually established a formal succession,” he said.
“Was there a tacit understanding?”
Bay frowned and tilted his head to one side. “If so, it wasn’t because of anything I said or did, although I can see where, given his duties, Roy may have made some assumptions. And possibly others made them, too. The truth is, though, I simply haven’t started thinking about a successor. That’s probably not good management on my part, but I’m not even forty-nine years old, Mr. Wolfe, and I feel like I have a lot of good years left in parish ministry, which to me is what the Silver Spire really is, despite our TV network and the national publicity and the books I’ve written.” If that last reads to you like a rehearsed speech, join the club. That’s how it sounded when he said it, too, although the guy really knows how to use his voice for maximum effect. I found I was almost enjoying hearing him talk.
“Assuming you were ready to step down, would Mr. Meade have been your choice as a successor?” Wolfe asked.
Bay waited several beats before answering, studying his hands and glancing at his elegantly simple wristwatch. “Roy has—had—been with me a long time. As Senior Associate Pastor, he functioned more or less as my chief of staff. He was loyal and devoted to our work—a real soldier for the Lord.”
“But not a general.”
Bay unleashed a self-effacing smile. “I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to,” Wolfe remarked. “How did the members of your Circle of Faith relate to Mr. Meade?”
Bay took a drink of water, returning the glass carefully to the small table at his side. “Mr. Wolfe, Roy had many fine qualities. He worked day and night—in fact, I had to urge him to ease off sometimes, to go home to his wife and son. He was a fine preacher, with a strong delivery and well-prepared, well-organized sermons. He often filled in when I was away if we didn’t have a high-profile guest minister lined up. And he always wanted everything to be just right—he was a perfectionist, which you must realize isn’t always conducive to popularity.”
“What comes to perfection perishes.”
Bay raised his eyebrows. “That’s not from the Bible; is it Shakespeare?”
“Browning,” Wolfe said. “Have you in fact answered my question?”
An earnest nod. “As I’m sure you’ve gathered from what I’ve said, Roy tended to be rigid. Some of the others chafed at this from time to time.”
“Did you intercede when there were differences?”
“Oh, Mr. Wolfe, indeed I did, indeed I did. Roy and I talked—and prayed—about his, well, I suppose abrasiveness is the best description. He was aware of the problem, and I feel he honestly tried to improve.”
“But still you received complaints?”
A shrug of the gray-suited shoulders. “Occasionally.”
“From whom?”
“Mr. Wolfe, we’re getting into an area of confidentiality here,” Bay said, rippling his brow. “I don’t feel I can answer that.”
“A man has been charged with first-degree homicide. I am not indulging in hyperbole by stating that his life is on the line.”
“There is no death penalty in this state.”
“Come, sir, that is a quibble. A long prison sentence spells the end for an individual as surely as does the hangman’s noose or lethal gas.”
“All right,” Bay said, reaching for the glass of water. He did not raise it to his lips. “Every one of the Circle of Faith, and that includes even my wife, has complained at one time or another to me about Roy.”
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br /> “What was the nature of the complaints?”
“Well, most of them centered on Roy’s abrasiveness, as I mentioned before. He could be extremely curt with people. To give you a bit of background, I assembled the Circle of Faith as a somewhat informal advisory council, sort of like those ‘kitchen cabinets’ that presidents used to have years ago. All the people in the Circle have been part of the Silver Spire ministry just about from its beginnings. Elise, of course, has been with me a lot longer than that; we’ve been married almost twenty-five years. Anyway, the Circle has been extremely important to me, both as a spiritual support group and an advisory body. They’re encouraged to be very close-knit and supportive of one another, as well as of me. Unfortunately, Roy tended to strain relationships, rather than bond them. He’d always been somewhat that way, and in the last several months, I’d gotten increasingly concerned about his divisive nature.” Bay let out air loudly, as if exhausted by his short monologue.
“And you had told him of this concern?” Wolfe asked, draining the beer in his glass and contemplating the remaining foam sourly.
The clergyman’s shoulders sagged. “Several times. And finally, about two weeks ago, we had a long meeting in my study. It got pretty tense. Roy just didn’t seem to understand why I was so upset about his methods. He told me that I coddle the rest of the staff too much. Now, maybe I do try awfully hard sometimes to avoid confrontation, but that’s my style.
“Mr. Wolfe, I’m a positive thinker, to lift the phrase from Norman Vincent Peale, and I don’t apologize for being one. We call our approach at Silver Spire ‘Inspirational Theology,’ which was also the name of a book I wrote a few years ago. Not a very exciting title, I admit, but it did sell pretty well, still does. Anyway, ‘IT,’ which is the abbreviation we like to use, calls among other things for everyone to place a high value on respect and support for one another. As a faith, we try to avoid confrontation and seek conciliation wherever possible. I loved Roy Meade, and I’ll miss him terribly, both as an individual and as a brother in the Lord. But on too many occasions, his conduct ran contrary to our principles. He was always quick to find fault with others on the staff and point it out—both to their faces and, worse, behind their backs. More than once he made critical remarks—really critical—about one or another co-worker in front of others, including secretaries and even volunteers from the congregation who happened to be within earshot. Criticism given in the proper spirit is not necessarily a bad thing, as you know. But often Roy’s criticisms were rough and, well … hurtful. And if the church leaders don’t themselves set an example, then what is the flock to think?” Bay turned his palms up in what seemed like a gesture he’d spent time perfecting.
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