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Preach No More

Page 15

by RICHARD LOCKRIDGE


  “I seek consolation in the Word of God,” she said. She lifted up the Bible. “The inspired Word.” The capitalization was in her voice. It was a light, assured voice and, Shapiro thought, one without warmth. “Are you a Christian, Lieutenant?”

  “No,” Shapiro said. “Of another faith.”

  She merely nodded her head.

  Shapiro pulled a chair up and sat on it, facing her.

  “The usual question,” he said. “Do you know of anyone who might have had reason—thought he had reason—to harm your husband? An enemy?”

  “He had no enemies. He was a friend of all men, even of those who sinned. If you had known him, you would not have asked that question.”

  “Probably,” Shapiro said. “But I didn’t know him. And someone killed him. We’re tying to find out who killed him.”

  “A hand guided by Satan. A soul corrupted by evil. Is not that enough?”

  “No,” Shapiro said. “I’m afraid it isn’t. We have to be more—specific. There’s nobody you suspect, then?”

  “No one. He was greatly loved. He was—”

  “Yes,” Shapiro said. “I realize he was a man of God.” And God knows I ought to by now, Shapiro thought. “Night before last, you didn’t see your husband? After the meeting, I mean. When he came back here and changed and went out again?”

  “No. I was sleeping. Florence persuaded me to take sleeping medicine. I had a very bad cold and had not been sleeping.”

  “Bad time of year for colds,” Shapiro said. “Better now?”

  She said, “Yes,” and then, a little to Nathan’s surprise, added, “Thank you.”

  “I realize this is difficult for you,” Shapiro said. “I’m trying to keep it as brief as I can. But there’s routine, you see. Things we have to go through, whether they mean anything or not. Did Mr. Prentis often go out into a city to—to assess its wickedness—before the meetings started?”

  This is getting to me, Shapiro thought. I’m beginning to talk like these people; stilted, as they talk. Pretty soon I’ll begin quoting from the Bible. Or the Talmud. What little I remember of what they taught me at schule.

  “I knew he sometimes went in search of evil. That he might destroy it. He did not shirk his duty.”

  Shapiro said he was sure the Reverend Mr. Prentis had not shirked his duty.

  “He saw things which made him cringe,” Mrs. Prentis said. “He faced such things.”

  “Sure,” Nathan said, lapsing into more comfortable speech. “There’s one small thing we’d like to get straightened out. Nothing important, but we try to get everything tucked in.”

  She looked at him. She had rather light blue eyes. They were eyes he couldn’t see into. But he was never any good at seeing into the eyes of others.

  “You came east with the others,” he said. “In a chartered plane on the second of this month. That’s what we’re told, anyway.”

  “Yes.”

  “But you left Little Rock on the twenty-second of last month. That was a Sunday. Flew to Saint Louis. That’s right, isn’t it?”

  “I try not to fly on Sunday,” she said. “To do anything on Sunday. Remember the Sabbath Day to keep it holy.”

  “Yes,” Shapiro said. “But you did fly to Saint Louis on a Sunday. And stayed there until the second of this month, when you flew here with the others?”

  “It was a day I could get a seat on the plane. Saturday was booked solidly, they told me.”

  “It was urgent that you get to Saint Louis?”

  “Urgent? No. Why should it be urgent? I was merely lonely in Little Rock. We have quite a large house there. Next to the Tabernacle.”

  “Your brother lives in Saint Louis,” Shapiro said. “You—I suppose you flew up to visit him before coming on east with the others?”

  “I saw my brother, certainly.”

  “Of course,” Shapiro said. “Natural thing to do. Stayed with him until it was time to fly to New York? He’s here now, by the way. But of course you know that.”

  “I knew he was expected. Somebody told me his plane was delayed. Florence told me he had arrived and—and had been very late. And is sleeping now.”

  “Yes,” Shapiro said. “I’ll probably want to see him when he wakes up. But there’s no hurry. In Saint Louis during that week or so. You did stay with your brother?”

  “Does it matter? How can it matter?”

  “Probably doesn’t at all. We just have to fill things in. Things that don’t make any difference one way or another. But, you did stay with him?”

  “No. I went into a retreat. For prayer and meditation. Often I do before the meetings begin. To prepare myself to hold up his hands. To minister to his needs.”

  “A retreat?”

  “A place in which to withdraw from the world. We—the mission—have several of them throughout the country. Many—the wives of our ministers, sometimes our returned missionaries—go to them to—to commune with God.”

  “Of course,” Nathan said. “Heard of such places, of course. Thought they were mostly Roman Catholic. Or Episcopalian, sometimes.”

  “Ours are not like theirs,” she said. “We follow the simple way. The true way. We make no graven images. Do not pollute our air with incense. We follow in the footsteps of the Master.”

  Shapiro said he understood, which was not especially true. He said, “This retreat you went to. In Saint Louis?”

  “No. Here in the east. In a place called North White Plains.”

  “Flew here to this retreat? Then back to Saint Louis to fly back with the rest?”

  “Yes. Is that so strange? My place is with the others. My modest place.”

  It seemed strange enough to Nathan Shapiro. Except, of course, that North White Plains is a short train ride from Grand Central Terminal. If a wife wants to check up on her husband who has—how had she put it?—has gone in search of evil. “That he might destroy it.” All Nathan said was “Mmmm,” which was not especially conclusive.

  “When he came back from the meeting night before last,” Shapiro said, “Mr. Prentis did not—oh, look in on you? To see that you were all right? How you were making out with this bad cold?”

  “I told you I was sleeping. Sleeping deeply because of this medicine. If he did, he didn’t wake me up.”

  “Probably did,” Shapiro said. “Saw you were sleeping. Didn’t want to waken you. Sort of thing a man might do, I’d think.”

  She did not say anything to that.

  “Because,” Shapiro said, “you and your husband were close, I imagine. Been married ten years, I understand. Time draws people together.”

  Or, of course, pushes them apart.

  “We were married,” she said. “Together in holy matrimony. In the sight of God.”

  “Of course,” Shapiro said. She sounded, he thought, a little sharp about it. Which wasn’t—at any rate he supposed wasn’t—any of his business. He said, “I’m sorry, Mrs. Prentis. I realize all this must be difficult for you. My—my prying into the past. Stirring up memories which must be dear to you.”

  She sighed deeply for answer. And, Shapiro found, he did not in the least believe in her sigh. Which somewhat surprised him. She sighed again, and he did not believe that sigh either.

  “We were spiritually as one,” she said. “We were dedicated together to the service of our Lord.”

  Shapiro thought for a moment and then repeated, “Spiritually?” He resisted the temptation to quote from the Scriptures himself, “Male and female created He them.”

  “Of course,” Mrs. Hope Prentis said. “We did not sin together.”

  He could only repeat the word “Sin?” He repeated it with a rising inflection.

  “Carnally,” she said. “We had put all that behind us, of course.”

  Shapiro said he was afraid he did not quite understand.

  “I can have no children,” she said. “I am a barren woman. A year after we were married I learned that from a doctor. Why do I tell you this? It can have no conn
ection.”

  Shapiro was not so sure of that. A woman who has abandoned sex, if that was what Mrs. Prentis was edging her way around, is not likely to experience sexual jealousy. Bluntly, to kill a husband who is playing around with another blonde.

  “No,” Nathan said. “It can have no connection, of course. I hadn’t intended to bring up such a—a delicate subject. You could have no children. And so you—you and Mr. Prentis didn’t—” He hesitated, rejecting certain words. “You and Mr. Prentis remained continent?” he said. “With each other?”

  “Of course,” she said. “Our relationship was chaste. If children cannot be expected, it is only sin. Lasciviousness. The employment of the bodies given us by God for carnal pleasure. After we knew, we did not sin.”

  Shapiro had been puzzled by these people from the start. He felt now that there was an enormity in this hotel room. He stood up rather suddenly and said, “Thank you, Mrs. Prentis. I’m sorry to have had to bother you at a time like this,” and got out of the room.

  He thought of Rose and of how they had clung together when they first heard that, together, they could not have children. And of how they had clung together since. He felt he was leaving an enormity behind him in the corner room of the Hotel Wexley.

  A waiter was bringing a tray with used dishes on it out of the room across the hall—the room which had been the Reverend Prentis’s. Henry Pruitt was awake, apparently, and had had breakfast. Shapiro knocked at his door. A man behind the door said, “Come back later, can’t you?” in a resonant voice. He spoke as one might speak to a maid come too early to straighten a room.

  “A police officer, Mr. Pruitt,” Shapiro said through the door. “Like a few words with you.”

  Pruitt did not answer. But Shapiro heard a bolt slide and then the door opened.

  Pruitt was a tall man and a heavy one. He was fully dressed—dark gray suit, with vest; white shirt and a black four-in-hand necktie. Except for the fact that he was wearing slippers, he was a man ready to go to an office and take charge. He didn’t, Shapiro thought with some relief, look like a particularly religious man. He had blue eyes which were rather like his sister’s.

  “Lieutenant Shapiro,” Shapiro said. “One of those investigating Mr. Prentis’s death.”

  “Terrible thing,” Pruitt said. “Unbelievable. I was in Saint Louis. Nothing I can tell you.”

  “I don’t suppose there is,” Shapiro said. “But they want us to talk to everybody.”

  The unidentified “they” is often useful.

  “Only take a few minutes,” Shapiro added. “Realize you’ll have a lot to do. Getting things straightened out. Or, will it be wound up?”

  “Nothing I can tell you,” Pruitt said again. “Nobody’s safe in a city like this. Criminals let run loose. Probably some homicidal maniac you people have let go.”

  He started to pull the door closed. Nathan Shapiro held it open. For a moment they looked at each other. Then Pruitt said, “Oh, come on in. You’ll be wasting time. Nothing I can tell you.”

  But he went on into the corner room, which was identical, in reverse, of the one occupied by his sister across the hall. Pruitt sat down, solidly, in a chair, a man who had no time to waste, who wanted to get on with it.

  “Assuming it wasn’t a homicidal maniac,” Shapiro said, “who would gain by Mr. Prentis’s death?”

  “Nobody. Oh, anybody who wanted to stop his work. A fanatic atheist. Good many of those around. Stopped prayers in schools, people like that did. In a God-fearing country. Breaking down the moral fiber. Part of the conspiracy. Communist. Somebody like that it could have been.”

  Easy enough to place now, Shapiro thought. Not religious in the sense the others were. But with his own religion. Member of the Birch Society, probably. He’d heard they were strong out west.

  “Yes,” Shapiro said. “It could have been somebody like that, I suppose. If it was, we’ll find him. But what I was wondering about was a personal motive. Or, of course, a financial motive. We have to look for that sort of thing.”

  “Won’t find it,” Pruitt told him. “What do you mean, financial?”

  “I don’t know,” Shapiro said. “I’m trying to find out. You’re treasurer of the Mission of Redemption. From what I’ve heard about it, a great deal of money is involved. We always wonder when a great deal of money is involved.”

  “No,” Pruitt said. “People are always trying to find out about that. Reporters. Magazine writers. Nobody’s business. Nonprofit religious corporation. Tax-exempt. Jonathan’s death won’t have anything to do with that. Not with what’s in the treasury now, anyway.”

  “With what may come in?”

  “All right. The cause will suffer, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

  “Somebody will take Mr. Prentis’s place. Carry on his work?”

  “Look. This just happened. We haven’t got to planning anything. Higgs and I, and Mrs. Mathews—it’ll be up to us, I suppose. All I can tell you now is we’ve canceled the Chicago meetings. After that—”

  He shrugged heavy shoulders.

  “Mr. Higgs himself? I understand he helped Mr. Prentis. Helped him write sermons. Syndicate articles. That sort of thing? He might take Mr. Prentis’s place?”

  “Listen,” Pruitt said. “Probably you people have talked to the Reverend Higgs. Heard him talk?”

  “Yes.”

  “Jonathan was a dedicated man,” Pruitt said. “A man of God. Also—you know what we called him? The Voice. Listening to him—well, it was an experience. When they listened to him, a lot of people thought God was speaking. Felt as if He were speaking. You’ve heard Pruitt’s voice, you say. Well?”

  “He did help Mr. Prentis with the writing? Higgs, I mean?”

  “Sure. More than one man could handle. Even Jonathan. Doesn’t mean he can take Jonathan’s place. However dedicated he is.”

  “So, you don’t know what will happen next?”

  “The mission will continue, certainly. Our funds will be used as they have been to carry on the work. To send young men to study for the ministry. To support the retreats. To carry on the missionary work in heathen lands. To people who have not heard the Word. Our work is not ended. It will not be ended in our time.”

  “Probably not,” Shapiro said. “Speaking of retreats. Place where people go to—to contemplate? To pray?”

  “To find refuge,” Pruitt said. “Widows of our clergy. Missionaries who have grown old in the work. Ministers who have worn themselves out in the service of the Lord.”

  “Many of these retreats supported by the Mission of Redemption?”

  “Twenty-one. Throughout the country. Oh, mostly in the South. Where our greatest strength is, although we advance throughout the nation.”

  Partly businessman, Shapiro thought. Partly—partly what? Publicity man?

  “Speaking of retreats,” Shapiro said. “Your sister spent some time in one last month, she tells me. One quite close to New York.”

  “She often did,” Pruitt said. “To prepare herself. She has always been invaluable as Jonathan’s helpmeet. A splendid woman. A dedicated woman. She will bear her cross with courage.”

  Shapiro said he was sure she would. He asked a few more questions, but not about the financial setup of the Mission of Redemption, Inc. It was evident that on that subject Pruitt wasn’t talking. Oh, the courts could intervene, if it came to that. As it might or might not.

  Yes, Mrs. Prentis had flown from Little Rock to St. Louis late in February. She had stayed for a day or so with her brother. She had flown to New York and stayed for a time in the retreat and had flown back to St. Louis to come east again with the others.

  Yes, Jonathan Prentis often went ahead of the others to a city where the meetings were to be held, to familiarize himself with conditions. Evil took various forms; he wanted to be familiar with the most recent.

  Yes, the retreat in North White Plains had an address. It was on a numbered route. Anybody could tell Lieutenant Shapiro where it w
as. It was called “Mission Retreat 14.” All the retreats had numbers. What did the police want to know for?

  “They want a lot of details,” Shapiro said, and thanked Pruitt for giving him the time on what would be, of course, a busy morning.

  Shapiro went out of the room and along the hall to the suite shared by Farmington and Higgs. There was nobody in it. He went down to the main floor and looked into the coffee shop. Higgs was there, having breakfast.

  Shapiro got a taxi to Grand Central Station and had to wait almost half an hour for an express to White Plains and, beyond it, North White Plains. The train ended its run at North White Plains. It was only fifteen minutes late in getting there. There was a cab at the station and, sure, the driver knew where Mission Retreat 14 was. It was maybe five miles out in the country.

  North White Plains was country enough for Nathan Shapiro, who can take open spaces or leave them alone—preferably leave them alone if they are more open than Prospect Park. The country was a good deal more open to the east of North White Plains, but after a mile or so the cab warmed up. If one is going to chase wild geese, it is well to do it in a warm taxicab.

  The taxi turned off a wide main road onto a narrower blacktop, with the winter’s chuckholes in it. It went more slowly, dodging the holes. At a gravel drive with a sign beside it which read “Mission Retreat 14” the taxi slowed. “Maybe and maybe not,” the driver said. “They fall apart this time of year. Frost goes out and they fall apart.”

  He turned into the drive, very slowly. Shapiro could feel the front wheels sink into it. The driver backed the taxi out and said, “Nope. Don’t want to take the chance. Have to walk up, mister.”

  “Wait,” Shapiro said. “I won’t be long.”

  The driver said, “Well, mister—” and Shapiro looked at him.

  “O.K.,” the driver said. “I’ll have to charge you extra. You know that, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” Shapiro said. “I know that.” He got out of the cab and began to walk.

  11

  The graveled drive went a hundred yards or so through a rough-mowed field toward a sprawling white house. It was mushy underfoot and there were puddles in it. Shapiro skirted the puddles, but his feet got wet all the same. The northwest wind whipped at him. It would dry up the puddles, given time. Or, on the other hand, freeze them. There was little warmth in the late March sun.

 

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