Divine Inspiration

by Jane Langton

  Homer made admiring remarks about her apartment, which was the same shape and size as Rosie’s, but altogether different. Gathered under her bay window was a cactus garden. Prickly objects sat on tables. Every sort of geometric shape thrust out dangerous-looking spines. A ceramic dachshund sported a thorny tail. Pots of African violets had a place of honor on the television set, beside a photograph of a young marine.

  “Your son?” said Homer, bending to look at it.

  “Yes, that’s Scottie. He was killed in Viet Nam.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry.”

  “Never mind, dear.” Mrs. Garboyle pointed at another picture, a large framed color print. Homer recognized the portrait of Isabella Stewart Gardner. “I found it,” said Mrs. Garboyle, “and brought it back to the Gardner Museum, remember?”

  “Of course I do. That was a great day for the museum, after all they’d been through.” Homer turned to look solemnly at his hostess. “Mrs. Garboyle, Alan tells me you used to babysit for Rosalind Hall.”

  She nodded enthusiastically. “Oh, yes, many times. Such a good baby.” Her face fell. “I pray to the Lord someone’s taking good care of him, that dear little boy.”

  “Well, I hope so too. Tell me, Mrs. Garboyle, did Rosie go out often?”

  “Almost every night.”

  “Every night? She went out every night?”

  “Oh, yes. She went next door to the church to do her organ practicing. She played the organ, you know, the king of instruments. She practiced late at night when there weren’t any weddings or funerals or novenas. Oh, no, I suppose this church doesn’t have novenas.” Mrs. Garboyle’s voice trailed off sadly.

  Homer thought it over. “You mean she practiced on the old organ, before the fire?”

  “Yes, that’s right.” Mrs. Garboyle’s face screwed up in pain. “The fire, oh, that was a dreadful night.”

  “You saw it, Mrs. Garboyle?”

  “Yes, I did. Oh, dreadful, it was dreadful.”

  “Was Rosie practicing that night?”

  “I’m not sure. I’m afraid I’ve forgotten. She was certainly at home when the fire started. We all woke up when the fire engines came, what with all the noise and the sirens. Then when we saw that it was right next door, we were afraid we might be next. All the girls took their best clothes out-of-doors. I took my hedgehog outside.”

  “Your hedgehog?”

  Mrs. Garboyle picked up a large potted cactus with rosettes of dagger-sharp spines and held it in her lap. “I’ve grown it from a baby.”

  “But this house was safe, wasn’t it? The fire confined itself to the balcony of the church, as I recall. I saw all the damage next morning, when they called me in, and it was clear that it was mostly the balcony and the pipe organ.”

  “That’s right. We were in no danger after all.” Mrs. Garboyle thanked the good Lord. “But it killed that poor man. I’ll never forget it. The tears! We all cried and cried.”

  “I understand Rosie saw the fire? She was pretty upset too, I gather?”

  “Oh, yes. She wrapped little Charley in a blanket and stood there watching beside me. But it was too much for her. Well, it was a terrible sight, that poor man. They brought him out, all burned.” Mrs. Garboyle’s eyes filled with tears.

  “Mrs. Garboyle, try to remember whether or not Rosie practiced in the church that evening. Because if she did, if she was there after Mr. Kraeger and James Castle, then they couldn’t have been responsible for the fire, do you see?”

  “I’m sorry, but I just can’t recall. All I remember clearly about that night is the fire and smoke, and poor Mr. Plummer.” Mrs. Garboyle covered her face with her gnarled old hands. “Oh, it was terrible, terrible.”

  Homer reached out in sympathy and drove his thumb into one of the hedgehog’s spines. He cried out in pain.

  Mrs. Garboyle put the cactus on the floor and leaped up for a bandage, her tears forgotten.

  CHAPTER 59

  I will do whatever the Lord gives me to do, and, God willing, never will I be afraid.

  Martin Luther

  It was a Saturday morning rehearsal for the soloists.

  “That’s right,” said Barbara Inch, pushing back her hair, “just free and easy. Take your time.”

  The tenor Evangelist put his foot on the balcony railing and sang one of the narrative passages from Bach’s St. John Passion, “The soldiers platted then for Him a crown out of thorns.” He broke off to complain that he couldn’t see the damn music. He’d lost one of his contact lenses.

  “And put it upon his head,” prompted Barbara.

  “Oh, right.” The soloist closed his eyes and went on singing, “And put it upon His head and put on Him a purple robe.”

  Homer Kelly sat below the balcony in a pew halfway to the pulpit, looking at the bowed back of Martin Kraeger a dozen rows in front of him. Was Kraeger listening or praying? Whichever it was, his own crown of thorns must be sticking into him like one of Mrs. Garboyle’s cactuses, with the blood trickling down over his ears. Mary had reported to Homer what she had learned about the Pansy affair. It wasn’t helping. Kraeger’s malicious wife was obviously a screwball, but she still had the upper hand. You couldn’t laugh off a putrid lawsuit like this one.

  The alto soloist came puffing onto the balcony, a large woman in mammoth blue jeans. Barbara sent the tenor home for a pair of glasses, and the contralto took a deep breath and let loose with a rippling succession of deep trills, “From the shackles of my vices to liberate me, to liberate me, they have bound my Saviour.”

  Kraeger stood up, nodded gravely at Homer, and walked out through the door behind the pulpit, passing the portrait of Reverend Wigglesworth without a glance, although it offered him DIVINE INSPIRATION. In the gloom the gold letters on Wigglesworth’s book sparkled with uncouth exaggeration. Above the painting half the wall was freshly painted, the other half a labyrinth of patching plaster.

  Homer turned in his pew and looked up at the balcony, where Barbara and the soloist were crouched over the music, talking in low voices. Above them the pipes of the new organ rose in profusion on either side of the window of Moses and the Burning Bush. The fire in the bush was a tour de force of colored and painted glass. The late afternoon sunlight slanting through the dancing boughs along the avenue made the flames flicker as though the window were really on fire.

  On fire. Homer focused his mind on all the fires he had heard about lately. There had been the one in the church balcony, the fire that had destroyed the old organ and killed Mr. Plummer. Kraeger had taken the blame for that, but perhaps he had been wrong. Castle had been there with him, and they had left together, leaving behind them, perhaps, a smoldering cigarette. But suppose there had been no cigarette, and Castle came back later and started the fire by himself, in order to destroy the organ and get himself a new one? Of course if Rosie Hall had been practicing in the church later on, both Kraeger and Castle were in the clear.

  Fire number two was the car fire, the one that had destroyed the body of an anonymous woman, a substitute for Rosie.

  Fire number three was in Castle’s own house, which had been partly destroyed by fire a couple of years back.

  Fire number four wasn’t a major conflagration, it was the general carelessness of Harold Oates. For one thing he had used a blowtorch in his rented room, and for another his sloppy smoking habits made him a walking incendiary bomb.

  For the first time Homer decided to take seriously the strangeness and unpredictability of the great Harold Oates. Suppose he really was the culprit? Suppose it was really Oates who had vandalized all those organs, the way most people thought? Perhaps the destruction of the old organ at the Church of the Commonwealth last spring had been the first in the series. It was true that Alan Starr hadn’t discovered Oates until last January, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t hanging around town before that.

  But why in hell would he be burning up bodies in cars? Or destroying Castle’s house? Could it be that he raged against the competition? He was of
course the greatest organist within a thousand miles, but James Castle and Rosie Hall were next best. Had he tried to finish them off, in order to reign supreme? No, no, it was impossible. Homer scoffed at his own conjecture. Surely Oates was too erratic to carry out anything as complex as the burning of the body in Rosie’s car.

  Homer stood up and stretched, and walked out of the church. On the way to his car he was surprised to see Martin Kraeger sitting on a park bench across the street. He wondered if Martin was neglecting his duties. Maybe he should be writing a sermon or visiting shut-ins.

  Probably the poor man was always doing something he shouldn’t be doing, or not doing something he should be. It must be god-awful to be a clergyman.

  CHAPTER 60

  Antichrist attacks with fire, and shall be punished with fire.

  Martin Luther

  Homer had a dream that night about fire. It was an astonishing dream. There was God, awful, immense, towering up and up, filling the cosmos, his face dark and hidden under a flaming diadem. His crown was a vast ring of church spires, smoldering, blazing, sending up columns of black smoke against the stars. Rousing himself sleepily in the morning, Homer made up his mind to spend the day in the Boston Public Library trying to learn something about arson.

  He didn’t find much that was of interest, beyond the fact that arsonists began young. As infant pyromaniacs they played with matches. They set fire to mattresses and wastebaskets and later on they lit bonfires in the drawers of their teachers’ desks. In ripened maturity they ignited automobiles and houses and people.

  That was your garden-variety arsonist, the kind with a passion for flaming infernos. There was another kind, the respectable owner of a failed enterprise, who set his property ablaze as a matter of business. People like that experienced no thrill from sticking around to watch the flames mount to the heavens, they hastened from the scene to establish alibis a hundred miles away.

  Which kind of arsonist had set the Church of the Commonwealth on fire, and perhaps also Rosie Hall’s car with the cadaver in the front seat?

  Doggedly Homer abandoned the library and set out to find the headquarters of the Boston Fire Department on Southampton Street. His destination lay somewhere between Boston City Hospital and the Southeast Expressway. By the time Homer found it he had acquired a bashed fender and endured humiliation and contumely from the drivers of other cars, whose lanes he had wandered into in desperation, trying to turn left when he was on the right side of the highway, and right when he was on the left.

  “Sure,” said the officer behind the information desk, “we’ve got a whole department of archives. Third floor, down the hall on the right. Sergeant Drum, he’s in charge.”

  The room was full of file cabinets. A pink-cheeked kid in a blue shirt looked up from a computer as Homer walked in. “Sergeant Drum?” said Homer.

  “That’s me.”

  Homer introduced himself, and flashed his long-defunct card from the office of the District Attorney of Middlesex County. “What I want to know is, do you have any sort of system, so you can trace fires that have similar characteristics?”

  Sergeant Drum stood up. “Sure, we’ve got a system. Categories, you know? Warehouse fires, car fires, space heaters, insurance scams, everything cross-referenced. Like what have you got in mind?”

  Impulsively Homer said, “Churches, have you got a history of fires in churches?”

  “Oh, you bet. Churches burn down all the time. Painters using acetylene torches to remove old paint, flame gets under the clapboards, place burns down. Careless use of candles, you name it. Here, just a sec.”

  He pulled out a file drawer and unfolded a printout. “See here, Baptist church, Shelburne, ten years ago, March seventeenth. Entire edifice one hundred percent destroyed, suspected arson, thirteen-year-old juvenile arrested, indicted, convicted, conviction suspended on appeal. Same kid, a year later, First Baptist, Thornton, ninety percent destroyed, fourteen-year-old served six months in a house of correction.”

  “My God, what was the kid’s name?”

  “Not listed here because it was a juvenile. Unfortunately the juvenile arsonist file”—Sergeant Drum made a face—“well, it no longer exists. My predecessor punched the wrong button and the whole thing went poof.” He clapped his hands to show the finality of the disaster. “I mean, that’s why I’m here. The poor klutz got fired.”

  “Do you remember it, I mean in your head?”

  “Sorry, I was in grade school at the time.”

  “Well, maybe there’s somebody older who was here then, who might remember?”

  “Wait a sec. I’ll get Heinrich, Fred Heinrich, he’s really old, been here since day one.” The pink-cheeked sergeant bounded out of the room and came back a moment later with Heinrich.

  Homer had expected a bent and crippled old fossil. He was shocked to see that Sergeant Drum’s idea of an old man was this strapping fortyish youth in a pair of pink athletic pants tied around the middle with a drawstring.

  “Well, I sort of remember,” said Heinrich. “It was architectural, that’s all I recollect. The name of the kid was kind of architectural.”

  Homer pounced. “Castle? Was his name Castle?”

  “Castle? Well, I’m not sure. Was he a juvenile ten years ago?”

  Homer tried to remember the vague face of the organist he had met only once, a year ago, among a crowd of other people on the scorched balcony of the Church of the Commonwealth. Surely the man had been bald. Did some men go bald in their twenties? “I don’t think so, but I’m not positive.”

  “Wait a minute,” said Sergeant Drum, “I’ll see if he’s in the regular file.” He bent over his file drawers again and snatched out another printout. “Hey, here he is, James Castle.”

  “That’s it! James Castle!”

  “House fire, One-two-one Mount Vernon Street, nineteen April, 1992. Inspector from the insurance company declared it was of accidental origin, problem with wiring, they paid up.”

  “Anything else under Castle?”

  “One other thing, Church of the Commonwealth, last year, fatal fire, one victim, careless smoking by pastor, Castle present at the time. That’s all on Castle.”

  Homer racked his brain for more people with architectural identities. Then, with a pouncing sensation in his head, he remembered one. Softly and tenderly he said the name of the girl with the mysterious juvenile police record, the woman who might have been present in the Church of the Commonwealth after Kraeger and Castle had left it on the night of the fire. “Rosalind Hall?”

  Sergeant Drum ransacked the file drawers again, and extracted another printout with a flourish. “Say, now you’re talking. Look at this, two entries, a couple more churches.”

  Homer tried to restrain his excitement. “I thought you said the juvenile entries were lost.”

  “These aren’t juveniles,” said Drum. He held up the printout for Heinrich to see.

  “They’re not exactly arson,” said Heinrich, staring at it. “This one, Preston Falls Methodist, Christmas Eve service, five years ago, candles on the organ, music caught fire. Didn’t amount to much. Smoke damage to the ceiling, that was all.”

  “My God, what’s the other one?”

  “Wedding,” said Heinrich. “Candles again. Damnfool brides, they’ve always got to have candles.”

  “Where was it?”

  “Malvern,” said Sergeant Drum, running his finger along a line. “Church of the Holy Redeemer, destroyed a bunch of music. Organist couldn’t see without a whole row of candles, knocked over a couple. Same female, Rosalind Hall.”

  “Interesting,” said Heinrich, “both fires started with candles. Arsonists, they usually establish a pattern. Like you’ve got your kerosene arsonists, they always use kerosene. Other people, they stick to a cigarette lighter, or maybe an acetylene or propane torch. Or like they ignite a bunch of oily rags, try to make it look like spontaneous combustion, only they use an accelerator, throw it out to spread the fire, you can tell what t
hey’ve done. Those church fires a while back, in Shelburne and Thornton, that was really clever. The kid dissolved some kind of incendiary chemical in water, sprinkled it around, so when the water evaporated long afterward, the stuff caught fire when nobody was there. It was polka dots, like. Polka dots of combustible material. It flamed up in spots where the stuff was sprinkled.”

  “Polka dots,” exclaimed Homer. “You mean those two church fires that were set by some kid with an architectural name? The one whose records were wiped out by mistake?”

  “That’s right,” said Heinrich. “I was present at the Shelburne fire. I remember seeing the flames coming up in a lot of different places, just like, you know, polka dots.”

  “What about the fire at the Church of the Commonwealth?” said Homer. “Was that polka dots too?”

  “Don’t know. That end of the building was really ablaze by the time Engine 33 got there from Boylston Street. They managed to save the rest of the church, by some miracle. Great bunch of guys, Engine 33. They had a tower unit there too from Purchase Street and everything from Columbus Ave. One fatality though, right?” Heinrich shook his head. “Too bad.”

  Homer left the headquarters of the Boston Fire Department half frustrated, half excited. Something was heaving and tumbling in his mind like a cat in a bag. Before long he knew what it was, the trash can in Rosie Hall’s back entry. It was full of ashtrays and candles.

  Had she been throwing away the evidence of her interest in incendiary materials? Had she entered the church late at night, after Kraeger and Castle were gone, bringing along her innocent little candles, and set fire to the balcony?

  Afterward, poor dear, she had been deeply distressed by the charred body of the sexton. The dear girl had only meant to cause a pretty blaze, she hadn’t really meant to kill anybody, and it weighed upon her mind and tormented her soul, and finally she couldn’t stand it any more, so she ran away.

  Homer couldn’t help a bitter laugh as he drove cautiously back to Storrow Drive. Poor old Alan Starr with his fixation on the sweet girl in the photograph! Perhaps she was a pyromaniac, a killer, a careless abandoner and kidnapper of babies, a really ghastly woman after all.