Murder on Lenox Hill (25 page)

“At first the other mothers wouldn't believe it,” Mrs. York said, her voice oddly flat as she continued to stare at Upchurch's shrouded figure. “I couldn't blame them, I didn't want to believe it, either, and the other boys tried to deny it, too, but then poor little Mark started crying.”

“He's the youngest, a year younger than Percy,” Mrs. Evans explained. “He said it was true, and the other boys finally confirmed it. They were reluctant, of course, but in the end, I think they were relieved that it was finally over.”

“That was very brave of you,” Sarah said, wondering if she would have had such courage.

“Why?” she asked gravely. “Because they might not have believed me? I'm an old woman, Mrs. Brandt. I don't have to worry what people think about me anymore. If I do something foolish, they'll just assume I'm getting senile. But they also take me seriously if I make sense. It's one of the few advantages of old age.”

“Whose idea was it to poison him?” Dr. Thomas asked mildly.

Mrs. Evans looked at him blankly, but Mrs. York turned to him, her eyes blazing with hatred. “He died too easily,” she declared vehemently. “He should've suffered more.”

Mrs. Evans gave a little cry of distress, and for a few seconds, everyone simply gaped at her. Then the man named Leland came over quickly to intervene. “No one was going to poison him,” he assured Dr. Thomas. “We were going to confront him this morning and tell him we knew what he was. We were going to dismiss him from his position and send him on his way.”

Sarah felt an ache in her heart. They'd planned the best way they knew to protect their own children, but throwing Upchurch out of their church wouldn't protect anyone else's. He'd probably have found another church in another city and done the same thing all over again. What had Malloy said? Death was the only way to truly stop him. Obviously, someone had figured that out.

 
 
F
RANK HAD RARELY BEEN CALLED OUT TO INVESTIGATE A murder on a Sunday, but he'd known the instant he'd seen the patrolman sent to find him that it was Sarah Brandt's doing. All that poor fellow had known was that a minister had been killed right in his church on the Upper East Side, and the cops up there wanted him on the case. That was enough, though. How many ministers in the city were in danger of being murdered at any given time? At first he figured the Lintons or one of the other families he'd visited must have had them send for him, since he'd known the situation. He hadn't actually expected Sarah to be there herself, so when he saw her, he wanted to spit nails.

Luckily, she was all the way at the other end of the sanctuary, and there were a lot of people in between, so he had time to compose himself. First he had to deal with the group of churchmen who met him in the foyer. They wanted him to know they expected him to treat this matter with the utmost delicacy and discretion, and that he was forbidden from upsetting any members of the congregation. When he'd managed to extricate himself from them, the precinct captain and his detective met him halfway down the aisle and told him what they knew, which was less than Frank already knew.

“Seems he was doing something perverted, and they were going to fire him,” the captain said. “Nobody'll say what it was, though.”

“Young boys,” Frank said. “One of the girls in the church was raped, and I was looking into it. Found out about the minister's problem by accident.”

“He rape the girl, too?” the detective asked. He was a round-faced Irishman who'd seen too much and didn't let it bother him anymore.

“I don't think so. He didn't seem to like females at all, according to his wife.”

The two other men winced at such an abomination.

“That must be why the lady up there asked for you,” the captain said, nodding toward where Sarah waited. “You're welcome to the case, too.” He wouldn't be excited about a scandal like this. Irish cops investigating a Protestant minister wouldn't be popular.

“I can use some help,” he said meaningfully to the other detective. “There'll be a lot of people to question.”

The captain nodded. “Kelly will do whatever you need, and I'll leave a couple patrolmen, too. There was a bunch of people here when it happened. It was right in the middle of the Mass,” he said, using the term with which he was most familiar. “They sent everybody home, but at least they got all the names, in case you want to question anybody.”

Frank wondered if Sarah had thought of getting the names. It seemed like something she'd do. He wasn't going to ask her, though. He was too angry at her right now to be grateful for favors.

“Did you send for the coroner yet?” Frank asked.

“No, I figured you'd want to see the body first. I'll do it right now.”

“Good. Let's find out what these people can tell us,” he said to Detective Sergeant Kelly, who looked less than pleased at being selected to assist Frank.

They started toward the front platform, and Sarah walked down the aisle to meet them.

“Good morning, Mrs. Brandt,” he said. “How nice to see you.” His tone told her it wasn't nice at all, but as usual, she didn't flinch.

“I'm glad you were able to come,” she said as brazen as you please, as if he'd done her a personal favor instead of responding to an order. “This is very shocking to everyone.”

He introduced Kelly to her. “Mrs. Brandt was involved in a case I worked on last year,” he said by way of explanation. “She was . . . helpful,” he added, letting Kelly know Sarah wasn't just a brainless female. “I suppose you just happened by this morning,” Frank said before she could speak, “while Mr. Upchurch was dying in front of his congregation.” Beside him, he heard Kelly catch his breath at Frank's sarcastic tone.

“Oh, no, I came here to worship,” she assured him innocently, lying through her teeth. He'd never understand how an upper-class lady could lie so well. Quickly and without wasting any words, she told him exactly what she'd seen when Upchurch died.

“I guess it
was
pretty shocking,” he allowed, a bit mollified. He hated that she'd been there to see a thing like that.

“A lot of people stayed home today, because of the scandal, so fortunately there weren't many children here, or ladies, either.”

“What scandal?” Kelly asked.

Sarah looked at Frank. “Does he know about Upchurch?”

Frank nodded, frowning.

“We were wrong about Mrs. Evans wanting to keep it a secret. She told all the other mothers and the church elders, too. Now everyone in the church knows. They were furious. No one went forward for communion, no one put money in the offering plates . . . no one even sang the hymns.”

“You said he drank all the wine himself, after nobody else came forward, and that's when he died?” Frank asked.

“Yes, almost immediately, but everyone thought he was just having some kind of seizure or something. Dr. Thomas—he's that elderly gentleman sitting by the body—was in the congregation. He's the one who realized Upchurch had been poisoned. He said it was cyanide because he could smell bitter almonds in the communion wine.”

“Somebody poisoned the communion wine?” Kelly asked in astonishment. “Wouldn't everybody die then?”

“Seems likely,” Frank said. “How do Protestants do communion?” he asked Sarah.

“Different ways, but it seemed the people here go to the altar to receive it.”

“And they'd all drink from the same cup?”

“I'm not sure. Sometimes people get a piece of bread and just dip it in the wine. You'll have to ask someone here how he usually served it. Like I said, no one went forward this morning, so I don't know.”

Frank glanced around the room, taking a mental inventory of everyone still here. The cluster of churchmen who'd met him earlier still stood nearby, watching to make sure he behaved himself. He saw Isaiah sitting on the front pew with a woman he knew wasn't the boy's mother. Sarah had identified the elderly man sitting on the platform as Dr. Thomas. Lastly, he recognized Mr. Linton and Mrs. Evans sitting together off to one side.

“What's Mrs. Evans doing here?” he asked Sarah.

“She wanted to be here to see Upchurch's downfall, I guess,” she replied.

“No, I mean why is she
still
here? Why didn't she go home when everyone else did?”

“I don't know,” she said, “but I'm sure she'll tell you if you ask.”

Frank remembered Kelly was listening to every word, so he didn't say what he wanted. Instead he said, “I suppose it would be a waste of breath to tell you to go home yourself.”

“It certainly would,” she replied.

Kelly coughed behind his hand, and Frank refused to look at him. “Let's take a look at the body,” he said and walked off without waiting for consent.

Up on the platform, Frank introduced himself and Kelly to Dr. Thomas. The old man looked remarkably calm for what he'd been through this morning, but then maybe doctors got to be like cops—things like this didn't bother them much after a while.

“Mrs. Brandt said you think Upchurch was poisoned,” Frank said.

“Yes, I'm sure if you check what's left of the communion wine, you'll find cyanide. It has a distinct odor of bitter almonds. Not everyone can smell it, but I knew I could, because I had a patient once who took her own life with it. It's in some types of rat poison, and that's what she'd used. She'd put some in a drink—lemonade, I believe it was. She didn't die right away, so her family called me. She confessed what she had done before she died.”

“So you recognized the smell of the cyanide in the communion wine?” Frank confirmed.

“Yes, and on Upchurch's breath. The poison causes convulsions, which is what happened to him, and it affects the blood, too, turning it bright red and making the victim's skin pink. See for yourself,” he said, pushing himself out of his chair and leading the detectives over to the body.

Frank pulled back the cloth and saw what the old man meant. Not only wasn't Upchurch deathly white, he might have been blushing.

“You'll have an autopsy, of course,” Dr. Thomas was saying, “but I'm sure that's what they'll find.”

“Who sets things up for communion?” Frank asked, raising his voice so everyone in the room could hear the question.

Everyone looked at everyone else for a moment. One of the churchmen finally said, “I think the boys would help Upchurch get things ready.”

“Which of the boys were here this morning?” Frank asked, looking down at where Isaiah sat wearing a ridiculous-looking robe.

He glared back defiantly. “Just me,” he said.

“Did you help?”

He lifted his chin a notch. “I did it all. I poured the wine and put everything out on the table.”

Frank saw the anger that simmered inside the boy, the rage over what Upchurch had done to him. Was he looking into the face of a killer? “Show me where you keep the supplies,” he said.

The boy glanced at the woman beside him, as if for guidance. She nodded encouragement, and he rose to his feet and started toward the platform.

“Who is that woman?” Frank whispered to Dr. Thomas.

“Mrs. Upchurch,” he replied.

Something stirred in Frank's memory, something he couldn't quite recall, but he'd think about that later. The communion cup still sat on the table, where someone had replaced it after removing the cloth to cover Upchurch's body. Frank sniffed it and realized he could smell the bitter-almond odor the doctor had mentioned.

“It's back here,” Isaiah said, his attitude grudging as he led the men through a nearly hidden door behind the pulpit into a small room obviously used for preparations for the services. Robes of various colors hung along one wall, and cabinets held various supplies. The communion wine was stored under lock and key, probably to discourage the altar boys from sampling it. Isaiah produced the key and opened the appropriate cabinet.

“Who has a key to that cabinet?” Frank asked.

“Upchurch does . . . did,” Isaiah said with a slight catch in his voice. “And me. That's all.”

“Is this the bottle you used this morning?” Frank asked, reaching for it.

“Yeah,” the boy said.

Frank gave him a look.

“Yes, sir,” he amended, although reluctantly.

The cabinet held several bottles of cheap wine, and all but one of them were unopened. Frank pulled the cork out of the opened one and sniffed. He didn't smell almonds, but he'd have the police laboratory check it just the same.

“Tell me exactly what you did this morning, Isaiah,” he said, keeping his voice neutral. No sense scaring him yet.

The boy shrugged. “I got here early. The other boys, they didn't come because their families wouldn't let them. I wanted to be here, though. I wanted to see him when they told him to get out.”

“Can't blame you for that,” Frank said encouragingly. “Then what did you do? Did you see Upchurch?”

“No, he was in his office with the door closed. I could hear him talking to somebody—one of them was talking pretty loud—so I came in here, to set up the communion table. I didn't know when they were going to tell him he was finished here—if it was before or after communion—but I wanted to make sure it was all set up so he'd expect everything to go like usual and then be surprised when it didn't.”

“Was the wine bottle already open?”

“No, I had to open it. I poured it out into the cup we always use. The ladies in the church make sure there's bread here. Somebody had brought a loaf. I don't know who. It was here when I got here.”