The argument over church had been going on for half an hour. Now, with only fifteen minutes left before mass, Marge gave up. "Well, I guess I can't force you," she told Sandy, making one last effort, "but you're the one who'll have to answer to your father. He'll be very disappointed in you. It's very important to him that the family be together on Sunday morning."
It's important for us to be seen together, Sandy silently corrected, certain her mother knew as well as she did that if her father really wanted them all to be together, he wouldn't go off to play golf every Sunday morning, and meet them at church just in time for them to walk down the aisle together. Did he really think he was fooling anybody? "Maybe I'll go later," she offered, but knew she wouldn't.
The moment she woke up that morning, she knew she couldn't sit through one of Father MacNeill's masses today. Just the thought of it made her feel almost as sick as she'd been yesterday morning at Kim's. But now that she'd gotten out of church, she was starting to feel better. Maybe, after her mother left, she'd just go back to bed for another hour.
When Marge Engstrom stepped out into the bright fall morning a few minutes later, she decided that if Sandy didn't want to go to church, it was her daughter's loss, not her own. Besides, Sandy didn't look well, and perhaps just this once it really would be better for her to lie down for a while. Surely Phil-and God-would forgive her this once!
Marge set out toward St. Ignatius briskly, nodding to everyone she met. Birds were chirping, and there wasn't a cloud in the sky, and by the time she was across the street from St. Ignatius, even her concern about Sandy had all but vanished. Then she saw the activity in the graveyard, and stopped short.
Had someone died?
But no-surely she would have heard about it!
Marge hurried her step. "What's happened?" she asked Corinne Beckwith, who was standing just inside the cemetery gate, whispering to Sister Clarence.
"It's terrible." Corinne glanced around to be certain no one else was listening, though Marge suspected that whatever Corinne was about to reveal had already been repeated-in strictest confidence-to everyone Corinne had talked to already. "Ray told me this in the strictest confidence, so you have to promise not to breathe a word to anyone. Not anyone!" Then, without waiting for the demanded promise to be tendered, she plunged on. "Someone opened up George Conway's coffin last night, and cut off his right hand. Can you imagine such a thing? Just cut it off! What kind of person would do such a thing! Well, of course it's the fault of those Conways. Everything was fine until they came to town. Now the church has been vandalized, and people's pets are being slaughtered, and…"
But Marge had stopped listening, her attention drawn to the cat that was pinned to the tree with the broken crucifix. For some reason, what kept running through her mind over and over like a stuck record were the words Jake Cumberland had spoken at the meeting last night: "The work of the Devil! I'm tellin' you, this is the work of the Devil!"
For the first time in years, Marge Engstrom didn't wait for Phil to arrive before going into the church. With all the tales she'd heard since she was a little girl, all the whisperings about the things that had supposedly gone on in the Conway house spinning anew through her head, she dipped her fingers in the font, made her genuflection, and slipped into her regular pew. When her husband sat down at her side a few minutes later, she slid her hand into his. "There's going to be trouble," she whispered. "I can feel it."
Then she began to pray. But this morning, her prayers went far beyond her regular pleadings for her husband and daughter.
This morning she prayed for the souls of every single person in St. Albans.
Father MacNeill dressed for mass with deliberation. Slipping first into the finely woven linen alb-pressed perfectly wrinkle-free by his housekeeper, Sister Margaret Michael-he fastened the cincture around his waist, then added a stole. Finally he put on the chasuble, then gazed at himself in the mirror. Beyond the closed door of the vestry he could hear the murmuring of the crowd gathering in the sanctuary, but instead of the usual soft, almost chanting rhythms of prayer, this morning he heard the excited buzz of gossip winging through the church.
Of course, he had no one to blame but himself-he should never have called the police, at least not until he'd investigated the vandalism in the cemetery himself. It might even have been all right if they'd sent someone other than Ray Beckwith; he should have realized that Ray would be unable to hold anything back from Corinne, and everyone in St. Albans knew that if you wanted a piece of news spread as rapidly as possible, you simply told Corinne Beckwith, first swearing her to absolute secrecy and making her promise not to mention it in the newspaper.
And he was certain where they would place the blame: after Ted Conway's performance last night, he had gained the support of much of the town-even of the St. Ignatius congregation. So it was hardly likely blame would fall where Father MacNeill was already certain it belonged. No, much more likely they would turn their wrath on Jake Cumberland. Poor, ignorant Jake, who had stood at the back of Town Hall last night, denouncing Ted Conway as a tool of the Devil.
And why wouldn't they turn on him? After the accusation he'd made, wouldn't it be logical to assume he'd also desecrated the corpse of the man he'd always held responsible for the death of his own mother?
"Best them Conways don't come back here ever again," Jake had told him not too many weeks ago, when Cora Conway lay dying at the Willows. "They come here, they'll have me to deal with. And I know what to do, too. Don't think I don't!"
Father MacNeill had known Jake was speaking of the voodoo crafts he'd learned from his mother so many years ago. He hadn't bothered to argue-the priest had always understood that one man's faith is another man's superstition, and that trying to destroy Jake's belief in his mother's religion would be as useless as trying to destroy his own faith in the living Christ.
As the church bell tolled the hour, Father MacNeill smoothed the chasuble one last time, picked up his breviary, opened the vestry door, and stepped into the sanctuary. For a moment the murmuring went on uninterrupted, but as first one person and then another realized their priest now stood before them, the tenor of the buzzing changed, and finally died away.
Father MacNeill scanned the congregation. The church was crowded this morning, though he suspected that had more to do with the news of the desecration in the cemetery than it did with his own powers to preach.
Even Corinne Beckwith, whom he was certain accompanied her husband to church only to keep Ray happy, was paying attention this morning. Father MacNeill wondered if she had her tape recorder going, or would be content taking notes with a pen and paper. But like nearly everyone else in the sanctuary, she obviously was expecting him to say something, to explain to them what had happened last night. How, though, could he point an accusing finger until he was certain he knew the culprit's identity?
As he was still trying to decide what, if anything, to say, the door at the back of the church opened and he saw three figures silhouetted against the brilliant morning light. They stepped forward, the door closed, and for a moment they were lost in the shadows of the vestibule.
Then Janet Conway, holding the hand of her little daughter, Molly, stepped forward, dipped her fingers in the font, and dropped into a quick genuflection. Straightening, she searched the church for an empty pew.
A moment later Kim repeated the ritual her mother had just performed.
Then Ted Conway stepped forward, slipping his arms almost protectively around his wife and older daughter.