I nodded, pretending to be impressed, but I was thinking how much easier it would be if the whole shebang could be operated by Father Wylands from a switch in the pulpit. But in that case, Lionel the High Lord of Toilet Paper and Everything Else would have one less excuse to hang around the church at night. “Can you show me the sanctuary?”
Leaving his equipment turned on, but carefully locking the door behind him, Lionel led us to a small door set in the wall. Surprisingly, it led to a spiral staircase about two and one half feet wide. He flipped on a light and began to climb, motioning for us to follow. “Careful!” he called down over his shoulder.
We wound around and around as we ascended, and I was thanking my lucky stars I wasn’t any wider in the hips or especially prone to dizzy spells. At the top, we emerged through a door in the wall of the chancel just to the right of the altar. The door would be hidden from the congregation by the carved wooden bulk of the organ. “This is how our organist gets from the front of the church to the back balcony without interrupting the service.” Lionel gestured toward the balcony, several hundred feet away. “The choir sits up there.”
I wondered how Georgina managed to play the organ and conduct the choir at the same time, separated as they were by what seemed like half the length of a football field. Lionel must have read my thoughts. “There’s another organ in the balcony, Mrs. Ives. Not a fine pipe organ like this one, of course.” He stroked the wooden case lovingly. “But adequate.” He polished an imaginary fingerprint off the case with the sleeve of his jacket.
“And the microphones?” Connie inquired. “Where might they be?”
Lionel snapped out of his reverie. “Ah, yes. The microphones. Let me show you. We have several.”
The pulpit at All Hallows was also carved of dark wood, but much more elaborately than the organ. I counted twelve full-length statues of the Apostles around its base. An eagle, its wings spread out to hold whatever papers the priest preached from, decorated the top. Three short steps led from the chancel up to the pulpit. Lionel tiptoed up the steps, opened a small gate, then stepped inside the pulpit. “One mike is here.” He pointed to a lavalier-style microphone that hung from a hook just inside the gate. “Father Wylands just clips it to his robe before he begins, although why he needs a lavalier mike, I couldn’t say. It’s not as if he ever goes anywhere while he’s preaching.” He stepped out, closing the gate behind him.
I noticed the long cord attached to the microphone and asked, “Aren’t these microphones usually wireless?”
Lionel smiled down at me condescendingly. “Well, yes. But Father is hopelessly old-fashioned… and frugal. We’ll use these until they wear out, I’m quite certain.”
He waited until I had backed down the steps out of his way, then swanned after me, crossing the chancel to a lectern, also made of wood, but of a much plainer design. “We’ve a stationary microphone here,” he explained. “It’s so the readers can be heard by the congregation. Some of the women-” He stopped, looked from Connie to me, and evidently decided that whatever he had been about to say about women as readers wouldn’t sit well with a pair of female private detectives. Instead, he pointed to a toggle switch mounted on the underside of the lectern. “But if I flip this switch here, the lectern can be patched into the recording system as well.”
Connie had been observing this performance in silence. “Any other microphones?” she asked. “Like in the back?”
Lionel shook his head. “No, no. That’s it.”
“How can we be sure they’re working properly?” I asked.
Lionel’s face assumed a pained expression, as if we were questioning his integrity. “They work every Sunday. I don’t know why they wouldn’t work now.” I stood my ground and simply stared at the man until he felt compelled to fill the silence. “But perhaps we should test it.”
“Yes,” I said. “Perhaps that would be best. Connie?”
Lionel bobbed and weaved his way back toward the spiral staircase with Connie at his heels. I checked my watch. Six-fifteen. In forty-five minutes we should know one way or the other about Dr. Voorhis.
I was standing at the lectern looking out over the empty pews and trying to calm my jittery nerves when Lionel materialized behind me. “Mrs. Ives?”
When I could breathe again, I said, “Yes?”
“When I get everything ready to go, I’ll send the other Mrs. Ives up to tell you. Then you just speak into the microphones in a normal voice.”
“Like this?” I leaned close to the microphone and intoned, “ ‘ ’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves…’ ”
He raised both hands, palm out. “Not that loud, Mrs. Ives.”
I straightened and took a step backward. “Like this? ‘… did gyre and gimble in the wabe.’ ”
He smiled a thin-lipped smile. “Much better.” He executed an elegant about-face. “About five minutes,” he called over his shoulder, and disappeared back down the rabbit hole.
“ ‘All mimsy were the borogoves,’ ” I continued, addressing the board on which the numbers for the hymns for the Seventh Sunday after Epiphany were displayed: 119, 123, and 128. I recognized 128-“We Three Kings.” I tried out the tune with “and the mome raths outgrabe,” but it didn’t fit.
“Very enlightening.” The familiar voice of Dr. Voorhis, smooth as satin, came at me out of nowhere.
“I haven’t gotten to the best bits,” I said into the shadows. I tried not to think about the Jabberwock, especially the bit about the vorpal blade that went snicker-snack.
Voorhis emerged from the baptistry alcove just to my left and stood squinting up at me in the dim light.
“You’re early,” I said, stating the obvious.
“I like to be prepared.” It was a statement of fact, cool and dispassionate. “I knew who you were, you see.”
“How? My note was anonymous.”
“When you telephoned Claudia pretending to be from the police, Claudia was concerned. She called me. I simply dialed the number that had appeared on her caller ID. Need I tell you that it didn’t ring at the police department?” I remembered, sheepishly, the threatening call my mother had answered on my phone. “I was going to pay you a visit in Annapolis, but then your note arrived.” His teeth, long and narrow, flashed white. “This arrangement is much more convenient.”
I wondered how long he had been standing in the alcove, listening. If he knew about the microphones, my proverbial goose would be cooked. “I didn’t hear you come in.”
“There’s a side door, Mrs. Ives.” He gestured toward the baptistry behind him. “It responded conveniently to manipulation by credit card.”
“I see.”
Voorhis took a tentative step forward, then paused in the side aisle, blocking my view of a marble memorial shelf on which someone had placed a vase of fresh flowers. “You said you had something to discuss, Mrs. Ives. So, here I am.” He waved a ringed hand. “Discuss.”
My fingers found the toggle switch on the lectern. Praying it wouldn’t respond with a telltale click, I turned on the microphone. I steadied myself with both hands gripping the lectern. “The very fact that you’re here, Dr. Voorhis, answers one question.”
“And that is?”
“That you sexually abused your daughter, Diane.”
“Abuse?” His hand rested on a pew. I could see the glint of a stone in his Johns Hopkins ring. “What nonsense! I loved my daughter, and she loved me. She was my joy, and I hers. Our times together were… special.”
My stomach lurched, and it was all I could do to keep from throwing up. I could tell by the expression on Dr. Voorhis’s face that he actually believed what he was saying.
“But she was only a child!”
He shook his head. “You don’t understand. I didn’t abuse Diane.” He addressed me as he would a difficult and not very intelligent child. “Mrs. Ives, Mrs. Ives. How can it possibly be abuse, when she enjoyed it, too?”