chapter one: Mrs. Hazelton is attending church--as she faithfully does every Sunday--when she witnesses Reverend Paulson fall from the pulpit. Is the Reverend dead?
Is the Reverend Dead?
Chapter Two
Mr. Blue hoists himself up to stand. “What happened?”
Mrs. Blue pulls her husband down to sit beside her. “Did you fall asleep, again?” she scolds. “Reverend Paulson just fell from the pulpit.” She grins, seemingly pleased that she’s up to speed.
Ms. Matthews charges up the aisle. “I’m sure he’s fine.” A mere sixty, she quickly claims the distance from her pew to the pulpit. “Please move aside, Mrs. Hazelton,” she directs me. “I was a nurse.”
She’s the head of the Woman’s Auxiliary and the altar guild and… It’s a long list. And now she thinks she’s next to God. She thinks she can make a dead man live.
“No, he’s not fine,” I argue.
“He’s fine.”
“Not fine.”
“Fine.”
“Not.”
“Is.”
She ignores me and knees beside the corpse. “Reverend Paulson? Are you okay? We’re all so worried about you.” She gently shakes him. “Yoo-hoo, Reverend?” Her voice becomes shrill. “Reverend Paulson, you’re scaring us. It’s time to wake up now.” She shakes him a little more vigorously. He doesn’t move or make a sound. That doesn’t surprise me. After all, he is dead. She cradles his right arm in her lap. The first three fingers of her right hand move from his wrist to his elbow. Not satisfied, she repeats the process, searching his left arm for a pulse. “Sometimes pulses can be rather weak,” she explains.
“Yes, especially when the person you’re examining is dead,” I tell her.
“Ah, there it is.” She puts her thumb on his neck.
“You can’t do that,” I tell her.
“Faint but there.”
“Faint? He’s dead. You have a pulse in your thumb. You’re feeling your own pulse.”
“What’s that?”
“I said, you can’t—.”
She frowns at me and holds her index finger in front of her lips. She bends over and puts her ear to his lips. “Yes. Yes, of course.”
I feel as if I’m at a seance.
She leaves the Reverend and claims the pulpit. “Rumours of Reverend Paulson’s death have been highly exaggerated.”
“What do you mean exaggerated? He’s dead, I tell you. Dead.”
She cups her hand over the microphone, glares at me, and nods at the Blues. “Please, Mrs. Hazelton.”
“But he’s—.”
“Just resting,” she speaks, loudly, into the microphone.
Mr. Blue stirs in his pew. “No, I’m awake.”
As if signalling an airplane, I wave at Ms. Matthews, pick up Reverend Paulson’s arm and let it fall back onto the floor. “Resting?”
“Reverend Paulson is a sound sleeper." She looks directly at the Blues, “He told me to you that he’s sorry but he had rather a late night preparing this Sunday’s sermon.” Her hand hovers over the Reverend’s glass but she doesn’t pick it up. “And he did a fine job, don’t you agree?”
“As always,” Mrs. Blue says.
“Yes, of course. As always.” Ms. Matthews agrees. “And so he was just too exhausted to go on. He told me that we should continue without him. So let’s proceed, shall we? This Sunday’s final hymn is...”
The organist starts to play. The Blues begin to sing. Young Ms. Matthews’ strong voice fills the church. “We are one in the spirit.”
Still singing, Ms. Matthews leaves the pulpit.
I rush over, as quickly as I can with my sore hip, to the microphone. “Please, everyone, you must listen to me.”
Now she’s at the wall that holds all the do-daddies for lights and sound and everything.
“The Reverend is—.”
She sweeps her hand over something, like a witch casting a spell, and turns off the sound system.
“Dead,” I say into a dead microphone. My pronouncement is drowned in music.
Ms. Matthews sways as she sings. She’s dancing in church. The hussy. The Blues follow her down the aisle and out of the church.
“Miriam,” I call to the organist. “Miriam, you have to help me.”
She closes the lid of the piano with a thud and leaves the church without even looking at me.
“Please, God. Please… I can’t...”
As if in answer to my prayers, the floorboards creak. Ms. Matthews has re-entered the church.
Of course, she has. She just didn’t want to work the Blues or Miriam into a lather. So she waited until they left and now we’ll solve this mystery together.
“I’m so glad you’re back.”
She heads straight to the pulpit and picks up the Reverend’s glass.
“What are you doing? You can’t take that.”
“I’m the president of the altar guild. I’m in charge of the Reverend’s glass.”
“But it’s evidence.”
“Evidence of what?”
“Reverend Paulson was poisoned. Smell it. It’s foul.”
She looks at me like I have two heads. “It may smell foul to you but it’s not poison. It’s whiskey.”
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