Devil's Food Cake Murder (Hannah Swensen, #14)(86)

The moment she thought of it, Hannah raced back to the church office and picked up the phone. She dialed the parsonage and was greatly relieved when Grandma Knudson answered. “I need to know how to get up in the belfry,” she said.

“The belfry?” Grandma Knudson sounded surprised. “Why do you want to go up there?”

“Because Reverend Matthew could have hidden something up there to keep Paul from finding it. It seems unlikely, but I’ve checked everywhere else.”

“All right. Whatever you think best, Hannah. To get to the belfry, all you have to do is go through the door in back of the choir loft. There’s a circular staircase that leads up to the bell-ringer’s platform.”

“And that’s the belfry?”

“Only part of it, dear. You’ll see the rope for the bell and if you look to the right, you’ll notice another staircase that looks like a ladder next to the wall. There’s a trap door above that staircase and the bell tower’s up there.”

“Uh-oh,” Hannah breathed, not liking the sound of that. She wasn’t exactly afraid of heights, but she certainly wasn’t comfortable with them. And although she didn’t think she was claustrophobic, she asked her next question anyway. “Is the bell tower large?”

“It’s good-sized, but you can only stand up in the center. The rest is filled with rafters that support the steeple. And of course the bell and the bellframe are in the middle. Since you’re tall, you’ll have to duck a little to walk around that.”

Hannah sighed. The belfry didn’t sound like a pleasant place to visit. And then she remembered the phrase her grandmother Ingrid had used to describe someone with only part of their faculties. “Are there bats in the belfry?” she asked.

“I don’t know, dear. I’ve never been all the way up there, but I imagine there could be bats. You should be very quiet when you’re up there and they’ll probably stay asleep. Bats are nocturnal animals, you know.”

“I know,” Hannah said, not terribly relieved by that piece of knowledge. Nocturnal did not mean nonfunctional in daylight. She’d watched part of a program about bats on the animal channel. They’d debunked the old wives’ tale that bats were blind in the daylight and could get tangled in your hair, but she was glad she had tightly curled hair all the same.

“At least there’s no such thing as a vampire bat,” Hannah said, trying for humor.

“Oh, yes there is. They’re from Mexico, I believe. Of course they’re not like Count Dracula or any other foolishness like that, but I understand that they bite.”

Lovely! Hannah’s mind interjected. Bats that bite. That’s all I need!

“Good luck, Hannah,” Grandma Knudson said. And then she hung up the phone.

There’s nothing to it but to do it, Hannah’s mind echoed her great-grandmother Elsa’s favorite sentiment, the one she’d uttered every Monday when she got out the big galvanized wash tubs and wheeled the old washing machine and wringer into the kitchen from its storage place on the back porch.

Time was ticking away, and Hannah knew she’d better get at it before Paul, or Matthew, or whoever he was got back from visiting the sick at the hospital. Her great-grandma was right. Sitting here thinking about what she had to do would not get it done.

On her way to the choir loft, Hannah passed the cloak room and stopped at the lost and found box. It was half-full of items that had been left behind in the church. There was a woolen head scarf on top, and Hannah reached down to grab it. She folded it into a triangle and tied it over her head, knotting the ends under her chin babushka-style. Old wives’ tale or not, she felt much better about facing the bats.

She found the door behind the choir loft with no problem, and for a moment, she wondered why she’d never noticed it before. Then she realized it was probably because she’d never sung in the choir. Hannah opened the door and went up the narrow, winding staircase to arrive at a part of the Lake Eden Holy Redeemer Church that she’d never seen before, the platform for the bell-ringer.

Light filtered in through the vented windows on all four walls. The wooden slats were canted so that very little rain or snow could get in, but it didn’t stop the cold air from whistling through. Hannah knew she wouldn’t like the job as bell-ringer. This part of the wooden steeple was freezing cold in the winter, and she was sure it would be miserably hot in the summer. Grandma Knudson was a saint for ringing the bell to gather the flock for Sunday services when her husband was the minister.

The rope hung down from an aperture above, and Hannah looked up to see the church bell high above her. It was a huge bell and very old. Reverend Bob had once mentioned that the bell had been made in the eighteen hundreds, and it was cast bronze. The bell rope was made of thick hemp with a sleeve of cotton so the bell-ringer’s hands wouldn’t touch the fibers of the rope. She’d once heard someone mention that the sleeve was called a “sally,” although she had no idea why.

Hannah stared at the rope for a moment and fought the insane urge to grab the rope and pull. Of course she didn’t. If she rang the bell, Grandma Knudson would think there was something wrong, the parishioners would start calling the church office and the parsonage to find out why the bell was ringing, and if Paul, or Matthew, or whoever he was, caught wind of it, he’d rush right up here to see who was responsible and catch her searching the belfry.