Chapelwood (The Borden Dispatches #2)(56)
“Very much like that, yes.”
I shook Miss Andrew’s hand and said it was nice to meet her.
She said, “Likewise, Mrs. Gussman, I’m sure. And I know it is terribly difficult, but you handled yourself admirably up there. It’s very brave of you to stand up to them.”
“Everyone keeps saying that.” I didn’t mean to sound fussy, but I probably did. “It’s not brave, though. It’s just what Father Coyle deserves, after all he did for me. So Miss Andrew, are you some kind of inspector, too? Do they let ladies do that in Boston?”
She blushed, and I hoped I hadn’t said something rude without meaning to. “Please, call me Lizbeth, dear.”
“Only if you’ll settle for Ruth in return,” I said back, and that seemed to please her.
“As you like, Ruth. But to answer your question, no, I’m not a proper investigator. I’m more like a . . . consultant.”
She was leaving something out, but that was fine. We were all leaving something out.
“I’ve never heard of a lady being a consultant before,” I said, and maybe I shouldn’t have, but I was distracted. The last of the jury men were filing by, and the recess was only supposed to last for thirty minutes. I wanted some air, so I said, “Let’s get out of here, if you don’t mind. It’s all stuffy, and I feel like I’m surrounded.”
Outside the courtroom, I didn’t feel any less surrounded by the folks who were milling about in the lobby. I tried to keep from looking at them, face by face, to figure out who I might’ve seen at Chapelwood and who I hadn’t . . . and it didn’t matter much. Even if I hadn’t seen these men and women at church before (and there were a handful of women, too—but it was mostly men) . . . I knew some of them from the newspapers.
Over here in this corner, a bunch of Klansmen chattered; over there along that wall, a cluster of shifty-eyed True Americans lurked; and the more I thought about it, the more I felt smothered by the lot of them. The judge was a wizard, once—and maybe he still was. My own representative, Mr. Mayhew, told me he didn’t participate in that group no more, but he could’ve been saying that to make me feel better, if he was so inclined to bother. Hugo Black—everybody knew about him and the True Americans. And all those grouchy old men in the jury box were peers of my daddy’s indeed.
I spotted the jury foreman chatting with Hugo Black. The foreman had a button on his lapel. It had the letters “TA” with a red, white, and blue background behind them, and it was disgusting. Not just because it was a signal, a reminder that all these men were in the same club and they all ought to hang together—but because they gave themselves that name: True Americans. That’s horseshit of the highest order, and I can’t stand it. There’s nothing true about them, and American? Sixty years ago they were willing to fight a war to keep from being Americans. Besides, American ought to be a good thing, the kind of thing that brings everybody together instead of deciding who’s good enough to be one and who isn’t. I’ve read in my history books, I’ve seen pictures of the statue in New York, the lady who greets all the people coming in from other countries. She doesn’t pick and choose; she takes everybody. And that’s how it ought to be.
This “True American” business—it’s nonsense, plain and simple. No, it’s worse than nonsense, because I think they actually believe it.
I might’ve started swearing about it, or even crying out of pure frustration with it all, but then the front doors opened and in strolled the Reverend Davis, just as easy as you please. He walked in like he owned the place, and I guess, in a sense, he did. He looked around the room and settled on me, and gave me this nasty little half smile that made my stomach drop. But there he was . . . dressed in ordinary clothes, no spooky robes or funny gloves. He still looked strange to me, though . . . like his arms were a bit too long, or maybe his hands had too many joints. When he moved, it didn’t look natural—maybe that’s what I’m trying to say. It looked like someone had built a person-shaped puppet and had done a real good job, but not quite perfect. Even in a gray cotton suit and with a politician’s grin, and even with his hair slicked back just as shiny as his shoes, he didn’t quite look ordinary.
I fought the urge to retreat; I wanted to back up against the wall, or hide behind the big, sturdy shape of the inspector. No, that’s not true at all. I wanted to run screaming from the building, just like I always wanted to run screaming from Chapelwood every single time I went there.
“Dear, are you all right?” Miss Andrew asked me. I mean, Lizbeth did. She put her hand on my shoulder and stepped closer, all protective-like. She smelled like fancy rosewater cologne and powder makeup. She smelled like money, and someplace else—and that’s how she sounded, too.
“Yes, ma’am, I’m all right,” I lied.
Then I noticed that she was looking right at the reverend—she just picked him out of the crowd, like she knew without even asking. Her eyes settled on him, but he didn’t look our way again. Once he’d finished trying to scare me, he’d lost interest in me—or anyone I was talking to. But she looked at him hard, so hard he must’ve felt it.
He frowned, and glanced up over his shoulder. He probably would’ve looked away in a flash, but her gaze hooked him hard.
Chief Eagan growled to them both, “That’s the dread reverend, it is. He’s the man who owns and operates the church at Chapelwood.”