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  Divine Inspiration

  A Homer Kelly Mystery

  Jane Langton

  A MysteriousPress.com

  Open Road Integrated Media Ebook

  Contents

  Prologus

  Advent

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  Christmas

  8

  The New Year

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  Epiphany

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  45

  46

  47

  48

  49

  50

  51

  52

  53

  54

  55

  56

  Palm Sunday

  57

  58

  59

  60

  61

  62

  63

  Good Friday

  64

  65

  66

  67

  68

  69

  Easter

  70

  71

  72

  73

  74

  75

  76

  Pentecost

  77

  78

  Afterword

  Preview: The Shortest Day: Murder at the Revels

  Copyright Page

  FOR AUDREY AND EDWIN BRIGGS

  AND FOR LIBBY BLANK

  PROLOGUE

  “Gloria” from the Magnificat by J. S. Bach

  Two introductions must be made at once.

  The first is to the new pipe organ in the Church of the Commonwealth in Boston’s Back Bay.

  It is an American organ, made in Marblehead, trucked down to Boston and installed in the balcony of the church by the local representative of the maker, organist and organ builder Alan Starr. Eagerly hovering over Alan as he works is the music director of the Church of the Commonwealth, James Castle. It is Castle who chose the builder and the specifications. When the organ is ready, Castle will play it.

  Starr has spent weeks setting it up, fastening in place the tall wooden cases and standing in their racks thirty-nine of the ranks of pipes above their wind chests, and settling the console into its niche at the front of the balcony. All the delicate tracker mechanisms have been assembled. Henceforth a pulled stop knob will withdraw the gag from a row of pipes and a struck key will activate a hinged rod, permitting a single pipe to sound its note.

  There is still much work to be done. Alan will spend months adjusting the open mouths of the pipes with his delicate tuning and voicing tools, listening and changing, nicking and prying, until each reed and flue pipe speaks its note correctly in the reverberating chamber that is the sanctuary of the Church of the Commonwealth.

  Not everyone is happy about the new organ. “There we were with the finest pipe organ in Boston,” complains church treasurer Kenneth Possett. “Granted, it was half destroyed in the fire, but surely it could have been repaired. I must say, I blame Reverend Kraeger. Oh, not just because it was his carelessness that started the fire. It’s his whole attitude toward Castle. Whatever Castle wants, Castle gets. And damn the expense.”

  “You’d think Castle would have been satisfied with the biggest instrument in New England,” grumbles old Dennis Partridge, a member of the Music Committee. “Five keyboards and fourteen thousand pipes!”

  “Oh, the man’s a musical snob. The old organ was out of style, that was the trouble. The rage right now is for this old-fashioned kind. Everybody wants to abandon their magnificent electropneumatic pipe organs and go back to mechanical action. It’s as if the advancements of science had never happened.”

  “Maybe it was a conspiracy, the fire that destroyed the organ and killed that poor sexton. Maybe Kraeger and Castle set the fire together. I’m only joking, of course.”

  “Maybe it’s no joke.”

  But there are supporters as well as detractors for Castle’s new organ. Martin Kraeger himself, the minister, is its principal champion. On the day the first truckload arrived from Marblehead he was there on the sidewalk, eager to lend a hand. He carted in some of the pipe trays himself, supporting them on his belly with his powerful arms, shouting questions, wanting to know what the labels meant—Nazard, Tierce, Prestant.

  Edith Frederick is another staunch defender. Mrs. Frederick is even more ignorant about pipe organs than Kraeger—she doesn’t know Bourdon from Chimney Flute or Mixture from Diapason—but she is the sole trustee of the music endowment that has come down in her late husband’s family. The endowment is enormous.

  After the fire Mrs. Frederick came forward with her arms full of money. “The best,” she said to James Castle. “Get the very best.”

  And he had. On the day the organ arrived, Castle astonished his student, Alan Starr, by saying something sentimental as they carried one of the sixteen-foot pipe trays into the church. Normally a wry and witty man, he said baldly, “Glory, that’s what we’re going to have here. Glory, nothing less.”

  “Well, sure,” agreed Alan. “Glory it is. Hey, watch out for that corner.”

  The glory, of course, was bound up in the sensitive mechanisms of the tracker rods and in Castle’s choice of stops. Any organist, reading the list of specifications, would recognize their possibilities.

  GREAT DIVISION

  Bourdon 16’ (wood) Tierce 1⅗’

  Prestant 8’ (I–II) Cornet II–V

  Spitzflute 8’ Mixture V–IX

  Octave 4’ Double Trumpet 16’

  Chimney Flute 4’ Trumpet en Chamade 8’

  Nazard 2⅔’ Clarion 4’

  Fifteenth 2’ (I–II) Zimbelstern

  CHOIR DIVISION

  Stopped Diapason 8’ Larigot 1⅓’

  Prestant 4’ Mixture II–III

  Spire Flute 4’ Glockenspiel ½’

  Fifteenth 2’ Regal 8’

  POSITIVE DIVISION

  Violin Diapason 8’ Tierce 1⅗’

  Chimney Flute 8’ Mixture IV

  Italian Principal 4’ Cymbal III

  Nazard 2⅔’ Cremona 8’

  Doublet 2’ English Horn 8’

  Quarte de Nazard 2’

  SWELL DIVISION

  Spindle Flute 8’ Night Horn 2’

  Viola da Gamba 8’ Clarion Mixture V–VI

  Voix Celeste 8’ Bärpfeiffe 16’

  Gemshorn 4’ Trumpet 8’

  PEDAL DIVISION

  Prestant 16’ Mixture V

  Bourdon 16’ Contra Bombarde 32’

  Octave 8’ Trombone 16’<
br />
  Rohrpipe 8’ Trumpet 8’

  Superoctave 4’ Clarion 4’

  COUPLERS

  Great, Positive, Swell, Choir to Pedal Swell to Positive

  Balanced Swell Pedal

  Positive, Swell, Choir to Great Balanced Crescendo Pedal

  So much for the first introduction.

  The second is to an occupant of the house next door to the church. The name of this resident of 115 Commonwealth Avenue is Charles Hall. Charley was born fourteen months ago in Brigham and Women’s Hospital. At birth his specifications were as follows:

  Weight: seven pounds, two ounces

  Length: 21 inches

  Hair: brown

  Eyes: blue

  Charley is a tractable child, although he does not yet walk or talk. His mother is sure he is not retarded, but sometimes she worries about him. Surely before long her child will say his first word?

  But like the organ, which has yet to be voiced, Charley Hall is not ready to speak.

  ADVENT

  “Puer natus in Bethlehem”

  Chorale harmonized by J. S. Bach

  A boy is born in Bethlehem,

  Alleluia!

  Rejoice, rejoice, Jerusalem,

  Alleluia! Alleluia!

  CHAPTER 1

  When I lay sucking at my mother’s breast, I had no notion how I should afterwards eat, drink, or live.

  Martin Luther

  The baby was wide awake, although it was after his bedtime. His mother had dressed him in shoes and warm socks and a woolly hooded zipsuit. He was hot. He stood up in his crib and bounced, enjoying the creak of the springs. The curtains were drawn and he could see nothing in his little room but the dark shapes of the dresser and the changing table, and a streak of light under the door.

  From the next room he could hear music, and his mother talking to someone. Her voice was comforting, as always. The music flowed around his head, his mother’s words went up and down.

  The other voice was sharper. “The car’s ready. Your stuff is in the back seat. Let’s go.”

  “I’m not coming. I’ve changed my mind.”

  “You’ve what?”

  “I’ve got to tell them. I can’t let him take the blame. I’m not coming with you.”

  “Look, I told you, it isn’t just this fire, it’s all of them. Not to mention manslaughter and murder. You’re not just in trouble, you’re in prison.”

  “I don’t care. I want to tell them. I’ve got to.”

  “My God, Rosie, Kraeger’s all right. His congregation has gorged itself on the pleasure of forgiving him. Forget about Kraeger. Come on.”

  “No, no, I’ve changed my mind. I’m not coming. I can’t let him be blamed for what he didn’t do. Let go of me, let go! Let go!”

  The baby stopped bouncing and listened to the unfamiliar sound of a scuffle, and his mother’s angry voice, shouting above the music. He began to cry.

  CHAPTER 2

  … the great and perfect wisdom of God in His marvellous work of music …

  Martin Luther

  Running up the dark steps of the Church of the Commonwealth, Alan Starr didn’t notice the baby at first, crawling up the stairs ahead of him, all by itself.

  He was absorbed in the muffled sound of the organ leaking through the closed doors. There were awful irregularities within each rank. No one would be able to judge the new instrument until he himself had voiced nearly three thousand pipes, nicking apertures, adjusting tongues, tuning wires and resonators.

  Even so, even unvoiced, the organ responded brightly to James Castle’s catapulting counterpoint. The driving sixteenth notes fell on Alan’s ears like rain in a dry land. He had been born with a thirst for harmonious noise, for “Rock-a-bye, Baby” and all that came after. The sound of the new organ from Marblehead was piercingly clear. The old organ had never sounded like this, in spite of its fourteen thousand pipes and its swarming electropneumatic imitation of all the instruments in the orchestra.

  But perhaps only James Castle was good enough to coax this sort of brilliance from the new organ. Castle was in a class by himself. He was, after all, the most famous student of the legendary Harold Oates. Since Alan in his turn was Castle’s pupil, he sometimes imagined himself a kind of musical grandson of the great Oates.

  “Is it true?” he had once asked Castle. “Did he really play like that? You know the way people talk.” Alan rolled his eyes comically upward. “They say he was divinely inspired by God.”

  Castle had guffawed. “Divinely inspired? Harold Oates?” But then he grinned at Alan. “Well, who knows? Perhaps in his own way he was.”

  Now, hurrying up the church steps in the dark, Alan almost stumbled over the baby. He stopped short and looked at it in surprise. It was crawling up the cold stone steps of the Church of the Commonwealth, slapping down a hand on the step above, hauling itself up on one knee, sitting down with a thump, reaching up to the next step.

  The baby was alone. No one else was climbing the steps behind it, or watching it from the sidewalk. What was a baby doing on the street alone in the dark? “Look here,” said Alan, “where’s your mother?”

  The baby paid no attention. It caught sight of a man walking a dog along the sidewalk. At once it turned around and started down the stairs again, making extraordinary speed. Transfixed, Alan watched it patter after the dog, which was tugging its owner across Clarendon Street toward the building excavation on the other side. The traffic slowed down, then charged forward.

  “Hey,” said Alan. He galloped after the baby and snatched it up just as it put a hand down into the gutter. The cars rushed by, oblivious, while Alan stood on the curb, looking down at the child in his arms, breathing hard.

  In the light of the street lamp he could see that it was quite a nice-looking baby with alert blue eyes. Its cheeks were plump and dirty, with clean streaks where tears had run down. Its face had a kind of hilarious expression.

  Whose baby was it? Alan looked along the row of town houses and up and down the tree-lined park dividing the two lanes of traffic on Commonwealth Avenue. A few kids were moving past the marble bust of a long-forgotten mayor of Boston, heading for the bars on Boylston Street, their shoulders hunched against the cold. The baby’s mother was nowhere in sight.

  Music flooded out of the church. Castle was trying the reed stops. Even through the closed doors the sound was thrilling—the brilliant clarion, the rampant trumpet.

  Alan had an appointment with Castle. They were to spend the evening in a swift overview of all the ranks, and Castle was going to say exactly what tonal values he wanted, and Alan was going to write it down. He was late. What the hell should he do with the baby?

  It occurred to him that its careless mother might be in the church, listening to the organ. Holding the baby with one arm, Alan walked quickly up the steps. He had never held an infant before, but there didn’t seem to be much to it. The baby fitted comfortably against his shoulder and chuckled in his ear.

  He pushed open the door with one elbow, walked across the vestry and entered the sanctuary.

  At once he was surrounded by the atmosphere of American Protestant holiness, circa 1887. The church had been built in obedience to the architectural ideals of John Ruskin. Ruskin’s lamps of Obedience! Truth! Power! Beauty! Life! Memory! Sacrifice! had shone upon the supporting pilings as they were driven into the damp silt and clay of the filled land of Boston’s Back Bay. The lamps had glistened on the rising walls of Roxbury pudding stone, on the checkered sandstone and granite of the tower, on the elaborate decoration of the interior. The winds of architectural fashion had long since blown out most of those noble lamps, one by one, but the usefulness of the building had not changed. It was still a sturdy and handsome structure, dark within, glowing with stained glass, gleaming with polished wood.

  Only the lamp of Truth still flared up now and then, flickering brightly enough to fill the pews on Sunday mornings and brim the collection plates with dollar bills. The preaching, of cour
se, had changed. The mild and respectable Protestant faith that had established the parish as a denomination unto itself in the middle of the nineteenth century had drifted farther from orthodoxy every year. The present pastor, Martin Kraeger, had started his ministerial life as a Lutheran, but he had grown farther and farther away from his background. Now what was he? A lapsed Lutheran, an occasional Transcendentalist, a moderate Unitarian, an unsilent Quaker and a wry Existentialist, with a few molecules of contemplative Buddhism thrown in. His congregation accepted the intellectual jumble. They seldom examined their pastor’s tissue of beliefs, or attempted to unravel one piece of patchwork from another.

  Alan walked up the center aisle, holding the baby, inhaling the scent of extinguished candles, the leathery smell of the old Bible on the pulpit, the stuffing in the pew cushions, the lingering fragrance of perfumed sopranos and clean-shaven tenors. There was still a hint of scorching in the air, a sharp recollection of the fire that had burned the balcony and destroyed the old organ and taken the life of the sexton, old Mr. Plummer.

  Alan winced as he caught the acrid scent, remembering the anguished look on the face of Martin Kraeger the morning after the fire. Alan had been called in at once, to assess the damage to the organ. He had examined it in the presence of Kraeger, James Castle and Edith Frederick, church treasurer Kenneth Possett, and the chief from the local fire station on Boylston Street.