The talk’s apt to be about anything. Father Byrne talks music mostly; it’s safer than his own job. With John MacVeagh and Chief Hanby it’s shop talk: news and crime—not that there’s much of either in Grover, or wasn’t up to this evening you’re reading about.
But sometime in the evening it’s sure to get around to Is there a God? And if so why doesn’t He— Especially when Jake Willis is there. Jake’s the undertaker and the coroner. He says, or used to say then, that when he’s through with them, he knows they’re going to stay dead, and that’s enough for him.
So here Jake had built up to his usual poser again. Only this time it wasn’t the weight that Omnipotence couldn’t lift. Everybody was pretty tired of that. It was, “If God can do anything, why doesn’t he stop the war?”
“For once, Jake, you’ve got something,” said John MacVeagh. “I know the problem of Evil is the great old insoluble problem; but Evil on a scale like this begins to get you. From an Old Testament God, maybe yes; but it’s hard to believe in the Christian God of love and kindness permitting all this mass slaughter and devastation and cruelty.”
“We just don’t know,” Chief Hanby said slowly. “We don’t understand. ‘For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the Heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.’ Isaiah, fifty-five, eight and nine. We just don’t understand.”
“Uh-uh, Chief,” MacVeagh shook his head. “That won’t wash. That’s the easy way out. The one thing we’ve got to know and understand about God is that He loves good and despises evil, which I’ll bet there’s a text for, only I wouldn’t know.”
“He loves truth,” said Chief Hanby. “We don’t know if His truth is our ‘good.’”
Lucretius Sellers refilled his glass. “If the Romans thought there was truth in wine, they should’ve known about applejack. But what do you say, Father?”
Father Byrne sipped and smiled. “It’s presumptuous to try to unravel the divine motives. Isaiah and the Chief are right: His thoughts are not our thoughts. But still I think we can understand the answer to Jake’s question. If you were God—”
They never heard the end to this daring assumption; not that night, anyway. For just then was when Philip Rogers burst in. He was always a little on the pale side— thin, too, only the word the girls used for it was “slim,” and they liked the pallor, too. Thought it made him look “interesting,” with those clean, sharp features and those long dark eyelashes. Even Laura Hitchcock liked the features and the lashes and the pallor. Ever since she read about Byron in high school.
But the girls never saw him looking as pale as this, and they wouldn’t have liked it. Laura, now, might have screamed at the sight of him. It isn’t right, it isn’t natural for the human skin to get that pale—as though a patriotic vampire had lifted your whole stock of blood for the plasma drive.
He fumbled around with noises for almost a minute before he found words. The men were silent. Abstract problems of evil didn’t seem so important when you had concrete evidence of some kind of evil right here before you. Only evil could drain blood like that.
Finally one of his choking glurks sounded like a word. The word was “Chief!”
Chief Hanby got up. “Yes, Phil? What’s the matter?”
Wordlessly, Luke Sellers handed over the bottle of applejack. It was a pretty noble gesture. There were only about two drinks left, and Phil Rogers took them both in one swallow.
“I thought you’d be over here. Chief,” he managed to say. “You’ve got to come. Quick. Out to Aunt Agnes’.”
“What’s the matter out there? Burglary?” Chief Hanby asked with an optimism he didn’t feel.
“Maybe. I don’t know. I didn’t look. I couldn’t. All that blood— Look. Even on my trousers where I bent down— I don’t know why. Any fool could see she was dead—”
“Your aunt?” Chief Hanby gasped. Then the men were silent. They kept their eyes away from the young man with blood on his trousers and none in his face. Father Byrne said something softly to himself and to his God. It was a good thirty seconds before the professional aspects of this news began to strike them.
“You mean murder?” Chief Hanby demanded. Nothing like this had ever happened in Grover before. Murder of H. A. Hitchcock’s own sister! “Come on, boy. We won’t waste any time.”
John MacVeagh’s eyes were alight. “No objections to the press on your heels, Chief! I’ll be with you as soon as I see Whalen.”
Hanby nodded. “Meet you there, Johnny.”
Father Byrne said, “I know your aunt never quite approved of me or my church, Philip. But perhaps she won’t mind too much if I say a mass for her in the morning.”
Jake Willis said nothing, but his eyes gleamed with interest. It was hard to tell whether the coroner or the undertaker in him was more stirred by the prospect.
Lucretius Sellers headed for the door. “As the only man here without a professional interest in death, I bid you boys a good night.” He laid his hand on the pale young man’s arm and squeezed gently. “Sorry, Phil.”
Father Byrne was the last to leave, and Molly bumped into him in the doorway. She returned his greeting hastily and turned to John MacVeagh, every inch of her plump body trembling with excitement. “What’s happening, boss? What goes? It must be something terrific to break up the bull session this early.”
MacVeagh was puffing his pipe faster and hotter than was good for it. “I’ll say something’s happened, Molly. Agnes Rogers has been killed. Murdered.”
“Whee!” Molly yelled. “Stop the presses! Is that a story! Is that a— Only you can’t stop the presses when we don’t come out till Friday, can you?”
“I’ve got to
