Tiny by day, it was cavernous by match light. No altar remained, or stand for votive candles, although there were vestiges of tile which had been Stations of the Cross. There was a single tipped-over pew which, righted, would make a temporary bed for Rosie. From somewhere, in the smell of cold and decayed wood, came an inquisitive rustle. Nesting birds? Rats?
Amanda’s current match went out and she lit another, instinctively, in this place, pinching them out and dropping them into her pocket. She said to the restively stirring Rosie, “We’ll sit down in a minute,” but she should not have spoken; her own voice, deadened and diminished in this forgotten air, frightened her.
Up front and to the right there was a confessional. Amanda approached it, to investigate for purposes of concealment, and opened the nearest door. It seemed to take forever for Ellie Peale to come toppling stiffly out.
Chapter 10
By macabre chance, the dead face had assumed the exact angle of the photograph used to saturation point in newspapers and on the television screen, so that it took no buried foreknowledge to recognize this particular contour of white cheek, this feathery brown hair. The dark eyes were open but unfathomable: Ellie Peale had recorded no impression of the eternity into which she had been prematurely thrust. There wasn’t a great deal of blood on the front of the cream shirt. The knife must have—
Amanda dropped the match away and backed away, trembling. In the midst of her horror and pity there was a frightful sense of intimacy, as though Ellie Peale, now serene, were charting the way for her. In the natural course of events her casual resting place would have been, for the winter months at least, as secret as any under grass; with its bell removed and its little tower fallen the church was not of the kind to attract wandering tourists—and how many peeked into confessionals in any case?
Stuffed there, like an awkward parcel. “Bless me, Father, for I have been murdered.”
Rosie had not shared in that flickering glimpse of death, because when she struggled higher in her blanketed perch on Amanda’s hip and suggested anxiously, “We go home?” it was only with a restless dislike of this strange dark place.
“Yes, in a minute,” said Amanda, collecting herself with an enormous effort. They would have to get out of here, although home was an impossible sound that made her throat swell. It was not only unthinkable to stay, it could be mortally dangerous. Take boldly to the road in the remembered direction of house lights? Or, if the church had a side door, flounder across fields—provided that they weren’t fenced— even though it meant exposing Rosie to the cold for longer?
Shock at that terrible thumping emergence from the confessional had rendered her dizzied, incapacitated, despairingly certain that whatever decision she made would be the wrong one. Her wet feet were icy, her cradling arm and shoulder ached even though Rosie, clinging to her with spindly arms and legs, supported most of her own weight.
Amanda did not light another match, in case its brief glow might reach out and appear to make Ellie Peale twitch wistfully. Her sharp retreat had brought her halfway to the toppled pew. She proceeded cautiously, tipped it upright, and put the child down for a few moments of physical relief, flexing her arm and saying in a whisper, “Don’t move, Rosie, I’ll be right back.”
The priest traditionally entered from the left, so that if there were a side door it would be there. Amanda touched the frigid wall and trailed her fingertips guidingly along it for perhaps five steps before she checked. A vehicle with a quiet engine, the kind which had purred away from Mrs. Balsam’s house, was nearing the church.
Let it go by, she prayed wildly, but it did not. The soft steady hum came to a pause—while the snow was inspected for footprints?—and died. A car door slammed, with either a carrying echo or the almost-synchronized sound of a second one.
Even if she had already located the side exit there wouldn’t be time to go back for Rosie and retrace her steps. Amanda caught a breath that missed being a sob by only a hair, found the pew again, got down with the child on the rough plank floor. The pew had legs at such intervals that it was impossible to slide under it. Rosie, startled and alarmed at this summary treatment, began a protest which Amanda cut off with a peremptory “Ssh!” She prepared herself to put a stifling palm over the small mouth if necessary, and the church door opened.
There were obviously two of them, as silent and purposeful as commandos. They had a flashlight, a strong one, more stabbing white than yellow. Amanda, squeezing her eyes childishly shut, knew exactly w hen the brilliant probe struck the open door of the confessional and then the body of Ellie Peale. The two pairs of feet halted and then proceeded; there was an indistinguishable mutter—sickened, she imagined it to be something like, “You take her legs”—and then some fast bundling and bumping, culminating in a woody thud.
Almost without transition, because this was the only other place in the church offering even elementary cover, she was pinned in light, and Peter Dickens said, “Here she is.”
It might have been some ugly game. Amanda got to her fee c, made awkward by failure and humiliation more than by her burden. She said steadily into the blinding flare, I don’t know who you are, either of you, but if I don’t return this child to her parents right away, and they can’t reach me, they’ll call the police.”
No pause at all; they had expected this. “You’ll have to call the parents then, won’t you?”
