Murder Among the Angels (27 page)

“Which means that almost anyone—not just Peter—could have ordered them in Dr. Louria’s name,” Charlotte said.

“Speaking of whom …” said Jerry.

Finding the church locked and no one around, they proceeded on to the Manse, where they found the pastor pruning the rose bushes that climbed up the trellises mounted to the wall on either side of the front door. He was wearing a faded blue plaid flannel shirt over his black clerical garb. Seeing them, he set down his pruning shears and moved the pile of clippings to one side with his foot so that Charlotte and Jerry’s ankles wouldn’t be snagged by the thorns when they came up the front walk.

“I’m pruning the deadwood,” he said when they reached him. “This past winter was very hard on roses. On everything, for that matter,” he added, pointing to some dead azaleas by the foundation. “What can I do for you?”

“We’re looking for Peter,” Jerry said.

“Ah yes, Peter,” he replied, brushing away the shock of dark, glossy hair that hung over his face. He stared off in the direction of the church, his profile, with its hooked nose, turned against the background of shrubbery.

“He might be in Corinth looking after his rental properties.” He checked his watch. “But he usually takes care of that in the morning. Since it’s after noon, I’d guess he’s down at the glass shop.”

“Glass shop?” Jerry asked.

“It’s where the glassblowers blew the glass for the stained-glass windows. Peter uses it as a workshop.” He turned and pointed to the Zion Hill Road. “Continue over the ridge. It’s about a quarter of a mile, on the corner by the Quarry Road. You’ll see a sign for ‘The Retreat.’”

At the mention of the Quarry Road, Charlotte and Jerry exchanged surreptitious glances.

“Thanks,” Jerry said.

“Chief,” said the pastor, as they were leaving, “I had a thought about those tall votive candles that were left with the skull in the undercroft. I think they use votive candles like that down at Immaculate Conception,” he said. “It might be worth checking out.”

“Or any of the other nine million Catholic churches in America,” Jerry muttered under his breath as they got back into the car.

“What’s the matter?” Charlotte teased. “Getting tired of the interference of amateur assistants?”

He smiled. “Only some of them.”

The glass shop was a long, shed-like building that was nestled in the woods in a vale behind the church. It had vertical wood siding weathered to a dark gray, and long rows of six over six windows, their woodwork painted white. The same old red pickup truck they had seen at the church when they talked with Peter before was parked outside. After parking next to it, they entered the building, and found themselves in a large room cluttered with sixty years’ accumulation of junk. Peter was at the other end of the room, working on a large stained-glass window that lay on a long worktable. He held a soldering iron in his hand, which he was using to repair the lead bars in the stained glass. As before, he was wearing a leather apron.

Picking their way around the junk, they crossed the big, open room to the worktable. “Reverend Cornwall told us we might find you here,” Jerry said after they had exchanged greetings.

“It’s usually a good bet,” Peter said.

Charlotte and Jerry took places on either side of him at the table. “What are you working on?” Jerry asked.

“This is a stained-glass window from the church,” he replied. “The one I had just removed when I saw you the other day. After a while, the solder that secures the lead at the joints gets brittle and has to be replaced. I’m also cleaning the glass and oiling the leads with linseed oil.”

The window showed an angel with Lily’s face. She was wearing flowing robes and striding toward the viewer through a field of lilies of the valley. Her wings were outstretched, and her head was surrounded by an orange-gold nimbus. She was flanked by two angels on each side, who had Lily’s face as well.

This must have been the window that Lisa Gennaro had mentioned at the florist shop, Charlotte thought.

“This is the angel of the ascension,” Peter said. “It’s the central light in a triplet. The other two show the stairs to heaven. As you know, we believe in Christ, but our emphasis is on the resurrection rather than the crucifixion—on death as a new beginning. That’s why you don’t see any crosses.”

As he spoke, Charlotte noticed the inscription at the bottom, which read: “Death like a narrow sea divides this heavenly land from ours.”

“Would you like to see it against the light?” Peter asked.

Charlotte and Jerry said they would, and Peter lifted it up with Jerry’s help and leaned it against an electric light panel on the wall.

“You miss the effect if you don’t see it with the backlighting. But even this light doesn’t do it justice. I like to look at it when the rays of the sun are falling directly on the glass. The sun turns each of these individual pieces of glass into glowing gems.”

Charlotte marveled at the opalescent quality of the glass, which gave the window such an ethereal air. “It’s magnificent,” she said.

“Yes, it is. The Zion Hill glassblowers rediscovered techniques that had been lost for centuries. The striated ruby, for instance: you can’t tell it from the striated ruby at Chartres. They also discovered some new techniques. See this shade of yellow?” he said, pointing to a ray of the angel’s nimbus.

They looked at the lovely color, a rich apricot-yellow.

“The master glassblower had tried and tried to get this shade, without any success. One day, he was mixing up a batch of yellow pot metal when a piece of his hair fell into the crucible—he had just come from the barbershop. The instant the hair fell in, the batch turned exactly the right shade.”

“So he used his hair from then on?” Jerry asked.

“Yes,” Peter replied. “I don’t know if it had to be his hair. If it did, it must have had to grow pretty quickly.” He smiled. “We have a lot of this shade of yellow in our windows.”

Jerry stood with his hands in his pockets, studying the stained-glass window. “All the angels look like Lily Louria,” he commented.

“The model was her mother, Lillian Archibald. But yes, they do look like her. Portraits of Lillian are everywhere in Zion Hill. Would you like to give me a hand with this?” Peter asked.

“It’s actually about Lily that we’re here,” Jerry said, as he helped Peter with the window. “We’d like to know about your relationship with her.”

“What would you like to know?” Peter asked as he resumed his work. After propping a piece of soldering wire into place with a small block of wood, he proceeded to melt it with the soldering iron.

Charlotte was fascinated by the practiced skill with which he compensated for the lack of an arm, and wondered briefly if he had done the same with the bodies.

“In the kingdom of the unskilled, the one-armed man is king,” Peter said, with a smile as if he had been reading her mind.

“How long you had known her,” Jerry said in response to Peter’s question. “How close you were. That sort of thing.”

“I’ve known Lily since the fifth grade when my parents moved here from upstate. My father had converted to the New Church when he came across some of Swedenborg’s writings in the local library. We had been on a waiting list to move here. Lily and I went through the Zion Hill School together.”

“Were you very close to her?”

“Are you familiar with Swedenborg’s works?” Peter asked. He looked up from his work, his long blond hair hanging over his face.

“Only very generally, I’m afraid,” Jerry said.

“Swedenborg believed that everyone has a soul mate, and that everyone will eventually be united with their soul mate, if not on earth, then in heaven. When two soul mates come together in heaven, they merge into one angel, and live in conjugial bliss into eternity.”

“Conjugial bliss?” asked Charlotte.

“It’s a term from Swedenborg’s writings. It’s the expression of conjugial love, which is heavenly love, as opposed to mere conjugal love. He believed—we believe—that the true love between a man and a woman is the foundation of all other love, and that to experience this love is to experience the highest state of God’s grace.”

“Are you saying that Lily was your soul mate?” Jerry asked.

“Yes,” he said. “She was. To use a phrase of Swedenborg’s, we were like the ‘two hemispheres of the brain enclosed in one membrane.’ We were engaged to be married at one time.”

“What happened?” Jerry asked.

“She broke off the engagement after I lost my arm. Then she met Victor Louria and married him, as you know.”

“How did you feel about that?”

Jerry was beginning to sound like a shrink.

“I was angry about it for a long time. But she and I are working it out. I’ve come to understand her motives for marrying Victor better, and she’s making amends for how she treated me.”

Something was wrong with his tenses. “
Is
making amends?” Charlotte said.

“Yes. The love between soul mates doesn’t end with the death of one of them, because the spirit of the dead continually lives with the spirit of the living. I still talk to her; every day, usually.”

He sounded as if he were talking about making a long-distance call. Charlotte and Jerry stared at him, nonplussed.

Peter straightened up and set aside the soldering iron. Then he took a seat on a nearby stool. “Let me explain,” he said.

“Please do,” said Jerry.

“Swedenborg believed that there’s a veil that separates this world from the next. The veil is essential; without it, we wouldn’t be able to function. But some people can see beyond the veil.”

“Swedenborg was one of those people. He communicated with the spirits for twenty-nine years. He frowned on the practice of trying to initiate contact with the spirits. He considered it dangerous. But sometimes, under special circumstances, when there is a need, and ‘when it is the Lord’s good pleasure,’ as he said, the veil is lifted.”

“And that’s what happened to you?” Jerry asked.

He nodded. “After I was struck by lightning. Out of the blue, literally. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky. But that’s more common than you’d think. It’s a problem for airplanes, which are often struck. I have an article about it right here.” Reaching into his back pocket, he pulled out his wallet and removed a newspaper clipping, which was dog-eared and yellow.

He passed them the article, the headline of which was: “
LIGHTNING IS UNDERREPORTED
.” It went on to describe the phenomenon, which the pastor had already told them about, and to say how it posed a particular problem for aircraft. It concluded with a quote from a researcher: “Lightning apparently does not command the respect it deserves as a dangerous killer.”

After reading the clipping, Jerry passed it back to him.

“I almost died,” Peter continued, as he returned the clipping to his wallet. “In fact, my heart stopped beating. During that time, I had a near-death experience. I found myself speeding through the dark tunnel, coming out into the light, and being greeted by celestial beings on the other side.” He paused for a moment, and then said: “Then I was called back.”

“Against your will?” asked Charlotte, who had read in magazines about people who had undergone near-death experiences.

Peter nodded. “Being struck by lightning is a very unusual experience. They say it’s as close to death as you can come and still live. People who are apparently dead for long periods of time can be brought back to life with little or no lasting damage. My doctor described it as being one of the few two-way streets to heaven.” He continued: “I lost my arm, of course. I also have burn scars on my left calf: the lightning exited through my left foot. My shoe was burned right off my foot. Vaporized.” He snapped his fingers. “Poof.”

“Whew!” said Jerry, shaking his head.

Peter went on: “I have other residual health problems: my left eardrum was perforated, so I’m hard of hearing in that ear, and I still have seizures occasionally, though much less often than I used to. I also have some peripheral nerve damage in my left leg, which is why I walk with a staff.”

“Not because you’re trying to affect a resemblance to the Leatherman?” Charlotte asked.

He shook his head. “Though the nerve damage is getting better too. After the accident, it was five weeks before I could put on a pair of pants. Apart from the loss of my arm, the physical damage was minor. But being struck by lightning changed my life. I started hearing voices, seeing celestial beings. At first, I thought I was going mad. But once I established contact with Lily, I realized that I’d been blessed with the privilege of being able to see beyond the veil. Lily has been my guide to life on the other side.”

Charlotte remembered what the pastor had said about damage to the cerebral cortex causing psychotic behavior.

“What’s it like?” asked Jerry, playing along.

“Just as Swedenborg said,” he replied. He gestured at the stained-glass window in front of them. “A paradise inhabited by ‘bright, lucid stars, glittering according to the charity of their faith.’ I haven’t yet had the privilege of getting to heaven. Lily still lives in the world of the spirits, which is an intermediate world where I’ll join her when I die. As we perfect our spirits, we’ll become one angel in the first heaven. Eventually, we’ll evolve into higher forms, and move up into higher heavens, which are even more beautiful. That is, if we seek to improve our spiritual natures. There are lower places where one can end up too.”

“Who dwells in these lower places?” Charlotte asked.

“Demons,” he replied. “Being able to communicate with demons is the down side of being able to see beyond the veil. That’s why Swedenborg didn’t approve of attempts to pierce the veil: it isn’t all sweetness and light. You’re in danger of losing your sanity. The demons are vile little creatures that will keep you awake all night with their nasty chattering. ‘Globules of coal-fire,’ Swedenborg called them. They know just how to punch your buttons.”

Charlotte and Jerry exchanged looks.

“Did they ever encourage you to do bad things?” Charlotte asked. Now it was she who was sounding like a shrink—one who was in over her head.