Gary Alexander: Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 26, No. 6, May 27, 1981

“It’s the sort of thing she likes. Let’s check it out.”

The basement was even chillier and darker than the main body of the church. Darius found it disturbing. Perhaps it would be different later with a crowd of kids singing and playing guitars. He was not sure there were ancient corpses in the walls and under the floor, but the musty smell of the place had him holding his breath.

Singleton pointed to a couple of amplifiers at one end of the large room. “This is where it happens,” he said. His voice echoed under the low ceiling. Somebody moved in a doorway half submerged in shadow. Singleton held up a cautionary hand. In the silence, they heard scraping feet. Singleton limped forward without making a sound. Darius followed.

They came to an oak door, ajar. Singleton pushed it inward and sunlight poured through from a window in the far wall of a narrow room. The ex-policeman moved on in. “I thought it was you, Carlo,” he said. “The artist described you, but I wasn’t sure.”

“You make no sense, Joey.” It was an accented voice, Italian perhaps. “But you never did.”

Darius followed his friend into the room and saw a dark, heavy-set, handsome man in his thirties. He was standing at a massive pulpit in the corner of the otherwise empty room. Some of the paneling on the pulpit was broken. Kids had carved and scratched their intials on it.

Singleton unrolled the portrait and displayed it. “Recognize her?”

“Oh, that artist. Hey, you bought Felix’s picture. I was gonna go back and get it for her.”

“What’s happening, Carlo? What are you doing down here with nobody else around?”

“I’m meditating. What do you think? Get lost. I don’t have to talk to you.”

“You’ll talk.”

“You had your chance at me but you couldn’t make it stick. I got friends.”

“They’ll sort you out this time. Not me — the working cops. They’ll find out what you’re doing.”

Carlo began to look uneasy. He stepped down from the pulpit. “You’ve got no authority.”

“I’m making a citizen’s arrest. This man is Felicity’s father. Did you know she’s only fifteen? I’m going to bring you in for contributing to the delinquency of a minor.”

“She came to me. You’ll never make it stick.”

“Maybe not. But while they talk to you they can shake you down. And search this little hideout too.”

Carlo broke for the door. He was fast. He went around Singleton and was upon Darius before he could think. As Darius grappled with him, the knife fell from his pocket. Singleton had Carlo by the collar now. Carlo kicked backward, dropped to one knee, snatched up the knife, and twisted around, bringing the blade up in a powerful thrust.

Joey Singleton coughed, his eyes widened, and he released his grip on Carlo, who backed away, saw that Darius was not going to try to stop him, and vanished through the doorway.

Darius arranged Joey on his back with his jacket folded under his head. There was a lot of blood.

“Tenacci,” the wounded man whispered. “His name is Carlo Tenacci. Tell them.”

“You’ll tell them yourself.”

Darius knew he had to get help, but he was afraid to leave his friend alone. Afraid? He had been terrified of the place from the first moment and now...

He was squatting beside his friend, paralyzed with indecision, when he heard Felicity’s voice.

“Carlo?”

“It’s me, love. Please don’t leave.”

She came into the room and stood over them. Her short red hair glistened in the sunlight. His first thought was that she looked terrific — not worn out and ratty like some of the kids on the street, but clean and bright. She looked successful, just like Pamela. He had successful children.

“Dad! Is that Joey Singleton?”

“Yes. Carlo stabbed him.”

“Why? He must be crazy!”

“Go for help. Tell the first policeman you see to radio for an ambulance. Run.”

She turned to the door.

“And, Felix...? Come back.”

She came back and sat with her father until the officers arrived with a stretcher. It was too late for Joey Singleton. He was dead on arrival at the hospital. Darius gave his statement and was allowed to take his daughter home. A search of the room off the Crypt revealed a stash of heroin under a loose panel in the base of the pulpit. The girl said she knew nothing of that and Darius believed her, but she was going to be required to testify at the hearing.

Darius drove Joey’s car to his house in Fulham. Felicity sat beside him, smoking. He had never seen her with a cigarette before; in a few days she had transformed herself into whoever she was. She insisted on coming inside.

“Somebody has to tell Gran,” she said. “I’m the best one.”

The old woman listened to the girl’s story about the romantic, glamorous older man who turned out to be a vicious killer. Felicity had really not known him. She understood he had supplies of pot but nothing more. She certainly never realized he carried a knife.

They persuaded Mrs. Singleton to come home with them, to move into Pamela’s empty room. She came like an obedient animal, holding Felicity’s arm, tapping with her white cane. Feeling like a voyeur, Darius watched the blind eyes for signs of accusation, but they showed him nothing.

After the funeral, Felicity announced she was home to stay. She seemed to blame herself for what had happened. When school reconvened, she went back and began working hard. Every afternoon she came home and read aloud to Gran from one of her library books. At night she sat with her and explained the television when it was necessary.

Darius met Pamela for lunch at a restaurant near her office and told her how things had worked out. She was sorry about Joey Singleton but seemed relieved to learn that Felicity was going straight. It was her final statement as they were parting that shook Darius.

“So you’ve given away my room,” she said in her mock-complaining voice. “I guess that’s that.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean if I was ever going to come back home I can’t now. Never mind. It’s better not to leave doors open.”

A loose end was the scrap of paper Sonia had found in Felicity ’s pocket. Why had the girl copied down the Latin inscription from the church portico? Darius asked her one night when he was in front of the house snapping dead blooms from potted marigolds. She crouched beside him holding a plastic bag open to receive the pungent heads.

“I’m not sure why I did it,” she said. “I was waiting for Carlo in the square one afternoon, reading the paper. I did the crossword. Then I noticed the inscription on the church and I wrote it down. I liked the sound of the words. Maybe I was going to look them up.”

“Maybe you wanted to help me find you. You were providing a clue.”

“That’s very subtle. Do people do things like that?”

Carlo Tenacci’s body was discovered weeks later, buried in a shallow grave. He had been shot once in the back of the head. Apparently the underworld did not want an unreliable employee talking to the police.

“What a strange man,” Felicity said. She was helping her mother fit a costume to a new puppet. Darius was at his bench, carving. “I didn’t have Carlo figured out at all.”

“It’s behind us now,” Sonia said, sounding relaxed and happy.

But it was not behind Darius. He would have to live forever with his secret. Had he not been carrying the knife, Joey would be alive today. Carlo Tenacci would be alive too, in a police cell. It was wrong to carry a concealed weapon. He had always known this. Now he understood one of the reasons why. Unforeseen things could happen.

Bending to his work, Darius put the unpleasant thoughts out of his mind. Tomorrow he was to perform the first of a series of shows at local schools. This was his real life, hidden in the darkness behind the painted façade, surrounded by his puppets, the children laughing out front and everything under control.