When the bells of the Methodist Church rang, Henry Holborn was on Main Street, not half a block from Maggie Kelleher’s shop. The bells rang and he stopped in the middle of the street, looking up. He had been this way before in this long day of walking. He knew that Maggie Kelleher had a copy of Darwin’s Origin of Species in her front window and a sign that said: SEE WHAT ALL THE TROUBLE IS ABOUT. He knew that Rose MacNeill had come home not half an hour ago, upset and looking disheveled. He knew that Stephen Harrow was working in his study, poring over books and listening to the small television he kept on a bookshelf between his books on theology and his books on the history of science. Henry only wanted to walk and walk and walk, until his legs fell off or until something happened, whichever came first.
Instead, when the bells rang, Henry Holborn decided he was hungry. As he hadn’t eaten since breakfast, this was not surprising, but it surprised him. It surprised him, too, that Main Street was so deserted. He didn’t know when Charlie Hare had closed up shop and disappeared, along with all the old men he’d been sitting with, but Charlie was gone and the sidewalk in front of his store was empty. He didn’t know when Maggie Kelleher had hung the Closed sign in her window in front of all those copies of Darwin’s book, but the Closed sign was there and the bookstore was dark. Town itself was getting dark. It was that odd time of year, when night came neither early nor late. The sun was setting behind the spires of Zhondra Meyer’s lesbian camp, making the old house look like Dracula’s castle, covered in blood.
Henry found himself just outside Betsey’s House of Hominy and stopped. The place was packed, mostly with reporters. There wasn’t much of anywhere else to eat in the town of Bellerton, unless you counted the sandwich place attached to the health food store, which most people didn’t. The reporters didn’t want to drive out to the mall to have dinner at McDonald’s or farther out still, where there were good restaurants that served steak and lobster and French food, all at exorbitant prices. It struck Henry Holborn suddenly that he had been fourteen years old before he had ever eaten in a restaurant of any kind. Before that, he hadn’t even stayed to have his lunches in the cafeteria at school. That first restaurant had been very much like this one, not much more than a diner. Henry had thought it was magic anyway.
He went up to the door and opened it to look inside. Betsey had her air-conditioning turned up high, in spite of the fact that it was a cool night. The television was on behind the counter. Everybody seemed to be watching it.
Henry came all the way inside, letting the door close behind him. There was only one stool left at the counter, with Naomi Brent on one side of it and a stranger on the other. The stranger was probably a reporter, but there was no help for it. Henry sat down on the stool and looked up at Betsey’s enormous wide-screen TV. A perky blonde with a ribbon in her hair was sitting behind a curved desk, trying to look solemn. For Henry, this was exactly what was wrong with the entire concept of feminism. If you put red and orange together, the colors clashed. If you put a woman in a suit and tried to make her look solemn, she looked hopeful instead, spoiling the effect.
“Police at this time are not revealing just what was in the note Zhondra Meyer left when she took her own life,” the anchorwoman said, “but speculation has been rife that it was a confession to the two murders that have taken place in Bellerton over the last month. Sources close to Bellerton Police Chief Clayton Hall say that enough evidence was found in Zhondra Meyer’s bedroom to answer most of the questions that have become important in these cases. If a Satanic cult really has been operating out of Bonaventura House, state officials now say they have enough to go on to get it closed down.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” somebody in the back of the room said. “They can’t close down a Satanic cult. It’s a religion.”
“Shhh,” somebody else said.
The television went to a commercial. Millions of children seemed to have descended on a McDonald’s restaurant at once. Henry Holborn turned to Naomi Brent.
“Naomi? Did I hear that right? Zhondra Meyer committed suicide?”
“That’s what everybody’s been saying,” Naomi said. “Weren’t you around this afternoon? They had the ambulance up there and everything.”
Betsey came down from the other end of the counter, her apron out of true, her expression harried. “Good evening, Henry. Can I get you something?”
“You could get me a cup of coffee and a tuna fish sandwich,” Henry told her. “Betsey, am I hearing this right? Zhondra Meyer committed suicide? And confessed to what? Killing Ginny Marsh’s baby?”