Even Barliman Vess seemed in a good mood, although I doubted he was enjoying the music. More likely he was comforted by the thought that every verse brought us closer to the moment when Lightfoot and the choir would be leaving Trinity. By the end of the concert he was actually smiling.
As Michael, Rob, and I were filing out with the boys we ran into Robyn. When she spotted us, she looked relieved.
“Is there any chance one of you could do a quick check around the church before you leave?” she asked. “Make sure everything’s locked up with no stragglers? I could do it of course, but for now, I have to stay here to make sure everyone really leaves—we think the pranksters got into New Life by staying after the choir rehearsal. And that’s going to take a while, and—”
“And if someone checks all the doors and windows and closets while you’re guarding the exit, you’ll get home all the sooner.” I turned to Michael. “I need to drive my car home anyway. Why don’t you take the boys home and start the bedtime process? I should be there before you get them tucked in.”
“Can do,” Michael said. He and Rob exited.
Robyn handed me a key ring and I started my inspection on the small hallway on the right side of the vestibule that held the offices and several storage rooms. No intruders in Robyn’s office, and her windows were all properly locked. Ditto for my small office, although I couldn’t actually get anywhere near the window. As far as I could tell from across the room, it was latched; and if it wasn’t, any burglar foolish enough to attempt entry would probably impale himself on the upturned legs of the half dozen battered chairs stored just under the window. Riddick’s lair looked like a filing clerk’s bad dream, untidy stacks of paper covering every horizontal surface, but it was secure and intruder-free. A couple of locked storage rooms finished off the short hallway. I unlocked the doors and peered in, seeing nothing amiss.
I returned to the vestibule, gave Robyn a thumbs-up, and crossed to the other side, where a longer hallway led to several classrooms and eventually the parish hall. I checked them all, methodically—even the bathrooms—and then headed down to the basement. Or should I work on calling it the undercroft, to please Mother and Robyn? A couple more classrooms on the downhill side, which had natural light, and on the side that nestled into the hillside was the furnace room, which also doubled as a huge storeroom.
The classrooms were a little cramped, thanks to the rows and rows of Shiffley Moving Company boxes stacked in the corners.
I had a brief anxious moment when I peered into the furnace room and thought I saw a human figure crouched against the wall at the far end. But when I turned on the light I saw that it was a coat tree covered against the dust with an old sheet that fluttered slightly in the draft from one of the air vents. There were a lot of hulking shapes in the furnace room, with and without dust covers. Like the greater part of my temporary office, it was filled with boxes, interspersed with heavy vintage furniture. Mrs. Thornefield’s legacy, no doubt.
“She had some very nice things,” I remembered Mother saying, when news came out that Mrs. Thornefield had left her entire estate to Trinity. “I shall look forward to the estate sale.”
Presumably the nice things were in the boxes. Unless Mother’s taste had changed dramatically, I couldn’t imagine her coveting any of the furniture I was seeing. No antiques, nothing light or graceful or elegant. Just a lot of big, heavy, dark, battered furniture with faded, threadbare upholstery and cheap, corroded metal fittings.
And scattered in and around the boxes and furniture I could see the detritus of decades of parish life. Hideous paintings in dusty, ornate frames. Every piece of broken equipment that had ever been banished from the offices above, including an IBM Selectric typewriter, an Apple IIe computer, and what appeared to be a 1950s mimeograph machine. Hulking unidentifiable papier-mâché objects left over from bygone children’s pageants. Why did we have a mini trampoline leaning in one corner?
Still, the undercroft was looking better than it had the last time I’d seen it. Shortly after Robyn’s arrival, Mother and the ladies of St. Clotilda had renewed their long-standing offer to reorganize all the church storage spaces, from attic to undercroft, and unlike Father Rufus, Robyn had given her approval. The crowded shelves of food that formed the food bank were gone, reorganized into a former junk closet upstairs. The dozens—perhaps hundreds—of cardboard boxes of old files had been sorted, weeded down to the essentials, and stored in neatly labeled waterproof plastic bins in the attic. The basement really was the last bastion of disorder—well, the basement and my office—and once the Christmas season was over and the guild had time to organize the rummage sale, even those would be gone. The very thought made me cheerful.