The Diviners

Page 78

“Maybe we’re going about this the wrong way. What if we find the temple he mentions? That way, the police can be there to stop him,” Evie mused. She snapped her fingers. “There’s the Egyptian temple at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.”
“It could mean a synagogue, especially if this is somehow connected to the Klan,” Jericho suggested.
“What about temples of finance—the stock exchange, or the banks!” Evie shouted. It was as if they were playing a strange parlor game, like charades, but with deadly serious stakes.
“Good, very good,” Will said. They discussed it further, making a list of other possible meanings for the temple mentioned in the seventh offering, with Jericho writing each one down.
“I’ll alert Terrence that our killer may strike at any of those places. Now, Evie, can you see if there is anything in the Hale book about religious iconography?” Will commanded from his momentary post near the bay windows.
The street lamps had come on in Central Park. It was just after eight o’clock. They’d been at the books for some time and had missed dinner entirely. Evie’s stomach grumbled.
“Unc, I’m starved. Can’t we come back to it?” Evie begged.
Will looked up at the clock, then at the dark outside the windows. His expression was one of complete surprise. “Oh. So you must be. Why don’t you and Jericho go down to the dining room? I’ll fix myself a sandwich here.”
“I’ll do the same,” Jericho said.
“Then I’ll be all alone,” Evie said. “Jericho, it will do us both good to get out of here.”
“She’s right, Jericho,” Will said. “Go downstairs for a bit.”
Reluctantly, Jericho closed his books and followed Evie to the elevator. She stopped it on the sixth floor and threw open the gate.
“Why are we stopping here?”
“It just occurred to me that Mabel must be starved! Her parents are at a rally tonight, and the poor dear is all alone.”
“She’s probably already had her supper.”
“Oh, no! I know my Mabel. She’s a night owl. Doesn’t eat until late—like a Parisian. It won’t take a minute-ski.”
Evie knocked her special knock and Mabel threw the door open, wearing her bathrobe and already talking: “I hope you’ve brought me the man of my dreams…. Oh.”
Evie cleared her throat. “Good evening, Mabel. Jericho and I were just going to have dinner downstairs, if you’d care to join us.” Evie cut her eyes at Jericho beside her.
“Oh. Oh!” Mabel said, looking down at her bathrobe in horror. “Let me just get dressed.”
“Hello, Evie,” Mr. Rose called from the kitchen table, where he sat banging out a story on a typewriter. Evie waved back.
Jericho glowered. “I thought you said they were at a rally.”
“Did I? I must have confused my days. Silly me. Mabesie, darling, do hurry!”
A few minutes later the three of them sat in the dining hall at a banquette under a chandelier that blinked every now and then due to some fault in the wiring. Evie filled Mabel in on the details of the murders and what they’d discovered courtesy of Dr. Poblocki. “This fellow seems to be enacting some sort of strange ancient ritual from a vanished cult. It’s pos-i-tute-ly macabre. What a monster he is!”
“That’s what happens when society neglects and abuses children,” Mabel said, fidgeting with her silverware. “They grow up to be monsters.”
“What an interesting theory! Mabel, you are so clever!” Evie said. “Isn’t she smart, Jericho?”
Jericho did not look up from his chicken and dumplings. Across the table, Mabel mouthed an urgent What are you doing?
Operation Jericho, Evie mouthed back.
“How do you know that’s what happens?” Jericho challenged.
“What do you mean?” Mabel asked.
“How do you know that it’s society that makes monsters?”
“Well, my mother says that when—”
“I didn’t ask what your mother thought,” Jericho interrupted. “Everyone who can read a newspaper knows what your mother thinks. I asked how you know that happens.”
Mabel chased the noodles in her cup of soup with a spoon. She’d eaten an hour earlier and wasn’t the slightest bit hungry. “Well, I’ve been to the slums with my mother and father. I’ve seen the horrors wrought by poverty and ignorance.”
“Then how do you account for the poor, abused soul who grows up to achieve greatness?”