Murder Among the Angels

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Murder Among the Angels

A Charlotte Graham Mystery

Stefanie Matteson

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Dla Ryszarda,

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1

As was her daily custom, Doris Snyder saw her husband Paul off on the silver and blue Metro North express to Grand Central at seven-forty, and then, as was also her custom, she took her Border collie, Homer, for a walk along the four rows of railroad track that guided the trains carrying Westchester County’s commuters down the Hudson River Valley to their daily labors in the city. Twenty-five miles to the south, the city was readily visible on a clear morning such as this one, when the morning sun glinted off the tips of the distant skyscrapers.

She loved this walk along the railroad, which was one of the few places in the area where one got an unimpeded view of the river. She loved the walk because she loved the river. Living near it was like living next to a majestic cathedral or a great museum: its very presence served to put her own problems into perspective. It was also a comfort, in the way a cathedral could be, the strength of its deep-flowing waters seeming to anchor the soul as well as the landscape. She was especially fond of this stretch of the river’s geography, which seemed to her to embody all of its best qualities. At the northern end of the lake-like expanse of the Tappan Zee, it was wide enough at this point to give a sense of peace and repose, but not so wide (the Tappan Zee being three miles across at its widest) that one lost the sense of it being a great river.

After more than thirty years of living on the Hudson, she was intimately familiar with its many moods: the end-of-the-world mood of the dog days of August, the languid mood of Indian summer, the energetic mood of a crisp midwinter day. But the mood of the river on this late April morning was intriguingly out of the ordinary. It had been a hard winter, and spring, which usually arrived at Manhattan about mid-March, and then crept slowly up the Hudson to arrive at the Tappan Zee two weeks later, was taking its time. And so the two seasons of winter and spring, which were usually so distinct in their moods, had blended into an eerie amalgam. The sun shone with the gusto of a fine spring day, but it cast haunting shadows of naked branches on the ground, which swayed as the result of a cold, blustery wind that should have departed several weeks before.

Homer, who tugged lustily at his leash, seemed to share her opinion of the day. After lifting his leg near the old summer house that marked the spot where they usually turned around, he looked up at her imploringly with his velvety brown eyes and uttered a polite entreaty to continue, which took the form of a barely audible whine.

“All right, baby,” she said, looking down at the dog, whose black and white face returned her gaze so appealingly. And thus they continued on toward Zion Hill Cemetery, which was their destination when they had the time for a longer walk than usual.

Zion Hill Cemetery was what she called it. She didn’t know if it had an official name; she had never heard one. In fact, she had never heard anyone ever mention the cemetery, and she considered it her own private discovery. Although she went there often with Homer, she had never encountered anyone else, though there was occasionally evidence that someone had visited during the night: a cast-off beer can or a soft drink cup. These she picked up and put in a plastic bag that she took along for the purpose. She felt an obligation to keep the cemetery tidy because of her only child, Paula, who had died eight years before at the age of thirty-one. It was in this little cemetery that she felt Paula’s presence the most strongly, more strongly than in church, more strongly. even than in the cemetery in which Paula was actually buried.

The hamlet of Zion Hill had been founded just after the turn of the century by Edward Archibald, a Scottish immigrant who had worked his way up from ticket taker to railroad tycoon. Archibald was a follower of the eighteenth-century Swedish mystic, Emanuel Swedenborg, to whom the Lord had revealed his teachings in a series of visions. Swedenborg recorded these visions in thirty volumes of theological works that became the foundation of a worldwide church called the Church of the New Jerusalem, or the New Church. Archibald had moved from Manhattan to the shores of the Hudson in 1909 with several hundred Swedenborgians to form a Utopian community devoted to the beliefs of the New Church. The community they created was outstanding for its graciousness, which was the product of Archibald’s infallible taste and deep pockets. The houses were designed by the finest architects—most notably the firm of McKim, Mead, and White—and the grounds laid out by the prestigious landscape architecture firm of Olmsted Brothers.

But to Mrs. Snyder’s mind, the most incredible thing about this Utopian religious community was the fact that it still survived, liberally supported by funds from Archibald trusts, and peopled with the descendants of Archibald’s offspring, and those of the other original settlers. On the rare occasions when a house did come up for sale, the owner was usually able to sell to another Swedenborgian, there being a waiting list of Swedenborgians from all over the world who wanted to live there. As a result, ninety-five percent of the population of three thousand were still followers of Swedenborg, the exceptions being the inhabitants of the elegant houses on River Road, which was the only stretch of prime residential real estate in Westchester that fronted directly on the river. These properties had been reluctantly ceded by the community to the New York doctors, lawyers, and stockbrokers who could afford them, their price tags being out of the reach of even the richest of the Archibald heirs.

As a lifelong resident of Ossining, the neighboring community to the north, Mrs. Snyder had in the past looked on the residents of Zion Hill with the same benign distrust as the other inhabitants of the area: not exactly as having five fingers and a dead body stowed away in the attic, but not as part of the respectable mainstream either. But her visits to the cemetery had piqued her interest in the church, and she had become quite knowledgeable about its beliefs. She even attended Sunday services occasionally, and had fallen in love with the wonderful neo-Gothic church, with its exquisite design and fine workmanship, which reflected Archibald’s opinion that God’s dwelling should represent man’s highest artistic achievements.

A cardinal belief of the New Church was that of a material heaven: a paradise where one went after death, not to idle one’s time away playing the harp in vague adoration of some authoritarian God, but to carry on with the work one had performed on earth. One did this not in the company of strangers who had also managed by virtue of their good works to ascend to the same levels, but in the company of close friends and relatives, and in particular with one’s soul mate. It was Swedenborg’s belief that everyone had a soul mate, whom they would meet, if not on earth, then in heaven. The two halves of a single soul would merge in heaven into one angel, and live forevermore in eternal bliss. This belief in the afterlife had the effect of producing among its adherents an enviable state of peace of mind. This peace of mind would have been sufficient on its own to attract Mrs. Snyder to the New Church, but the church also offered the comforting prospect that she would not only be reunited with Paul in the next world, but with her beloved daughter as well.

It was with thoughts of being reunited with Paula that, being led by Homer, she headed up the embankment on a narrow path of her own making through the tangled thicket of wild roses, raspberry canes, and bittersweet vines. At this time of year, the path was still muddy from the recently melted snow, though delicate green shoots were beginning to sprout from the excelsior-like mat of dead grass on the ground, and leaf sprouts were pushing their way out of the barren raspberry canes.

The belief of Swedenborg’s followers in the afterlife was reflected in the minimal nature of this little graveyard on a wooded hillside overlooking the river. There were no roads to facilitate access to the graves; there weren’t even any paths. Nor were there gravestones—not in the usual sense anyway. There were only markers: some of these took the form of headstones, but they were untended, tilted over in many cases, and usually lacking inscriptions. Others were merely rocks or boulders lying in the grass. Sometimes these had been rudely inscribed with the name of the departed, but more often they, like the headstones, were unmarked. Most basically, the graves were marked only by metal markers of the type used in public gardens to identify plants. In many cases, the names, which had originally been written in black felt tip pen, had been worn off by the weather, if there had been any names on them to begin with. The Swedenborgians clearly saw no point in going to any lengths to mark the spot where the body lay when it was only a material raiment for the spirit.

The most peculiar thing about the Zion Hill cemetery, however, was the arrangement of the graves. These weren’t lined up in orderly rows, but were scattered haphazardly around: some off by themselves, others in pairs, still others in a circle, like a family that has carried the porch chairs out to the lawn for a spot of iced tea on a summer afternoon. Actually, it wasn’t a lawn so much that the cemetery reminded Mrs. Snyder of as a beach. The arrangement of the graves put her in mind of that of the towels of beach-goers who have left to take a carefree dip, and who will be back momentarily. But instead of their clothes, the dead had shed their bodies. One almost had the feeling that one could wave to them out there on the Hudson, and that they’d shout back: “C’mon in, the water’s fine.” It was this that gave the cemetery its peculiarly joyful atmosphere, so different from the heavy, somber air of most cemeteries. Usually, in fact, Mrs. Snyder did—wave, that is.