Clements laughed as if in delight, but again the amusement touched only his mouth. “It’s a small building, as you saw: sanctuary, minute office, a vestry room the size of a hall closet. Not a lot of places to hide. And much as I love my parishioners, I wouldn’t want them to carry the burden of a secret like that.”

“Historically important,” I said, my tone dreamy, musing on the past. “A refuge for free African-Americans during the Civil War. Those crypts or underground rooms, they’d be at high risk during the floods, I’m guessing.”

Clements’s eyes narrowed. “Good point, Detective Warshawski. We have a job preserving those historic spaces. Much too damp for anyone to hide in today, but I’ll be glad to show them to you when you’ve finished talking to Sister Albritten.”

I bowed my head, half ironic, and told him I would enjoy a tour. “I’m about to tell Ms. Albritten something that amounts to evidence tampering. I could be arrested, so if you don’t want another burden to carry on your own, you might step outside.”

“Unless you’re going to confess to a murder or something of that nature, I won’t call the Douglas County Herald,” Clements said. “Since you’re speaking in confidence to one of my parishioners, I’m even willing to extend my pastoral exemption to you.”

I turned to Albritten. “Ma’am, when I went out to the farm yesterday, I found a thumb drive—a piece of computer equipment—that contains photos and videos that August took in the middle of the night. He was out in a field with Ms. McKinnon and Ms. Ferring. They apparently didn’t want anyone to know what they were doing, so he filmed without using a light. Ms. McKinnon was digging up soil samples. Do you know which field she might have been in?”

“I told you yesterday, I hadn’t seen Doris McKinnon in some time,” she said fretfully.

“Yes, ma’am. Forgive my putting it this way, but . . . I used to practice law before I became an investigator. That’s a ‘letter of the law’ response. I believe you hadn’t seen her, but did she phone you? Or you her? Or did Emerald—Ms. Ferring—talk to you about what they’d been doing?”

There was a long silence, during which she took her hand away from her pastor’s and clasped it with the other in her lap.

When she didn’t speak, I said as gently as I could, “Yesterday, when you collapsed, it was while you were trying to say that someone would have told you if Ms. McKinnon had died. I think you are such a truthful woman that you fainted rather than speak a lie: you already knew she was dead.”

“Detective! That is completely out of line.” Clements moved so that his whole body was between me and Albritten.