Father Fogarty struggled to his feet, clenching his fists. “I’ve never had a conversation with the Lord Jesus Christ either,” he roared, “but that doesn’t mean I don’t know He exists! I’ve never met the Queen of England either, or the President of the United States—”

“All right, all right, never mind.” Father Jackson slumped further in his chair and closed his eyes.

Trembling, Father Fogarty turned back to me. “Now since we know what Mrs. Reddy is, we can assume that her associate Mrs. Scaravelli is, or was, the same thing. And now you know why I’ve been reluctant to have Mrs. Scaravelli’s story publicized. There seems to be no doubt that she was cured of cancer, so it’s quite possible that she had an authentic vision too. The point is, what caused these things to happen? Also, what caused you to see the General on two occasions, Mrs. Caine?”

“This is where I came in,” said Father Jackson, rising.

“Sit down! I want you to investigate this case.”

“Oh, for pity’s sake, Father . . .”

“I’m not able to get around, so you’ll have to do it. There may be some connection between Mrs. Caine’s case and ours.”

“That’s ridiculous, Father.”

“So you say. Check on it and find out.”

“What do you want me to do—perform an exorcism on her son?”

“Over my dead body,” I said.

“From what you’ve told me, it could come to that,” said Father Fogarty. “However, there are many preliminaries before we could do anything like that.”

“And there are other priests in the diocese more qualified to handle it,” said Father Jackson. “Call the Bishop and have someone assigned.”

“The bishop will want more evidence than we have now. We’re not in the good graces of our Bishop Driscoll at the moment,” Father Fogarty told me. “He blames me for encouraging the likes of Mrs. Scaravelli. He also thinks it was a mistake to build this shrine in the first place. But do you want to know why I did it? It was because of Mrs. Reddy and her kind. Like your Aunt Hannah, I wanted to do something to counteract the evil that was going on around here.” He got up. “Well, I’ll leave you in Father Jackson’s hands, Mrs. Caine. By the way, the church is open now if you want to go in and say a prayer. You could be in danger too, you know. It’s not only your son.”

He made his creaky way to the door, then paused and said, more to himself than to either of us, “Maybe the whole thing was a mistake. Maybe he wanted it here so he could pervert it to his own purposes.”

He went out and Father Jackson twirled his forefinger at the side of his head.

“What was he talking about? Who wanted what here?”