Blood on a Saint (9 page)

Ignatius Boyle. Hard to forget that name. Brennan recalled meeting him before the infamous Podgis debate and remembered liking the fellow right away. What had Boyle told him? He had not finished school. Sounded as if he’d been on the drink as a young lad, but he had not said anything more than that in explanation of the way his life had turned out. He had been permitted to sit in on some philosophy classes at St. Mary’s, thanks to a few sympathetic professors. Brennan was familiar with the philosophy department at the university; the courses were taught in English. There was also the mission Boyle had taken upon himself, to assist the street kids.

Now, what was this? He had been injured and had developed an ability he had never had before. Brennan read the article again. September 24. Did they have that right? That would have been the same early morning the young girl was killed.

There was a knock on his door, and he called, “Come in.”

Michael O’Flaherty. “Morning, Brennan. Have you seen the paper?”

“I’m just after seeing it.”

“One of us should go and see that poor man, Boyle.”

“Certainly. I’ll go. I met him a while back.”

“Did you now? I’ve seen him around but, apart from saying hello, I’ve never met him. Did you notice the night they say he fell and hurt his head?”

“Yes. Same night as the murder. Well, the morning. And not far from here.”

“You have to wonder.”

“I’ll see what I can find out. Though if he really is speaking only French, I won’t get much out of him. You’re not a French speaker yourself, Michael?”

“Sadly, no, apart from a few little phrases. Much of New Brunswick is French-speaking but not Saint John, where I grew up. I’ll see if I can reach Father Cormier. No, wait, he’s up in Moncton this week.”

“No worries. I’ll seek the advice of our friend Collins. He’ll be curious about this, to say the least. He has some French but, if he’s not up to the task, he’ll know someone who is.”

Brennan picked up the phone and punched in Collins’s number at home. No answer after eight rings. Brennan tried his direct line at the office. Success.

“Hello.”

“Monty.”

“Yes.”

“Have you read this morning’s paper?”

“Mmm.”

“Have you lost your ability to speak English? It’s going around, they tell me.”

“Right. Call you back.” Click.

Brennan hung up the phone and shrugged.

“What is it?” Michael asked.

“Monty was being a bit odd. Wouldn’t speak. But said he’d call me back.”

“Maybe he was with a client.”

“It’s early but he must have been. Maybe seeing someone before court.”

“All right, Brennan. I’ll leave you to it.”

Collins returned the priest’s call ten minutes later. “Brennan, sorry about the earlier call.”

“
Ego te absolvo
. What’s going on?”

“Podgis was in here.”

“Fortune smiles on you, my lad.”

“Tell me about it.”

“Anyway, what I was calling about was the story in the
Herald
. Have you — ”

“Oh, yeah. I’ve seen it.”

“Well?”

“Same date as the murder. I have to get in there. I’m hoping they’ll let me in to take his statement if he’s able.”

“His statement.”

“As you might imagine, Ignatius Boyle is a person of interest to me, if not to the police.”

Of course. That’s why Podgis had been in Collins’s office so early in the day. Brennan had been thinking, to the extent that he had started to process the information at all, that Ignatius Boyle might have suffered violence at the hands of the same individual who had killed Jordyn Snider. And if that was Pike Podgis, so be it. But now Brennan saw things another way.

“You’re going to try to pin this murder on poor Ignatius Boyle. That’s what the early morning confab with Podgis was about.”

“I’m not going to try to pin it on Boyle if he had nothing to do with it, Brennan. But you have to admit it’s a curious set of facts. One of the ‘seers’ at the apparition site was murdered, and one of the regular pilgrims, Boyle, was found unconscious nearby on the same night.”

“I notice you use the passive voice when you say the young one ‘was murdered.’ But then, what else are you going to say? As for Ignatius, he’s not just a regular pilgrim. He was a regular visitor at the churchyard even before this. He’s a familiar figure on the streets downtown as well.”

“I know, Brennan. He was a client from time to time when I was with Legal Aid.”

“For what?”

“I don’t remember anything about it. I’d have to look it up.”

“He’s obviously had a hard life. This is probably not the first time he’s been injured. So there’s no obvious connection between the girl’s murder and Ignatius being found on the street.”

“Still, it’s something I have to run down in building a defence for my client.”

“How can you bear to be in the same room with Podgis?”

“Comes with the territory. But that’s neither here nor there. The point is I want to get in there and talk to Boyle if I can.”

“So do I.”

“What for?”

“To offer a bit of comfort to the man, for one thing. And to see for myself whether he has acquired overnight the ability to speak a second language.”

“A miracle.”

“A bit early to be talking like that. But the news article said there has been a religious component to his conversation, so I’d like to know what that is all about.”

“Well, let’s meet at the VG and talk our way in to see him. Wear your collar.”

“To help ease your way past the hospital personnel.”

“You said it yourself: you want to comfort him.”

“And in the process, help you defend Pike Podgis.”

“Don’t think of it that way, Brennan. Think of your duty to visit the sick.”

“All right, all right. Now, do you have somebody who can act as an interpreter in case he really does speak only in French?”

“Monique LeBlanc, one of my law partners.”

“Good. See you there in . . . ?”

“Half an hour.”

†

A speculative murmur arose among Ignatius Boyle’s supporters gathered in the parking lot of the Victoria General Hospital as Brennan strode by. They obviously recognized him as the priest from St. Bernadette’s. He nodded a greeting, but kept going. He did not know any more than they did about Boyle’s rumoured acquisition of a second language. Monty Collins and Monique LeBlanc were waiting for him outside the entrance to the massive red-brick hospital. When he reached them, Monty introduced his partner to his priest.

“Father Burke,” Monique said, “I have attended some of your concerts. You are a wonderful musician. It’s a pleasure to finally meet you.”

“The pleasure is mine,” he responded. As indeed it was. With big brown eyes and long blond hair, Monique LeBlanc was as pleasing to the eye as she was learned in the law.

“Monique is a native of New Brunswick,” Monty told Brennan. “She hardly knew a word of English until she started university. And she is more than happy to act as our interpreter.”

The party of three asked at the reception desk for Ignatius Boyle’s room number, then proceeded to his room. Boyle lay in bed looking peaceful but tired. He opened his eyes when they entered but showed no sign of recognition.

Brennan took Boyle’s right hand in his and held it gently. “Hello, Ignatius. Do you remember me?”

The patient looked at him blankly. Brennan glanced at Monique.

“Bonjour, Monsieur Boyle.
Je m’appelle Monique LeBlanc, et je
..
.”

That got his attention. Monique told him she would like to speak with him, and she requested his permission to tape the conversation. She drew out her little office Dictaphone and showed it to him. He made no protest, so the lawyers took that as consent, and Monique turned the device on. She started to speak to him again, but he began a soliloquy of his own:
“Notre siècle est fort bizarre . . .”

The three visitors could all understand that much, and perhaps agree. Our times are indeed bizarre.

Monty signalled to Monique to prompt him again. She spoke to him in French, and they recorded his words:
“. . .
si par faiblesse je tombe quelquefois qu’aussitôt Votre divin regard purifie mon âme, consumant toutes mes imperfections, comme le feu qui transforme toute chose en lui-même
. . .”
His voice trailed off and he smiled, then seemed to drift into sleep.

Monique played the tape back at low volume and listened to the words again. “I notice he uses the polite form of ‘you,’ that is, ‘
vous,
’ but usually when we pray in French we say ‘
Tu
,’ or ‘Thou.’ Anyway, what he said was: ‘If through frailty I fall sometimes, may Your — or Thy — Divine glance purify my soul immediately, consuming every imperfection — like fire which transforms all things into itself.’”

Monty looked at Brennan, but Brennan simply did not know what to make of the man’s intriguing remarks.

Ignatius remained silent for a few minutes, then resumed speaking:
“Toutes nos justices ont des taches à Vos yeux. Je veux donc me revêtir de Votre propre justice et recevoir de Votre amour la possession éternelle de Vous-même
.
”

Monique again replayed the taped remarks and translated them for her companions: “‘All our justice is tarnished in Your sight. It is therefore my desire to be clothed with Your own justice and to receive from Your love the eternal possession of Yourself.’”

Even more intriguing: a discourse on justice, earthly and divine, though not the statement Monty came to get.

Monty looked to the priest in the group for enlightenment. “Would these be his own words or are they from a known prayer?”

“I wish I could tell you but I have no idea.”

Ignatius did not respond to the discussion of his words, but looked at his visitors placidly and smiled.

Monty had a couple of questions for Monique: “How’s his French?”

“Very good. There’s some sophisticated grammar in there, and he has it right.”

“What kind of French is he speaking? What accent does he have?”

She laughed.
“Nouvelle-Ecosse!”
Nova Scotian. It was his own voice, albeit in a language he had never spoken in his life before now.

†

The story made the paper again the following day.

C
OMPARED TO
P
OLISH
M
YSTIC

Believers are comparing a homeless man in Halifax to a Polish mystic, following his sudden ability to speak French and discuss theological matters he would not normally understand. Ignatius Boyle, 56, is still under observation in the VG Hospital, after waking with a severe headache and language skills he never had in the past. Father Jerzy Zukrowski, priest at St. Catherine’s church in Halifax, told this reporter that, if the statements he has heard about are in fact accurate translations of what Boyle said, the situation appears similar to that involving a Polish nun who claimed she had visions of Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary in the period between the two world wars. Sister Faustina Kowalska “came from a very poor and humble background and she had only three years of schooling,” Father Zukrowski explained, “yet she kept a record of her visions, writings which contained very sophisticated and subtle theological ideas. Ideas which were utterly original at the time. Her thoughts were so new that Faustina was suspected of heresy and her work was banned. But years later, the Church examined her writings and found that they contained no theological errors whatsoever. In fact, her idea of ‘prevenient grace,’ that is, that divine mercy can work on a person without any co-operation from the person’s own soul, is now a dogma of Catholic theology. She was way ahead of her time theologically. A person with three years of education could not possibly have come up with this on her own, without divine intervention. Maybe we have a similar case here in Halifax, with Ignatius Boyle.” Father Zukrowski cautioned, however, that he himself does not understand French and can only rely on what others have told him about Boyle’s pronouncements. The Catholic Church is in the process of considering Sister Faustina for sainthood. “I think she’s on the fast track, with Wojtyla (Pope John Paul, from Poland) in the driver’s seat,” Father Zukrowski said, smiling and holding up his right hand with his fingers crossed. “Maybe if the next Pope’s name is O’Malley, Mr. Boyle will have a shot at sainthood too!”

Monty

“If he’s a saint, I’m the Easter bunny. Some old bum gets knocked on the head and now instead of bandages he’s wearing a halo.” Pike Podgis was leaning across Monty’s desk, delivering his verdict on the question of the sainthood of Ignatius Boyle. “Now what can we find out about this guy that will help our case?”

“We won’t necessarily find out anything that will be of use to us.”

“I got a better idea, Collins. We find out everything we can about him and we
make
some of it good for our case. Maybe I should be the lawyer here.”

“Many have suffered from the same delusion. Perhaps you should do a show on self-represented litigants and how they fare in the courtroom. And in life in general.”

“Okay, okay, so represent me. You can’t believe it’s a coincidence that this Boyle guy got knocked out the same night and only a few feet away from where the Snider girl was killed.”

“It is a striking fact. But it could still be pure coincidence. Ignatius Boyle has been living on the streets for years. Street people frequently meet with violence. But of course we will be looking into it. I’ll check into his background, any criminal or psychiatric history he might have.”

“Good. Don’t let me hold you up.” Podgis heaved himself out of the chair and went to the door. He turned to say, “And when you get the dirt, I want to hear about it. Call me.” With that, he was gone.

Of course, notwithstanding the casual attitude he had displayed in front of Podgis, Monty was very interested in the timing and location of Ignatius Boyle’s misfortune. And he would be doubly interested if whatever happened had resulted in blood in the street near his client’s hotel. Monty in fact had every intention of digging into Boyle’s background. He did what he had intended to do before being interrupted by Podgis: started some paperwork to obtain information from the hospital about Boyle’s admission, and then picked up the phone to call a former colleague at Nova Scotia Legal Aid.