Cecilian Vespers (12 page)

“I certainly hope not! The lock’s queer on that door, and you never know whether it’s secure or not. Plus, I don’t want to be answering two doors all day!”

“Right. How about Billy Logan? Was he around?”

Her lips tightened. “He’s not staying here, of course. A spoiled priest, is what I heard about him. But he was in and out of the choir school that day.”

“When you say in and out, what times are we talking about?”

“He didn’t arrive in time for Mass. I was there and he was not. But I saw him come out of the choir school just before noon.”

“Anything notable about him?”

“No. Except for the fact that he looked like he’d swallowed a bitter pill. But I find he always looks like that. He got into his car. His wife was in the passenger’s seat, and the car was piled to the rafters with stuff.”

“What kind of stuff?”

“I couldn’t tell. Maybe it was in garbage bags or boxes — I didn’t pay that much attention. Anyway, he peeled out of the parking lot and leaned on his horn. He must have been angry with another driver. There’s no need for such noise, especially on church property!”

“Did you see him again that day?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Did you see Mr. Bleier?”

“No. He’s not staying here, either. I believe he is staying at a bed and breakfast run by Germans. I suppose it’s natural to want to be with your own kind.”

“So you didn’t see him. How about his wife, Dr. Silkowski?”

“No.”

“Father Mills.”

“He went out early in the afternoon. Said hello to me before he left.”

“Do you know when he came back?”

“No, I didn’t see him again.”

“I’m nearly finished here, Mrs. Kelly. What about Jan Ford? You know who I mean?”

“Yes. She is staying at Mount Saint Vincent but she was here that day. She and another lady — she may have been a sister, hard to tell these days — were on their way to a restaurant, and they were kind enough to invite me along. They were going to compose some music over lunch. Said they were working on a ‘song cycle,’ whatever that is, about Joan of Arc. And I could contribute if I wanted to. But I had a bird to put in the oven for supper, so I couldn’t go. I saw the two ladies stop in the parking lot and have a word with Father Mills. Then I got back to my bird.”

Mrs. Kelly was of the generation that believed it took six hours in the oven, and a lot of fussing in the kitchen, to roast every last molecule of moisture out of a turkey or a chicken. I kept my own counsel on that.

“One more question and I’ll leave you in peace. Do you know where Mr. Petrucci is staying?”

“Petrucci? Who’s he?”

“One of the people at the schola. Not a priest. Just someone keen on the music, I guess.”

“Well, he should be on the list then. Father gave me the phone numbers in case he wants me to make some calls for him.” She got up and thumbed through a stack of papers by the phone. “Here it is. Petrucci, L.”

“Would you mind if I called him from here?”

“No, go right ahead.”

I dialled the number and waited. A young woman answered and told me Lou had driven up to Montreal for a few days. Did I want to leave my number? No thanks, I’d try him again another time.

I had a visit from Moody Walker later that morning at the office.

“I made a call about Bleier.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, I have a buddy over there, in Hamburg. Gunther Schmidt. He’s a cop I dealt with a few years ago when there was some suspicious container traffic plying the waters between Hamburg and Halifax. He knew all about the Schellenberg killing, needless to say. He’d never heard of Bleier but he ran the two names through his computer. Didn’t come up with anything about Kurt Bleier, except that he was on the police force in East Berlin till the wall came down. There wasn’t all that much about Reinhold Schellenberg. He was a priest in a town called Magdeburg, he was an adviser at the Second Vatican Council, he taught at a couple of universities in Germany. And he was detained briefly after some kind of political demonstration in the 1970s.”

“Another protest gone wrong! I guess it’s trite under the circumstances to say we’ve got a lot of people here with strong opinions.”

“Yeah, whoever went at Schellenberg with an axe certainly had strong opinions about him.”

“Too true. Any indication Schellenberg and Colonel Bleier knew each other?”

“No, but there may be a connection of some kind. There was a Schellenberg in the same prison camp as Max Bleier during the war. A camp outside Berlin.”

“Is Max related to Kurt?”

“His father. Max was a commie too, in the 1930s and 1940s. That’s
why he was targeted by the Nazis.”

“Who was the Schellenberg?”

“Schmidt doesn’t know. He’s going to call me if he’s any relation to our victim. Schmidt was more than a little curious about Bleier being over here when the hit was done. Not much I could tell him, except that he’s here with his wife. All the way over here from Germany to learn music? Nobody would ever call me a culture buff, but even I know you don’t have to wear out your shoe leather before you find a bunch of choir boys around an organ over there.”

“True, but the same could be said for others in the group as well. There are people here from France, Italy, England —”

“And a queer-looking bunch they are, some of them.”

“You think?”

“Who’s that flamer in the cape? I’d like to know where his two-thousand-dollar shoes were standing at the time Schellenberg was getting axed.”

“Why don’t you ask him?”

“I thought you just wanted me for the information you can’t dig up yourself.”

“No reason you can’t come along while I have a chat with the man. How about now? We’ll see if he’s in.”

Walker shrugged, and we left the office for the rectory at St. Bernadette’s.

We rang the bell — of the
back
door — and waited. A face peered out at us through the window before the door was opened.

“Hello again, Mrs. Kelly.” The housekeeper looked as if she needed an emergency hook-up to a Valium drip. “Is something wrong?”

“Is … Is His Grace out there?” she asked in a quavering voice.

“I don’t see the bishop out here, no. May we come in?” She opened the door halfway, and we sidled in. “Sergeant Walker and I are going to head upstairs if that’s all right.”

“Oh, I don’t know …” Her eyes rolled upwards. “Do you hear that?” I heard singing then, opera perhaps. “That’s been going on for —” she looked at her watch “— ten minutes now. And His Grace said he may be coming to visit! Imagine him hearing that! I’d better stay here to keep an eye out.”

As Walker and I approached the staircase we heard a tenor voice
soaring through the building at full volume; the piece was a fulsome “Ave Maria” I did not recognize. We climbed the stairs and approached the source: Sferrazza-Melchiorre’s room. His door was ajar. We found him singing to a portrait of the Virgin and Child, Mary’s naked breast grasped in the hands of her son. The priest was, as always, in full regalia, in his soutane and cape. His arms were flung out in a gesture of operatic passion. A bottle of
vino rosso
stood half-empty on his table. I turned my attention from him to Sergeant Walker. The retired cop was goggling at the caped figure as if it was his first day on the job as a rookie policeman. The priest turned and directed the last bars of the hymn, with no
diminuendo
, to me and my stunned companion. He raised his arms as he declaimed the amen.

“Monty!” he cried, when the song of praise had ended. “
Buongiorno!
You have brought me a visitor. Wine?” He gestured towards the bottle with his jewelled hand.

“None for me, thanks. Enrico Sferrazza-Melchiorre, this is Sergeant Walker. He’s helping us with the investigation.”

Walker gave him a wary nod. Enrico grasped his hand, and said: “
Piacere, signore!
Make yourself quite at home.”

We sat across from him, and he filled his wineglass, took time to savour a mouthful, then asked: “In what way can I help you?”

“We have to find out if anyone saw anything out of the ordinary on the afternoon of the murder.”

“Everything is out of the ordinary for us, Monty. We are all strangers here.”

“What did you do that day?”

“I went to our Mass in the morning, I returned here to my room, I went out to lunch.”

“Where?”

“I do not remember the name, a small place. Then I walked and walked around the city.”

“Were you dressed in any, uh, distinctive kind of way that day?”

“No.” The priest shrugged his caped shoulders. “I just wore what I always wear.”

“Right,” Moody Walker said. “If you were out there, it shouldn’t be too hard to find people who noticed you. Why do you think Schellenberg was killed?”

Again, the shrug.
“Chissà!”

“Come again?”

“I say: who knows?”

“You seem a little blasé about the death of one of your compadres.” Enrico didn’t respond, but pointed to a poster he had on the desk before him. There was a pair of scissors beside it, and some trimmings from the borders. “Are you an admirer of Jacques Villeneuve?” he asked Moody.

“Sure. That’s the Reynard Alfa. Where did you get the poster?”

A hesitation. “I found it blowing along the street, and I brought it here. Villanova, he is on our F3 team now. But he will be F1 some day.”

“You follow Formula One racing?” Walker asked, barely masking his surprise.

“Oh, yes. I was at Monza last year.”

“Really! Watching the Ferraris?”

“The Ferraris were driven by Prost and Mansell, placing second and fourth. I follow Riccardo Patrese. He is a cousin of mine. He was driving for Richards.”

“Patrese came in about a minute behind Mansell. What were they, fourth and fifth?”

“Yes, but it was not a minute. Mansell’s time was one hour, eighteen minutes, fifty-four seconds. Riccardo came in at one hour, nineteen minutes, twenty-three point one five something.”

“Were you at Monza in ‘78 when Ronnie Peterson was killed? They blamed Patrese for that. Even brought charges against him.”

“He was cleared of blame! By the Grand Prix Drivers Association and the courts!” Enrico’s face had reddened. “It was a tragedy for all concerned. We are thankful that Riccardo’s career recovered. He won the San Marino Grand Prix last year.”

“He went over to Richards when?”

“In 1988, and was cursed by those not-turbo-charged engines. They went to the Renault engine the next year, then the 1990 victory.”

“You obviously follow this closely.”

“Not as closely as I would like to. They have a form of racing where I live now, but —”

“Where’s that?”

“Mississippi.”

“What do you mean, Mississippi?”

“I now live in the southern United States.”

“You’re puttin’ me on.”

“
Che cosa?
Anyway, they have a form of racing there. I was joyful when I heard it being discussed by some in my congregation, and I attended a race. It is not the same thing at all.”

“You went to a NASCAR race? I wish I’d seen that! You sitting there with all those good ole boys in the south.”

“Please don’t misunderstand me. It provides entertainment for those who … who are less fortunate than others, but one could not properly compare it to, say, the Grand Prix at Monaco.” He shook his head, then looked at us as if remembering why we were there. “I am not keeping you from your rounds, I hope, Sergeant. Are you seeing others today as well?”

We hadn’t planned on it, but it might be a good idea to pretend otherwise. “Yes, we are. Thank you for help, Enrico.” We left and closed the door behind us.

“Well, he sure spilled his guts there, Sergeant. How do you do it?” “Piss off, Collins. He wasn’t going to give us anything. He says he was out walking. If he isn’t lying, somebody will remember seeing him in that outfit.”

I spent half the afternoon in the office, dealing with a young guy who had just blown his chance to have a future outside the walls of a prison. He had committed an armed robbery, and he had two particularly aggravating factors working against him: he had carried a sawed-off shotgun and worn a mask. All of this meant five to eight years behind bars, if he got sentenced as an adult. The Crown had offered him a chance to avoid that. If he pleaded guilty, the Crown would not apply to have him sentenced as an adult. He would serve less than two years as a young offender, some of it already served. The client ignored my advice, refused the deal and, as predicted, was found guilty at trial. Now he had the gall to ask whether we could go back to the Crown and salvage the deal.
No, we cannot
. People don’t
listen. It was a relief to turn to a client who was not guilty, the doctor I was defending in a medical malpractice case. He had failed to diagnose a rare neurological disorder in his patient. Was there a failure to diagnose? Yes. Did this amount to negligence? No. I was hard at work on my pretrial brief when I received a call from Moody Walker.

“I heard from my man in Hamburg. Schmidt. He was able to identify the Schellenberg who served time in the same Nazi prison camp as Kurt Bleier’s father. It was Johann Schellenberg, a priest. Uncle of our Reinhold Schellenberg.”

“Well! Did they know each other at the camp? Or before the camp?”

“Schmidt didn’t have anything on that, one way or the other.”

“Interesting, to say the least. Maybe it’s time to have a talk with Kurt.”

“Definitely. I got something else too. I asked around some of the downtown businesses to see if anybody noticed the Caped Crusader window-shopping the day of the murder. I spent two hours and all I got was no, no, no. Nobody saw him. But then one of the girls in Mills Brothers said he sounded a lot like a guy her husband told her about. Husband works at the Jaguar dealership on Kempt Road. An Italian ‘in spiffy clothes’ test-drove a Jag that day but didn’t buy it. I took a run up there and the salesman wasn’t in, but guess what? Sferrazza-Melchiorre took the car out at one-fifteen on November 22 and didn’t bring it back till nearly four o’clock.”

“No! Did he give them his real name, credit card, and all that?”

“Yeah, he did.”