Cecilian Vespers (16 page)

“I must correct you, Brennan, if you will permit me. You say I have succeeded in attracting attention to myself and, to an extent of course, I have. But I have not yet had my day in court. I have not yet been presented with the opportunity to make a speech from the dock, a practice honed to brilliance by your own countrymen facing execution for various crimes against the state. Or against their colonizers.”

“You strike me as a man well able to expound his views without resorting to the criminal process. Write an article. Write a book. Write a letter to the
Times
.”

“I in fact did write articles. I doubt if they’ve survived. The Gadkin-Falkes by-line appeared in a publication called the
English Catholic
. I played at being a journalist whilst in my early twenties and so I was selected to cover the final session of the Second Vatican Council in 1965. If my work is still extant, it will support my motive for killing the former Vatican II busybody.”

“Well, then, why didn’t you just dust off your outpourings on the subject, and get up on a soapbox in Hyde Park?”

“I would have done, I suppose, if I’d given old Schellenberg a thought before I left the sceptred isle. But he wasn’t even in my thoughts, until he made his startling appearance here at your worthy institution. The opportunity presented itself and the rest, as they say —”

“The opportunity presented itself for somebody, but not you. Now who was it?”

“All right, Brennan, all right. Have it your way for a moment. Let us say for the sake of argument that it wasn’t me. And let us think about this purely hypothetical killer. Somehow I doubt that the sort of person who would do this — someone not in control of his emotions or his actions — would be able to withstand the ordeal I am about to undergo with such admirable sangfroid. Put me in the dock, throw me in the nick, bang me up here among the barmy — it doesn’t inconvenience me in the least. After all, I’ve been in a monastery for twenty-two years! Could have been worse, I suppose. I could have gone into the army, like my poor nephew, and been posted to Northern Ire —”

“What made you choose the religious life, Robin?”

“I am a servant of the Lord. Like yourself, Brennan.”

“Why a brother and not a priest?”

“Oh, I agree. You have a higher calling than I, but —”

“Why not set your sights on being Robin Cardinal Gadkin-Falkes, Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster?”

“I could ask you the same. Why not Archbishop of Armagh? But I think I know the answer. Your ego, let us say, is sufficient unto itself. You do not crave or need the affirmation that comes from a position of leadership. And you most certainly do not need the aggravation. My imagination fails me when I try to picture you dealing patiently with the administrative cock-ups of your inferiors.”

The man may have been mad as a hatter but he had Burke pinned with uncanny accuracy; no doubt he saw in him qualities he himself possessed. Burke, true to form, ignored the exchange.

“So I guess we’d better get the police on the line, Robin, and set them straight.”

“Oh, I’ll deny this little exchange if you report it to them.”

“It’s our word against yours.”

“Very well then. I’ll admit to the conversation but come up with a very convincing tale about why I engaged in such a fanciful discussion.”

“You won’t have them fooled for long, particularly if the physical evidence against you doesn’t hold up.”

“The evidence will hold up. It may not be the evidence of a professional criminal. It may in fact be the evidence of someone who wanted to draw attention to his crime in a rather ham-handed fashion. But I am an amateur, and have never pretended otherwise.”

“Robin. You’ve virtually admitted you’re not a criminal at all. You’re not making any sense here.”

“It must be the environment, Brennan! It is a psychiatric hospital, after all. Now, I must ask you gentlemen to leave me in peace. I’d show you out of the building, but I have no idea where they hide the exit. Good day to you both.”

We drove to the rectory to see Michael O’Flaherty, but Mrs. Kelly told us he had been called to the Victoria General Hospital to attend to a dying parishioner. Burke and I stood discussing our loopy conversation with Robin Gadkin-Falkes, then Burke said goodbye and went up to his room to prepare for his afternoon classes.

“Not making any headway, Mr. Collins?” Mrs. Kelly came up to me as I headed for the door.

“Not as far as I can tell, Mrs. Kelly. Unfortunately.”

“Well, if there’s anything you’d like to do here …”

“Sure, if I think of something I’ll ask. Thanks.”

“Like look around anywhere. The rooms or whatever.”

“Uh-huh.”

“They say you can learn a lot about a suspect from his room. Of course the police have been through Brother Robin’s room already. Still …”

It was hard to miss the hint. “It wouldn’t hurt me to have a look around in there, if you have the key.”

“Let me see. Is this it? No. Wait … I think it’s this one.”

“Perfect. Thank you.”

Robin Gadkin-Falkes’s room was on the top floor of the three-storey building. His bed was still unmade. One black robe was slung over a chair; another hung in the wardrobe. There were two suits with shirts and ties, a pair of casual pants, and a sweater. There was nothing but underwear and socks in the bureau drawers. A small CD player sat on top of the bureau; his collection included chant by various monastic choirs, choral music by the Tallis Scholars, and a collection of works by Hildegard von Bingen. He had brought a small library
with him. I noted Newman’s Apologia Pro Vita Sua and an ancient book titled The Great Standing Army of Rome: Monks in England before the Suppression of the Monasteries in the Time of Henry VIII. I smiled when I saw a video of
Monty Python’s Flying Circus
; whatever else could be said of Robin Gadkin-Falkes, he was not without a sense of the absurd.

But what was it Mrs. Kelly thought I should see? Something the police had missed? And why was she being so indirect? I continued my examination.

The monk had a cardboard briefcase containing materials from the course at the schola, and a scribbler full of notes made in black ink during class. He had drawn little cartoons in the margins. I guess when you’re a mature student, you don’t worry about having your knuckles rapped for doodling in your notebook. One of the drawings showed a man with a halo over his head; circles or spirals were drawn around the figure. It gave the impression he was turning. This was in the margin beside the words “Enough Palestrina!!!” There was a blue question mark next to the picture. I got the impression the question mark was done by someone else. In reply, Robin had written: “St. Charles spinning in his grave!” The blue ink answered: “True!” Must have been an exchange with the student at the adjacent desk, provoked by someone else saying he or she — Jan Ford perhaps? — had had enough of Palestrina, the great sixteenth-century Catholic composer. Obviously, Robin, his classmate, and Saint Charles did not agree.

The room contained more secular items as well. A bottle of gin stood half empty on a table, beside a kettle and an assortment of exotic-looking teas. There was nothing connecting Robin to Schellenberg, but I hadn’t expected to find anything.

When I opened the door to leave, my foot hit something on the floor. I bent over and picked up a small rosary. It had red and white beads, and an oval religious medal at the end of the chain where a crucifix would normally be. There was a note attached to the chain with a paperclip. The note was printed on high-quality marbled paper, and had been torn from a longer sheet. It read:
“Fac me tecum plangere.”
Let me cry with you? I would run it by Burke to make sure. From its position on the floor, it appeared to have been shoved under the door. I dropped it into my pocket and headed for Brennan’s room. Then I
thought I’d better find out what had set Mrs. Kelly on my heels.

I tracked her down in the kitchen. She looked at me and asked:

“Anything there? Maybe not …” She tried for a tone of idle curiosity.

I drew the rosary from my pocket and held it carefully by the edges of the medal at the end. “I found this.”

“I saw it there! That note might mean something.”

“I’m going to assume it does.”

“The police must have missed it!”

“Could be.” But I doubted it. I inclined to the belief that it had been slipped under Robin’s door after the police had searched the room. Placed there by whom? “I’m going to take it to the police. They’ll try for fingerprints. Thanks, Mrs. K. This could be very helpful.”

“You’re welcome.”

“Do you have an envelope?” She brought me one, and I placed the rosary inside.

“I’ll see what Brennan has to say about the Latin.”

Her face clouded over. The fact that she had told this to me and not to Burke — or the much more approachable Monsignor O’Flaherty — suggested that she felt she had been remiss in her duties somehow. I wondered if she had noticed it a while ago and failed to mention it. Whatever the case, I wouldn’t allude to her involvement.

“I’ll just say I decided to search the room. That will make me look as if I’m on the ball!”

Her relief was obvious. I headed up to Burke’s room, and found him sitting at his desk with a stack of books and a writing pad. From the stereo came the glorious soprano voice of the woman of his dreams, Kiri Te Kanawa. She was giving him an incomparable version of “Vissi d’Arte.”

Sempre con fè sincera la mia preghiera ai santi tabernacoli salì. Always with true faith my prayer rose to the holy shrines.

I pressed the pause button and got down to business. “Have a look at this. It’s a rosary I found on the floor just inside Gadkin-Falkes’s room. Someone must have slipped it in there after the police were finished.” I shook it out on Burke’s table and began to caution him about handling it as little as possible. The look he gave me was meant to
convey that I might be an imbecile but he was not. He didn’t touch it.

“It’s not a rosary; it’s called a chaplet. A set of prayer beads for a certain saint. This one is —” he bent over the table and peered at the medal “— Saint Philomena. I don’t know what significance the number of beads has but I’d say the three white ones symbolize virginity and the red ones, thirteen in all, symbolize martyrdom.”

“What do you know about Saint Philomena?”

He shrugged. “We’ll consult Michael. But I’m more interested in the note, as I’m sure you are.”

“How do you translate
plangere
?”

“It means to beat your breast or your head in lamentation. A sign of grief. So whoever wrote this is saying: ‘Let me grieve with you’ or ‘Let me share your grief.’”

“Someone sympathizes with his plight, his wrongful arrest.”

“Or someone thinks he actually did it, and is expressing solidarity with the deed, or whatever drove him to it. Makes you wonder whether the writer of the note has more information than we do about our man Robin.”

“Right. I’m going to take it over to the police station now. Maybe they’ll get some prints off it.”

“Maybe so. But the only one who’ll have fingerprints on file to compare them with …”

Burke’s voice trailed off. Robin Gadkin-Falkes wasn’t the only person whose prints were on file; Burke himself had been fingerprinted at the time of the wrongful murder charge that had propelled him into my life.

“Yes, well, I’ll leave you to your lesson plan.” I picked up the chaplet by the edges of the medal and returned it to the envelope. Burke was lost in his own thoughts and didn’t say goodbye. I pressed the button on his stereo, and Kiri resumed her lamentation:

Nell’ora del dolor perché, perché, Signor, ah, perché me ne rimuneri così?

In the hour of grief why, why, O Lord, ah, why do you reward me this way?

I drove directly to the Halifax Police Department on Gottingen
Street, presented the chaplet, and left it to be fingerprinted and catalogued with the other evidence. Then I went to the office for my afternoon appointments. As usual, there was bad news for some of my clients over the weekend. Two of them had talked to the police when they should have exercised their right to remain silent; neither of the confessions was as eloquent as that of Robin Gadkin-Falkes.

After my last appointment, my mind returned to the murder of Father Schellenberg. I pictured the murder scene, Reinhold Schellenberg’s blood-drenched corpse with the head nearly severed from the body. I thought of the near-decapitation of Saint Cecilia, on whose feast day the murder had been committed. I recalled the police reports showing the killer had mopped up after himself or herself, eradicating the bloody footprints he might have made on his way out of the church. The reports showed he had left a bloody towel and two plastic grocery bags by the door; the police believed he had used the bags to cover his shoes. There were no prints on the bags. If he had a covering over any other part of him, he had taken it with him along with the murder weapon. Schellenberg’s wallet had not been taken, but that meant nothing; nobody was pretending this was a robbery. I wondered what to make of the valentine cards left on the body, and the swizzle stick. The police had not been able to find any shop selling valentines at this time of year, so the cards could not be traced. The police had, however, located the source of the swizzle stick: the Wheel and Anchor Beverage Room in Dartmouth. They had shown Schellenberg’s photo around, but nobody remembered seeing him in the bar. Had they shown any other photos to the staff there? I couldn’t remember what the report said, but I knew which of the schola participants were without alibis for the time of the murder. So I decided it couldn’t hurt to collect their pictures and interview the waiters myself. It was Monday, which meant blues night, when my band Functus got together to wail and blow the harp and play slide guitar, but it wouldn’t be bad form to arrive late, especially if I had the perfectly acceptable excuse that I was coming from a bar.

Monsignor O’Flaherty had gone about snapping photos at the reception held for the students on their first evening in Halifax. I found him in residence, borrowed what I needed — I had snapshots of Robin Gadkin-Falkes, William Logan, Fred Mills, Luigi Petrucci,
Enrico Sferrazza-Melchiorre, Kurt Bleier, and Jan Ford — and took the Macdonald Bridge across the harbour to the Wheel and Anchor on the Dartmouth waterfront. The west-facing wall of the pub was all glass, overlooking the city of Halifax and the harbour in between. It had a nautical theme, with massive anchors, ropes, wheels, and other ship’s paraphernalia displayed around the room. The wait staff were togged out as sailors. Nobody on the day shift recognized any of the faces in my photos. The bartender suggested I come back later and, if I had no luck then, again on the weekend. I thanked him and headed off to join my band for an evening of the blues.