Cecilian Vespers (18 page)

Gadkin-Falkes reared back, clutching his blanket in front of him.

“Leave me! Get out!”

A nurse rushed into the room. “What’s going on here? Are you all right, Brother Robin?”

“Yes, I’m quite all right, thank you. Though I do think it’s time for these men to leave.”

“Brother Robin needs to rest now,” she told us, and stood aside for us to leave. Burke glared at the man in the hospital bed. But the invalid refused to meet his eyes.

“Mulvather?” I inquired.

“Bamboozle, confuse. Trying to get us off track with all this shite about Enrico’s wardrobe. About the confession, Monty — I’m thinking we should keep it to ourselves for a bit. Leave the other suspects wondering whether we think Gadkin-Falkes is guilty or not.”

“Mum’s the word.”

We drove back across the harbour to St. Bernadette’s.

“I have to prepare tomorrow’s lecture on the sacred music of Mozart. How would you like to fill Michael O’Flaherty in on our conversation with Gadkin-Falkes?”

“Sure. I’ll give him a quick rundown before I head home.”

I found Michael in the priests’ library and described our encounter with the Englishman.

“So we know a bit more about Robin now, Mike. We know he’s well aware of the prayer beads, though he refuses to admit it. And he denies any particular interest in Saint Philomena.”

“The chaplet was the only item in his room that related to Philomena, was it, Monty?”

“As far as I could see, yes.”

Mike said: “So that reinforces the impression that the Philomena reference is about someone else.”

“Right. The only other reference I saw to a saint was a little drawing of Saint Charles. Whoever he is.”

“What did the drawing look like?”

“It depicted the saint spinning in his grave. Somebody in one of the schola classes apparently announced that he or she had heard enough
of Palestrina. Sacrilege, in the opinion of Robin and the saint.”

“Well now, that would be Charles Borromeo. Sixteenth-century Italian saint. A contemporary, and a champion, of Palestrina. Charles is a particular favourite of clergymen, including Pope John XXIII! If my memory isn’t fooling me, it seems to me Pope John arranged to have his papal coronation on the feast day of Saint Charles.”

“So this saint might be associated in some minds with John XXIII, who set in motion the Second Vatican Council.”

“Now I wouldn’t be reading too much into that, Monty. Any more than I’d suspect you because Saint Charles was a lawyer!”

Chapter 7

Omnes sancti Sacerdotes et Levitæ, orate pro nobis.
Omnes sancti Monachi et Eremitæ, orate pro nobis.
Sancta Cæcilia, ora pro nobis
.
All ye holy priests and Levites, pray for us.
All ye holy monks and hermits, pray for us.
Saint Cecilia, pray for us.
— “Litany of the Saints”

“What are you looking at, Bleier?”

“Is this the part of the movie where I am to be beaten by your fists, Logan? Or shot with a pistol? It seems I have looked at you in the wrong way; we all know what happens to those who do that.”

“I’m glad you find things so funny here. Which leads me to the obvious question: what are you doing here, Bleier?”

“I am an invited guest.”

We all were. I had joined Brennan and a few people from the schola for lunch Wednesday at the Gondola on South Street. We had just ordered our meal, and received our drinks, when Kurt Bleier walked in and drew the ire of William Logan.

“You know goddamn well what I mean,
Colonel
. Why are you at a school for traditional Catholic music? You know, that just doesn’t compute for me.”

“I might ask you the same question, Mr. Logan. What attracts you to such a traditional Catholic program? Did you not leave the church many years ago?”

“I never left! I am a Catholic! I am now living in the lay state and
I have my disagreements with the church, sure. But why am I answering to you? If you had your way, there would be no church. No religion. No belief in —”

“If you had your way, Mr. Logan, what kind of church would there be?”

“What the hell do you mean by that?”

“Just a question. What kind of church would you like to see?”

“I don’t see how that’s any of your business, considering how you guys worked to suppress religion at every turn.”

“On the contrary. You will find that in the German Democratic Republic, the church was left largely to its own devices, as long as it —”

“As long as it toed the party line!”

“How could it do that? If, as you suggest, the party line was atheistic materialism, a church that toed the line would hardly be a church. And yet Christianity survived in democratic Germany. In fact, churchmen were always free to practise their faith.”

“Free! Your system is the very antithesis of freedom. You would have liked nothing more than to overthrow the government of the United States, the very Land of the Free. What are you smirking at, Brennan? You think this is funny? Come to think of it, you never were actually Americanized, were you? You in your little Irish ghetto in New York. But this isn’t about you. This is about Colonel Bleier and his late, lamented commie state, where nobody even had the freedom to take a piss without checking with the party first.”

“Freedom is a mantra for you Americans, I realize,” Bleier replied. “But what I see in America is freedom run amok. When it comes to the point where the citizens are free to buy guns at will and kill each other with them, have you not taken freedom beyond its logical extreme? Are you not on your way towards a society in which the freedom of the unarmed will be trampled by those who are armed with weapons, where you will not be free to step outside your house without the fear of being attacked?”

“I’m glad you mentioned killing, Kurt. That goes back to my original question. Why are you here? How many religious institutions have you attended in your life? Besides whichever ones you infiltrated so you could spy on them, I mean. Is this the first time you were struck with the inspiration to go to church? Did this inspiration
coincide, by any chance, with the fact that Reinhold Schellenberg was coming here? A fellow German, who no doubt opposed everything you stood for and tried to do?”

“Were you not in opposition to Reinhold Schellenberg yourself, Mr. Logan? Did he not represent a retrenchment to a position for the church that you could not abide?”

“Are
you
accusing
me
of Schellenberg’s murder?”

“Pardon my poor manners. I thought for a moment you were making the same accusation against me. Without any evidence or grounds on which to do so.”

An uneasy truce was established, and peace reigned. Until I got to my office. I walked in to find one of my criminal clients badgering our receptionist about my absence. He was looming over the reception desk, and Darlene was clearly uncomfortable.

“What’s the trouble, Duane? Move away from the desk.”

“I’ll stand wherever I fucking well want to, Collins.”

“Darlene, maybe you’d like to go for your coffee break now.”

“Well, I —”

“Go ahead.” When she was out of harm’s way, I said: “All right, Duane. Let’s have a seat and see what’s bothering you today.”

“You’re never fucking here when I want you. I got a trial coming up, remember?”

“I do remember. All you have to do is make an appointment and I’ll be here. As it happens, I have a file full of copies of letters I’ve written to you, asking you for names of witnesses and other information I need for your defence. I’ve called you and left messages. You never call, you never write. You’re the one who’s going to jail if I can’t put on a decent defence, but I need help from you —”

“If I go to jail, Collins, you die the fucking minute I get out. Hear me? So you get to work on my case and do a good job on it. Or you’re dead. Got it?”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw someone come into the reception room. I heard the person pick up the phone and punch in some numbers. I heard a man’s voice, one of my partners. “Yes, I’d like to
report a criminal offence. Uttering a threat. I’m calling from the Stratton Sommers law office on Barrington Street …” Duane bolted from the room.

So we dealt with that. Once again, I had made myself unpopular not only with a client but with my fellow lawyers at Stratton Sommers. Not everyone looked kindly on the addition of a criminal law department — me — to this long-established corporate law firm.

“Who was it who said: ‘Let’s kill all the lawyers’?”

I had decided to absent myself from the office after the uproar with Duane. Something with a little more tone, like a lecture by a visiting professor on the counterpoint of Johann Sebastian Bach, was a fine corrective. I stayed in the classroom after the lecture and regaled Brennan with the tale about Duane.

“‘Kill all the lawyers,’” he repeated. “I’m sure that’s been said in every part of the world, in every age.”

“Thanks, Burke. But some of us do the work of the angels. Not to blow my own trumpet, of course, but …”

“But what?”

“Nothing. I was fishing for a compliment. Hoping you’d butt in and assure me I’m doing good works. Mike O’Flaherty even came up with a saint who was a lawyer. Can’t remember the name.”

“Could be any of a number of people. There were many lawyer saints.”

“There’s hope for me yet. This guy was the patron saint of Pope John XXIII, or no, John was crowned on this saint’s feast day. Saint Charles somebody.”

“Must be Carlo Borromeo.”

“Yes, that’s him.”

“One of those many and varied instances you’re talking about, where somebody said: ‘Let’s kill all the lawyers.’”

“Why do you say that?”

“Somebody tried to do him in.”

“What?”

“There was a plot to assassinate him. They shot him while he was
kneeling at the altar, saying evening prayers with members of his household. He commended himself to God and instructed the others to finish their prayers. But he survived the attempt and lived for another fifteen years.”

“This happened during evening prayers. As in our case of an attack during vespers. Who tried to kill him?”

“A group of nasty priors.”

“Priors?”

“High-ranking monks.”

“Why?”

“He tried to rein them in, I suppose. Reform their order.”

“Which order was it?”

“They were called the
Umiliati
. I don’t know much more than that.”

“Well, try to know a bit more about it next time we speak!” “Monty, if someone here is devoted to Charles Borromeo, who was the victim — not the perpetrator — of an assassination attempt, chances are the fellow would take a dim view of those who try to pick off members of the clergy. There’s no reason to think he’d take up arms against them. That would be like saying a devotee of Saint Thomas Aquinas would suddenly try to imitate the actions of his brothers in abducting him, holding him captive, and sending a hooker into his room. It doesn’t make sense to think —”

“What? What are you talking about now?”

“Don’t you know the history of Saint Thomas?”

“I know something about his times, and his thought, but what’s this about a hooker?”

“Thomas’s family — they were nobility, with a military history and royal connections — had become resigned to the fact that Thomas’s future lay with the church. So they tried to make the best of it. They paved the way for him to become a monk and then, eventually, the abbot of Monte Cassino. But Thomas was having none of it. He was determined to become one of the Begging Friars, in the new order founded by Saint Dominic. Well! The fur was flying when he brought this news home. Not long afterwards, when Thomas was travelling on a road near Rome, he was waylaid by his furious brothers, who seized him and locked him up in a castle. They sent in a painted hussy to
tempt him. He put the run to her and settled down to his life’s work.”

“And here I thought all this ecclesiastical mayhem was an aberration! We could have wild-eyed, murderous factions on all sides of this and never penetrate to the truth.”

“It doesn’t admit of an obvious solution.”

“Borromeo was a favourite saint of John XXIII,” I mused aloud. “And our victim, Father Schellenberg, was active in the Council set up by John in the sixties. But then he turned against John. So —”

“Who said he turned against John? Don’t forget, Pope John died just eight months after convening the Council; it went on for another two years after his death. It’s just as likely Schellenberg thought the changes in the church, as far as they went, would have offended John had he lived to see them. So he may have thought he was being true to John’s legacy by backtracking in his positions. You can’t take this train of thought to any logical end.”

“So it seems. What are you going to do now?”

“Try to compose a few suitable bars of music for my Mass.”

“Good luck with it.”

“I’ll need it. See you later.”

He headed for the auditorium, and I started for the exit. Michael O’Flaherty and Fred Mills were chatting in the doorway.

“Did you know Father Mills played baseball in the major leagues, Monty?” Michael asked.

“I heard that. The Royals, was it, Fred?”

“That’s right.”

“When did you play?”

“Mid-seventies.”

“With George Brett and Amos Otis!”

“Yeah, them and Mayberry and Patek. I taught them everything they know!”

“What position did you play?”

“Second base. If you watched the games on television, you probably saw a lot of Cookie Rojas on second. But if you kept watching, you’d see me once in a while.”

“And he had a pretty nice batting average,” Michael put in. “What was it, Fred?”

“It was .281.”

“Good for you. Must have been hard to leave it behind.”

“Well, yeah, but I knew I had a vocation, Monty. Brennan thinks I should have stayed on, and become a major league baseball chaplain or something.”

“You could have heard their confessions.”

“Didn’t have to — I was on the road with them!”

“Some wild times, I’ll bet.”

“Not for me.”

“Well, I should be off,” I said. “Suppertime.”