Cecilian Vespers (34 page)

Pope John, who knew our murder victim before and during the Vatican Council, was heavy, round, kind, and good-humoured, as his photograph attested. He was born Angelo Roncalli, in northern Italy in 1881. He was third in a farming family of thirteen children. He was quoted as saying: “There are three ways of ruining oneself: women, gambling and farming. My father chose the most boring.” Roncalli entered the seminary at the age of twelve and continued his education until he spent a year in the army as a volunteer. He returned to his studies and received his doctorate in theology. Roncalli was ordained in 1904. He gained an understanding of the working classes, taught in a seminary, then served in the medical and chaplaincy corps in the army during World War I.”

The First War. I thought of the holes in the wall of the Oratorio of St. Philomena, from the grenade that exploded during the war. It reminded me that I had not yet dropped my photos off to be printed. I had taken a picture of the plaque setting out the history of the oratorio. I got out my Schellenberg notebook and wrote: “Take film in.”

I read the rest of Roncalli’s biography: his ascension to the throne of Peter in 1958, and his convening of the Council in 1962.

“One more thing before I go, Mike. Those papers we brought back from Schellenberg’s room in the monastery.”

“Oh, yes.”

“Brennan thought it might be prudent for you and me to go through them ourselves before we provide them to the police or to anyone else. Get a sneak preview, not that I’m expecting anything that will enable us to wrap up the case. But we’d like to know, right? Because if we hand them over to anybody else, we’ll never know for sure what was in them.”

“Right! Sort of like being the first archaeologists on the dig.”

“Exactly. So I’ve put them in a locked conference room at my law office, and you can go in there and look through them privately whenever you have time.”

“Good plan.”

“Just call me at Stratton Sommers when you want to start. You have my number.”

“Yes, I do. You’ll be hearing from me soon, and I hope I find something revealing!”

When I returned to the office, I found a message from one Normie Collins. I dialled the familiar number, and my daughter picked it up on the first ring.

“Hello?”

“May I speak to Miss Collins please?”

“Daddy, it’s me!”

“Hello, sweetheart. I know it’s you. I got your message.”

“Mummy says you have a job for me to do, on the murder case.”

“That’s right. I need a bit of research done.”

“Okay.”

“You have a collection of holy cards, pictures of angels and saints with little write-ups about their lives.”

“I have tons of them. The ones I got from Father Burke, some other ones I got at the church fair, and a whole whack from Auntie Margaret when we were in Cape Breton.”

“Perfect. Have you got a pen and paper there?”

“Just a minute.” The receiver banged against the kitchen wall, then she was back. “I’ve got a pencil and paper.”

“Could you look through your collection and see if you have any cards for these saints: Cecilia, Charles Borromeo, Andrew Avellino, Philomena, Joan of Arc, Clare, and John Vianney.” I spelled out the names that could be confusing.

“Joan of Arc! I know about her. They set her on fire!”

“Yes, they did. And unfortunately, that’s what I want you to concentrate on: how they all died. It’s a pretty gruesome assignment, so if you’d rather not —”

“I want to do it!”

“All right, dolly. I’ll leave you to it. Thank you!”

“You’re welcome, Daddy.”

Ulrike, the young receptionist at the Göttingen Gasthaus, was engaged in a lively conversation in German with Kurt Bleier when I arrived there after work. They were sharing a laugh over an article in
Der Spiegel
. There was merriment in his eyes when he turned to me. “Ah,
Guten Abend, Herr
Collins.”

“
Guten Abend
, Colonel Bleier. Could I have a quick word with you?”

“I am at your service, Mr. Collins. A word about what?”

“Chess.”

“Do you play?”

“I don’t, but I know you do. And so did Father Schellenberg.” “Come up to my room.”

The room had an elaborately carved dark wood bedstead and an even more elaborate cuckoo clock on the wall. We sat in two chairs facing each other across a small table.

“Yes, Reinhold Schellenberg and I enjoyed a few matches together before he was butchered.” His voice faltered and he looked away from me. He was silent for a few moments before saying: “I hope you will soon make progress in finding his killer. Do investigations always move so slowly in your country?”

“Not always. But in this case we must be dealing with a very clever, cool-headed killer. It is trite to say it must be someone who had a connection with him in the past.”

“Obviously.”

“Well, it’s not one hundred percent certain, of course. Father Schellenberg could have set off something in the mind of a fragile personality, causing that person to snap. But, if that’s the case, why has the fragile personality held up so well throughout the investigation? I’m leaning more towards a cold, methodical type of person as the killer.”

“It is hard to miss the inference that you are directing your comments to me. Do you find me cold and methodical?”

Not entirely
, I thought, picturing the light-hearted banter between him and Ulrike downstairs. But I said: “I would imagine a police officer in a large European city, particularly one with the history of Berlin, would have to be methodical and cool under fire.”

“So you think I slaughtered Reinhold Schellenberg in the most
brutal fashion?” Bleier’s voice rose in pitch and volume. “Then stayed around to dance on his grave? Why would you think this of me?”

“Why don’t you explain the notes that were concealed in the chess-board?”

“I don’t know of any notes.”

“I think you do.”

“I do not.”

“Aren’t you curious about them?”

“I have just learned of them now. Tell me about them.”

“Did that chessboard belong to your father?”

That struck a nerve; he was unable to hide it. But he brazened it out. “That chessboard belonged to Reinhold Schellenberg. Or I assume it did. It was of German manufacture. He brought it with him when he came here.”

“You’re saying you didn’t bring it yourself?”

“I did not see it until he produced it after his arrival.”

“And you immediately began to play together.”

“Immediately? I don’t know. He may have played with others before me. I did not give the matter any thought.”

“Do you really expect me to believe you did not know Schellenberg before arriving here?”

“I have already told you what I knew, and did not know, of Schellenberg. I may have met him in Germany. I know he was detained by the police in Berlin, then released. I did not see him in custody. And, Mr. Collins, I had no reason — none at all — to want the man dead.”

“Did your wife have a reason to want him dead?”

“My
wife
? What are you saying?”

“I remember hearing some time ago that Dr. Silkowski had run afoul of the authorities. I took that to mean, not the state authorities, because that would have been you, but the church authorities. Reinhold Schellenberg went through quite a period of retrenchment with respect to church doctrine, or at least church practice. Was he one of the authorities she offended?”

“As far as I know he was not sitting in judgement of my wife.”

“Why did you rent a car and then return it?”

“That is a two-part question. Why did I rent a car? To orient myself in the city. Why did I return it? Because I am a retired
policeman, not a rich man. I could afford to take the car for two weeks because they offered a special rate for two weeks.”

“Did you have any trouble getting used to it?”

“What do you mean?”

“Hitting the wrong controls, for instance.”

“Not that I recall. I am an experienced driver. Now, do you have any more questions, or may I proceed with my evening?”

“No more questions for now, Colonel. Open or closed?” I asked when I reached the door.

“Close it, please. I have some thinking to do, and I do that better without distractions.”

Michael O’Flaherty turned up after morning Mass the next day, eager to start going through Reinhold Schellenberg’s papers. It wasn’t long before he was at my office door. “Monty! I found something that may have a bearing on the case. Or, it may not of course, but —”

“What is it, Mike?”

“Well, it seems yer man was a bit of a wag. And perhaps somebody didn’t appreciate his sense of humour! There’s a set of limericks about the saints, scribbled on three pieces of hotel stationery. The Daphne and Steven Hotel in London! And there’s a note stapled to them in German and I can’t decipher it at all.”

“Let’s have a look.”

We went into the conference room and Mike shoved the pages into my hand. A series of limericks was hand-printed in ink, possibly a fountain pen, in block letters. The lines appeared to have been printed in haste. A few words were smeared with a brownish stain, and I wondered if thepoems had been copied down during a party in the hotel, or in the bar. I read aloud from the sheets:

There was a young man from Aquino
A student of Monte Cassino.
A temptress was sent,
Or should we say lent,
By his family, the Houseof Aquino.

A handsome young man, Avellino,
Was troubled like Thomas Aquino
By the naughty behaviour
Of nuns of the Saviour.
He sent them away, Avellino.

His friend, the great Charles Borromeo,
While praying the Gloria Deo
Was attacked by a mob
Who, thank God, botched the job
And Saint Carlo continued to pray-oh.

“Here’s a bunch of saints I’ve never heard of. Notburga, Botolph, Odo. They may have been considered martyrs just for going through life with those names. Oh, here we go, something more familiar. You must have appreciated this one, Mike:

Sure, Patrick and Dymphna and Kevin
Ensure there is Guinness in Heaven.
And Camillus de Lellis,
So they do tell us,
Is still rolling the dice for a seven.

“Camillus must have been a gambler.”

“I believe so, yes.”

“I don’t recognize any of the other saints’ names. How about you, Michael?”

“Some are unknown to me. But the ones we’re interested in are the ones admired by our suspects.”

“That’s right. This sounds like something composed by a bunch of people sitting around a table. It seems harmless enough to me. What do you think, as a priest?”

“It doesn’t seem particularly offensive to me, but I suppose if someone were very devoted to a saint and heard him or her being slagged, especially by a prominent member of the church, it could set the person off. This would have been in Schellenberg’s more liberal days. It makes him sound like a smart-aleck.”

Attached to the limericks was a note in German. It had obviously been produced on a computer. There was no signature. I read the note aloud to Mike, translating it roughly as I went along: “My dear Schellenberg. You have shown yourself to be a scholar and a wit. I imagine in my mind the sneers and laughter that greeted your beer-fuelled recitation. You wear the vestments of a priest and the honours of a theologian, yet I ask myself whether you are a Catholic. Would a Catholic denigrate the saints and martyrs in this way? And mock their suffering? Many names have been reviled, but one is missing. But, of course, it would not be there! Thanks to
him
and now, I learn, to
you
! Pray for forgiveness. Father.”

“Well!” O’Flaherty exclaimed. “Somebody’s unhappy with him!”

“We already knew that, Mike.”

“Em, yes, of course, but now we have something in our hands that may lead to the killer’s identity. Do you suppose the ‘Father’ at the end was a signature, or was the person calling Schellenberg ‘Father?’”

“I was thinking the latter, and that he separated it from the preceding sentence for emphasis. There’s something stilted about the writing, and I think there are a couple of errors in it. I’m not sure. We’ll run it by Brennan. My impression, though, is that the writer of the note is not a native speaker of German.”

“That leaves out Colonel Bleier, but it wouldn’t be him anyway; he’d hardly be giving out to Schellenberg about mocking the saints of the Catholic Church.”

“Right. But it could be any of the other people we have in our sights. The note writer says this is something Schellenberg recited, possibly in the bar of this hotel or at a party in one of the rooms. My guess is someone else jotted down what he said. Somehow it came into the hands of the person who wrote the note. Let’s see if we can reach the Daphne and Steven Hotel. Find out if they remember a gathering of limerick-spouting theologians.”

Calls to directory assistance in London got us nowhere; there was apparently no hotel by that name. But we found the number of a tourist accommodation service and spoke to a young woman with a thick Cockney accent. She informed us that the Daphne and Steven had been made over into the Chichester Suites in 1967.

“So Schellenberg’s beery performance took place before 1967. The
accompanying note in German was done on a computer, so it was written years after the verses. Was Schellenberg ever known as a drinker?”

“Oh, now, I never heard that about the man,” O’Flaherty replied. “I did hear that he liked the occasional pint of beer and a feed of good German sausage. And he travelled quite widely in his earlier days.”

“Do we know when Robin Gadkin-Falkes went into the monastery?”

“I believe it was in the late 1960s. I’m thinking 1969.”

“That sounds right.”

“Let’s go through this again and see who he slagged,” O’Flaherty said, taking the papers from my hands. “The only ones on our list are Andrew Avellino and Charles Borromeo.”

“Saints Andrew and Charles. They were friends, Brennan told me. Enrico Sferrazza-Melchiorre is devoted to Andrew, and Robin to Charles. That accounts for two of our suspects, but someone might have been offended by any mockery of the saints, no matter which saints were named. And there could be something else. The note says: ‘one is missing, thanks to him’ — an unnamed third person — and to Schellenberg himself, apparently. I wonder who ‘him’ is. And who is ‘missing’? But we’ll work with what we have. Enrico or Robin might well have been moved to write this note in protest. We’ll have to find out how much German they know.”