Cecilian Vespers (37 page)

“All right. Who else is on our list? Do you have Saint Andrew Avellino there?”

Normie looked as if she had just been given a D on her math exam. “No! I kept looking but he’s not here.”

“No problem,” I assured her. “We know a bit about him already. Do you have Saint Charles Borromeo?”

“No.” She shook her head, and looked as if she might burst into tears.

“It’s okay, sweetheart. We didn’t expect you to have every holy card in the world. We know Saint Charles was shot by a member of a society, the
Umiliati
, who resented his reforms. The attempt took place while he was praying at the altar. He survived for another fifteen years, then died of a fever. Andrew Avellino was Borromeo’s friend. Andrew was attacked by a crowd of people who resented
his
efforts at reform.” I turned to Burke. “He was attacked by the johns he booted out of the convent-brothel in Naples.”

“Funny how that stuck in your puerile mind.”

“I’ll bet it stuck in yours too.”

“It did.”

“A reformer, a lawyer who committed perjury, a priest — Andrew must have died of exhaustion.”

“He suffered a stroke while celebrating Mass and died soon afterwards.”

“Borromeo is admired by Brother Robin, and Andrew by Enrico
Sferrazza-Melchiorre. Who else have we got?”

Normie shuffled the deck as if one more bad card would cost her the house. Then she found the ace of spades. “Cecilia! You asked for her, and here she is!”

“Of course! Thank you, sweetheart. Her feast day is November 22, day of the murder.”

“Here you go.” Normie passed the card to Burke.

“All they show here is the sculpture in the Catacomb of St. Callixtus in Rome. The figure of a young girl, carved in white marble, lying on her side; you can see a cut on her neck. We know her killers tried to drown or suffocate her in her bath, then tried to cut her head off …” Burke’s voice trailed away as he looked at my little girl, her eyes as big as butterscotch pie plates.

“Attempted decapitation,” I responded, “as was the case with Father Schellenberg. It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the killer was trying to re-enact Cecilia’s death.”

“Patron saint of church musicians. Everyone at the schola would be keen on her, I’m thinking. Of course a couple of our suspects have no saintly devotions at all, namely Kurt Bleier and Billy Logan.”

“From my own observations, Brennan, and from our researches in Rome, I’d say the ex-Father Logan is more attached to Holy Mother Church than he lets on.”

“No doubt.”

“All right. Back to the holy dead. We mustn’t forget Saint Reinhold himself,” I said, “beaten to death by masons. And Saint John Vianney.”

“I’ve got him!” Normie exclaimed. “Right here!” She waved his card in our faces. John was shown with long white hair and a kindly face; he was vested as a priest and had a halo around his head.

Brennan looked at the card. “The great confessor and patron saint of priests.”

“Isn’t there another one who’s patron saint of priests?”

“There are many, but Saint John is a particular favourite. What does it say about his death, Stormie?”

“Another one who died of natural causes.” She gave the appearance of one who was letting down the side.

“Fred Mills is devoted to him,” Brennan said, “but I don’t think we
have to spend much time wringing our hands about Fred.”

“Why not?”

“He doesn’t have a motive.”

“He doesn’t have an alibi.”

“Not one of them has an alibi, Monty. They didn’t all kill him.” “That is probably a safe assumption,” I agreed, with only the slightest lawyerly reservation. They may indeed all have killed him. But it was unlikely.

“Who else?” I asked. “Philomena, obviously, since it was a Philomena chaplet I found in Robin’s room. Normie, did you —”

“I have a card for Philomena! I’ll read it to you. ‘Philomena’s death was extraordinary even when measured against the bizarre torments suffered by other saints. The Roman Emperor Dio — Dioc —’ How do you say this?”

I looked at the text on the card. “Diocletian.”

“He wanted to marry her but she refused, saying she had promised to be the bride of Christ. The emperor had her scourged — What’s that mean?”

Burke gave me a look across the table. “It means they hit her with something,” I said.

“They were really rough in those days! Like those police in Germany back in the 1970s. I’m glad I wasn’t around then.”

“This was even before the dark ages of the 1970s.”

“Way back,” she agreed. “Anyway, then they tied her to an anchor to be drowned in the Tiber River. There’s a legend that angels cut the rope, the anchor fell, and she was transported up to the bank. The soldiers then shot her with arrows! Again she was saved by heavenly in — inter — intervention. Then they —”

I gently slid the card away from her and read the rest of the gruesome tale to myself. They tried heated arrows on her, but the arrows miraculously turned back and killed the archers. Finally, the emperor had her head cut off. I stared at the card, at the image of a young girl with long dark hair crowned with a circlet of flowers. In her left hand she held a bouquet; in her right she clasped a sinister collection of items: a scourge, an anchor, an arrow.

Anchor. Arrow. The swizzle stick and valentine cards left on Father Schellenberg’s body, after the killer tried to cut off his head.

“It was the death of Saint Philomena that was being re-enacted!”

Burke’s eyes were riveted to the card. Normie looked from one to the other of us, and stayed silent.

When I recovered, I said: “We don’t know of any devotions to Saint Philomena on the part of our suspects. She’s the patron saint of what?” I consulted the card. “Priests, babies, children, sickness, lost causes, desperate causes — I see as well that there are miraculous cures attributed to her. We’re getting there. I know it.”

Normie couldn’t hold it in: “Did I help you solve the murder?”

“You may have, Normie. Your work has given us something we didn’t know before. And I think it’s something important.”

“Wow! Wait till I tell — No, it’s a secret. I know that.”

Brennan turned to me. “The Saint Philomena chaplet. Someone put it in Brother Robin’s room, with the note saying ‘let me grieve with you.’”

“That story Robin told us about his sister, a young girl who died of some sort of disease or infection in Africa. Does somebody think Robin blames Philomena for failing to save the sister? Could anyone’s mind work like that?”

“You tell me. You defend murderers for a living. How do their minds work?”

“I defend people
accused
of murder, Brennan,” I replied. “But let’s get back to Robin. There was nothing like this in his statement to the police; it dealt with Schellenberg and the changes after Vatican II.”

“He’s led us around in circles,” Brennan said, “and I’m sure in his own mind, he has his reasons for all this daft behaviour.”

“The heart has its reasons, which reason knows not of.”

“True enough. It was my understanding that Robin didn’t do it. But now, seeing this, I don’t know what to think.”

“Somebody knows,” I interjected. “Somebody put that chaplet and note under his door. And we know Enrico’s fingerprints were on the note, along with Robin’s.”

“Let’s pay a visit to Enrico again.”

But Enrico only shrugged once again when we called upon him that night, and denied having anything to do with the note.

“Your prints were on it, Enrico.”

“I cannot explain.”

“But you must realize this puts you in a very difficult position.”

“I did not see this note. What kind of a note was it?”

“It was a piece of paper torn from a larger sheet of writing paper, and it said:
“Fac me tecum plangere.”

“Perhaps this was writing paper that I had touched. But how can I know if I have never seen it?”

“I can tell you it was beautiful marbled paper. Probably quite costly.”

Sferrazza-Melchiorre leaned over and opened a drawer in his desk. “This paper?”

It was a pad of marbled paper matching the one on which the note had been written.

“Exactly like that.”

He shrugged again. “My paper. My fingerprints.”

“Now we’re getting somewhere. Did anyone borrow this, or take a sheet from it?”

“I do not know. Perhaps someone did.”

“Who was in your room?”

“Many of the people here at the schola. I cannot say who. Or, to be more correct, I cannot say who was not in here.”

Great.

I retrieved my pictures from the one-hour photo place on Tuesday and headed straight to the T-shirt shop in Scotia Square, where I handed over the ANGELICVM picture and ordered a shirt for Normie. Then I sifted through the other snapshots. There was St. Philomena’s Oratorio. The plaque containing the lengthy write-up of the building’s history was perfectly legible in the photo, so I drove to the rectory. Burke was in, and he took out a pair of half-glasses, perched them on his nose, and swiftly translated the Italian text.

“In 1908, the parish priest of St. Bona,
Don
Natale Reginato,
decided to create a tangible sign of his devotion to the holy virgin and martyr Filomena, whose cult had become popular around the middle of the nineteenth century, following the wondrous recovery of the Curé d’Ars, San Giovanni Maria Vianney, thanks also to —”

“Vianney!” I interrupted. He looked at me over his reading glasses and waited. “A connection between Saint John Vianney and Philomena. We have the Philomena chaplet placed in Brother Robin’s room with the note attached. Which one of your students is devoted to Saint John? Fred Mills. A connection between Fred and Robin?”

Burke did not reply.

“What else did you just read there? Let me see it. The ‘
guarigione prodigiosa
.’ What’s that again?”

“The wondrous recovery. Saint John must have been cured of something dire, and attributed the cure to Saint Philomena.”

“So. Sickness and cure. Robin’s sister died of illness. No cure there. Would someone maintain a devotion to a saint who fell down on the job? ‘My saint came through for me,’ or ‘my saint let me down.’ Would any rational person think in such crass terms, haggling with the supernatural?”

“People do it every day, Monty. ‘Dear God, if you cure me of this liver ailment, I promise I’ll never let a drop of whiskey touch my lips again.’”

“I know, I know. But I can’t figure out what point the sender of the chaplet was trying to make with Robin. I’m way out of my league here, Brennan.”

“We all are, Monty. You saw the butchery visited upon Reinhold Schellenberg. Don’t expect the killer’s motivations to make sense to you.”

“True. Well, I’d like to find out where the chaplet came from. I know of only one religious supply shop in town.”

F.X. McMurtry Ecclesiastical Supplies was an obscure little place tucked in between two antiques shops on Agricola Street in the north end of Halifax. Red and blue votive candles flickered in the left-hand window; a plaster statue of the Virgin Mary oversaw a collection of rosaries on
the right. There was an elderly man presiding at the counter.

“Good afternoon, sir. Major day out there.”

“Beautiful,” I agreed. “I’m wondering whether you might have any medals of Saint Philomena.”

“Not likely, but I’ll check.”

He pulled out a drawer and rummaged in it. “What do you know? We’ve still got one.” He held it out to me in shaking fingers; before I could grab it, the medal fell out of his hand.

“Poor old Philly. Dropped again. Sorry, my hands are a little shaky. Doctor says there’s not much to be done except I shouldn’t fill my teacup to the top.” He bent down behind the counter and retrieved the medal. “Here you go.”

“Thanks.” I looked it over but didn’t gain any insight from the tiny piece of metal. “Have you had anyone else asking about Philomena in recent weeks? I’m thinking of a chaplet I saw, with red and white beads. Did you sell one of those?”

“I don’t remember selling one, but we had a table of leftover items. If someone purchased a chaplet along with some other things from the table, I would not have noticed.”

“I’m going to show you some pictures, if you wouldn’t mind, and I’d like to know whether you remember any of these people coming into the shop.”

“Okay.”

I brought out photos of Sferrazza-Melchiorre, Logan, Ford, Petrucci, Mills, and Bleier, although I didn’t seriously imagine the East German cop had given the British monk a chaplet of an ancient Roman saint. It was all for nought anyway; the proprietor didn’t recognize any of them.

“Sorry I can’t help you. This must be about the murdered theologian.”

“Yes, it is. My name is Monty Collins. I’m the lawyer for the schola cantorum, and I’m doing a bit of detective work.”

“Good luck!”

“I’m going to need it. You may be able to tell me something about this: apparently, Saint John Vianney was devoted to Philomena, something about a miraculous recovery?”

“The way I heard it, it was his friend, not John himself, who was
cured of a hopeless disease. But John had a well-known devotion to Philomena. He called her the ‘new light of the church militant.’ Pope Pius X, himself canonized as a saint, named Saint John Vianney the patron of something called the Universal Archconfraternity of Saint Philomena. I won’t define that for you, but you get the picture. John and Philomena were an item. Never mind that they were separated by fifteen centuries of history! Though I suppose they’re together now.”

I wondered then about something he had said. “What did you mean a minute ago, ‘dropped again’? Did something happen to her medal, or a statue?”

“Don’t you know?” I shook my head. “She got dumped from the calendar of saints.”

“So that means what? She’s no longer a saint?”

“No, it’s not quite that bad. But she’s no longer publicly commemorated in the liturgy of the church. She doesn’t have a feast day anymore. She hasn’t been decanonized, and people can still maintain their devotions to her. But she took a hit, no question.”

“Fans of Philomena and John Vianney must have been upset.”

“I suppose so, yes.”