Cecilian Vespers (8 page)

“But, as I say, it could have been from somewhere else. And I couldn’t catch the gist of it anyway.”

“Was it English?”

She looked up from petting the dog. “I don’t know. I didn’t even think about it. I’m sorry.”

“That’s all right. So then what happened? You had your walk and went back to your car?”

“Yes, I heard the voices when I passed the church the first time. We had our walk around. Dewey found an injured seagull farther down the hill so that occupied him for a while. Then we returned to the car.”

“How long were you there, do you think?”

“Twenty minutes maybe.”

“What time was this?”

“Three, three-thirty or so.”

“And you didn’t see anything unusual around the church on your second pass by.”

She shook her head. “No, just got in the car and started for home. I nearly got hit, but that could happen anywhere.”

“Nearly got hit by —”

“Another car in the parking lot. I had just backed out of my space and was getting ready to leave the lot. He pulled out in front of me. I guess he didn’t see me, with the sun in his eyes. And the wipers flapping.”

“Wipers?”

“Yes, it was funny. The sun was so bright, it reflected off his wind-shield when he pulled out. That’s probably why he didn’t see me driving out of the lot. He was in a hurry and for some reason he had his windshield wipers on.”

“Maybe he was cleaning the windshield.”

“I don’t think so. It was a nice, clean car. And he didn’t have the water spraying or anything like that. Just had his bright lights and his wipers on, in the blinding sun!” She shrugged. “But we didn’t collide. No harm done. I got Dewey home and fixed him a nice supper after his outing.”

“Thanks, then, Mrs. MacIntyre. I appreciate your speaking with me.”

“Sorry I couldn’t be more helpful.”

“That’s quite all right.”

I gave Dewey a pat on the head on my way out.

I called Brennan after work the next day, Tuesday, gave him a quick précis of my talk with Clara MacIntyre, and asked him how we should approach the people we had come to regard as suspects.

“Let’s start with the least likely, simply because I know where he is right now.”

“Who is it? Why do you say ‘least likely’?”

“Because I’ve known him for years. Fred Mills. The schola is finished for the day, so who knows where the others are. Which makes me ask myself — not for the first time — why the person guilty of the murder would stay around.”

“Because to leave would immediately cast the person in a suspicious light. I know a couple of students left the program — it was in the police notes Mike gave me — but they were people who had been on the Peggy’s Cove bus trip, so they were above suspicion. The guilty party feels he has to stick around in order to look innocent, but he must find it agonizing to do so.”

“He or she.”

“Right. And the person may also feel compelled to monitor events as they unfold here, see how the case against Brother Robin holds up. Who knows? Anyway, let’s go find your ‘least likely’ suspect.”

“Fred said he was going to watch the children rehearse for the Christmas pageant, so let’s meet up with him there. This is no doubt the first time in his exemplary life that Freddy will have been asked for his alibi.”

“Maybe so, but we have to check him off the list.”

The rehearsal was taking place in the basement of St. Bernadette’s Church. Breeze block walls were painted a glossy beige, the floor was a streaky brown, blue, and cream-patterned linoleum, there was a small stage at one end and a kitchen at the other; the room could not be anything other than a church basement. We were nearly knocked off our feet by a little boy with a white and green hotel towel on his head, a shepherd’s crook wielded like a sabre in his hand. He looked up in alarm at Burke and kept on running. Then we were hailed by a trim, athletic-looking man in his mid-thirties, with cropped blond
hair and the handsome, friendly face of an all-American boy. He wore a tan cardigan over his clerical shirt and collar. He waved us over to a row of grey metal folding chairs, where the audience would be sitting on the big night.

“Monty Collins, Father Fred Mills. Fred was a student of mine at the seminary in upstate New York.”

“Lucky you!” I exclaimed.

“You should have known him in those days,” Mills said. “Before he mellowed with age.”

“Let me see if I have this right. You knew a version of Brennan Burke that was less mellow than he is now and yet you willingly came to see him again.”

“I’m not the only one. Even Billy Logan showed up. Bill was teaching at the sem when Brennan arrived there,” Fred explained to me. “I sent Bill the schola’s brochure with an invitation to sign up, tongue-in-cheek. And he’s here! Well, have a seat. The drama is about to begin.”

It couldn’t hurt to catch a bit of the show. The alibi would hold for a few minutes longer, if it held at all. A young woman stood beside a cardboard replica of a stable. She called a blue-veiled girl and brown-blanketed boy to their places. “Kayla, come sit by the manger. Zachary, stand beside her. Beside her! Don’t be shy.” The blessed couple moved into place, as half a dozen shepherds abided in the fields of linoleum.

The names were new — in my day, Mary and Joseph were Mary Eileen and Timmy — but otherwise there was nothing new under the sun. Or was there?

The woman stood to the side, opened her Bible, and began to read: “The king, the one who they called Augustus, made a rule that there would be a numbering of all the world.”

“Hold it right there,” Burke demanded. “It’s Mrs. Kavanagh, do I have that right?”

“Yes, Father.”

“Was the one
whom
they called Augustus one of many kings of Rome at the time? Whatever happened to ‘There went out a decree from Caesar Augustus’?”

“I don’t know, Father. This is the Bible they gave me to use.”

“Who?”

“The parish council.”

“Well, I’ll have a word with them. It’s no fault of yours, Mrs. Kavanagh. Carry on.”

Things went from bad to worse when the baby was born. “And she wrapped him in bands of cloth, and put him in the place where the animals had their food.”

“I have to stop you again there, Mrs. Kavanagh.” Burke’s eyes swept the scene, taking in all the children. “Who can tell me why Mary would wrap her baby in bands of cloth? Why not put him in rugby shorts and a T-shirt?”

“I know, Father, I know!”

“And what would your name be?”

“Jeremy.”

“All right, Jeremy, tell us why.”

“Because they weren’t invented yet!”

“Exactly. What did they wrap the newborn babies in two thousand years ago?”

“I don’t know.”

The catechism teacher jumped in at that point and said: “They don’t know what swaddling clothes are or what a decree is, if that’s what you mean, Father.”

Wrong thing to say. “You know what they are, don’t you, Mrs. Kavanagh?”

She laughed. “Yes, I do.”

“I do, too,” Burke said. “How do you and I know all that, Mrs. Kavanagh?”

“We’re grown-ups, Father.”

“We didn’t learn this stuff as grown-ups, though, did we? Somebody explained to us when we were very young children what the words in the Christmas story meant. And that’s what’s going to happen here. So instead of not teaching them, and then removing the words they haven’t been taught, and pretty soon having no words at all we can use, we’re going to teach them the words and put those words back where they belong.”

“Um, well, I only have the children for another half hour, Father. Then I’m not in again until next week. But I could —”

“I won’t trouble you about it any further, Mrs. Kavanagh. This is a situation not of your making. I’ll take the children myself for an hour after Mass on Sunday. Then we’ll go out for hot fudge sundaes to ruin their lunches and get their mothers’ knickers in a twist.” Apprehension turned to joy among the cast. “And when you see them next week they’ll know all about Caesar Augustus and swaddling clothes. And that the animals had their food in something called a ‘manger,’ as in ‘Away in a Manger.’ And I shall provide you with a Bible that tells the story in language we can all be proud of.”

“That went well,” Fred Mills remarked when the rehearsal was over, and the teacher had shepherded the children out.

“If they want things to go well,” I replied, “if they want the Father Burkes of this world to remain benign and good-humoured and stay out of everybody’s hair, they should never attempt to dumb down the Bible. Or the liturgy. Or the music.”

“Now they know. So, what brings you gentlemen to call on me today?”

“My lawyer and I are doing a bit of investigating,” Burke explained. “I thought that was all done. Brother Robin under arrest, end of story.”

“That’s probably it, you’re right,” I agreed. “But it will help wrap things up if we can account for everyone else’s whereabouts that afternoon. That will make the case against Robin all the more solid.”

“I see.”

“Right. So we’re trying to place everyone the day of the murder.”

“You want my alibi.”

“Alibi is merely a Latin word that means ‘elsewhere,’” I responded.

“And that’s where I was. Elsewhere.”

“And that’s all you’re going to tell us?”

“No. I can also tell you I was nowhere near Stella Maris Church that afternoon, and I did not take an axe to Father Schellenberg.”

“And that’s it?”

“That’s it. Now, let me give you a little vignette or two about your friend Father Burke.”

“He knows more than enough about me already.”

“He was never a student of yours, Brennan, so he doesn’t have the
full picture. We were all getting along just fine at Sacred Heart Seminary. Then we received distant early warning signals about this hard-ass priest who was coming to terrorize us. And we also heard absolutely hair-raising tales about his father! Everything from organized crime connections to Irish Republican derring-do. Don’t know how much of it was true.” He looked at Brennan and waited. Nothing. “Have you met his father, Monty?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“Really! So, what’s the story?”

“My lips are sealed.”

“There is something behind it. I knew it! Anyway, back to the sem. If we thought things were lightening up in the 1970s, we had reckoned without Brennan Burke.”

“And a proper thing too,” rejoined Burke.

“The first thing he did was start quoting from the
Summa Theologiae
in Latin.”

“
Summa Contra Gentiles
. You obviously weren’t listening.”

“There was hardly anybody in our class who could understand you.”

“As I discovered. Don’t get me going on what passes for education these days.”

“We won’t.”

“I’m on my way out,” Burke announced, and stood up. “Have to see some of Monty’s clients at the Correctional Centre.”

“How many times do I have to tell you, Brennan? If they’re in jail, they can’t be clients of mine. What kind of a defence lawyer would I be if I let my clients be sent to jail?”

“You’re delusional, Collins. But I could be wrong. The same was said of the great mystics, and they’ve stood the test of time.”

“You still minister to prisoners, do you, Brennan?” Fred asked.

“Yeah. Keeps me out of the hospitals, ministering to the sick! I’m sure there’s nothing left to be said about me, so ask Fred about his former calling.”

“What was that?”

“Fred is brilliant on the baseball diamond.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, I played a season with the Kansas City Royals before I followed my true calling.”

“Are you serious? Must have been hard to give up a major league baseball career.”

Mills shrugged. “This is where God wants me.”

“I still say you could have done both,” Burke said.

“Not this again.” It must have been an old argument between them.

Burke gave us a farewell salute and started up the stairs. He nodded to a man who was on his way down — William Logan.

“Freddy! I heard I could find you down here.”

“Hi, Bill. Come have a seat.”

He sat and turned to me. “Have we met?”

“Briefly. At the party at my wife’s place. You and Mrs. Logan put on a little, um, product demonstration.”

“Yeah, yeah. Babs gets these ideas in her head. What a flop. So what’s up?”

“Fred was recounting his first meeting with Brennan Burke. You used to teach with Brennan, I understand, Bill. When you were Father Logan.”

“Yeah, I have all the luck. Things were pretty laid-back at the sem in those years. The guy Burke was replacing was the kinda guy who’d let the students do self-evaluations, mark their own papers. Don’t worry about how they’re written, that sort of approach. Then, in mid-term, he was out and Burke was in. Burke had Freddy quaking in his boots.”

“True. I was given the task of introducing him to the other seminarians but I hardly dared speak to him. To me he was intimidating and almost — I don’t know, I guess ‘exotic’ isn’t quite the word — anyway there I was, little Fred Mills from middle America, never been anywhere, and here was this big black-Irish
force
thrust upon us. Someone whose family was said to have fled Ireland in the middle of the night, and emigrated to Hell’s Kitchen in New York. And he had that clipped sort of accent that made me rethink everything I had ever heard about the twinkling-eyed, charming Irish. What was he going to do, shoot our kneecaps off if we faltered in the fourth conjugation of our Latin verbs? One guy stood up to him, though, that first week —”

“Yeah, me. I stood up to him, in case nobody remembers.”

Fred continued as if Logan had not interrupted. “It was another Irishman, wouldn’t you know? Father Burke was berating us for being
slack in our work, and this Irish guy in the class, Fingal MacDiarmid, let fly at him in a tongue I had never heard. Irish Gaelic. Well! Burke’s eyes absolutely bored holes into him. He ordered MacDiarmid to stay behind after class. When Fingal tried to leave with the rest of us, he heard a bark from the front of the room. ‘MacDiarmid! Sit!’ Fingal kind of hesitated, then put on a brave front and sat right on the corner of Burke’s desk. Burke told him that, like most Irishmen these days, he had only a smattering of the old language but he wanted to learn more.