Cynthia Manson (ed) (44 page)

Steve pointed a finger at Floss. “He’ll
tell you.”

“Charley was doing fine,” George
said as he poured a cup of coffee from a pot on the stove. “Didn’t even seem to
take it too hard—at least, not at first—when I told him he was going to be out
of a job.”

“You
told him?” the priest
said sharply.

“Why, sure,” Floss replied with an
important air. “I’m the Super at the Liberty building. Soon as I knew the old
dump was going to be torn down, I told everybody on the maintenance crew that
they’d be getting the ax. Me too.” He scowled and his face darkened. “A
stinking break. There aren’t too many good Super jobs around town.”

He gulped some coffee and then
brightened. “Of course it won’t be for some time yet. That’s what I kept
telling Charley. But I guess it didn’t sink in. He started worrying and acting
funny—” He broke off with a shrug.

“You haven’t heard the latest,
George,” Steve said. “That cop—Casey—was here nosing around Charley’s room.
Found a gun and the Everett guy’s wallet.”

“No kidding!” Floss’s eyes widened
in surprise. He shook his head and whistled.

“Gun, wallet, no matter what that
cop found,” Annie shrilled, waving the paring knife in her hand for emphasis, “I
don’t believe it. Charley may be a little feeble-minded, but he’s no murderer—”

The air was suddenly pierced by a
loud and penetrating wail. In an upstairs bedroom a child was crying.

“Now see what you’ve done,” Steve
said disgustedly. “Started the brat bawling.”

Annie gave a potato a vicious stab
with her knife. “Go on up and quiet her.”

“Not me,” Steve retorted with a
defiant shake of his balding head. “That’s your job.”

“I’ve got enough jobs, cooking and
cleaning around here. It won’t kill you to take care of the kid once in a while.”

Father Crumlish had stood in shocked
silence during the stormy scene. But now he found his tongue.

“It’s ashamed you should be,” he
said harshly, turning his indignant dark blue eyes first on Annie, then on
Steve. “When I baptized your little Mary Ann four years ago, I told both of you
that you were blessed to have a child at your age and after so many years. Is
this disgraceful behavior the way you give thanks to the good Lord? And is this
home life the best you can offer the poor innocent babe?”

He took a deep breath to cool his
temper. Annie and Steve sat sullen and wordless. The only sound in the silence
was the child’s crying.

“I’ll go and see what’s eating her,”
George offered, obviously glad to escape from the scene.

“I’ve an errand to do,” Father told
the Swansons. “But mind you,” he held up a warning finger, “I’ll be back before
long to have another word or two with you.”

Turning on his heel, he crossed the
kitchen floor, walked down the hallway, and let himself out the door. But
before he was halfway down the steps to the street, he heard Annie’s and Steve’s
strident voices raised in anger again. And above the din he was painfully aware
of the plaintive, persistent sound of the crying child.

Lieutenant Madigan was seated at his
desk engrossed in a sheaf of papers when Father Crumlish walked into
headquarters.

“Sit down, Father,” Big Tom said
sympathetically. “You look tired. And worried.”

Irritated, the pastor clicked his
tongue against his upper plate. He disliked being told that he looked tired and
worried; he knew very well that he
was
tired and
worried, and that was trouble enough. He considered remaining on his feet,
stating his business succinctly, and then being on his way. But the chair next
to Madigan’s desk looked too inviting. He eased himself into it, suppressing a
sigh of relief.

“I know all this is rough on you,
Father,” Madigan continued in a kind tone. “But facts are facts.” He paused,
extracted one of the papers in front of him, and handed it to the priest.

Father Crumlish read it slowly. It
was a report on the bullet which had killed John Everett; the bullet definitely
had been fired from the gun found in Charley Abbott’s room. Silently the pastor
placed the report on Big Tom’s desk.

“This is one of those cases that are
cut and dried,” the policeman said. “One obvious suspect, one obvious motive.” He
shifted his gaze away from the bleak look on Father’s face. “But you know that
with his mental record Charley will never go to prison.”

Abruptly Father Crumlish got to his
feet.

“Can you tell me where I’ll find
Detective Dennis Casey?” he asked.

Madigan stared in astonishment. “Third
door down the hall. But why—?”

Father Crumlish had already slipped
out the door, closed it behind him, and a moment later he was seated beside
Detective Casey’s desk. Then, in response to the priest’s request, Casey
selected a manila folder from his files.

“Here’s my report on the anonymous
phone call, Father,” he said obligingly. “Not much to it, as you can see.”

A glance at the typed form confirmed
that the report contained little information that Father didn’t already have.

“I was hoping there might be more,” the
pastor said disappointedly. “I know you’ve been on this case since the
beginning and I thought to myself that maybe there was something that might
have struck you about the phone call. Something odd in the man’s words, perhaps.”
Father paused and sighed. “Well then, maybe you can tell me about your talk
with Charley. Exactly what you said to him—”

“Wait a minute, Father,” Casey
interrupted. He ran a hand through his carrot-hued hair. “Now that you mention
it, I
do
remember something odd about that call. I remember hearing a
funny sound. Just before the guy hung up.”

“Yes?” Father waited hopefully for
the detective to continue.

Casey’s brows drew together as he
tried to recall.

“It was a sort of whining. A cry,
maybe.” Suddenly his eyes lit up. “Yeah, that’s it! It sounded like a baby—a
kid—crying.”

As Father Crumlish wearily started
up the steps to the rectory door, his left foot brushed against a small patch
of ice buried beneath the new-fallen snow. He felt himself slipping, sliding,
and he stretched out a hand to grasp the old wrought-iron railing and steady
himself. As he did, the package of statuettes, which he’d been carrying all
these long hours, fell from under his arm and tumbled to the sidewalk.

“Hellfire!”

Gingerly Father bent down to
retrieve the package. At that moment St. Brigid’s chimes rang out. Six o’clock!
Only two hours before Evening Devotions, the priest realized in dismay as he
straightened and stood erect. And in even less time his parishioners would be
arriving at church to kneel down at the crib, light their candles, and say
their prayers.

Well, Father thought, he would have
to see to it that they wouldn’t be disappointed, that there would be nothing
amiss in the scene of the Nativity. Moments later he stood in front of the crib
and unwrapped the package. To his chagrin he discovered that the tumble to the
sidewalk had caused one of the lambs to lose its head and one leg. But Herbie
Morris could easily repair it, Father told himself as he stuffed the broken
lamb into his pocket and proceeded to put his replacements in position. First,
in the center of the crib, the Infant. Next, to the left, the First Wise Man.
And then, close to the Babe, another unbroken lamb that he’d purchased.

Satisfied with his handiwork, Father
knelt down and gazed at the peaceful tableau before him. Ordinarily the scene
would have evoked a sense of serenity. But the priest’s heart was heavy. He
couldn’t help but think that it was going to be a sad Christmas for Charley
Abbott. And that the man’s prospects for the future were even worse. Moreover,
Father couldn’t erase the memory of what he’d seen and heard at the
Swansons—the anger, bitterness, selfishness, and, yes, even the cruelty.

Hoping to dispel his disquieting
thoughts, the pastor started to close his eyes. But a slight movement in the
crib distracted him. He stared in astonishment as he saw that a drop of
moisture had appeared on the face of the Infant and had begun to trickle slowly
down the pink waxen cheeks.

Even as he watched, fascinated,
another drop appeared—and then the priest quickly understood the reason for the
seeming phenomenon. The greens that Emma had placed on the roof of the stable
had begun to lose their resilience in the steam heat of the church. The fir,
pine, and holly boughs were drooping, shedding moisture on the face of the
Child...

In the flickering rosy glow of the
nearby vigil lights it struck the priest that the scene seemed almost real—as
if the Child were alive and crying. As if He were weeping for all the people in
the world. All the poor, lonely, homeless—

Father Crumlish stiffened. A
startled expression swept over his face. For some time he knelt, alert and deep
in thought, while his expression changed from astonishment to realization and,
finally, to sadness. Then he rose from his knees, made his way to the rectory
office, and dialed police headquarters.

“Could you read me that list you
have of the buildings that John Everett was going to have torn down?” Father
said when Madigan’s voice came on the wire. The policeman complied.

“That’s enough, Tom,” the priest
interrupted after a moment. “Now tell me, lad, will you be coming to Devotions
tonight? I’ve a call to make and I thought, with this snow, you might give me a
lift.”

“Glad to, Father.” Suspicion crept
into Madigan’s voice. “But if you’re up to something—”

The pastor brought the conversation
to an abrupt end by hanging up.

Herbie Morris was on the verge of
locking up The Doll House when Father Crumlish and Big Tom walked in.

“Can you give this a bit of glue,
Herbie?” Father asked as he handed the storekeeper the broken lamb.

“Forget it, Father,” Herbie said,
shrugging. “Help yourself to a new one.”

“No need. I’m sure you can fix this
one and it’ll do fine.”

Then, as Herbie began to administer
to the statuette, the pastor walked over to a display of flaxen-haired dolls
and leaned across the counter to select one. But the doll eluded his grasp and
toppled over. The motion caused it to close its eyes, open its mouth, and emit
the realistic sound of a child crying.

“I see your telephone is close by,” Father
said, pointing to the instrument a counter across the aisle. “So it’s little
wonder that Detective Casey thought he heard a real child crying while you were
on the phone with him at headquarters. One of these dolls must have fallen over
just as you were telling him to arrest Charley Abbott for John Everett’s murder.”

The priest was aware of Madigan’s
startled exclamation and the sound of something splintering. Herbie stood
staring down at his hands which had convulsively gripped the lamb he’d been
holding and broken it beyond repair.

“I know that you were notified that
this building is going to be torn down, Herbie,” Father said, “and I know these
four walls are your whole life. But were you so bitter that you were driven to
commit murder to get revenge?”

“I didn’t want revenge,” Herbie
burst our passionately.

“I just wanted to keep my store.
That’s all!” He wrung his hands despairingly. “I pleaded with Everett for two
months, but he wouldn’t listen. Said he wanted this land for a parking lot.” Morris’
shoulders sagged and he began to weep.

Madigan moved to the man’s side. “Go
on,” he said in a hard voice.

“When I went to his house that
night, I took the gun just to frighten him. But he still wouldn’t change his
mind. I went crazy, I guess, and—” He halted and looked pleadingly at the
priest. “I didn’t really mean to kill him, Father. Honest!”

“What about his wallet?” Madigan
prodded him.

“It fell out of his pocket. There
was a lot of money in it—almost a thousand dollars. I—I just took it.”

“And then hid it along with the gun
in the room of a poor innocent man,” Father Crumlish said, trying to contain
his anger. “And to make sure that Charley would be charged with your crime, you
called the police.”

“But the police would have come
after
me
,” Herbie protested, as if to justify his actions. “I read in
the papers that they were checking Everett’s properties and all his tenants. I
was afraid—” The look on Father’s face caused Herbie’s voice to trail away.

“Not half as afraid as Charley when
you kept warning him that the police would accuse him because of his mental
record, because he worked in the Liberty Building and was going to lose his
job. That’s what you did, didn’t you?” Father asked in a voice like thunder. “You
deliberately put fear into his befuddled mind, told him he’d be put away—”

The priest halted and gazed at the
little storekeeper’s bald bowed head. There were many more harsh words on the
tip of his tongue that he might have said. But, as a priest, he knew that he
must forego the saying of them.

Instead he murmured, “God have mercy
on you.”