Grandmother and the Priests (36 page)

“I should like to know what you two are rumbling about,” said Lady McLeod, who had seated herself at a little distance.

The priest studied her candidly. “We have just informed each other of the goodness of our hostess,” he said.

The girl’s mouth opened slightly, then closed in its pale carving of silence.

The tea was brought by the stiff and haughty Maggie, who departed with a clatter of heels. Lady McLeod filled a fragile cup for Father Alfred, then, after a little hesitation, she filled one for herself.

“Why did you come?” she murmured.

“For one reason only: to know you, to find out if I could help you.”

The girl put down the silver pot and stared at it. “No one can help me but myself,” she said. When the priest did not answer she looked at him quickly, with a blaze of blue eye.

“You know all about it!” she cried.

“I know what I have heard,” he said.

“George was murdered!” she cried again.

“I think so, too,” said the priest. “I want to help you discover the murderer, and bring him to justice.”

The girl put down her cup and lay back in her chair, a flaccid figure of exhaustion, mute and despairing.

“I have tried for a year,” she whispered. “Almost every night.”

“Through mortal sin?” said the priest.

She opened her eyes at him, wide and brilliant. “I have committed no wrong,” she said, slowly and quietly, “except the deadly sin of hatred, and the sin of anger. I still commit them. I shall never have peace until I find George’s murderer.”

The priest looked down into the cup. He believed her. Then, she had not committed adultery, in spite of all the tales.

“And when I find him,” she said, very softly, “I shall kill him, with my own two hands. There’ll be no judge or jurors; there’ll be no hanging. I shall kill him, myself.”

She put her hands over her face, hands as fragile as porcelain, and almost as transparent. “You never knew George. No one knew him, except me. He was a saint.”

“And a saint wants you to find his murderer? And kill him, yourself?” The priest was greatly alarmed.

The girl dropped her hands. She shook her head. “No. He wants me to find the murderer, and deliver him to justice. But, the law’s delay! He could escape.”

“He will not escape the justice of God,” said Father Alfred.

The girl was silent, but her white mouth twisted in mockery. “Tell me about it,” the priest pleaded. “I know the story; I know the verdict at the inquest. I know to what you testified, that your husband appeared to you after death — ”

The girl’s head dropped on her breast. “I saw George again,” she murmured. “He still did not know his murderer. And, he could not forgive, and so he is not at peace. I do not know if he is in Purgatory; he did not tell me. But he is not at peace. He is afraid for me. He is afraid that eventually his murderer will — that I will come to love him, and marry him. George’s murderer. And so, a few months ago, George told me that no workman of the hamlet, and no servant, had killed him, and had plunged him, unconfessed, into death and into eternity. It was one of our friends. Here, close by, within sight and hearing.”

“Oh, it could be illusion,” said the priest. “You have suffered so much.”

The girl shook her head so that her yellow hair flew like a whirlwind about her.

“You do not know!” she cried. “Since the moment we came here there have been the men — ! The young, unmarried men! Many of them, trying in one form or another to make love to me! Look at me now, old and white, but still they come!”

The priest looked at the young pale face, fixed now and furious, but still incredibly beautiful.

“They knew I’d never divorce George, and could not,” said the girl, in a low and muttering voice. “So, one of them decided to kill him, to leave me free, so that I could marry again. Someone, it must be, who wants me, and wants George’s money, someone who is not too rich, someone who is unmarried. So, I have my dinners and my dancing, and each time I search out a different man, and I give him all he wants to drink, and more, then I whisper for him to stay. And he stays, when the others are gone, drunk, in his cups. And then I talk to him, gently, lovingly, saying I did not love George, and that I love him. Can you not understand?” she cried desperately. “One of these nights a man will confess, when he is drunk enough, and with the promise of my bed before him, and marriage! He will tell me he did it for me!”

Frightfully disturbed, the priest stood up and began to pace the floor, thinking. The girl watched him, clenching and unclenching her hands. The dog watched him, anxiously.

Father Alfred finally stopped in front of the girl. “Has it ever occurred to you, my lady,” he said, sternly, “that there is always the morning, and that the man will remember what he has confessed? A man who has killed once will kill again. He can only die once. You are in awful danger.”

The girl laughed loudly. The dog trembled. Father Alfred did not move. “Danger!” she cried. “Do you think I’d let him live until morning? I’ll kill him immediately! I am not afraid of guns, as George was!”

“You will then become a murderer, yourself,” said the priest. “Then, you will never see your husband again. You will never know God, or possess Him. Do you think your husband wants that for you?”

“I will kill,” said the girl, quietly. “I will kill the man who murdered my dear George, and killed my own life. There’ll be no trial for him.”

She looked suddenly and fiercely into the priest’s eyes. “There has been no man who has already confessed to you?”

“If such had occurred, I could not tell you,” said Father Alfred.

She smiled strangely, and nodded. “Then, he has not confessed.”

She stood up. The priest did not move. “Does Holy Mother Church mean nothing to you, Lady McLeod?”

“Nothing means anything to me, not even God, so long as George’s murderer is free and safe.”

“You have indeed committed a mortal sin,” said the priest. “You have murdered already in your heart.”

She lifted her hands restlessly, then dropped them. She smiled, and it was a smile not quite sane. “When I have killed him, Father, I will confess to you, and you will absolve me.”

The priest did not answer. He picked up his hat and looked at it. He said, “I should like you to promise me something, my lady.”

“No,” she said.

“I should like you to promise me,” said the priest, “that when, and if, you discover this man you will tell me and the Chief Constable and leave it in our hands.”

“No,” said Lady McLeod.

The old dog looked anxious and accompanied him to the gate. “Is there a way I can help you?” he asked.

The priest looked down at him seriously. “I do not know,” he said. “I really do not know. In the meantime, I will pray.”

The dark autumn came, and the thunder of the winds, and the sky was low and murky. The winter came, with snow and gales, and long icicles hung from the roofs. In a few weeks it would be Christmas. The children skated on ponds and practiced carols, and Father Alfred quarreled with the organist, who disliked Plainsong and wanted more flamboyant music for the holy days. The nuns were fractious, having bad colds, and Father Alfred was depressed.

No one had confessed murder to him in the Confessional. Father Alfred now knew his parish very well. The gentry who were Catholic were coming to Confession more regularly as the holy days approached. But no man confessed murder. Father Alfred singled out those young, unmarried men among the gentry who had not come to Confession at all, and wondered, night after night. He saw them at Mass, but not at Confession. He considered each one, carefully, particularly those who did not come to the Communion rail. And then he practically came to the conclusion that there was no murderer at all, except in Lady McLeod’s disturbed mind, and in the mind of the Chief Constable, and that Lord McLeod had indeed died the death of misadventure. So Father Alfred prayed for the soul of the young man, dead in his youth and love, and put his ‘ghost’ out of his thoughts.

There were only twelve young men, unmarried, in their late twenties or early thirties, among the Catholic gentry families, the county families. Father Alfred had been invited to the homes of their parents, or older sisters, or aunts, for family dinners. It had been a horrible idea to him that any of these fine young men could have murdered, and the priest was becoming ashamed of himself more and more each time he was invited to their homes. There were some older bachelors, precise and womanish, whom the priest discounted as having ever shown any interest in the human female at all. An uneasy thought came to him that there were gentry in the county who were not Catholic, and would therefore never come to him for Confession. If one was a murderer he might never be discovered. In some manner the priest managed to gain some invitations to these gentry, through his Anglican colleague. His hosts and hostesses, and their young, unmarried sons, were the souls of serenity and teeming with good works, and had no objection to a ‘Roman’. A lesser number of the gentry were Presbyterians, and Father Alfred, in three months, had contrived to meet these also, if a son, unmarried and youngish, was on the premises. He had never met any finer people.

A few days before Christmas he was called to give the Last Rites to a very old man. A snowstorm was beginning and he pedaled industriously on his bicycle to get home soon. He found the Chief Constable in his warm and tiny parlor, whistling merrily to his lovebirds in their gilt cage. “Aha,” said the officer, grinning, “I could have saved ye all the trouble if you had asked me, but you did not. The Inspector and mesel’ were there before ye.” He laughed amiably at the priest’s abashed expression. “Great minds,” said the Chief Constable at last, and generously, “run in the same channels. There’s not a lad that was not scrutinized and investigated. But you had the good dinners, did ye not, and it’s the fair favorite you are in the county now.”

He chuckled, and shook his head. “And what’s this tale I hear of ye talking with the dogs? Aha. All gets out in the town. There’s some who say you are fey and some as says you are soft in the brain. Are ye still reading Sherlock Holmes, eh?”

The young priest colored violently, and lost his temper. “It was you who said that Lord McLeod was murdered!” he exclaimed.

“And so he was,” said the Chief Constable, soothingly. “But I thought in your rambles you may have come across something. Eh?”

“No,” said Father Alfred. “Tea?”

“Ye hae nothing stronger?” asked the officer with a wink.

Father Alfred got out his precious bottle of old brandy and two small glasses. The two men sat in front of the fire, and thought. Then the Chief Constable said thoughtfully, “My cat. She’s fair fey, herself. And what did the dogs tell you, young sir?”

Father Alfred peered at him suspiciously, but the officer was truly interested, so the priest said, “They’re worried about their mistress. See here, I don’t think I really can talk to the dogs — ?”

But the Chief Constable shook his head vigorously. “I talk with me cat, and she’s a wise one. When I think it over, later, I think I am mad. But I am not. Nor are you.” He paused. “So the dogs are worried about the lassie. So am I.” He looked at Father Alfred. “She’ll be getting a bullet, hersel’, if she goes on like that.”

“Like what?” asked the priest, astonished.

The Chief Constable winked again, seriously. He held up two fingers. “I have been a policeman for longer than you hae lived, laddie, and I’m nae fool, if I say it mesel’. Nor is the Inspector. We know what she’s up to, and, it seems, so does your highness.”

Father Alfred was so distracted that he refilled the two glasses. The Chief Constable held up three fingers now. “Three of us,” he said. “It’s a wonder how you got in the mansion, so mild you look, and young, and pink in the face. And plumpish. But I’ve heard the tale.”

He stood up and stretched. Then he was not smiling. He said, “I am the Chief Constable, and all know my job. The Inspector is not here. But there has been talk of your sidlin’ aboot. A fair mystery it is to all policemen how the talk travels, with nae sign of human communication. Young sir, keep to your church and your auld folk and the young ones. Leave the investigations to me.” He shook a lean finger in the priest’s face. “I had a lad your age; killed in India. It will be nae pleasure to me to find a bullet in you, some dark morning, when you’ve been prowlin’.”

“I don’t ‘prowl’,” said the priest, with angry dignity.

The Chief Constable sighed, shook his head, and departed.

All the anxieties and worries returned to harass Father Alfred. He had written several times to Lady McLeod, begging her to see him, and she had not replied. He did not go again to the mansion, for that would have put a severe strain on the dogs’ courtesy. One did not do that to friends. He heard fresh stories of the goings-on at the mansion, each one more scandalous, and finally he was obliged to warn his flock of the serious sin of scandalizing for the sake of scandalizing, and out of lack of Christian charity.

The mansion was dark on Christmas Eve and there was no party. A considerable portion of the Protestants in the hamlet disdained to celebrate Christmas, a matter over which Father Alfred and his Anglican colleague shook dismal heads. But New Year’s was a different affair to all canny Scots, for gifts were not required except the one of a bit of dried herring on entering a house. The young year rolled on, and it was wretched February, with dark and streaming skies, loud and battering winds, and long, cold nights.

On one particularly bad day, the priest encountered the grim Maggie in a fish shop. She refused to recognize him at first, for all his smiles. Then he sidled up to her and said in a low voice, “How is Lady McLeod? I have been worrying about her.”

The woman snorted, seemed about to say something, then closed her big gray mouth tightly. The priest waited. She shrugged. “Daft she is,” she said, and for one instant the priest saw dread and pity in the hard little eyes. “It’ll nae be long — ” She turned away abruptly and marched from the shop.

Father Alfred could not sleep that night. Shortly before midnight he pulled a coat over his nightshirt, went out and stared in the direction of the mansion. He could see the far gleam of many lights, raying out against the low and gloomy sky. It had stopped raining, but the air was heavy and dull, with a feeling of the pestilential. The priest, sighing, returned to his low fire, waiting for drowsiness. Then, shivering a little, he did fall asleep, and the last ember winked out.

He began to dream. He dreamed that there was a hard knocking on the door, and a crying, but when he went to it and opened it there was no one there, not even a shadow. He dreamed that he went back to the fire. And the knocking began again, thunderous, and he started awake, the sound loud in his ears, and the feeble crying. But when he ran to the door he recalled his dream of the knocking, which probably had no existence at all except in his sleeping brain. If it had not been for the dim whimpering on the doorstep he would not even have opened the door, though his hand was already on the handle. It sounded like a desperate child crying, or a dying man. He flung open the door.

The great gray-and-black shaggy dog of the mansion was there, the master of the dogs, the leader. When he saw the priest he rose on his hind legs and flung himself on the priest’s chest, as if imploring, and the priest instinctively caught him in his arms and held him tight. Then he was filled with a sense of disaster. The lamplight outside, faint though it was, showed that the dog’s paws and legs were dripping with blood. “Poor laddie!” cried the priest, and holding him as if he were a wounded brother, he drew him into the house for examination. The dog resisted, whining, his fierce eyes rolling with entreaties, his tongue lolling.