Working Murder (7 page)

“She was
seventeen
!” Tully's voice shook. “And before we close the subject, I'd
like to say that I entirely concurred with her parents' actions, even to returning Jim's
insulting Christmas present.”

Henry had squeezed the Datsun into a compact space, and we were piling out stiffly. We
stopped, in various stages of emergence, looking at Tully.

“What was it?” I said.

“He sent her a diamond wristwatch which must have been worth a thousand dollars.”

We started walking toward the welcoming glow of the canopy. A thousand dollars in
1938.... Well, I thought, with a spasm of amusement, there are insults and there are
insults.

Henry said: “Did Ellen know about the insulting Christmas present?”

“I don't know.” Tully began to walk ahead of us. “I only saw her in the summers, and the
next summer she was gone.”

THE MOWRY BROTHERS FUNERAL HOME, APPARENTLY a former spacious private residence, was
jammed.

As we inserted ourselves into the crowd, which extended even to the front door, a sign
was being hoisted: more seating upstairs. The recitation of the rosary was in progress
(a ritual that I have always considered beautiful), and voices rose and fell around us.

Sadd whispered: “We infidels are going upstairs,” and he and Henry disappeared. I looked
at Tully, but he was standing patiently beside me, apparently resigned to waiting out
the devotions. Well, I myself didn't mind standing for a while after the cramped
discomfort of the car, and my feet were warming up nicely. I unwrapped the scarf from my
head and a low voice beside me said: “Can't miss that handsome heap of hair. Hello, Aunt
Clara.”

It was Jonathan Saddlier, Sadd's son.

“Jon, dear! I'm so glad to see you!” I'd always liked this boy. Good-looking, early
thirties, single, Jon made an adequate living with a music publisher and dreamed of
becoming an opera star. His voice, according to Sadd, was “not good enough and not bad
enough” to settle his fate, so he continued with the singing lessons he couldn't afford
and, as I would platitudinize to his father, “after all, it's his life.”

I said: “My ‘handsome heap' must look a mess.” I touched my hair self-consciously,
wondering why I couldn't take an offhand compliment more gracefully.

“Not a bit—you could go on as the empress in
L'Aiglon.
I was hoping you and Dad
might come north for this. Is he here?”

“Yes, upstairs. Do you remember your cousin Tully?”

Tully nodded at Jon, then put his finger to his lips. A few heads had turned
disapprovingly. Jon took my arm, whispered “Let's go aloft,” and piloted me to the
stairs.

I said: “I didn't realize you knew Lloyd.”

“I didn't, until last year. My voice coach told me to go listen to his choir at St.
Bernard's. When I introduced myself, the Saddlier-Cavanaugh connection came up. Lloyd
was a great choral director. Wait till you hear his High Requiem tomorrow.”

I was spared having to say that I would not hear it by our arrival at more seating
upstairs and by Sadd's delight at seeing Jon. He adored his son, despite the fall of
genes that had made them so different. Henry was filling coffee cups from an urn that
stood at one end of the room. A dozen or more persons had found their way here, and one
of them, a hunched figure in a chair near the urn, looked as if he had found his way
from a soup kitchen. He was clutching a coffee cup and staring into space, a shriveled
man who could have been sixty or ninety, encased in a deplorable overcoat buttoned to
the neck.

Jon said, as we sat down on the folding chairs being placed for us: “There's poor old
Marty Cavanaugh. I should go speak to him, but he's so skittish.”

“Marty?” Sadd looked across the room with interest. “Son of Martin and Sara?”

“I don't know whose son he is, Dad. He's just your old-fashioned family drunk. Lloyd was
good to him. Marty used to go over to St. Bernard's sometimes on Sunday morning to get
out of the cold and listen to the music. Lloyd would always take him out to breakfast.
Did you know that St. Bernard's is up for some kind of papal award because of Lloyd?
It's one of the few Catholic churches in New York that still keeps the authentic
Gregorian chant with full choir.”

“That's interesting,” I said, my eyes on the hunched figure across the room.

“And refreshing,” said Jon. “All you get in most churches today is the congregation
bleating in the pews.”

“Who's bleeding in the pews?” asked Sadd. I knew his attention had wandered to where mine
had.

“Bleating, Dad. Singing off-key and not knowing all the lyrics.”

I said the “lyrics” of hymns had always been my downfall as Henry approached, balancing
three cups of coffee. He distributed them, shook hands with Jon, and said, as he sat
down:

“That sad-looking creature over there is Martin Cavanaugh, Junior. I introduced myself
and when he told me his name, I said ‘you must be Jim Cavanaugh's nephew' and he said
yes and kept drinking his coffee—which is spiked to the hilt, by the way.”

Jon waved to someone across the room and excused himself. Sadd and Henry and I looked at
each other. Tully's recounting of the events of that summer was still perking.

Sadd said: “Martin would be one of those cousins in Patchogue. He'd have known Ellen.”

“And Jim,” said Henry. “Wouldn't you love to pump him on the subject of the mausoleum?”

I said: “We shouldn't all converge on him. Jon described him as ‘skittish.'”

“I'd describe him as drunk,” said Henry.

“Jon also said Lloyd was good to him.” Then I added: “I wonder if Lloyd remembered Jim
Cavanaugh.”

“Too bad we can't ask him.” Sadd drained his coffee. “But I doubt it. Lloyd's father was
a much older brother of Jim's. He took off for Ohio during Prohibition while Jim was
distinguishing himself in New York. Lloyd was born and raised out there.”

Across the room, the bedraggled figure of Martin Cavanaugh stood up and I thought
nervously—we're going to lose him.... Sadd and Henry straightened too. But Martin had
only turned to the coffee urn and was now, without the least attempt to be covert,
doctoring his cup.

A voice behind us said: “It's Sadd Saddlier—it has to be!”

Sadd turned and said: “It's Peter Angier—it has to be!”

Henry and I were introduced to a very tall, nice-looking man with thinning white hair and
a crisp mustache. As he and Sadd chatted away, I whispered to Henry: “Ellen's friend's
date?” and he nodded. I sighed, wishing I could say: “Do come and sit by me and tell me
all about that terrible night fifty years ago when Ellen Dawson disappeared and did you
by any chance recently write an anonymous letter—” Sadd was saying:

“Pete and I went to our first dance together at Miss Long's School on Fifty-fourth
Street, and my date fell madly in love with him. I tried to drop his acquaintance after
that but was never able to manage it.”

“He nearly managed it when he went to Florida”—Peter Angier was smiling at me—"but my
wife and I are moving to Sarasota next winter. I hope you'll be visiting again, Mrs.
Gamadge.”

I murmured something as Jon returned with word that prayers were over and he thought we'd
better go down and pay our respects. With one accord, three pairs of eyes turned
longingly in the direction of Martin Cavanaugh. I said:

“Please go ahead—I'll follow you in a minute. I'm going to the ladies' room,” and headed
for a sign which was, happily, in the general direction of Martin. The room was filling
up fast, but he sat, still quite alone, staring before him. I refilled my cup from the
coffee urn and sat down next to him.

I said: “What a lot of people. Lloyd Cavanaugh must have been much admired. I didn't know
him well, did you?”

Martin didn't turn, but he said slowly: “He was the nicest person I ever knew.”

“I keep hearing that. My name is Clara Gamadge, by the way. May I ask yours?”

Still slowly, still without turning: “Martin Cavanaugh.”

“Oh, a relation of Lloyd's? I'm not actually
related
to the family—just sort of,
well,
connected
, you might say”—my, how chatty I was—"and I do remember some of
the older Cavanaughs. Let's see ... are you any relation to Jim Cavanaugh?”

Now Martin turned and looked at me groggily:

“You're the second person who's asked me that tonight. I thought we didn't mention good
old Uncle Jim in this family.”

“Really? I understand he was quite colorful. Years ago a cousin of mine, Ellen Dawson,
worked for Jim one summer. She liked him.”

Martin's eyes came into focus for a minute as he gazed directly into mine. “Did you know
Ellen?” I nodded. “Did she...” He gave up and his eyes splayed again. “Did she die?”

“You've got me there.” I felt like a rat. “I just don't keep up with the family as I
should. Tell me more about Lloyd. I suppose he'll be buried in the Dawson Mausoleum in
Holy Martyrs.”

Ah—my first rise out of Martin. He sat up quite straight and said clearly: “Oh, no.
Nobody will ever be buried there except Uncle Jim and his buddies. And me.”

I cast a silent prayer up to my husband's spirit to help keep my voice calm. I said:
“Now, that's odd. The one thing I remember hearing about that mausoleum is that Jim
Cavanaugh is buried there alone.”

Martin shook his head. “That's what people think, but I know different.”

Another prayer. I wrinkled my brow. “You're probably thinking of Jim's mother. True, she
was buried there once, but I believe her body was transferred. Other than that, the
place hasn't been opened since Jim died.”

“I open it. I open it all the time.”

Martin clawed at his neck and got his fingers around a piece of filthy string. A key
dangled from it. I thought I knew how Lord Carnarvon felt at the door of King Tut's
tomb. I wanted to run yelping to Henry and Sadd. Martin was still talking as he tucked
the key back carefully.

“That's where I'm going to be buried, you see. Father Dever took me to the doctor just
the other day and you know what he said? He said I'd probably be a holy martyr myself
real soon, and they'll lay me away with Uncle Jim and his buddies. Of course”—Martin
grew tearful—"I won't have the lovely Mass that Lloyd promised me. He always said he'd
bring me over to St. Bernard's and give me the whole works—choir and all. Now he's
gone.”

Martin pulled a gruesome handkerchief from his overcoat pocket and wiped his eyes. He
added: “I'd better go home.”

Dear God, we mustn't lose this treasure. “Perhaps we could give you a ride,” I said.
“Where do you—I mean—how did you come?”

“Father Dever brought me.” Martin stood up, listing. “He said as soon as he finished
saying the rosary he'd—”

“Martin,” I said, “do sit down again for a minute.” I gave his arm a mere touch which, in
Martin's condition, must have been the equivalent of a push, for down he plopped. “I
have some friends who would love to meet you. Let me find them—and I'll find Father
Dever for you, too.”

I threaded my way back to the stairs and went down them on something of a run. From the
slight elevation of the bottom step, I gazed around the crowd. Sadd and Henry were
nowhere to be seen, and there were Father Devers everywhere. Then I sighted Sadd talking
to Helen Cavanaugh beside her husband's coffin. Barbaric to interrupt there; better go
back and check on my treasure. I hurried up the stairs again and over to the
corner—Martin was gone. Oh, damn, damn. Back to the stairs and down them (I'm certain
there were people who returned from the wake to describe an old woman who spent the
evening running up and down the stairs) and met Henry midway.

“Henry,” I said in his ear, “Martin has a key to the mausoleum—but I've lost him.”

“I just saw him”—Henry looked over his shoulder—"going out the door with a priest. A
key
?” Henry had caught the fever. “Let me see if I can find them.” He took
off.

I made my way over to Sadd and Helen Cavanaugh, and she held out her arms to me.

“Clara, dear, you were wonderful to come.”

I embraced her, a tiny woman and a darling person. “Helen, we're all so sorry—and so
proud. Lloyd was a great person. I hear nothing but his praises on all sides.”

Sadd said: “I always thought that Lloyd fit Cardinal Newman's definition of a gentleman:
One who never knowingly inflicts pain.”

“Oh, Sadd, how well you knew him!” Helen, who was no dope, knew that Sadd scarcely knew
him, but was herself one who never knowingly inflicted pain. “Lloyd would be so honored
to think you came tonight. Now I want to hear about Florida.”

I suppose we chatted on the subject, but my mind was on Henry searching for
Martin-of-the-Key. Now Henry was coming toward us, shaking his head. My heart sank. I
said:

“Helen—that nice priest who led the rosary—who was he? Sadd was so impressed with his
voice.”

Sadd looked nonplussed.

“Oh, Father Dever,” said Helen. “He's our pastor at Saint Agnes's in Hollis. Yes, a
wonderful speaker. Henry Gamadge, you are the image of you father! And now you'd better
take these dear folks home—it may snow again. Say good night to Tully for me. By the
way, I think he looks bad.”

As we headed for the door, Henry said: “Not only looks bad but feels worse. I had to take
him out to the car.”

“Is he ill?” I was truly concerned.

“Either that or he needed a nip. And I couldn't find Martin, damn it.”

“Couldn't find him?” Sadd was puzzled.

“Never mind,” I said. “Father Dever saves all.”

“And would you mind telling me”—Sadd held the door as we emerged into the piercing cold
night air—"why I'm supposed to be impressed with that reverend gentleman's voice—which I
have never heard?”