“— and fun, imaginative garage door opener holders as well,” Babs was chirping. “My husband is in garage doors, and he can show you his brochures on those. William?”
William addressed the assembly. “How many of you can honestly say your garage door adds curb appeal to your home?”
The guests looked from one to another.
I spoke up again. “I think, William, that most of the local people live downtown. It may be that nobody has a garage at all. I can’t speak for the visitors who are here for the schola, of course.”
This prompted no response other than a pissed-off look from Logan to his wife. But Babs carried on. “That’s okay! Not everybody has the space that comes with suburban living. But here’s something everyone in this room can have: any product in my catalogue for forty percent off. Everyone also has the opportunity to sign up now to
become an Accessoreez consultant, so you can host parties in your home state, wherever that may be. And make quick, impromptu interventions at other gatherings like the one tonight — we call these ‘partymercials.’ We like to say: Pitch your tent, make your pitch, and shut down before they pitch you out! So, get on board and earn extra income for that new patio furniture or little Johnny’s college education! Those of you who are priests may not want to take up my offer, though it’s too bad — I imagine you could use the extra income! But some of you ladies have the opportunity of a lifetime. If anyone wants to talk about a bright new future in home sales, give me a call or come see me at twenty-nine Loftingdon Mews.”
Apparently nobody had ever heard of Loftingdon Mews, but Babs had a map ready, showing its location in a new suburb west of the city. “This is the home of one of my fellow consultants. We met at a sales convention in Vegas. She and her husband are spending the winter months in Florida, so she offered us their home while William is at the choir school. You can see she’s done well! The advantages of a truly international sales organization!”
“Gesù mio!”
The entire party turned as one, to see Father Sferrazza-Melchiorre staring dumbfounded at the Vesuvius gadget.
Brennan turned to him. “Better get out there and rattle those pots and pans, Enrico. They’re trying to sell us a bunch of knickknacks —
ninnoli
. Now I know why he wanted me to round up some locals.” He spoke
sotto voce
, but he was not quiet enough. William Logan had overheard, and the embarrassment on his face was excruciating to see.
Enrico returned to the stove, and the house soon began to smell like a fine Italian restaurant. People were drawn to the kitchen where the master chef had several pans and several conversations going at once without missing a beat. Finally, he pronounced himself satisfied, arranged his concoctions on their plates, and handed them around. We were offered salted cream puffs, gnocco fritto, salmon canapés, and truffle crostini. There was no prohibition in effect in this town, and we drank gallons of Italian wine. All of this breathed new life into a plan Burke and I had cooked up and which surfaced whenever the wine was flowing: he and I were determined to take a road trip in Italy, if we could both get away at the same time.
After we ate, we sat around in a blissful stupor until I saw Father
Hank looking at the door. I turned to see Monsignor O’Flaherty coming in. His face was a ghostly white, and he looked almost fearful as he peered into the room. I went to greet him.
“Evening, Mike! You missed a magnificent spread, but I’m sure we can come up with a few scraps for you.”
“Who’s here, Monty?” he whispered.
“Oh, well, quite a few from the schola, if that’s what you mean. William Logan, Enrico Sferrazza-Melchiorre, lots of others whose names I’ve forgotten.”
“The German?”
“No, he didn’t come. Is everything all right, Mike?”
“Is there somewhere we could talk, with Brennan?”
“There’s a little den upstairs.”
So up we went, to a small room fitted with a comfy chesterfield, a television, and shelves overflowing with books. The room had a five-sided dormer with a banquette, which Normie had fashioned into a playground for her dolls, with a toy swing set and a merry-go-round. I gently put the toys aside so I could sit facing the two priests on the couch.
“What’s wrong, Mike?”
“I’ve been to see Brother Robin.”
“Really! Over at the hospital?”
“Yes, he’s there on psychiatric remand.”
“Right. And?”
His eyes shifted away; he seemed to have trouble getting started.
“Michael!” Burke exclaimed. “You’re just after meeting the man who, apparently, murdered Father Reinhold Schellenberg at solemn vespers here in Halifax. And now you’ve nothing to tell us?”
“Why did you say ‘apparently’ just now, Brennan? Have you had some doubt about the, em, situation?”
“No, I just meant he hasn’t been tried yet. And we’ve a defence lawyer in our midst! What’s troubling you, Michael? Have you some doubt yourself?”
This was not the Monsignor O’Flaherty I had come to know: gabby, sociable, and more than a little fascinated by lurid crime.
“Why were you concerned about who’s here tonight?” I asked him. “Why did you ask about Colonel Bleier? You don’t think Brother
Robin is guilty, so one of the people in this house tonight could be the real killer? Is that it, Mike?”
He avoided my questions. “Perhaps you should go over and see him yourself, Brennan. And Monty, unless, well …”
“Unless he wants to confess to Brennan whatever he confessed to you. Which in some way has led you to question his guilt.”
“I’m not saying that!”
No, the monsignor would not come out and say it. He couldn’t. A priest can be excommunicated for revealing what he hears in confession.
“Who is representing him?” I asked.
“Saul Green.”
“Saul would pay solid gold for a tape recording of whatever Gadkin-Falkes told you tonight, Michael.”
He looked down at his hands. After a few moments he asked: “Are the children here tonight?”
“Tom and Normie are out. The baby is here. We should cut this short, you’re suggesting.”
“I don’t know what to say, Monty. But I have to get back to the rec-tory. There are some things I want to do. Go over to see Robin,” he urged us again, before making his exit.
“Jesus! What do you make of that, Brennan? Why isn’t this Robin Napkin-Forks, or whatever his name is, raising holy hell over there if he’s innocent? If he is and if he knows who really did it, and is protecting him, then that’s the connection we should be looking for. We have to find out what’s going on.”
We went downstairs, and soon the party drew to a natural, uneventful conclusion.
But we didn’t get in to see Robin when we tried to arrange a visit on Sunday. He had left instructions with the staff of the hospital that no one was to be admitted to his room.
Chapter 3
Quid sum miser tunc dicturus,
Quem patronum rogaturus,
Cum vix justus sit securus?
What then shall I say, wretch that I am,
What advocate entreat to speak for me,
When even the righteous may hardly be secure?
— “Dies Irae,”
Requiem Mass
The police had their suspect. But, as far as I was concerned, Michael O’Flaherty’s nervously imparted hint was a bombshell: it was clear he had reason to believe Brother Robin was not the killer. The case was wide open. There was no doubt I’d be drawn into Burke and O’Flaherty’s attempts to solve the murder, and not just because I was the schola’s lawyer; my own curiosity would impel me to look into it. So I was anxious to start searching for another suspect before the trail got any colder.
I couldn’t do that, however, until I dealt with suspects of my own, two clients who had been ordered by the court to have no contact with each other and who had just been arrested together in connection with the robbery of a credit union. I succeeded in getting them released from jail, but I had no confidence that they would comply with their bail conditions this time, any more than they had in the past.
When I finished with them on Monday, I stopped in at St. Bernadette’s rectory long enough to collect the notes O’Flaherty had made of his conversations with the police, and read them as soon as I
got home. There wasn’t much to go on. He had already filled me in on the autopsy results, and on the schola students who had not gone to Peggy’s Cove on the afternoon of the murder.
The notes told me that the police had established who had rented a car upon their arrival, who had been picked up by Burke or O’Flaherty, and who had taken a cab or bus from the airport to wherever they were staying in Halifax. Of the people without an alibi, only Kurt Bleier had arranged for a car, a black Japanese compact he picked up at the airport when he flew in on November 16. He returned it two weeks later. William Logan and Luigi Petrucci both drove up from the U.S. in their own vehicles. All our other suspects had relied on taxis, public transportation, or lifts from the locals.
I saw an excerpt from a police interview with the taxi driver who carried Reinhold Schellenberg to the scene of his death:
Yes, this is the fellow I picked up at St. Bernadette’s rectory on Friday. I thought he was either Dutch or German.
What time was this?
Two-thirty-five in the afternoon.
What did he say to you?
Just asked me to take him to Stella Maris Church. I said: “Are you sure you got the right church, Father? That place is closed down.” And he said it was right, that sometimes solitude is what a person needs. So I said: “You’re going pretty far out of your way to be alone!” He kind of laughed and told me it wasn’t him that needed peace and quiet. It was somebody else. And no, before you ask me, he didn’t say who.
The police interviewed everyone working near Stella Maris, at the container terminal and the handful of businesses close by. Nobody saw anyone at the church. Cars went in and out of the parking areas but this was normal, and no one reported anything exceptional. There was one woman who at first looked promising. Clara MacIntyre. She had parked in a lot near the church so she could take her dog for a walk along the top of the peninsula. She thought perhaps she had heard something in the church but, on questioning, she could not provide the police with any information they could use. I picked up
the phone, rang Mrs. MacIntyre, and asked if I could pay her a call. I didn’t have much hope of a breakthrough; it’s just that we didn’t have anything else.
Clara MacIntyre was in her early sixties and lived in the Hydro-stone area of the north end. If you look down on the neighbourhood from the Needham Park hill, the row houses with their chimney pots and narrow back lanes will make you think of England, especially on a soft rainy evening like this, the first Monday in December. Mrs. MacIntyre had one of the big stand-alone houses at the end of the street across from the park, a location ideal for a dog owner. She walked her little cocker spaniel, Dewey, several times a day in the park or around the neighbourhood. But every once in a while she treated Dewey to a jaunt through Point Pleasant Park at the southern tip of the Halifax peninsula, overlooking the Atlantic Ocean, or Seaview Park at the northern tip, overlooking the Bedford Basin. The salt air perked him up, she said. The dog sat at her feet, and she rubbed his silky ears as we spoke.
I explained that I was the lawyer for the Schola Cantorum Sancta Bernadetta, and that I was doing a bit of investigating on the schola’s behalf.
“But they got the person! Are you looking for someone else?”
I didn’t answer her directly, but said: “We’d like as complete a picture as we can get of the circumstances surrounding the murder.”
“Okay.”
“So, on Friday, November 22, you and Dewey went to Seaview Park.”
“Yes, we did.”
“How did you end up near Stella Maris Church?”
“Well, there was what I call an irresponsible pet owner on the loose at Seaview Park that day. He had two Rottweilers, lovely dogs if they’d been properly brought up — I don’t fault the dogs — but they came bounding after Dewey. I thought they were going to have him for lunch. This was the second day in a row they were there. We had been up there Thursday afternoon as well, and we enjoyed our walk until this man and his dogs appeared and ruined our outing. We left. We tried again on Friday. But no, the Rottweilers bore down on Dewey again. I scooped him up and glared at the owner. He laughed at us. That was it for me. But it was lovely and sunny out, and Dewey and I weren’t ready to call it a day. On the way back to my car I looked up, noticed the spires of Stella Maris, where I’d made my first communion as a girl. I said to Dewey: ‘How about a walk around God’s house on the hill?’ That sounded just fine with him, so off we went.” She smiled down at the dog.
“So you parked where, behind the church?”
“No, there’s a small parking lot behind a white building, a city building of some kind, at the top of the hill. From there I walked across the grass to the church.”
“Then what?”
“We went for our walk down by the church and along the hill there.”
“You didn’t go into the church.”
“Oh, no. I assumed it was locked. Even though they’re tearing it down. What a shame. But no, I just walked around it.”
“And you heard something?”
“I thought I did. I thought I heard voices.”
“Coming from the church.”
“Well, I thought so. But when the police questioned me I had to admit there were voices I could hear from the container terminal. And someone was unloading a truck at one of the businesses nearby. So now I have to wonder whether the voices I heard came from the church at all.”
“I understand. Could you make out any words?”
“No.”
“Could you tell anything about the tone?”
“It seemed they were speaking loudly but it wasn’t loud to me, if you understand what I mean. It was windy, and there were other noises, so the voices were faint by the time they reached my ears, but it sounded like yelling. Does that make sense?”
“Yes, I think I know what you mean.”