Murder at the National Cathedral (18 page)

The inspector shook his head. “Afraid not. We send it all up to London.”

“Fine,” Smith said. “Can we arrange to have two sets of prints made in London, one for you, one for us?” He smiled. “It would be nice to have something to remember this lovely day in the Cotswolds.”

“Fair enough,” said the officer.

Mac rewound the film and removed it from the camera, then handed to the officer, who, in turn, gave it to one of his men with instructions to have it driven to London immediately. Mac gave the officer their Washington address and was assured a set of prints would be sent there by courier.

“Hate to say it,” Annabel murmured, “but the pictures probably won’t amount to much with all that fog. I did have fast film, though.”

After the authorities had left, Mac and Annabel sat with Nigel and Tracy. Mac brought up Paul Singletary again. “What did he do when he was here?” Smith asked Nigel.

“Relaxed, I suppose,” Nigel said. “He had a favorite room, one facing the gardens behind the hotel.”

“He was here one weekend with an attractive woman named Morgan. Do you recall that?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Did they share the same room?”

Nigel grimaced. “I don’t think it is appropriate for someone in my position to reveal such information.”

“And I respect your discretion,” Smith said, “but we’re talking about two murders here, first Reverend Singletary’s, and now your local parish priest’s. Mrs. Smith and I are here in the United Kingdom on our honeymoon, but there is another purpose for this trip. I am serving as legal counsel to the National Cathedral of Washington. Father Singletary, who was murdered there, was a friend. He officiated at our wedding in August. Bishop St. James of the National
Cathedral asked me to look into Reverend Singletary’s movements while he was here in England. He was in London the day before he was murdered, but told people he would be spending the next day in the country, presumably here, before returning to Washington. That obviously didn’t happen, because he was murdered the next night.”

“I see,” Nigel said.

“Was that the only time he came here with a woman?” Annabel asked.

Tracy said, “Yes, I think it was.”

“Did they see anyone else while they were here?” Smith asked.

“No, they kept very much to themselves, which would be expected,” Nigel said. “Except, of course, for Reverend Priestly. As I told you, they were chums.”

“Because they were fellow priests?”

“More than that. I overheard them talking one day in the library,” Nigel said. “They evidently went back a long way, perhaps to university.”

“Anything else you remember about the conversation you overheard?”

“Not really.”

“Did Reverend Singletary and Reverend Priestly get together the weekend Singletary was here with Miss Morgan?” Annabel asked.

Nigel and Tracy shrugged. “I don’t recall,” Nigel said.

“Well, you’ve been very generous with your time and information,” Smith said. “I think we’d better head back to London.”

“Mr. and Mrs. Smith, I can’t tell you how upset we are that your initial visit to Buckland Manor involved such horrible experiences. Being the one to find the body of Reverend Priestly must’ve been a ghastly occurrence. And you, Mrs. Smith, almost being killed by an irresponsible equestrian is appalling. We’ve never had anything like that happen before. Please accept our apologies for the two days
you’ve had to endure. And come and stay with us again as our guests—on the house, I think you say.”

Smith smiled and shook the young manager’s hand. “It’s a wonderful house. Aside from priests being murdered and my wife almost being run over by a horse, we enjoyed our stay very much. Ideally, we’ll come back one day and have the sort of tranquil vacation you’re used to providing.”

Mac and Annabel were early for their flight and settled into the Clipper Club at the airport. Mac called Jeffrey Woodcock and asked, “Anything new on Miss Morgan?”

“No, Mac. Most unusual, most distressing.”

“Do me a favor, Jeffrey. See if you can find out if Reverend Priestly was involved with the Word of Peace movement.”

“Shall do, Mac. Again, horrible what happened to Annabel. Please give her our warmest regards.”

“Could have been worse. A hell of a lot worse. She might have ended up permanently planted in that field in the Cotswolds.”

Washington, D.C., That Evening—Chilly

They arrived at Foggy Bottom too late to spring Rufus from the kennel. The grating electronic voice on the answering machine informed them that there were eleven messages. Mac noted the names and numbers on a yellow legal pad. Some could wait; calls from Bishop St. James, Terry Finnerty, and Tony Buffolino would be answered immediately. He called the bishop first.

“Welcome back, Mac. Good trip?”

“Depends upon how you look at it, George. Annabel and I had some fine moments, although the whole thing was not what you’d call without incident.” He told the bishop of Annabel’s strange experience while walking in the fields, and of the murder of the parish priest, Robert Priestly.

“That’s horrible!” St. James said. “You say he was killed in the same manner as Paul?”

“A blow to the head, only this time the weapon, a candlestick, was left at the scene.”

“I see. Was there any connection between Paul and this Reverend Priestly?”

“You didn’t know about him?”

“No.”

“There was a specific link between them. They evidently knew each other pretty well, and often spent time together when Paul was in England. I’ll fill you in on this tomorrow. I have a class in the morning but thought I’d come by the cathedral after that. I should be there about noon.”

“They have you working on Saturday.”

“A makeup class. The price you pay for a honeymoon. See you tomorrow.”

Smith failed to connect with Finnerty, but reached Tony Buffolino at the Spotlight Room. “You called while I was away?” Smith said.

“Yeah. When did you get back?”

“A little while ago. What did you get on Reverend Singletary?”

“Mac, I spent a pretty good hunk of time on it.”

Smith asked when they could get together.

“How about tonight?”

“No, Tony, we’re beat.” It was eight o’clock in Washington, one in the morning London time. “How about tomorrow afternoon?”

“Can’t do it, Mac.”

Smith put his hand over the mouthpiece and said to Annabel, “Feel like a little nightclubbing?”

Her expression was what Smith would have expected if he’d suggested a walk in a foggy Cotswold sheep pasture. “Just for an hour,” he said.

She shook her head, and Smith knew she meant it. He said to Buffolino, “Annabel is exhausted, but I’ll be there in a half hour.”

“Great.”

“Is there a place we can talk quietly? I really don’t feel like
hearing what you’ve learned while your impressionist does obscure personalities.”

“I got an office in the back. Lousy view of the stage. See ya.”

“You don’t mind, do you?” Smith asked Annabel after hanging up on Buffolino.

“Absolutely not,” she said. “I’m going to take a hot bath and unpack. Frankly, I think you’re crazy, but I’m beginning to wonder why that would surprise me.” She came to him, wrapped her arms around his neck, and kissed him. “Don’t be long, Mac. You have your class first thing in the morning, and I have to get cracking, too. Let’s cuddle up for a good night’s sleep.”

“With even half of that invitation, I’ll be back quicker than I planned.”

There weren’t many customers in Tony’s place, and the show hadn’t started, for which Smith was grateful. Three bored musicians played slow music with a backbeat. A couple danced.

“A table, or do you prefer the bar?” a sunken-cheeked young woman wearing minimal clothing asked.

“I have an appointment with Mr. Buffolino.”

“You do? I’ll tell him you’re here. What’s your name?”

“Smith, Mackensie Smith.”

Alicia Buffolino appeared from the rear of the club. For a second, Smith wasn’t sure it was Alicia. She had always worn her auburn hair long, and was fond of tight shiny toreador pants, and tight shirts scooped low at the neck. Now she’d had her hair cut into a trendy bob, had applied a considerably lighter hand to her makeup, and wore a nicely tailored rust-colored suit and white blouse with a bow at the neck. “Good to see you, Mac,” she said, kissing him on the cheek.

“Nice to see you, too, Alicia. Forgive me if I make no
sense. We just got back from London, and I’m still operating on their time. Is Tony here?”

“He’s in the office going over bills. We have more bills than customers. Come on back.”

If Alicia and Tony hadn’t called it an office, Smith would have assumed they were in a storeroom. Except for a small, genuinely distressed desk, a chair that had suffered too many heavy sitters (and maybe a hand-grenade attack), and a leaning tower of battered black file cabinets, the rest of the room was piled with boxes. Buffolino sat at the desk going through a swirl of papers. The minute Alicia opened the door he stood up and said, “Hey, Mac, good to see you again.” To Alicia: “Get a chair for Mac, would you?”

She returned with a folding metal chair that she noisily snapped open. “Anything else, Your Majesty?” she asked before slamming the door behind her.

Buffolino shook his head. “Man, she gets more difficult every day.”

Not long before she’s former wife number three, Smith thought. “So, Tony,” he said, sinking into the chair, “tell me what you’ve found out about Paul Singletary.”

Buffolino reached into the bottom drawer of the desk and pulled out a folder. Written on the cover was
MAC SMITH
. He slid the top piece of paper across the desk to Smith, who put on half-glasses and read it.

“Whattaya think?” Buffolino asked.

“Pretty thorough,” Smith said. “A lot of it I know, but there are some interesting items in here. This reference to his military service. Where did you get that?”

“I got a friend in military records in St. Louis. She gave it to me over the phone.”

“I’m not sure I understand this joint commission Reverend Singletary was assigned to. It says here he served aboard a destroyer that had been outfitted with sensitive, classified gear, and that the crew was made up of American, British,
and French naval personnel. What else do you know about that?”

“What you see is what you get, Mac. What caught my eye was how short a time he served, less than a year. I guess clergy don’t get put on extended assignments.”

“I’m not sure that’s true, but it’s worth checking into. There’s no reference here to the type of discharge he was given.”

“I asked my friend in St. Louis about that. She said the only notation in his file was ‘Discharge: Official.’ ”

“I’ve never heard of that designation before, but I suppose all discharges are ‘official,’ ” Smith said.

“I’ll check it out,” Buffolino said, scribbling a note on the folder. The other papers in the file were not as neatly organized as the first, and Buffolino read from them. Smith stopped him when he got to Singletary’s travel itinerary back to Washington the day of his murder. “You say he arrived at two-thirty in the afternoon at Kennedy Airport in New York, and took a shuttle to Washington from LaGuardia. That would place him back here at approximately five o’clock.”

“Right.”

“Anything else about his trip home?”

Buffolino smiled. “Yeah, there is. Seems he was accompanied by a foxy lady.”

“Really? Another friend in strange places tell you that?”

“As a matter’a fact, yeah. I got this gal I used to see once in a while … between marriages, of course … and she works in crew scheduling. I told her I needed the names of the stewardesses who worked the flight from London to JFK that Singletary was on, and she gave them to me.”

“They’re not called stewardesses anymore, Tony, they’re called flight attendants.”

“They’re all ‘Coffee, Tea, or Me’ to me. I called some of these stews—attendants, and told them straight out that I
was an investigator looking into the murder of Reverend Paul Singletary, which happened at the National Cathedral. I told them that it was very important that if they remembered anything about a priest on that flight that they share it with me. It took me five calls before I connect with this—” He glanced down at a note on the paper. “Her name is Anne Padula. She tells me she remembers him very well.”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why would she remember him? How many passengers are on those flights, two hundred, three hundred?”

“Yeah, probably, only this Anne Padula got to talking to the reverend. She told me she spotted him the minute he walked in because he was a very handsome guy, especially for a guy in a collar. She told me she wasn’t the only female on that flight who gave him a look more than once, including the lady sitting next to him.”

“Sitting next to him? I thought he traveled with a woman.”

“Well, this stewardess didn’t know that right away. What interested her was that they seemed to strike up a friendship pretty fast for a couple’a people who just happened to sit next to each other on a jumbo jet. Then she gets talking to both of them and she gets a sense that even though they came on the plane separate, they knew each other from before. You know, women like this Padula have pretty good instincts, especially working with the public all the time. Anyway, she tells me that she becomes convinced that they came on board separately for deliberate reasons.”

“Did she describe this woman to you?”

“Yeah, she did, only she really didn’t remember what she looked like as much as she did the reverend. She says this woman was kind of cool-looking, black hair, very fair skin, maybe talked with a British accent. Had big shoulders, she says.”

Smith grunted. “She couldn’t be sure about the accent? Not hard to recognize a British accent.”

“Yeah, except the lady didn’t say much. In fact, the lady seemed annoyed that a pretty stew was talking to the reverend.”

“Interesting,” Smith said. “Did you find out anything else from this flight attendant?”

“That’s about it, Mac.”

“Did you learn anything about Singletary’s movements between the time he arrived in Washington on the shuttle and when he was murdered in the cathedral that night?”