[Dorothy Parker 02] - Chasing the Devil

by Agata Stanford

  “I didn’t think to do that.”

  “The room he stayed in—are his belongings still there?”

  “Yes.”

  “Would it be all right with you if we—”

  “Of course.”

  “Let’s find out if there are any clues as to why he was murdered.”

  “Then, you believe it wasn’t random. He was deliberately murdered!”

  Our silence was response enough for Timothy Morgan.

  “I’ll only be a few minutes,” I said, walking into the bedroom to dress.

  Half an hour later, Mrs. Daniels bade us enter the rectory of St. Agatha’s on 43rd Street.

  “Good morning to you, Mrs. Parker, Mr. Benchley, Father Timothy.”

  “Father Timothy?” I blurted out loudly.

  “Yes, that’s right,” said the priest, removing his scarf to display his clerical collar. “I thought you knew.”

  “We do now! Here we’ve been behaving all sacrilegious—”

  “Speak for yourself, Mrs. Parker,” interrupted Mr. Benchley.

  “That’s all right,” said Father Timothy with a laugh. “We Jesuits are used to heresy.”

  Damn it! I had to discard my designs. After all, Girls seldom make passes at men who say masses! By the way Mrs. Daniels beamed dreamy-eyed at the young priest I surmised there were lots of repressed “church ladies” who might challenge my observation.

  Father Michael was meeting with a church committee, Mrs. Daniels told us, and would not be free until the hour, which, by Mr. Benchley’s pocket watch, gave us about fifteen minutes to examine the bedroom in which Father O’Hara had spent his last hours on earth.

  Timothy Morgan led the way up the wide, carpeted stairs. My hand glided along the rail of the brilliantly polished dark-walnut banister to the second-floor landing, where, to left and right, wainscoted hallways led to rooms entered through paneled doors. He opened the second door to the right and we walked into the sparsely decorated bedroom.

  Weak winter sunlight shone through the diamond-shaped panes of leaded-glass casement windows; an armoire, bed frame, and bedside table were polished to a looking-glass shine; a stream of dust motes danced along the arrow of light that shot in from outside and onto the bed.

  There was little to say as the three of us began opening drawers and doors. Timothy looked under the bed, Mr. Benchley peered into an empty trash bin, and I checked the pockets of a coat jacket that still hung in the armoire. I folded the jacket and laid it on a chair. Father Timothy opened a small leather valise.

  Inside were articles of clothing: one shirt, two clerical collars, two each of socks, undergarments, a pair of trousers, along with a shaving kit containing razor, brush, toothbrush, manicuring scissors, hair comb, and a bottle of Carter’s Little Pills.

  There was nothing, absolutely nothing that gave us any clue as to where the priest had traveled and for what purpose during the days before his murder. But it was obvious from the sparse contents of the valise that he never intended an extended stay—not in Michigan, nor in New York City.

  “We’re fresh out of trash,” stated Mr. Benchley, displaying the metal trash bin flipped upside down. Father Timothy’s blank expression brought out Mr. Benchley’s serious side. “Let’s ask Mrs. Daniels if the trash has been collected. And, by any chance, do you have a recent photo of Father O’Hara?”

  Father Timothy went to his room across the hallway and returned with a snapshot of his godfather, which he handed to Mr. Benchley, along with a parcel returned to him from the police containing clothing worn the day of his death. He placed the parcel on the bed and untied the string that held it together. Pulling away the flap of paper, we stared down at the bloodstained shirt, collar, undergarments, and socks and shoes. Beneath the neatly folded garments lay trousers, waistcoat, and overcoat, all black, and all marked with dried blood.

  Mr. Benchley and I remained silent, watching as Timothy Morgan examined the clothing, gingerly running his hand along the fabric of the lapel of the waistcoat, and then carefully, lovingly, lifting the clerical collar between his fingers. From the pocket of the waistcoat he pulled a string of ebony wooden beads. Father John O’Hara’s rosary. He turned to look at us, and I felt, as did Mr. Benchley, like we were intruders. Mourning is a personal experience and the young man’s intimate connection with the deceased priest was profound.

  “It’s all right,” he said, with a little smile of understanding, as if he’d read our thoughts. “These are of no importance any longer. Uncle John is in a better place, a place he’d prepared to go all of his earthly life. It’s just me, you see. I will miss him.”

  Whatever I thought of religion and whatever I didn’t believe in didn’t matter much. Throughout my life, when I felt alone or had known despair, I never thought about God; never thought to ask for divine intervention. Prayers were just words said in churches and temples reassuring God that you loved Him. But, did He love us back? And if there is a guardian angel watching over me, I’ve never seen him. Every other little kid at the Academy had one for protection; at least, they said they had. None had been assigned to me; I was on my own. There was no life after this one pathetic condition, even with all the assurances of the nuns of the academy, of my stepmother, of the great poets and statesmen of centuries past and present. And as I was Jewish and not baptized, I was told that I would languish in limbo among the other unbaptized children and heathen peoples of the world, never to be admitted into Heaven. Of this I was assured by the nuns. I saw a picture, a pen-and-ink drawing, when I was little that depicted limbo. I envisioned myself among all the little children like me, the stains of Original Sin unbleached from their souls by fontal waters, roaming about some vast, cobra-infested jungle, searching for places to hide from grotesque deformed demons and from naked, painted, spear-carrying savages who were, undoubtedly, cannibals.

  I was frightened at first. As I grew older, I saw the absurdity of it all.

  I could not believe.

  I didn’t want there to be nothing. I didn’t want to think I was alone. I didn’t want to deny the existence of a God that I might lean on, appeal to, and eventually reunite with. I didn’t want to be left out. But, I felt there was nothing for me; I was alone; there was no great Being to comfort me, to go to. I was left out.

  In many ways I envied the faith that Timothy Morgan held close to his heart, as he now held the rosary beads to his chest. I wanted to have that kind of conviction held by people of faith, but I just couldn’t wrap my mind around the irrational premise of it all. I wasn’t an atheist, mind you; I knew of no absolutes. If, as Karl Marx stated in his Manifesto, “Religion is the opium of the masses,” I can attest that opiates depress me, and I get depressed enough without any help. I prefer the effects of Johnny Walker and tobacco.

  But, in that moment, too, a light of sorts did shine in on me, like the dust mote-filled shaft of sunlight warming my face: I have an undying, if irrational, faith in love. Strip away all the big and little conflicting interpretations of theological dogma, and the message, the only truth, remains: love. The message of Jesus spoken through His Beatitudes; Buddha, Mohammad, Abraham—all the same message: Love one another. Too bad the world is so hateful.

  So what if I didn’t follow an organized religion? Religion had been responsible for so much death and misery in the world. Christians killing Muslims, killing Jews: crusades, inquisitions, royal feuds. It’s not an original idea, but just look around. I struggle every day with my own hatefulness.

  I am a Jew, a half-Jew. I don’t shout out the fact. Jews have been blamed for all the ills of the world, and for “half-baked” people like me, it’s an ambiguous existence. I don’t let it cripple me.

  But perhaps it has crippled me. Even though I am separated from Eddie Parker merely by mutual agreement—he wasn’t the same after fighting the War in Europe, and as hard as we tried after all the years apart, we never regained our tempo as a couple—I will, in the event we divorce, keep my married name. I became famous as D
orothy “Parker,” and had I kept my maiden name, Dorothy Rothschild—not of the great-fortune Rothschilds, but of the sweatshop coat-manufacturing Rothschilds—I doubt I ever would have been permitted to become the model of style and sophistication for my generation. Religion is often worn like a nametag, and in our society determines whether love is offered or denied.

  Love. I think that is all there is.

  But, I regress.

  “Where’s his prayer book?” asked Father Timothy, pulling me out of my trance.

  All the coat pockets checked, and finding no book, we left the room in search for Mrs. Daniels. Our inquiries as to its whereabouts proved useless. She’d not seen it anywhere about the house. Perhaps Father Michael had it, she offered. As for the contents of the dustbin, she had discarded the few items from the receptacle. The trash was out back behind the kitchen; she’d not taken it to the incinerator as yet. Look for the brown paper bags she’d recovered from the bedrooms, she said. We went on a fishing expedition.

  It’s amazing how much you can learn about a household just by looking through its trash. Father Michael enjoyed Red Bordeaux and quite a bit of it from the number of bottles we encountered; had a propensity for indulging in Belgium chocolates, German pastry, custard pies, and Prince Albert pipe tobacco, as revealed by the merchants’ cardboard and tin packaging; and paid for the consequences of those indulgences with stomach bitters and milk of magnesia.

  After looking through several brown paper bags we found the one that was probably taken from the receptacle in Father O’Hara’s room. We spread the contents on a worktable: train ticket stubs of his journeys from Tennessee to Detroit, and a one-way to New York. We’d found no ticket for his return home among his belongings, one that, for economy, he would have likely purchased upon leaving Tennessee. Strange, that; the Christmas season upon us, the busiest time of the year for any parish priest, and he up and leaves his flock without notice and without a date of return. Obviously, he was resigned to traveling wherever he had to go. To do something. My impression after talking with his godson and Father Murphy led me to believe Father O’Hara’s sudden decision to hop a train for New York had nothing at all to do with the on-the-spot decision to visit his old seminary friend. Perhaps the murdered priest was not trying to rid himself of any inner spiritual turmoil at all, and he was not chasing rainbows, either, but rather, was running away from something.

  He was running away from something!

  He’d never had any intention of returning to Tennessee! Perhaps the visits to his godson and old friend Michael were attempts at escape.

  He was afraid, not conflicted.

  But, from what had he been fleeing? The Law? Had he run off with the church building fund, or the Sunday offering? Not that we knew. If so, where’d he hide the money? I’d have to get FPA to use his newspaper’s resources to find out if the police in Tennessee were looking for a parish thief.

  My imagination was running wild: Had he become involved in a love affair with a married woman? The church secretary, or a pretty member of the Rosary Society, or the beautiful wife of a wealthy parishioner whom he’d been counseling for kleptomania? Maybe he was innocent of any lascivious conduct, but a jealous husband nevertheless wanted to put out his lights?

  We uncovered a box of matches from the Garden Café.

  I asked Father Timothy if his godfather smoked. He did not. Was it taken as a souvenir of his trip to New York? Not if he was on the run.

  Several candy wrappers, a Cooper Union schedule of lecture programs for the winter season, and a crumpled-up piece of stationery from the University Club.

  I deduced the priest liked hard candy, was handed the lecture schedule by a street promoter as he walked around the city, and because the schedule had been trashed, he had no real interest in going to any lectures.

  The matches and stationery? Although discarded, they could have been picked up anywhere for reasons of little importance. But from all of these seemingly inconsequential items light could be shed on his whereabouts during the days immediately preceding his murder. We had to follow up, retrace his steps, if we had any hope of understanding why he had been marked for death. Perhaps we might stumble upon a connection between the priest and his killer. I don’t like loose ends. There have been too many loose ends left dangling during my life. And the one that haunted me the most was the mysterious disappearance of my brother, Harry, so many years ago.

  Father Murphy welcomed us into his study.

  I got right to the point: “Father O’Hara wasn’t conflicted, wasn’t fighting inner demons, was he?”

  The look on Mr. Benchley’s face was one of wide-eyed surprise. “Did I miss something, Mrs. Parker? I thought we were looking for a prayer book.”

  “I doubt it is of any consequence whether we find it or not.”

  “I’m sorry?” asked Father Murphy, also wearing a look of surprise.

  And in response, the godson’s eyebrows raised up in astonishment. “It is of consequence to me,” he said.

  “Yes, of course it is,” I said, trying to soothe his sudden indignation, which was so unexpected. “What I meant to say was that finding the book is of no consequence to solving the mystery of why Father O’Hara was murdered. The killer may be dead, but still the question remains: Why? What did Father O’Hara do that got him killed? The book is moot.”

  “Why are you so sure of that?” asked Mr. Benchley. “If he was in the habit of carrying his prayer book with him, he might have scribbled a clue, or inserted a receipt or some such thing between its pages.”

  Father Murphy responded to my friend with a chuckle. “No, Mr. Benchley. No! We men of God do not deface our prayer books or use them as wallets!”

  He walked to his desk and from a stack of books lifted a small book. Handing it to Timothy Morgan, he said, “I found it the evening before he was killed, half-hidden beneath the console table in the hall. It must have fallen from his coat pocket when he left that final time. Only his name is inscribed on the frontispiece.”

  I wanted Father Murphy to address my question: “Was Father O’Hara in some sort of trouble? Was he running from someone or something?”

  “John was an exemplary human being—”

  “My godfather would never do anything that—”

  “Oh, please!” I said over the two reproachful voices. “Let’s try to be honest here! I didn’t say he ran off with the church building fund—or did he?”

  Expressions of disbelief registered on all three faces, as if I had said something sacrilegious, or worse, was suddenly stripped naked before them. I’d try a different tactic.

  Mr. Benchley’s jaw lifted off the floor and into a sly grin before I could continue. “Mrs. Parker, are you saying that you suspect the sort of trouble Father O’Hara may have found himself in might have been of a . . . personal nature rather than a criminal one?”

  “What would I do without you, Fred?”

  “How often I ask myself that very question,” he murmured in an aside.

  Fully clothed, I addressed the men: “Anything you can tell us might shed some light on the real reason he traveled across the country for the first time in so many years. It could also tell us why he was murdered.

  Father Michael said, frustration cracking his voice: “I only wish I could.”

  Mr. Benchley handed Father Timothy his card, so that he might telephone should he learn anything more that might shed new light on why his uncle was murdered, and then we said our goodbyes, a piece of stationery from the University Club, a box of matches from the Garden Café, and a Cooper Union lecture schedule our only clues.

  We left the priests and walked out into the cool daylight. Mr. Benchley took a paper from his inside coat pocket. It was the telegram Father O’Hara had sent to Father Murphy last Wednesday evening informing his host that pressing business would keep him away and that he would try to return to the rectory the following day for Thanksgiving dinner.

  “Well, thanks to a friend at Western Union,
I’ve been able to find out that the telegram was sent from a telegraph office on West Fifty-fourth Street, a couple doors down from the University Club and the Garden Café.”

  “So the business that needed his attention must have been at the café or the club.”

  “Presumably,” said Mr. Benchley.

  “I do dislike that term of speech, ‘presumably.’ After all, who is doing the presuming, will you tell me that?”

  “Inextricably?”

  “That’s even worse.”

  “Indubitably?”

  “I’ll just ignore you.”

  “Ineluctably!”

  “Idiot!”

  “Ahhhh, Imbecile-ic-ably?

  “Shut up.”

  “Indefatigably!”

  “Quite!”

  I’d had enough of trying to solve this puzzle. There was no real urgency, as there was no longer any threat to me or Aleck or anyone else since the murderer was dead. The day was bright, and I wanted a break from all the drama of the past few days. We left our “clues” on my desk for future review, and went down to join the others for our one o’clock luncheon, after which Jane and I spent the rest of the afternoon shopping at B. Altman’s and Lord & Taylor’s on Fifth Avenue. I was anxious to try on a fox-trimmed embroidered coat I’d seen advertised at Stewart & Company on 37th Street.

  As it was the Saturday of a holiday weekend the stores were mobbed with out-of-towners from the suburbs getting a jump on their holiday shopping. The store windows were decorated with fairyland and winter-countryside scenes with mechanically driven figures of ice skaters circling a frozen pond, dogs romping about, horse-drawn sleighs winding along snow-covered lanes, children sledding down hills before forests of snow-blanketed evergreens. There was a wonderful Santa’s Workshop, a window bright with elves at workbenches, hammering and wrenching together the body parts of toy soldiers, jack-in-the-boxes, and life-sized dolls. A family decorating a sparklingly lit tree with scores of brightly wrapped presents at its base; the father on a tall ladder, shining star in hand at the tree’s top, mother adding tinsel, daughter placing an ornament on a lower branch, son peeking at a gift box through a tear in the paper (reading American BB gun), small dog pulling the seat of the son’s pants between his teeth, tail wagging. A happy change from the usual fare of slinky manikins draped in fashionable attire.