“Oh – sorry,” I said hastily, catching sight of Father Taggart standing from the bench. He was barely visible in the poor lighting due to his dark clothing, but the white of his collar and paleness of his skin still caught in the dim lights off to either sides of the room. “I – I didn't mean to disturb you.”
For some reason, I had assumed that the church would be empty by now. It had never really occurred to me that the priest both worked and lived within it, and the idea that the two parts of his life were so entangled was an odd one, as though the inability to step away from it all must have pressed against him uncomfortably. But, looking at him then as he stood and approached me, he didn't appear to be anything but content.
“There's no need to apologize; I was rather enjoying listening to it,” he said kindly.
“Right.”
I pulled my hands away from the keys anyhow, certain that it was not appropriate to play a non-religious song in a place of worship, especially one like Dido's Lament.
“You're a lovely pianist,” the priest continued, pausing as he reached the organ and looking down at me. “I didn't want to intrude, but I was surprised to hear it from the office.”
“I didn't mean to bother you,” I said again, sliding my hands beneath my legs as though hiding them might erase the action. “I – I guess I thought that no one was here.”
“There's always someone here, Enim.”
“Right.” I nodded, though I wasn't entirely sure of what he meant. “Well, it won't happen again.”
“You can play whenever you like,” he countered. “There's sheet music in the sacristy, too, though you don't seem to need any.”
“Yeah, I … mainly play by ear.”
“It's a lovely gift, I've always thought, the ability to create. You learned at school?”
“Yeah.” I nodded, then added uncertainly, “And my mother played, too.”
“She's passed?” he asked, noting the use of past tense.
“Yes.”
“I'm very sorry to hear that. She's at peace now, at least.”
“Right. Well, she's dead.”
I could only consent to agree with the initial statement: the latter was debatable.
“I was pleased when Jack told me that you would be visiting,” Father Taggart went on. “He was very excited – very happy, I should say. He's glad that you've come.”
“Right. That's … good.”
“It is,” the priest agreed. “And I … I often think that he might be a bit lonely up here, even though he seems to like it. At any rate, it's good that he had a friend here now.”
Though he seemed to be commending me, a nagging part of me wondered whether he was really berating me for having not come sooner. Jack had lived there for more than three years now, and I had only just consented to come to see him. Feeling the need to defend myself and figuring that word would get around the town soon enough given that I had already told Mr. Perenna about the schizophrenia, I said, “I've been ill. That's why I haven't been here before now.”
“I'm sorry to hear that,” he said with a frown. “Are you better now?”
I didn't hesitate.
“No.”
Father Taggart gave a solemn nod.
“That's unfortunate,” he said. “I'll pray for you.”
I had to stop myself from giving a scoff.
“No, that's alright,” I said. “I don't – I don't think praying will do me much good.”
“It certainly might,” he said. “And I don't mind trying.”
“Well, I do. I mean, I appreciate it and whatnot – I'd just rather if you didn't bother.”
The priest looked at me closely.
“Alright, if you'd prefer,” he said. “Though … you could pray, too, of course. You might find that God answers your prayers.”
I looked at him steadily.
“Right,” I said flatly. “Well, I actually already hear voices, Father Taggart, so I don't think I'd like to hear anymore.”
He smiled sadly.
“I see. Well, you might find that this voice is … kinder than the ones that you're used to,” he said. When I didn't look convinced, he added, “I certainly know that God's voice has always been good to me.”
I hummed in feigned agreement.
“God speaks to you?” I said, unable to completely hide the skepticism in my voice.
“He does, Enim,” he said, still looking at me closely. “Do you not believe me?”
I ran my tongue over my teeth.
“No, I do,” I said. “But I think that anyone can hear voices – if the world's quiet enough, and they're lonely enough.”
I excused myself and returned upstairs, wishing that I could think of a reason to stay in the local inn rather than the room above the church to avoid any future conversations with the priest, but resigned that he would undoubtedly give up on me eventually. When Jack returned shortly after eight, I was sitting by the window looking down at the cemetery, my mind as simultaneously thoughtless and heavy as ever.
“How was work?” I asked as he went to the small refrigerator to find something for dinner.
“Same as usual – sorting books, trying to fix the register, answering questions. Never really thought I'd be spending so much time in a bookstore.”
He found a jar of nearly empty preserves and poured it over a slice of bread in a makeshift sandwich. The red, viscous jam contrasted on the white in a morbidly grotesque way.
“What've you been up to?”
“Nothing. Just waiting for you to get back.”
“How exciting,” he said dryly. “Have you at least been thinking about how Anna might've died?”
I rolled my eyes, but he had just taken a bite of his sandwich and didn't notice.
“We know how she died,” I said. “And the more I think about it, the more I think that it really was a suicide.”
Jack sighed.
“Come on, Nim – can't you just humor me and try to think of something else?” he said. “Give me a wild theory or something to run on – I'm stuck.”
“I don't do theories,” I said. “That's you. I'm the logical one, remember?”
Now that the hallucinations of Cabail Ibbot had stopped, the rational, stoic part of me had returned to my mind to allow me to think the way that I had perceived that he had, and though I had never particularly liked him, having his qualities was better than having him around in the open air.
“I've already given you my theory,” Jack said. “She was murdered. But that's all I've got, and it's not much to go on.”
“Maybe that's because there's nowhere to go,” I said. When he gave me an irritated look, I ran a hand through my hair and tried again. “I mean, come on, Jack: I know that you think it's weird that she killed herself, but it's not. She was upset over her brother dying, and her family's a mess – it's not unreasonable that she'd decide to kill herself.”
“So that's it? You're not even going to try to help me?”
“That's not what I'm saying,” I said, even though it truly was. “I just mean – I'm staying here for a few weeks, alright? I'm not going anywhere regardless of what happened to her. So I just think … maybe we should give this whole thing a rest, and just try and do things like we used to – you know, before Miss Mercier and all those murders. Normal things. Normal hobbies. We could – things could be like they were before.”
I wasn't sure that he was pleased with the idea, though the time when we had just been foolish and adventurous without needing to chase killers were the best memories that we had together. And maybe I should have known that it would come back to this, because he had always gotten bored far too easily and sought stranger and more exciting ways to pass the time, but I would have thought that after everything that had happened and all of the messes that had taken months to clear away that he might have been willing to try to revert back to when things had been simpler and easier, if not for his sake than my own.
“It's different now, Jack,” I said, k
nowing that I hadn't convinced him. “I'm not – I can't do this type of thing anymore. My brain won't let me.”
“Yeah. Yeah, I know.” He was silent for a long moment, his sandwich dripping jam upon the floor as he thought it over. “And I get what you're saying, Nim, but this isn't – I'm not making this up. I know that something's not right here, and I don't know how to explain it.”
“Maybe there's nothing to explain.”
“Fine – maybe,” he said. “Maybe you're right and she killed herself. But can you just give me a day or two where you go over the possibilities with me and pretend that she was murdered, just to see if there's any chance that it's true?”
He looked at me imploringly, and I let out a sigh.
“Alright,” I said. “I'll – I'll try, I guess. I just don't think I'll be much help.”
“We just need to find a piece that's missing,” he said. “Some sort of – I don't know – explanation of when things started to go wrong.”
“I don't know if there's a start to that,” I said.
“Everything starts somewhere.”
“Maybe, or maybe it's a chicken and egg sort of thing.”
“The egg came first, Nim. Ask any evolutionist.”
“Is there one here in town?” I asked skeptically. “Or is this another of your theories?”
“Nah,” he said, sitting back and taking another bite of his sandwich. “I've just been doing a lot of reading since I started working at the bookshop. Did you know we evolved from fish?”
“I thought we evolved from apes.”
“No, we share a common ancestor with chimpanzees,” he said. “Science was really never your strong point, was it?”
“Definitely not.”
I rubbed the bridge of my nose as I tried to get my mind to work in the way that he wanted it to. Shutting my eyes, I pressed the tips of my fingers against the sockets and tried to piece something together with the little that I knew about the dead girl.
“Alright, so Anna kills herself – allegedly – on the fifteenth,” I said, vaguely wondering why it had to be the same date as my birthday. “Everyone thinks it was a suicide, and no one's surprised to hear that she did it. Right?”
“Right.”
“Okay, and … her parents basically own the town, right? So maybe they have enemies who wanted to … I don't know – get back at them?”
“Could be, though a lot of people seem to like Mr. Perenna. It's sort of a 'fear is love' type of thing.”
“What about Mrs. Perenna, then?” I said, thinking about what Mrs. Coffey had told us about the woman. “Do people like her?”
“Yeah, she's a bit of a different case,” Jack said. “She's … I mean, she doesn't really have any control over the town – not legitimately, anyway, like her husband does – but she likes to act like it.”
“So she rubs people the wrong way?”
“She's an outsider,” Jack explained. “She came up here from some city – I forget where, exactly – and married Jim and just sort of took over, from what I've heard, and no one was too happy about it.”
“They have a problem with people from other parts?” I said doubtfully. “Isn't that sort of … I mean, there aren't too many people here. Do they really expect everyone to marry someone from Kipling?”
“It wasn't so much because he married someone from away, I don't think,” Jack said. “I think it's because everyone knew why he married her, and definitely why she married him.”
“Right, for his money.”
“Exactly. And it wouldn't be so bad if that was it, but it's just so clear that she doesn't like it here – it's too small and whatnot, and there's not much going on. I think she was hoping that they'd move somewhere a little more exciting, you know? She's never really gotten used to baking pies and hosting fundraisers.”
“She could divorce him.”
“Are you kidding? Mr. Perenna's probably got a pre-nup the length of the Oxford English Dictionary. His family built this town – no way he's letting her get control of any of it.”
I sat back on the bed and leaned against the wall, accidentally waking Mea from her sleep. She raised her head tiredly and scooted over to me to lay upon my lap.
“Okay, well, that doesn't tell us too much,” I said. “Or at least nothing that points to the fact that Anna's death was something other than a suicide.”
“Which it wasn't.”
“Which it might not have been, sure,” I said. “So what else do we know?”
“One of her brothers is dead, and the other one's inhaling too many paint fumes.”
“Right. So her family's messed up,” I reiterated, sighing once again. “Though – I guess if we're just looking for a place to start – the brother's death would probably be it. How'd he die again? Moose hunting?”
“Grouse hunting, Nim.”
“Grouse hunting,” I said. “Right. Well, if your theory's right and someone's bumping off Perenna children, then that would be the place to start.”
Jack looked at me expectantly.
“Yeah?” he said.
“Yeah.” I patted Mea's head lightly. “If there's something to find about that, then there's something to find about Anna's death, too.”
We waited until the morning before discussing it any further, as neither of us knew enough about Tommy Perenna's death to do more than guess as to what had happened to him. As I laid awake on the floor of Jack's room, staring up at the ceiling and huddled beneath my coat, a thin blanket, and several of Jack's sweatshirts in order to keep warm, I dully tried to think of a time when there had been anything between the monotony of everyday life and the situations that Jack pulled me into.
“So would there still be newspaper clippings or something from the time that he died?” I asked Jack when we were outside early the next day waiting for Mea to go to the bathroom.
“I don't know – I don't think the town archives them or anything,” he said. “Events like that are more of town gossip than written word. And there's no newspaper, either.”
“Alright, so who do we ask? Mrs. Coffey?”
Jack hesitated.
“I don't know. I was thinking about what you said yesterday – how I shouldn't have said anything to Mr. Perenna about what we're up to – so it's probably better that we don't go asking questions, what with us being from away, and all.”
“You make it sound like we're known spies in the Cold War.”
“Worse, we're outsiders,” he said seriously. “Best not to give everyone more reason to dislike us.”
It occurred to me that he was really referring to the fact that I had admitted my diagnosis to Mr. Perenna. Word had undoubtedly already circled the town, and though I didn't plan to stay long enough in the place to care what anyone thought about me, it wouldn't make anything easier for Jack once I had gone. I shifted uncomfortably in the cold.
“Right. So how do we do this, then?” I asked. “There has to be some way of finding out what went on around here before you came.”
“I guess we could ask Father Taggart,” Jack said slowly.
“Is he the local gossiper or something?” I asked dubiously.
“No, but he's the only one I'd trust not to tell anyone.”
I rolled my eyes upwards and stared at the sky. It was so white that it was difficult to tell if the sunlight had paled it or if it was covered over completely in clouds, and there was no hint of the moon anywhere in sight, either.
“Alright, we could try that,” I said.
“He's probably in the rectory,” Jack said with a nod.
We knocked on the door even though it was open, and the priest called for us to come in. I trailed a few steps behind Jack with Mea trotting at my feet. As I paused just inside the doorway, she began sniffing around the area and had successfully wrapped her leash twice around my legs before I could think to get her to sit still.
“Hi, Father,” Jack said. “Do you have a minute?”
“I have several,” he replied, lo
oking up from the paper that he had been reading over. “What do you need?”
“Nim and I sort of had something to ask you,” Jack began cautiously. “It's – ah – sort of a curiosity more than anything. You can tell us if we're out of place.”
“Well, now I'm intrigued,” Father Taggart said, putting the paper to the side and folding his hands in front of him. “Would you like to sit?”
“Alright.”
Jack took a seat in one of the chairs in front of the desk, and I hesitantly followed, not quite sure that Father Taggart would care to answer any questions that I had after how I had rebutted his beliefs the night before. As I sank down into the chair, though, he offered a smile as though the conversation had been in any way a pleasant one.
“So, what were you hoping to ask?” he said, looking between me and Jack.
“It's – it's sort of something about the Perennas,” Jack said.
“I see. Does this have something to do with your … excursion into their house yesterday?”
“Well, maybe a bit,” Jack admitted. “But we're not trying to cause trouble. I swear.”
“Please don't,” Father Taggart said, and though he sounded serious, there was a hint of teasing in his eyes. “We're in the house of the Lord, after all.”
“Right – I promise, then.”
The priest looked him over searchingly, apparently no more appeased than he had been with the initial word choice, though he seemed to feel that Jack at least thought that he was being quite honest.
“Continue,” he said after a moment.
“Right. Well, we were actually wondering a bit about how Tommy died. It was a grouse-hunting accident, right?”
“It was,” Father Taggart said.
“Right, so …” Jack glanced at me, uncertain of how to continue. “Was there … I don't know. Was there anything else?”
The priest frowned.
“Anything else about his death, you mean?” he asked. “I'm not sure that I know what you're asking, Jack.”
Jack looked at me again, and I unwilling jumped in.
When I Am Laid in Earth (Damnatio Memoriae Book 3) Page 10