Aisle of the Dead

by Joseph E. Wright

  “I really couldn’t say,” Father Sieger said thoughtfully. “I suppose it certainly could be, but I can’t imagine why Paul would be writing to him. He could just as easily have called him. What did the letter say?”

  “Only a sentence or two, telling Leslie that if he had anything he wished to discuss, Father Mowbray would be available and more than willing to help in any way he could.”

  “That certainly is strange, isn’t it?” Father Sieger said as they walked towards the side church door.

  “And your nephew has a key to the rectory?” Phillis asked.

  “I’m often here alone, and if anything happened….”

  “Was that your idea or his?” she asked.

  “His, I believe. And a good idea, too. It’s nice to know….”

  “One other thing,” Pat said and took out the photograph. “This is Father Paul with a young man. Sherrill Rothe?”

  The priest reached out and took it. “Yes… yes, Father Paul and that young man. And I’m sure you recognized Mr. Quentin standing behind them.”

  They went through the church and came out again into the front garden and stopped at the gate.

  “This Sherrill Rothe who visited Father Mowbray yesterday afternoon, can you tell us anything more about him?”

  “No, no, I don’t believe so.”

  “Shame, hoping you could. We’d like to find out a few things about him while the police are questioning him. Oh, well, if you’ll excuse us, we have a few things to attend to.”

  As they left the church grounds, Pat announced to Phillis that he wanted to do some shopping. “Few things I want to get. Coming with me?”

  “Sure. All detectives take time out in the middle of an investigation to do a little shopping.”

  Pat ignored her sarcasm. “A very interesting morning, to say the least,” he said as they approached Broad Street.

  “Think so? It was a morning spent looking at an old church and we met a crazy lady who takes care of a cemetery.” Phillis knew that would get a rise out of him.

  “Oh, my dear, dear Phillis,” he sighed. “You were privileged to go through a structure that’s truly a magnificent example of English gothic. You met an equally perfect example of a phenomenon of the times we live in, a street person, a citizen of that growing global commonwealth of the homeless. Beatrice Mulrooney, nee O’Brien, would be commonly referred to as a bag lady, although she does have a semblance of a job. I dare say there is much she could instruct both of us about the meaning of life.”

  They crossed Broad Street and continued towards their destination, a store in the middle of the next block on Chestnut Street.

  Phillis stopped outside the jewelry store with the name H. Sachs in gold lettering on the plate glass. “The gun Father Sieger had with him was a thirty-eight caliber, wasn’t it?”

  They were admiring the Waterford crystal displayed in one of the windows.

  “Wondered when you’d get around to that.”

  “Anyway, he couldn’t have killed Father Mowbray. His gun has been in your possession since he gave it to you Tuesday evening.”

  “He gave it to me quite willingly, no fuss at all. Could it be he had another gun someplace in the rectory? Could it be that he gave me that gun so everyone would believe what you believe, that he couldn’t have killed anyone since that gun was in my possession?”

  “Well, he’d be the first priest I knew who murdered anyone,” she protested. “I can understand someone murdering someone else. Even a priest doing that. But for someone like Father Sieger to drive to Atlantic City and engage our services, all the while playing the role of the troubled rector of Saint Alban’s, while planning to murder his own curate, that would take cold, ruthless, calculating evil.”

  “It would, wouldn’t it,” Pat agreed.

  CHAPTER XII

  Beatrice O’Brien was one of the most beautiful children ever to grace the city of Philadelphia. Her father was a drunk; her mother was a frustrated actress determined to cash in on her daughter’s beauty. This paradigm of all stage mothers booked her daughter into as many beauty contests as the family budget would allow. Six suitcases packed with costumes, and dreams of winning with its promised rewards of fame and money, were boarded onto buses headed as far north as Boston and south to the Carolinas. Truth be told, Beatrice was far prettier than virtually any of the competition in these sometimes-rigged contests. Her face with its cherubic cheeks, her hair with its heavenly golden halo, her lovely young limbs, all outshone those of the other little girls. This made Beatrice unpopular amongst her peers and did nothing to ingratiate her mother with the other stage mothers. The only thing the other contestants had which Beatrice lacked was talent. Most of them could dance. Beatrice had trouble walking across a room without bumping into a chair or a table or a wall, and frequently hit all three. Many could sing. Beatrice was at her best when she kept her mouth shut. Her virtually unintelligible English marked her as coming from the wrong side of the tracks: geographic tracks, social tracks, and intellectual tracks. If only they could have found a beauty contest in which Beatrice had to do nothing but stand motionless and silent for a moment or two, her place in the world of beauty and fame could have been assured.

  It was not that Beatrice wanted stardom for herself. She was content to run with a pack of boys who terrorized her neighborhood. She was not bad; she just liked their company and they let her join them as something of a gang mascot. She was always smiling, always easy to get along with. At that tender age, she was not hardened. That would come later. Life would see to that.

  She managed to finish the fifth grade in school, not brilliantly, but passably. She went to work in a sewing factory, earning enough to help out at home, but far less than her mother had dreamed her daughter would make in Hollywood. In her teens, Beatrice met a man. He promised her what her mother had only dreamed of: fame and fortune. In exchange, all she had to do was marry him. Being of a kind and loving nature, Beatrice thought that was only fair, so with mother’s approval, Beatrice O’Brien, age 16, and Herbert Mulrooney, age 42, were married in Philadelphia’s City Hall.

  Herbert tried to keep his promises, not because he was conscientious, but because he, too, had visions of the great wealth Beatrice could earn for him. He put her in Madame Yelzinsky’s School of Modeling where she tried to learn how to walk. He personally gave her diction lessons. For sixteen months Beatrice walked with a book atop her head, and sat without slouching, then Madame Y. announced that her best students (and surprisingly, that included Beatrice)‎, would be appearing in a fashion show at Stieger’s Department Store.

  The students were to model the latest styles in furs during a luncheon given by the Ladies Auxiliary of The Darmshire School. The luncheon was held in the store’s auditorium. Beatrice made her entrance wearing a full-length mahogany mink of stunning lines with high stand-up collar framing her beautiful face. Gasps could be heard around the room as even the more disciplined ladies found themselves stunned by her beauty. She walked to the center of the stage, turned as she had been trained to do, so that the skirt of the coat flared out. She removed it, and with an air of indifference she had practiced at home for months, let it drape along the floor, following her as she walked along the outer ridge of the stage.

  For the first time in her life, Beatrice was aware of the impact her appearance was making on others. She could feel every pair of eyes was fixed on her alone. Women stopped eating their salads. The men--buyers, mostly--were visibly panting. She had finally made it, she told herself. At long last she was a star, if not in movies, then in the world of modeling. She had a brilliant idea. She would show them all what a real, talented model could do. She stopped suddenly, almost three-quarters of the way around the stage, and turned to walk back in the direction from which she had come, thereby giving them all a second look at her, which meant she would stay out there almost twice as long as any of the other models.

  Beatrice forgot one thing: she was dragging the fur coat behind her. She
made no provision for stepping out of its way, and, as she had been doing ever since she was a child, she was again destined to trip over something. This time, something she herself was carrying. The tip of one of her spiked high heel shoes went into one of the pockets in the lining of her coat. Her next step was on the outside of the coat. Unable to think fast enough to release her grip on the garment, she held steadfastly onto it. There was nothing for her to do but fall forward, which would have been serious enough, even without the fact that she was precariously close to the edge of the stage.

  Beatrice landed face-first on the table at which Mrs. Edwina Ransteven of Bryn Mawr and Palm Beach--whose husband was president of the stock exchange--was seated. Beatrice’s weight knocked over the table and with it sent Mrs. Ransteven sprawling across the floor on her back with her luncheon plate upside down on her face.

  It was Beatrice’s first and last modeling job. It did not make her bitter. That would come later. Life would see to that.

  Shortly after this disastrous debut, Herbert announced he was leaving her. He realized there was no future in Beatrice. He did find a future, however, with Madame Yelzinsky’s School of Modeling as Business Manager and, as soon as he could obtain a divorce from Beatrice, he would become husband and helpmate to Madame Yelzinsky and half-owner of the school.

  By this time, Beatrice’s mother had joined her husband sitting all day in the living room in front of the television set, a bottle of whiskey between them. It fell to Beatrice to find a job which would bring in enough money to support the family, and her parents’ expensive habit.

  Over the next few years, Beatrice held many simple jobs: waiting on tables, sorting mail for a large insurance company, attempting to sell ladies’ lingerie in a small boutique, but kept none of them for more than a few weeks.

  Then one day she mysteriously got an interview for the position of private secretary to no less a personage than Cyril Waltham, president of the city-funded Dentsel Foundation, an organization formed right after World War II to ferret out and expose corruption in city government. Cy realized, after only a minute into their interview, that the gorgeous blonde sitting across the desk from him would be of no use whatsoever to him during working hours. Always one to plan ahead, he decided she could be of inestimable value to him after hours in the suite the foundation kept in the Fairmount Hotel across the street. She was hired on the spot.

  That evening, she tried to share her good news with her parents, but by the time she arrived home they were both beyond the stage of understanding, much less congratulating, their daughter. The next day, she reported for work and was given a rather senseless job of putting no-longer-needed documents into packing boxes for storage. She failed miserably, putting the wrong labels on the outsides of the boxes. Cy was very understanding and urged her not to worry about it, but would she be willing to work a few hours this evening? Still the sweet, helpful soul, she told him she would. At six that evening, Cy escorted her across the street, through the lobby of the hotel, and to the eighteenth floor. He explained that he had some highly confidential work for her, his confidential secretary. Beatrice blushed with pride at the thought that someone had finally recognized her intelligence.

  There was food in the suite’s refrigerator, flowers on the sideboard, and a well-stocked bar. In the bedroom, music was playing softly and an open clothes closet revealed a selection of expensive peignoirs. Beatrice still did not get the whole picture.

  The sitting room, Cy announced, was too warm, so he removed his jacket and tie and suggested she make herself comfortable. She removed her hat. He took off his shoes and she asked when they were going to start working. He explained that before any executive and his private secretary could begin working on such important matters, they would have to get to know one another better. He insisted she sit next to him on the sofa. She saw nothing wrong with that. He poured two drinks. She told him she wasn’t thirsty. He said she was being unsociable. That was one thing Beatrice insisted she never was, but since she wasn’t thirsty, she didn’t see any reason for drinking and, besides, why was not drinking when you weren’t thirsty so un… un…?

  Cy tried the direct approach. He put his arm on the back of the sofa and then brought it down on her shoulders. She asked him to remove it.

  “Ar, c’mon, honey,” Cy said and threw himself on top of her, his lips pressed against her face and running over her eyes, her cheeks, until they found her mouth. Cy did not know how strong Beatrice was. (It came from running with that pack of boys as a child.)‎ She pushed him off and sent him sprawling on his back onto the floor. She jumped up.

  “Well!” she said and straightened her dress. “That’s what this… this sec’try stuff is alabout, is it?” She headed towards the door.

  Cy had no intention of being cheated of his prize. “Don’t play little Miss Virgin with me, bitch,” he shouted as he got to his feet. “I know your kind. Looking for money, right? Well….” He ran around the coffee table and succeeded in coming between her and the door to the outside hallway.

  She ran towards the window side of the room, Cy rushing after her like a football player determined to bring the opposition to the ground. He made like he was about to tackle her. He underestimated Beatrice’s talent for finding the least obstructive object in a room and colliding with it. This time, it was an innocent floor lamp, which had been standing next to one end of the sofa. She hit it full on, falling to the floor with the lamp between her arms. Together, they rolled about the floor like two lovers writing with passion, the lampshade rolling across the room. Cy could not stop himself in time. He tried to leap over the two figures on the floor but his foot became entangled in the lamp cord. He spun around in an attempt to keep from colliding with the French doors in front of him, but it was too late. Instinctively, he reached out and grabbed the damask drapes. His back hit the doors and they flew open. The drape should have stopped him, but one corner of the rod came away from the wall and Cy went through the doors, over the low, purely ornamental balcony, and--the drapes appearing to all the world like a cape--fell the eighteen floors to Broad Street below. Fortunately, no one was passing the hotel at the time.

  It was many hours later when she left the police station. Had it been up to her interrogators, she would have been released much earlier. Everyone in the police station, with the exception of the raw, young assistant district attorney, was prepared to give Beatrice a medal for ridding the city of Cy Waltham, the sleaze who was holding dirt over the heads of most of the police force. As she walked home in the early light of day, tears filled her eyes. She had thought that finally she would have a good job, one she and her parents could be proud of, but there was no bitterness in those tears. Bitterness would come later to Beatrice. Life would see to that.

  In the years that followed, Beatrice went back to her career of unkept jobs until one day she met a woman who lived on Rittenhouse Square who told her she needed someone to clean her apartment. This opened up a whole new world for Beatrice, something at which she could be successful. Always eager to help, she was a godsend to more than one resident of that square, provided, of course, they did not mind occasional breakage. They soon learned to hide anything fragile on the days Beatrice came to work for them. She eventually had a quintet of employers for whom she cleaned.

  The day came when Beatrice’s father died, on the back seat of a police car on the way to the hospital. Her mother died soon after.

  As age began to take its toll, Beatrice’s feet were the first to give her trouble, doubly serious for anyone doing the kind of work she was expected to do. She was alone, but she wasn’t lonely. She had her dreams of the future to keep her company, dreams of the day when she would retire. She had it all planned in advance. She would have a nice apartment, not the old house that had belonged to her parents, which was falling down in a section of the city that was falling down even faster. She would sell that house and get herself a place on Rittenhouse Square. Someone else would come in and clean for her and she wou
ld go to the nice shops on Chestnut Street to shop for clothes and have her food delivered from the Great Scot Supermarket, just the way her present employers did. She would speak of these plans to anyone who would listen, even those same employers, none of whom would disillusion her, none of whom would tell her the truth. When she reached sixty, she began counting off the days on a large calendar she had made and hung on the wall of her bedroom. The birthdays came: sixty-one, sixty-two, sixty-three, sixty-four, then…. As The Important Day approached, the day after which she would never again have to drag herself to work each morning, her feet killing her, her hands stiff, her back feeling like someone had stuck her with knives, she decided she would go to the Social Security Administration office and find out exactly how much money she would receive each and every month for the rest of her life.

  Bright and early the next morning she took a number and a hard wooden seat in the dingy office on Arch Street and waited her turn. The hours rolled along, people came and went, the staff behind their desks laughed and talked to one another, discussed their previous evening’s activities, the places they had gone, the television shows they had watched. Finally, she went back to the receptionist to ask when someone would see her and was told not to be so impatient, someone would be with her soon. “Soon” came after lunch as the workers strolled back to their desks and settled down to an afternoon of work to be done at the slowest pace physically possible for any human being.

  “be-A-trice Mulloonery,” a voice called out.

  Beatrice jumped to her feet and hurried in the direction of the voice which had summoned her. She was told to be seated next to a desk, which bore the nameplate, “D. Witherspoon.” Miss Witherspoon did not look at Beatrice as she asked the latter for her social security number.