Cecilian Vespers

by Anne Emery

  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.”

  “But, as I say, it could have been from somewhere else. And I couldn’t catch the gist of it anyway.”

  “Was it English?”

  She looked up from petting the dog. “I don’t know. I didn’t even think about it. I’m sorry.”

  “That’s all right. So then what happened? You had your walk and went back to your car?”

  “Yes, I heard the voices when I passed the church the first time. We had our walk around. Dewey found an injured seagull farther down the hill so that occupied him for a while. Then we returned to the car.”

 
“How long were you there, do you think?”

  “Twenty minutes maybe.”

  “What time was this?”

  “Three, three-thirty or so.”

  “And you didn’t see anything unusual around the church on your second pass by.”

  She shook her head. “No, just got in the car and started for home. I nearly got hit, but that could happen anywhere.”

  “Nearly got hit by —”

  “Another car in the parking lot. I had just backed out of my space and was getting ready to leave the lot. He pulled out in front of me. I guess he didn’t see me, with the sun in his eyes. And the wipers flapping.”

  “Wipers?”

  “Yes, it was funny. The sun was so bright, it reflected off his wind-shield when he pulled out. That’s probably why he didn’t see me driving out of the lot. He was in a hurry and for some reason he had his windshield wipers on.”

  “Maybe he was cleaning the windshield.”

  “I don’t think so. It was a nice, clean car. And he didn’t have the water spraying or anything like that. Just had his bright lights and his wipers on, in the blinding sun!” She shrugged. “But we didn’t collide. No harm done. I got Dewey home and fixed him a nice supper after his outing.”

  “Thanks, then, Mrs. MacIntyre. I appreciate your speaking with me.”

  “Sorry I couldn’t be more helpful.”

  “That’s quite all right.”

  I gave Dewey a pat on the head on my way out.

  I called Brennan after work the next day, Tuesday, gave him a quick précis of my talk with Clara MacIntyre, and asked him how we should approach the people we had come to regard as suspects.

  “Let’s start with the least likely, simply because I know where he is right now.”

  “Who is it? Why do you say ‘least likely’?”

  “Because I’ve known him for years. Fred Mills. The schola is finished for the day, so who knows where the others are. Which makes me ask myself — not for the first time — why the person guilty of the murder would stay around.”

  “Because to leave would immediately cast the person in a suspicious light. I know a couple of students left the program — it was in the police notes Mike gave me — but they were people who had been on the Peggy’s Cove bus trip, so they were above suspicion. The guilty party feels he has to stick around in order to look innocent, but he must find it agonizing to do so.”

  “He or she.”

  “Right. And the person may also feel compelled to monitor events as they unfold here, see how the case against Brother Robin holds up. Who knows? Anyway, let’s go find your ‘least likely’ suspect.”

  “Fred said he was going to watch the children rehearse for the Christmas pageant, so let’s meet up with him there. This is no doubt the first time in his exemplary life that Freddy will have been asked for his alibi.”

  “Maybe so, but we have to check him off the list.”

  The rehearsal was taking place in the basement of St. Bernadette’s Church. Breeze block walls were painted a glossy beige, the floor was a streaky brown, blue, and cream-patterned linoleum, there was a small stage at one end and a kitchen at the other; the room could not be anything other than a church basement. We were nearly knocked off our feet by a little boy with a white and green hotel towel on his head, a shepherd’s crook wielded like a sabre in his hand. He looked up in alarm at Burke and kept on running. Then we were hailed by a trim, athletic-looking man in his mid-thirties, with cropped blond hair and the handsome, friendly face of an all-American boy. He wore a tan cardigan over his clerical shirt and collar. He waved us over to a row of grey metal folding chairs, where the audience would be sitting on the big night.

  “Monty Collins, Father Fred Mills. Fred was a student of mine at the seminary in upstate New York.”

  “Lucky you!” I exclaimed.

  “You should have known him in those days,” Mills said. “Before he mellowed with age.”

  “Let me see if I have this right. You knew a version of Brennan Burke that was less mellow than he is now and yet you willingly came to see him again.”

  “I’m not the only one. Even Billy Logan showed up. Bill was teaching at the sem when Brennan arrived there,” Fred explained to me. “I sent Bill the schola’s brochure with an invitation to sign up, tongue-in-cheek. And he’s here! Well, have a seat. The drama is about to begin.”

  It couldn’t hurt to catch a bit of the show. The alibi would hold for a few minutes longer, if it held at all. A young woman stood beside a cardboard replica of a stable. She called a blue-veiled girl and brown-blanketed boy to their places. “Kayla, come sit by the manger. Zachary, stand beside her. Beside her! Don’t be shy.” The blessed couple moved into place, as half a dozen shepherds abided in the fields of linoleum.

  The names were new — in my day, Mary and Joseph were Mary Eileen and Timmy — but otherwise there was nothing new under the sun. Or was there?

  The woman stood to the side, opened her Bible, and began to read: “The king, the one who they called Augustus, made a rule that there would be a numbering of all the world.”

  “Hold it right there,” Burke demanded. “It’s Mrs. Kavanagh, do I have that right?”

  “Yes, Father.”

  “Was the one whom they called Augustus one of many kings of Rome at the time? Whatever happened to ‘There went out a decree from Caesar Augustus’?”

  “I don’t know, Father. This is the Bible they gave me to use.”

  “Who?”

  “The parish council.”

  “Well, I’ll have a word with them. It’s no fault of yours, Mrs. Kavanagh. Carry on.”

  Things went from bad to worse when the baby was born. “And she wrapped him in bands of cloth, and put him in the place where the animals had their food.”

  “I have to stop you again there, Mrs. Kavanagh.” Burke’s eyes swept the scene, taking in all the children. “Who can tell me why Mary would wrap her baby in bands of cloth? Why not put him in rugby shorts and a T-shirt?”

  “I know, Father, I know!”

  “And what would your name be?”

  “Jeremy.”

  “All right, Jeremy, tell us why.”

  “Because they weren’t invented yet!”

  “Exactly. What did they wrap the newborn babies in two thousand years ago?”

  “I don’t know.”

  The catechism teacher jumped in at that point and said: “They don’t know what swaddling clothes are or what a decree is, if that’s what you mean, Father.”

  Wrong thing to say. “You know what they are, don’t you, Mrs. Kavanagh?”

  She laughed. “Yes, I do.”

  “I do, too,” Burke said. “How do you and I know all that, Mrs. Kavanagh?”

  “We’re grown-ups, Father.”

  “We didn’t learn this stuff as grown-ups, though, did we? Somebody explained to us when we were very young children what the words in the Christmas story meant. And that’s what’s going to happen here. So instead of not teaching them, and then removing the words they haven’t been taught, and pretty soon having no words at all we can use, we’re going to teach them the words and put those words back where they belong.”

  “Um, well, I only have the children for another half hour, Father. Then I’m not in again until next week. But I could —”

  “I won’t trouble you about it any further, Mrs. Kavanagh. This is a situation not of your making. I’ll take the children myself for an hour after Mass on Sunday. Then we’ll go out for hot fudge sundaes to ruin their lunches and get their mothers’ knickers in a twist.” Apprehension turned to joy among the cast. “And when you see them next week they’ll know all about Caesar Augustus and swaddling clothes. And that the animals had their food in something called a ‘manger,’ as in ‘Away in a Manger.’ And I shall provide you with a Bible that tells the story in language we can all be proud of.”

  “That went well,” Fred Mills remarked when the rehearsal was over, and the teacher had sheph
erded the children out.

  “If they want things to go well,” I replied, “if they want the Father Burkes of this world to remain benign and good-humoured and stay out of everybody’s hair, they should never attempt to dumb down the Bible. Or the liturgy. Or the music.”

  “Now they know. So, what brings you gentlemen to call on me today?”

  “My lawyer and I are doing a bit of investigating,” Burke explained. “I thought that was all done. Brother Robin under arrest, end of story.”

  “That’s probably it, you’re right,” I agreed. “But it will help wrap things up if we can account for everyone else’s whereabouts that afternoon. That will make the case against Robin all the more solid.”

  “I see.”

  “Right. So we’re trying to place everyone the day of the murder.”

  “You want my alibi.”

  “Alibi is merely a Latin word that means ‘elsewhere,’” I responded.

  “And that’s where I was. Elsewhere.”

  “And that’s all you’re going to tell us?”

  “No. I can also tell you I was nowhere near Stella Maris Church that afternoon, and I did not take an axe to Father Schellenberg.”

  “And that’s it?”

  “That’s it. Now, let me give you a little vignette or two about your friend Father Burke.”

  “He knows more than enough about me already.”

  “He was never a student of yours, Brennan, so he doesn’t have the full picture. We were all getting along just fine at Sacred Heart Seminary. Then we received distant early warning signals about this hard-ass priest who was coming to terrorize us. And we also heard absolutely hair-raising tales about his father! Everything from organized crime connections to Irish Republican derring-do. Don’t know how much of it was true.” He looked at Brennan and waited. Nothing. “Have you met his father, Monty?”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  “Really! So, what’s the story?”

  “My lips are sealed.”

  “There is something behind it. I knew it! Anyway, back to the sem. If we thought things were lightening up in the 1970s, we had reckoned without Brennan Burke.”