Cecilian Vespers

by Anne Emery

  Sister, brother, child of light.

  Hail the dawn as His love on us.

  We are pleasing in His sight.

  What do you think?”

  “It does rhyme. How do you like it out here? There’s a good view of Stella Maris Church across the Basin.”

  “Yes, and I try to banish all negative thoughts when I look towards the peninsula and see the church. But it isn’t easy to maintain a positive frame of mind. What’s happening with the murder investigation? Did the monk really do it, or are they covering something up?”

  “Why do you suppose they would do that?”

  “The church authorities are masters at keeping unpleasant truths under wraps. That’s probably what’s happening here.”

  “Is there someone in particular you think they’re covering up for?” “Well, certainly if it’s someone who’s in favour with the current regime, they might not want word to get out.”

  “Who, for instance?”

  “Oh, I’d say look around for the ones who are most intent on suppressing any kind of progressive reform in the church and you’ll be halfway to finding the killer.”

  “So your theory is that a conservative killed Father Schellenberg? Why? He had taken a conservative turn himself in recent years. Wouldn’t they be on the same side?”

  “Too little too late, from their point of view. The few inroads we’ve made in opening the church to a more ecumenical, pluralistic position can be attributed in part to Reinhold Schellenberg in his younger, more progressive days. Many in the church, at all levels, have never forgiven him for that.”

  “How did you feel about Schellenberg?”

  “I disagree with what you say, but I defend to the death your right to say it! That was my position.”

  “Interesting choice of words.”

  “Not my choice. I’m quoting — who? Voltaire?”

  “I understand. But I’m wondering if there might have been someone else who felt they had been silenced by the current climate in the church, and took ‘defend to the death’ literally.”

  “If you’re suggesting that someone in the open, forward-looking, life-affirming wing of the church would do something like this, you’re way out of line.”

  “I may be, but we have to look in every direction. Before we leave that subject, though, I have another question for you.”

  “What kind of question?”

  “I understand you had a bit of trouble down in Florida.”

  “I won’t even ask how or why you have that information about me. In the age of Big Brother watching, nobody should be surprised if her privacy is invaded.”

  “That’s what happens when you get convicted of a criminal offence.”

  “Speaking of offence, I find you a little offensive today, Monty. What are you suggesting, that because I defended my freedom of expression and got hauled off to jail by a bunch of uniformed thugs who should have been standing at my side rather than making their arrest quota, this makes me a killer?”

  “Did you hit somebody?”

  “Did I hit somebody with an axe and leave him in a pool of blood in a church in Halifax, Nova Scotia? No. Anything else I ever did is none of your business. End of story. If there’s nothing else you want to harass me about, I’ll get back to my composition.”

  But I wasn’t finished with the interview yet. “What brings you to the schola cantorum? You must have known it would be a centre of very traditional music and liturgy.”

  “Are you saying I should have been kept out? Not welcome in the club?”

  “No, of course not. I just wondered.”

  “Because if that’s what you mean, or if that’s what’s going on here, let me tell you I am willing to storm the barricades to make sure I and other like-minded persons have a seat at the table.”

  “We already know that.”

  “I’ll ignore that little jibe. And let me tell you something else. I did not appreciate the attitude of your friend Brennan Burke in our seminar the other day when I presented the choreography I was working up for the spring, but which I decided to share with the group. I don’t know how familiar you are with liturgical dance.”

  “I, um —”

  “No, I suppose you don’t know a thing about it. Well, don’t wait for Father Burke to introduce you to it. Anyway, Kyle, Tamsin, and I performed my ‘Ballet for the Birthing Season’ for the workshop. I admit I’m not the most graceful dancer but that’s not the point. I caught Burke exchanging looks with that guy Sferrazza-Melchiorre from Rome. Well, of course, you can’t expect the boys from the Vatican to appreciate creative movement. It was almost as if Burke was saying: Can you believe this? Between you and me, I think he feels threatened.”

  “Who?”

  “Burke.”

  “I’ve never known Burke to look, act, or feel threatened by anything or anyone.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t expect you to admit it. But I think he feels threatened by strong women and their voice in the church.”

  “I can tell you without reservation that, whenever I’ve seen him with women, it’s precisely the strong women he likes the best — those who don’t take any crap from men, including him. You’ve got him wrong on that score.”

  “Right. Macho men sticking together. As usual.”

  “Well, Ms. Ford, I am sensitive enough to suspect I’ve overstayed my welcome.” And sensitive enough to the mood to know I’d get nowhere at this point asking where she had been at the time of the murder. “I’ll let you get back to your work.”

  “Which I probably won’t get to perform. At the Father Burke School of Music.”

  “Which makes me wonder yet again why you signed up.”

  “I wouldn’t expect you to understand. Goodbye!”

  I stopped by St. Bernadette’s before work on Friday to fill Burke in on the previous day’s developments. I caught him just as he was leaving his room with a stack of books under his arm.

  “What’s this, amnesty day at the library?”

  “I’m giving a lecture on Saint Gregory to the theology students. Atlantic School of Theology.”

  “I should go with you. Not to listen but to walk around the grounds. They’re blessed with one of the most beautiful, and valuable, properties in the city, overlooking the waters of the Northwest Arm.”

  “It wouldn’t hurt you at all to come along. Broaden your education, Montague. Feel free to seek my guidance at any time.”

  “I’ll do that,” I said. I sounded flippant but in fact I had often thought of seeking his priestly instruction. I was a highly educated man in some fields of knowledge but I was embarrassingly ignorant in others, notably the finer points of religious thought.

  “The theology school is Fred Mills’ alibi,” I said. “I can’t remember if I told you. He attended a lecture there.”

  “Alibi for what?”

  “November 22. The killing of Kennedy.”

  “Ah. That makes sense. Just don’t be telling me it’s an alibi for the killing of Schellenberg.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “There was nothing happening at the theology school on November 22. I got a call from one of the faculty members that day, asking about the planned lecture by Schellenberg. A crowd of them were going to come over for it. The building’s electrical system badly needed work, so they decided to send everybody over to hear Schellenberg and get the work done that afternoon. They turned off the lights and shut the place down. Everybody had the afternoon off once the Schellenberg lecture was cancelled.”

  “So Fred Mills lied to me.”

  “That’s hard to believe.”

  “I’m sure it is, but there you have it.”

  “Fred must have been up to something else. He’s the last person in the world I can see as an axe murderer.”

  “None of them strike me as being axe murderers, Brennan. But one of them is exactly that. Anyway, your trip to the theology school appears to be legit, so I won’t keep you.” I gave him a quick rundown of my
talk with Jan Ford and Moody’s discoveries about Ford and Luigi Petrucci.

  “Santa Chiara’s. I know that church. At least I’ve seen it from the outside, driving by. Never heard about the fire, but I wasn’t around there in ‘79.”

  “What kind of church is it?”

  “It’s a beautiful big stone place with a dome and columns in the front. Something you’d see in Rome. Or Dublin. It’s still standing.”

  “An old-style church? Sounds magnificent. I wonder what Petrucci’s problem was with that. What do you know about him?”

  “He’s not a clergyman or a church musician, but he’s an arch-Catholic. Goes by the name of Lou. Works as an electrician in New Jersey. His nephew is here, son of Lou’s widowed sister. The young fellow came to Halifax to play football for Saint Mary’s, so Lou drove up to see him and attend the schola. Somebody told me he’s bringing his wife and the lad’s mother up here after Christmas. The nephew, Giorgio, is the alibi; they had lunch at the Lighthouse Tavern. The police tracked Giorgio down at his girlfriend’s place. He wasn’t one hundred percent sure how long he and his uncle were together, but it sounded as if they were there till three-thirty or so. Petrucci looks clean.”

  “Sounds it. But with the church-burning conviction in his background, we’ll have to check him out.”

  We walked down the stairs and saw Mrs. Kelly emerging from the kitchen. It wouldn’t hurt to hear what she remembered about people’s whereabouts on the afternoon of the murder. I said goodbye to Brennan, and asked the housekeeper if I could direct a few more questions her way.

  She sat me down at the kitchen table, gave me a cup of tea, and pushed a plate of tea biscuits in my direction.

  “Thanks again, Mrs. Kelly. What’s your other name? Mrs. What Kelly?”

  “Mrs. James Kelly. My husband passed on twenty years ago, God rest his soul.”

  “I’m sorry. Well —” I stopped to sample the biscuits. “These are delicious.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Collins.”

  “Call me Monty.”

  “Okay.”

  “Why don’t you have a seat? If I need a refill, I’ll get up. We’ve already covered Father Schellenberg’s arrival. Now, let’s go through what you remember about the day he was killed. Do you recall anything about him that Friday?”

  “No, Mr. Collins — I mean Monty. Sadly I cannot remember one thing about him that day. He may have come and gone through the front door. We never use it, but some of them don’t know that, so they use it.”

  “Mmm. Did he get any phone calls?”

  “I don’t know. The calls go directly to their rooms. If they don’t answer after four rings, the calls get rerouted down here.”

  “How about some of the others? Most of them went on the bus trip but a few stayed behind. Let’s begin with Brother Robin.”

  “I’m pretty sure I saw him a couple of times but I can’t say what time, whether it was morning or afternoon. I’ve tried to remember, but I just didn’t take any notice on the day.”

  “All right. Father Sferrazza-Melchiorre.”

  “He was in his room. I heard him playing music up there after Mass in the morning. Then he went out.”

  “What time was that?”

  “Lunchtime, or early afternoon.”

  “Anything unusual about him when he left?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t actually see him. Just heard him say something in Italian to someone else as he was going out the door. Front door. We don’t use that door.”

  “Do you know who he spoke to?”

  “Um …”

  “Did the person answer?”

  “Yes, he did. I remember now — it was Father Burke. He answered in Italian.”

  I couldn’t help asking: “Does that mean Father Burke was using the front door?”

  “I certainly hope not! The lock’s queer on that door, and you never know whether it’s secure or not. Plus, I don’t want to be answering two doors all day!”

  “Right. How about Billy Logan? Was he around?”

  Her lips tightened. “He’s not staying here, of course. A spoiled priest, is what I heard about him. But he was in and out of the choir school that day.”

  “When you say in and out, what times are we talking about?”

  “He didn’t arrive in time for Mass. I was there and he was not. But I saw him come out of the choir school just before noon.”

  “Anything notable about him?”

  “No. Except for the fact that he looked like he’d swallowed a bitter pill. But I find he always looks like that. He got into his car. His wife was in the passenger’s seat, and the car was piled to the rafters with stuff.”

  “What kind of stuff?”

  “I couldn’t tell. Maybe it was in garbage bags or boxes — I didn’t pay that much attention. Anyway, he peeled out of the parking lot and leaned on his horn. He must have been angry with another driver. There’s no need for such noise, especially on church property!”

  “Did you see him again that day?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Did you see Mr. Bleier?”

  “No. He’s not staying here, either. I believe he is staying at a bed and breakfast run by Germans. I suppose it’s natural to want to be with your own kind.”

  “So you didn’t see him. How about his wife, Dr. Silkowski?”

  “No.”

  “Father Mills.”

  “He went out early in the afternoon. Said hello to me before he left.”

  “Do you know when he came back?”

  “No, I didn’t see him again.”

  “I’m nearly finished here, Mrs. Kelly. What about Jan Ford? You know who I mean?”

  “Yes. She is staying at Mount Saint Vincent but she was here that day. She and another lady — she may have been a sister, hard to tell these days — were on their way to a restaurant, and they were kind enough to invite me along. They were going to compose some music over lunch. Said they were working on a ‘song cycle,’ whatever that is, about Joan of Arc. And I could contribute if I wanted to. But I had a bird to put in the oven for supper, so I couldn’t go. I saw the two ladies stop in the parking lot and have a word with Father Mills. Then I got back to my bird.”

  Mrs. Kelly was of the generation that believed it took six hours in the oven, and a lot of fussing in the kitchen, to roast every last molecule of moisture out of a turkey or a chicken. I kept my own counsel on that.

  “One more question and I’ll leave you in peace. Do you know where Mr. Petrucci is staying?”

  “Petrucci? Who’s he?”

  “One of the people at the schola. Not a priest. Just someone keen on the music, I guess.”

  “Well, he should be on the list then. Father gave me the phone numbers in case he wants me to make some calls for him.” She got up and thumbed through a stack of papers by the phone. “Here it is. Petrucci, L.”

  “Would you mind if I called him from here?”

  “No, go right ahead.”

  I dialled the number and waited. A young woman answered and told me Lou had driven up to Montreal for a few days. Did I want to leave my number? No thanks, I’d try him again another time.

  I had a visit from Moody Walker later that morning at the office.

  “I made a call about Bleier.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah, I have a buddy over there, in Hamburg. Gunther Schmidt. He’s a cop I dealt with a few years ago when there was some suspicious container traffic plying the waters between Hamburg and Halifax. He knew all about the Schellenberg killing, needless to say. He’d never heard of Bleier but he ran the two names through his computer. Didn’t come up with anything about Kurt Bleier, except that he was on the police force in East Berlin till the wall came down. There wasn’t all that much about Reinhold Schellenberg. He was a priest in a town called Magdeburg, he was an adviser at the Second Vatican Council, he taught at a couple of universities in Germany. And he was detained briefly after some kind of political demonstration in the 1970s
.”

  “Another protest gone wrong! I guess it’s trite under the circumstances to say we’ve got a lot of people here with strong opinions.”

  “Yeah, whoever went at Schellenberg with an axe certainly had strong opinions about him.”

  “Too true. Any indication Schellenberg and Colonel Bleier knew each other?”

  “No, but there may be a connection of some kind. There was a Schellenberg in the same prison camp as Max Bleier during the war. A camp outside Berlin.”

  “Is Max related to Kurt?”

  “His father. Max was a commie too, in the 1930s and 1940s. That’s why he was targeted by the Nazis.”

  “Who was the Schellenberg?”

  “Schmidt doesn’t know. He’s going to call me if he’s any relation to our victim. Schmidt was more than a little curious about Bleier being over here when the hit was done. Not much I could tell him, except that he’s here with his wife. All the way over here from Germany to learn music? Nobody would ever call me a culture buff, but even I know you don’t have to wear out your shoe leather before you find a bunch of choir boys around an organ over there.”

  “True, but the same could be said for others in the group as well. There are people here from France, Italy, England —”

  “And a queer-looking bunch they are, some of them.”

  “You think?”

  “Who’s that flamer in the cape? I’d like to know where his two-thousand-dollar shoes were standing at the time Schellenberg was getting axed.”

  “Why don’t you ask him?”

  “I thought you just wanted me for the information you can’t dig up yourself.”

  “No reason you can’t come along while I have a chat with the man. How about now? We’ll see if he’s in.”

  Walker shrugged, and we left the office for the rectory at St. Bernadette’s.

  We rang the bell — of the back door — and waited. A face peered out at us through the window before the door was opened.

  “Hello again, Mrs. Kelly.” The housekeeper looked as if she needed an emergency hook-up to a Valium drip. “Is something wrong?”

  “Is … Is His Grace out there?” she asked in a quavering voice.

  “I don’t see the bishop out here, no. May we come in?” She opened the door halfway, and we sidled in. “Sergeant Walker and I are going to head upstairs if that’s all right.”