Cecilian Vespers

by Anne Emery

  “Wouldn’t say no. What do I have to do?” “Research. Go through some old newspapers on microfilm. I won’t pretend it’s exciting work.”

  “Do you pay by the hour, so if it gets boring enough for me to fall asleep I get more?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “I’ll do it! I won’t fall asleep!” his sister exclaimed, when she came back into the living room.

  “We’ll find a job for you, Normie, don’t worry. But this one’s for Tom. He has to go to the library and stare into a machine reading newspapers in German.”

  “I can learn German!”

  “First lesson,” Tom commanded. “When I say ‘Fraülein Klumpenkopf,’ you say ‘Jawohl, mein Herr!’ “

  “You don’t know any real German. You only studied it in school.”

  “Well, he knows more than I remember from my own studies, so he’s the man for the job. Get the reels showing Die Welt in the 1970s. Look for anything about Father Reinhold Schellenberg. I’m sorry I can’t be very specific. I heard something about him being detained or arrested during a political demonstration of some kind, so I’m especially interested in that.”

  “You’re letting Tom investigate the murder! I don’t get to do anything.”

  “We’ll get you out there in a trench coat yet, Normie, like the old-time detectives used to wear.”

  “Good. Father, make sure he keeps his promise.”

  “Don’t I always keep my promises, sweetheart?”

  “Well, yeah, but maybe not this time.”

  The four of us played cards for a while, then Burke went home. My kids and I hit the sack early. The baby woke up twice to be fed and changed. The first time, at two, was fine. I had forgotten how brutal that second awakening was just before seven o’clock.

  Maura came home just as the kids and I were clearing up after breakfast. She looked refreshed, and chatted to me quite pleasantly about her evening out. I drove Normie to her friend Kim’s and dropped her off. With a free day ahead of me, I decided to take a run over to the choir school in case there was anyone I could buttonhole for information. Things were quiet until I approached a classroom at the far end of the main corridor. I heard raised voices and I peered in through the window of the door at the back of the room. I opened it and slipped in unseen. I had walked into an argument. Jan Ford was seated behind a desk, brandishing a hymn book in the direction of Father Sferrazza-Melchiorre in one of the chairs. How she thought she would be able to convert Enrico to her way of thinking, I couldn’t imagine. But this was the same person who had expected police officers in Florida to side with her in her protest against the death penalty. She was not a woman who would go down without a fight. William Logan slouched in another seat, bored and above it all.

  Jan had the floor. “Music should be accessible, user-friendly —”

  “Will you please speak English!” This from Father Sferrazza-Melchiorre.

  “— music that the people understand, that makes them feel good about themselves, even if the music does not come up to the old elite standards —”

  “The music you speak of is trash! Melodies designed to appeal to the nursery! Babyish words and sentiments. All you hear in North America is this talk of people feeling good about themselves, whether they have done anything to merit all this good feeling or not!”

  “Did it ever occur to you that we, as liturgists, have a role to play in moving people to that feeling? To let them know they are welcomed and empowered in their faith community?”

  “All I hear from you, Signora Ford, is about the people. Congratulating themselves in these embarrassing songs. Have you forgotten God? Did you not hear Father Burke yesterday when he spoke of abandoning the self to God in worship?”

  “I’m not surprised that Burke would dismiss the self, the very personhood of the faithful, in his form of worship. I suspect the phrase ‘self-actualization’ is not even in Burke’s vocabulary.”

  You got that right. I realized they still did not know I was there. “Get with the times, Enrico,” Ford continued. “You’re stuck in the past.”

  “You say that as if you mean to insult me, Signora Ford, ma sai una cosa? — I am not insulted.”

  “Right,” William Logan put in. “You can’t be insulted. Hundreds of years of aristocratic breeding make you immune to the opinions of the common people!”

  “The church is for all,” Enrico countered, “the common people and those of the privileged classes. The church is universal. And she is timeless. Her past — her long tradition — is a treasure of immeasurable value.”

  Jan Ford leaned forward and slapped her hymn book on the desk. “And so we should be saddled with the liturgy that was set in stone by the Council of Trent in 1570? If it’s an unchanging ritual, it’s just there. What are the people supposed to do while all this is going on?”

  “The sacrifice of our Saviour being re-enacted? Is that what you mean by ‘all this going on’?” Enrico’s voice had risen in pitch and volume. “The Holy Mass is, or should be, an act of adoration and mystery!”

  “Adoration and mystery went the way of the horse and buggy!”

  “Am I hearing you correctly, signora?” Enrico shouted at her. “It is out of fashion to adore the Supreme Being? God is out of style? How dare you call yourself a Catholic!” He was standing now and glaring down at her.

  “That’s you all over, Enrico! Some of us just don’t count as Catholics. Well, I don’t happen to agree with you. I see the church as a fellowship, a gathered community —”

  “This is a fine example of fellowship,” Logan interjected, a note of amusement in his voice. “And people wonder why I left the priest-hood. This is exactly —”

  Sferrazza-Melchiorre whirled on him. “You are being dishonest. This is not why you left the priesthood. You left because you wanted ease and comfort! You were not strong enough to endure the rigours of the consecrated life.”

  “Oh, yeah? How well have you endured those rigours yourself, Sferrazza? Have you kept to your vows since the day you were ordained?”

  “I have not been without sin. But I pray for God’s grace and His guidance every day in order to continue to serve him as his priest. Men like Father Burke and —”

  “Burke! Funny you should mention him,” Logan sneered. “The priesthood suits him just fine and dandy, thank you very much.”

  “What are you saying now?”

  “I’m saying Burke’s in it for himself, to gratify his own ego. He knows he looks damn good up there on the altar, and sounds damn good too!”

  “You are outrageous, Logan! If Brennan Burke had his way, all you would see of him would be the back of his head. Because he would be offering the Tridentine Mass every day, and priest and congregation would all be facing the same way, towards the Blessed Sacrament. And have you forgotten the principle of objectivity in worship? In a sacred ritual the priest conforms to the rubrics, speaks or chants the words as they are written — the ego is subsumed, and he becomes the representative of all of us. One does not show off one’s vocal flair in chant; one does not add trills or a big finish! Brennan could find less onerous ways to ‘look good’ as you say it. His youthful ambition was to be an architect. Prayer in stone! He could be a man with a wife and a family and a few dollars in his pocket, and some magnificent buildings to leave to posterity. But he chooses to use his talents to serve God. It does not commend you, Logan, that you cannot or will not understand that. I think you are a bitter man. A jealous man.”

  “You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, you Italian fop!” Logan rose from his seat, and shouted into the priest’s face. Jan Ford stared at the two in alarm. “You’ve been handed everything your whole fucking life. You don’t have to get out there in the business world and scramble to make a buck, and look over your shoulder every minute to see younger, hungrier guys coming up behind you, ready to take it all away from you. I’d like to see you dropped down in the middle of the United States of America and have to fend for your
self like the rest of us. See how long you’d last there, you and your —”

  “As a matter of fact, Mr. Logan, I have been dropped in it. Is that not the expression?” The anger had leached out of Enrico, and he regarded the enraged Logan with amused detachment. “I now live in America and I grant you I do not feel as if I belong there. The people of Mississippi seem to regard me with wariness, and I —”

  “You in Mississippi! I’d give my left nut to see that. You and a bunch of good ole boys. You in a pair of shoes that cost more than they make in six months, guzzling wine and bellowing opera, and trying to tell them why the Assumption of the Virgin Mary into heaven is an infallible doctrine. You’re probably the only Catholic in spittin’ range. They probably think you’re the Whore of Babylon.”

  “They do! They inscribed those very words on the front door of my church! Spelled incorrectly, but that is clearly what they meant. I have a lovely photograph of the Holy Father, encased in glass, at the entrance to my church, and they despoiled it with the words you said. And yet I feel it is my mission to bring these poor, disadvantaged —”

  “If anybody should be a missionary in Mississippi, it’s her.” Logan turned and jabbed a finger in the direction of Jan Ford. “Her nambypamby, everybody feel good, let’s not be too Catholic, let’s play the spoons at the offertory and clump around the altar and wail like it’s a hoedown kind of fellowship might have a place in rural, Bible-belt Mississippi.”

  “Well!” Jan exclaimed. “At least I know where you stand, William. I can’t expect anything better from him, stuck as he is in the sixteenth century!”

  I tried to slink out, but my jacket snagged on my chair; the chair tipped and fell on the floor, making a bang and announcing my presence to the combatants. They turned as one and gaped at me. They looked as if they had been caught in flagrante delicto. I raised my hand in farewell and left for the calm, rational world of criminal law and litigation.

  “Father Schellenberg was beaten up by the police in East Berlin.”

  “The police beat somebody up?” When you’re eight years old, there are still many, many facts of life you have not yet learned, most of them painful. Normie stared at her brother in horror as Tommy delivered the results of his research. The kids were at my house, across the water to the west of the Halifax peninsula, and we were sitting at the kitchen table on Sunday afternoon.

  Tom tried to soften the blow. “It was in Germany a long time ago, 1971.”

  “I wasn’t even born then!” Normie replied, her worries instantly assuaged. What could you expect from the creatures who roamed the earth in the dark ages before she existed?

  “I went through the old editions of Die Welt. I found a few stories mentioning Reinhold Schellenberg at this or that church event, or giving a lecture. And being an adviser at the Vatican Council. But I also got the story of his arrest, or his ‘detention,’ by the police in East Berlin. He was involved in a protest when Leonid Brezhnev, the Soviet leader, visited Berlin at the end of October 1971. He wasn’t just detained; he said he was beaten by the police. There weren’t any other details. A couple of lines and that was it.”

  “Good work, Tommy. I’ll pass this along to the other private eye we have working the case.”

  I picked up the phone and called Moody Walker. We agreed to have a word with Colonel Bleier that evening at the bed and breakfast where he and his wife were staying. So, after making sure Tom was studying for his exams and Normie was out of his hair, I left to meet Moody outside the Göttingen Gasthaus situated, appropriately, on Gottingen Street in the city’s north end. The turreted Victorian house looked more Anglo than Saxon but a sign promised Zimmer mit Frühstück. The Göttingen’s young blonde receptionist, Ulrike, rang Bleier’s room and announced our arrival; he came down to the lobby to join us. Jadwiga Silkowski was not in, so we had Kurt Bleier to ourselves. I made the introductions. Sergeant Walker wasted no time on small talk.

  “What were you doing on the afternoon of November 22?”

  “I was walking.”

  “Where?”

  “From one place to another.”

  “From where to where?”

  “Around.”

  The two cops stared at each other, neither giving in.

  “You don’t strike me as an aimless kind of guy, Colonel Bleier.”

  “I am on holiday, Sergeant. A holiday of my wife’s choosing.”

  “Make like you’re not on holiday. Make like you’re working a case.

  And help me put all the facts in the file. Where were you the afternoon of November 22?”

  “Not in church.”

  “Would you consider an abandoned church, scheduled to be torn down, not to be a church?”

  “I am not a Jesuit; I am not trying to trip you up with words.”

  “Good. How long did you know Schellenberg?”

  “Why do you assume I knew him?”

  “We know you did. For how long?”

  “I did not in fact know him. I believe I met him on one or two occasions in Germany. That is all.”

  “Quite a coincidence, you and Schellenberg meeting on a couple of occasions in Germany, and then finding yourselves here in Halifax at the same time.”

  “As you say. Coincidence.”

  “Did you buy into that kind of coincidence as a cop in the German Democratic Republic, so-called?”

  “If the facts implied coincidence, I inferred coincidence.”

  Walker stared into the unblinking blue eyes, then asked: “Did your father, Max, keep in touch with the priest Johann Schellenberg after they left the Nazi prison camp?”

  It hit home, but Bleier quickly recovered. “My father tried to forget the camp. He had no interest in reliving those times.”

  “Did they get in touch again, yes or no?”

  “My answer suggests no. If it was otherwise, I am not aware of it.”

  “Was your father a Communist Party apparatchik after the war?”

  “My father was a party official.”

  “Was Reinhold Schellenberg ever taken into custody by the East German authorities, either the Stasi or the Volks Police?”

  A hesitation. “I believe he was. Briefly.”

  “Were you involved in that?”

  “I was on duty. I was not involved with his — with detaining him.”

  “Why was he detained?”

  “I believe he was involved in an illegal gathering. It was a long time ago. I do not have the details.”

  “What happened to him as a result of that?”

  Bleier shrugged. “He was released.”

  “After how long?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Why are you here?”

  “To answer your questions.”

  “Why did you come to Halifax?”

  “To accompany my wife to the schola.”

  “Enjoying your time here?”

  “I was.”

  “Where were you on November 22?”

  “I walked along the waterfront.”

  “From where to where?”

  “From the park at the south end up to, I don’t know, the end of the city centre.”

  “The naval dockyards.”

  “I believe so.”

  “Take any photos?”

  A hesitation again. “My wife asked me to shoot some photographs.”

  “Photos of the navy ships and facilities?”

  “A ship maybe, if it presented a pleasing picture. Now I must go. I am meeting my wife for dinner. Good evening, gentlemen.” With that he rose, nodded, and left us in the lobby of the inn.

  “Well?” I asked Walker.

  “Spying on our navy.”

  “So?”

  “So nothing. He knows as well as we do there’s nobody stopping you from taking pictures of navy ships. It’s not as if he got into the nerve centre of Maritime Command. But maybe he’s still conditioned to think that kind of activity is verboten, and the information worth passing along. To someone. Do you supp
ose he still thinks that way?”

  “I doubt it, Moody, but he wants us to think he does.”

  “He wants us to think he was nervous about it, and that we wore him down and found out why he has been so secretive.”

  “When in fact it’s something else he’s hiding.”

  “That was my take on it, for sure.”

  Chapter 6

  Ingemisco tamquam reus,

  Culpa rubet vultus meus.

  Supplicanti parce, Deus.

  I groan like a guilty man.

  Guilt reddens my face.

  Spare a suppliant, O God.

  — “Dies Irae,” Requiem Mass

  “Are you going to be home for a while?” It was Brennan on the phone, after I returned from the Göttingen Gasthaus.

  “I’m just about to drop Tommy Douglas and Normie off at MacNeil’s.”

  “I’ll meet you there.”

  “What’s up?”

  “You’ll see.”

  I bundled the kids into the car and drove straight downtown to Dresden Row. Burke was sprinting up the street when we pulled in.

  “Brother Robin has confessed his guilt!” he announced.

  “Confessed to —”

  “The police.”

  “No!”

  “Wait till you read this.” He waved a sheaf of papers at me. “Evening Normie. Mr. Douglas.”

  “Hi, Father.”

  Maura greeted us at the door, and Brennan tapped the papers.

  “News,” he said.

  “When did this happen?” I asked when we got ourselves seated in the living room.

  “Earlier today. This is Robin’s statement to the police. He sent a copy to Mike by courier! But he wouldn’t take Mike’s call afterwards.”

  “Let’s see it,” I urged. Maura and I leaned over his shoulder. “Rather than have us fighting over it,” she said, “why doesn’t Brennan read it to us?”

  So he shifted through the typed papers and began to read. And, for the occasion, he spoke in an upper-crust British accent, which I inferred was the way Robin Gadkin-Falkes would have sounded if he were speaking to us directly.