Cecilian Vespers

by Anne Emery

  “Why were these people permitted to leave?”

  “They weren’t under arrest.”

  “Do you have a suspect in mind other than this Brother Robin?”

  “No.”

  The atmosphere had not warmed up by the time we arrived at the rectory. I waited in the car while Brennan escorted his visitor inside and handed him over to Mrs. Kelly.

  “Things seem a bit frosty between you and Father Savo,” I remarked when Brennan returned to the car. “Why is that?” He dismissed my question with a flick of his hand. “You’re going to have to cooperate with this guy, Brennan, like it or not. He’s here and he’s a guest, if an unwelcome one from your point of view. So, what’s the story?”

  “It goes back to a bit of a diplomatic flap when I was in Rome. Gino got a little miffed at me. Artistic differences. Nothing major.” I let him off the hook for the moment; I’d get the story later.

  I didn’t have long to wait. I was about to leave the office the following day when I got a call from Brennan. “What are you doing for dinner tonight?” I thought I detected a note of urgency in his voice.

  “Ordering a pizza from Tomaso. As usual. Why?”

  “Come over to the parochial house. O’Flaherty invited Gino Savo to have dinner with us.”

  “I should hope so!”

  “I know, I know, but now O’Flaherty has to make a hospital visit. It’ll only be me, Savo, and Mrs. Kelly. I’m just not able for it.”

  “Now there’s an enticing offer. I’d better snap it up before somebody else does.”

  “You can smooth things over. Fill in the conversational gaps.” “What time?”

  “If Mrs. Kelly had her way, the plates would be slapped down on the table at half five. But that’s not on. Make it seven.”

  At seven on the dot I was ushered to a mahogany table in the Victorian dining room of St. Bernadette’s rectory. Red-faced and flustered, Mrs. Kelly seemed to brighten when she saw me arrive. That may have had something to do with the brusque tones of the voices we could hear coming from the dining table.

  “Here’s Mr. Collins, Fathers!”

  They both stood to greet me, then we sat and waited as Mrs. Kelly ladled soup into our bowls. Father Savo proceeded to say grace; perhaps he didn’t trust his host with the job. After that, Savo sipped his soup, made a face, put down his spoon, and took up a quarrel that had obviously been raging before my arrival.

  “All you had to do, Father, was direct the music for a group of American pilgrims. One Mass was all I asked of you.”

  “American pilgrims with more money than taste.”

  “Hardly a new phenomenon. They were filled with zeal on their first visit to Rome, and they were disposed to make a much-needed donation to the church of Santi Oliviero e Margherita. They wanted to participate in the Mass by singing the sort of music they understood.”

  “They wanted to sing something so atrocious — Mrs. Kelly!”

  “Yes, Father!”

  “Would you be kind enough to go into the library, open up that box of old discarded hymn books, and bring me one of them?”

  Brennan and I ate our soup until the housekeeper appeared with a blue hymn book.

  “This has never even been opened, Father. It’s brand new! It must have been placed in the box by mistake, so I’ll —”

  Burke’s black eyes made it clear that it was not he, but Mrs. Kelly and the book itself, that were mistaken. “Here’s what they wanted to sing, Gino:

  Gift is you and gift is me, that is where it is today. Love and gift and peace within us, never let the doubts hold sway. Feel the presence in our selfhood, giving through the full new day. Fellowshipping with each other, in the brand new sharing way. Oooooooo, fellowship in a brand new way!”

  He crossed his arms over his chest, sat back, and raised his left eyebrow at me. “What would you do?”

  “Those have to be the worst lyrics I have ever heard, in any type of music!” I exclaimed. “What’s the song supposed to mean?”

  “Who the fuck knows?”

  I heard a gasp behind me and turned. Mrs. Kelly was gaping at Burke as if he had just unzipped his pants and peed on the pope’s leg.

  “You refused to conduct the music for a group of Catholics —” Savo began.

  “I refused, yes. I believe I told them that, as long as I was living and breathing, and had not been beaten by them into a pulp, or shot in the heart by whichever one of them might be packing a gun, that so-called hymn would not be sung in the church of Santi Oliviero e Margherita, or any other holy place dedicated to the Supreme Being, the Lord of Hosts. And that if they cared to look at a book I was about to pass around, the Kyriale, we could substitute a simple, beautiful hymn of praise to God in words He understands and appreciates. Or at least that’s the way I remember it.”

  “Your memory accords with mine. And their bishop was enraged.”

  “He was, yes. I have to say the bishop sounded more like a stevedore than a shepherd of God’s earthly flock.”

  “He is not the only priest we know who uses vulgar language, Father.”

  Burke continued as if he hadn’t heard. “And a bigot as well, it pains me to say. According to him I was a conceited, insolent son of a bitch and my family should have stayed in the slums of Dublin where we belonged and given our place on the boat to someone who would appreciate America in a way I obviously didn’t. And if I thought I was going to get one greenback American buck to use for that gaudy Italian church so a bunch of Euro snobs could sit and listen to the warbling of a band of boy sopranos with their nuts cut off, then I had fatally misjudged Bishop Wayne Carter.”

  “The bishop was understandably distressed. Who are you, Father, to snipe at the innocent failings of these people? They are not to blame if they are unsophisticated in the ways of the world. Such people do not have our advantages.”

  “European advantages, he means,” Brennan explained in my direction.

  “But that is the way they are,” Savo declared. “I do not care if they sit there with banjos on their knees and keep time by that peculiar and vulgar American habit of chewing gum, Father Burke. When they come to Rome, they are to be treated as treasured members of the worldwide church, and accorded some latitude. They do not know any better.”

  “But that’s all behind you now, gentlemen,” I said. I engaged them in some inconsequential chatter, and we got through the meal. Savo left most of his untouched. Not up to Roman standards. Well, he wasn’t far wrong there.

  “Have you come up with any useful information on the murder, Father Savo? Anything that would cast doubt on Robin GadkinFalkes as the chief suspect?”

  “No. I have not made any progress. Yet.”

  “How do you expect to make progress, Gino?” Brennan demanded. “You don’t have a team of investigators here. But the police department does.”

  “Monsignor O’Flaherty was kind enough to say he will arrange a meeting for me with the police.”

  “They don’t know anything themselves, beyond whatever they’ve uncovered about Robin.”

  “We can’t assume that, Brennan,” I cautioned. “They may have someone else in mind —”

  “Oh?” Savo interrupted. “Do you think so?”

  “I have no idea. I’m just saying we won’t necessarily know what they’re thinking unless and until they move forward with Robin, or clear him and arrest somebody else.”

  “Surely someone in the police headquarters can be approached —”

  “They can’t be bullied, even by the Vatican, if that’s what you have in mind.”

  “No, that is not what I have in mind, Brennan!” Savo’s voice had risen, and his face was flushed. “Please give me some credit! You have no reason to question my motives in this matter!”

  “I had no reason to think one of our priests was going to be found at solemn vespers with his white vestments drenched in blood, a gaping wound in his neck, his head damn near off and —”

  “That is enough!” Savo g
ripped the table with both hands, rose, and shouted at Brennan: “Do not sit there and recite to me in sensationalistic detail the horrible wounds the man endured! Have you no respect?”

  “Respect for whom, Gino, you or Father Schellenberg?” Brennan asked coolly.

  “For Father Schellenberg! I do not have to hear about his blood!” The Vatican’s man trembled with anger. “I will not listen to any more of this!”

  “Fine. Don’t listen. But don’t give out to us here as if the matter is of no concern, and say we’re not doing anything to track down the killer. You didn’t see it. The rest of us did. And we’ll never get over the sight.”

  “None of us will get over it! It was not my choice to come here. But I have a task to complete. I want the matter solved so I can go back to Rome and give my report, a report which I hope will not provide the Holy See with any more consternation than it is already suffering over this terrible affair.” He held Burke in his angry gaze, and Burke glared back at him across the table.

  “Coffee, Fathers? Tea?”

  We turned as one and glared at the interloper. Mrs. Kelly’s hands wrung her apron into a ball as she stood there, knowing, I suspected, that her interruption was ill-timed, but knowing as well that shecould no more forgo her routine than she could divine the identity of the killer of Reinhold Schellenberg.

  I was in the Court of Appeal the next morning, making a pointless argument on behalf of a man who had been convicted of the murder of his infant son. The baby had been brutalized and left for dead; the accused man had tried to pin the killing on an elderly neighbour. I didn’t have a hope on appeal, and I didn’t really want one, but I did my best just as I did for all my clients. He had been represented by another lawyer at trial, so I made the usual argument about incompetent counsel. That didn’t sit well with me, either, because the lawyer who handled the trial did an exemplary job. The whole sordid affair was in the papers again, and a local radio call-in show had started a campaign to press for the return of the death penalty. That wasn’t going to happen. The death penalty had been removed from the Criminal Code in 1976; the last execution in this country had taken place in 1962.

  At the end of the morning I lost the appeal, the client stayed in Dorchester Penitentiary, and I returned to my office on Barrington Street. I turned to other, less traumatic, cases and didn’t look up from my desk till nearly four o’clock.

  I heard voices in the street below and looked out my window. People with placards were gathering on the sidewalk, getting ready for a demonstration. Must have been planning to march to the federal Justice Department, or possibly disrupt rush-hour traffic heading home on Barrington. I had had enough for the day, so I left the office and went down to the street to have a look. It had snowed and then rained; the sidewalk was slushy and people were bundled up. There were two factions, those in favour and those against state killing. One of the women looked familiar, but I wasn’t sure because she was bent over her placard, applying the finishing touches to her message. Yes, it was Jan Ford. I remembered Moody Walker’s report of her arrest during a protest in Florida.

  “Afternoon, Jan!”

  She looked up. “Hello, Montague. I don’t suppose I dare hope you’re on the right side of this issue.”

  “I’m with you on this one, Jan. State murder has no place in a civilized country. It’s wrong, it doesn’t deter crime — just look at yourown country — and too many innocent people have been executed. So, if I had the time I’d march along with you and try to out-shout the lynch mob. But my son has a basketball game, so —”

  She picked up her placard and shoved it towards me. “Killers have no right to live!”

  “You? In favour of state executions?” My voice cracked the way it had when I was thirteen.

  “You really must move beyond stereotypes, Montague. I am a progressive woman. How can I sit back and watch women and children and innocent men being murdered every day, and let their killers spend a few years in jail and get out and do it again? How you can defend these people, I just don’t know!”

  “Don’t you object to the death penalty on religious grounds, Jan? The deliberate taking of a life —”

  “Don’t get me started on religion and capital punishment, Montague. Now, as you can see, I have a protest to attend. So why don’t you go back to making the streets safe for all the rapists and murderers and drug pushers you represent? Goodbye!”

  Well, you just never knew.

  “Monty, I have to get Gino Savo out of my hair,” Burke said on the phone that night. I had caught the call on the last ring as I came in from Tom’s game. “I find myself wanting to proclaim the guilt of Robin Gadkin-Falkes to Savo’s satisfaction so he’ll fly back to Rome, present his report, and we’ll be rid of him. But he won’t budge. We have to solve this and have done with it, so I can get the schola back on track and get Rome out of my life.”

  “Let me have a talk with him, see if I can find out what he’s thinking.”

  I found Gino Savo the next morning, having a cup of coffee in the dining room of the rectory. He greeted me with courtesy and invited me to have a seat. There was no sign of the anger he had exhibited at dinner. Mrs. Kelly hovered over us, offering me tea and coffee. I declined, and she appeared ready to remonstrate when she caught sight of Fred Mills passing by in the corridor.

  “Oh, Father Mills! Would you like coffee and a biscuit? Anything for breakfast?”

  “Thanks, Mrs. Kelly. Maybe I’ll …” Fred peered into the dining room and saw me with Gino Savo. “… take up your offer another time. I think I’d better get over to the school. I left a couple of things undone.” He said hello to us and kept moving.

  “Do you really think you’ll be able to solve this case to Rome’s satisfaction, Father Savo? The police believe they have the right man. I’ve been doing some questioning outside official channels, and I’m not getting anywhere.”

  “I am here to monitor the investigation, not to conduct it myself. I am here to see that our interests are not compromised.”

  “You’re here at the direction of the papal nuncio to this country.”

  “Correct.”

  “Does he have any theories about the killing?”

  “He has a theory that no one connected with the Vatican has done this.”

  “You’re not talking about priests in general.”

  “It may be a rogue priest. We all pray that it is not. We — I especially, in my role in the Congregation for the Clergy — are concerned with all priests. But Arturo Del Vecchio, the nuncio, concerns himself with those who have had, or may again have, a position in the Vatican itself.”

  “As far as I know that could only be Father Sferrazza-Melchiorre.”

  “There is also the matter of Father Schellenberg himself. Was there something sensitive in his background that might embarrass the church?”

  “From what I understand, Father Schellenberg could have drawn fire from any number of directions.”

  “He is blamed by many for the loss of the old Mass and our musical heritage, and for all the other elements of disintegration that people attribute to the Second Vatican Council. Others, as you know, attack him for retrenching in more recent years. Liberals feel betrayed by one of their own, as they considered him to be.”

  “Did you know Schellenberg?”

  “Yes, I knew him and worked with him in various capacities over the years.”

  “Were you an admirer?”

  “Very much so. Of course.”

  “So you have a personal, as well as an official, incentive to see his killer identified and punished.”

  The priest’s eyes began to fill with tears, and he blinked to clear them.

  I returned to the subject of the silk-apparelled cleric who seemed to be living in exile. “I get the impression Father Sferrazza-Melchiorre may be doing a bit of purgatory before he returns to the gates of Saint Peter.” Savo shrugged, and I continued. “Is the nuncio worried that Father Sferrazza-Melchiorre might be guilty?”r />
  “He does not think that! Of course not. The Del Vecchio and the Sferrazza-Melchiorre families have known each other since the time of the Borgi — since Renaissance times. He knows Enrico is not a murderer. His desire is to make sure there is no misunderstanding that could lead to suspicions of Enrico if no other explanation is found. Or suspicions of anyone else who may be found to have a connection with Rome. That is all.”

  As simple as that.

  “And you yourself are close to the nuncio?” “He has always been good to me.”

  I suspected that it was a great boost to someone’s career in the Vatican hierarchy if a powerful man was good to you. Savo would not want to let the pope’s ambassador down.

  “Do you share the nuncio’s faith in Enrico?”

  “Yes, yes, of course I do. My presence here goes beyond Enrico. I want to know what happened. I intend to find out. Then I shall present my findings and return to Rome. I shall also arrange to have Father Schellenberg’s remains released and flown back to his home for burial.”

  “Well, let me know if you discover anything Brennan or Michael should know. And I’ll do the same for you.”

  “I will. Thank you.” Neither of us believed the other, but appearances were maintained, and I took my leave.

  Chapter 12

  He has besieged and enveloped me

  with bitterness and tribulation.

  — Lamentations 3:5

  Two weeks into the new year, the schola participants organized a concert, presenting their own musical arrangements and, in a couple of cases, their compositions. The music would be performed on Friday night by the St. Bernadette’s Choir of Men and Boys, of which I was a member. This time, though, I would be in the audience, as I had not been able to attend the daytime rehearsals.

  Father Burke, dressed in his soutane, arrived and sat beside me. He looked tense.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked.

  “Who knows what we’ll be hearing out of them tonight?” he answered. “And, of course, I’ve got Savo in my house. There is a glimmer of light in the darkness, however.”

  “Oh?”

  “Kitty Curran flew in today. I’m expecting her here any minute.”