Cecilian Vespers

by Anne Emery

  “Wonderful! Where is she staying?”

  “The parish house.”

  She arrived just as the master of ceremonies, Enrico Sferrazza-Melchiorre, rose to welcome the audience. I slid over and made room for Kitty, so that she was sitting between me and Burke.

  The nun greeted me with a hug and kiss, then demanded in a whisper: “All right, lads. Tell me who’s who. Which one’s Logan?” We discreetly pointed to our suspects, giving her their names and a bit of background. She waved to Enrico Sferrazza-Melchiorre and, after a jolt of surprise, he smiled and made a little bow in her direction. Then we settled in to wait for the downbeat.

  “He’s not afraid to fly, but would you look at the white knuckles on yer man for this occasion?” Kitty said, pointing to Burke’s hands, which were gripping his knees.

  As it turned out, he had little to fear and much to be proud of. The choristers, looking deceptively angelic in their pre-Vatican II surplices, acquitted themselves well. Most of those who conducted the music were competent, and some exceptional. Father Sferrazza-Melchiorre, Father Ichiro Takahashi of Japan, and Soeur Thérèse Savoie, a Moncton, New Brunswick, nun, were in the latter category. The music had been chosen to represent the entire liturgical year, so we heard Victoria’s beautiful “O Magnum Mysterium,” honouring the pregnancy of the Virgin Mary and the birth of the Saviour; the very moving “O Vos Omnes” by Pablo Casals, in which Jesus asks passersby if their suffering is comparable to his; Victoria again on a similar theme, with the “Reproaches from the Cross” in Greek and Latin; and the “Exultet” and the “Alleluias” traditionally chanted at the Easter Vigil. The biggest surprise of the evening came under the baton of Billy Logan. The former priest, his abrasive manner held in check, managed to portraythe exquisite longing of Palestrina’s “Sicut Cervus”:

  Sicut cervus desiderat ad fontes aquarum ita desiderat anima mea ad te Deus.

  Like as the hart desireth the waterbrooks, so longeth my soul for thee, O God.

  The only low point was Jan Ford and her committee, who brought out a ukulele and tambourine and sang while a man and a woman pantomimed the actions they imagined went along with the words:

  Sharing, caring, daring yet to be

  At the Jesus table, friend to you and me.

  Share Him, care f’r Him, we, Christ’s bo-od-y,

  Yea, His body and His light, His folk are we!

  I sneaked a look at Burke and saw all too clearly how music could lead to murder. His Irish mouth was clamped down in a thin white line; his eyes were like the sun’s rays boring through a magnifying glass at an insect about to be incinerated. Christ’s folk were oblivious up at the altar. I thought he was set to shout them down. I leaned across Kitty and gave him a warning look.

  But all in all, it was a success. Brennan rose at the end and gave a gracious tribute to the performers. Every one of them.

  Maura had offered to host a reception following the performance. She had given me instructions as to what to bring, and I had dropped the items off earlier. Now I waited while Brennan made a quick trip across to the rectory to change into pants and a sweater. Then we all walked to Morris Street and a few blocks west to Dresden Row for the post-performance party.

  “Where’s Kitty?” I asked on the way.

  “Monsignor O’Flaherty has appointed himself her escort for the evening. I think he’s in love. He’s been hanging on her every word since she arrived. A nun from Dublin is to Mike what a lap dancer from Brazil would be to you and, em, well, you, Collins. So what did you think of the concert?”

  “Some of that was music to die for, Brennan. And Reinhold Schellenberg died on the feast of Saint Cecilia, patron saint of church musicians.”

  “That hasn’t slipped my mind, Montague.”

  “Who would you single out as the most likely person to murder for music?”

  “The most likely person for me to murder, you mean?”

  “Excuse the lack of lawyerly precision. I meant the person most likely to commit murder.”

  “I knew that, Monty. I was taking the piss out of ya. Well, to answer your question, it wouldn’t be Jan Ford.”

  “Don’t be too sure. If Schellenberg’s right turn has any lastinginfluence, and the old music enjoys a revival, her own efforts will be shunted to the sidelines.”

  “Nobody could harbour such strong feelings over that drivel,” he said dismissively.

  “So she’s not worthy of being the murderer!”

  “Hmmph.”

  “All right, who?”

  “We can dismiss Colonel Bleier if music was the motive.” “What did we hear about him? He married into a very musical family. Jadwiga Silkowski’s home was filled with music.”

  “Too much of a stretch. If he killed Father Schellenberg, it was for another reason. Something to do with their past in Germany.”

  “Logan?”

  “I wouldn’t know where to begin, to sort out what motivates Logan. Obviously he’s never come to terms with his departure from the priesthood. Beyond that, who knows?”

  “Enrico.”

  “He loves the music; he loves all the great art of the church. But I suspect if we find out he did away with Schellenberg, he did it for motives much more Byzantine than music.”

  “That leaves you, I guess, Brennan.”

  “Very amusing, Monty.”

  “So. Where were you on the afternoon of November 22?”

  He stopped and looked at me. “You’re not serious, I hope.”

  “No. Though maybe you have an acolyte — a groupie — somewhere who feels he or she is striking a blow for the music that constitutes a great part of your life’s work.”

  “That must be it. Let me know when you’ve tied up the loose ends.” We arrived at the house on Dresden Row, and Maura met us at the door. It was the first time she had seen Burke since the trip to Italy.

  “Brennan! Poor Collins was wrung out after his travels. Did you exhaust yourself as well? Quite the trip, was it?” No reply. “What happened to him?” she asked me. “Struck dumb at the throne of Saint Peter? Silenced by the Holy Inquisition?”

  “No, no, amn’t I still a little weary from the jet lag?” he said lamely. She gave him a penetrating look, and he made his way around her. “Step aside, MacNeil. I’ve a hooley to attend.”

  “Well, I intend to hear all the details of the journey, about which Collins has said very little. But which, I’m sure, produced the solution to the mystery we’ve all been living with here. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have gone. Let me know if an arrest is imminent and whether it’s someone under my roof right now.” I knew from our previous conversations, of course, that it was her belief that the police had got it right — “this time,” she had said to me, in order to show she was not a lackey of the police and was ready to second-guess them on the next occasion — and that Burke and I had affected to think otherwise in order to justify a road trip to Italy.

  “We’re still at the stage of helping the police with their inquiries.”

  “I see. Well, pour yourselves a whiskey or a glass of wine, and grab something to eat. Unless you’re both sated for all time after your bacchanalian revels abroad.”

  “Where are the kids?”

  “Normie’s staying at Kim’s, and Tom is with Lexie.”

  “Okay. Remind me later. I promised Normie I’d find her a little job to do in connection with the case. I had Tom do the newspaper research, so she wanted in on it too. I have something she can do —”

  “Funny you should say that. She believes she knows where the answer lies, but it requires a trip to — Disney World!”

  “All right, all right. You’ve made your point.” I would take the direct approach, and ask Normie myself.

  The house was soon full, and the gathering achieved what was almost a party atmosphere, but the strain of the murder thrummed beneath the surface, for some of us at least, like a sombre bass line. Gino Savo arrived with Mike O’Flaherty and Kitty Curran, Gino appearing to be in a l
ess festive mood than his two companions.

  “Now, Kitty, where would you like to sit?” Mike asked solicitously. “Would you have a little something to drink?”

  “I’d have a whiskey if such a thing were available,” Kitty replied.

  “Oh, surely there’s a drop of whiskey. I’ll go and see. Now you just make yourself comfortable there.” He was soon back with a glass of whiskey and a couple of chocolate treats in a tiny silver dish.

  I left her in his tender care for a few more minutes, then brought Maura over and introduced her, noting Kitty’s role on the Council for Justice and Peace. Keenly interested in social justice herself, Professor MacNeil was soon in rapt conversation with the globe-trotting nun, while Mike O’Flaherty looked on adoringly. The smell of something burning in the kitchen reinforced the fact that MacNeil had found something much more interesting than tending to the stove. I went out, switched off the burner, and turned on the fan to suck up the smoke. I didn’t bother to look at whatever remained in the pot, just opened the back door and pitched it into the snow. Maura didn’t ask any questions when I returned to the living room.

  The two women continued their intense conversation until the baby, Dominic, cried out from his room, and Maura excused herself.

  I sat down with Kitty. “Well, you’ve got nearly half the cast in front of you tonight, Sister.”

  “In front of me and Gino Savo.” I had forgotten that the Vatican’s man was in the crowd; now I saw him standing against the far wall, looking tense and ill at ease. “He’ll be more intent on observing them than I will. Nobody put me in charge!” She sipped her drink and popped a chocolate into her mouth.

  “Maybe it would be best for everyone if Savo caught the perpetrator,” I suggested. “Justice would be swift under his hand, I suspect!”

  “Or mercy perhaps. He caught one of his staff members embezzling money. When discovered, the man claimed he needed it for his disabled son. Further investigation, however, revealed that the little boy had died years before, and the father had been using him as an excuse. But Gino Savo forgave him and kept him on. That’s the priest in Gino. He tried to hush it up, but word got out.”

  “Commendable, but it gives rise to the suspicion that Gino may be hoping to cover up another crime, the one committed here.”

  “Kind of hard to do, unless he manages to fool the police along with everyone else.”

  She looked up. “Ah, the baby! Isn’t he a dote!” Maura had returned to the living room with the bawling infant and busied herself with him in the corner. “Poor little thing; he can’t understand why we don’t know what he’s miserable about!”

  “Do you come from a big family yourself, Kitty?” Michael O’Flaherty asked.

  “Seven brothers and sisters, Michael, and there’s a tale about every single one of them.”

  “Don’t leave out a word!” he urged her.

  I left them to it, poured myself a ginger ale, and joined Fred Mills and Enrico Sferrazza-Melchiorre. “Brennan seems a little subdued this evening,” Fred remarked.

  “Well, it’s not as if bubbly hyperactivity is his usual demeanour,” I replied.

  “No, there’s something troubling him.”

  “He has been quiet since his travels,” Enrico said. “Perhaps he fell in love in Italy! Tell us, Monty. Did he? Did you?”

  I shrugged and started to issue a denial, but I was interrupted by Father Savo, who had joined us. He stated flatly: “Brennan is not a boy. It would take more than a glance at a pretty face, or even a night in the arms of a woman, to throw him off course, so …” His voice trailed off. I followed his gaze across the room, where Brennan was standing with a drink in his hand, listening to something Maura was saying. I stared at her. Lamplight bathed her face in a warm glow; despite a smear of something on her cheek, she looked beautiful. The baby was lying across her legs. No longer crying, he was all smiles, his big dark eyes on Brennan, his little legs kicking and hands reaching out to the tall man in front of him. The only move Brennan made was to lift his drink to his lips and down it. I did the same.

  The scene receded from my mind with the arrival of Billy Logan and Babs. The former priest walked in just as Father Sferrazza-Melchiorre positioned himself before the fireplace and burst into song. He opened with an Italian folk number I thought I recognized from the Trattoria Benelli, then segued into “E lucevan le stelle,” in which a man awaiting his own execution declares that he has never loved life so much as now. Enrico had a magnificent voice, and the party gathered around him, abandoning small talk and giving itself over to the music. All except Father Savo, who regarded Enrico stonily from the other end of the room.

  “Brennan, join me!” Enrico urged. Burke waved him off. But the Italian was not to be denied, and Burke was half-corked by this time, so soon the two of them were singing opera in antiphonal mode, one doing one stanza and the other taking over. The showstopper, “Caruso,” was a number written in honour of another operatic Italian who spent time in America. The song captured the embraces betweena woman and a man who sees the end of his life approaching. Passions run high in the aria, and our performers rose to the occasion.

  The audience applauded wildly. My wife fanned her face with her hand, and demanded of the duo: “That chorus means what, exactly? Let me guess: ‘We can sing better than other men ’cause our testicles are bigger.’” This earned a hoot of laughter from Sister Curran.

  Brennan seemed to have something caught in his throat.

  A handsome and flushed Fred Mills tore his eyes away from Brennan, made a beeline for the bar, cracked open a beer, and chugged it.

  But it was William Logan who notched things up to a higher operatic pitch. “Why don’t you guys just fuck off and get over yourselves?”

  The casually dressed Burke and the elaborately caped Italian turned towards Logan in astonishment. Before either of them could come up with a rejoinder, Logan launched himself out of the house. His wife gave everyone a mortified glance and stumbled after him.

  I was shocked into immobility for a few seconds, then I decided to follow Logan and find out what his problem really was. I saw them down the street, standing by their station wagon. Babs was fumbling with the key, and Logan started in on her. “How long have we had this freaking car, Babs? Five months, and you still can’t figure out the key turns counter-clockwise on the driver’s side and clockwise on the passenger side!”

  “Well, that’s because it’s never me driving it. It’s always you.”

  “And it’s going to be me now. I told you I’m fine to drive, so give me that key!”

  “No, William, you’re not driving. And it wasn’t very nice what you said to Brennan and that other guy. Imagine what they think of you.”

  “What they think of me? I don’t give a shit what they think. And I especially don’t give a shit about that Euro-trash priest in the million-dollar cassock! It’s Burke who sticks in my craw. That conceited prick. He’s got it all and he rubs everybody’s nose in it!”

  “What are you talking about, Billy? For heaven’s sake.”

  “He’s got that voice, he gets people from all over the world to his choir school, he composes a Mass, he says he’s going to write an oratorio, he speaks how many languages … Before he entered the sem he was getting more sex than Mick Jagger. Now he doesn’t need it,doesn’t need a woman, doesn’t need a family. Doesn’t need the United States of America! He’s still a goddamn Irishman! His father was run out of Ireland because he pissed off his fellow terrorists in the IRA, he shoved his family onto a boat to New York when Brennan was ten years old, and the kid refused to give up his Irish citizenship, or he got it back, or he’s a dual citizen, or something. So he lived in the U.S. but never became Americanized. He sneers at our government and our culture and the first chance he gets, he’s off to Rome and all these other parts of the world. He’s never even been to Florida! He’s a fucking European! Now he’s up here in this little Scottish outpost, loving every minute of it. Yeah, he’s got i
t all. And to top it off, he still gets to celebrate Mass every day. In public. Unlike some of us. Now, give me that key!”

  “Billy! You’re not saying you wish you were still a priest! You wouldn’t have met me if you’d stayed with that! You wouldn’t have your kids.”

  “I don’t have my kids, Babs. All I have is alimony payments and visits once a month. Remember?”

  “But what about me?”

  “It’s not you, Babs. Obviously. It’s just that nobody tried to talk me into staying. In the priesthood. Know what I mean? All these priests and nuns were leaving, and it was just so goddamn easy to get out. And it didn’t matter because we were all Christ’s holy priesthood anyway, Holy Orders or not. This all happened when the church went to hell in a handcart after Vatican II. Nobody was leaving when the church was strict, when being a Catholic meant something. Being a priest meant something. Back then, you told your bishop you were having doubts, he’d just tell you to get down on your knees and pray harder, then get your ass back on the job. And you did.”

  “Well … Brennan obviously still thinks it means something.”

  “He and God are singing in each other’s ear. I don’t want to hear another word about him. Get in — I’m driving!”

  I melted into the shadows and returned to the party.

  Chapter 13

  Now therefore be ye not scoffers, lest your bonds be made strong,

  For a decree of destruction have I heard from the Lord.

  — Isaiah 28:22

  Logan’s harangue played over and over in my mind until I fell asleep, but it was his car that was in my thoughts when I awoke on Saturday morning. One of the few bits of information we had gleaned froma witness was that, right around the time of the murder, there was a car near Stella Maris Church with its wipers going on a sunny afternoon. Which suggested the driver was not used to the controls. Surely I was not alone in having that experience in a vehicle I was not accustomed to. A new car or a ental. Go for the light switch and you get the wipers. Or vice versa. Perhaps somebody had been in the parking lot near the murder scene in a car that was unfamiliar to him or her. I now knew William and Babs Logan had bought a car a few months ago, and she was unfamiliar with its locks because, she said, she never got to drive it. Lou Petrucci had come to town in his own car. Whether it was new or old, he would have had lots of time to get used to it on the drive from New Jersey. Kurt Bleier had a rental car. Enrico Sferrazza-Melchiorre had taken a car out for a test drive. It should be easy enough to determine whether the witness, the woman with the little dog, had noticed American plates, or a snazzy British auto, or maybe a car with a rental sticker in the parking lot that day.