Cecilian Vespers

by Anne Emery

  “Logan knows it was you,” I said, and let it sink in for a moment. “He thinks you were trying to frame him for the murder.”

  “I believe there is evidence, somewhere, of his guilt.”

  “You’re telling me you truly believe Logan killed Schellenberg.”

  “I do.”

  “Why Logan?”

  “I think the man is unstable.”

  “And the Englishman isn’t?”

  “Logan flies into a rage with the slightest provocation. He bears ill will to a number of people in the Roman Catholic Church. Schellenberg was receiving threats —”

  “How do you know that?”

  “We have — our police force has information about these threats. At least one of them came from America at a time when Schellenberg was planning a trip to the United States. He cancelled the trip.”

  “Because of the threat.”

  “Correct.”

  “Why didn’t you share this information before?” He didn’t answer. A novel and unwelcome experience for a career policeman, being on the other end of an interrogation. “What else can you tell me about Schellenberg?”

  “Nothing. Let us return to Logan. Of all the people here, of all those who cannot give an account of themselves for the time of death, Logan is the one I suspect.”

  “He suspects you.”

  “No. He does not. He pretends to suspect me to divert attention from himself. When I went out there —”

  “How did you get there?”

  “It is a simple matter to rent a car and read a map. I intended only to look around in the garden shed.”

  “How did you know there was a shed?”

  “I knew. I hoped it was not locked. But it was, and so I picked open the lock. Did no damage. I did not see anything of interest to me in the shed. There was no one about, so I decided to enter the basement.”

  “You’re a pretty skilled man with a lock.” “One learns things over the course of one’s career. I went into the basement and looked around. I saw a small axe and then a larger one. I took them down from the wall to examine them, to photograph them. I took two photographs, then I heard a sound, so I left them on the work table and got out.”

  “Where are the photos?”

  “I have them.”

  “Do they show anything on the axes?”

  “I could not see anything.”

  “Logan wiped them off.”

  “The action of a guilty man.”

  “He wiped them after the break-in, not before.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “He told me.”

  “And you believe him.”

  “You want me to believe you. Logan claims you went out there to plant evidence, that you might have put blood or something on one of the axes.”

  “Whose blood?”

  “Well, it wouldn’t work unless it was the victim’s blood, would it?”

  “Where would I get Schellenberg’s blood?”

  “From the real murder weapon?”

  “You are reaching, Montague. You have no grounds for suspecting me.”

  “I wouldn’t say that, Kurt. But I’ll be off now. You and Logan have given me a lot to think about.”

  “And so, my Lord, the defendant submits that the plaintiff is a crumbling skull plaintiff and not a thin skull —”

  “What are you saying, Montague?”

  I turned off my dictaphone and looked up. Brennan was standing in the doorway of my office late Monday afternoon, staring at me as if I were a witch doctor.

  “Sit down, Brennan. In tort law,” I explained, using the tone of voice he himself used when instructing those who just will not catch on, “a thin skull plaintiff is someone with an underlying condition or weakness that becomes manifest only after his new injury. If he has degenerative changes in his spine or is emotionally unable to deal with adversity, and his reaction to the injury is worse than another person’s would be, too bad for the defendant. We have to take the plaintiff as we find him. But if the person already has symptoms from his underlying condition, that means he would have had problems even without the accident, and so we only pay for the portion of the damage we caused. His skull was already crumbling, so to speak. Crumbling skull plaintiff. Thus endeth the lesson.”

  “A lesson I’m not likely to forget.”

  “Good man. Now, what can I do for you today?”

  “I just took a stroll over to see if we could sit down and talk about grisly death scenes. But, hearing all this about crumbling skulls, I’m not so sure I’ll be able for it.”

  “Sure you will. Give me an hour and come back. I’ve got a trial starting on Thursday, a medical negligence case. So I have to get some other stuff cleared away. Like this file, a minor claim. Somebody looking for ‘monetary bandages,’ if you know what I mean. I’ll meet you downstairs at six-thirty.”

  I finished my work and met Brennan on Barrington Street outside my building.

  “I thought we might talk about the sanctified again,” he said. “And how they died. I can’t escape the notion that there’s a connection between the murder and one or more of the saints.”

  “If you had told me a year ago, Brennan, that I’d be looking to the dead heroes of the Catholic Church for clues to a murder, I’d have thought you’d gone simple.”

  “No, no, just stepping back and forth between one world and another. Nothing to it.”

  “If you say so. Anyway, what we should be looking for is a depiction of their death scenes.”

  “I asked Mike, but all he has is Butler’s Lives of the Saints, which, as you saw, is not illustrated. The information is out there if we need it; we’ll just have to do some digging.”

  “Well, I do have somebody on the case. I asked Normie to look through her collection of holy cards to see if she has any of the people we’re interested in. She’ll be home from school by now. Maybe it’s time to ask for her report.”

  “Let’s hope the death scenes aren’t shown in any detail! You wouldn’t want the child seeing that.”

  “They’re holy cards, Brennan. Not slasher films.”

  So we walked to my car and drove to Dresden Row, where Tom and Normie were just finishing a meal of spaghetti and meatballs, and butterscotch pie for dessert.

  “Evening, Stormie. Mr. Douglas.”

  “Hi, Father.”

  “Where’d you get the pie?” I asked, ogling it. “Mummy bought it,” Normie answered.

  “Can we have some?”

  “Okay, but if you take the last piece you have to buy a new one. I didn’t mean you, Father Burke!”

  “Why not him?” I demanded. “I’m giving him the smaller piece, then.” I cut modest slices for myself and Brennan.

  “Where’s Mum?”

  “At Fanny’s with the baby.”

  Tom asked: “Are you guys going to be here for a while? If I can have the car, I can go get Lexie and bring her over.”

  “Sure. Go ahead, Tommy.”

  I handed him my keys, and he took off.

  “Okay, Normie. Time to get to work. We need the results of your research.”

  “It’s all done! I have cards for some of the ones you asked for!”

  “Great. Let’s move into the dining room. Put your cards on the table.”

  She pounded up the stairs to her room, ransacked the place by the sounds of it, then came flying down the stairs and didn’t stop till she hit the dining room table. Her cards were clutched in her fist. Seeing her with them reminded me: I had not yet taken my film in to be developed. I wanted the photo of the Angelicum for her T-shirt. I made a mental note to get it done. She put the cards on the table in a pack, then squinted at the one on top.

  “Where are your glasses?”

  “I don’t know.

  I don’t need them.” This battle had been going on for five years, but now was not the time for fresh hostilities, so I let it go.

  “All right. What did you find?”

  “Saint Joan of Arc.
”

  “The saint beloved of Jan Ford,” I noted for the record. “Saint Joan led the French army in all kinds of battles and did a really good job. Then she was captured and they said she was bad and burned her to death! They said she was a heretic. That means somebody who’s not a good Catholic. But they found out it wasn’t true and she was really a saint.” The card showed the maiden warrior in armour; fortunately, she was not depicted going up in flames.

  “Who else have you got, Normie?”

  “You wanted Saint Clare; I have two Clares!”

  “Brilliant!” Brennan exclaimed. “Lou Petrucci rescued the statue of a Saint Clare, Santa Chiara, from the modernized church in New Jersey. Before he set fire to it. Give us your Clares.”

  “Clare of Rimini and Clare of Assisi. The Rimini one was dis-solute,” my daughter said. “Dissolute?” She stumbled over the word, then looked up at me. “What’s that mean?”

  “She probably partied a lot.”

  She turned to her priest. “It was a sin to go to parties back in the thirteen hundreds?”

  “Em, well, there’s partying, and then there’s partying.”

  She waited for enlightenment but none was forthcoming, so she went back to her card. “She enjoyed sinful pleasures, it says here. Then she stopped sinning and opened a convent. And it says —” she bent over until her face was about eight inches from the card. “‘She practised penances that would have been thought extreme even in medieval times.’ What do they mean by that?”

  “I have no idea,” Burke lied.

  “Okay.”

  “How did she die?”

  “Of natural causes,” Normie read from the card.

  “Or unnatural penitential practices,” the priest muttered.

  “What does ‘natural causes’ mean?”

  “It means nobody killed her,” I replied.

  “But you want someone to kill her, right?”

  “Well, that’s probably what we’re looking for.” “Let’s see,” Burke said, peering at the card. “Oh, this Clare has been beatified, but not canonized. So she’s called ‘blessed,’ not ‘saint.’ Who’s the other Clare?”

  “Saint Clare of Assisi,” Normie answered and showed us the card. The saint was pictured in the brown and black habit of a nun. “She liked music. She was born rich, but started a group called the Poor Clares. Natural causes again,” she said with disgust, and pushed the card away.

  “All right. Who else is on our list? Do you have Saint Andrew Avellino there?”

  Normie looked as if she had just been given a D on her math exam. “No! I kept looking but he’s not here.”

  “No problem,” I assured her. “We know a bit about him already. Do you have Saint Charles Borromeo?”

  “No.” She shook her head, and looked as if she might burst into tears.

  “It’s okay, sweetheart. We didn’t expect you to have every holy card in the world. We know Saint Charles was shot by a member of a society, the Umiliati, who resented his reforms. The attempt took place while he was praying at the altar. He survived for another fifteen years, then died of a fever. Andrew Avellino was Borromeo’s friend. Andrew was attacked by a crowd of people who resented his efforts at reform.” I turned to Burke. “He was attacked by the johns he booted out of the convent-brothel in Naples.”

  “Funny how that stuck in your puerile mind.”

  “I’ll bet it stuck in yours too.”

  “It did.”

  “A reformer, a lawyer who committed perjury, a priest — Andrew must have died of exhaustion.”

  “He suffered a stroke while celebrating Mass and died soon afterwards.”

  “Borromeo is admired by Brother Robin, and Andrew by Enrico Sferrazza-Melchiorre. Who else have we got?”

  Normie shuffled the deck as if one more bad card would cost her the house. Then she found the ace of spades. “Cecilia! You asked for her, and here she is!”

  “Of course! Thank you, sweetheart. Her feast day is November 22, day of the murder.”

  “Here you go.” Normie passed the card to Burke.

  “All they show here is the sculpture in the Catacomb of St. Callixtus in Rome. The figure of a young girl, carved in white marble, lying on her side; you can see a cut on her neck. We know her killers tried to drown or suffocate her in her bath, then tried to cut her head off …” Burke’s voice trailed away as he looked at my little girl, her eyes as big as butterscotch pie plates.

  “Attempted decapitation,” I responded, “as was the case with Father Schellenberg. It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the killer was trying to re-enact Cecilia’s death.”

  “Patron saint of church musicians. Everyone at the schola would be keen on her, I’m thinking. Of course a couple of our suspects have no saintly devotions at all, namely Kurt Bleier and Billy Logan.”

  “From my own observations, Brennan, and from our researches in Rome, I’d say the ex-Father Logan is more attached to Holy Mother Church than he lets on.”

  “No doubt.”

  “All right. Back to the holy dead. We mustn’t forget Saint Reinhold himself,” I said, “beaten to death by masons. And Saint John Vianney.”

  “I’ve got him!” Normie exclaimed. “Right here!” She waved his card in our faces. John was shown with long white hair and a kindly face; he was vested as a priest and had a halo around his head.

  Brennan looked at the card. “The great confessor and patron saint of priests.”

  “Isn’t there another one who’s patron saint of priests?”

  “There are many, but Saint John is a particular favourite. What does it say about his death, Stormie?”

  “Another one who died of natural causes.” She gave the appearance of one who was letting down the side.

  “Fred Mills is devoted to him,” Brennan said, “but I don’t think we have to spend much time wringing our hands about Fred.”

  “Why not?”

  “He doesn’t have a motive.”

  “He doesn’t have an alibi.”

  “Not one of them has an alibi, Monty. They didn’t all kill him.” “That is probably a safe assumption,” I agreed, with only the slightest lawyerly reservation. They may indeed all have killed him. But it was unlikely.

  “Who else?” I asked. “Philomena, obviously, since it was a Philomena chaplet I found in Robin’s room. Normie, did you —”

  “I have a card for Philomena! I’ll read it to you. ‘Philomena’s death was extraordinary even when measured against the bizarre torments suffered by other saints. The Roman Emperor Dio — Dioc —’ How do you say this?”

  I looked at the text on the card. “Diocletian.”

  “He wanted to marry her but she refused, saying she had promised to be the bride of Christ. The emperor had her scourged — What’s that mean?”

  Burke gave me a look across the table. “It means they hit her with something,” I said.

  “They were really rough in those days! Like those police in Germany back in the 1970s. I’m glad I wasn’t around then.”

  “This was even before the dark ages of the 1970s.”

  “Way back,” she agreed. “Anyway, then they tied her to an anchor to be drowned in the Tiber River. There’s a legend that angels cut the rope, the anchor fell, and she was transported up to the bank. The soldiers then shot her with arrows! Again she was saved by heavenly in — inter — intervention. Then they —”

  I gently slid the card away from her and read the rest of the gruesome tale to myself. They tried heated arrows on her, but the arrows miraculously turned back and killed the archers. Finally, the emperor had her head cut off. I stared at the card, at the image of a young girl with long dark hair crowned with a circlet of flowers. In her left hand she held a bouquet; in her right she clasped a sinister collection of items: a scourge, an anchor, an arrow.

  Anchor. Arrow. The swizzle stick and valentine cards left on Father Schellenberg’s body, after the killer tried to cut off his head.

  “It was the death of
Saint Philomena that was being re-enacted!”

  Burke’s eyes were riveted to the card. Normie looked from one to the other of us, and stayed silent.

  When I recovered, I said: “We don’t know of any devotions to Saint Philomena on the part of our suspects. She’s the patron saint of what?” I consulted the card. “Priests, babies, children, sickness, lost causes, desperate causes — I see as well that there are miraculous cures attributed to her. We’re getting there. I know it.”

  Normie couldn’t hold it in: “Did I help you solve the murder?”

  “You may have, Normie. Your work has given us something we didn’t know before. And I think it’s something important.”

  “Wow! Wait till I tell — No, it’s a secret. I know that.”

  Brennan turned to me. “The Saint Philomena chaplet. Someone put it in Brother Robin’s room, with the note saying ‘let me grieve with you.’”

  “That story Robin told us about his sister, a young girl who died of some sort of disease or infection in Africa. Does somebody think Robin blames Philomena for failing to save the sister? Could anyone’s mind work like that?”

  “You tell me. You defend murderers for a living. How do their minds work?”

  “I defend people accused of murder, Brennan,” I replied. “But let’s get back to Robin. There was nothing like this in his statement to the police; it dealt with Schellenberg and the changes after Vatican II.”

  “He’s led us around in circles,” Brennan said, “and I’m sure in his own mind, he has his reasons for all this daft behaviour.”

  “The heart has its reasons, which reason knows not of.”

  “True enough. It was my understanding that Robin didn’t do it. But now, seeing this, I don’t know what to think.”

  “Somebody knows,” I interjected. “Somebody put that chaplet and note under his door. And we know Enrico’s fingerprints were on the note, along with Robin’s.”

  “Let’s pay a visit to Enrico again.”

  But Enrico only shrugged once again when we called upon him that night, and denied having anything to do with the note.

  “Your prints were on it, Enrico.”

  “I cannot explain.”

  “But you must realize this puts you in a very difficult position.”