The Good Friday Murder

by Lee Harris

  He brightened up. “One, two, three—”

  “It doesn’t matter. Eighteen doesn’t matter. You were a real hero.”

  He was all smiles.

  “Come,” I said, “let’s get you up to bed.”

  —

  It turned out the Talley twins had slept through the commotion, so that the events of the night would not be part of their repertoire. Jack took me home, and sitting at the kitchen table with a mug of hot tea, he filled me in on what I didn’t already know.

  “I started worrying when you didn’t answer your phone all afternoon. I called the Oakwood police and asked them to check out your house. They found the broken window, the open door, and the phone cords missing. I got there as fast as I could, but no one had seen you since your neighbor stopped to talk to you this afternoon.”

  “That was just before I got home. He was inside, waiting forme.”

  “I figured. Anyway, we checked out Greenwillow and didn’t find anything. The twins were okay, no one suspicious had been there, and we couldn’t find your car.”

  “My car.” I would have to pick it up tomorrow. “It’s parked off the road about half a mile from the hospital.”

  “I know. One of the local cops spotted it while we were waiting. I didn’t think Spanner would try to break in. I was expecting him to call and offer a trade, you for one of the twins. When he dragged you into the hospital, I started to see how he had managed it. Did he tell you much?”

  “Only that Gerry Spanner was dead and buried and he had had a different identity for forty years.”

  “It’s probably true. I did a little digging today. He joined the army in the Korean War, which started a couple of months after the Talley murder. The records show that Private Gerry Spanner was killed in action. I started looking for survivors in his platoon to establish the facts and came up with a couple of likely KIAs, guys he could have changed identities with. Two of them were orphans.”

  “You mean when someone else died, he switched dog tags and became someone else?”

  “Either that or he killed someone, blew him up with a grenade so he couldn’t be identified. Maybe Spanner even got himself lost for a while and then reported in as someone else to another unit where he wasn’t known. There’s always a lot of confusion after a major action.”

  “What an awful life he must have lived,” I said, “knowing every minute was a lie.”

  “That was his choice. And he deserved a little agony. Look at what he did to a woman and her sons. He took away the most important person in their lives and then stole the next forty years from them.”

  I nodded. I was beyond talking. It was closer to when I usually wake up than to when I usually go to sleep. Jack came up with me, kissed me, and went back downstairs. I had forgotten to ask if he was staying, forgotten to offer him a pillow. About all I could think of was closing my eyes.

  29

  I awoke about ten, smelling coffee. Jack was making breakfast when I got down.

  “They gave me today off so we can clean up the mess up here. You’ll have to make a statement to the local police today, and probably the county district attorney.”

  “Today I can do anything.”

  He bought some telephone cords, restoring my service. Then we went down to the police station and I told my story, which took a fairly long time. It seemed like there were a million questions. The story was, after all, forty years long. When we were finished, we had lunch.

  “I also checked up on your favorite suspect, Patrick Talley,” Jack said when we were waiting for our sandwiches.

  I grinned at him. “What did you find?”

  “Well, for openers, he was wanted by the FBI.”

  “Then he was involved in insurance fraud.”

  “They sure think so. But once he left for the Bahamas, that was the last they ever saw of him. And by the way, Mrs. Talley, if she’s still alive, hasn’t been back to the States in over fifteen years.”

  “Living the good life with her husband’s ill-gotten gains.”

  “Looks that way.”

  I was still a little peeved that I had been wrong about Patrick. “It seemed so logical,” I said. “No one had more to gain than he.”

  “Except Spanner. For Spanner, killing Mrs. Talley was a matter of life and death.”

  After lunch we drove over to Greenwillow.

  Virginia must have seen us from her window, because she came out to the car. “I have some very bad news,” she said.

  I felt the cold chill. “What is it?”

  “James has been hospitalized. They think it may be a heart attack.”

  I have a rather childish habit of pointing out facts to counter news of happenings I cannot deal with. “They slept through everything last night,” I said, hoping she would tell me I was right and therefore what she had said could not possibly be true.

  “The doctor thinks it may have been the effects of the poisoning, the anxiety of the last days. The truth is, men have heart attacks on golf courses and no one ever knows why.”

  “Is Robert with him?”

  “They thought it would be better if he weren’t.”

  “It isn’t better.” I got out of the car, feeling angry. “Doctors don’t know everything. Where’s Robert?”

  She took us to the patio, and I introduced Jack along the way. Robert was sitting by himself with the old lost look on his face. “Come with me,” I said, and he came along in his old docile manner.

  We went to the cardiac unit, and I persuaded the nurse on duty to let Robert and me in. James was hooked up to half a dozen wires and tubes and seemed to be asleep. I held Robert’s hand and we stood near the bed, not saying anything. About a minute passed. Then James’s eyes opened and the twins looked at each other. Then there was a small smile.

  I remembered what Dr. Courtland had said about Gerry Spanner’s proposed experiments. He had wanted to see whether they functioned as savants when their backs were to each other, when they were certain distances away, when a wall was between them. I was convinced James had sensed his brother’s presence in his sleep and opened his eyes to acknowledge it.

  Robert sat on a chair and I walked away, leaving them together. The nurse, however, was insistent that Robert stay no longer then ten minutes. I tried to suggest having Robert sleep on a cot near his brother, but she wouldn’t hear of it. I took Robert back to the waiting room where Jack was waiting, and we all walked back to Greenwillow.

  —

  One of my neighbors had stayed in the house to wait for the glazier, so when we got back, the window had been fixed. I walked into the dining room and saw my papers spread out. All that work, and now it was over.

  “I feel at loose ends,” I said.

  “Looking for an excuse not to prepare for your poetry course?”

  “No excuses.” I started gathering my papers.

  “Chris.”

  I turned from the table, and he put his arms around me.

  “Think there’ll be something there for us when we don’t have the Talley murder to kick around?”

  “I think so.” It felt so good. “I know so.”

  “So do I.”

  That evening, alone and unafraid, I started through the poems. He was right about the old ones; they were all about love and death, but the best ones were love, and I felt a new appreciation of it. Lines that had once described something universal but not of my world now sang to me, all those blissful poets of four centuries ago, opening their hearts to their coy mistresses or coy loves:

  Clip me no more in those dear arms,

  Nor thy life’s comfort call me,

  O these are but too powerful charms,

  And do but more enthral me!

  But see how patient I am grown

  In all this coil about thee:

  Come, nice thing, let my heart alone,

  I cannot live without thee!

  Jack, my nice thing.

  I fell asleep dreaming of the rapture of the contemporary Amer
ican woman, myself.

  30

  The phone rang at seven-thirty Thursday morning.

  “Chris, this is Virginia.”

  “Yes.”

  “I think you should come to Greenwillow.”

  “I’ll be right there.”

  I chucked what was left of my breakfast and ran out to the car. A police car was parked in front of Greenwillow, and I ran to the door, feeling frightened.

  Virginia was standing in the reception area, talking to two policemen. When she saw me, she left them.

  “Come to my office,” she said, leading the way.

  We sat in chairs away from her desk.

  “I got a call early this morning from the hospital,” she began. “James died during the night.”

  “Oh no.”

  “Peacefully,” she added, trying to smile. “I dressed and came here as quickly as I could. I knew Robert would have to be told, and I couldn’t let anyone else do it.” She paused and took a breath. “He died in his sleep.”

  “Robert?” I said. “Robert died?”

  “Apparently so. We got the rescue squad here—they just left a little while ago—but he’d been dead for a couple of hours.”

  I closed my eyes, opened them, and shook my head rapidly, trying to clear it. Parts of a whole. When one died, the other could not survive alone. They had not been looking at each other or in the same room, and they had much more than a wall between them, but it had happened. They were gone.

  “Have you called a priest?” I asked, my practical nature taking hold.

  “Jonesy called the rectory of St. Mark’s. He’s on his way.”

  “I had hoped they would have many years in each other’s company.”

  “They had a week. And you gave it to them. Someday you will think of that and it will be a comfort.”

  I was unable to answer. Brushing my tears away, I went upstairs to Robert’s room to wait for the priest from St. Mark’s.

  —

  I have had my share of delivering bad news. I have had to call parents of a student to say that their daughter was hurt in an automobile accident. I had to call a family to tell them that their beloved aunt, a nun at St. Stephen’s, had passed away. Today I had another terrible call to make. I had to call Magda and tell her about her boys.

  “This is Christine,” I said when she answered.

  “Christine.” She sounded so happy to hear my voice. “And how are the two old gentlemen?”

  Yes, I thought, how kind of her to see that they were boys no more. “I have some terrible news, Magda,” I said, and then I told her.

  —

  The funeral was the next day at St. Mark’s. Virginia and I agreed that it was best for the Greenwillow people to bury their dead quickly.

  I sat between Gene and Magda, whom I had picked up in Queens. Gene held my hand through most of the mass, or maybe I held his. Maybe on this day I needed more comfort than my cousin did.

  The mass in its constancy is a comfort in itself. Whenever I smell the incense I have a sense of the ages, of time, of continuance.

  The Talley brothers could not have had a more devoted group of worshipers at their funeral. My retarded cousin Gene and his friends seem to find it easier to love than to feel anything else—hate, dislike, even neutrality. Sitting in that pew, I could feel the love, and I knew that the twins must have felt it in the week they were at Greenwillow.

  One week, after forty years.

  31

  On Saturday I drove to St. Stephen’s. It was nearly two weeks since I had had my talk with Mother Joseph, and now I had to tell her both that she had been right and that the twins were gone. I had once entertained the idea of getting the three of them together, since Joseph was so largely responsible for the twins’ reunion, but so soon it was too late.

  I arrived at two, a quiet afternoon in summer. A novice walked across the grass near where I parked, her head down, her arms crossed, her hands tucked into her sleeves. Her life at St. Stephen’s lay ahead of her. Today I knew that mine was behind me.

  I went to the Mother House, saying hello to Grace, who was on bells. She called upstairs to tell Joseph I was coming.

  The room looked exactly as it had at the time of my last visit. I was almost sure the same papers were atop the same piles on the long table. Joseph’s office was like the constancy of the church. It irritates sometimes, but it can always be relied on.

  She had coffee for us in one of those silvery pitchers that keep things warm, and she poured it into two rather lovely china cups. Then I told her the story.

  I thought at times that I was dragging it out, prolonging it with too much detail, but each time I tried to rush through something, she slowed me down. I was in tears when I finished, and she came around the table and patted my back.

  “Have you ever seen our view of the river?” she asked, her hand resting on my back.

  “The legend of St. Stephen’s?” I said, patting my eyes with a tissue. “Only in my dreams.”

  She opened the door to her closet and pushed back a raincoat and a couple of empty hangers. Then she said, “Follow me,” and walked right into the closet.

  It was fairly deep and lined with shelves behind the bar that held the hangers. On the shelves were paper, paper clips, ink, and other office supplies. At the rear of the closet was another door. Joseph pulled it open and passed through.

  Following her, I came to a narrow set of stone stairs along the outside wall of the building. It was a long flight—her office had a very high ceiling, which I had taken to be; directly underneath the roof—and at the top was a door. Joseph pushed it open and we entered a small room under the eaves with a floor of unfinished pine boards and walls of stone. Inset in the stone were two deep grooves that looked like gun emplacements in old forts.

  I walked over to one and peered through it, and sure enough, there it was, the mighty Hudson in all its glory.

  “Oh my God,” I whispered, something I could not have said six months ago. “It’s true then.”

  Joseph was smiling. “Great truths sometimes become great myths. Not many people have come up here. You’re probably one of the few who wasn’t a superior. But since you turned one myth into truth, I thought you deserved to see another.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Well deserved,” Joseph said.

  32

  I moved into the master bedroom that night. With the mirror no longer an enemy, there seemed no reason anymore not to be more comfortable.

  I spent Sunday with Jack, swimming at the private beach and cooking dinner together at the house. We acknowledged that we had great feelings for each other, but I told him it was too soon for me to make any kind of commitment to see him exclusively. I’m just too new at this, and I need to stretch my wings a little.

  The mayor, of course, didn’t even need my report since the whole thing was front-page news in the local papers. But he told me that an informal poll of the council indicated Greenwillow would be granted their variance. I expect them to move to Oakwood around the first of the year.

  Gerry Spanner will probably live, but I expect he’ll spend the rest of his life in prison. Although he will not be tried for the Talley murder, he will be tried for kidnapping—I was kidnapped—breaking and entering, carrying an unlicensed weapon, threatening police, and a hundred other things that all seem to go together. I will have to testify at the trial, which I don’t look forward to, but it has to be done. I’m convinced he’s responsible for the death of James, and therefore also of Robert. Incidentally, Jack’s guess about Spanner’s identity was right on the mark. The identification he was carrying was in the name of a man in his company in Korea. I expect the poor fellow’s remains are buried in the Spanner family plot.

  I spent a few days writing letters to people who deserved to know what had happened—Dr. Sanderson; Arnold Gold, James’s lawyer; the group home in Buffalo. The letter I got back from Arnold Gold was so thoughtful and considerate that I’ve decided to go into New
York a couple of days a week and do some work for the causes he supports. It’s the kind of thing I had in mind when I left St. Stephen’s, and I think this is the place to start.

  It turned out the twins did have a sizable inheritance, which was managed by some state appointee who didn’t know an awful lot about the twins. Most of the money—aside from his annual fee—had been accumulating interest for all these years and had reached a staggering sum. Probably Greenwillow and the home in Buffalo will receive most of it. For Greenwillow that will certainly help the renovation of the house in Oakwood.

  At the end of July I invited the whole block to an open house. As I was getting dressed, I opened the closet door and there was the yellow silk dress I’d been avoiding all summer. It was just perfect for the occasion. I didn’t invite Jack, because he isn’t exactly a member of the family yet. But all the neighbors came, including children, and we had a great time.

  I made it an afternoon party so that the children would be able to come and also so that it would end early. By seven, the last of the guests had left. By nine I had cleaned up. By ten I was in bed.

  I still get up at five o’clock in the morning.

  For my mother

  who’s read them all

  By Lee Harris

  Published by Fawcett Books:

  THE GOOD FRIDAY MURDER

  THE YOM KIPPUR MURDER

  THE CHRISTENING DAY MURDER

  THE ST. PATRICK’S DAY MURDER

  THE CHRISTMAS NIGHT MURDER

  THE THANKSGIVING DAY MURDER

  THE PASSOVER MURDER

  THE VALENTINE’S DAY MURDER

  THE NEW YEAR’S EVE MURDER

  THE LABOR DAY MURDER

  THE FATHER’S DAY MURDER

  THE MOTHER’S DAY MURDER

  THE APRIL FOOLS’ DAY MURDER

  THE HAPPY BIRTHDAY MURDER

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