Fair-mindedly, Mandy conceded, “It’s ever so romantic about the Lamburns, a real fairy tale. They were sweethearts at school but somebody else cut him out, and Mr. Lamburn—a teenager at the time, wild—made terrible scenes and got in trouble and Lord knows what. But then he made his fortune and they found each other again in the twilight of their lives, so to speak.”
Manganelle choked on his drink. Mrs. Lamburn was forty years old, maximum, and thus a mere slip of a girl in his estimation.
“Enough frivolity,” he hissed, “duty calls,” and jostled away through thickets of guests. Mrs. Lamburn appeared to be without an escort for the moment, and he’d devised a thin yet just about tolerable pretext to pester her. Planting himself before Anne Lamburn, he took her hand (she started, focused on him out of a daydream, and was palpably displeased by the view) and made a fairly revolting kissing sound half an inch above her captive fingers. The slight bow involved in this courtliness enabled him to peer earnestly into her cleavage. “Eric Manganelle, Daily Intelligencer.”
“How nice for you.” Hand snatched back, she turned a shoulder, searching for rescue.
“You were pointed out to me, Mrs. Lamburn, and the name struck a friendly chord. Good ol’ Harry spent hours eulogizing his lovely wife, and I wondered … Harry Lamburn, we were out in Lebanon together, a relation of yours by any chance?”
He was agreeably surprised when she swung round, lips parted. “Lebanon … Harry?” She was puzzled. “How strange.”
“Sorry?”
Touching his arm, Anne Lamburn said, “You must wonder what on earth I’m talking about. My present husband’s never been to Lebanon, you see, but my first … died there.” Her tone hardened as she corrected herself. “He was killed in Beirut.”
Appalled, he stammered, “Awfully sorry, never dreamed that—”
“Please don’t worry about it. That was in 1982, I’m used to it.” Mrs. Lamburn’s smile was not happy. “Complete adjustment: it must be, I have remarried.”
He was aware of sharp interest in her glance, and not so fuddled that he mistook it for flirtation. Further, the significance of what she’d been saying had just started to sink in.
Both Anne Lamburn and he glimpsed patent-leather hair and a brace of glasses held aloft as their bearer edged through the throng. Manganelle’s visual memory was exceptional: he’d last seen that shiny-topped head with rulered parting poolside at the Commodore hotel.
Mrs. Lamburn lowered her voice, hurried and almost conspiratorial. “You were in Beirut. Maybe you met my husband, my rea—first husband? His name was Lancelot Pasover?”
“NATURALLY I AGREED to meet her next morning,” Eric Manganelle told me. “Spare me the dying codfish look. I wasn’t planning to make a pass, any fool could tell our Annie was a one-man woman; one at a time, leastways.
“But I wanted her side of the story, for my own satisfaction. I was getting a grip on the original story for the first time, come to that. I beat it before Harry Lamburn saw us together. Oh yes, it was the same Harry, my chap in Beirut, the good listener.”
“It was all rather silly, I hired a car after breakfast and drove out to Hardpath Heights, the cliffs beyond Palmcastle. Local beauty spot, see all the way to France on a clear day, though why one should make the effort is a mystery to me, bloody Frogs doing Froggy things at extreme range.…”
I sighed stagily, and Manganelle glowered. “Anne Lamburn was waiting for me there, in a Bentley if you please, this year’s model. I decided I’d been right about her old man, Harry was a crook. And a murderer, of course.”
“Of course. Sticks out a mile.”
Manganelle gave me a pitying look. “Don’t act stupid, old lad, you have a head start in that department as it is. Come on, Harry Lamburn is besotted with Anne, but she married Supertwit, little Lancelot Pasover instead. Harry throws a tremendous wobbly, vows revenge, camps on her family’s doorstep saying he’ll never give her up. Local scandal, police called, finally her parents go to court and get an order against Harry, forbidding him to approach their daughter.
“Harry storms off to seek his fortune in foreign climes, Anne is wed to Lancelot. Time passes, Pasover goes on his fool’s errand to Beirut, I—all unwittingly, mind—zero Harry Lamburn in on him. Lo and behold, Pasover is murdered and suddenly Harry is nowhere to be seen. I never noticed at the time, but Lamburn made himself scarce directly after Lancelot Pasover was killed. Shot off to Cyprus, then a flight to Anywhere. It was happening all the time. The Israelis controlled PLO movements, but Brits could come and go as they liked, we were flitting back and forth like swallows.”
“Granted, Lamburn could have done it. So could a quarter of a million other likely suspects—anyone within a few square miles of him,” I objected.
“Twaddle! He had the motive, means, and opportunity, isn’t that the standard litany? And there’s more.…”
“Anne Lamburn apologized for our cloak-and-dagger date but said it had to be that way because her husband was neurotically jealous and possessive, always checking on her. She often came out to the Heights so if anyone mentioned seeing the Bentley, Harry Lamburn wouldn’t find it suspicious.”
“‘Harry lost me once and he isn’t rational about it, he cannot believe it will not happen again,’ Anne told me. That was when she filled me in on the teenage melodrama when Lancelot Pasover swept her off her feet. Hard to picture Lance sweeping the floor, even, but women are funny.
“Before she could ask me about meeting Lancelot in Beirut, I pretended to forget our conversation the previous evening and asked her if Harry Lamburn had ever been there. No, she said, definitely not, he’d made his pile in Africa and never set foot anywhere in the Middle East. Harry had made a sentimental journey back to Palmcastle, heard of her bereavement through mutual friends, and was astonished to learn that his teenage obsession had been widowed for six months …”
“Aha!”
“Well put,” Manganelle approved. “My very thought at the time. That’s when I knew Lamburn had polished off his rival. Why lie? Because if he told Anne that he’d been to Beirut all right, and her husband happened to be rubbed out during Harry’s brief visit … you follow? She had to put two and two together, and the answer wouldn’t come out orange blossom and Wedding March.”
“Meanwhile, Anne Lamburn was getting a trifle restive with me. Had I or had I not met Lancelot?” Manganelle indulged in one of his patented, shifty grins. “I blarneyed her, said we’d spoken briefly, Lancelot and me, he’d been a typical British gent, tragic end, probably mistaken identity, and he was tragic victim of terrorism.”
Staring at him, I said, “You covered up for Harry Lamburn?”
Shrugging moodily, Manganelle countered, “I couldn’t prove anything beyond a strong smell. Why get the wretched woman worked up? It was painfully obvious that, twit or no, she’d thought the world of Lancelot Pasover, and I saw no good in presenting her with the nightmare that she was living with his killer—who had killed for her, into the bargain.”
Manganelle sniggered bitterly. “Too late, old boy. Always engage brain before operating mouth … but what with the champange and everything, I’d had to chat her up, and the goose was cooked.”
“How d’you mean?”
“Something in her eyes,” he said, pulling a face. “A glint putting me in mind of a cat at a mousehole, very strongly in mind of that. Disagreeably so, old boy. And the minute I ran out of soothing lies to make her feel better, she gave me a real sergeant major’s look, a cut-the-crap look. Know what she said? ‘Why did you ask if Harry had ever been to Beirut?’ And then, no time for me to stick my oar in, she said, statement not question, ‘You met him there.’”
“Awkward,” I suggested.
“You spat a bootful. Let’s take a stroll, breath of fresh air on the prom.” Not Eric Manganelle’s style at all, leaving an unemptied glass.
It was a gorgeous night, black velvet sky, pumpkin moon, air like warm milk, and fairy lights twinkling their reflection
s across the placid sea. From the shadow came the singing of cicadas: in reality the scrape of alloy on asphalt as geriatric strollers deployed their walking frames.
“Women have bouts of ESP,” Manganelle argued. “I never said a word about seeing her husband, both of them in fact, present and future tenses as it were, in the same place at the same time. But she … she picked up that thought and drew it out of my head like pulling silk from a silkworm.”
I had to laugh. “She wouldn’t need ESP! You’re tactful as a bull elephant and transparent as cellophane, two minutes of your socalled soothing lies and Mrs. Lamburn was bound to smell a rat.”
Out of character, he took that passively. “Possibly, possibly; ’pon my word, though, I tried to act for the best.” He sounded so subdued that I nagged.
“You’re keeping something back.”
Manganelle gave me a sideways look blending shame, pride, and sheer mischief. “Um, well, there’s a bit more,” he admitted coyly.
A suspicion was growing. “Hang on, exactly when was this conference where you met the lady?”
“Months back, half a year or more.”
“So why are you here now?”
Eric Manganelle tried to look solemn, regretful. “I came down for the inquest, actually. Open-and-shut thing, over in minutes. Sad case, feller is up there on Hardpath Heights, sudden attack of vertigo, loving wife makes futile attempt to yank him back by the collar, just misses, and is left holding his toupee, rest of hubby three hundred feet below on the rocks.
“Verdict: misadventure. You could tell the coroner was quite smitten by the widow—but then there’s nothing like designer mourning to complement a mature redhead.”
We paused by mutual consent and watched serene Palmcastle, where nothing happens because that is what Palmcastle is for. “She killed him, executed him, and you are letting her get away with it,” I accused.
Manganelle simpered and pursed his lips. “Two wrongs can make a right is the way I prefer to see it. Impulse, old boy: the moment of unbearable temptation. We all know about that, generally from standing outside a pub, sixty seconds before opening time.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Harry Lamburn found himself in Beirut with Lancelot Pasover, whom he saw—correctly, as events proved—as the only barrier between himself and the love of his life. What’s more, Pasover was ripe for the zapping, in the world capital of random violence. Where d’you hide a leaf but the forest? Where d’you hide a murder but jolly old downtown West Beirut? Unbearable temptation.”
“Same thing goes for Anne Lamburn. I blurted something out, and she made inquiries and was morally certain that she’d married a murderer. The Lamburns liked going to that cliff-top, she told me so. Unbearable temptation Part Two, Mr. Lamburn tries parachuteless skydiving.” Manganelle drew himself up, or at least puffed harder and pushed his paunch out. “Don’t go preaching at me—if you think I had no proof about Lamburn giving poor Lance the chop, there’s even less against the repetitive widow, Mrs. L. I was at the inquest, heard the witnesses. Graphic evidence that onlookers can’t tell the difference between a grab and a shove.”
“All the same, you should go to the police, get the investigation reopened, the inquest verdict set aside. I’m sure there is a procedure for that.”
Eric Manganelle drew himself up to his full five-three or thereabouts, toadly countenance florid with righteous indignation. “Bite your tongue! Me, make trouble for a poor, lone, widow-woman? I never make trouble for anyone!”
GEORGE C. CHESBRO
PRIESTS
September 1991
GEORGE C. CHESBRO is probably best known for his creation Dr. Robert Frederickson, P.I., criminologist, karate black belt, and a dwarf who, as “Mongo the Magnificent,” was once a world-class circus performer. The Mongo stories often featured elements of fantasy or the supernatural, and though “Priests” is not a Mongo story, it shares their concern with fundamental forces such as evil.
Symbols that had once given him comfort and a sense of belonging to a community of infinite continuity now evoked in him opposite emotions, reminding him of his loss and his isolation from all the people, places, and things that had permeated his soul and defined his being until five years ago, when he had been banished from this world.
Flanked by the plastic statuary of the Stations of the Cross in their shadowy alcoves, feeling like a naked, vulnerable runner in a gauntlet set up to test his spirit, Brendan Furie, his footsteps muffled by thick maroon carpeting, strode quickly down the center aisle of the dimly lighted cathedral. He had not been inside a church in the five years since his excommunication, the amputation of his soul from the body of the church engineered by the figure in black who was kneeling, head bowed in prayer, at the railing before the white-draped altar at the front of the sanctuary.
Brendan had the distinct feeling that he was being watched, and he wondered if this might not be a kind of vestigial sense of the eyes of God, a psychological reaction to this return after a long absence to physical surroundings that had once meant everything to him but now seemed only a distant memory from another life, perhaps one only dreamed.
He reached the front of the sanctuary, but the frail, kneeling figure remained still, and Brendan was not certain the other man was even aware of his presence. For a moment he felt the old, virtually instinctive urge to genuflect before the altar, but he knew he no longer had either the obligation or the right, and so he simply sat down at the end of the first pew and waited for Henry Cardinal Farrell to finish his prayers.
Almost five minutes went by before the old man, without raising his head or unclasping his hands, said in a low voice, “Thank you for coming, father.”
“I’m here because you asked me to come, eminence,” Brendan replied evenly. He swallowed, added softly, “I would appreciate it if you wouldn’t call me ‘father.’ Frankly, it sounds rather odd when you say it. You, of all people, know that I’m no longer a priest.”
There was a prolonged silence, and Brendan began to wonder if the cardinal had heard him. But then the kneeling figure said, “Other people still call you that.”
“No.”
“You’ve become famous.”
“Have I?”
“I’ve seen it in the newspapers. They call you ‘the priest,’ or sometimes just ‘priest.’”
“It’s not the same thing, eminence.”
“No,” the old man replied, and then shuddered slightly, as if he had suddenly experienced a chill. “And I’d prefer you not to address me as ‘eminence.’ It’s been some time since I felt eminent. I appreciate your courtesy, but it isn’t necessary.”
“As you wish, sir.”
“Brendan, are you … carrying a gun?”
It seemed a decidedly odd question in this stone house of worship, and Brendan stared at the old man’s back for a few moments. But the kneeling figure remained inscrutable, old bones and flesh draped in black. Finally he replied, “No.”
“I thought you might be. The stories …”
“Sometimes I carry a gun, but not often. In my business, a gun doesn’t do much good. I’ve yet to meet the superstition, ignorance, obsession, or hatred that I could kill with a bullet.”
Now the cardinal raised his head, unclasped his bony hands, straightened his back. He put both hands on the rail in front of him and struggled to rise. Brendan got to his feet and started forward to assist the other man, stopped when the cardinal vigorously shook his head in protest. Brendan resumed his seat, waited. Finally the cardinal managed to stand. He turned, walked unsteadily to the pew across from Brendan, eased himself down. Brendan gazed into the eyes of the man sitting across the marooncarpeted aisle and was shocked by the stark gauntness of the features, the parchment-colored flesh that seemed almost translucent, the dark rings around the eyes. Henry Cardinal Farrell looked, Brendan thought, like a piece of fruit that had shriveled, or been cored.
The old man’s lips drew back in a kind of bemused smile, an
d emotions Brendan could not decipher moved like moon shadows in the watery gray eyes. “Danger, the world, and good works seem to have served you well, priest. You look very well.”
“You do not.”
“I shall die … shortly.”
“I’m sorry.”
The frail Prince of the Church made a dismissive gesture with a trembling hand, and once again he smiled. “God really does work in mysterious ways, doesn’t He?”
“I’ve heard it said, father.”
“I suppose it could be said that in a certain way I created you.”
“How so, father?”
“I created this ‘priest’ that you’ve become, this man of such fame—or notoriety, as some would have it—who is now a private investigator, of all things, specializing in religious and spiritual matters, a fierce defender of children and their rights. Before, you were just a … priest. I have heard it argued again and again that you are a far more effective avatar for Christ in your state of disgrace than you ever were before your … career change. The implications of this for the church are a subject of some heated debate among certain theologians. My name is almost never mentioned. I actually believe my role in it all has been forgotten.”
Brendan said nothing. He felt oddly distanced, separated from this old enemy and the institution he represented by an unbreachable wall of betrayal, loss, pain, and death.
“You were never a good priest, Brendan,” the cardinal continued in a voice that seemed to be growing stronger with a passion born of either anger or regret. “You were always a rebel, never at ease with the church. You were always questioning things you had no right to question.”
“I questioned things you didn’t want me to question, eminence, but I always obeyed you, didn’t I?” Brendan paused as he felt waves of his old resentment and anger rise in him, waiting for them to recede. When they were gone, he continued, “I went into retreat to do penance when you ordered me to, and I came out to do your errand when you ordered me to. It was not the church that made me ill at ease.”
Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine Presents Fifty Years of Crime and Suspense Page 34