“Fine. Thanks for washing and dressing it last night. Janet fixed it up again this morning and said what a neat job you’d done.”
“I wonder how she thought you got it.”
“She didn’t ask. No nonsense about Janet. Strange things happen, but she has her job and she does it.”
Silence.
“Well,” said Concha, “that covers Janet, doesn’t it?”
“Look,” said Matt abruptly. “I want you to do something.”
“What?”
“Tell the Lieutenant about—about your idea. If anything was wrong, surely he’d at least have heard something. He can set you right.”
“I am set right. I told you that. I got rid of it last night. For a minute I was free. But you can’t stay free, can you? One thing goes away and another comes. Like the man with the evil spirit only it doesn’t have to be seven others. One’s enough.”
“Tell him anyway. You know the thought’s still there hidden away in back somewheres; you can’t get rid of things so simply as that. Try it.”
“Maybe …” She broke a crisp slice of bacon into little pieces. “I want a favor, too, Matt.”
“Yes?”
“Drive me out to the convent this morning. I want to talk to Sister Ursula, and I’d sort of like to have you along, too. Do you mind?”
Bunyan came in just then, a certain plus-value of self-satisfaction added to his usual smug sufficiency. “I beg your pardon, Miss Mary. I had not intended to intrude.”
“That’s all right. Go ahead.”
“I merely wished to inquire of Mr. Duncan if he knew whether the police lieutenant would be calling here in the course of the day?”
“I’m not sure,” said Matt. “I wouldn’t be surprised. Did you get your night off last night?”
“Indeed I did, sir. But if I may be so bold, would you communicate to the Lieutenant that I have some information of prime importance to his case and should be glad to see him at his earliest opportunity?”
Concha clapped her hands. “Why, Bunyan! I bet you’re a detective in disguise! What’s your secret?”
“That, Miss Mary, you must learn from the Lieutenant.” He bowed and withdrew suavely.
Lieutenant Marshall was refreshing the flowers of the patio with gardener’s incense. “Frankly, Sister,” he was saying, “what I really want from you is a little unofficial police work.”
“I don’t see what I can do,” Sister Ursula protested gently, with a cautious glance at Sister Felicitas, who dozed near them in the sun. “I’m perfectly willing to try to reason and talk, but what I could do practically …” She seemed, however, not unflattered by the idea.
“There’s one thing you can do, that I’m helpless to even try. You can break down Ellen Harrigan’s story.”
“Lieutenant!”
“I know. She’s sort of your patroness here, isn’t she? But I thought that you, Sister, might put justice above even the advantage of your order.”
“You misunderstand me, Lieutenant. I was not being indignant—merely astonished. Please go on.”
“This sealed-room business isn’t just locked; it’s deadlocked. There’s no possible way in or out of that room save through the chapel door. And Ellen Harrigan was at that door. Obvious conclusion: She’s protecting someone. And I can’t use third-degree methods on her, or I’d have all her brother’s political influence on my neck and probably the Archbishop to boot.”
“But I thought you understood that—”
“I know. I can’t ask you to violate any confidence she might place in you. But I had a situation like this in the Rafetti case. The whole force was certain Big Mike had killed him, but there was no evidence. Nobody knew positively but Big Mike’s confessor, and of course I couldn’t get a word out of him. But I did drop a hint, and he worked on Big Mike until the lug confessed.”
“That was his duty even without your hint, Lieutenant.”
“Was it? But that’s what I mean you could do. Not worm confidences out of Miss Harrigan, but persuade her that the best thing she can do is to tell the truth to the police.”
“But there’s no sense to that. She has told the truth.”
“Nonsense. The only solution to this case lies in making her tell what she saw.”
“You know all that she saw. Her evidence is the one reliable fact you have: that no one came out of that chapel door for ten minutes before Matt Duncan saw Mr. Harrigan’s body.”
“But how can you—?”
“You will find her out here, Miss Harrigan,” came a nun’s voice, and Concha entered the patio, followed by Matt.
“Lieutenant! It’s Fate, Matt, isn’t it?”
“Fate? I’m a married man, Miss Harrigan.”
“No. Matt wanted me to ask you something, and I didn’t want to, so I came out here just in case you went to the house. And now …”
“Fate,” said Sister Ursula, “is a pagan concept for a Harrigan. God’s will counts for something, too.”
“Very well, Miss Harrigan. If Fate and God and the duties of a policeman all combine to bring me here, you might as well ask your question. What is it?”
“Lieutenant, do you know … Oh, no! I can’t. Really, Matt, I just can’t.”
“Is it—what you told me about last Friday?” Sister Ursula asked gently.
Concha nodded without a word.
“Go on then. Ask it. Terror vanishes when you take it out and look at it.”
“First principles of psychoanalysis,” Marshall smiled.
“You’ve no idea, Lieutenant, how many of those principles had already been known to the Church for nineteen centuries. But go on, Mary.”
“All right. Lieutenant Marshall—do you know how my mother died?”
Marshall looked reflectively at Matt. “She died,” he said easily, “a natural death. Heart clot. Probably precipitated by strain and worry over her blindness.”
“How do you know?”
“Do you think I’d approach a case without checking up on any other recent deaths in the same family? One of the first things I did was to look up the record and get a full report on your mother. Nothing out of the way at all.”
Concha stretched her arms out high. “I’m in the sun,” she said. “It’s warm and it’s good. Thanks, Matt. Sister. You were sweet to make me ask.”
“I’m glad you came out today,” said Sister Ursula. “Sister Perpetua was asking after you. She wants you to see her illuminated missal; she’s finished it now.”
“Has she? Oh, how keen! I’d love to see it.”
“She’s in the library now. Would you like to go see her? You know where it is.”
“Why? Aren’t you coming?”
“My dear, that missal is the most beautiful material thing ever created in this convent, but I’ve quite run out of comments on it. There’s only so much one can say about beauty, and I have said it. But you go.”
“All right. I shan’t be long.”
“This is an astounding and wonderful labor of Sister Perpetua’s. She is attempting to re-create medieval effects using modem methods and materials; and I feel that she has been markedly …” Concha’s footsteps died away down the arcade, and the nun’s voice changed abruptly. “Now, Lieutenant, will you please tell us what you really know about Mrs. Harrigan’s death.”
“Why, Sister, what makes you think that I—”
“You were a little too glib, Lieutenant. Please tell me the truth. I am sure you would have difficulty in finding anyone more devoted to that poor child than I am, or Mr. Duncan here. I think that we deserve to know.”
“All right. Everybody but Miss Harrigan knows anyway, though Joseph did a brilliant job of hushing it up.”
Sister Ursula shuddered. “Suicide?”
“Yes. I guess she couldn’t stand the thought of blindness. Terrible thing, this old Spanish pride. And after her mother’s death she seems to have felt the whole burden of the race on her shoulders—the last of the Pelayos. Messy death, too. S
tabbed herself with an heirloom knife—finest Toledo steel. There was an inquest—I saw the transcript—but it was held behind closed doors, and nothing got into the papers. Wonderful what pulling the right strings can do. I gather that she was even buried with the full rites of the church. You could quote Hamlet on that:
Her death was doubtful;
And, but that great command o’ersways the order,
She should in ground unsanctified have lodg’d …”
“The Church gave her the benefit of the doubt, then. It’s very rare to forbid a suicide burial. There is always the possibility of some momentary aberration that drove the poor victim to his act; and your own story indicates that the death of her mother and the obsession of family pride had combined to drive the half-blind woman to a state where she might forget the canon which (if I too may quote Hamlet) the Everlasting has fixed ’gainst self-slaughter. And is such mercy in burial any worse than your telling a kind lie to her daughter?” It all fell into place now, Matt thought All the hugger-mugger and secrecy about Mrs. Harrigan’s death to prevent a scandal that would blot the fair name of Harrigan and also (to give the devil his due) to spare her daughter that bitter knowledge. Then the memory of her parents’ unhappiness and the cruel chance of that book which fell open at Hyoscine, and all Concha’s adolescent self-torture growing out of that caprice of Fate—or would Sister Ursula think that, too, the will of God?
“And what gave the girl the idea of murder?” said Marshall.
Sister Ursula stared at him innocently. “What on earth do you mean?”
“Now who’s too glib? Why else should she be so eager and yet so afraid to know, and so infinitely relieved by natural death? Come on, Sister; what gave her the idea?”
Sister Ursula shook her head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Lieutenant.”
“All right. Have it your way. But I can’t help my wicked thoughts, can I? Thoughts like, for instance, supposing she suspected her father? That could be a new motive—open up a whole fresh line of …”
“And William the Second?” Sister Ursula interposed hastily. “How does that indicate her?”
“How the sweet—How does it indicate anybody?”
“If only I knew the how,” Sister Ursula murmured. “The who is so obvious, unless…” She started suddenly. “Lieutenant! I know the Harrigan family. The two young people are dark, and the two older ones are gray. But does anyone—anyone at all connected with this case—have red hair?”
“Hey!” said Marshall.
“Please. I am not being cryptic. At least, not wantonly so. But these other suspects of yours—the ones outside the family—do they?”
“No.”
“Nor anyone else at all connected?”
“Nobody but my wife and son. The only redheads in the whole cast.”
Sister Ursula seemed relieved. “Then I am right. But how stupid of me to have overlooked such a possibility. I cannot help wondering what other stupidities we may have committed among us. Please: has anything new come up, anything I should know about?”
“Bunyan has a secret,” said Matt. “I’m supposed to give you that message, Lieutenant. He wants to see you today. He went to a Temple of Light meeting last night, and today he looks as self-satisfied as a canary who’s just disposed of the biggest tom in the neighborhood.”
“The Temple?” Marshall repeated. “So. The more I think about that Temple angle, the less I like it. I’ll see Bunyan this afternoon; but nothing he could tell me about the Temple would interest me so much as a way out of that sealed room. We spent a whole night on that room,” he added plaintively to Sister Ursula. “We went over every possible angle and all the impossible ones. I kept hoping that somewhere we’d hit on what made sense, but all we did was run up against one more impossibility.”
“And what was that?” the nun demanded eagerly.
“Sister, you sound as though you wanted another impossibility.”
“I think perhaps I do. Two pieces of wood may be asymmetrical and almost shapeless. Fit them together, and you have a perfect geometrical figure. Impossibilities can be like that, too. What is this one?”
“All right. You asked for it. Yellow gloves are a part of the Ahasver costume—a fixed adjunct to the yellow robe. The murderer left no fingerprints anywhere. But when Duncan saw him through the window, he had taken off his gloves!”
She turned to Matt. “You mean you saw a bare hand?”
“Yes. I couldn’t see the face, but I do remember that bare flesh against the desk.”
“And why,” Marshall lamented, “any murderer, however cockeyed, should peel off his gloves to—”
“Lieutenant!” Sister Ursula’s voice was sharp and efficient. “Will you please be at the Harrigan home tomorrow afternoon?”
“Probably. This is my job. But why so urgent?”
“I am beginning to see a way out. No, please don’t ask me to explain now; but I think tomorrow, on the ground, I can show you how the man in the yellow robe left the room.”
“And who the man is?” asked Marshall. “After all, that helps too.”
“I have known that for too long. Unless,” she added as an afterthought, “Ahasver’s hair should prove as false as his beard. And now, if I could beg you both to tell me everything that has happened since Mr. Duncan gave me his outline of events on Tuesday …”
“In any standard whodunit,” Marshall had remarked in the car, “Bunyan would have been rubbed out by now. The Man Who Knew Too Much.”
But an unscathed butler greeted them at the door. “Well,” said the Lieutenant, after Concha had somewhat reluctantly excused herself, “here I am.”
“Ah,” Bunyan smiled. “If you gentlemen will be so kind as to step into the study where we may be unobserved, I shall be more than happy to divulge to you the true identity of Ahasver.”
Chapter 19
It was a strange group of five men who sat together in the balcony of the Temple that Thursday night. Attending the Temple of Light, Matt reflected, was getting to be like going to the theater or a football game—there was no telling what acquaintances you might pick up.
He had started in with R. Joseph Harrigan. The full details of the secret and the resultant plan Bunyan had reserved for the Lieutenant’s private ear; all Matt knew was that there was to be an extraordinary revelation this night and that R. Joseph had been invited as the most interested and least excitable representative of the family.
No sooner were they in the foyer (where Matt looked in vain for the cherubic countenance of Robin Cooper among the greeters) than the lawyer exclaimed, “Arthur! What on earth are you doing here?”
Arthur shambled over to them reluctantly. “When you hear your butler making a date with a cop, you get curious.”
“And, Gregory!” Joseph boomed. “Glad to see you, young man!”
Gregory Randall looked anything but glad. “Arthur said he wanted company,” he muttered half-defensively.
“I know,” Joseph nodded. “You feel embarrassed at meeting me after that foolish scene on Tuesday. Tush, boy! We all are carried away at times. No hard feelings.”
Gregory drew Matt back from the others as they started up the stairs. “I hope you understand about last night, old man.”
“I guess I do.” Matt’s voice was not too warm.
“After all, when all’s said and done—what I mean is—”
“A man in your position,” Matt prompted.
“Exactly. I’m glad you understand. A man in my position has, after all, a certain—well, a certain position to uphold. I know it was absurd of me to lose my temper so, but in view of everything …” He noticed the fresh scar and broke off. “Did I—?”
“You should have seen it fresh,” said Matt cheerfully. “Five stitches and a blood transfusion. Of course, it’s pretty much healed up by now.”
Greg, accepting the statement with his usual literal faith, fell into shocked silence, and Matt turned his attention to the talk of the two
old men with thin tight lips and turkey-gobbler necks who were ascending the stairs ahead of them.
“The Nine Times Nine sure did the work,” said one. “We showed that Harrigan, all right.” There was relish in his dry voice.
The other chuckled harshly. “And that ain’t all we’re going to do. You wait. That was just one enemy. You wait till we really start cleaning up. You wait and see where the Reds and the Cath’lics and the dirty Jews get off then.”
The first one scratched his bald spot. “But Ahasver’s a Jew himself, ain’t he?”
“That don’t prove nothing. So was Jesus, wasn’t he? Well?”
The first seemed content with this form of logic. “I’d like to see anybody stop us,” he said grimly.
At the top of the stairs Matt ran plump into Fred Simmons. That retired storekeeper seemed cruelly torn between his natural good-hearted friendliness and his enmity for any Harrigan spy. He said “Hello,” in an exact state of balance between the two feelings.
“Hello,” Matt replied, then added on a chance, “This is Mr. Randall, Mr. Simmons. Randall’s been trying to persuade me I’m all wrong about the Temple—persuaded me to come back tonight and listen again.”
Fred Simmons expanded and eagerly shook the hand of the badly confused Greg Randall. “Fine work, Randall. I’ve tried to tell Duncan here that young men like him and you are just what we need. Maybe you can help get him out of those tomfool ideas of Harrigan’s. Mind if I sit with you?”
Matt found himself sitting between R. Joseph and Fred Simmons, with Arthur and Greg at opposite ends of the party. All through the organ voluntary on stickily familiar themes, he could hear the lawyer berating his nephew on his unseemly conduct of the past week and the ex-storekeeper eagerly, if monologously, debating articles of faith with his new-found comrade in the Ancients.
“I’m right glad Randall brought you of a Thursday,” Simmons said, turning to Matt. “That’s Special Study Night. Tonight Ahasver always tells us about the perils threatening America, so we’ll know what to do when …”
“When what?”
“Hush.” The high tenor had begun Sweet Mystery of Life. The service started as before: the parting of the curtains to reveal Ahasver in yellow splendor on a bare stage, the service-club welcome from the man by the water pitcher (Matt enjoyed seeing Gregory wince as Simmons wrung his hand), and the communal singing of Old Christianity. If possible, this last was even louder and more vigorous than on Saturday; the congregation seemed to have been infused with new strength and devotion.
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