by Anne Emery
“Did you see Leeza when she left?”
“No, Monty, I didn’t. I’m sorry I can’t help you there.”
“Can you tell me anything about her time at the centre?” He shook his head sadly, as if admitting failure. “Father, what went through your mind when you heard about a religious angle to this killing?”
“It didn’t make any sense to me at all!” He was emphatic. “I don’t believe for one minute a priest, or anyone else in religious life, committed this murder. Moody wouldn’t... nobody I know in law enforcement circles would tell me what kind of religious signs or signals were left at the murder scene.” The priest looked at me shrewdly. “Do you know?”
I shook my head and he went on. “It has to have been someone with a grudge against the Church. But why take that out on her? Unless somebody was jealous of the time she spent around here. Which seems unlikely, doesn’t it? Or somebody was jealous of this priest she was supposedly spending time with. Perhaps she told these stories to provoke some other man in her life. Provoked him beyond endurance.” It was as good a guess as any I had come up with.
As I walked back to the office, I remembered something I had neglected to ask, so I dialed the rectory and got Father O’Flaherty on the phone.
“Just one more thing Father. Did the police question you after the murder?”
“Yes, they did.” I thought I detected a trace of excitement in his voice.
“Did they ask you for samples of threads or anything like that, for elimination purposes?”
“No. They didn’t.” Excitement had turned to puzzlement and perhaps disappointment. I thanked him and hung up.
II
It was the first week of April and the weather was balmy. Maura had agreed to drop the kids off before she headed out for the evening. They greeted their dad and went off in their own directions, Tommy Douglas to my collection of guitars and harmonicas, Normie to the boathouse. Later we had a pleasant dinner of poached salmon, which of course must be eaten with boiled potatoes, peas and strawberry shortcake.
“Let’s take a walk around the park and see if anyone has a boat out,” I suggested.
Normie asked: “Can we go up to the top of the tower? Please!”
It’s a long climb up the steps of the Dingle Tower but the view from the top of the stone structure is magnificent. You can see the city, the waters of the Arm, and farther out the blue of the Atlantic Ocean. The three of us went off and had a brisk walk around Fleming Park, donated to the city by Sir Sandford Fleming, the man who devised the system of Universal Standard Time. Normie, as she always did, nearly had a stroke trying to choose among the playground, the beach, and the tower. But we managed, as we always did, to enjoy all of them. It was cool and breezy, not yet prime sailing season, but one hardy mariner had his sails up. We peered across the water at the houses, some of them grand, on the other side, and waved at the Strattons’ place just in case they were gazing over the water in our direction. They were not, as it turned out. At least Rowan wasn’t. He had gone to the office, which I found out when we got back to my house and I listened to my answering machine.
I dialed the office number and Rowan answered on the second ring. “Rowan. You called.”
“Splendid news, Monty,” came the British voice over the phone. “There will be no charges laid against Brennan Burke in the Leeza Rae case. My man tells me the police were satisfied with our client’s alibi. There were ‘indications of physical contact’ between Brennan and the victim, as my source put it with great delicacy, but whatever traces they found could have been transferred if he danced with her. So at this point they are not looking at him as a suspect. It was suggested to me that this chap Walker is a little intense on the subject of religion. Sounds as if there was a spot of bother with his sister when she was young, something about a preacher. Walker may have a motive of his own.”
“Motive?”
“His own agenda, going after Burke the way he did. But as far as I am concerned, Brennan is clear.”
III
Now that Father Burke was not going to be charged with murder, a low-key celebration was in order. Or so the Strattons believed. They invited Burke to join a few people at their house on Friday night. I wondered whether this sort of thing was, as the Strattons would otherwise have put it, good form. Rowan had to use all his powers of persuasion to get Burke to come, and people were warned not to breathe a word about the murder.
Maura and the kids had been invited, as they always were when there was an extended family gathering at the Strattons’, and they would be coming a little later. My brother Stephen and Janet Stratton were there with their children. A couple of lawyers from our office were in attendance. The others were people I did not know.
Burke, dressed in a dark blue suit, tie, and crisp white shirt, was perched on the edge of a chesterfield next to the fireplace, the tension of the past weeks still evident in his face. He was clutching a glass of whiskey like a relic of the true cross. Sylvia and a younger woman were chatting to him and he nodded absently in time with the cadence of their speech.
“I’m fascinated to meet you, Father Burke,” the young woman said. “I don’t know any priests.”
“I’m a bit of exotica for you then,” he said, and downed his whiskey.
“No, no, not at all. I just haven’t had much contact with people of your persuasion, your religion.”
“Ah.” His eyes followed the drinks tray as it sailed past without stopping in port.
“But I’m very accepting of all religions and faiths.” She smiled and put a hand lightly on his left arm. “My idea is that we’re all God.”
“Speak for yourself,” he retorted, giving her a look that would curdle mother’s milk.
Clearly, he had not yet unwound. Or, more likely, he found such theological twaddle offensive at the best of times.
“Hey Dad!” We all looked up, whether we had a sixteen-year-old son or not.
“Tommy! Come on in. Hello, Tanglyhead!” I put one arm around my boy and hoisted my little girl up in my other arm. “Are you all set for a party?”
Maura swept in and made a beeline for Rowan, who was lifting a glass in greeting.
“Is the revolution here at last?” Rowan greeted my wife.
“The revolution is imminent, Rowan, and you and I are the vanguard. So pack up some of these baubles and choose a room for yourselves. Nothing too big. I’m moving six families into this house tomorrow. In the meantime let’s fortify ourselves with drink. What have you got?” Rowan had everything, and Maura accepted a large tumbler of it. She took a long swig and turned in my direction. She caught sight of Father Burke and gave him an appraising look.
“So you’re the demon priest.” She held out her hand to Burke, who eyed her coolly as he rose to shake her hand. “I’m Maura MacNeil. Did you find him to be of any use at all?” She jerked her head in my direction as she spoke.
“He has been an enormous help to me, Professor MacNeil. Even an innocent man needs wise counsel.”
“Bit of an arsehole personally, though, eh? But that needn’t put you off. You’re not going to marry him. I’m pleased to meet you, Father. Now, do I hear music being played, badly?” Maura tilted her head towards the sound.
“The children, I’m thinking,” answered Burke.
“Well then, we’ll let it pass.”
“Sounds like a magnificent piano, whoever is playing,” Father Burke remarked. He got up to have a look. Someone called to Maura, and she went over to chat.
Normie looked vexed with boredom, so I took her downstairs to a playroom the Strattons had set up for their grandchildren. My son joined us. We played games and laughed and lost track of time. Eventually they remembered there were treats upstairs so we trooped back u
p to the party. My watch told me I had missed more than an hour of the soiree. I could hear snatches of conversation from the piano room. As Tommy helped himself and his sister to an assortment of sandwiches and sweets, I headed for the piano.
At the far end of the glassed-in conservatory was Burke, his tie off and his crisp white shirt unbuttoned at the neck. His head was thrown back as he laughed and he was enjoying himself immensely. With, of all people, my wife. I attributed this to Rowan’s top-of-the-line whiskey, the mind-altering properties of which I had yet to sample. I picked up a music book and thumbed through it. When I looked up again, Burke and Maura were in deep conversation. He reached out and lifted an errant strand of hair from her face and patted it back where it belonged. He appeared to have done this without thinking. Could anyone be that comfortable in the presence of my wife?
Somebody called to Burke from across the room. I could not make out the question but his response was that he would be saying a Latin Mass early the next morning.
“I thought the Latin Mass was verboten these days,” Maura said.
“Non licet, you mean? Not at all. A common misunderstanding. But if I told you it was forbidden and had to be celebrated clandestinely in the hedgerows, you’d be the first one there, now wouldn’t you?”
“You got me there. But I just may show up anyway. I grew up with the Latin Mass.”
“Well, this is the new version, but I’m planning to set up a high altar and start saying the old Tridentine Mass as soon as I can.”
“I saw a very clever cartoon once,” Maura said. “It showed a really depraved party going on, people in masks, performing all kinds of bizarre antics, and the caption read: ‘I prefer the old Latin Mass myself.’
“Yes!” Burke smiled in appreciation. “It was in Punch, a contest. That was the winning caption. I have it tacked up on the wall in my room. I can’t, of course, invite you up to see it.” He paused. “Because it’s in New York.” She laughed. “Yes, another whiskey would be just the thing,” he said to someone going by with a tray of drinks. “Thank you.”
“What time is it on?” asked Maura. He gave her a quizzical look.
“The Mass,” she said.
“It’s on at nine a.m.”
“Could be worse.”
I heard Burke asking Maura about her job, and she told him about the various Charter of Rights cases she had launched on behalf of the poor and disenfranchised. Some challenges — and some challengers — had more merit than others, as she freely acknowledged. She was also big enough to admit that she had recently been named in a discrimination suit herself, after she refused to hire a certain applicant as a research assistant. Her defence consisted of one sentence: “She can’t spell.” Maura told him about the poverty law course she taught at Dalhousie Law School. Burke obviously liked what he heard, because he favoured her with a most charming quotation: “The wise shall shine brightly like the splendor of the firmament. And those who lead the many to justice shall be like the stars forever.”
“Sweet of you to say so,” Maura responded with surprised pleasure.
“Once a sweet-talking guy, always a sweet-talking guy. And not above stealing a line from the prophets, in or out of context. That’s Daniel, by the way, chapter 12, verse 3. I’ll write it out for you. If anyone challenges your efforts, you can point to a higher authority.”
Just then, Normie barrelled into the room and made for the piano. I saw Burke snatch her up by the back of her overalls. A fellow lawyer started to regale me with a long story before charging after a tray of profiteroles. Then it was Maura at my side.
“Did you see that?” she demanded.
“What?”
“Normie and Brennan?”
“No.”
“She careened past us and he caught her by the overalls. I growled at her for running around blind without her glasses. Anyway, Brennan picked her up. She looked at his face, then started staring at the front of his shirt. Where his heart would be. Or is, I should say. Then she pressed her hand over it, drew her hand back and looked at the palm, pressed it and looked again. As if expecting to find something there. They exchanged a long look and he said to her, speaking quietly and sounding very Celtic: ‘Oh, you can see just fine, can’t you, you little Druid?’ She just nodded, never taking her eyes off him. What do you make of that?”
I shook my head. Whatever it was, I did not want to get into it at the party. “Right now, she should be in bed. I’ll take her.”
I got Normie settled in a spare room, poured myself a large glass of whiskey, and returned to the conservatory to find my brother Stephen at the piano. The guests joined in, and old tunes were sung badly with great enthusiasm. It was not until the good father picked up a beer bottle for a microphone and began belting out “Mack the Knife” that I realized he was hammered. Burke had a magnificent voice and, in full party mode, was not above milking the song for all it was worth. A drunken but effective rendition. I looked around and found everybody spellbound. Even Sylvia Stratton was gaping in a most undignified manner, delicate fingers toying with a strand of lustrous pearls at her neck. My wife seemed to have been frozen in place, a glass halfway to her lips.
It went on from there. Every once in a while Burke would look around and say: “What the hell time is it? I have to say Mass.” Then he’d go back to singing, dancing, or drinking. Till around five in the morning. It looked to me, although I was not a very astute judge by then, as if he gave up the whiskey at that time and switched to water. He eased off the vocal pyrotechnics, and his cigarette consumption seemed to tail off as well.
Then, somehow, I found myself sitting in the Strattons’ Range Rover with half a dozen other people, including my wife and brother. It was a tight fit. Brennan, now silent, sat in the front, his head resting on the window. Rowan pulled up at St. Bernadette’s Church and parked the car. “Domine, non sum dignus, “ Burke muttered, “and I’m sure I speak for all of us when I say that.”
“What’d he say?” came a boozy voice from the back of the vehicle.
“Lord, I am not worthy,” my wife explained.
It was three minutes to nine when our raggle-taggle group shuffled up the aisle. The church was about one-third full. I had not gone to Mass just for the sake of going to Mass in years. Burke sprinted up a side aisle, still in his suit and leather jacket; his tie had long since disappeared. He was surprisingly agile given the amount of whiskey that must still have been coursing through his veins. Before disappearing into the sacristy, he jerked his head towards the empty second row. That’s where we were to sit. We stumbled into place. When Father Burke appeared on the altar two minutes later, his hair was wet and his face had a pinky, scrubbed look.
In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti, Amen. The priest, in Lenten vestments matching the amethyst in the church’s stained-glass windows, made the sign of the cross over the old, the young, the hung-over and the still-drunk, and began saying Mass in the ancient tongue. He recited the Confiteor and those who knew it joined in the public confession, with its abject admission of sinful-ness: “Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.” For the first time in hours, I thought of the murder charge. I made a conscious effort to dispel any suspicion still lingering in my mind about Father Burke’s culpability. He spoke in a clear voice and sang parts of the liturgy in an unaffected baritone, which was only occasionally rough around the edges. The Latin responses came back to me from my days as an altar boy, thirty-odd years before.
Although I thought the sermon might be a good time to close my eyes and drift off, I soon found myself listening to a lawyerly dissertation on the meaning of the triune God. He must have been working his way through the Credo ov
er the past few weeks.
“Later in the Credo we find: Genitum, non factum, consubstantialem Patri. The meaning of these words was hammered out in the midst of an unholy row in the fourth century. From Judaism we inherited the doctrine of the one God. But in the third century, theologians were already wrestling with the unity of God and His threefold manifestation in creation, redemption, and reconciliation. The Council of Nicea was called together by the Emperor Constantine in the year 325, and from it we have the Nicene Creed, which we still recite today. The council established the meaning of the words: genitum, non factum, begotten, not made. The Son is not a ‘creature.’ Rather, He is generated out of the substance of the Father...” Burke lost me somewhere during an ancient debate over whether the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, or through the Son. This was likely not everyone’s cup of tea, but if I hadn’t been so exhausted, I would have enjoyed the interpretive gymnastics that are so dear to the legal mind. I had never realized how much of this went on in the higher realms of theology. When I was a boy, they told you what it meant and that was that. I wondered how the priest was able to think so clearly; my brain was barely functioning.
I had a brief lucid moment at the consecration. Father Burke spread his hands and held them over the bread and wine. The ritual proceeded until he held the bread in his hands, bowed, and spoke the words “Hoc est enim Corpus meum.” We were centuries away from the raunchiness of the Strattons’ party; each gesture was done with reverence and grace.
I was not aware of anything again until I felt a sharp pain in the toes of my right foot. I jerked awake to find that Father Burke had stamped on my foot, hard, and was standing above me with the Body of Christ in his hands. The priest smelled faintly of whiskey, smoke, and minty toothpaste. He looked at me benignly as he said “Corpus Christi’,’ and I responded “Amen,” and took the Host. All the Catholics, however lapsed, snapped into line and took Communion. Was it the long reach of the ancient faith, or the magnetism of its enigmatic priest?