Murder at the National Cathedral

by Margaret Truman

  She continued her walk until reaching Stanton, where she stood in the middle of the deserted main road and took in her surroundings. She saw few birds, but one house was more beautiful than the next, and she snapped some pictures. Where are the people? she wondered.

  A church, St. Michael and All Angels’, stood in the V where two roads intersected. She meandered through the graveyard studded with ancient stones and approached the door. The sound of a car caused her to stop and to turn. A tan Ford Escort driven by a man moved slowly past the church and disappeared around the corner. All was silent again.

  Annabel stood in the middle of the damp, musty church and pondered what it must have been like centuries ago when the faithful came to worship on Sunday mornings. How many hands had shaped the stone and fashioned the stained-glass windows? The ends of some of the wooden pews had been deeply gouged by chains that secured sheep-dogs accompanying their masters to church. She looked up at the Gothic pulpit and imagined the words spoken from it to the poor, hardworking members of the congregation.

  She looked down; she was standing on a large slab of stone with a skull and crossbones etched into it. She crouched and rubbed her hand over the writing. A man named John Ingles had been buried there in 1705. Below his name was written: JUST IN HIS ACCOUNTS; FAITHFUL TO HIS FRIENDS; MILD IN HIS TEMPER; CONSTANT TO THE END.

  How nice to be remembered that way, Annabel thought as she retraced her steps to the front entrance, pausing to drop coins into a poor box.

  She walked up a short road leading to the Mount Inn. The agreeable, pungent smell of smoke from the inn’s chimney almost physically pulled her up the steep incline and into the cozy interior where a few locals drank and shared stories. One man read the local newspaper, the Village Voice, which bore no resemblance to its namesake in New York. Annabel sat at a small table across from the fireplace, where logs arranged vertically crackled, sending orange flames dancing up into the flue. An old woman behind the bar asked if she wanted something. It was too early for anything alcoholic, at least for Annabel, so she asked for a cup of tea. Soon she was sipping the steaming, strong brew and felt herself sinking deeper into the chair as she reached a state of mental and physical détente with herself and her surroundings. Everything was so perfect now. She was married to a man she loved deeply, she was able to indulge her love of pre-Columbian art with her gallery, and she was on her honeymoon in this beautiful place. Sometimes things could be perfect in one’s life, not often and never for long, but sometimes. This was a moment she would cherish.

  She paid for the tea and continued her walk, taking snapshots as she went. Soon, she’d run out of road again and was moving across vast fields, their green grass rendered even more vivid in the unnatural light created by the fog. Everywhere she looked were shapes, shadows, blurred images of livestock, and the economic backbone of the Cotswolds, its sheep. They would suddenly be there, then disappear just as quickly as the fog made them invisible to her.

  The walk to the quarry was now uphill, and Annabel felt it in her legs. “You’re out of shape, Annie,” she muttered, her breath coming fast, her stride becoming more purposeful as she sought the Cotswold Ridge. From there, Nigel had promised, it would all be downhill.

  When she reached the quarry, she sat for twenty minutes on a stone wall. Revived, she tried to follow the crude arrows on the hand-drawn map provided by Nigel. A half hour later she knew she was lost in a sea of washed green and surrounded by an opaque fog.

  In the distance to her right was a line of black stick shapes. Trees. The ground sloped slightly to her left. Which way back to Laverton? she wondered. She’d never been very good at directions. But she had to make a decision. She decided to go in the downhill direction, away from the trees. Eventually, she reasoned, she’d have to reach something, someone. After ten minutes she paused and looked back at the row of trees. Something was moving up there. What was it? She squinted in an attempt to pierce the fog. It was heading her way. Now she could see that it was … someone on horseback. “Wonderful,” she said aloud and laughed, suddenly thinking of Mac’s promise to send “the Mounties.” She’d stop the rider and ask directions back into Laverton. But first, she’d take a picture of this scene that was so eerily beautiful. She pressed off a couple of frames as the figure on horseback, shrouded in the wet fog, headed for her.

  The figure was now close enough to be distinguishable. It looked to Annabel to be a woman on the horse, a woman dressed in full riding regalia. The horse was huge and powerful. When it was a hundred yards from Annabel, it suddenly broke out of its slow canter and bore down upon her. It took Annabel a second to react, to realize that she was about to be trampled. She flung herself to one side just as the horse reached her, its powerful hooves thundering close to her head, and kicking up mud and dung as they struck the earth in passing.

  Annabel had fallen sharply on her left shoulder and the side of her face. She touched her cheek. There was blood on her fingertips. When she sat up, she looked in the direction the horse and rider had gone. She couldn’t see me, she thought: the fog. “Idiot! You damn near killed me.” She pulled herself to her feet. Her entire left side was covered with mud. She was trying to remove some of it when she heard … hoofbeats. The shapes reappeared, the horse and rider heading for her again. This time she had more time to react. She ran in the direction of a stone wall, slipping, sliding, stumbling, grasping at the fog as though it could be used for support. She looked back once and saw that the rider had directed the horse to turn after her. Gasping for breath, her lungs and heart throbbing with pain, she reached the wall and threw herself over it. The hoofbeats stopped. A moment’s silence. Annabel was afraid to look over the wall, but knew she had to. As she began to raise her head, the horse and rider turned and vanished into the fog.

  Annabel wasn’t sure what to do next. She needed time to pull herself together before continuing, but was reluctant to stay there. When would the rider return? One thing she knew for certain; she couldn’t cross any open fields, would have to stick close to fences and walls.

  An hour later she sloshed through the deep mud of a Laverton farmer’s pigpen, climbed the fence, and reached the center of town. There wasn’t a soul on the street. She was still shaking and knew she was wambling as she headed for the marked pathways that would take her back to the hotel. She was almost out of the village when she froze. A large black Labrador, its fangs bared and threatening growls coming from its throat, appeared from behind one of the stone cottages. “Get away, get away!” Annabel shouted. The dog stopped a few feet from her and continued to growl. “No! Get away, I said!” Annabel yelled.

  A window in the cottage opened, and a woman stuck her head out. “Don’t be yelling at him. He won’t hurt you. He doesn’t bite.”

  “Well, you’re sure not going to prove that by me,” Annabel snapped. “Get him away from me.”

  The woman called the dog’s name. The animal backed off, still growling, and returned to the back of the cottage.

  Annabel’s legs were jelly, and she had trouble catching her breath, neither condition abating by the time she reached Buckland Manor. She entered the small foyer and collapsed on a bench, starting to sob. Nigel and Tracy ran from the office. “What’s the matter?” he asked. “You look a fright.”

  Annabel looked up at them. “I’ve had a terrible experience.”

  “Your face is bruised,” Tracy said.

  “I know.” Annabel looked down at the legs of her sweat suit, which were covered with mud and sheep dung. She trembled, deeply chilled. “Please, I just want to get to my room and take a hot bath. Is my husband here?”

  Tracy looked at a clock on the wall. “He took a drive but said he’d be back at eleven to see Reverend Priestly.” It was twenty to eleven.

  “Come,” Nigel said. “We’ll help you upstairs.”

  They brought her tea and a bottle of port. Once she assured them that she was all right, they left her alone. She soaked in the tub, but as soothing as its warmth was, she
could not stop the internal shaking.

  Wrapped in the hotel bathrobe, she poured herself some port and gulped it down, then did it again. She also had tea. Soon, the trembling began to subside, and she was able to focus more clearly on what had happened.

  There was a knock on the door. “Come in,” she said. “No, wait—who is it?”

  “Nigel.” He came into the room. “Just checking on you, Mrs. Smith. Feeling better?”

  “Yes, much, thank you. Is my husband back?”

  “No, but we’re keeping an eye out for him. He’ll have been slowed up in the fog. We’ll send him up the moment he arrives.”

  “Thank you. You’re all very kind.”

  “Anything to be of help. We feel distressed that we sent you out like this, and it turned out to be such an awful morning. What did happen to you, Mrs. Smith?”

  Annabel leaned her head back against the love seat. “I’m really not sure,” she said, “but I’ll be happy to share it with you once I’ve figured it out myself.”

  “As you wish.” Nigel lighted the gas fireplace and said he would be available for anything she needed.

  Mac Smith parked on the street side of St. Michael’s opposite the hotel and near the church’s main entrance. He assumed that Priestly would be in the church holding his parish meeting. Smith was a few minutes late. If Priestly was not there, he’d look for him in the hotel.

  The church was empty. And cold. Dank. Smith peered up at the high ceiling created of wainscoting that had been intricately decorated. The unworldly, fog-filtered light from outside passed without purposeful effect through large stained-glass windows depicting Baptism, Marriage, and Extreme Unction.

  Might as well check at the hotel, Smith thought as he walked toward the rear door. He would not have stopped, would not have seen anything more, if the interesting ornate carvings on the high backs of some of the pews hadn’t caught his eye. He stopped and ran his fingers over the carvings, and glanced down and saw a shoe—a man’s black shoe. Smith bent over. His eyes traveled up the length of a man’s black trousers, then to the torso and its clerical collar, and finally to the head. His mouth and eyes were open. The man was, Smith judged, in his mid-forties, certainly no older than fifty. His gray hair was short, a crew cut, actually. Just above the ear on the side of the head that faced up was a long, oozing wound that had intruded deeply into the skull. A bloodied instrument of death lay on the pew’s bench. Smith sensed that he hadn’t been dead long, maybe only minutes.

  Smith left the church and found Nigel in his office.

  “Mr. Smith, your wife is upstairs. She’s quite all right, but she evidently had a harrowing experience on her walk this morning.”

  “Is she hurt?” Smith asked, starting for the stairs.

  “No, no, but shaken. She asked that I send you up the moment you arrived.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Did you meet up with Reverend Priestly? Has he been very delayed?” Tracy called after him.

  Hearing that Annabel had suffered some mishap had caused Smith to forget for the moment what he’d just discovered in the adjacent church. He paused at the foot of the stairs and said, “Yes, I think I did. He’s in the church now. And he’s very dead.”

  13

  Washington, D.C., The Same Day: 7:00 a.m.—The Beginning of a Fat Fall Wednesday in the Nation’s Capital

  “Calm down, Mrs. Waters,” MPD Homicide chief Terrence Finnerty said. Present in an interrogation room were a department stenographer, another detective from the Singletary murder task force, and Mrs. Waters’s son, Brian.

  Evelyn Waters had been crying and praying ever since detectives had picked her up at her house an hour earlier. She looked surprisingly the way Eileen St. James had described her. Finnerty was impressed; usually, they never looked the way witnesses said they did.

  “Mrs. Waters, there is nothing to be this upset about,” Finnerty said. “If you don’t calm down, we’ll be here all day.”

  Her son, Brian, said, “My mother is a very religious person, Captain Finnerty. She’s also very fragile, as you can see.”

  “Yeah, I know all that, but if we can’t talk to her, we’ll get nowhere.”

  Brian sat on the edge of the table next to his mother and placed his hands on her shoulders. “Mom, please, try to pull yourself together. You aren’t in any trouble. They just want to ask you some questions to help find whoever killed the priest.”

  She took a rapid series of deep breaths and vigorously shook her head. “How could you do this to your own mother?”

  “Mom, I couldn’t see you living the way you’ve been ever since you discovered that body. I did it because I love you. These people aren’t out to hurt you. They just want you to help them.” He said to Finnerty, “She’s been a wreck ever since that morning. I didn’t know what else to do but call you.”

  “You did the right thing, Mr. Waters. Try to convince her she’s doing the right thing.”

  No matter how upset someone is, there is just so much energy of despair, just so many tears in the tank. Eventually—it was only minutes but seemed like hours to Finnerty—Evelyn Waters gained enough composure to apologize, and to indicate that she would try to answer his questions.

  “What I’d like you to do, Mrs. Waters, is to remember exactly what happened that morning from the time you entered the chapel to when you discovered the body, went up to the bishop’s dressing room with the bishop’s wife, and then left. Take your time, and don’t worry if you forget things. We’ll help you.”

  She looked up into her son’s eyes. He was a nice guy, Finnerty decided, a little wimpy maybe but okay. Brian Waters touched his mother’s shoulder again and gave her a reassuring smile. Finnerty pegged him to be in his late twenties. They’d had a chance to talk a little before bringing his mother into the room. He’d dropped out of college and was working as a salesman in an auto dealership on Wisconsin Avenue, not far from the cathedral. He lived with his mother; she had been widowed for eight years. According to the son, his father’s death sent his mother into religious immersion. She attended six o’clock mass almost every morning at the cathedral, made most noontime masses in the War Memorial Chapel, and spent her time away from church reading the Bible and listening to religious broadcasts. “Did she often go to that little chapel by herself at odd hours?” Finnerty had asked. “When she was especially upset,” the son had replied.

  “Okay, Mrs. Waters, let’s begin,” Finnerty said. “I assume you went to the chapel because you were upset about something. Is that correct?”

  Mrs. Waters bit her lip against another torrent of tears. She tried to reply verbally, but ended up simply nodding.

  “What were you particularly upset about that morning?”

  “I … it all seemed so hopeless.”

  “What did?”

  “Life … my life … everything happening in the world. He has to come and stop it.”

  “Who has to come and stop it?”

  “Jesus, the son of God. He’s our only hope for salvation. I’d been up all night and …”

  When she didn’t continue, Finnerty asked her why she’d been up all night.

  “I couldn’t sleep. I had on my movies.”

  “Movies?”

  Her son spoke for her. “She buys videotapes from religious organizations, from radio and TV evangelists. She watches them when she can’t sleep.”

  “I see,” said Finnerty. “Go on, Mrs. Waters. Did something on one of the tapes especially upset you?”

  She shook her head.

  “Then why did you come to the chapel? What time did you come to the chapel?”

  She looked up at her son.

  “Go ahead, Mom,” he said. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

  She raised her hands as though to indicate the futility of trying to remember the precise time. “Seven, yes, maybe seven-thirty.”

  “In the morning.”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you drive there?”

 
; “No. I walked.”

  Her son answered. “She doesn’t drive, and when we looked for a new apartment in the neighborhood a few years ago after my dad’s death, it made sense to be within walking distance of the place where she spends so much of her time. It’s also near my job.”

  “Okay,” Finnerty said. “How many times a week do you end up in that small chapel, the Good Shepherd one?”

  Another fluttering of the hands in frustration with the question.

  “Had you been there earlier in the week, the day before you found the body, two days before?”

  “No. Yes, two days before. I went there at night.”

  “What time at night?”

  “Eleven.”

  Finnerty knew she’d guessed at that time, and renounced trying to pin her down. It really wasn’t important. He said, “Okay, Mrs. Waters, you walked into the chapel. First, you had to enter the cathedral. Did you come through those doors just outside the chapel?”

  “Doors? What doors?”

  “There are doors that separate the inside from the outside. Just inside those doors is the chapel.”

  For the first time she exhibited an emotion other than despair. “Yes, of course I came through the doors. How could I get to the chapel if I didn’t?”

  Finnerty was pleased that she’d snapped at him. Could be a sign she would get through the rest of the interview without more sobbing and invoking the name of God. “I came in to pray,” she said softly.

  “Did you see the body right away?”

  Oh, God, Finnerty thought, my mention of “body” has turned on her faucet again.

  “Please, Mrs. Waters, I’m trying to be gentle and to use the right words, but you must—”

  Her son now demonstrated a sternness that hadn’t been there before. He said with grit in his voice, “Mother, stop it and answer the questions.”