“Shock,” Comisario Serrano repeated. “You have had quite a shock!”
When Mary Helen pulled her hand from her sweater pocket holding a bloodstained tissue, the comisario looked a little shocked, too.
“We can expect to find your fingerprints in the crypt?” he asked matter-of-factly.
Nodding sheepishly, Mary Helen handed the tissue to him and dug in her pocket for another. Wiping her eyes, she watched him turn the soiled tissue over in his hand.
“And last night, Sister,” he said, studying her face, “what did you do last night?”
Mary Helen recounted her evening, including being unable to sleep, hearing people arguing in the hallway, watching Pepe and María José quarrel in the plaza, and finally hearing the early-morning revelers in the hallway.
She was glad that was all she’d heard since she was afraid that she was beginning to sound like an inveterate eavesdropper. Comisario Serrano didn’t seem to care about her manners. “Anything else?” he pressed.
Feeling foolish, she told him about looking out onto the deserted Plaza del Obradoiro and thinking that she saw a figure standing on the cathedral steps.
The comisario fell silent.
“Surely, it was just a shadow,” Mary Helen ventured. “You know how night shadows can be, and it was pouring rain,” she added, hoping that he wouldn’t think that she was an old lady given to flights of fancy. “Nobody stands that still in the pouring rain.”
“Unless the person does not want to be noticed, dear Sister.”
“Who in the world would care about being seen on the cathedral steps?”
Even before his dark eyes pinned her like sharp needles, she knew the answer. “Our killer, Sister, that is who.”
Although the office now seemed stifling, a shiver ran down Mary Helen’s spine. Had she actually seen Lisa’s murderer?
“Whom have you told about this?” The sharpness in the comisario’s voice startled her.
She ransacked her memory. “No one really.”
“Not Pepe Nunez?”
Mary Helen shook her head.
“Not even your traveling companion?”
Again Mary Helen shook her head. She really had not had the time or the opportunity to talk to Eileen, not that Eileen would repeat it.
“Do not tell anyone, Sister, not even Sister Eileen.”
Mary Helen was aware that the comisario had not consulted a list but knew Eileen’s name right off. This fellow is going to be interesting to watch, she thought, wondering absently how long it would take him to discover her call to Kate Murphy and whether or not she ought to tell him first.
Before she could decide, he rose from his seat, bowed, and ushered her toward the door. “Tell no one, Sister. Do you understand?” He peered at her.
Of course, she understood! Mary Helen tried to hide her annoyance. His words were abundantly clear. Perhaps he did think that age made her a bit senile in the memory department.
“I won’t tell anyone, Comisario,” she said, “not even Sister Eileen.” Her cheeks flushed as the reason for his concern erupted in her mind and sent a wave of panic through her body. If I saw the killer, perhaps the killer saw me. If he knows that I saw him and that I told someone else about him, then we are both . . . She dreaded drawing the logical conclusion.
“Good show!” the comisario said, saving her from it. With a deep and final bow, he escorted her from the room.
Back in the small, musty catchall room, the morning dragged on. Breakfast lay virtually untouched. As each tour member left, then returned, the mood in the room seemed to darken. Not even opening the thick drapes to let in the crisp October sunshine helped.
Mary Helen drank an ocean of coffee. She looked around in vain for a magazine, even a Spanish one, to take her mind off the experience of finding Lisa. She wished crazily that she had brought along her paperback. In it, the murders were all make-believe and the villain caught in 270 pages. She attempted to write something, anything, in her travel diary, but the only word that came to her mind was horrible.
The catchall room was unnaturally quiet. With each passing hour suspicion and distrust grew and spread. When the group realized that María José had failed to return, tendrils of fear coiled around them.
In the prevailing tension Bootsie DeAngelo paced nervously while her husband made quite a show of reading and rereading the Spanish titles on the row upon row of bookshelves. The Fongs made every effort to avoid each other, not easy in a room this small. When their eyes did meet, Neil Fong looked away quickly. And no wonder, Mary Helen thought, watching Rita. The anger in her cold, dark, almond-shaped eyes would freeze a pillar.
Finally the comisario called for Sister Eileen. Heidi curled up in one of the heavy velvet chairs. Before long she was asleep. Now that Fong’s vigil over the girl seemed unnecessary, he joined his wife. Despite the obvious coolness between them, they sat close together like a small, safe unit in a hostile camp.
Mary Helen wished that she could get Heidi alone, but there didn’t seem to be much of a chance. Not now anyway. She wanted to ask her about her unfinished remark during last night’s dinner. “You’ll never guess who Lisa was with . . .” Heidi had said, and she was probably right. Mary Helen would never guess, although from the strain in the room, she put her money on Dr. Neil Fong.
Mary Helen checked her wristwatch. Eileen had been with Comisario Serrano for nearly twenty minutes. She wondered what was taking so long. After all, Eileen had been fast asleep the entire night. Mary Helen could vouch for that. She hoped that her friend wasn’t filling him full of her “old sayings from back home,” as she was wont to do when she was in a pinch.
With a swish the door swung open, and Eileen, her face flushed, entered. Before she was settled in her seat, the comisario called for Pepe. He was the last. Their ordeal was nearly over.
“How did it go?” Mary Helen asked in a low whisper.
“Fine, old dear, just fine.” Eileen’s brogue was unusually thick. Something had excited her. “That Ángel is quite the character.” She rolled her eyes heavenward.
“Ángel, is it?” Mary Helen asked. “And what took you so long?”
“Nothing really. We were just talking about Ireland. He spent several summers there when he was a lad going to Oxford. He knew many of the haunts I knew, and lo and behold, he even knew my third cousin on my mother’s side, Mary Agnes Glynn, from Ballygloonen. They went to a dance or two together.” Eileen blushed. “He said he remembers that Mary Agnes—Aggie, we called her—was quite a looker.”
“I am waiting out here, sweating through your interrogation, and you are in there talking about your mother’s third cousin?” Mary Helen felt her blood pressure rising.
“Who, by the way, married quite well, did our Aggie. I told the comisario that we have an old saying back home: ‘Many an Irish property was increased by the lace of a daughter’s petticoat.’ ”
Mary Helen groaned, but Eileen went on as though she hadn’t noticed. “It is, no doubt, his technique. Making you feel at ease like that. There’s another old saying back home—”
Mary Helen glared. Unabashed, Eileen smiled. “Yes, indeed. ‘You must crack the nuts before you can eat the kernels.’ ”
“You are no nut at all.” Mary Helen lowered her voice and resisted the temptation to rephrase her last remark. “You were asleep.”
“How did the comisario know?”
“He could have asked you or me.”
“Entirely too simple,” Eileen said, and smiled over at Bud Bowman.
“Anyone want to play cards?” Bud asked in an attempt, no doubt, to get something going, even a conversation. “Pinochle, maybe?” His eyes roamed the room like a friendly Great Dane looking for a playmate.
Mary Helen was considering taking up his offer, more as an act of charity than anything else, when Bootsie DeAngelo exploded.
“How could you, you cretin? How could you suggest cards at a time like this?” she shouted. Then, her nerves obviously rea
ching their limit, she burst into high hiccuping sobs. Almost a keening, Mary Helen thought.
Bud’s face fell.
“Who are you calling a cretin?” It was Cora. Any veneer of the friendship they had enjoyed at breakfast vanished. She rose like a mother bear to protect her own. Florid-faced, she stumbled for an epithet to return to Bootsie. “You—you—you fish-eyed old bag!” she spit out in frustration.
Bootsie stopped in mid-hiccup. An uncomfortable silence filled the room. Cora was right. Bootsie’s blue eyes did have a fishy coldness to them, and although she was not strictly elderly, she was much older than she tried to appear.
Seemingly satisfied that she’d hit pay dirt, Cora put her hands on her hips and waited for round two.
“Now see here, Cora.” Roger DeAngelo pulled himself up to his full height and stepped in front of his wife. His dark eyes blazed. “You are definitely out of order.”
“Who are you calling ‘out of order’?” Bud Bowman found his voice. “If I remember right, it was your missus that started the name-calling.”
Dr. Fong peered over the top of his glasses and put his arm protectively around his wife’s shoulders. Stiffening, she shook it off.
Heidi stirred in the chair but did not wake. She must have been up all night, Mary Helen thought absently, to be so tired.
“This will get us nowhere,” Dr. Fong said, his face draining of color. “Let’s at least act civilized.”
“Why don’t you stay out of it, fella?” Bud doubled up his fist and glowered first at Fong, then at DeAngelo.
“Someone better stop this or it’s sure to turn into a donnybrook,” Eileen whispered to Mary Helen.
Before either of the nuns could act, tiny Rita Fong stepped to the middle of the room. “Ladies and gentlemen,” she said in a no-nonsense voice, “we are all obviously tired and upset. Fighting among ourselves will do us no good. We have had a long trip, a short night, and a very stressful morning. What we all need to do is relax. We need some deep breathing. Everyone stand.”
Like obedient robots, they stood.
“Tall, stand tall! Ready, ready, ready.” Her voice boomed off the bookshelves. “Up tall, tall, tall. Taller. Shoulders back. Feet apart. Arms over your heads. Stretch those lazy spines. Stretch. Stretch taller.”
Mary Helen watched in amazement as tiny Rita stretched her arms and her back until she loomed almost tall. She held the pose as still as a statue. Mary Helen felt suddenly light-headed.
“Breathe,” Rita commanded. “Breathe deep. Deep. Deep. Deeper!”
Standing tall and breathing deep was how an astonished Pepe found his group of peregrinos.
As soon as Pepe left the office, Comisario Ángel Serrano pushed himself back in the swivel chair, propped his feet on top of the manager’s desk, and closed his eyes. Peace, at last! He needed it to think.
After a morning filled with chatter the small office was richly quiet. “Quiet as a nun,” the English poet had written. The chap must never have run into the two I just met, Ángel thought, rubbing his burning eyes.
In the stillness he heard the rhythmic drip-drip-drip of a rain gutter in the patio below. From somewhere tires swished on the still-wet street. Silverware rattled in one of the hotel’s dining rooms.
What a mess this tour of Nunez’s had become! There was something about the young man that Ángel didn’t like, didn’t trust really. He was too suave, too well dressed. What did the Americans call it? Too “yuppie”—strange word. Ángel pulled at his tie to loosen it. His shirt collar chafed at his neck. Was he really gaining kilos as his wife, Julietta, claimed or was she using too much starch in the laundry?
Julietta would probably like him to be more like Pepe Nunez. At the thought of her, his stomach rumbled. It was almost time for his dinner.
The whole of Santiago would soon stop for dinner. María José must be home by now. Thank goodness that he was able to send his only niece home. His sister, Pilar, would have had his head if he had detained her. Although it would serve her right. Maybe scare her a little. Quickly he dismissed the notion. María José, he knew from years of experience, did not scare easily. He wondered crossly how she had managed to get involved with this Pepe and what the duties of an assistant to a fellow who did nothing but show people the sights actually were.
When he asked her, she had shrugged impatiently. “Tío, I have told you and Papa both that I intend to be a businesswoman, support myself, see the world, break out of Galicia. I want to be a liberated woman. I will take whatever opportunities arise to do this.” Her jaw was set. “This is not just an adventure. I view Pepe Nunez and his tour as a business opportunity.”
For the life of him, Ángel Serrano could not see why, but it was fruitless to say so. All this liberation business happened when María José went to the university: liberation and her magenta-colored hair. He and his brother-in-law had figured both would pass, but neither had, and Pilar seemed to be encouraging her.
“And now, what of your opportunity, Ho-Ho?” He used her childhood pet name, hoping to soften her up for reason. “It seems to have propelled you right into the middle of a murder.”
Undaunted and clearly unsoftened, María José’s dark eyes met his. “Tío,” she said in that irritatingly positive tone of hers, “it has produced another opportunity. Don’t you see? I can continue on this tour with Pepe and work as a sort of assistant to you.”
Ángel sent her home. Maybe having only sons is a blessing, he thought, determined to talk to his brother-in-law. Ho-Ho had always been a handful. Someone had better tighten the rein on that girl before it was too late.
Wasn’t this just his luck? Bad enough to have his own niece involved in a murder, let alone in the murder of an American tourist. It would mean notifying the embassy in Madrid—clearly the mayor’s responsibility—but notifying the mayor fell to his lot. Better to leave it until after the noonday meal. The mayor always reacted better when he was full. Surely Canon Fernández had already reached the mayor. Thank goodness he had made it clear that he was not to be disturbed for any reason.
And, of all places to find the victim, in the cathedral! Murder in the Cathedral. His mind jumped back to Oxford, where he had first read that play, then back again to Santiago and to the canon, whom he had been avoiding all morning.
What would the canon say when they finally met? Plenty, Ángel knew, visualizing the bantamlike priest, ranting and strutting, lamenting the sacrilege, somehow blaming the police in general, and Ángel in particular, for what had happened. Idly Angel wondered what kinds of rites would be required to exorcise a cathedral. But that was the canon’s problem. His was to discover the murderer. And what a muddle it was.
“Maybe it was a mugger,” the professor’s wife had suggested in her slow drawl. When he had seen her alone, Barbara DeAngelo, for some reason called Bootsie, with the blue-black hair and those cold blue eyes, stated very clearly and concisely that on the previous night she was in the lounge with her husband, the Fongs, and the Bowmans. Lisa Springer, Heidi Williams, María José, and Pepe Nunez joined them a little later. The Bowmans left early. Dr. and Mrs. Fong were the next to go. Not too much later she and her husband left. About ten-thirty, she thought.
“We were just exhausted,” she said, “and we both went to bed. My husband fell asleep immediately. I read for a while and then turned off the lights. Although I didn’t sleep very well, I don’t remember hearing anything unusual until Pepe roused us this morning.
“Surely it was a mugger who did this,” Bootsie repeated, and Ángel did not argue. He knew, however, what she did not. Santiago had its share of thieves, drunks, and even wife beaters. But it had very few murderers, and none so heinous as to commit murder in the crypt of its beloved St. James.
A staccato rap on the door propelled Ángel upright in his chair. “Pase!” he barked, clearing his throat and bending over a sheet of paper on the desk.
“Comisario!” Officer Esteban Zaldo, eager and efficient, clicked his heels and stood at att
ention. Ángel motioned for him to sit down. Zaldo even sat at attention, back straight, heels together. His mustache was straight and rigid. Only the half-moons of perspiration forming under his arms indicated that he was human.
For some reason his formality irritated Ángel, although he knew it shouldn’t. Esteban was a dedicated and effective police officer. Being successfully able to contain that bunch of American peregrinos in one room ought to be proof enough.
Ángel pulled in his chair and doodled down one side of the paper on his desk. “I’m glad to see you, Esteban,” he said.
Zaldo allowed a small, pleased grin to play at the corners of his mouth.
“We have a problem.” Ángel turned the paper around and started down the other side. “There is absolutely no question in my mind that one of these Americans is the murderer.” Ángel glanced up. “But which one?”
Esteban frowned, undoubtedly indicating that he, too, understood the seriousness of their predicament.
Ángel read aloud from his notes. “Barbara, called Bootsie, DeAngelo claims to have been in bed all night with her husband. Her husband, Professor Roger DeAngelo, verifies it. Henry Bowman, called Bud, slept all night. Snoring, according to his wife, Cora. She was just dropping off to sleep when someone, she claims, was quarreling in the hallway outside her room.” He consulted his paper. “ ‘Fighting tooth and nail,’ to quote her exactly.”
“Do we know who that was, Comisario?” Esteban’s dark eyes were sharp.
“The Fongs, I suspect.”
“Did they admit it?”
“Not at all!” The comisario grinned at Zaldo, who was still a bachelor. “Married people don’t admit that they fight, Esteban. We discuss things. And they did admit that they had a discussion, which, according to Dr. Neil Fong, may have become a bit noisy. ‘Loud enough to wake the dead,’ to quote Cora Bowman.”
“Do we know what they were fighting about, Comisario?”
“Only what they tell us.” Ángel chuckled. “The dentist claims that his wife was upset that they had stayed downstairs so long. She was tired and had kicked him several times under the table.”
Murder Makes a Pilgrimage Page 9