The Christmas Night Murder

by Lee Harris

  It was true. The raised plateau where the orphanage had stood had long been a place where students sat and studied, sometimes resting against the base of a statue of the Virgin Mary that had been placed there after the building burned down. And the novices’ dormitory now had trees growing there, naturally, I had been told, seeds falling from the older trees, maples and oaks, trees that like cold weather. “I’ve tried to imagine it,” I said. “Not very successfully. I’ve always loved the grounds so much just the way they are.”

  “I had to call her family,” Joseph said. “She had a grandniece who truly loved her.”

  “Ann-Marie Jenkins.”

  “Yes.”

  “There was a letter from her in Mary Teresa’s purse.”

  “I’m too close to this, Chris. In the past, when you’ve come to me with questions, I’ve always been able to look at your conundrum with detachment, to ask salient questions, to see what is obscure to you. Today I feel deep in obscurity myself. Perhaps the police are right and some intruder walking across the campus spied someone outside the chapel. Maybe he thought there would be money in the box and she tried to prevent him from going in.”

  “You don’t believe that.”

  “She often walked in the evening, especially in the summer. But even in the winter, she liked the fresh air.” She looked around at the snow and the sky. “What a nice day this would be if it were not so tragic.”

  We had reached the first of several benches along the path. The snow had been brushed off, either by a diligent Harold or by a stroller who wanted a place to sit in the sun. We sat down. From the village the sound of churchbells came up the hill. It was Sunday.

  “Tell me again what happened yesterday.”

  “I met Walter Farragut’s mother and talked to her, but I got very little from her. The one thing she said that made me take notice was that Julia had a brother named Foster. Angela told me that Julia had said her mother’s mental illness began when she lost a son and was told she couldn’t have any more children.”

  “But Grandmother Farragut says there was a son.”

  “Is a son,” I said with emphasis. “She said he’s nearly thirty now. And that I wouldn’t find him very easily. But Jack found him. He’s in prison.”

  “Which makes it equally unlikely that he had anything to do with Hudson’s disappearance or Mary Teresa’s death.”

  “But Mary Teresa didn’t know Julia had a brother and the name Foster left her confused. When I talked to her yesterday afternoon, her mind wasn’t awfully clear.”

  “That’s been happening. But when she was all there, she was her old self.”

  “She didn’t want to talk about the rumors involving Julia and Hudson. She said Sister Clare Angela had said never to discuss it. But it was obvious she had loved Julia. When I saw her the second time in the evening, her mind was sharp. I asked her if she knew Julia had a brother and she said she’d never heard about a brother. When I said his name was Foster, she just seemed confused or agitated, Joseph. We spoke for a few minutes more, but I could see she was edgy. Finally she looked at her watch and said she had to go. That’s the last I saw of her.”

  “Tell me what you think.”

  “What I think is that the events of yesterday are connected. I spoke to old Mrs. Farragut in the morning and talked about Foster. That night someone killed Mary Teresa.”

  “Mrs. Farragut called someone to say you were asking questions. Is that what you’re saying?”

  “But whom?”

  “I suppose Walter’s the only one.”

  “Joseph, I have a hard time believing that a man of Walter Farragut’s age and position in the community would drive up to a convent, meet an elderly nun, a woman close to his mother’s age, outside the chapel, and strangle her to death.”

  “It is a difficult thing to grasp. And maybe he’s not the one. But I believe you’re right that there’s a connection between your conversation with Mrs. Farragut and what happened here last night.”

  “It means someone had to call her during the day to set up a meeting at the chapel. When she looked at her watch, she realized it was getting near the time, or that she had to go upstairs and get her coat, or something like that. She may have wanted to spend some time in the chapel before the person she was meeting was scheduled to come.”

  “There’s a chance Angela will remember a phone call. But it’s possible the caller only asked for the villa, not for a particular person.”

  “Then someone in the villa will know. I’ll ask around later today. Now I want to get some dinner. I’m meeting Jack at two o’clock at Walter Farragut’s house. I don’t know if we’ll find anything out from him, but I want to look at him, get a sense of the kind of man he is. You’ve described him as very generous and yet I have the feeling that was a very unhappy family that lived on Hawthorne Street in Riverview. I spoke to the Farraguts’ next-door neighbor last evening, a Mrs. Belvedere, and she said as much. If there was unhappiness, there was a cause.”

  We stood and started back uphill toward the chapel and the mother house. The bare branches were no longer covered with Christmas snow; they had been blown clear or perhaps yesterday’s milder temperatures together with the sun had melted the thin white layer. Except perhaps in a black-and-white photograph, there is nothing quite so starkly sad-looking as a bare branch. In May they would come alive again with the fresh, bright green of spring, but today there was no hint of the better days to come.

  “There was a son who got into trouble,” Joseph said.

  “Maybe that’s it. Maybe that’s why Julia wanted to get out of that house completely.”

  “Yes, I suppose that’s possible. One always hopes a novice will come to us for better reasons.”

  “She was troubled. Maybe she thought St. Stephen’s could help her out of her trouble.”

  “I wish we had,” Joseph said. “I really wish we had.”

  15

  The street was wide, curved, and lined with custom-built houses that shared the image of luxury and nothing else. No two that I could see were in any way similar in design. There were houses of redwood, of brick, and of stone, one story and two story, contemporary, traditional, and Mediterranean. They were spaced far apart, and from what I could see, had deep lots, many with swimming pools, some with tennis courts. Walter Farragut had traded in a hundred-year-old antique for a modern architect’s dream.

  I had stopped short of the Farraguts’ house number. Looking down the block, I now saw that Jack had arrived first, turned around in the cul-de-sac, and parked on the other side, near the far end of the street. He was walking toward me.

  We kissed as we met and I turned around as we kept walking.

  “Sounds like you’re having a rough day.”

  “Terrible. The nuns are all in shock. Even Joseph isn’t faring well.” I explained the presumed connection between my visit with Mrs. Farragut and the murder of Sister Mary Teresa.

  “How did you introduce yourself to Mrs. Farragut?” Jack asked.

  “I said I used to be a teacher at St. Stephen’s College.”

  “And what were you looking into?”

  “I was trying to find out what had happened to Hudson and I wanted to know about Julia. Mrs. Farragut is a tough cookie. She didn’t let anything slip.”

  “She told you about the brother.”

  “I don’t think the brother was a family secret. The next-door neighbors to the Farraguts talked to me about him. I think he was Julia’s secret. Maybe she was ashamed of his behavior and thought a convent wouldn’t want her if they knew about him.”

  “OK, bottom line—why would Walter Farragut go up to St. Stephen’s last night and murder Sister Mary Teresa after his mother calls to say she’s been talking to you?”

  “Because he knows where Hudson is and Mary Teresa knew something that could put me onto Walter.”

  “Like what?”

  “Jack, I know it’s possible that Hudson made a second phone call from the rest stop, but
we can’t overlook the fact that a man called him at the church in Buffalo that he was visiting and said something very threatening. How did that man know Hudson would be there?”

  “You got me.”

  “Someone told him and the only someone I can think of was Sister Mary Teresa.”

  “Why would she do that?”

  “Because he made her believe he was her friend and Julia’s friend. Or that he was Hudson’s friend and wanted to surprise him when he came east for the first time in seven years. Every nun at St. Stephen’s knew when Hudson was arriving. There are gifts for him under the tree. I’ll bet they all knew he was spending a few days in Buffalo first. They probably even know the name of the church or the name of the priest he was visiting.”

  “You’re telling me that someone has been in contact with Sister Mary Teresa for seven years, waiting to get his hands on Father McCormick.”

  “That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

  “And you think Julia’s father may be the person.”

  “I think Julia’s grandmother may be the person.”

  “Right.” He threw an arm around my shoulders. “No one would think twice about a woman calling the convent.”

  “And no one would recognize her voice.”

  “OK, let’s see where it gets you.”

  We turned and walked back to my car.

  “It’s the second house down on this side,” he said. “I’ll stay here. I think you’ll do better alone. Two people at the door can be very intimidating and they’ll make me as a cop in two seconds.”

  “Gee, I thought you were the most uncop cop I’d ever met when I met you.”

  “That’s because you were blinded by the force of my overwhelming personality.”

  “It was your smile,” I said, evoking one as I spoke.

  “See you soon.” We kissed again and I went down the block to find the Farragut house.

  —

  “It’s Sunday and my husband is resting.”

  She was tall with long hair streaked with the color of sand. She was wearing a green velvet jumpsuit with a paler green silk blouse, and to me she looked like every man’s second wife, thirties, well shaped, glamorous even on a sleepy Sunday afternoon. And scented. Not like her mother-in-law, who was delicate; this woman reeked of something cloyingly sweet that threatened to make me sneeze.

  “It’s very important, Mrs. Farragut. I’ve come down from St. Stephen’s convent. A nun who was a friend of Julia Farragut was found dead this morning.”

  She did something with her mouth as though to say she was tired of the whole thing. Then she said, “I didn’t see anything about it in the paper.”

  “She was found after the papers went to press. I’d just like to talk to him for a minute.”

  “Come on in.”

  I walked into a marble foyer with enough mirrors to keep all of St. Stephen’s away forever. Just seeing strips of myself wherever I turned made me uncomfortable.

  “Stay here,” she said. “I’ll see if he’ll come.”

  I didn’t stay exactly “here,” but I remained in the foyer. There was a curved stairway off to my right and doors at the rear of the foyer, probably to closets and a bathroom. The marble floor was so shiny it could almost have been another mirror. And high above me was a skylight bringing the light of day into the windowless room.

  “What is it you want?”

  I looked around to see the presumed Walter Farragut. He was medium height, silvering hair, wearing a silk-and-velvet smoking jacket in shades of green and black, making me wonder whether he and his wife coordinated their daily wardrobes.

  “My name is Christine Bennett. I was a nun at St. Stephen’s and a teacher in the college. This morning Sister Mary Teresa was found dead outside the chapel.”

  “Who is Sister Mary Teresa?”

  “She was a friend and mentor of Julia. She was at Julia’s funeral.”

  “Come with me.” He turned back and called, “We’re fine, Karen,” then led the way into a sitting room that had a view of the backyard, although I’m sure he didn’t think of it that way. “I don’t know any Mary Teresa. I knew a Sister Clare Angela, who was the superior when my daughter was there. She’s dead now, I understand.”

  “Yes, she is. Mary Teresa was a friend of hers and a friend of Julia’s. She loved Julia very much.”

  “So did I. Exactly what do you want from me?”

  “I’m looking for Father Hudson McCormick.”

  “Well, you won’t find him here. He left his Jeep in front of my old house in Riverview and took off. How should I know where he is?”

  “Because his disappearance is connected to what happened to your daughter seven years ago and to what happened to Sister Mary Teresa today.”

  “Are you the woman who talked to my mother yesterday?”

  “Yes.”

  “How did you find me? She didn’t give you my address.”

  “I just knew where to look,” I said.

  He didn’t like that. He was a man who was used to controlling situations he was part of and he didn’t like someone finding out information that he hadn’t disseminated. He answered only those questions that he chose to and changed the subject when it pleased him. “Well, you found me. If I knew where that bad priest was, I’d give him a piece of my mind. But I don’t know and I resent your assumption that I do.”

  “Mr. Farragut, why did Julia keep her brother’s existence a secret?”

  “Who says she did?”

  “Nuns that she was friendly with.”

  “She was a sick girl. Sometimes she had a hard time telling fact from fantasy.”

  “Why did you send her to St. Stephen’s? Why didn’t you keep her at home under the care of a psychiatrist?”

  “We did what we thought was best for her.” The rancor was gone from his voice now. He sounded resigned, a father who had lost his child.

  “Did you know she was suicidal?”

  “She wasn’t suicidal. Julia had a strong desire to live. Even after her mother…passed on, she wanted to make a life for herself. Something happened that day, I don’t know what, I’ll never know what, and her life came to an end.”

  “Hudson was gone by then,” I said. “He spent that Christmas in the southwest.”

  “I didn’t say he was there or that he had anything directly to do with what happened. Maybe what happened was in her mind. We’ll never know.”

  “If you talk to me about it, Mr. Farragut, maybe we can find some answers. Something was bothering her and she implicated Hudson McCormick, maybe to save herself. I want to clear Father McCormick’s name almost as much as I want to find him alive.”

  “I’m sure he’s alive and I’m equally sure he was involved with my daughter in exactly the way she described. May we now put an end to this conversation?”

  But I didn’t want it to end. “I think she may have killed herself because she was so dreadfully sorry for what she said about him.”

  “That’s what you think. You have a right to your opinion. I have a right to my own.”

  “What’s yours?” I asked.

  “Her mother’s death destroyed her. She was a fragile child, unready for the world. I’m sure that’s why she chose to be cloistered. When her mother died, she blamed herself, which was nonsense, but you can’t always get through to someone in the state she was in. She felt that if she’d been home with us, my wife would have survived. The truth is, my wife had lost it long before the day she took her life. She wasn’t a well woman.”

  “Were you at home when Julia died?”

  “I was out with friends. It was Christmas Night and I’d been invited. My mother was home with her. This is really very difficult for me to talk about, and all your assumptions are false. You find that missing priest, you’ll find the person responsible for my daughter’s death.”

  “We’ll still have to find Sister Mary Teresa’s killer,” I reminded him.

  “Why not the priest? He knew the truth about my
daughter’s problems. Maybe he suspected this nun knew it, too, if she was close to Julia. Once she’s out of the way, he’s in the clear.”

  “You’re right about one thing. I think Father McCormick does know the truth. But I think it’s a truth you’re trying to cover up.”

  I knew I shouldn’t have said it, that I was betraying my very unobjective point of view, but sometimes a person says something spontaneously when he’s angry that he wouldn’t allow himself to say when he’s under control. Mr. Farragut wasn’t one of those people. He said nothing and I was ushered out very quickly and found myself walking down to the curb.

  Jack was standing beside my car and he came over as the door closed behind me. “You got to talk to him.”

  “Yes, but it didn’t amount to much. He admitted his mother had called about my visit, and for a minute I thought he might open up. He came close to being emotional when he talked about Julia, but he caught himself. Then he blamed everything on Hudson.”

  “So what do you think? He our man?”

  “I don’t know. He certainly isn’t holding Hudson in his house, not with his wife living there.”

  “He wouldn’t keep him there anyway. What’s she like?”

  “Young, gorgeous, expensively dressed. So is he. Do you have a silk-and-velvet smoking jacket tucked away anywhere?”

  “Not lately. That turn you on?”

  “Not today.”

  He pushed my hair off my forehead. “You know, it’s so much fun to meet up here, we should think about living together.”

  “I’ve been thinking about it a lot.”

  “Me, too. Soon, huh?”

  “Very soon.”

  “Where to now?”

  “I think I want to water some plants.”

  16

  We had a cup of coffee in a pretty place that had a view of the river and then we went our separate ways. I felt pangs of longing as I drove away. Tomorrow Jack would go back to work at the Sixty-fifth Precinct in Brooklyn and it looked as though I would still be here. I was still without answers for Hudson’s disappearance, and now the very convent had been invaded.