The Christmas Night Murder

by Lee Harris

  I thought about what Walter Farragut had said, that Hudson had killed Mary Teresa because he suspected she might know the truth that involved his guilt. Then why hadn’t Hudson done it seven years ago? No, I had stirred something up yesterday and someone had decided to silence the poor woman. The question was, was it Walter Farragut?

  Over coffee Jack and I talked obliquely about what troubled me: Walter Farragut and his daughter, Julia. I didn’t want to think about it, couldn’t bring myself to confront it. But it was right there and I couldn’t get rid of it.

  There was a car in the long driveway next to the Belvederes’ house. I parked on the street and walked up to the front door. Marilyn Belvedere answered.

  “I heard what happened,” she said. “Come in. Were you at the convent when that poor nun was murdered?”

  “I’ve been staying there since Friday. The handyman found her body this morning, lying outside the chapel. I think she’d gone there to pray for Father McCormick.” It was probably at least partly true.

  “They said on the news it was someone looking for the poor box.”

  “I don’t believe that. Mrs. Belvedere, I need your help. Isn’t it time to water the Corcorans’ plants?”

  She looked undecided for a moment, then said, “I’ll get the keys.”

  She took her coat out of the closet and went somewhere for the keys. When she came back, we went the long way to the house, out the front door, along the street, and up the Corcorans’ walk.

  “In the summer I go out the side door and cut across, but with all the snow, it’s easier this way,” she explained. “And you’re not wearing boots, are you?”

  Neither was she. It took two keys to open the door.

  “Did the Farraguts have two locks?”

  “No. The Corcorans are a lot more security conscious. Personally, I think they overdo it. You get the occasional burglar out here, but it’s really pretty safe. Come to the kitchen with me. I have to fill the watering can.”

  I followed her through a hall to the back of the house. The kitchen looked completely remodeled, with handsome wood cabinets that might look Victorian to someone living a hundred years later, and plenty of windows facing the back.

  “The original kitchen was very small. Housewives didn’t do much cooking in a house this size a hundred years ago. They let the servants do that. The Corcorans pushed the kitchen out a little to get room for the island.” She turned the water on and filled two cans, one of copper, one of stainless steel. “I’ll do the ones here on the window shelves. Would you mind doing the ones in the breakfast room?”

  “Not at all.” I walked from the kitchen to a charming room with a round wooden table and heavy armchairs. A rubber tree and a large Norfolk Island pine were near the large window. Although light came through it, thin blinds covered it completely. I guessed the Corcorans didn’t want people peeping in at them, or at their empty breakfast room. There were some other large, treelike plants that I watered, too, one with a beautiful, variegated leaf. Before returning to the kitchen, I admired the china cabinet and its display of hand-painted plates.

  “Beautiful plants,” I said as I went back to the kitchen.

  “They are. Gail has more than a green thumb. Let’s fill up and do the living room and dining room.”

  We carried our cans to the dining room first. As we were leaving the kitchen the phone rang.

  “Don’t worry about that. The machine’ll answer.”

  It did. “Gail? This is Sunny. Just wanted to let you know that Miranda had a little girl Thursday night, seven-two, with little wisps of dark hair, an absolute beauty. So she’ll get her tax deduction, but she’ll miss first baby of the year. Call you when you get home.”

  “Isn’t that nice,” Mrs. Belvedere said. “Miranda went to high school with Julia Farragut.”

  “I guess everybody knows each other here.”

  “Pretty much.”

  I watered a crown of thorns and moved on to a group of African violets. “I understand old Mrs. Farragut was home with Julia the night she killed herself.”

  “I think that’s so. I think she called the ambulance.”

  “Was Walter Farragut home?”

  She stopped watering. “He was out. He came home later, after the police arrived.”

  “Where was Foster?”

  “I don’t think anyone ever knew where Foster was. Probably out getting himself in trouble.” Her voice was tinged with unkindness.

  “Then the grandmother was alone with Julia that night.”

  “I think so. I think she said she went to look in on her, see if she wanted anything, and found her.”

  We went back for more water. As we entered the kitchen I heard the sound of a piece of machinery turning on. I looked at her.

  “Must be the furnace. Gail leaves it at fifty-five or so so the pipes won’t freeze.”

  We refilled and went to the living room. It was an enormous room with a beautiful fireplace. The walls were papered with a tiny floral design that was echoed in the covering on the sofa and two easy chairs. Antique lamps were everywhere, a magnificent collection. I could see the one at the window that I had noticed from outside last evening. Here the shades were down only three quarters of the way, perhaps to allow the plants to soak up the sun. We watered in silence. When we were finished, I paused to admire a tapestry hanging on the wall. Just beneath it was the thermostat. The temperature in the living room read fifty-eight degrees.

  “Works fast,” I said, meaning the furnace.

  “It may have been another zone that went on. The house has several zones. Do you want to go upstairs now?”

  “Please.”

  “We don’t need the cans. Gail moves all the plants downstairs when she’s away to spare me the trouble. I really shouldn’t be doing this.”

  “I appreciate your help.”

  There were a lot of bedrooms upstairs, all of them larger than anything in the house I lived in. We looked in on the Corcorans’ master bedroom suite with its small adjoining sitting room and full bath, then the children’s rooms, which had been decorated with the kinds of colors and furniture and games that I had seen only in magazines in waiting rooms.

  “When Gail found out about the suicide, she decided not to use that room for the family. I really can’t blame her.”

  “I understand.”

  “So it’s a guest room now.” She opened a door and stood there, not entering.

  I went inside. It was a lovely room, larger than the rooms for the Corcorans’ children, certainly a room for a favorite child. It was in the corner of the house with windows on two sides. Shades were drawn now, but pulling one aside, I could see the Belvedere house through the trees and behind the one on the other wall the large backyard. It was a much simpler, more natural backyard than the one behind Walter Farragut’s new house. Here a swing set stood near a small slide, trees grew, and the edge of a patio was visible. I couldn’t see very far to the left because the kitchen extension blocked my view, and what looked like a wooden fire escape also intervened.

  A double bed was made up with a colorful quilt and decorative pillows, or perhaps it was a queen dwarfed by the size of the room. A rocking chair had a cushion covered in the same tones as the quilt, and a hooked rug in the center of the room left the old wide floorboards bare, a good touch. There was a dresser with a mirror over it, another wonderful antique lamp on the night table, and a watercolor of a fall scene on one wall. Altogether a very nice room to spend a night in, or to grow up in.

  “Do you know where she hanged herself?” I asked.

  Mrs. Belvedere had not entered the room. She stood at the doorway as though an invisible barrier kept her from crossing the threshold. “I think the closet,” she said uneasily. “I think there was something in there, a bar or something. The ceiling is quite high—maybe it was a shelf.” She was plainly nervous.

  I opened the closet door and looked inside.

  “They changed it,” Mrs. Belvedere said. “Gai
l likes her closets customized.”

  “They did a beautiful job.” There was everything in there you could want, slanted shelves to hold shoes, rods at various heights to accommodate clothes of different lengths, shelves for sweaters, even built-in drawers. Obviously Gail Corcoran used this closet to store her out-of-season wardrobe because it looked like an upscale cruise-wear department.

  I backed out and closed the door. “Do you know where the grandmother’s room was?”

  There was a bang from somewhere in the house and Marilyn Belvedere jumped. “A shutter’s loose again,” she said. “May we please go?”

  “Sure.”

  “It wasn’t a room,” she said, answering my question. “She had a separate apartment on the first floor with her own kitchen and even her own living room with a fireplace. It’s on the other side of the house. I never saw it, but Serena told me about it. She said it was how they all managed to get along with each other so well.”

  Then it was true that she could have been in the house and heard nothing. “Do you know which room was Foster’s?”

  “One of the ones the children have, I’m not sure which. You saw them both. Have you seen enough now?” She was distressed, anxious to leave.

  “Yes, I think so.” I took one more look around the room and followed her downstairs.

  17

  I don’t know what I expected, but as I drove away I felt disappointed. I had wanted the house to speak to me, to tell me something that I couldn’t figure out for myself, and it had not. All that I could see was that Julia had lived in a large, prized room, that if her brother had been home that night and had been in his room, he should have heard something, but if he was out and his grandmother was in her own private quarters, poor Julia could have cried for help and no one would have heard her. Even if Foster were home, if he had been listening to music the way a lot of aficionados do, he would not have heard the noise at the end of the hall.

  I left Mrs. Belvedere at the start of the walkway to her house. A second car had joined the first one in her driveway and two men were looking under the hood of the car farther up.

  She moaned when she saw them. “My son’s been having car trouble since he came home. I hope he gets it taken care of this time.”

  The second car had MIKE’S AUTO BODY SHOP painted on the side. “I guess this is the season when batteries die,” I said.

  “That’s just what I told him. Well, you can’t tell your children anything.” She smiled as if we shared a secret, but I was a lot closer to her son’s age than to hers.

  Now, in the car, I decided to see if Mrs. Farragut would talk to me again. I found the retirement community with no difficulty and parked in the visitors’ area. There were children around today, probably because on Sunday Americans visit their families.

  Mrs. Farragut answered on the first ring. She looked conflicted about seeing me there, but she hustled me inside. “Do we have anything else to talk about?” she asked.

  “One of our nuns was murdered last night.”

  “I heard about it. Personal safety is a problem everywhere. Even here, we’re careful at night.”

  “The nun was your granddaughter’s mentor, her friend, her confidante.”

  “Then I suppose you’d better look to your missing bad priest.”

  I was getting a little tired of having Hudson dumped on for everything. “He had no more reason to kill her last night than he had seven years ago.”

  “Miss Bennett—sit down, sit down, I can’t stand having a conversation standing in the middle of the living room—I don’t know where your priest is and I don’t know how I can help you find him.”

  “Can you help me find out what drove Julia to take her life?”

  “What difference does it make now? It’s over. I believe you have to move on in life. It’s what I’ve been trying to do.”

  “I think she may have been terribly sorry for saying what she did about Father McCormick.” I had said the same thing to her son and not gotten very far.

  “I’m sure what Julia said was true.”

  “Did she leave a note?”

  “No, she did not.” A rapid-fire answer, stated sharply.

  I began to detect her scent again, so sweet in contrast to her words and manner. “Can you tell me who was home when she ended her life?”

  “I was. I was in my own apartment having a cup of tea and writing thank-you’s for Christmas gifts.”

  “And your son?”

  “He was out for the evening.”

  “Can you remember where?”

  “Miss Bennett, it’s seven years. I didn’t know at the time and I don’t know now. Walter was a grown man and led his own life.”

  “And Foster?”

  “He was out, too. Please don’t ask me where he was. No one ever knew where Foster was.” She said it sadly, acknowledging failure.

  “I know where he is now,” I said.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “He’s in prison. He’s been there for the last year and a half.”

  “You know too much for your own good, young lady.” But she didn’t usher me out. In some strange way, she was glad to be talking to me about all this.

  “Do you have a picture of Julia?” I asked, the thought just occurring to me.

  She got up and went to a shelf that had at least a dozen framed pictures and picked up three. “This was the last, when she was at St. Stephen’s.” In it Julia was wearing the habit of a novice and she stood with each hand hidden in the opposite wide sleeve, but she was smiling. Something about the face gave me a start.

  “This was her high-school graduation picture.”

  There was no doubt now. Even wearing a white cap and gown, Julia and the present Mrs. Walter Farragut looked enough alike to be sisters. I handed the picture back.

  “And this was Julia with some friends during her last year in high school. The girl on the left is Billie something and the one on the right is Miranda Gallagher. She’s married now,” she said sadly.

  The name rang a bell. I had overheard a telephone message about a Miranda only an hour ago. The mother’s name was…I couldn’t remember. But I would keep Gallagher in mind. A good friend might fit a lot of missing pieces into my holey puzzle.

  “She was a beautiful girl,” I said, handing the last picture back.

  “And kind and sweet and thoughtful and devoted. I will never stop missing her.” There was no sharp edge anymore; there was only grief. The lined face had given up the fight to look young and spirited. Slowly, looking at each picture, she replaced them on the shelf and then sat down again. “It was the darkest day of my life.”

  “I can understand that.”

  “She had her mother’s face. Serena was a beautiful woman.”

  “I don’t pretend to understand why a person, especially a young one, would take her life, but when I spoke to your son this afternoon, he said Julia wasn’t suicidal. He said she had a strong will to live. What happened that Christmas, Mrs. Farragut?”

  “I’m sure you know that as happy a time as Christmas is for most of us, it is deeply depressing for others. They think of how it used to be, where they were, who they were with, those missing who will never return, and they become unhappy to the point of hurting themselves. I think that’s what happened to our Julia.”

  “What was she doing that evening?”

  “Reading. Writing in her diary.”

  “She was writing in her diary and she didn’t leave a note?”

  “I told you. There was no note.”

  “What became of her diary?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Did you show it to the police?”

  “I’m sure we must have.”

  I knew immediately that she was lying. If they had given the diary to the police, she would have said so unequivocally. What she had said was a hedge. “Do you have it here?”

  “I do not.”

  A girl about to take her life is writing in her diary and doesn�
�t leave a note. She doesn’t need to because the reason is contained in those pages, maybe in the very last one, maybe in all the pages taken together. “I would like to see it, Mrs. Farragut,” I said softly.

  “I don’t know where it is. It’s probably been destroyed.”

  Hardly. If this woman had possession of it—and she was the person who had found the body, so she must have seen it—she wouldn’t have let it go. She certainly wouldn’t have destroyed it.

  “You know why she killed herself, don’t you?” I said, again softly.

  “I gave you the reasons. She had lost her mother, she had lost her vocation, she had nearly lost her mind with grief. I shouldn’t have left her alone that night. I should have sat with her, talked to her, held her hand, and assured her things would get better because they would have. I am an optimist. You can’t reach my age without being one. If I blame anyone for Julia’s death, it’s myself. I failed her when she needed me most. You must go now, Miss Bennett, and I don’t think you should come back. I’ve told you everything. There isn’t any more. You know everything now, including my responsibility in Julia’s death. I have nothing more to say.” She stood and went to the door. Today she was wearing a blue suit with a white blouse. The jacket was a loose, interesting weave with gold buttons, four pocket flaps, and piping around all the edges and on the hem of the skirt that just covered her knees. A gold choker with a diamond flower was partly visible in the vee of her blouse. She was a well-to-do woman whose money had failed to buy her peace.

  I thanked her and said good-bye. I’m not sure she said anything. I think she was glad the interview was over, that she hadn’t lost control and spilled the secrets she had kept for so long, not just from me but from the rest of the world, including the police of Riverview, who, I was sure, had never heard of, much less seen, Julia Farragut’s diary.

  18

  I racked my brain all the way back to the convent to think of the name of the woman who had called the Corcorans. Finally I decided it wouldn’t make any difference if I remembered it because she was probably listed under her husband’s name. I would have to call Mrs. Belvedere or try every Gallagher in Riverview, something I found distasteful. While I’m not exactly a shy person, there are tasks I really don’t like to do; calling strangers to find a particular person is one of them. Jack had told me about detectives who sit at a phone and make a case. He laughed and called them telephone detectives, but what a talent.