by Anne Emery
He would keep an eye out for Ignatius Boyle. Perhaps he could persuade the homeless man to come into the church. Boyle was a very devout Catholic. Would the magnificent interior of the church, with its statues and stained-glass windows depicting the angels and saints, and the presence of the Blessed Sacrament on the altar, induce in Boyle the desire to tell the truth? Brennan of course did not have the luxury of lounging about on the benches in the churchyard all day and night in the hope of catching the man when he came for his devotions. It would be a matter of chance, not at all an efficient way to make progress in an investigation, but he did not see what else he could do.
There was no sign of Ignatius Boyle over the next few days. Whenever Brennan had the opportunity, he took a peek out the window of the parish house or the choir school to see if he could spot his man. But no luck.
It was nearly a week before Brennan caught sight of Boyle again. On a Monday night when the priest was in his room basking in the creamy voice of Kiri Te Kanawa on his CD player, he looked out the window and saw his quarry shambling into the churchyard with his Roman missal in one hand and his pack of cigarette butts in the other. Brennan gently extinguished Kiri’s voice and ran down the stairs and out to the yard. He thought it best not to draw attention to himself but to get good and close to Boyle before announcing his presence. He was just about to head over to him when he heard his name.
“Father Burke!” Shite.
Ignatius Boyle whipped around, saw Brennan, and hightailed it out of the churchyard.
Brennan turned to see who had hailed him. It was Urquhart, the fellow who did repair work around the church. He wanted a word with Brennan about cleaning and doing something to the furnace. The burner, the filter . . . something. Brennan could not remember ever looking at the furnace and had no interest in its maintenance; he told the man to go ahead and do whatever needed doing.
By the time he had dealt with that, Boyle was out of sight.
Well, Brennan was not about to let it rest. He took off at a fast clip in the direction Boyle had taken; he was determined to question the man again and get to the bottom of the connection between Boyle, Podgis, and Jordyn Snider.
Boyle had left the churchyard in the direction of Morris Street to the south, so Brennan sprinted to Morris and looked left and right. He had a split-second decision to make: which way to go? Left was the direction of the harbour. It was more likely Boyle had gone right, into the heart of the Halifax peninsula, so that’s what Brennan did. He walked as fast as he could without breaking into a run. There, up ahead, was Boyle. Brennan slowed and moved into the shadows of the buildings as he followed his quarry west on Morris. He saw Boyle turn right on South Park; Brennan broke into a run until he got to the corner, then turned and resumed a walking pace. Boyle stopped for the light at Spring Garden Road and did not turn around. A man not plagued by any suspicion that he was being followed. Well, most people are not being followed, and Ignatius Boyle would normally be no exception. In fact, he was probably the least likely person to be pursued, having no possessions that anyone would want to steal. Boyle turned left on the north side of Spring Garden, walked the length of the Public Gardens to Summer Street and then cut through the Camp Hill Cemetery. Brennan made a little bow in the direction of the soaring column marking the grave of the great brewer Alexander Keith on his way through the graveyard. How far was this pursuit going to take him, Brennan wondered, but he stayed well behind Boyle and kept at it. Boyle did not stop until he reached a blue wood-shingled house on Yukon Street north of Quinpool Road. Only then did Boyle look about him. Brennan ducked out of sight behind an oil truck. When he peered out, he saw Boyle standing at the entrance to the house, leaning on the bell and pounding on the door. There had been a reference to Yukon in the notes in Podgis’s closet. Podgis had this address.
After nearly a full minute of ringing and pounding, which attracted annoyed glances from a couple of people passing by, the door opened a crack. Boyle spoke to someone inside in an urgent whisper. Brennan strained to hear what was being said, but could not make it out. Boyle was admitted to the house, and the door closed behind him. Who was in there? Someone connected with Jordyn Snider? With Pike Podgis? Someone with a nostalgic taste for candid Polaroid photography?
Chapter 17
Brennan
Brennan, dressed in a navy sports coat, white shirt, and no tie, stood in front of the blue house on Yukon Street, treating the door with more restraint than had been shown by Ignatius Boyle the night before. It seemed long but it was probably only thirty seconds before Brennan heard someone shuffling towards the entrance. The door opened, and a woman of about seventy-five stood there glaring up at him through a pair of smudged eyeglasses. She had three sweaters layered on, all white, and still she shivered with the cold.
“Yes? May I help you?”
“Em, perhaps you can. I’m wondering if Mr. Boyle is here.”
“Who?”
“Ignatius Boyle. This is the address he gave me.”
“Ignatius!”
“Yes. Is he here?”
“I’d remember a name like that, so I can tell you the answer to your question is no. You must have the wrong address.”
“It may be the upstairs flat . . .”
“The upstairs flat is occupied by three — ”
“Maggie! Maggie!”
Brennan heard two very young voices coming from the top of the stairs, followed by footsteps and a crashing sound. The elderly woman looked upwards. “Take it easy up there, girls. You’ll fall and hurt yourselves. I’ve warned you before about that landing. Now go back inside. It’s not Maggie; it’s me talking to a gentleman who’s lost.”
“Lost? We’ll help him, Mrs. Lewis! We’ll know the way!”
“No, no, he’s just leaving.”
But she did not succeed in hustling him off the property before two little girls came bounding down the stairs. One looked about ten, the other maybe eight. Both had dark curly hair and big brown eyes. They were wearing bibbed overalls made of denim with striped cotton T-shirts underneath.
“Are you lost?” the younger one asked.
“Well, it’s more that I’m looking for someone and can’t find him.”
“So the other guy’s lost.”
“Could be.” Brennan smiled at them.
“We’ll help you. Come up to our house. You tell us what he looks like. We’ll draw a picture, and you can nail it to a tree or a telephone pole, and people will see it and find him and you put your phone number on. That’s what we did with our kitty.”
“Oh, did you find him?”
“It’s a girl! Buffy.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. Did you find her?”
“Yeah!”
The older sister spoke up at that point. “But then she got sick and died.”
“Oh, no.”
“We had a funeral,” the younger one said. “Buffy’s buried in the backyard, and we have a picture of her out there. What does the lost guy look like?”
He looked uncertainly at Mrs. Lewis. She said, “Girls, why don’t you go back inside and let this gentleman go look for his friend. I’m sure your sister will be home soon, and she won’t want you out here gabbing with, well, with strangers.”
“It’s okay,” the older child said. “If he does anything bad, we’ll get you to call the police.”
Obviously, the right thing to do would be to leave. But Brennan wondered if the girls knew, or had seen, Ignatius Boyle when he came to the house last night. There appeared to be only two flats in the place, one up, one down.
“How about this?” he suggested. “I’ll come up and talk to you on the landing. I won’t go into your apartment, because you don’t know me and I don’t know you. I’ll tell you what my friend looks like, and you can go in and draw a picture if you like, and bring it out to me. Maybe Mrs. Lewis will leave her door open, so
she can hear us in case she thinks of anything that might help. Does that sound all right?”
“Yeah, okay.”
“Great!”
The girls were on side. Mrs. Lewis looked skeptical, as well she might. But it was a dead certainty that she would listen in, so she would know soon enough that he was harmless. She stepped aside, and he walked up the stairs to the landing.
“I’m Florrie and this is Celia,” the younger girl announced. “She’s one year, six months, two weeks, and two days older than me, but I learned to read at four and she didn’t learn till she was almost six. She reads better than me now, though, because they have harder books in grade five.”
“I’m pleased to meet you, Florrie and Celia. My name is Brennan.”
“That’s a nice name,” Florrie said. “I don’t know anybody else called that. I know four Joshuas and three Kaylas. But there’s no other Florrie in our school. And no other Celia except one of the teachers and we don’t call her that; we call her Mrs. Randall, because you have to be polite at school. I’ll go in and get our drawing stuff and bring it out here.”
“Sure. Or maybe I could ask you about the fellow first, ask whether you’ve seen him. You might have. He said something about coming to this street to see someone.”
“I’m getting the papers and coloured pencils anyway, Celia,” Florrie declared and stepped past her into the flat.
“So, what school do you go to, Celia?”
“Oxford.”
“How do you like it?”
“It’s good.”
“What’s your favourite subject at Oxford?”
“Math. The teacher sneaks me extra work from the bigger kids, in grade six.”
“You must be very good at it.”
“Well, you know . . . What do you work at?”
“I have a school. A choir school.”
“So you’re a principal?”
“I’m more of a music director.”
“That sounds like more fun. We have music too.”
“Brennan! What kind of music do you play?” Florrie called from inside.
“I do Gregorian chant, and something called Renaissance polyphony; that’s where different parts of the choir sing different parts of the piece. Beautiful harmonies.”
“I’m really good at music!”
“Florrie, that’s bragging!” her sister said.
“Well, you were bragging to him about the math!”
“Oh, no! I guess I was.” She looked at Brennan, the picture of guilt. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to.”
“I didn’t think you were bragging; you were just stating a fact. Right?”
She grinned at him. “Right!”
He heard the banging of something that sounded like a guitar hitting the wall, and he winced. Out came Florrie with one hand clutching the neck of a guitar, the other arm barely enclosing a bunch of drawing supplies. She dropped everything on the floor. The guitar suffered another blow.
“I’ll play something for you. But you can go first.”
“No, no, I won’t.”
“Please? Sing one of your songs for us.”
He decided on something short and simple, one of the most beautiful melodies this side of heaven: the Easter plainchant “Alleluia.”
“Wow, that’s really good!”
“Yeah,” Celia agreed, “it is.”
“Sing us another one.”
“Well,” he said, “this is a sad one but you can make up your own ending. It’s about a cat that got sick. So if you don’t want to hear it, I’ll understand.”
“No! No! We want to hear it, don’t we, Cel?”
“Yes, please.”
“All right. It’s an old folk song I used to hear when I was a little boy in Ireland.”
“Cool!”
Departing far from his standard repertoire, he launched into “Pussy Got the Measles.”
“Pussy got the measles on the first day of spring, the first day of spring, the first day of spring. Pussy got the measles on the first day of spring, the poor, the poor, the poor wee thing.” He revised the lyrics as he went along, so in this version the poor creature survived the ordeal.
“That is a great song! The other kids will be jealous ’cause I’ll know it and they never heard it before. I want to learn it!”
“I’ll send you the words and music.”
“Great! Oh, here’s the paper and pencils in case we need them to make a poster. Now I’ll play you a song on the guitar.”
“Lovely. What are you going to play?”
“What’s the name of it, Celia?”
“‘My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean.’”
“It’s got three chords in it. I know them all.”
Florrie plunked herself down on the floor, cross-legged, and bent over the guitar, her face about three inches from her left hand as she formed her first G chord. She struck the strings and it sounded like hell.
“Oh, no! That’s not it!” She looked crossly at the instrument, and tried again, louder this time. Same result. “But my fingers are right!”
“It’s out of tune,” Brennan said.
“Oh, no! That guy at the store said it was good!”
“He said we could bring it back if there was something wrong with it, Florrie.”
“And there is. It’s no good!”
“It’s second-hand,” Celia explained.
“There’s nothing wrong with it,” Brennan assured them. “Second-hand guitars are often the best. I’ll tune it for you.”
“Can you do that?”
“Sure, I can.” He gently removed it from Florrie’s grasp and played each string. He noticed she had her name printed on a yellow sticker on the back, Florrie Nelson. Then he closed his eyes for a second, found E in his head, and tuned the first string. He did the others in sequence, strummed it a bit, was satisfied, and handed it back. “Nice sound. It’s a good guitar.”
“Is it?” Florrie’s eyes lit up.
“Take good care of it now. Don’t drop it or bang it around.”
“I never do!”
She got herself into position again, then played “My Bonnie,” and her sister and guest applauded.
“Now let me ask you about this friend I’m looking for.”
“Okay,” they said in unison.
“His name is Ignatius.”
“Wow!” the little one said. “Nobody at my school has that name!”
“No, I suppose not. He has grey hair that’s a little bit wild-looking, and he usually wears a light tan-coloured coat. He may have — ”
“That’s the guy that was here,” Florrie said.
“Yeah, that’s him,” her sister agreed.
“Oh, good, then I don’t have the wrong house after all.”
“No, this is the right place,” Florrie agreed, “but he doesn’t live here. He just came to see my sister.”
Brennan looked at Celia, but she shook her head. “Not me. Our other sister.”
“Older sister?”
“Oh, yeah, she’s way older. She’s like a mum.”
“And this man came to visit.”
“Yeah.”
“Does he come here often?”
“No,” Celia replied, “only a couple of times. But that was the first visit in a long time. I think she sees him other places, though. Even if he’s old.” She looked at Brennan, and a blush spread over her cheeks. “You’re not as old as him. I don’t mean old is bad.”
“No, no, I understand.”
The phone started ringing in the apartment, and Florrie leapt up to answer it. “I’ll get it!”
Celia laughed. “I don’t know why she says that. She always gets the phone. Nobody else even tries anymore.”
“So who lives with you? Florrie, and your
older sister? Anyone else?”
“No. Nobody else now. Our mum is in a special place. For wheelchairs.”
“Oh. I’m sorry to hear it. What’s your big sister’s name?”
“Maggie.” Celia leaned towards him. “She works with rats.”
“Ah.”
“Celia!” Florrie called from inside. “It’s Maggie. She’s gotta work late.”
Celia said, “Sometimes she works late because the rats — ”
Florrie came out then and relayed the rest of the conversation: “Maggie said to eat the rest of the waffles. They don’t have to be heated up or anything. And she’ll do the dishes when she gets home. And she said . . .” She glanced at Brennan, then looked quickly away. “She said we can’t, uh, have anybody over. To visit. So we have to go in and lock the door.”
“Good advice,” Brennan agreed. “I’ll be running along. Thank you for your help.”
“You’re welcome,” said Celia.
“Maggie said you have to leave,” Florrie told him, “but I told her you weren’t bad and that you were looking for somebody. Except I couldn’t remember how to say his name.”
“Oh, that’s all right. What did she say to that?”
“That’s when she said we couldn’t have anybody over, and we have to stay inside by ourselves. And she’s going to make up some new rules about us answering the doorbell.”
“I understand. She sounds like a very good big sister.”
“She is!”
“All right, Florrie and Celia, I’m going now. It’s been lovely to meet you. God bless you.” He made a little, unobtrusive sign of the cross in their direction.
“Okay, bye, Brennan!”
“Bye!”
He went down the stairs and looked into the open door of the downstairs flat. Mrs. Lewis was standing just inside, making no effort to pretend she had not been listening. That came as a relief. Brennan was glad the little ones had somebody paying attention to the comings and goings in the house.