by Ray Russell
“You wouldn’t dare!” Mrs. Farley roared, belligerently.
Quietly, Berardi told her, “Go get the girl, ma’am.”
“I will not.”
Berardi turned to Gregory. “Father?”
“I can’t.”
“All right,” said Berardi, walking toward the stairs, “you don’t leave me any choice.”
Gregory leaped in front of him, blocking the stairs. “No!” he said. “She didn’t do it! You must not!”
“Get out of my way, Father.”
“No! I know she didn’t do it!”
“Get out of my way!”
Will he push me aside? wondered Gregory. Will he lay hands on a priest of his Church and then hate himself for it, poor man?
But the questions were never answered, for at that moment the doorbell rang.
With the bitter humor of frustration, Berardi said, “Saved by the bell, Father. I’ll get that—it’s probably one of my men—but I’ll be back. And when I come back I’m going straight upstairs whether you and His Excellency like it or not.”
He walked swiftly out of the room, into the vestibule. The people in the living room heard the door open, then heard a quick soft exchange of male voices.
Followed by Berardi, Father Halloran entered the room.
Mrs. Farley greeted him with tears: “Oh, Father, it’s good to see you . . . things have been so terrible here since you left . . .”
Gregory greeted him with silence, fearing what might now come.
The Bishop greeted him with a question: “James, my son—why have you come back?” He looked into Father Halloran’s face. It was haggard, taut, the eyes ringed with the poison of sleeplessness and shrouded in an anguish such as the Bishop, in all his years, had never seen in the eyes of man or woman. When Father Halloran answered the question, his voice was a whisper so dark, so low, so full of haunt, that at the sound of it the Bishop’s skin suddenly prickled with cold dread.
Father Halloran said, “To confess.”
• • •
“Wait!” Berardi said immediately. “Don’t say a word, Father Halloran.” Berardi was on the phone in a second, barking orders to bring a tape recorder to the rectory. It was there within fifteen minutes. While waiting, Father Halloran accepted a small glass of brandy from Gregory and said words of comfort to Mrs. Farley.
The transcript of the tape was typed for Berardi that evening.
FATHER JAMES HALLORAN: The man Garth came to me one day to confess. He told me—
BISHOP CONRAD CRIMMINGS: James!
FATHER JAMES HALLORAN: I know, Your Excellency. You’re shocked that I am about to betray a secret of the confessional. And well you should be. But the betrayal, I’m afraid, has already been committed, as you will see, so what I say now can’t make it any worse.
BISHOP CONRAD CRIMMINGS: You betrayed a penitent, James?
FATHER JAMES HALLORAN: Yes.
LIEUTENANT FRANK BERARDI: Go on, Father.
FATHER JAMES HALLORAN: He had been carrying a terrible burden with him for a long time, and at last he had to shake it off. Several years before, I think he said six, he deliberately allowed his wife to drown. Pushed her into the water from a rowboat. I asked him why he had committed that terrible crime. “For the money,” he said. “For the insurance money.” He said there was a $10,000.00 policy. I know $10,000.00 is a great deal of money, but to kill somebody for it—your own wife—the amount did not seem to match the enormity of the crime, and I was profoundly shocked. However, men have killed for less, I know. For a warm coat or a crust of bread.
Then I began to ask him details. The insurance money, who was the beneficiary?
“I am,” he said.
Nobody else? I asked him.
“Susan,” he said. “We’re joint beneficiaries.”
And that frightened me. He had killed his wife for the money, and the money was not even his alone. Why should he stop with one murder? What was to prevent him from killing the daughter, too, so the money would be all his? A six-year interval—it was enough to offset suspicion. I voiced my fears frankly. I told him I could not absolve him, that he was not in a state of grace if there was another murder in his heart.
He said, “No, I couldn’t do that, I could never kill Susan, I love her too much, I love her, you must believe me, Father!”
And I did, I did. If you had heard him, you would have believed him, too. He sounded completely sincere—and yet when he spoke of his love for his daughter, something—I’ve never known what, I could not pin it down—something told me that things were strangely awry.
He left the confessional, after assuring me he would give himself up. Days went by. I would see him—on the street, in church on Sundays—free as air. The days turned into weeks and still he had not given himself up.
And now I began to have the first of many sleepless nights. I was helpless—I knew of a murderer who might murder again, and yet I could tell no one. Nights, I would lie sleepless on my bed, devising plans, ways by which I could arouse the suspicions of the police without actually telling them.
But even as I evolved these elaborate schemes, I knew I could not put them to use. It is not only by revealing the words he hears in confession that a priest violates the confessional. If he uses the information in any way it is a violation. He must go about his duties as if he had never heard the confession, as if it had never been spoken. It must not affect what he does or says in any way at all.
I remembered an example they used to give us in the seminary. If a priest hears, in the confessional box, that someone has placed a time bomb under his bed, he can do nothing about it. He must not use the knowledge in any way that will cause him to vary his usual routine. He must not remove the bomb, he must not sleep elsewhere that night. He must do only what he would ordinarily do—go to bed, in his own bed, at the usual hour.
So you see, there was nothing, absolutely nothing I could do with the information in my possession, even though I feared for the life of the daughter.
Day after day went by, night after night, and still Garth the murderer was free. I went to his home, talked to him privately. I urged him to confess his crime to the police. I ordered him. Finally, I pleaded with him. I said I would not leave his house until he had, in my presence, called the police and given himself up. He said he would give himself up as soon as he and Susan returned from a little vacation in the country they were taking in a few weeks. He had promised it to her for so long, he said, and it was the last thing he could ever do for her, after all.
He made me believe it. I left. But later, here at the rectory, I began to think. A vacation in the country. Why? The better to kill her, just as he had killed her mother?
Then, Your Excellency, word came from you that there was a post for me at Guardian Angel. I felt immediately relieved. At the orphanage, with new work to occupy me, without the sight of Garth before my eyes every day, perhaps I could forget my dilemma, and my frustrations would cease. Well, it didn’t happen that way, actually. At the orphanage I saw girls of Susan’s age, even one or two as pretty as Susan. They acted as reminders, and the feeling that I had abandoned her to murder never left me. I dreamt of seeing her dead, drowned like her mother, I dreamt of her accusing me of leaving her, even though in my rational moments I knew I could have acted in no other way. But all this is beside the point.
When Father Gregory here arrived at St. Michael’s, I introduced him to the people of the parish and passed on to him any information I thought he would find useful. But I kept putting off introducing him to Garth and his daughter—out of weakness—because I feared I would be tempted to violate the confessional. On my last day, Father Sargent and I were making our final rounds. Among others, we stopped in to see Mr. Hennessy, the pharmacist.
“You wouldn’t be stopping by the Garths, Father?” he asked me.
I said no
—or, rather I started to—and then I realized that I could put it off no longer, I could not avoid meeting with the Garths again. So I told Hennessy yes.
“Perhaps you wouldn’t mind dropping off a prescription?” Hennessy asked me. He’s been doing that for years; it’s become a kind of joke almost. I told him I’d be glad to.
LIEUTENANT FRANK BERARDI: Yes, go on, Father.
FATHER JAMES HALLORAN: Father Sargent can confirm the fact that, later that evening, I handed Garth a bottle of pills.
LIEUTENANT FRANK BERARDI TO FATHER GREGORY SARGENT: Can you, Father?
FATHER GREGORY SARGENT: Yes. That’s right.
LIEUTENANT FRANK BERARDI TO FATHER JAMES HALLORAN: The wrong pills?
FATHER JAMES HALLORAN: Yes.
LIEUTENANT FRANK BERARDI: The druggist made a mistake?
FATHER JAMES HALLORAN: No. Hennessy’s prescription was correct. The blame is mine.
LIEUTENANT FRANK BERARDI: I don’t understand.
FATHER JAMES HALLORAN: It wasn’t until just this morning, at the orphanage, that I discovered my terrible mistake. We are having an unseasonably warm September there, too, and I’ve always been subject to heat prostration when the weather is sultry. I reached into my pocket for my salt tablets, which I always carry this time of year. I found the little bottle, opened it, shook out a tablet and was about to take it, when I noticed there was a label on the bottle. My bottle had never had a label on it. This one had. Although it was exactly the same size and shape bottle as mine, and although the pills were at first glance very similar in appearance to my salt tablets, this bottle bore the label of Hennessy’s pharmacy and, typed on it, “Robert Garth. Take as directed.” I had given Garth my salt tablets. And he had a bad heart, I knew.
The first thing I did was pick up the phone and call the pharmacy. I wanted to tell Hennessy to get another bottle of pills to Garth right away—the pills he had were worthless, worse than worthless. Dangerous. But before I could tell Hennessy the reason for my call, he gave me the news of Garth’s death.
LIEUTENANT FRANK BERARDI: News sure travels fast in this neighborhood.
FATHER JAMES HALLORAN: So I didn’t say anything about the pills. I fabricated some excuse for calling, and then I got here as quickly as I could.
BISHOP CONRAD CRIMMINGS: James, we understand how you feel, but you mustn’t blame yourself.
FATHER JAMES HALLORAN: Yes. Yes, I must.
BISHOP CONRAD CRIMMINGS: But why?
LIEUTENANT FRANK BERARDI: His Excellency’s right, Father.
FATHER JAMES HALLORAN: No. I am to blame. Truly to blame. Ask Father Sargent. He knows what I mean.
BISHOP CONRAD CRIMMINGS: Do you, Gregory?
FATHER GREGORY SARGENT: I may.
FATHER JAMES HALLORAN: It was just a mistake, yes, but why do people make mistakes? Father Sargent—you know about such things. The unconscious mind, slips of the tongue and the hand; seemingly meaningless, seemingly accidental slips that are really an expression of anxieties and hostilities deep within the mind. Isn’t that so?
FATHER GREGORY SARGENT: Yes, but—
FATHER JAMES HALLORAN: Hennessy put in the palm of my hand the little bottle that contained Garth’s heart medicine. His life. And when I withheld it from Garth, I murdered him. Not only did I murder him—I also violated the confessional, for I used my knowledge. Unconsciously, yes, but I used it all the same, just as if I had removed a time bomb from under my bed. That’s what it was like—a time bomb in my brain, ticking and ticking for days and nights, for weeks, until—dear God forgive me!
BISHOP CONRAD CRIMMINGS: My boy, there is no question of God forgiving you. You cannot be blamed for the workings of your unconscious mind. The Church would never consider what you did a violation of the confessional.
FATHER JAMES HALLORAN: Perhaps the Church simply has never had anything quite like this to contend with.
BISHOP CONRAD CRIMMINGS: Nonsense, nonsense.
FATHER JAMES HALLORAN: Are you so sure, Your Excellency? Can you be sure? Think of it. If a priest can violate the confessional at the whim of his unconscious mind, if he does not have control over his total self, then the confessional is meaningless! It becomes a farce! Oh God. Think about it, Your Excellency. Think hard about it, I beg you.
LIEUTENANT FRANK BERARDI TO FATHER JAMES HALLORAN: I’d like you to come with me and make a short statement, Father.
XV
THE HAND OF GOD
Gregory had always disliked snow. Its beauty was transitory, for after that first smooth white quilting, it became a thing of depressing ugliness; lumpy, rigid, veined with dirt and offal, a thing to offend the eye, snarl traffic, and make walking a joyless drudgery. From heavenly to hellish it could go in a single day—a sign, perhaps, of how a piece of God’s work could be snatched away and perverted by God’s Enemy.
But now, as he walked up the snowy pathway to the rectory door, his arms loaded with packages, his hat and coat-shoulders sequined with white, he forgot his dislike. On the porch, he stamped his feet, loosing the packed snow that clung to them, but he stamped without his customary resentment. Inside, he pried off his rubbers in the vestibule, not bothering to make mental note of its drabness.
Pungent aromas met him—the mingled scents of Christmas tree and brewing coffee. Christmas shopping and the brisk weather had given him an appetite. Dinner would not be ready for more than an hour, but perhaps he could talk Mrs. Farley out of a pre-dinner slice of her voluptuous holiday fruitcake and a deep cup of that coffee.
Bearding the housekeeper in her den, the rectory kitchen, Gregory succeeded, but only after putting up with her admonitions about “spoiling your supper.”
“Any calls while I was gone?” he asked as he prepared to carry away the snack.
“Just Mrs. Barlow,” said the housekeeper.
“Oh?”
“She’s giving a party or somesuch Saturday night and says she’d love to have you. Said she’d call back.”
“Fine. I’ll be working in the study, Mrs. Farley. Call me when dinner is ready.”
“That I will, Father.”
He carried the fruitcake and coffee into his study, smiling inwardly at the thought of Mrs. Barlow. Ever since she had been proved so seriously in error last September, she had become overly attentive and solicitous, inviting Gregory to dinners and gatherings at least once a week, so often that Gregory could not accept all the invitations. Since he had in a sense bested her, stood up to her, she now respected him and considered him her equal rather than her lackey. She was a bright woman and a lively hostess who drew interesting people to her. Gregory had come to find her little soirées not unattractive.
Alone in his study, he munched the fruitcake and opened the Christmas cards that had arrived while he was shopping. One, a simple Nativity scene, was signed in ballpoint, Frank Berardi & family. Gregory had grown quite friendly with the Lieutenant after the trouble had blown over. Berardi, though a rough man with sketchy education, was blessed with a rich vein of humor and a shrewd intelligence that was without arrogance. The two professional men had found themselves liking each other almost at once, hungrily exchanging theological and criminological lore.
An expensive and rather vulgar card, resplendent with gilt and flocking, had come to Gregory from The Glencannons (not signed; embossed). Bruce Glencannon had augmented the embossing with a personally endowed message: “Sincerely hope we can get together soon.” Gregory had talked with Glencannon at one of Mrs. Barlow’s gatherings, and Glencannon had seemed to have come away satisfied that Gregory was a good sort, even though—like Father Halloran—he had discouraged the idea of confession-by-Dictaphone.
A very plain envelope was the last of the group awaiting Gregory. The address had been typed: Gregory Sargent (the “Father” was glaringly absent), St. Michael’s Church, City. Gregory tore it open. It contained a single sheet of chea
p paper, on which was printed in hand-set type: LET’S PUT THE X BACK IN XMAS. CHRIST WAS A POWER-MAD JEW. It bore no signature, nor did Gregory require one to know the sender. He made a mental note to call upon him after the holidays. Gregory was confident he possessed enough know-how to demolish the pamphleteer’s arguments in any debate.
His mail attended to, Gregory opened a drawer in his desk and took out a notebook. He turned the pages of a journal he had been keeping. From these hasty, private notes, he would soon compose the formal report on the exorcism which the Bishop was expecting from him.
He read here and there, sampling what he had written, frowning slightly when he came upon passages which shied away from an explicit expression of belief in a literal Devil. These passages would have to be recast with great tact, for the Bishop—still worried about Gregory’s attitude—would read them closely, ready to pounce upon any small kernel of doubt or hesitancy.
Gregory picked up a pencil and wrote at some length:
One thing seems clear to me at any rate: there was an attempt by Garth to gain incestuous knowledge of Susan. I say “attempt,” although I have no way of knowing it was not in fact consummated. I prefer to believe it was no more than an attempt, and it seems unlikely we will ever know the full truth. Susan has told me there is a blank day in her life, a day she can never remember—all she recalls of this mysterious day is that her father spoke of his love for her at that time. It would appear—though I am still only guessing—that the love he spoke of was the physical variety; that he made actual advances and perhaps even consummated an act; that Susan, horrified and repelled, suppressed the entire loathsome incident. This could account for the blank day. And Garth’s conduct in the rectory bedroom, his over-excitement when the subject of incest was brought up, his cursing of Susan in the very words we were told he used at an earlier time—“Damn you, damn you to Hell”—all point convincingly toward an attempted or successful act of incest. Until such time as Susan can undergo analysis in depth, possibly with the aid of hypnotism or sodium pentothal, we will never know. For the only other person who ever possessed the knowledge is dead: Garth.