Postmark Berlin

by Anne Emery

  There were only three possibilities: (1) Meika was so distressed over the situation with Lieutenant-Colonel MacNair that she ran all around the southern tip of the Halifax peninsula and swam out into the winter surf and took her own life; (2) MacNair somehow got her into the depths or the surf of the Atlantic Ocean, threw or pushed her in, either in a rage or in a move calculated to keep her from threatening his marriage and his family life; or (3) someone else came into the picture between midnight and seven thirty-five that morning, a random killer or someone who coincidentally had a motive to kill Meika Keller. Monty knew which of those scenarios a jury would find most likely.

  Chapter V

  Brennan

  Brennan was feeling the morning-after effects of his Monday night, this time drinking and smoking alone in his room. Not the best condition for a man morally required to attend an event at which he would be most unwelcome: the funeral for Meika Keller. Although she had adopted Saint Bernadette’s parish as her own, it was no surprise that Commodore Rendell did not choose Father Burke’s church for his wife’s funeral. It was in fact held at a chapel on the naval base, CFB Stadacona, in Halifax’s north end, and the chapel was Saint Brendan’s. Appropriate for a naval chapel to be named for Saint Brendan the Navigator, who, according to legend, had travelled far from his native Ireland in the sixth century in a leather-hulled boat. Some even maintained that he had made it all the way to Newfoundland. Most people scoff at the idea, but then they had also scoffed at the story that the Vikings had landed in Newfoundland, until their settlement was uncovered in the 1960s. Well, wherever the Irish saint had sailed to, he was honoured as a navigator in places far from his home in County Kerry.

  But that history would not be enough to distract Brennan today, any more than would the magnificent building he saw on the base. He was told it was Admiralty House, a neo-classical building in stone with rows of multipaned windows, three dormers, and side chimneys. He would love to have gone in there to explore the interior, but he was called to a much more painful duty. Monsignor Michael O’Flaherty, God bless him, not only offered to accompany Brennan but came up with a ruse to keep a desperately keen Mrs. Kelly from attending the funeral. Mike told her that the bishop might drop by with a cousin who was home from Boston. Brennan knew that the cousin had been in town for a week already and was planning to stay until after Easter, but it was not technically a lie to say he and Cronin might drop by.

  The church was jammed with mourners, and there was an easel at the side of the altar with a large photograph of Meika, standing atop a hill somewhere, a pack on her back, her hair blowing around in the wind, a big smile on her face. Brennan and Mike sat near the back of the chapel, sang along with the hymns, walked up to the altar with all the rest of the mourners for Communion, and then listened to the words of remembrance delivered by family members and friends before the final commendation. According to the rules governing Catholic funerals, these were to be short pieces highlighting the faith of the person who had died. Brennan had never stuck to this format; he let the people say whatever they felt moved to say, and the priest here at Saint Brendan’s was obviously cut from the same cloth.

  Brennan felt as if he was taking a lash of the whip every time a poignant memory was evoked. There was a young musician who had failed in her attempts to join the symphony orchestra as a clarinet player. She met Meika at a fundraising event and ended up telling her the whole sad tale. “Meika said, ‘Come to me at Saint Mary’s on Monday and bring your clarinet.’ So I did. I went to her office and she nodded her head at me and said, ‘Play it.’ I felt a bit self-conscious, but I played her a couple of pieces. It didn’t go all that well, so I stopped and sang the notes to put them in my memory and played them again on the clarinet. When I finished, she said, ‘No wonder you have not been accepted into the orchestra.’ And I wanted to run out the door and keep on running. I was mortified! Then she said, ‘You are not doing justice to it.’ I could hardly bear to ask but I had to. ‘Not doing justice to what?’ The composer, the instrument? ‘Not doing justice to your voice. Your voice has a dark, rich timbre; a magnificent contralto. You should be in the Halifax Camerata Singers or in the opera program at Dal.’ I thought I was too old, but she shook her head. ‘I will introduce you to the people you should know.’ I had sung in a couple of choirs at school but never thought I was any good because I couldn’t reach the high notes! So I had put all my effort into the clarinet. I took lessons for years, so I thought I should be making something out of that. But Meika set me on the right course. I’m singing Cornelia, wife of Pompey, in Handel’s Giulio Cesare in Vancouver next month! Thanks to Meika!” She smiled, then teared up, and said, “God bless you, Meika. I miss you and will never forget you!”

  There were other uplifting stories, and some that were heart-scalding, and then the two Rendell children got up, grown children, Lauren and Curtis. Lauren stepped up first; she was a short, slim young woman with long wavy light-brown hair. Her face was ravaged with grief. She held a sheet of paper in her trembling hands. She started to speak but couldn’t manage it. She tried again, and her brother took hold of her arm to steady her. But she fell weeping into his arms. Hubert Rendell got up and escorted her back to her seat. Then he rose again and passed the page to Curtis. The young man, with his military bearing and strong features, looked as if he would fill his father’s shoes someday.

  Curtis began to read his sister’s words. “When I was eleven, I was starting to become self-conscious about my hair.” He put his hand up and ran it back over his short-cropped brown hair, and there was gentle laughter in the church. “Even though it was a nice colour of blond back then.” He looked upwards and made a face as if to say Where are those golden locks now? And again there was laughter. “It was thick and curly and I couldn’t do a thing with it.” Curtis looked up from the paper and said, “Story of my life.” And the congregation loved it. “One Friday at school, we were all to come dressed as a character from a book. I wanted to be the girl from an old book I loved, National Velvet.” Curtis raised his hands in a gesture that said I’m a natural for the part, then returned to the reading. “And of course I didn’t have a horse, so the next best thing was the jockey’s cap that my grandfather had found for me. But my hair wouldn’t cooperate. So Mum — Meika is Mum to me, always — did my hair up in beautiful, elaborate braids and said I now looked like a little German girl and I would go as Gretel in Hansel and Gretel. And she took a pair of our curtains and somehow sewed them into a costume that looked like a German style of dress. Except Mum, well, she was so smart at science and all kinds of things but not sewing. But I loved my braids so much, I didn’t even care about the sloppy seams in the dress. And I had great fun playing Gretel at school.

  “But the point of this story isn’t about my hair. The point is what Mum said to me while she was doing the braids. She said —” And here it was Curtis’s voice that faltered. He cleared his throat and said, “‘You know I had a little girl. I used to braid her hair like this.’ Dad had told us that she had a daughter who had died, and her name was Helga, but Mum — Meika — never talked about it. And I was a typical young girl, full of insecurities, and I blurted out, ‘Am I your little girl now?’ But even at that age I knew enough that a child who died could never be replaced by another, and I was anxious and worried about what she would say. But what she said to me that day has stayed with me my whole life, sustained me my whole life, and it always will. She said, ‘You are my little girl, Lauren. I love you as if I made you myself. Don’t you ever, not for one minute, ever doubt it.’ And Mum, I love you as if you made me yourself. I will never stop missing you.”

  Curtis stepped down then and took his sister’s hand, and she stood with him facing the congregation. Curtis looked up and said, “Mum, the loss of you is so great that I won’t even try to put it into words. But you’re up there, and you know. I see your face before me every night before I go to sleep. And we will find whoever put you in that water, whoever
took you from us and took your life from you!”

  Brennan looked over at the photo of Meika, her yellow hair blown about by the wind, and he pictured that same hair being tossed about by the waves, the face under the water, her eyes wide open and locked on Brennan’s own. When the Mass was ended, he slipped away like a criminal desperate to avoid detection.

  * * *

  Back on his home turf, Brennan struggled to turn his mind away from the grief over the woman’s death, the mortification over his neglect of her on the final night of her life, and his persistent hangover, and he concentrated instead on one of the joys of his life: his choir school. To be working with bright young students; fostering their appreciation of the greatest, most sublime music ever composed; hearing that music sung in the clear, ringing tones of their young voices was heaven on earth to Brennan. But somebody was having trouble with her music theory. Brennan was looking over the tests the students had written last Friday, and even allowing for the difficulty of the subject, the performance of Normie Collins was far below her usual high standard. Brennan wanted to talk to her but didn’t want to alarm her. Normie was a sensitive child, to the point that she sometimes had experiences of second sight. Brennan had met her spooky old great-grandmother in Cape Breton, who had the same ability. Brennan tended to dismiss out of hand most reports of people who claimed to have “psychic” visions, but with Normie it was genuine, he knew. Just as were his own occasional experiences of that kind. Normie’s nature was such that she was far too ready to find fault with herself, and she was constantly on guard against hurting the feelings of others. Brennan had known her since she was just a little girl, when he first met Maura MacNeil and Monty Collins. Well, he had to speak to her, but he would put her mind at ease right away. The students in the upper grades had a practice session in the auditorium; he would come up with something then.

  When Father Burke strode into the auditorium, there was a mad shuffle of papers, and young voices fell silent, as everyone affected a pose of the hardworking student going over his and her music sheets before the rehearsal. “Good morning, Father,” several of them chanted. One of the boys tried to be subtle as he shifted a large piece of paper under his desk. Richard Robertson. This will be good, thought Brennan, knowing Richard’s standing as a wit and a wag. So, Brennan reached back for a phrase wielded by prissy schoolmarms against students from time immemorial. “Have you something to share with the class, Richard Robertson?”

  “Uh, I’ve already shared it, Father. They told me it’s not worth wrapping today’s mackerel catch in, so . . .”

  “Ah, now, you’re too tough on yourself, lad. Let’s have a look.”

  Richard’s face was the colour of a boiled lobster. But he knew resistance was futile. He pulled out the paper, on which was drawn an excellent likeness of Father Burke looking imperious in a Roman collar and black soutane. His expression was stony. Even so, he looked much better in the portrait than he felt this morning. It appeared that Richard had started to draw a conversation bubble before he was interrupted. Brennan would love to know what words the talented young artist had intended to put in his mouth. But, for now, he’d give the talented young artist a ribbing.

  “Have you not kept up with modern art, Robertson?”

  “Um, I don’t know.”

  “Here, let me show you the modern, 1990s way to draw a face.”

  “Okay.”

  Brennan went to the board and drew one of those ubiquitous, supremely annoying smiley faces you saw everywhere these days. “Isn’t that better now?”

  The kids all laughed, and Richard said, “Thank you, Father. I’ll change it right away.”

  Brennan leaned towards the young fellow and said, “I’m only after blackguarding you, Richard. Your picture is brilliant. Don’t change a thing. And tell Mrs. Moretti —” the art teacher “— to make sure you get to do heaps of portraits this term. I’ll be happy to model for you any day of the week.”

  So, he had them laughing. But the laughs would be short-lived. They were about to rehearse Anton Bruckner’s sombre setting of the “Christus Factus Est.”

  “Turn to the Bruckner.”

  “Scary,” Richard muttered.

  “Scary indeed,” their instructor agreed. “There’s nothing more harrowing than the events of Good Friday. Jesus taken prisoner and executed in the most brutal fashion. Translate that first sentence for me. What do the words mean?”

  He looked out at the assembled students, and they recited the words, “Christ became obedient for us unto death, even unto death on the cross.” The austerity of the Latin, the D minor key, and Bruckner’s ominous opening chords, with the melody line staying on the low D for the first two and a half measures, made it even more harrowing. Christus factus est pro nobis obediens usque ad mortem. He always got chills whenever he sang or heard it.

  And so did Normie by the look of it. She was susceptible to the moods induced by music, all the more so with a piece as haunting as this one. They sang it through until the choirmaster was satisfied, and then he told them he would be back in ten minutes for Victoria’s “Popule Meus.”

  “Get your books out and read over your parts. Normie, could you come and help me for a minute?”

  “Yes, Father.” Always self-conscious, she avoided the curious eyes of her schoolmates as she left the auditorium.

  He led her into an empty classroom and gently closed the door behind them.

  “Am I in trouble?” the poor little thing asked him immediately.

  He smiled at her. “Sure, when have you ever been in trouble, Normie?”

  “Maybe I just never got caught.”

  “Ah. That must be it. Well, you’ve not been caught this time either.”

  “It’s my theory test, isn’t it?”

  “I know you’re a whiz at music theory, so I was a little surprised at your Circle of Fifths.” That was the Circle of Fifths showing the keys, their signatures, and the number of sharps and flats for each.

  “I’m sorry. I know it! I just made a mess when I started putting the sharps in and then I . . . Can I do it again?”

  “Don’t be worrying about one little test. No need to do it again. I know that you know all the keys. I’m the one who’s worried here, and I’m worried about you, acushla.”

  “How come?”

  “I’ve a feeling that you’re not your old self at all. Is something wrong?”

  “No.” He waited, and then she said, trying for casualness, “It’s always sad to sing about Jesus being . . . taken prisoner, and then the way they . . .”

  “But is there something else? Can you tell me about it?”

  Her voice was shaky as she began her confession. “I failed, and you got hurt!”

  What on earth? “What do you mean, Normie?”

  “If it wasn’t for me being a failure, you would have been safe.”

  A lifetime of hearing people’s woes and their transgressions was no help to him here. “I’m not sure what you mean, Normie, but I’m sure you weren’t a failure in any way. And certainly not in any way that affected me.”

  “It’s about what happened to you!”

  “To me?”

  “They never told me! Even after we made that poster for you.”

  She must have meant the poster his students had made at the end of the last school year in anticipation of Brennan’s return from Belfast: when he was supposed to touch down in Halifax briefly and then head over to Rome for a year to direct a choir at Sancta Maria Regina Coeli. Which he never got to do, because he was arrested and imprisoned on terrorism charges in Belfast. Not knowing what had befallen him, the choir school children had made him a poster showing a choir of angels singing for him in the Roman church, with the Halifax kids’ faces pasted in over the angel bodies. Except for Richard Robertson, who was portrayed as a little devil. Brennan treasured that gift from his students in spite
of how things had turned out for him.

  “I love that poster, Normie. You know I have it framed and hanging in my room. And I think maybe you were the operating mind behind that lovely gift.”

  “It’s true. I was. Which shows even more how stupid I was.”

  “How on earth were you stupid, little one? I don’t understand.”

  “I only found out later what happened to you over there.”

  “Right.”

  “But I should have known about it.”

  “I’m sure your mum and dad didn’t want to upset you. It’s scary stuff being thrown into a jail over there. I don’t recommend it!”

  The dear little soul was weeping by this time. Brennan couldn’t take it. He got up and went around to her, gently lifted her from the chair and held her in his arms. They stood like that and he let her cry it all out. Whatever it was.

  Eventually, she said, “You know all about my gift. That I have the sight.”

  He gingerly released her and settled her back in the chair.

  “I know that,” he told her.

  “Well then, how come I didn’t see what was going to happen to you? I failed and you went to jail on account of it!”

  How could the child possibly look at that series of events and somehow conclude that she was responsible? He knew she had an overdeveloped conscience, always worrying about whether some little remark, or even the expression on her face, might hurt somebody’s feelings. But this! “Normie, darling, there was no failure on your part. And you aren’t responsible in any way for what happened to me.”

  “But don’t you get it? If my sight had been working right, if I hadn’t just been thinking of myself and all the fun I was having in Ireland, I would have had a vision of what was going to happen, and I would have warned you and you could have got away.”