Anne Emery Cecilian Vespers, a Mystery (pdf)

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Lord Sun-Shines-Out-His-Arse, set up a food bank on the grounds of
the estate, fed the people, and fed them well, too! No thin gruel for
the good people of Ballybegob. They ate nearly as well as himself, and
were glad of it, bless his soul! Brennan worked on Whitehead till he
came around to Brennan s way of thinking.
About what?
Whitehead s newly conceived charitable donation and tax write-
off.
Burke dunned money out of him for the church.
No, not the church. We wouldn t be seeing a cent of it. It was a
soup kitchen and food bank that the area sorely needed. Whitehead
woke up the next morning convinced of two things: he d never touch
alcohol again, and he was the great white hope of the local poor.
Brennan had done such a job on him that he Whitehead
believed the food program was his own idea. And the cream on the
top was the way Brennan had appealed to his vanity: Whitehead
would put on the best spread in town. So not only were the poor
going to eat; they were going to tuck in to a feast. The local gentry,
and ladies who lunch, would be dishing it up alongside Father Burke
and some other guys he dragooned into volunteering. It was a master
stroke on Brennan s part.
That s what Billy Logan missed. Or, more likely, chose to ignore.
Bill was kind of the cool guy on campus, till Brennan showed up and
didn t give a damn about being cool and got all the attention anyway.
Billy wasn t there when Burke came down from the head table, sober
as a Baptist, and said out of the corner of his mouth: My work is
done. Then he muttered a little comment about Whitehead: Feckin
arsehole thinks the famine was in nineteen forty-seven.
That sounds more like the Brennan I know. Now, down to busi-
ness. Fred.
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Yes?
Where were you on the afternoon of the murder? You must have
given the police your whereabouts.
Yes, I did, and they haven t come after me with handcuffs, so they
were obviously satisfied.
Exactly. Why don t you tell me, and I ll get out of your hair.
I was at a lecture, at the Atlantic School of Theology.
Oh. Beautiful spot they have, eh? Right on the water.
The wa yeah, on the water. Though we didn t have much time
to admire the view. There was a series of speakers, and we got deeply
into the subject of the apostolic succession, the Petrine primacy, the
deposit of faith, and all that stuff.
Why didn t you tell me this in the first place?
Because I m innocent. I didn t think there was any need to
belabour the point.
All right. Thanks, Fred. Appreciate it.
Okay, Monty. See you later.
I left the school and went back to my office, where I settled down
once again to the day s quota of legal work. The two guys I got released
on bail Monday had breached their conditions already, and were back
in the slammer. I was fed up with them, and made a call to a younger
lawyer to handle the next bail hearing. I had just completed the
arrangements for that when I got a call from Monsignor O Flaherty.
Good day to you, Monty!
Morning, Michael. What s up?
Brennan is concerned about us being out of things with respect to
the investigation; he s thinking I can help out with my contacts in
police circles. And indeed I can! I ve asked Moody Walker to give us
a hand.
Oh? Sergeant Emerson Walker had retired from the Halifax
Police Department a few years before. He and O Flaherty were cronies
and met frequently for coffee.
What did Brennan have to say about that?
Em, well, he remained tight-lipped, shall we say.
That wasn t surprising. Walker once suspected Brennan Burke of a
very serious crime. Burke had moved to Halifax two years ago. A
few months after he arrived, two young women were murdered. For
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various reasons, Moody Walker s suspicions had led him to Burke. I
was hired to defend him, and I secured an acquittal when I tracked
down the real killer. I had run into Walker a few times since then in
Tim Hortons and other places, and we had never alluded to the
murder trial.
We need another set of eyes and ears, Monty, Michael
O Flaherty said now, and Walker tells me he s going into business as
a private investigator. The police have Brother Robin. So they won t
be following our lead in other directions, at least not right away.
Moody can open doors for us that we can t open ourselves. He has
contacts with overseas law enforcement agencies, for one thing.
Yes, I see what you re saying.
So, em, Moody is coming over this morning to have a look
around. To eyeball some of the suspects, as he put it. Could you, per-
haps, accompany him for awhile today?
Sure I will, Mike. I ll be free in an hour or so.
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Chapter 4
. . . Ergo in infinitum remanet quaerere de impedimentis tollendis.
Further, the inquiry of counsel has to consider not only
what is to be done, but how to avoid obstacles. . . .
the inquiry about removing obstacles can go on indefinitely.
(Saint Thomas assures us this is not so.)
Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae
Emerson Moody Walker, our retired sergeant, was a compact man
in his late fifties, with cropped greying hair and seen-it-all brown eyes.
Early that afternoon I escorted him to Stella Maris Church, the
murder scene, which was no longer cordoned off. The demolition had
been postponed because of the investigation.
You were doing what over here, Collins, when the body was dis-
covered?
It was a prayer service. Chanting, candles, incense. The usual.
Usual. Right. Why can t the RCs just have someone bawling at
them from the pulpit on Sunday and leave it at that, like everybody
else? He was found here?
Yes. I described the scene, and what I recalled about the various
participants. When Moody had seen enough, we departed for the
schola.
What s the name of this place again? The schola? Couldn t they
just call it a school?
It s Latin, Moody. You know, like Nova Scotia. This might be a [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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