Cecilian Vespers Read online

  “Oh, I don’t know …” Her eyes rolled upwards. “Do you hear that?” I heard singing then, opera perhaps. “That’s been going on for —” she looked at her watch “— ten minutes now. And His Grace said he may be coming to visit! Imagine him hearing that! I’d better stay here to keep an eye out.”

  As Walker and I approached the staircase we heard a tenor voice soaring through the building at full volume; the piece was a fulsome “Ave Maria” I did not recognize. We climbed the stairs and approached the source: Sferrazza-Melchiorre’s room. His door was ajar. We found him singing to a portrait of the Virgin and Child, Mary’s naked breast grasped in the hands of her son. The priest was, as always, in full regalia, in his soutane and cape. His arms were flung out in a gesture of operatic passion. A bottle of vino rosso stood half-empty on his table. I turned my attention from him to Sergeant Walker. The retired cop was goggling at the caped figure as if it was his first day on the job as a rookie policeman. The priest turned and directed the last bars of the hymn, with no diminuendo, to me and my stunned companion. He raised his arms as he declaimed the amen.

  “Monty!” he cried, when the song of praise had ended. “Buongiorno! You have brought me a visitor. Wine?” He gestured towards the bottle with his jewelled hand.

  “None for me, thanks. Enrico Sferrazza-Melchiorre, this is Sergeant Walker. He’s helping us with the investigation.”

  Walker gave him a wary nod. Enrico grasped his hand, and said: “Piacere, signore! Make yourself quite at home.”

  We sat across from him, and he filled his wineglass, took time to savour a mouthful, then asked: “In what way can I help you?”

  “We have to find out if anyone saw anything out of the ordinary on the afternoon of the murder.”

  “Everything is out of the ordinary for us, Monty. We are all strangers here.”

  “What did you do that day?”

  “I went to our Mass in the morning, I returned here to my room, I went out to lunch.”

  “Where?”

  “I do not remember the name, a small place. Then I walked and walked around the city.”

  “Were you dressed in any, uh, distinctive kind of way that day?”

  “No.” The priest shrugged his caped shoulders. “I just wore what I always wear.”

  “Right,” Moody Walker said. “If you were out there, it shouldn’t be too hard to find people who noticed you. Why do you think Schellenberg was killed?”

  Again, the shrug. “Chissà!”

  “Come again?”

  “I say: who knows?”

  “You seem a little blasé about the death of one of your compadres.” Enrico didn’t respond, but pointed to a poster he had on the desk before him. There was a pair of scissors beside it, and some trimmings from the borders. “Are you an admirer of Jacques Villeneuve?” he asked Moody.

  “Sure. That’s the Reynard Alfa. Where did you get the poster?”

  A hesitation. “I found it blowing along the street, and I brought it here. Villanova, he is on our F3 team now. But he will be F1 some day.”

  “You follow Formula One racing?” Walker asked, barely masking his surprise.

  “Oh, yes. I was at Monza last year.”

  “Really! Watching the Ferraris?”

  “The Ferraris were driven by Prost and Mansell, placing second and fourth. I follow Riccardo Patrese. He is a cousin of mine. He was driving for Richards.”

  “Patrese came in about a minute behind Mansell. What were they, fourth and fifth?”

  “Yes, but it was not a minute. Mansell’s time was one hour, eighteen minutes, fifty-four seconds. Riccardo came in at one hour, nineteen minutes, twenty-three point one five something.”

  “Were you at Monza in ‘78 when Ronnie Peterson was killed? They blamed Patrese for that. Even brought charges against him.”

  “He was cleared of blame! By the Grand Prix Drivers Association and the courts!” Enrico’s face had reddened. “It was a tragedy for all concerned. We are thankful that Riccardo’s career recovered. He won the San Marino Grand Prix last year.”

  “He went over to Richards when?”

  “In 1988, and was cursed by those not-turbo-charged engines. They went to the Renault engine the next year, then the 1990 victory.”

  “You obviously follow this closely.”

  “Not as closely as I would like to. They have a form of racing where I live now, but —”

  “Where’s that?”

  “Mississippi.”

  “What do you mean, Mississippi?”

  “I now live in the southern United States.”

  “You’re puttin’ me on.”

  “Che cosa? Anyway, they have a form of racing there. I was joyful when I heard it being discussed by some in my congregation, and I attended a race. It is not the same thing at all.”

  “You went to a NASCAR race? I wish I’d seen that! You sitting there with all those good ole boys in the south.”

  “Please don’t misunderstand me. It provides entertainment for those who … who are less fortunate than others, but one could not properly compare it to, say, the Grand Prix at Monaco.” He shook his head, then looked at us as if remembering why we were there. “I am not keeping you from your rounds, I hope, Sergeant. Are you seeing others today as well?”

  We hadn’t planned on it, but it might be a good idea to pretend otherwise. “Yes, we are. Thank you for help, Enrico.” We left and closed the door behind us.

  “Well, he sure spilled his guts there, Sergeant. How do you do it?” “Piss off, Collins. He wasn’t going to give us anything. He says he was out walking. If he isn’t lying, somebody will remember seeing him in that outfit.”

  I spent half the afternoon in the office, dealing with a young guy who had just blown his chance to have a future outside the walls of a prison. He had committed an armed robbery, and he had two particularly aggravating factors working against him: he had carried a sawed-off shotgun and worn a mask. All of this meant five to eight years behind bars, if he got sentenced as an adult. The Crown had offered him a chance to avoid that. If he pleaded guilty, the Crown would not apply to have him sentenced as an adult. He would serve less than two years as a young offender, some of it already served. The client ignored my advice, refused the deal and, as predicted, was found guilty at trial. Now he had the gall to ask whether we could go back to the Crown and salvage the deal. No, we cannot. People don’t listen. It was a relief to turn to a client who was not guilty, the doctor I was defending in a medical malpractice case. He had failed to diagnose a rare neurological disorder in his patient. Was there a failure to diagnose? Yes. Did this amount to negligence? No. I was hard at work on my pretrial brief when I received a call from Moody Walker.

  “I heard from my man in Hamburg. Schmidt. He was able to identify the Schellenberg who served time in the same Nazi prison camp as Kurt Bleier’s father. It was Johann Schellenberg, a priest. Uncle of our Reinhold Schellenberg.”

  “Well! Did they know each other at the camp? Or before the camp?”

  “Schmidt didn’t have anything on that, one way or the other.”

  “Interesting, to say the least. Maybe it’s time to have a talk with Kurt.”

  “Definitely. I got something else too. I asked around some of the downtown businesses to see if anybody noticed the Caped Crusader window-shopping the day of the murder. I spent two hours and all I got was no, no, no. Nobody saw him. But then one of the girls in Mills Brothers said he sounded a lot like a guy her husband told her about. Husband works at the Jaguar dealership on Kempt Road. An Italian ‘in spiffy clothes’ test-drove a Jag that day but didn’t buy it. I took a run up there and the salesman wasn’t in, but guess what? Sferrazza-Melchiorre took the car out at one-fifteen on November 22 and didn’t bring it back till nearly four o’clock.”

  “No! Did he give them his real name, credit card, and all that?”

  “Yeah, he did.”

  “Well, then. He must have known we could find out.”

 
“I suspect this princeling doesn’t think the way you and I do, Collins!”

  I drove to Kempt Road after work in my non-Jag and went into the showroom. It took a few minutes to get through to the salesman who had signed the car out. He was an Englishman in his early thirties; who better to market an upscale British car? I explained why I was there. Yes, Nigel Soames remembered Enrico. He had test-driven not a Jag but an Aston Martin. And he had cut quite a figure in his obviously costly ensemble.

  “Was he dressed as a priest, European-style?”

  “A priest? No, he was in very pricey-looking Italian clothes. He wore a fawn cashmere topcoat with a yellow scarf wound round his neck, and he pulled on a pair of driving gloves when he took the wheel.”

  “I see.” Enrico had lied to us about where he was, and what he was wearing. “Was he alone?”

  “Yes. At least he was when he took the car out and when he brought it back.”

  “He had the car out for quite a while, I understand.”

  “Yes, he was gone for a good three hours.”

  “Were you concerned?”

  “Normally, I would be if a car was out that long. But he had told me he wanted to drive on the highway and on some twisty roads. That too would have concerned me but we had quite a chat about cars and driving. He’s something of an expert. Chaplain to the Grand Prix set perhaps! We had some Jacques Villeneuve posters on hand, and he took one of those. Anyway, all in all, I expected him to be gone for awhile. And I had his credit card for a damage deposit.”

  “Were you expecting a sale? After all, he was clearly not local.”

  “Well, he was Italian of course, but his current address was somewhere in the United States. Missouri or something.”

  “Mississippi.”

  “Quite right, yes. So it didn’t seem too much of a stretch to think he might purchase it here and drive it home.”

  “True. Was there anything out of line about the car when he brought it back? Any damage or soiling?”

  “No, apart from a bit of dust and dirt from the roadway, it was in tip-top shape. The only thing was that he had moved the passenger seat back and couldn’t return it to its normal position. So I helped him with that. It was a bit stiff, actually; I don’t think it had been moved in a while.”

  “Why did he move it?”

  “He didn’t say. There was no sign anybody had been in the seat. But, then, there wouldn’t be, really.”

  “Was there anything unusual about him when he returned?”

  “Not that I can recall.”

  “Can you remember him being calm or agitated?”

  “A little excited perhaps. I was hoping that was about the car. He did say he might be in touch again.”

  And that was that. Enrico may have been excited, but it may have been about the car. He may have had someone as a passenger, or he may have had some other reason to move the seat. I might ask him about the drive or I might not. If past experience was any indication, I would be no wiser by the end of the interview.

  Chapter 5

  Thou hast heard their reproach, O Lord,

  and all their imaginations against me.

  The lips of those that rose against me,

  and their device against me all the day.

  — Lamentations 3:61-63

  It was Friday night, December 6, and a gentle snow was falling. I enjoyed the snow from the warmth of my old house on Dresden Row. Sitting by the fire with my feet up, watching the flakes float down outside the multi-paned windows, it was as if I’d never left home. But the cry of my wife’s new baby jerked me back to the present day. Maura had plans to go out and, since our son Tom was not around, I was going to look after our little girl for the evening.

  “My homework’s all done!”

  “Let me see it, Normie.”

  “Aw, Daddy! You’re no fun. It’s as if it’s done ‘cause I know everything I have to do.”

  “So do it already! Then we’ll play.”

  “Okay, okay. We’ll play Scrabble and Clue and read stories.”

  “Sounds good.”

  Maura came into the room with the baby resting against her shoulder. His whimpering sounded like the prelude to a full battle cry. His mother looked exhausted, in desperate need of a break.

  “Okay, Normie. Bedtime doesn’t change just because Daddy’s here.

  Oh, sweetie, could you go get me the diaper bag? It’s in my room. I’ll change him just before we go, but I’ll still need a couple of spares.”

  Normie left to get the bag.

  “Where are you off to?” I asked MacNeil.

  “Dinner at the Silver Spoon with Fanny and Liz.”

  “Wouldn’t it be a bit more relaxing for you to have dinner with your two best friends without the baby?”

  Did she take him with her every time she went out? Where was the father, I wondered for the thousandth time, thinking simultaneously that I’d like to punch his lights out if he did show up.

  “No, it’s fine,” she said. “He’s used to going out on the town, aren’t you, Dominic?”

  He let fly with a scream then, and I saw her eyes clamp shut. She was on the verge of tears.

  “Leave him here with us,” I said.

  “No, he’ll be good. He just lies in his basket and sleeps beside the table.”

  “Leave him. In fact, why don’t you sleep over at Liz’s? You’ve got the baby on a bottle now, right?”

  “Yeah, but nobody’s pretending this is your problem, Collins. God knows, we’ve been through that.”

  “Whose problem is it?”

  No answer.

  “Where’s the baby’s father?”

  A hesitation. Then: “He’s not around much.”

  “Listen. Pack a bag and take a night off. We’ll handle things here, won’t we, Normie?” I said to my daughter when she came back with the baby’s gear. “We’re having a sleepover and Mum’s going to stay with Liz.”

  “Really? Great! That means I can add to my list of things we’re going to do!”

  “Go right ahead.”

  MacNeil packed her bag and headed out for the night with a lighter step than I’d seen in months. She looked like a little teenager going to her first sock hop.

  Normie played with the baby while I made pasta for supper. The minute she left him alone he started to wail. “Oh, Dominic!” she cried.

  “Leave him for now, sweetheart. He’ll be all right. Eat your supper.”

  The infant continued to bawl, and Normie invented an urgent errand upstairs. She’d obviously had enough for a while. I realized it was the first time I had been alone with my wife’s son. Red-faced and miserable, he cried at full throttle. Well, I couldn’t go forever without picking the little fellow up. And nobody was here to see how I did. I reached into his crib and gently lifted him out. I put him against my shoulder and patted his back. That used to work for Tom and Normie. Not for this one, though. He just screamed louder. I persisted for a good twenty minutes, checked his diaper, offered him a bottle, then gave it up and laid him down.

  I popped open a beer, threw another log on the fire, and sat on the chesterfield. The doorbell rang, and the crying stopped. Before I could get to my feet, Normie was down the stairs and at the door.

  “Hi, Father! Oh, good! My books on the saints. And, oh, right, angels too. Thank you!”

  “You’re welcome, Stormie.”

  “You’re the stormy one — you’ve got snow in your hair. You know, Father, I hate to say this but you remind me of the boys at my school.”

  “Oh yeah? How’s that?”

  “It’s snowing out. You’re wearing the same jacket you wear in the spring; it’s not buttoned up, and you don’t have any mittens on. Your mother would be mad if she saw you.”

  “She would indeed. I’ll shape up. Is your own mother home, or are you the châtelaine now?”

  “What’s the châtelaine?”

  “The lady of the castle.”

  “No. Daddy’s here.”

>   “Ah.”

  I went to greet him. “Evening, Father. Are you here to bring Mass to the shut-ins?”

  “Well, since it’s you and there’s no sign of herself, perhaps I should be hearing confessions.”

  “Come in.”

  “I just stopped by to bring Normie some books.”

  Did he feel he needed to explain his presence at the house? That was not like him at all.

  “Have a seat. I’ll get you a beer.” I went into the kitchen. Normie came in behind me and whispered: “I asked him for books about saints in Scotland and Ireland, so he wouldn’t know it’s the angels I’m after.”

  “Good thinking.”

  My daughter had got it into her head, for some reason, that Father Burke might be an angel. This had been going on for months now, ever since she first saw him celebrating Mass in his white vestments. She said there were spirits all around him on the altar. Normie had a touch of second sight, or so I’d been told by her maternal relatives in Cape Breton. She had not yet come to a conclusion about Burke; apparently there was still a great deal of research to do.

  “Ah,” sighed the angelic one as the first sip of Keith’s India Pale Ale slid down his throat. “Nectar of the gods.”

  The howling started up again. Burke looked over at the crib, then at me. “Don’t you think you should pick him up, Monty? You’re not without experience in that regard.”

  “He won’t settle,” was all I said.

  Finally, Burke put his beer on the table and went to the crib. “Evening, Dominic. How’s the little lad?” At the sound of Burke’s voice, the baby fell silent. Burke picked him up, cradled him in his arms, took the corner of his blanket and used it to wipe his face. The baby smiled and kicked his legs. “That’s more like it,” Burke muttered to him, and stood there, irresolute. We were saved by the arrival of Normie, who announced that she would take the now placid baby to his room.

  My own son arrived then, his blond hair curling out from under a black fedora, a skinny tie askew against his white shirt; this signalled that he had just come from a jam session with his band, Dads in Suits. We chatted a bit about the blues-rock direction his group was going in, then I asked him: “How would you like to earn a few bucks, Tommy?”