Stained Glass

by Ralph McInerny

  “Yes?” she said and only then turned. Her nose wrinkled.

  “Tetzel of the Tribune. I’ll start with you, if you don’t mind.”

  “Start with me?” The frostiness fled and she put a hand to her hair. “What do you mean?”

  Tetzel pulled a chair up to her desk and got out his notebook. “How do you spell your name?”

  For a few minutes Hazel was putty in his hands. He could have asked whether she dyed her hair and gotten an answer. A door behind him opened.

  “Tetzel, what are you doing here?”

  “I’m going to do a series on the secretaries of our most successful men.”

  “Don’t tell him a thing, Hazel. He gives new meaning to the phrase ‘the freedom of the press.’”

  “He said it was …” She was so furious she threw her mouse at Tetzel. He retreated into the inner office, followed by Tuttle.

  “Thanks a lot, Tetzel. She’s been almost human for days.”

  “Maybe we ought to get out of here.”

  “I was about to suggest the same thing.”

  Settled in a booth in the Jury Room, Tetzel got the story from Tuttle, who spoiled things a bit by adding it was all in the Tribune. Had Bipple been on this before his fall?

  “The Chicago Tribune.”

  Tetzel scowled. What he thought of the Chicago Tribune was not fit to print, but then anyone there who had heard of him might have reciprocated the sentiment.

  “How do you shut down a church, Tuttle?”

  “It’s not going to happen. I have it on impeccable authority.”

  “Father Dowling?”

  “No. Willie, the maintenance man. If you want the real scoop, go to the man who pushes a broom.”

  “I think Hazel must fly on one.”

  “Only in the full moon, Tetzel. Only in the full moon.”

  3

  Father Dowling told Marie of his exchange with Bishop Wilenski, and the housekeeper let out a whoop of triumph. “People say that prayers aren’t answered.”

  “Don’t make too much of it, Marie. If anything saves us it will be the stained glass windows.”

  Marie plunked into a chair. “The stained glass windows.” After a moment’s silence, she began to nod. “Of course you’re right. Our Lady is our refuge.”

  He let it go. He spent a day searching for any records of the building of the church, but the files were still such a mess that that didn’t prove anything at all. He told Amos Cadbury this when they met at the University Club that night.

  “Your best source on that would be Jane Devere.”

  They were having a preprandial drink in the library. At least Amos was, unless tomato juice counts as a drink in such a context. The venerable lawyer tasted his scotch and water with the concentration of a connoisseur.

  “Tell me about the Deveres, Amos.”

  Amos affected surprise. “They’re your parishioners.”

  “And your clients.”

  “Meaning that each of us might be restricted in what he would say.”

  “I meant just a sense of the family, the generations. Even Marie is vague on the matter.”

  Amos put his drink on the table beside him and settled in his chair. “August Devere,” he began.

  If August were considered the first generation, there were four generations to be taken into account. Jane, wife of William, the late son of the late August, would be the sole representative of the second, but she had three children, with the oldest of whom, James, and his sister, she shared the house that August had built and in which she had lived most of her long life. Then there was the latest generation.

  “Hugh?”

  “And Susan,” Amos said after a pause.

  “Their father, James, has two siblings?”

  “He had two. Only one, a sister, is still alive. His younger brother was a naval officer, a pilot, who was reported missing in action in the Middle East. His sister, Margaret, is Mrs. Bernard Ward.”

  “Mrs. Bernard Ward.”

  “Yes.”

  Margaret Ward was what is now called a paleo-conservative, a staunch and vocal critic of the so-called neocons, her wit legendary, her aristocratic dismissal of dubious converts to the conservative cause enjoyed even by its victims for the unforgettable English in which it was expressed. “A liberal, like lilies that fester, is odious under any name.” Her half-dozen books all continued to sell in respectable numbers; the latest, Narcissus in Niger, was still among the top ten on the bestseller lists, almost a year after its publication. She was a formidable foe, a loyal ally, and a ferocious Catholic to boot.

  “What is a ferocious Catholic, Amos?”

  “Margaret would say that she has modeled herself on Chesterton and Belloc. Others find her more akin to Patrick Buchanan.”

  “I don’t know him.”

  “Never say that to Margaret.”

  “I doubt that I will have the opportunity.”

  “She speaks very highly of you.”

  “I scarcely know the woman.”

  “As I said before, the Deveres, some of them, are your parishioners.”

  “Yes. Margaret is one of them.” One he seldom saw. Her work involved incessant travel.

  Over their meal, Father Dowling briefed Amos on his conversation with Bishop Wilenski. The lawyer nodded through the narrative as if arriving at a judgment. “The Deveres are your armor and shield, Father Dowling.”

  “I got the impression that it was the Menotti windows in the church.”

  “That is very much the same thing.”

  Later, in a lounge, with Amos sipping brandy, Father Dowling got the lawyer’s account of the commissioning of the stained glass windows by August Devere. “It was Jane who made him aware of the work of Angelo Menotti. The artist was not well known then. Jane had made his acquaintance as a student at Rosary College.”

  “Surely he wasn’t a fellow student.”

  Amos smiled. Of course, Rosary had been exclusively a women’s college.

  “He was artist in residence there. It would not be too much to say that Jane launched his career in stained glass windows.”

  “He did other things as well?”

  “Oh, yes. Paintings, some sculpture. Stained glass was important to his career, but not everything. He did a portrait of my wife.”

  “The bishop told me that someone intends to reproduce all of Menotti’s stained glass in a book.”

  “Yes. Carl Borloff. I drew up the agreement between him and Jane Devere. Of course, he will also need permission from you and the other pastors in whose churches Menotti windows are found. It is one of the ironies of such things that the artist’s permission is not required.”

  “Is he alive?”

  “Indeed he is. In his presence I feel like a young man again, not that I could compete with him in agility. He is older than Jane by a year or two.”

  “Then you see him?”

  Amos drew on his cigar, and his words seemed to ride exhaled smoke as if he were a Plains Indian sending signals. “He is a client of mine.”

  “For someone in alleged semiretirement, you seem to have a host of clients.”

  “But of an age, Father. Of an age. By and large, that is.”

  “I know Hugh, of course. He came by before setting off for South Bend. He wanted me to bless his car. One doesn’t get many such requests nowadays.”

  “He is a good boy. A credit to his family and his school, and a scratch golfer. If he were less serious, he might earn a fortune playing golf.”

  “Did you ever tell him that?”

  “He hardly needs anyone to tell him, but, yes, I did. His reply was ‘But where are the pars of yesteryear?’” Amos smiled at the memory. It was clear that he thought the world of Hugh Devere. “He will make an excellent architect. His mentors at Notre Dame, Stroik and Smith, are designing buildings across the country. Their speciality is church architecture.”

  “Hugh has a sister.”

  “Yes.”

  Father Dowli
ng waited. Finally he said, “You seemed hesitant to mention Susan.”

  The smile faded. “That is a matter into which I cannot presently go, Father Dowling.”

  4

  Amos did send young Maurice Cassidy out to St. Hilary’s, to bring order out of the chaos in those file cabinets in the basement of the rectory. His reception might have been chilly if it hadn’t been for Marie Murkin’s susceptibility to good-looking young men. Cassidy, all five feet nine of him, curly black hair, wide face, and bright blue eyes, made Marie nostalgic for an Ireland she had never seen.

  “Watch your step,” she warned as she led the young man down the basement stairs.

  “I always watch my step, Mrs. Murkin.”

  To describe the housekeeper’s laugh as a giggle would have been unkind. She turned and looked up at him. “Do you plan to become a lawyer?”

  “I am a lawyer.”

  “No!” It was Marie who lost her footing then, not seeing that she had yet a step to go. Cassidy reached out and steadied her and then put his arm about her and they moved across the floor. In a moment, they were dancing. Marie could imagine what Father Dowling would think if he came upon this scene. She freed herself, reluctantly. “You don’t look old enough to be a lawyer.”

  “Well, I’m young enough to be one.”

  “Where did you go to law school?”

  “Notre Dame.”

  Marie frowned. “When are they going to get a decent coach?”

  “Decency has nothing to do with it. They want a winning coach. Do you watch the games?”

  “It’s become a Lenten penance. These are the cabinets.”

  Cassidy got out his laptop and placed it on one of the cabinets. Next came the power cord, and Marie connected it for him. Maurice took off his suit jacket, and she took it.

  “I’ll hang this upstairs. Why would Amos Cadbury give you a job like this?”

  “I’m his favorite.”

  “Would you like coffee?”

  “Maybe later.”

  “Just call me.”

  He opened a drawer, stepped back, made a face, and then began to riffle through the contents of the drawer. Marie glided up the steps. When was the last time she had danced?

  Father Dowling was in his study, his breviary open, lips moving as he read the liturgy of the hours. Marie stood in the doorway. After a moment, Father Dowling laid a ribbon aslant the page and closed the book.

  “The boy Amos sent is starting on those file cabinets,” Marie said.

  “Boy?”

  “Young man. Maurice Cassidy. He looks like an altar boy.”

  “If he was an altar boy he’d be middle-aged or more.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “I wonder if he’ll find anything about those Devere graves in the church.”

  “If they’re there, he’ll find them.”

  Half an hour later, Father Dowling came through the kitchen and went down into the basement. Marie stood at the open door, listening to the murmur of their voices. Then she went back to her work, doing a waltz step across the kitchen floor.

  Two days later Marie was in the basement, putting in a load of laundry, when Maurice cried, “Eureka!”

  “I use a Hoover.” She hurried over to see the papers he was flourishing. The day before, after he left, she had come downstairs and slid open a cabinet drawer. Everything in it was neat as a pin.

  “This is what Mr. Cadbury hoped I would find. Is Father Dowling in?”

  Marie went upstairs with him. She liked the way they got along, the pastor and the young lawyer.

  Father Dowling took the papers Maurice handed him and leafed through them, nodding. “Good work.”

  “I’ll take them to Mr. Cadbury.”

  “Maurice must want some refreshment, Marie.”

  Maurice was picking up the telephone as Marie left the study. When she came back with the soft drink, he looked at her. “Mr. Cadbury’s coming out here.” He seemed surprised that the senior member of his firm would make house calls.

  “Marie and Amos are old friends,” Father Dowling said.

  “Oh, not old,” Maurice said. Such a lovely boy.

  The document that Maurice Cassidy had found in the second file cabinet, bottom drawer, was signed by August Devere and Father Rusher, the then pastor of St. Hilary’s. Amos nodded as he read it. “Richard Sullivan drew this up,” he murmured. “He was a legend in the local bar when I arrived in Fox River.”

  The agreement specified that members of the Devere family would have first option to be buried in the little chapel, as long as there was room for them. The graves were considered permanent. Amos frowned. “As long as the church shall stand.”

  The graves in the side chapel did not quite provide the impediment Amos had hoped for. Nonetheless, he considered the document important. He could argue that the phrase “as long as the church shall stand” had the force of “until the end of time.”

  “Here’s an odd thing, Father. Angelo Menotti is also mentioned as having the right to be buried in the chapel.”

  5

  Having filed an injunction against the archdiocese to stop the closing of St. Hilary’s and the tearing down of its church, Amos Cadbury busied himself with other Devere family business.

  Of course, he had no compunction about keeping James Devere au courant on his mother’s generosity. As a member of the board of the Devere Foundation, James would have learned it all eventually, but Jane had gone to the limit of the discretionary amount she could award in her capacity as director. Like most family foundations, the Devere Foundation was a cozy arrangement, all members of the board related by blood or marriage, but the Deveres had taken Amos’s advice not to have any member of the family benefit financially from the foundation. Amos was responsible for the reports to the Illinois attorney general, an office that had been filled over the years by friends of his, and Amos had heard stories. Some family foundations were merely devices to sequester money from taxation and make it available by way of contingency funds to members of the family. Even in Illinois such sharp practice was frowned upon. Of course, there was no need for him to give lessons in ethics to the Deveres.

  “If you okay it, Amos, I suppose it’s all right,” Jim Devere said with reluctance. “You know what Susan says about Borloff.”

  They were in the smoking room of the country club, for years a quaint anachronism but in these last days earning its name once more as newer members objected to the aroma of tobacco. Jim, like all Deveres except Jane, was an ardent cigarette smoker who delighted in producing series of smoke rings that he mentally counted as they formed before him. “Seven,” he said with pride.

  “What is your record, Jim?”

  “Nine. I could have claimed ten, but the last one was scarcely visible.”

  “Perhaps it will become an Olympic event.”

  “In this day and age?”

  Amos veered away from the topic. If he wanted an apocalyptic account of the times he could go to Jim’s sister, Margaret, the darling of what her niece, Susan, called the moulting right wing. How tempted Amos was to talk to Jim about a recent session he had had with Susan.

  She had returned after a period of reflection that Amos had urged on her when she told him she wanted to divest herself of all the money that had come her way from the family, her trust fund, her claim on any further inheritance. “The whole shebang, Mr. Cadbury.” In political and social views, Susan was the polar opposite of Margaret Ward, but her expression as she spoke was identical to that of her ideological aunt.

  “A trust fund is a rather difficult thing to undo, Susan. It represents the decision of others, not your own.”

  “Isn’t it mine?”

  He explained patiently her limited control over the base amount. Susan received the income, but the endowment was encumbered for many years in a number of ways.

  “My grandmother is giving away money hand over fist,” Susan said. “It’s true about the fortune she has turned over to Carl Borl
off, isn’t it?”

  Amos gently amended her language. The grant to the art historian came from the family foundation, and the amount involved could scarcely be called a fortune. Moreover, it had been given for a quite specific purpose, the progress of which would be carefully monitored.

  “We didn’t vote on it.”

  “Do you plan to attend board meetings, Susan?”

  “I read the minutes.”

  Amos was on the board and knew that Susan had seldom come to any of its meetings, somewhat to his relief and, he supposed, that of her father and aunt as well. From time to time, she sent in suggestions for grants, most of them involving indigent artists of uncertain future.

  “Your grandmother, as director, can award grants of a certain amount at her discretion, independently of the board. Of course, the board must give its approval at the next meeting.”

  “What’s her limit?”

  “Two hundred thousand.”

  “That’s what she did for Carl Borloff?”

  “Do you know him?”

  “He’s one of the parasites of the arts world, a step below gallery owners and dealers. Do you realize how many talentless oddballs make a cushy living off the work of others while real artists starve?”

  “Like oddball lawyers?”

  The passion left Susan, and she was full of apologies. “You know I would never think such a thing of you, Uncle Amos.”

  He had been a little put off by her earlier “Mr. Cadbury,” so this reversion to honorary membership in the family was welcome. “I should hope not.”

  She sprang to her feet and came around his desk and kissed his cheek. Amos felt a blush suffuse his face. “Now, now.”

  She went back to her chair. “Did you ever read about St. Francis?” she asked.

  “I recently read an interesting account of his life by Julian Green.”

  “What a man! When I think of him just getting rid of everything, living in rags, trusting in God, talking to birds …” She ran out of breath. Once more her eyes sparkled with youthful enthusiasm.