Aisle of the Dead

by Joseph E. Wright

  “And you think he needs help? What kind of help? You think he is somehow involved in the other priest’s murder?”

  “No, nothing like that. It’s just that he feels very confused right now. He’s not used to something like a police investigation. It’s very disorientating.”

  “But not to you? It’s not confusing or disorientating to you?”

  Pat grinned his boyish grin. “No, not really.”

  “For what it’s worth--and I do have to rush--we speculate that Father Mowbray was headed for the sacristy, off to the side. There’s a telephone there.” With that, the detective spun around and walked briskly down the path to the sidewalk and his car which was parked there.

  Pat shook his head as he watched him drive away.

  “I wonder if Detective Worton’s cases are all this easy,” Father Sieger said, more to himself than to either of his guests as he and Phillis joined Pat outside. “I wonder if, in fact, his life is this easy.”

  “Do you know who the young man is they’ve just arrested?” Pat asked the priest.

  “Huh? Oh, the young man. No, no, I’m afraid I don’t even know his name.”

  “His name is Sherrill Rothe.”

  “Oh, my, my,” Father Sieger sighed. “Is that who it is? And such a nice young man, too.”

  “You know him?” Phillis asked.

  The priest nodded. “Yes, indeed, but only slightly. He’s the young man I told you was often in Father Paul’s company.”

  “Why don’t we find this Beatrice who evidently told the police about him and find out what she has to say?” Pat suggested.

  “Yes. Beatrice.” As though in a trance, Father Sieger headed towards the church.

  Pat shrugged and motioned to his sister that they should follow. They walked through the garden next to the rectory in the warm sunshine.

  Father Sieger stopped and addressed them. “About Beatrice. She’s not quite… well, what I mean is, don’t go taking everything she says as being the gospel. She takes care of the grounds here at Saint Alban’s, been doing it for the past couple of years. I don’t know if she actually has a home, a place that’s hers, but she’s an independent soul who won’t take charity and this is her way of working for what little in the way of support the parish can give her. But I do think you’ll find her quite--”

  “Father Sieger!” a voice called out. The priest stopped and turned. A man of medium height and build with a sandy red beard, in his late forties, came out the door which was a pair to and was at a right angle to the rectory door. He was hurrying towards them. “It’s Leslie on the telephone,” he said. “He says it’s important and asked me to find you.”

  Father Sieger addressed the messenger. “Thank you, Kelsey. I’ll be right there.” He then apologized to Pat and Phillis. “I must take this call, but you go ahead. I’ll catch up with you in a moment. You might enjoy going through the church and out the back door to the other garden. You should find Beatrice there. I won’t be long. And forgive me. This is Kelsey Quentin.” He introduced them to one another. “Kelsey runs our library. Excuse me, I must run.” He walked away, following Kelsey.

  Pat broke out in a wide grin as he turned to look at Phillis. “Doesn’t that beat just about anything?”

  “All our problems should be solved so easily and so quickly. Now we know the identity of one of the two with Father Paul in that photo.”

  “We’ll make a note to speak to Mr. Kelsey Quentin as soon as possible. Shall we?” Pat asked and pointed towards the large gothic door of the church.

  CHAPTER X

  Past the large, heavy oak door, Father Sieger followed Kelsey Quentin down the steps to the lower level where the church offices were.

  “Leslie’s on line two,” Kelsey said as he stepped aside and let the priest go ahead of him through one of the doors into the secretary’s office. Kelsey closed the door so Father Sieger might have privacy.

  Kelsey usually worked half days in the church library, which was overhead on the second floor of the parish house. He was anxious to get home today. There were things he wanted to do.

  Three generations of Quentins had belonged to Saint Alban’s. The first and least religious of the Quentins, Artemas, attended this church in the center of downtown Philadelphia for purely selfish and financial reasons. His wife, a distant cousin removed several times, was one of the city’s wealthy Murhouses, a clan with branches on the family tree reaching from Newport to Atlanta. On a typical Sunday morning at Saint Alban’s, Artemas rubbed elbows with more Murhouses with financial fortunes than he could have hoped to meet in a month at the Philadelphia Stock Exchange. His wife, a genuinely religious woman, had more than a passing suspicion concerning her husband’s motives for attending services on the first day of the week. She overlooked them in the hope that he would eventually come to believe the things he heard the Reverend Doctor Wellingsley preach. In her heart, she knew Artemas never would.

  Their son, Kendal, followed his mother’s example and not only was seen week after week in one of the front pews sandwiched between his parents, but he gave generously to the church--more generously than Artemas approved of. “The church has enough,” Artemas often said to Kendal. “All you have to give is what’s needed to keep up the family reputation.” Kendal went well beyond the bare minimum needed to keep the Quentin family in good standing with the church and eligible to vote for and be members of its vestry.

  The magnificent Final Judgment stained glass window above the main altar was donated by Kendal and his wife, Esther, shortly following World War II, after the original window was destroyed when a tree crashed through it during a violent storm. If that did not make Artemas turn over in his grave, a few years later Kendal set up and endowed the Artemas Quentin Memorial Library at Saint Alban’s. From its outset, it was a gem of a library, holding some fourteen thousand books; many of them from Kendal’s own collection and a good many of them quite rare and valuable.

  Kelsey was born late in life to Kendal and Esther (both of whom were in their late thirties when they married)‎, and after the doctors had told both of them that a child was out of the question. As might have been expected, he received a strong religious education, both at home and at school. He was an exceptionally gifted child, graduated from Episcopal Academy when only sixteen years old, and went on to study law (like his father before him)‎ at the University of Pennsylvania. After a lengthy and extensive trip through Europe as a graduation present, Kelsey entered the law firm of Quentin and Murhouse (soon, it was promised, to be Quentin Murhouse and Quentin)‎.

  Life went smoothly and predictably at the house in the twenty-hundred block of Locust Street in downtown Philadelphia, the house presided over by Kendal, with Esther in her--according to both Kendal and Sacred Scripture and endorsed by Esther herself--God-ordained second position as his wife, and Kelsey as the proper and obedient son and heir.

  All that, however, came to an end on a sunny day in early June many years ago when Kelsey was still in his twenties. The senior Quentin, Kendal, had left his law offices just off Rittenhouse Square a trifle early that day. He felt tired. He strolled through the Square (something he never did)‎ and stopped to sit on one of the benches and smell the freshly cut grass and watch the children playing around the bronze statue of a goat while their nannies sat in clusters, gossiping and occasionally casting an eye on their charges. Kendal resented the fact that he needed to sit. Age was taking its toll. No longer did the legs move swiftly. His breathing was somewhat labored of late. The hair was now mostly white and, he refused to admit it, his eyes were not what they once were.

  A child’s ball rolled to Kendal’s feet and stopped no more than three inches from his impeccably shined shoes. He watched an angelic blonde-haired child rush over to retrieve the ball, then stop in his tracks. He looked at Kendal and backed away. Kendal suddenly realized the child was afraid of him. Was he that terrifying? he asked himself. He tried to smile, but it was no use. It was too late in life for him to attempt
to start a new habit. He made a gesture to assure the child, but the latter ran back to the safety of his guardian in the park, a young black woman. He spoke to her and pointed towards Kendal. She came towards Kendal. She apologized for the child as she picked up the ball. Kendal tried to assure her that it was all right.

  After a few minutes, he got up and walked slowly towards the house his father had bought when Kendal was a lad, a four-story Philadelphia red brick affair with marble steps leading up to double front doors with beveled and etched glass rectangular inserts, lace stretched over them inside so that the curious could not see into the vestibule. He let himself into that vestibule with its mosaic floor and tiled walls, then opened the inner door with its heavily jeweled stained glass, and came into the cool, marble foyer. He carefully placed his hat on the rack on the wall and picked up the day’s mail, which was always left on the carved mahogany table there, untouched by anyone, even Esther, until he had gone through it. There were the usual circulars and bulk mail--an annoying number of such pieces. Not at all like when he was a child. Today, anyone, anyone at all (he often complained to Esther)‎, was free to invade a man’s home with such trivial messages. There was also a letter from his sister Eugenia who was spending a year in Scotland, and another from his younger brother, who was usually someplace with an unpronounceable name. “Hinting for money, no doubt,” Kendal said to himself. The only other piece of mail that he brought with him into his study on the second floor was one addressed simply, “K. Quentin.” The handwriting was hurried, scrawled across the envelope.

  His routine was the same every evening at the end of his working day: Kendal would go directly to his second-floor study, place his mail on the blotter on the large oak desk which had belonged to his father, then go into the dressing room which connected his study and bedroom, and remove his jacket and tie. He next donned a smoking jacket, although he prided himself on never having contracted that “filthy habit of smoking.” He then returned to his study, placed a record, usually a Beethoven symphony or a Wagner opera, on the phonograph in one of the bookcases, the speakers discreetly hidden behind the floor-length drapes on the windows, and poured himself a drink.

  He opened Eugenia’s letter first and smiled as he leaned back in his desk chair and read. He was fond of Eugenia. She was sensible, had all the right values, believed religiously that God had ordained certain people in this world to see to it that the rest of the world knew and kept its place. She gave generously of what she had, while she took without apology the income for which she had never labored. It was all in the natural order of things in Kendal and Eugenia’s personal cosmology, as though Mother Nature, like many mothers, had favorite children, and on those she lavished her wealth.

  Next, Kendal opened his brother’s letter. There was no hint for money. He came right out this time and asked for--or more correctly, demanded--money, for himself in a remote part of Africa, his wife (some half-caste, Kendal knew in his heart)‎, and their mob of dirty, noisy children. Kendal put the letter aside in a pile he would get to later and made a mental note that he would send a modest sum, more than his brother had any legal right to expect. Finally, Kendal picked up the envelope with the nearly illegible handwriting on it and wondered whom he might possibly know who would use such obviously cheap stationery. He turned it over several times.

  Kendal usually limited himself to only one drink before dinner. This evening it seemed some inner self, which felt it needed the false courage alcohol might offer, suggested a second scotch was in order before opening that letter. He placed the letter neatly in front of him in the center of the desk blotter and rose from his seat, all the while keeping an eye on the envelope, as though it might mysteriously disappear if he did not watch it. He poured the drink and returned and stood at the desk and was about to pick up this piece of correspondence when his telephone rang. He did not answer. Their housekeeper would answer and buzz him if it was important. He took a second sip of his drink when two quick buzzes told him he should pick up the telephone. It was his secretary.

  “That’s quite all right, Miss Thornton,” Kendal assured her. “You are perfectly correct. Yes, I shall meet with the committee tomorrow forenoon. And thank you for reminding me.”

  He replaced the receiver and picked up the envelope, which had been patiently awaiting his attention. Still he was not to read it. There was a gentle knock on the study door, then it opened. Had he been a superstitious man, he might have thought there was a force, good or evil, certainly powerful, keeping him and the contents of that envelope apart. It was Esther standing in the doorway.

  “I trust you had a pleasant day.” Esther asked that same question every evening. She had been exceptionally beautiful as a young woman. She was now nearing the completion of middle age, resembling something like an ad for silver hair coloring, and could have become a sixty-ish model if she had needed employment. Her delicate features had not faded with time as had happened to the other females in her and Kendal’s circle of friends, and her sharp, deep blue eyes still held a mischievous twinkle at times. The few wrinkles--and there were very few--only softened her face, adding a maturity and, to some men, a sensuality, which eluded Kendal.

  He assured her he had had a pleasant day, something he assured her every evening.

  “You won’t forget we are dining at my brother’s this evening, will you, Kendal?” She never entered upon these sacred premises unless invited.

  “I can hardly forget,” he told her. “I had lunch with your brother Clarence only today. He mentioned the fact of our dining with them this evening several times during the course of the meal.”

  Esther smiled and withdrew. Alone, Kendal sat down once more at his desk. This time he was determined nothing would intercept his reading this letter which lay in front of him. He picked up his sterling silver letter opener and slit the envelope along the top, all the while realizing how inferior quality paper cut so poorly compared to the linen stock he was accustomed to handling. He withdrew a single sheet of paper with light blue lines on it and three equidistant holes along one edge, the type made to fit school binders. He began to read. The writing was not much better than that on the outside of the envelope. At first, he did not believe his eyes. It was impossible. Surely there had to be some kind of mistake, some unspeakably cruel joke being played on him. He referred back to the envelope. Yes, the address was correct.

  When he finished reading, he sat motionless for several minutes, trying desperately to tell himself that the whole thing was all wrong, some sick person trying to…. He began to shake, both from anger and fear; fear that there might be some truth in what he had read. He let his left arm fall off the chair and hang next to it, his hand clutching the letter. A pressure was beginning to make itself felt in his chest. He pressed his right hand against his ribs and tried to massage the skin as though outside pressure and movement might make the inside tightness and pain go away. They did not go away; they became worse.

  Kendal’s face felt taut. He could not see the color there, almost blue, his lips a deep purple, his mouth open, trying to take in air. It all left as quickly as it had come. The pressure was gone; the pain left. He remained motionless in his leather swivel chair with its high back. The lined sheet of paper left his hand and gently floated to the floor.

  It was about forty-five minutes later that Kelsey came to his father’s study. He knocked and opened the door. Immediately sensing something was amiss, he rushed over to the chair where his father was seated and placed a hand on his shoulder. It was clear to Kelsey, who had never seen a dead body before, that his father was beyond his help. Still, he picked up the telephone and called Doctor Warner. As he replaced the receiver, Kelsey saw a piece of paper on the floor a few inches from his father’s left hand. He picked it up and read it. He looked down at the desktop, saw the envelope with the same handwriting on it, folded the single sheet of paper, replaced it in the envelope, and put the latter into his inside jacket pocket. No one, absolutely no one, Kelsey swore
to himself, would ever know about that letter.

  Five days later, much of Philadelphia’s society, including the mayor, gathered at Saint Alban’s to pay their last respects to Kendal Murhouse Quentin, and to hear him eulogized as outstanding lawyer, humanitarian, philanthropist, faithful husband, loving father--all that any man could be expected to be in this world. Kelsey sat in the front pew between his mother and his aunt Eugenia, who, thanks to friends in high places, had been able to book passage from Scotland to attend her brother’s funeral. Murhouses were there in abundance, as were Dilworths and Biddles and Drexels. Newspapers were represented so that the rest of the less fortunate world might vicariously be in attendance.

  Only Kelsey knew the cause of his father’s death. Only he and his father had read that letter, the letter addressed simply, “K. Quentin,” the letter which was intended for him, not his father. The words written on the sheet of notepaper were now written on Kelsey’s mind forever. They were innocent words, loving words, but they were never meant for Kendal Quentin’s eyes. Three days before his father’s death, Kelsey had returned home from a vacation in Florida. While there, he had gone down to the keys and spent several days in Key West. He met a young man, John, and they had spent the whole time in one another’s company. When it ended, they exchanged addresses. John’s letter, written in haste in the Kansas City airport, had simply stated the truth: that John had enjoyed being with Kelsey, that he had enjoyed their nights together, that he hoped they would soon be together again, that he would try to change schools next year so that they might be closer. Kendal had read the true meaning of all those words. He had not been able to accept their truth.

  As happens with so many vacation romances, Kelsey never saw John again. There was a Christmas card that first year, then nothing after that. It wasn’t long before Kelsey had trouble remembering John’s last name, then he found it difficult to conjure up his face.