Aisle of the Dead

by Joseph E. Wright

  By this time, Pat had already developed a strong liking for this sexton of Saint Alban’s. There was an honesty to his gruffness, a gentleness to his criticism. “You’re wrong, you know,” he told Tom. “We’re not here to cross-examine or to browbeat or to find out what you saw or heard that day--although, if you did see or hear anything that might help us, we’d certainly like to know about it. What we really want is to find out what you think--in Father Mowbray’s case, thought--about these two priests. Did you like Father Mowbray? Can you think of anyone, anyone at all, who might have wanted him dead, who might have profited, no matter how, by his death? We’re especially interested in your opinions.”

  “I learned a long time ago that opinions don’t change things,” Tom answered. “That may sound like indifference. It isn’t. I care. I care a hell of a lot. Too much, maybe. But it never seems to make things different no matter how much I care, only makes them more painful when you feel strongly about something but can’t do anything about it. I liked Father Paul. He was a great guy. Always generous with his time. He spent many an hour up here, sitting in this very chair I’m in right now, talking about himself, about me, about the things he hoped to accomplish before he died. He’ll never get to do any of them now. I’ve scratched my head till it hurts, trying to figure the whole thing out. I can’t imagine why anyone would want him dead. As for profiting from his death, that leaves me even more puzzled. If I ever had to draw up a list of people who should never be murdered, he’d have headed up that list. That’s why I hope you two do your job and do it right and find out who the bastard was who killed Paul. If the law doesn’t do anything about it, I will, if I have to strangle the killer with my own two bare hands.”

  Phillis noticed Tom’s hands were now shaking with anger and his knuckles were white. “What about Father Sieger?” she asked.

  Tom’s eyes closed slightly and he spoke with an even greater vehemence. “If it weren’t for Father Sieger, I wouldn’t be here today. I might not be any place today. I owe him my life. He took me in six months ago when I had nothing left at the time to live for. He gave me a job when no one else would. I-- What the hell, I might as well tell you the whole story. If I don’t, someone else sure as hell will. They can’t keep their mouths shut around this place and any parts of their stories they don’t know, they don’t hesitate to fill in with their own versions of the truth.

  “Seven years ago, I went to jail. One of the great ironies of life. I had been divorced a couple of years at the time. I met a young woman. She was unstable. Flaky. I had exactly one date with her. You couldn’t call it a date. I met her in that great meeting place for lonely people in highrise apartment buildings: the laundry room. I didn’t ask her out. I wasn’t interested in her or any other woman, but she asked me. Said she had a couple of tickets to a play, one of those neighborhood amateur theatrical affairs. I was free that evening, so I figured what the hell, it wouldn’t do any harm; so I went with her. I could use a friend. A newly divorced guy doesn’t have any friends. It was a Saturday evening. Afterwards, we had a snack and I took her back to her own apartment. So help me, I stayed at the door and didn’t even go inside her apartment or even give her a goodnight kiss on the cheek. After spending an evening together, I was convinced more than ever I did not want to pursue any kind of relationship with her, not even friendship, which was the only kind I could think of.

  “I went to my apartment and about six o’clock in the morning there was one hell of a racket at my door. It was her, banging on the door and disturbing the whole floor. She wanted to come in. I wouldn’t let her. It was obvious she had been drinking or was high on something. I had to physically push her away from the open door, and got her to finally leave by promising to visit her that evening. A busybody of a neighbor in the next apartment to mine had been awakened by the noise and he claimed I was trying to drag the woman into my apartment. I went to her apartment later in the day and told one whopper of a lie about something having come up and I couldn’t spend the evening with her. She became hysterical, accused me of leading her on, playing with her emotions, now trying to dump her. I finally got away from her and heaved a sigh of relief. Boy, was I ever wrong!

  “It wasn’t over; it was only just beginning. She began calling me at work. I had a good job with a life insurance company and was about to get promoted to vice president. I don’t know how she got my business number, but she did. And, she called me so often at home, I stopped answering my own phone. I discovered her following me a few times when I went out. I tried to reason with her, convince her I didn’t hate her and that I thought she was a nice person, but that I didn’t want a relationship at that time with anyone. I even went so far as to tell her that I was gay, but she just laughed and said she could easily change that.

  “One evening, about two months after I first met her, I was home watching television and there was a loud knock on my apartment door, followed by a voice shouting, ‘Open up! Police.’ Do you have any idea at all what that can do to you? I think I must have hit the ceiling, it frightened me so much. They had a warrant for my arrest. No questioning. They cuffed me, read me my rights, and it was clear as far as they were concerned I had already been tried and convicted. They had just come from her apartment, where a neighbor had found her, her body covered with bruises. She had been raped. She swore that I had done it.

  “Truth was, that very evening, right after I got in from work, she had called me and threatened to kill herself if I didn’t come to her apartment and talk to her. I felt sorry for her and like a fool I went there. As luck would have it, when I got off the elevator on her floor, there was a group of five people waiting for a down elevator. They saw me go to her door and saw her let me in. They later testified--all five of them, with no discrepancies in their testimonies--that I was the one they saw go into her apartment. The trial was swift, just as our constitution provides. I should have listened to my lawyer’s advice when he urged me to admit I was gay, but I was afraid of the publicity and how it would affect my job. Boy, was I stupid. I got ten years.”

  “You got out early for good--” Pat began to say.

  Tom interrupted him. “No, not me. Not good behavior. I wasn’t what you’d call the ideal prisoner. In fact, I got into trouble more than once and one time got into one hell of a brawl and was accused of trying to kill another prisoner. I’d still be there except for whatever reason my accuser suddenly recanted the whole thing. She went to the D.A.‘s office and confessed that she had made up the whole story, that I had not raped her. In fact, she hadn’t been raped at all. Seems she fell down the stairwell in the apartment building, then staged her own rape. Probably with the help of a vacuum cleaner hose, for all I know.”

  “But surely there must have been a physical examination, a complete physical examination,” Phillis protested.

  “There was,” Tom answered her. “But she claimed she had begged me to put on a condom which she just happened to have handy in the night table next to her bed, and that I had obliged. Even the jury fell for that one: A rapist who takes time out to put on a rubber!

  “When I got out, no one was willing to talk to me. Would you hire an ex-con? Maybe. A rapist? Never. Never mind that it was shown I raped no one. There was still always that nagging doubt. I might rape your wife. Your secretary. Your daughter. Maybe even your son. I couldn’t get work anyplace. That’s when Father Sieger offered me this job.”

  “As sexton?” Phillis asked.

  “Of course, as sexton.”

  “How did you meet Father Sieger?”

  “Actually, it was Father Paul who suggested I contact Father Sieger.”

  “You don’t look very busy this morning,” Pat observed as he looked around the room. “According to Kelsey Quentin, you--”

  Tom did not let him finish. “That old buttinsky! If he minded his own…. His trouble is he needs a man, needs someone to give him what he’s been missing these years. I’ve a good mind to--”

  “Funny, he said as much
about you,” Phillis said. “He said you need someone to straighten you out and implied he was just the one who could do it.”

  “That….” Tom stopped himself and smiled. “Who knows, maybe he could. It might be fun letting him try.”

  Pat stood up and moved towards the door, Phillis next to him.

  “Do the police know about your prison record?” He was standing with his hand on the doorknob.

  “If they do, they haven’t said anything about it.”

  “Then they don’t know. Not yet, at any rate. When they do--and they will--it could go rough on you. Maybe you ought to have Father Sieger tell them. It could be easier on you that way. One last thing: Are you sure there’s nothing you can tell us that might help?”

  “Anything the police want to know, they’ll have to find out on their own,” Tom said. “You’ll never find me helping the police.”

  “We don’t work for the police. We’re working for Father Sieger. He asked us to help him and that’s what we intend to do. If you know anything, you owe it to Father Sieger and to Father Paul’s memory to tell us.”

  Tom stared at Pat for several seconds. “There is something,” he said as he slowly got up from his chair. “I’m sure you know about the nocturnal events that have Father Sieger so frightened he’s afraid to got to bed at night. It’s why he hired the two of you in the first place. I recommend you speak to Grace Everett about those things. I suspect she knows more about them than she’s letting on.”

  “Why do you say that?” Phillis asked.

  “Because she as much as admitted to me that she knew what was going on,” Tom explained as he came closer. “A month or so ago, she came to me one day and told me she was worried about Father Sieger, said he didn’t look well, like he wasn’t sleeping properly. I asked what I could do and she suggested I start sleeping in the rectory, on the third floor, in one of the rooms you two are using. I asked how my sleeping on the third floor could possibly help Father Sieger get a good night’s sleep on the second floor. That’s when she let something slip, accidentally or on purpose I don’t know, but she said my being in the rectory at night would make Father Sieger feel safer and that way he’d sleep better.”

  “But you didn’t move into the rectory?” Pat said. “Why?”

  “I didn’t think it was my place to suggest it. If Father wanted me to sleep in the rectory, he’d have asked me to.”

  “But you think Grace Everett knows what’s going on.” Phillis said, almost as though talking to herself.

  “Wouldn’t hurt to ask her.”

  “And just what do you know about the goings on in the rectory at night?” Pat asked.

  “About as much as you do. Father Sieger told me everything.”

  “How come?”

  “Guess he had to tell someone. Things like that are damned near impossible to keep to oneself.”

  “Got any idea what or who’s the cause of those things?”

  Tom broke out in a broad smile. “Ghoulies and ghosties and longleggety beasties?”

  “Seriously.”

  “Seriously, I still say you should speak to Grace Everett about them. Seriously.”

  “Did Father Paul ever discuss these things with you?” Phillis asked.

  “Only once, indirectly, the first or second day I was here. And then not in detail. He told me there were things going on at Saint Alban’s, things that were dangerous and that I was to keep my eyes and ears open all the time, that he was depending on me to be observant enough to see if anything was wrong, and to be on the lookout for anyone who was… who was unbalanced. That’s the word he used, ‘unbalanced.’ I guess I wasn’t observant enough, was I? Maybe if I had been, he’d be alive today. I never guessed that he was talking about himself and that he meant he was in danger.”

  Pat glanced quickly at his sister. “We better be going,” he said as he opened the door.

  Phillis stopped on the landing outside the door and turned towards Tom. “I was just wondering. Before this day is over, we hope to speak to Sherrill Rothe, Father Paul’s lover. Just to satisfy my own curiosity, have you ever met Sherrill?”

  “A few times. But we weren’t what you’d call friends.”

  “I’m sort of a collector of limericks,” she lied. “Were you friendly enough for Sherrill to compose one of his famous ones about you?”

  Tom laughed heartily. “As a matter of fact, he did. How did it go? Yes…

  An Episcopal custodian named Benson

  Was filled with ecclesiastical apprehension.

  “This church is so high,”

  (He was oft heard to sigh)‎,

  “If not careful, I’ll become an Anglo-Sexton.

  “How did you know?”

  “I would have been surprised if he hadn’t.”

  Phillis and Pat reached the first floor of the Parish House and stopped. “Wipe that smile off your face,” he said. “Don’t get any bright ideas you’re going to play cupid with those two, because you’re not.”

  “But they’ve both got the hots for one another. Tom’s ready to jump Kelsey and Kelsey thinks Tom’s so damned sexy, which he is. They’d be perfect for one another. I think you’re jealous.”

  “Of which one?”

  “Take your pick. I know deep down, you wish you had someone who….”

  “When the day comes…” he mumbled.

  “Then you wouldn’t mind if I sort of helped them find one another?”

  “Let them find one another themselves. And now let’s get serious. What do you think of our interview with the sexton of Saint Alban’s?”

  “First of all, if he’s the sexton of Saint Alban’s, then you and I came here to be cooks. I don’t believe he’s the sexton of this church. Wouldn’t surprise me to find out he was hired for a purpose or purposes quite different.”

  “Exactly. And next, let’s see if we can get more details from Father Sieger about the fight he and Father Mowbray had last Monday evening. That argument could have some bearing on Father Mowbray’s death. There’s a lot we have to do today, sis, a lot. And as for Ms. Everett, it looks as though she didn’t tell us nearly enough last evening when she tried so hard to find out why we are here.”

  “Pat?”

  He looked at her. He waited for her to go on. He knew she was formulating something in that smart brain of hers.

  “We’re here at Saint Alban’s, a very nice church in the middle of Philadelphia, trying to help the rector get to the bottom of his trouble, trying too to help in a murder investigation. So how come so many people have been lying to us? This is one place where I would have thought people would be more open, more honest.”

  “You’ve answered your own question, my dear. When people are in trouble, or believe themselves to be in some kind of danger, they don’t always tell the truth, at least not the whole truth. Fear, like conscience, doth make cowards of us all.”

  “And love? What does love do?”

  “And love, dear one, makes even bigger liars out of us. And you wonder why I’m so particular about finding just the right person? Believe me, I’ve seen too many mismatched people in this world, each making the other uncomfortable, if not downright unhappy. When I find someone… when I settle down… it will be with the right person or not at all. But now for some answers to Father Mowbray’s murder. I’m growing tired of nothing but questions.”

  CHAPTER XIX

  As they came down the outside steps of the parish house, they met Father Sieger as he was leaving the church.

  “You look exceptionally serious,” he said to them as he preceded them to the door of the rectory. “I do hope there is no more bad news. I’m not quite sure I can take any more at this stage.” He unlocked the front door.

  “Could we speak to you for a few minutes, Father?” Pat asked.

  “Of course. Let’s go into my study. I do have to be at the hospital within the hour. One of our parishioners was admitted there yesterday and I promised to stop by and check on him this morning.”
/>
  They sat down in the study.

  Pat decided to get directly to the point. “Father, we--Phillis and I--just came from seeing Tom Benson. You’ve referred to him more than once as the church sexton. We both got the feeling that that is not a completely accurate title for him, that he is something other than sexton. Are we right?”

  Father Sieger nodded. “Yes. You are right, of course, but please let me explain. Tom is not really sexton of this parish. I’m not totally surprised that you figured that out. First of all, we have a man who does most of the work a sexton would ordinarily do, such as keeping the church and the offices clean. He and his teenage son work here several days a week. I asked Tom to come here for more than one reason. First of all, the man was desperate for a place to live and for some semblance of a job. I couldn’t have hired him and paid him out of church funds solely on that basis. I could have helped him, certainly, but I couldn’t give him a regular salary under false pretenses, for allegedly doing work that someone else was already doing. It wouldn’t be fair to the parish. I hit upon another solution. I told him what was happening here at Saint Alban’s, that I felt I needed someone on the property who would be what you might call a watchman, someone to be around keeping an eye on things. I didn’t use the word, ‘bodyguard,’ but I guess if I’m to be totally honest with you and with myself, that’s what it amounted to. I hired Tom to protect me. Do you think that cowardly of me? I paid him and am still paying him with my own money. I thought it best to keep up the pretence, even with you, for fear that it might jeopardize Tom’s place here if it became known that he was not really sexton, especially with Tom’s prison record.”