Red Mass

by Rosemary Aubert

  Other Novels by Rosemary Aubert

  in the Ellis Portal Mystery Series

  Free Reign

  The Feast of Stephen

  The Ferryman Will Be There

  Leave Me By Dying

  Copyright © 2005 by Rosemary Aubert

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American

  Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form

  or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage

  and retrieval systems, without written

  permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief pas-

  sages in a review.

  Published by Bridge Works Publishing Company, Lanham,

  Maryland, an imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.

  Distributed in the United States by National Book Network, Lanham,

  Maryland. For descriptions of this and other Bridge Works books, visit the

  National Book Network website at

  www.nbnbooks.com.

  FIRST EDITION

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any

  similarity to actual persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended

  by the author.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Aubert, Rosemary.

  Red mass : an Ellis Portal mystery / Rosemary Aubert—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  9781461623014

  1. Portal, Ellis (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Private investigators—Ontario—Toronto—Fiction. 3. Toronto (Ont.)—Fiction. I. Title.

  PR9199.3.A9R43 2005 813’.54—dc22 2005001237

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of

  American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of

  Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

  Manufactured in the United States of America.

  Table of Contents

  Also by

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  For Barbara and Warren Phillips

  Chapter 1

  At Mechanises in the autumn of the year, Canadian judges in black silk robes, red woolen sashes and starched white-linen collar tabs gather like red-winged blackbirds to celebrate the Red Mass. I often observe red-winged blackbirds in their natural habitat and have never seen two males on the same branch. Ordinarily, you would not have caught me and Supreme Court Justice John Stoughton-Melville in the same room, either, even a room as large as the nave of St. Michael’s Cathedral. This day of the Red Mass, knowing I was in Stow’s presence made me conceal myself from his sight.

  At sixty years old, I am a man living out my last chance. I don’t draw attention to myself. I don’t sit where people can see me unless I mean them to. I sat in the back of the cathedral among law students and the general public, where my eyes could scan the crowd who had come to celebrate the archaic practice of opening the courts with a church service.

  Crimson vestments adorned the seven celebrants of the mass. Rank upon rank of judges, red-jacketed Mounties and even the cap of the cardinal added to the color of the occasion. Of all who were present, only the cardinal and the chief justice outranked Justice Stoughton-Melville. I saw Stow shift nervously in the pew, glance over one shoulder then the other, clearly a man ill at ease. Did he find it demeaning to be a third-ranking dignitary behind the cardinal and the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court? Or—harder to imagine—was he afraid of something? I was glad I was too far away for him to notice me.

  “Supreme Court Chief Justice Amanda Welsh-Martine. Supreme Court Justice Puisne John Stoughton-Melville. Justice F. Robert McKenzie of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice ...”

  As the archbishop honored the respected attendees by reading out their names, I strained my neck to get a better view of Stow’s escort. On either side of him stood an exceptionally tall young man in a scarlet tunic trimmed in gold. So he traveled with his own Mounties! How impressive. How like Stow to waste the taxpayers’ money instead of his own.

  He fidgeted again, and I glanced quickly away, which would have been the reason I wasn’t looking when, just as the choirboys rose to sing the opening hymn, the huge cathedral echoed with a small sharp sound that had nothing to do with Gregorian chant.

  Without actually seeing them move, I realized that the two Mounties flanking Stow had just made him their prisoner.

  I’d been a judge myself the first time I’d felt the cold steel bands of the law around my own wrists. Still, I was shocked to see Stow arrested. I experienced that curious slowing of time that happens when some life-altering occurrence plays itself out before one’s eyes. I saw Stow’s shoulders stiffen. Even beneath the absurd red robe with its white fur-trimmed cape, the muscles of his back became visibly rigid. Years on the bench—and on the skids, too—had taught me the difference between a man who stands up straight when he faces defeat and one who slumps. Stow did not slump.

  “Hosanna in the highest ...”

  Who had planned this horrific display of punishment—and why and how? Fortunately, Stow was spared the disgrace of having to crawl past someone else on his way out of the pew. He and his guards were on the aisle.

  But they were on the center aisle, and in order to remove their prisoner from the church, the police were going to have to march him, Supreme Court robes and all, right down the middle of the hundreds of dignitaries, only a few of whom seemed to be gaping at the tall man in red walking in step with the red-coated officers.

  “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.”

  I, too, sat on the aisle. Was there any reason for Stow to think I would be present at the Red Mass? I never would have come without prodding. Not even in the old days when I might have expected my own name to be called out. I preferred to stay away, even before bitterness, shame, regret and longing had attached itself to anything that had to do with me and the court. Vainly, I tried to hunker down behind the tall student in front of me. Even though Stow was the one being hauled off, I was the one who’d be embarrassed if he saw me.

  “Hosanna in the highest.”

  As Stow passed by the assembled judges, men and women possessed of professional—indeed legendary—calm, no head turned.

  The same was not true of the heads of the lawyers, including mine. Lawyers were always welcome at the Red Mass—but as spectators. Unlike the judges, we welcomed the opportunity to gawk at our betters.

  When I turned, Stow’s eye caught mine.

  I winced and dropped my gaze.

  But not before I saw, at the very back in the deep shadows at the rear of the church, a slender female figure who, as if by prearrangement, slipped out behind Stow and the Mounties and disappeared from my view into the bright sunlight outside the cathedral.

  My instinct was to follow, too, but I fought the urge. Stow had been my friend once, but that had been a long time ago. If I owed him anything, the debt had been cancelled by time. And by distance, too. The distance between an outlaw and a potentate of the court.

  “What in God’s name is going on?”

  “Shut up, Nicky,” I whispered to the young man sitting beside me. “
Pay attention to the service.”

  Like most of the hundreds of other officers of the court present at the Red Mass, I turned my attention back to the officiating archbishop and pretended not to have seen what I so clearly had.

  What could Stow have done to merit being taken into custody? Were it anyone else, I would automatically have assumed that criminal charges had been laid. To assume such a thing of a Supreme Court Justice, let alone a pillar of the community like Stow, was inconceivable. Had he, then, been arrested for his own protection? It is one of the duties of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to protect important public figures. But not to handcuff them. Not to drag them off in full view of the public they are pledged to serve.

  The rest of the Red Mass passed in a blur. I imagine there was the usual homily, the usual reminder to all present of the power and majesty of the court, of the supremacy of law, of the honor of service to one’s country and Queen. I heard not a word.

  I’m speeding through the streets, stone sober despite the booze and the coke. It’s raining and I can barely see, but I feel like the Pope or the Queen—as if anybody who cared to could see me. What have I done? How have I let go so quickly and so thoroughly? There is no need to ask why. There is no why. There is only the fact that I have tried to kill a woman by choking her in the middle of a crowd of people in the Eaton shopping center. I have been driven around this city by chauffeurs for years now. But though this car is unmarked, anybody would know it is a police cruiser. Impulsively my eyes seek a means of release. But there is no door handle. And even if there were, how could I open the door with cuffed hands? The steel grates against my wrist. Do I care more about my skin or about my Cartier watch?

  “Coming back to the Barristers’ Dining Room, Ellis?”

  “What?”

  I started at the whispered question, looked up to see the procession of dignitaries, led by a police honor guard, slowly making its way out of the church.

  “You’re back in the profession now. You gotta get out more. Personally, I wouldn’t miss the reception for the world. Watching stuffed shirts stuff themselves. What could be more fun?”

  “Oh, Nicky!”

  Nickel McPhail IV, named for his great-great-grandfather who had made a fortune in the mines of northern Ontario, was a few decades younger than me—thirty to my sixty. But he had “adopted” me on the first day I’d returned to law school after so many years in disgrace. It embarrassed me to think that Nicky was my teacher and not the other way around. It flattered me that he nevertheless followed me around like a puppy, asking questions about what he teasingly called “the golden days of our calling.” Nicky was possessed of the astonishing sense of personal ease that comes only from generations of great wealth. The standing joke was that he could afford to be a fun guy because he had been born with a nickel spoon in his mouth, but to my mind, his personality had nothing to do with luck. Nickel was simply a decent, positive, honest, civil man.

  “No, Nicky, I’m not going,” I whispered back. One of the judges in the procession heard my whisper and cast me a warning glance. It’s not wise to forget that a judge’s livelihood depends on his hearing.

  “I wouldn’t be welcome,” I said more loudly. One of the things Nicky had taught me—as if I needed to learn—was never to show that one was intimidated by a judge.

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Ellis, even the lackeys are invited.” He nodded toward the four judge’s deputies at the very rear of the grand procession—two women and two men who escorted judges when they were robed. Each of them was middle-aged, trim, alert. I never referred to court service officers as lackeys myself, especially since I’d done a stint as one. But even a basically friendly guy like Nicky sometimes showed contempt for the nearly invisible underlings of the system.

  “I have no desire to stand among judges and fellow lawyers eating tiny sandwiches and trying to think of clever retorts, Nicky.”

  “I keep telling you, Ellis, you need reality training. You’ve been away for a long time, and you’ve spent the last six months with your nose glued to a laptop. It’s time to reclaim your place among your peers.”

  I glanced up at his earnest, handsome face. The McPhails were tall men. I’d seen a full-length portrait of Nicky’s father in the lobby of Osgoode Hall among the portraits of the other Chief Justices. “Listen, kid,” I said, “I’m interested in cases and causes, not gossip and pretense.”

  “You’re interested in what’s going on with your old pal John Stoughton-Melville,” Nicky replied. “You don’t fool me with your righteous routine. But if you know what’s good for you, you’ll stay out of it. Come on, you old relic, get with the program and get on the bus.”

  He wasn’t speaking metaphorically. There was a bus waiting outside the iron gate of the fence that surrounded St. Mike’s Cathedral. As I followed Nicky toward it, grumbling as I went, I suddenly remembered something that had happened at least twenty years before. The Pope had come to Toronto and, I seemed to recall, had said mass at St. Mike’s. The mass had been for clergy, but hundreds of laypeople had stood outside the fence, hoping to catch a glimpse of the Pontiff. I stood in the crowd with my mother. When the Pope appeared, she crossed herself and pressed closer to the fence. I tried to pull her back, afraid she’d be crushed in the crowd, but she resisted. I turned to see if there was a way out, an opening through which I could drag her if it became necessary. I looked around, and then I looked up. Across the street from the cathedral, the roofs of all the buildings were lined with military snipers, their long-barreled guns outlined against the afternoon sky like a crown of thorns. I glanced around.

  “Watch where you’re going, Ellis; you’ll fall on your face ...” Nicky gave my shoulder the sort of little push that makes a man feel old, and I realized we were next in line to board the bus back to Osgoode Hall and the Red Mass reception. Like my mother on the day of the Pope’s visit, I was up against it. There was no turning back, no choice except to follow Nicky onto the bus.

  “Most unfortunate. Quite surprising. One never knows what to expect these days, does one?”

  Once I got to the reception, I sidled up beside a cluster of the more senior judges, hoping to overhear some snatch of conversation that would give me a clue about Stow. But their conversation was so guarded, so general and vague, that I couldn’t tell whether they were discussing the arrest of the Supreme Court judge or the latest verdict in a criminal case.

  Across the room, the four “lackeys” huddled beside an eight-foot fern in a corner. Against the brocade-upholstered chairs, the deep blue carpet, the long white window treatments, they looked uncomfortable and eager to escape. Like me.

  “Hi,” I said to them.

  The deputies nodded and smiled, but I could see my presence put them slightly on guard, as if they expected me to ask them to fetch something, good minions that they were.

  “It’s a shame what happened at the mass, isn’t it?” I prodded.

  To no effect. “It was lovely as always,” one of the officers said.

  “What are you doing here, Portal?”

  Ignoring the deputies entirely, a large, elderly man with dark craggy brows and a thatch of wild white hair pushed himself between me and them as if his judge’s robes exempted him from ordinary civility. “I wouldn’t have thought you’d have the gall,” he said.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw one of the male minions glance quickly from the old man’s face to mine. Clearly the deputy knew who both of us were. “You may have returned to the bar, Portal, but rest assured you’ve no hope of regaining the bench.”

  “Thank you, Your Lordship,” I replied. Always thank a judge even if he screws you. That was Nicky’s advice. Good idea but not new. I’d taught it myself in years gone by. “It’s a pleasure to know that Your Lordship has paid such close attention to my career.”

  “You were a troublemaker when you were young, Portal,” he growled, “and now you’re an old troublemaker. You’d be best advised to be of good character and keep the
peace.”

  This insulting legal warning, often given to people on bail, was a veiled reference to my criminal record, now permanently sealed by a pardon. But if the old coot thought he was shocking me, he was wrong. I made no secret of my past.

  I nodded good day to the pompous ass, threaded my way through the crowd and out into the lobby. The Byzantine mosaic of the floor amplified the sound of my hurrying steps, and the portraits of stern old former Chief Justices of Ontario stared in disapproval as I rushed toward the front door. I had to get outside. I was suffocating.

  In the late afternoon sun, the formal gardens in front of Osgoode Hall bloomed with an exuberance that was almost embarrassing. Mounds of impatiens—red, flaming pink and orange—spilled out past symmetrical borders and over the deep green lushness of the grass. Purple, rust and yellow mums vied for attention with the feathery flower heads of tall, exotic grasses. A real red-winged blackbird, having strayed, no doubt, from the river valley or the harbor islands or the lakeshore, clung tenaciously to a thick stalk and kept his eye on the door of Osgoode as if waiting for his impersonators to come out.

  Still unable to get the image of the handcuffed justice out of my mind, I decided to walk for a while along Queen Street in order to clear my thoughts.

  As soon as I left Osgoode, I passed “new” City Hall, built in the 1960s when I had been a law student the first time. Forty years had not diminished the startle effect of its spaceship-like architecture.

  Across Bay Street to the east rose Old City Hall, a Gothic mass of dark pink stone built by immigrant masons when Toronto was an outpost of Queen Victoria’s empire. It had long been a courthouse. In fact, years before, Judge B. Sheldrake Tuppin, my mentor, had reigned in its upper reaches. I, too, had been a legend there. First as a champion of the downtrodden and then as one of them.