Murder at the National Cathedral

by Margaret Truman

  There was silence as all eyes turned to Merle. He didn’t seem to know what to do, what to say. He looked from one face to the other, then finally fixed upon Mac Smith. The taut muscles of his gaunt cheeks and chin sagged; his thin lips began to tremble. Slowly, he raised his hands palms-up at Smith in a weak plea for understanding. “I … I didn’t want to move him. Oh, God, no, I didn’t want to do that. It was terrible seeing him on the floor, blood running from his head. It made me sick. I was so sorry—for both of them.”

  He glanced at Armstrong, then back at Smith. “She didn’t mean to do it, Mr. Smith. I know that. God knows that. Singletary could be cruel to her. I saw it more than once.” He looked at Armstrong before continuing. “She wouldn’t have hurt him if he hadn’t driven her to it. How much can a person take? I asked her once to give him up and to be my friend. I told her I could help her forget him and make her happy.”

  Smith looked down at the floor. This sudden tenderness by the stiff-necked Jonathon Merle, whose severe features were the stuff of caricatures, embarrassed Smith.

  Merle continued, “I told her I wouldn’t do it, but she pleaded with me. She told me that if the police thought Paul had been murdered by an outsider, they wouldn’t suspect her. Even so, I still refused. But then she told me that the cathedral would be ruined if it got out that one member of its clergy had killed another. I believed that, Mr. Smith, I really did, and I took Paul’s body to Good Shepherd for that reason.”

  Smith thought of Bishop St. James and his ill-advised attempt to hide the murder weapon because of the same faulty reasoning. How many wrongs are done in misguided attempts to do right?

  Smith said to Armstrong, “I believe Reverend Merle. He’s telling the truth, isn’t he?”

  Carolyn Armstrong’s face was tight and bitter. But then her body convulsed as she started to sob. Her hands went to her face, and she sank to her knees in front of the altar.

  Merle, too, started to cry, but the only visible signs were large tears that ran slowly down his cheeks and found the corners of his mouth. “There was one other reason,” he said, with difficulty. “I love her.”

  Smith went to Joey Kelsch and put a large hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Joey, I know you’ve been through a lot, but everything is going to be all right.”

  Joey looked up into Smith’s eyes. “I saw him,” he said. “I saw him moving Father Singletary the night I was in the choir room.”

  “Yes, we know,” Smith said. “We know now what happened.” He spoke to Buffolino. “Make sure neither of them leaves here. I want to make sure this boy gets back to his family. And I want to call Finnerty. On time for once. And he’ll be coming back here again tonight.”

  28

  Two Nights Later—A Lovely Fall Evening in the Nation’s Capital

  “Sad, huh?” Tony Buffolino said.

  Tony, Mac, Annabel, and Alicia sat in a banquette along the wall of Tony’s Spotlight Room. Alone on the bandstand, a sallow-skinned man with flowing gray hair, wearing a blue tuxedo jacket with sequins, lethargically played a keyboard while an electronic drum machine provided a cha-cha-cha rhythm.

  “Well, maybe it was just the wrong idea in the wrong place,” Smith said. “Maybe Washington, D.C., just isn’t ready for a Las Vegas nightclub. Besides, there’s no gambling.”

  “No gambling? This whole place was a gamble. But you’re right, Mac. I had a good idea, but I bet against the house. I was ahead of my time in D.C.”

  “Exactly,” Annabel said.

  “Don’t be too hard on yourself, Tony,” Alicia Buffolino said. She touched his hand and smiled. “It just wasn’t meant to be. Besides, I have to take some of the blame here. I wanted you to be more than a private detective following cheating husbands. I wanted you to be a businessman. This was just the wrong business.”

  Tony grinned at Mac and Annabel. “Ain’t she somethin’?” he said.

  “Yes, I think she is exactly that, Tony,” Annabel said.

  “Do you know what the shrink told us this afternoon?” Buffolino asked.

  Mac and Annabel raised their eyebrows.

  “The shrink—she’s a woman, which don’t exactly make me happy, but she seems pretty straight—she told me I don’t always sound the way I’m thinkin’. She got us into a conversation and taped it on a videocamera. Then she played it back. I got her point. There I was thinking nice things and telling them to Alicia, but when I see myself on the tape I sound mad, like I’m puttin’ her down.”

  Smith smiled, said, “We’re all guilty of that at times, Tony. Sounds like you’re going to get a lot out of marriage counseling.”

  Alicia said, “All I want out of it is a good marriage with this knucklehead.”

  “Hey, don’t call me a knuckle … Whatta you …?” He broke into a big smile and embraced her. “Yeah, I guess sometimes I am a knucklehead.”

  The only other person in the club was a Hispanic busboy who also functioned as bartender for Tony and his guests.

  “Did you cook up our meal in the kitchen?” Smith asked.

  “Nah,” Buffolino said, “I had takeout brought in.”

  The Chinese food was set out in bowls on the table. A sign on the front door said: PRIVATE PARTY IN PROGRESS—NO ADMITTANCE.

  Annabel tasted an eggroll and said, “I really feel sorry for Clarissa Morgan.”

  “Not Carolyn Armstrong?” Smith asked, spooning beef with snow peas onto his plate.

  “Of course I feel sorry for Carolyn, but in a way Clarissa’s story touches me even more.” She sat back. “I could see myself ending up in that kind of life. I mean, it must have seemed exciting in the beginning, a beautiful young woman being a paid agent for British intelligence, at first merely dating, then later seducing men who have secrets important to the state, living the high life and being paid well on top of it.”

  “Didn’t get her far,” Buffolino said through a vast mouthful of shrimp fried rice doused with sweet-and-sour sauce and Chinese hot mustard.

  “I know,” Annabel said, “and that’s my point. She did what she was told to do, and then simply because she fell in love with Paul, they cut her loose.”

  “Not quite as cruelly as Reverend Priestly was cut down in Buckland,” Smith said.

  “Why did British intelligence kill Priestly, Mac?” Annabel asked. “I’d have put my money on the murder being the work of someone from Word of Peace.”

  “Then you’d have won your wager. Maybe you should put in gambling here, Tony. The problem was that Priestly, who once was a Young Turk allied with Paul Singletary, had gone over to MI5. He was no longer trying to pass along useful data and weapons information and such to help Word of Peace; he’d become suspicious of certain characters high up in it and went over to become an agent for the Brits, who fed him bits of this and that. His role now was to get the goods on the bad apples in the peace movement. Problem was that the heavy hitters in Word of Peace got wind of it—twigged to it, as the English say—and wanted to eliminate this source who had become a danger to them. Once Paul was killed here, in such a distinctive fashion, Mr. Jin Tse, who was not only a mover and shaker in Word of Peace but an acknowledged terrorist and assassin to boot, flew to England and hit Priestly in a manner calculated to make it seem that the murders were parallel—to divert attention, obviously, from his organization—since he knew that they hadn’t killed Paul Singletary.

  “But wait a minute, Mac,” Annabel interrupted, “how could Jin have known to kill Priestly with a candlestick? At that time nobody but Armstrong, Merle, and, I guess, St. James, knew what the murder weapon used on Paul was.”

  “I think one other person knew,” Mac said, “and George confirmed my suspicion yesterday when he told me that one of the cathedral custodians skipped town the night of the storm, the night the evening news carried the story about the FBI sweep of Word of Peace’s petty spies. My hunch, and this is all based on circumstantial evidence until the police can find him for questioning, is that the maintenance man at the cathedral
saw St. James switch candlesticks, and make a nervous display of it at that. George is a charming guy and a wonderful bishop, but I assume he’s not the smoothest of men when it comes to removing murder weapons. The maintenance guy reported it to Jin Tse, who is smart and inscrutable. He saw the opportunity to use a similar weapon in the Cotswolds. As it turned out, he’s more inscrutable than smart considering the time he’s facing. Of course, Word of Peace might have gotten to killing Paul anyway because of the unwanted attention he’d been attracting with his over-active love life, or at least sex life. Not only that, he was tottering on the edge of being accused of feathering his own nest with their funds. Which he was, in fact. The trips to England to see his mistress; the very expensive security system in his apartment, installed because Paul was beginning to think that his whole life, the whole shaky, secret edifice, could bring him down. Whether he was afraid of MI5 or the CIA or others in the peace organization may never be known—but he wasn’t paranoid. Treason is a good reason to be fearful. And he was sincere about almost everything in the movement.”

  “You mean attempted treason,” Tony put it, “don’t you? Didn’t I hear that the street value of the tapes meant they were not exactly prime stuff?”

  “Right. But stealing the wrong stuff and turning it over, or holding it to turn over at the ‘right time’ to a nation’s enemies, is treason whether the tapes were outdated or not. The British only let Priestly get hold of weak material from the start, and he and Singletary held on to it too long. It’s like strong narcotics or weak narcotics—it matters to addicts but not to the law. When MI5 confronted Priestly with knowledge of his taping and other acts, stuff he had been feeding to Paul, he had an extra reason to be ‘turned,’ and to work for them. Also, he was beginning to want out, didn’t much like using his friends, made the mistake of letting that show. Jin and company figured that he might tell all he knew about Word of Peace, information he’d gotten from Paul, to buy his way clear.”

  “What I don’t understand,” Annabel said, no longer attempting to eat, “is why those two priests should have been engaged in intelligence trafficking, anyhow.”

  “Oh, sure you do. They met when both were in the military, engaged in joint exercises of the two navies, and became good friends. You can almost hear the conversations between them, young idealists, ministers in the military, bemoaning the money spent on weapons while much of the world is dirt poor, deciding over a few beers late at night that they had to do something to help prevent further escalation or nuclear destruction.” He frowned. “The problem with those two was that they were naive, inept. Priestly eventually paid the price, as Paul might have, long after most other young idealists have put on pinstriped suits and taken managerial jobs with defense contractors. Really a shame.”

  “What a world,” Annabel murmured. “Believe in peace and work for it, and get killed because of it.”

  “You are, as usual, too nice. Paul wasn’t killed for his commitments but for a lack of them. Especially toward women.” He sipped Chinese tea, now cold. “Well, at least they gave Clarissa Morgan the option of leaving England and settling in the British Virgin Islands, which, I might point out, is not exactly hardship duty.”

  “She seemed so resigned about going back there. This Mr. Leighton … what did she call him, her ‘control’ … seems to call all the shots in her life.”

  “Your expression is almost too appropriate. I propose to call the shots at this table: a toast.” He held his glass of Blantons high over the table. Buffolino picked up his glass of Don Q rum and Coke, and Annabel her white wine. “What are we toasting?” she asked.

  “First, George St. James and his return to his relatively normal life as bishop of the National Cathedral. Of course, what he prayed wouldn’t happen did happen. One of his own was the murderer. Which proves that even for a bishop, not all prayers can be answered. He’s gotten some phone calls. One woman said she would no longer contribute to that ‘den of iniquity’ posing as a cathedral. But he—and the cathedral—will ride it out because they must. We need him, and the cathedral.”

  “You bet. A great institution, some great people—and an eternally good cause. What’s the second thing we’re toasting?” Annabel asked.

  “The end of a sad, nasty, and upsetting episode in our lives,” Smith said. The rims of glasses clinked together. “And,” Smith added, “I propose a toast to the National Cathedral getting back to its business at hand, namely setting the spiritual pace for this increasingly hedonistic slice of society.”

  “Amen,” Tony said. “What’s that mean?”

  “Hedonistic?” Smith said.

  “Yeah.”

  “Caring about your own fanny more than anybody else’s.”

  “Makes sense to me,” Buffolino said, raising his glass again.

  “What do you think will happen to Jonathon Merle?” Annabel asked.

  “Hard to say,” Smith replied. “He was an accessory under the law, but I have a feeling they won’t go hard on him. He walked in on them right after she’d hit Paul with the candlestick, and bought her rationale that if the body were found in Good Shepherd, it would appear that someone from outside the cathedral had murdered him. He had finally found someone on earth to truly love. Also, Merle is a good soldier. Jonathon believes in the cathedral and what it stands for, and thought he was doing the ‘right’ thing. He wasn’t, of course, but he’ll have to answer to a lesser god than he’s been used to.” Smith shook his head. “Nickelson is a sad case. Because he was convinced his wife was playing around with Paul, he had good reason to think he’d be accused of the murder. Frankly, he’s better off in San Francisco, and the cathedral is better off without him.”

  “His wife would be better off without him, too,” Annabel said, “but that’s another story.”

  Buffolino gestured to the bartender. “Another rum and Coke.” He also ordered for Mac and Annabel, but they demurred. Buffolino said, “I really feel sorry for that kid, Joey. Man, he must be some mess, running away like that, having seen Merle dragging a body up the hall. Tough on a kid.”

  “Yes, it is,” Smith said. “Interesting that Armstrong was convinced Joey had seen her moving the body, not Merle.”

  “Do you think she would have hurt the boy?” Annabel’s concern, even after the fact, was etched in her face.

  Smith shook his head. “I don’t think so. Killing Paul was not a premeditated act. She was the woman scorned, and she lashed out.”

  “Whattaya think she’ll get?” Buffolino asked.

  “I don’t know. Susan Kellman is a good attorney, a good choice to defend Armstrong, if I do say so myself. I think they’ll probably do well, fairly well. Word of Peace is another matter.”

  “I’m glad that the cathedral and the Mother Church have disassociated themselves from it,” said Annabel.

  “I suppose so,” Smith said, “but it’s kind of a shame, too. We could use more effective peace organizations. Too bad a few factions decided to make use of it for their own purposes.”

  “More ribs?” Buffolino asked.

  “No, thanks. Not those ribs, anyhow,” Smith said. He took Annabel’s hand and asked, “Dance?”

  She giggled. “Here? Now?”

  “Yup. Excuse us, Tony.”

  Buffolino smiled as he watched the Smiths take to the small dance floor.

  “What would you like to hear?” the musician asked.

  “ ‘Our Love Is Here to Stay,’ ” Annabel said.

  They danced close, their cheeks touching, Annabel humming the melody along with the pianist, who seemed to have become inspired by two live, moving bodies. Halfway through the song, Mac whispered in her ear.

  “No,” she said, pulling her head back and laughing.

  “Why not?”

  “Do you really think he’ll know the answer?”

  “Bet you a hundred bucks.”

  “You’re on,” she said.

  Smith guided her close to the bandstand and said, “Excuse me,” to the
musician.

  The musician leaned over the keyboard, his fingers still working the keys. “What?”

  “Do you know your fly is open?” Smith asked.

  The pianist laughed. “If you can hum it, I can play it.”

  Tony Buffolino suddenly appeared next to them. “Mind if I cut in?” he asked.

  “Not if she doesn’t,” Smith said.

  She didn’t. As they danced, Tony leading manfully, half as tall as she, he told her that he was out of the nightclub business for good, that he wanted to turn over a new leaf with Alicia, and that his best days—and nights—were spent working for Mac. She smiled. Even Tony was becoming nicer. But she hoped there would be few occasions for Tony to get assignments from Mac. Still, looking over Tony’s head at her husband, she wasn’t so sure.

  Later that night, while they sat propped up in bed and browsed through the newspaper—Rufus providing a breathing footboard—Smith asked, “Say, did you really find that phony Frenchman Pierre Quarle handsome and charming?”

  “Yes. Didn’t you?”

  “No. He had bad breath.”

  “I didn’t notice.”

  “You were blinded by the accent, and your nose shut down.”

  “I was not. Mac, are you jealous of me?”

  “At times.”

  “Don’t ever be. I am your woman, and will be for the rest of my life.”

  “Then I won’t be … jealous. All the time. Just stay away from Frenchmen with halitosis. And especially from any man without it. If you don’t—”

  “What will happen if I don’t?”

  “He becomes a meal for the beast. Right, Rufus?” He cued the dog with his right foot.

  The Dane growled and shifted position. Smith and Annabel turned off their reading lights.

  “Good night, Professor,” she said.

  “Good night, Patron of the Arts.”

  “Never again.”

  “Never what again?” Smith asked.

  “Two never-agains. First, never hire an assistant who thinks he’s smarter than you are but turns out to be merely impossible. And two, never get involved in murder.”