Quoth the Raven

by Jane Haddam

  They moved across the quad and then around the sides of Concord Hall and out onto Minuteman Field. The air was thick with the smell of kerosene and sharp cold with the lateness of the year. Freddie and his friends had managed to replace the effigy in time. In the light from the moving torches, it looked not only more outrageous than the first had been, but more outrageous than the disguised body of Donegal Steele had been. The new costume from the drama department was scarlet red and plush. The new jack-o’-lantern head was a monstrous mutant twice the size of the old.

  Gregor stopped at the edge of the field and let the students behind him surge past. He still had his hand on Tibor’s shoulder and intended to keep it there. Tibor had been much too quiet, and he had been looking depressed.

  “What is it?” he said, while the rest of the crowd began to press toward the mountain of logs. “Are you worrying about all that stuff you told me this evening?”

  Father Tibor Kasparian sighed. “No, Krekor. It is something else I have to tell you now. Something closer to home.”

  “What is it?”

  Tibor scuffled his feet in the dirt. “Well, Krekor, do you remember, when we first went into Lexington House, I disappeared for a while?”

  “Of course I do. I thought you went to the bathroom.”

  “Well, yes, Krekor. I did that, too. I went to the bathroom. But mostly what I did was to call Lida. To make sure everything was all right.”

  “And?”

  “And everything was not all right, Krekor. They have had a robbery. They have had a man in a suit like the Terminator who came in and tried to take Lida’s diamond necklace and her engagement ring.”

  “Those doors,” Gregor exploded. He grabbed Tibor by both shoulders and turned the little priest around to face him. It didn’t do much good. The torches were fine for illuminating the big picture, the bonfire pile and the effigy and the craggy face of the outcrop. They did more to hide Tibor’s face than to reveal it. And then Gregor caught it, the only significant word, the truly insane thing. “What do you mean tried,” he demanded. “Tried?”

  Tibor took a deep breath. “Well, Krekor, you see, he did not get away with it. Lida hit him. With Bobby Costikian’s magic Jedi sword.”

  “With—”

  “And then when he was down, old George Tekemanian jumped on his chest and kicked him in the—in the—”

  “Oh, dear sweet Lord Jesus, “Gregor said. “What are those two, crazy? They could have been killed.”

  “No, Krekor, they could not have been killed. The man was keeping his gun in his pocket. Donna Moradanyan got it after George—”

  “Tibor.”

  “It is all right, Krekor. Lida let me talk to the policeman who came when they called. The man was being taken away and everything was calm again. Lida said the children were all very excited and impressed.”

  Very excited and impressed. Gregor could just imagine it. In fact, that was the problem. He could imagine it exactly. Lida Arkmanian. Bobby Costikian’s magic Jedi sword. He gripped Tibor’s shoulders more tightly and started to say what he should have said all the way back on Cavanaugh Street, to berate and explain, to finally make his point—but he didn’t have the chance. There was a shout from the front of the crowd. When Gregor looked up, he saw Jack Carroll in full bat regalia in a cleared space right in front of the log mountain. He looked so tall, he must have been standing on something, but Gregor couldn’t see what. The smell of kerosene was now almost overpowering. Jack lifted his torch, swung it around and around his head, and threw it at the wood.

  For a second, it seemed like nothing had happened, the maneuver had not worked. Then a thin stream of flame shot up, and another, and another. Torches began to fly through the air, arcing and landing like rockets. It took no time at all for critical mass to be reached and the whole thing to explode.

  It wasn’t really an explosion, of course. It was only light and heat, so much light and heat, roaring at the sky. Above their heads, Lenore, who had been circling close to the jack-o’-lantern, widened her arc. His, Gregor corrected himself mentally, and then gave it up.

  The bonfire was beautiful.

  It could have been a star.

  It could have been the sun.

  Turn the page to continue reading from the Gregor Demarkian Holiday Mysteries

  Prologue

  Thursday, February 21

  [1]

  THERE WAS A BIG maple on the front lawn of St. Ignatius Loyola Parochial School, covered with papier-mâché leprechauns and painted-plastic glitter-encrusted shamrocks. Brigit Ann Reilly passed it every day on her walk from the Motherhouse of the Sisters of Divine Grace to the Maryville Public Library. Sometimes she thought the tree was pretty, a perfect example of the simple faith of children. Sometimes she thought it was wrong, because it replaced the sacred symbols of Christianity with representations of a lot of pagan superstitions. Mostly she didn’t notice it at all. Brigit Ann Reilly was very self-conscious about her walks. She was only eighteen years old, just out of high school, and she had arrived in Maryville to enter the convent just this past September. Before coming, she had watched a dozen movies about girls who decided to become nuns and read a handful of books put out by the Church on the same subject. She hadn’t even begun to be prepared for what it was like. She had imagined herself in a habit more times than she could remember. She hadn’t realized how exposed it would make her feel to actually wear one. A postulant’s habit wasn’t much—a long-sleeved black dress that reached to the bottom of the calves; a caplike French babushka—but it was enough to make Brigit feel that everyone must be staring at her. Especially today. On top of being naturally shy and more than a little self-involved, Brigit was one of those people who are pathologically self-conscious in guilt. She was supposed to go directly from St. Mary of the Hill to the library. St. Mary of the Hill was on one end of Delaney Street, at the top of the highest rise in town. The library was at the other end. It was a straight shot, without detours or side issues, right through the center of town. Brigit went down the hill with books to return and a list of books needed. She came up again with whatever Glinda Daniels could find of what was on the list. It was, as Sister Scholastica always said, a position of trust and a test of religious obedience. Brigit had been very obedient for most of the past six months. Today, she was getting ready to make an excursion of her own.

  It was ten o’clock on the morning of Thursday, February 21. On this day of any other year, the landscape would have been frozen solid, full of snow and grit. This far north in New York State, edging up toward the banks of the St. Lawrence Seaway, February was a hard month. This year, for some reason no one could tell, there had been an unprecedented thaw. On Valentine’s Day the temperature had risen to fifty-two degrees. Three days later, the rain had started, washing away what was left of another big rock candy winter. Today the temperature was nearly sixty and the rain a thick curtain threatening to bring flood. Brigit wore a simple shawl over the shoulders of her habit and carried an umbrella to keep the rain off her head.

  “Good morning, Mr. O’Brien,” she sang out, when she got to the shoe store, just half a block past Iggy Loy. The shoe store was worse than the school, in terms of Irish decorations. Its window was hung with green paper streamers studded with buttons that said “Erin Go Bragh.” Brigit didn’t know what “Erin Go Bragh” meant, but she did know that Sister Scholastica hated it. Sister Scholastica was Mistress of Postulants. She always said there ought to be a murder mystery out there called Erin Go Bang. Brigit skidded to a stop at the shoe store’s door and said, “You shouldn’t be standing out in the rain without a hat, Mr. O’Brien. You’ll catch a cold.”

  “I never catch colds,” Jack O’Brien said. Then he rubbed the rain off the top of his bald head with the flat of his hand and sighed. “Never mind. That’s the kind of thing I used to say when I was twenty-two. These days, I’d be glad to go back to sixty-two.”

  “I never think of you as old,” Brigit said virtuously.

&
nbsp; “Hunh. Must be why you’re going to be a holy nun. Excess of charity. What are you doing out in weather like this?”

  “What I always do. Going to the library.”

  “Well, the good Sister Scholastica must not have looked out her window this morning. Assuming she’s got windows. Don’t you realize, child, there’s going to be a flood.”

  “Is there really?”

  O’Brien shrugged. “Not a big one. Not like the disaster we had in ’53. But if the rain keeps on coming down like this, I’d expect the streets along the river to be underwater by three this afternoon.”

  Brigit turned in the direction of the river, invisible behind block after block of solid two-story frame buildings, stores, and houses that made up the center of town. She had never been down by the river. The only times she was allowed into town from the Motherhouse were on her library trips and her literacy days, Wednesdays, when she and half a dozen other postulants and novices were bussed over to St. Andrew’s parish to teach reading to adults. Literacy days were Brigit’s first experience of Doing Good to the Poor. That, like entering the convent, had turned out to be not at all what Brigit expected. Sometimes Brigit wondered if there was something wrong with her. Her best friend among the postulants, Neila Connelly, never seemed to have the same kinds of trouble. Neila never seemed to have any kind of trouble. Neila just… floated.

  Brigit turned her head away from the river, thinking she might be giving herself away—although that was silly—and smiled at Jack O’Brien again. “Sister Scholastica was probably just excited,” she said. “About Margaret Finney. You know.”

  “Margaret Finney?”

  “The founder of our Order. She was beatified last week.”

  “Ah,” Jack O’Brien said.

  “If she actually gets all the way to being canonized, she’ll be the first Irish-American saint. You wouldn’t believe the kind of fuss that’s going on up at the house. We’re even having our parents up for St. Patrick’s Day and putting on a program.”

  “What kind of a program would that be? Nuns dancing?”

  “Some of us,” Brigit said. “Mostly it’s going to be postulants and novices singing and giving speeches. You can come if you want. The whole town’s going to be invited for after the parade. I’m going to speak on ‘The Snake in Irish Myth and Legend’ and ‘The History of the Immigrants National Bank.’”

  “Two speeches?”

  “Everybody’s giving two speeches. We have to. Sister Scholastica is always saying how they wouldn’t have had to in her day because there were a hundred girls in her postulant class. Can you imagine that? A hundred.”

  “Yes, well,” Jack O’Brien said, “the good Sister’s right about that. There aren’t nearly enough vocations these days. People are too selfish.”

  “Maybe there aren’t as many people.”

  Jack O’Brien cocked a single eyebrow. “That’s a kind of selfishness, too. ‘I’d rather have a new TV set than raise another child.’ Or are you one of those people who thinks the ban on birth control ought to go?”

  “To tell you the truth, I never think about it.”

  “Yes,” Jack O’Brien said. “Maybe that’s natural. In the old days, nuns never thought about birth control.” He rubbed the top of his head again, and sighed again, and looked back through the door of his store. It was empty and likely to stay that way, with the weather this bad. Brigit could practically see him making up his mind to close up and go home. “Listen,” he told her, “you get back up the hill from the library, you tell the good Sister how bad it is down here, all right?”

  “All right.”

  “The nuns have always been good for this town. In ’53 the lady who’s now your Reverend Mother General came right down to Hibernia Street in that big flowing habit they used to wear and hauled sandbags with her own two hands. The old Reverend Mother General opened the doors of the convent to anybody who needed shelter and half the town was up there before midnight. Caused a terrible fuss. Had to have something or the other reconsecrated.”

  Brigit shifted uneasily under her umbrella. It really was raining very hard. The air itself was saturated, thick with wet. Brigit could feel the damp chill under her habit and inside her shoes.

  “Well,” she said, “I’d better get going. Sister fusses so much when I get back too late.”

  “Sister ought to fuss when you’re back late. It’s a form of protection.”

  “I’m eighteen years old, Mr. O’Brien. I can take care of myself.”

  “Hunh. Well. You try to do that for the rest of the day. I think I’ll pack it in and see how my Mary is getting along. You sure you don’t need an escort?”

  “Positive.”

  Jack O’Brien nodded, turned, and went back into his store.

  Out on the sidewalk, Brigit Ann Reilly bit her lip, looked at the rain streaming past the edges of her umbrella, and wondered if she ought to go through with what she had agreed to do. Her sense of local geography was weak, so she couldn’t be sure, but she thought the place she was supposed to be going to was down near the river. If the river really was flooding, then what? She turned in the direction of the library and started to move, slowly, sloshing along the pavement as if she were wading in surf.

  All around her, Maryville, New York—founded by Irish immigrants just after the Civil War and sustained by them for more than a 125 years since—was getting ready for St. Patrick’s Day. It was getting ready in ways that had nothing to do with the conscious will of the people living in it, too. There were so many deliberate things—like the polished ’57 Chevy Stu Morrissey kept on the roof of his body shop on Corrigan Street, wrapped now in green ribbons and sporting a larger-than-life-size leprechaun at the wheel—but what struck Brigit were the undeliberate ones. The rain and the thaw had done their work. Grass was sprouting in thick emerald green carpets on all the lawns. At the library, the border made of a deeper green plant Brigit didn’t know the name of had gone wild. It was at least half an inch taller than the grass beside it, and thick, and very dark. It reminded Brigit of a dust ruffle. She stared at it for a moment and shook her head.

  If she had any sense, she would go right down to the bottom of the hill and in through the library doors, get her job done, and then go right on home. That was what she owed Sister Mary Scholastica and the Sisters of Divine Grace and the Catholic Church. It was called religious obedience and she had made a promise to practice it all the way back in September. The problem was, she no longer knew what religious anything meant any more. Ever since she had entered the convent, religion had been falling apart on her. Neila Connelly was always telling her it was a very bad sign, that it meant she had no vocation, but Brigit didn’t like to think that. She was one of those girls who had “always” wanted to be a nun, the way other girls “always” wanted to be mothers or ballet dancers or models. She couldn’t imagine herself doing anything else.

  There was an old-fashioned lamppost at the intersection to Londonderry Street, where she would have to turn if she wanted to go on her extracurricular errand. It had been left standing by the town as a gesture to the “history” of Maryville, and festooned with green satin ribbons with gold harps and mock shillelaghs at their hearts. The ribbons were drooping in the rain and the harps were losing their gold. Brigit stopped beside the mess and looked first toward the library and then down Londonderry Street. Londonderry Street seemed to stretch out into fog and blackness, mysterious.

  When she had set out from the Motherhouse this morning, Brigit had had a whole set of rationalizations. Her errand was important, maybe even a matter of life and death. Her errand would hurt nobody and take nothing away from the Sisters of Divine Grace. There wasn’t any reason not to bend the rules a little to help a friend. Now it struck her with particular force that it wasn’t the errand she was desperate to carry out, but the person who had asked her to do it that she was desperate to keep as a friend. Like most girls her age, Brigit would never have admitted to anyone that she was unsophisticated
or naive—but she was both. She had grown up in a small town in New Hampshire where the rest of the population had been made up of people exactly like herself, except that some of them had been Protestants. Before coming to Maryville, she had never met an atheist or a Jew, never mind a really rich person or a really poor person or someone from an entirely different culture. Maryville hardly seemed the place to throw her into contact with things like that, but it had. In the process, it had taught her something that disturbed her greatly. In Maryville, all the things that weren’t supposed to matter—beauty and money, surface brilliance and superficial shine—actually did.

  Brigit looked at the lamppost again, and then at the library. The plant border down there looked an even darker green than it had a moment ago. She turned away and looked down Londonderry Street again. The choice seemed so plain. The library was safety and submission. Londonderry Street was adventure and risk. It couldn’t have been plainer if it had shown up in her senior year psychology book back at North Frederickson High.

  She shifted the umbrella to her other, not yet sweated hand, and made the turn. Even if she didn’t have a million other reasons to be doing what she was doing, she had this: If she went to the library, she would have to pick up books on snakes. Brigit Ann Reilly hated snakes.

  They hissed.

  [2]