Blood on a Saint

by Anne Emery

  “Wouldn’t miss it.”

  “You might want to stick close to this fella,” O’Flaherty said, pointing to Brennan, “in case he gets weak at the knees. It’s de Rudder I’m going to be talking about.”

  “Ah. Maybe I’ll have a shot of whiskey before I go, to give me strength.”

  But no drink was taken, and the three of them left the rectory for the churchyard. It was a spectacular October day, and the leaves were gold and vermillion. The statue of St. Bernadette of Lourdes was surrounded on three sides by evergreen trees. There was about six feet of lawn all around the sculpture, between it and the trees, leaving a sort of living grotto in which people could gather on their feet or on their knees. The statue of the kneeling saint rested on a granite base, so the whole thing was about five feet in height. It depicted the fourteen-year-old Bernadette gazing upwards with her hands together in prayer. The figure was done in white marble but the sculptor had managed to convey the rough fabric of the girl’s dress and headscarf. Her round face was realistic, her expression one of awe and reverence. There was still a smear of blood on the saint’s face, a vertical slash the width of a finger, as if the murder victim had reached out to grasp the statue while falling. Only the killer would know.

  A crowd of up to two hundred people had gathered around and in front of the statue. Monsignor O’Flaherty introduced himself, made some preliminary remarks about Bernadette and her visions of the Virgin, then told the group he would describe one of the sixty-five officially approved miracle cures.

  Brennan scanned the crowd. Many of the faces were familiar by now. He saw Befanee Tate, with a circle of admirers. And, was that the boyfriend? What was his name? Brennan had put the run to him on a previous occasion, on the suspicion that he had been soliciting money from regular visitors to the statue of Bernadette. Now there were hundreds of punters to prey upon. Brennan had not had the time or patience to determine what line the young miscreant was using to get people to pay up, but he had the impression it was more than simple panhandling. Whatever it was, it was not going to happen on the grounds of St. Bernadette’s church, grounds filled with vulnerable, gullible people. There he was again. Tall, heavy-set, with a pockmarked face and thick dark hair that gave rise to the old word “pompadour.” Was he trying to imitate the preachers on American television? Brennan would make a point of hustling him off the property after O’Flaherty had spoken but for now he tuned in to what his pastor was saying.

  “This was the case of Pierre de Rudder. This man didn’t actually go to Lourdes. He attended a Lourdes shrine in Belgium, so he certainly wasn’t subject to any kind of mass hysteria or autosuggestion, the kind of effect critics of Lourdes try to evoke as an explanation of the cures. By the way, if such a phenomenon is at work, why isn’t everyone cured? But this whole chimera of ‘autosuggestion’ is a non-starter anyway. As one of the presidents of the Lourdes Medical Bureau has pointed out, no kind of personal or collective suggestion could cause germs to neutralize each other, could fill in gaps in bones and tissue, rapidly form scars, or cause pus to be absorbed! And the Church refuses point-blank to consider any ‘hysterical’ or ‘neurotic’ cases; there has to be an organic, physical problem in the patient. One of the things that particularly astounds the doctors is that bones knit together, severed nerves are rejoined, skin wounds heal and form scar tissue — all of which, according to the laws of biology, take time. At Lourdes, they happen in minutes or hours.

  “But I’ve gone off on a tangent. Back to Pierre de Rudder. He broke his leg in a fall. The fracture was so bad that, after the removal of some fragments, there was a gap of over an inch between the bones of his leg, and the lower part of the leg was no longer attached to the top; it swung back and forth in all directions. If that’s not enough to make Father Burke weak at the knees, there is also the fact that over the years an abscess formed around the wound, a grotesque running sore that necessitated a change of dressings several times a day. There was nothing the doctors could do for him, and they recommended that the leg be amputated. But de Rudder refused. After suffering through this for eight years, he decided to make a pilgrimage to a statue of Our Lady of Lourdes near the city of Ghent. He took the train to Ghent, then boarded the bus to the shrine. The bus driver complained because the open sore was discharging so much blood and pus onto the seat! Are you still with us, Father?”

  “Barely, Monsignor.”

  There was some soft laughter from those in the crowd who heard his reply.

  “Good man. Anyway, Pierre de Rudder got to the shrine and prayed, but not for a cure. He asked Our Lady for the grace to be able to work and support his children, rather than have the family live on charity. Suddenly, he felt a change come over him. He got up and walked, without crutches. Within a few minutes at the shrine his leg bones reunited, his legs were of equal length, and he no longer had a limp. You’ll be happy to hear, Father Burke, that the offensive wound had closed.

  “De Rudder’s doctor, an agnostic, refused to believe what he heard about the healing, so came to see it himself, and later wrote to the Medical Bureau that the cure had been complete and instantaneous, and was absolutely inexplicable. He could not explain how bone had somehow been created to fill in where he himself had removed the fragments. Twenty-eight doctors reviewed the case, and their work was supervised by both Catholics and non-believers. His cure was one of the few that made it through all the hoops to be declared miraculous.”

  This was met with prolonged applause, and then Michael resumed his spiel.

  “There was another cure that I’m sure will make our man Father Burke a little pale on the telling of it. Sister Marie-Marguerite. She had a kidney condition that caused swelling and fluid in her legs. She had blisters that discharged serous fluid. Running sores again, in other words. She was cured, and I know you’re wondering what happened to all that fluid. Aren’t you, Father?”

  “No. I can’t say I am, Monsignor. I am content to hear that the worthy sister was cured. So if there’s nothing else you need me for . . .” Brennan wanted to go to the edge of the crowd and make sure Befanee Tate’s boyfriend was not out there fleecing the weaker members of the herd.

  But his pastor had more to say. “I haven’t quite finished with Sister Marie-Marguerite.”

  “Ah.”

  “Her bandages fell off, because they were too big for her legs after they diminished in size. One would have expected all that fluid to pour out of the sores in her legs and onto the ground. Right, Father Burke? But no, there wasn’t a drop on the ground, and her linen was dry and clean. The doctors had to concede that this was a ‘material impossibility,’ yet it had happened.

  “The case was so outstanding that it attracted the attention of a prominent neurologist in Amsterdam, Dr. Koster, who reported it to the Netherlands Psychiatric and Neurological Association in 1952. Dr. Koster was a Jewish fellow, by the way, not a Catholic, and he was very impressed with the scrupulous methods employed by the Lourdes Medical Bureau.

  “So, my dear brothers and sisters,” O’Flaherty said, addressing the crowd, “some of the incidents you hear about are well-founded. But of course most are not. With that in mind, I urge you to think carefully about what you hear, use your common sense, and of course continue your prayers. That’s always good! God bless you, and we’ll see you next time.”

  The people applauded again, and O’Flaherty wrapped it up. Brennan said to Monty, “Wait a second. I want to check on somebody out there.”

  “Who?”

  “Just a little gouger who seems to be running a franchise of his own.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Not important. Hold on.”

  Brennan walked briskly to the back of the crowd and looked around, but the boyfriend of the visionary had vanished from sight.

  “All right, let’s be off,” he said to Collins when he returned to the statue.

  “What’s going on?”r />
  “I think that one’s boyfriend has been taking money off people in the crowd.”

  “What do you mean? Robbing them? Befanee’s boyfriend?”

  “Maybe not robbing them. Not at gunpoint or anything. Putting a good face on it, but I don’t want it going on here.”

  “You’d better look into it, Brennan. You don’t want Bef and company helping themselves in the guise of helping the poor on your turf.”

  “I’ll take care of it.”

  “I too will have to embark on some boyfriend research for the Jordyn Snider case. This kind of killing has ‘boyfriend’ written all over it.”

  “True enough.”

  “There’s something else I meant to ask you. When I saw you after the news broke about the murder, you mentioned seeing Podgis at the Midtown. What was that all about?”

  “He showed up at the bar. Outside, when I was leaving. Started giving out to me about walking off his show.”

  “What did he say?”

  “Just asked who I thought I was, walking out on him.”

  “And you responded.”

  “More or less just told him to get out of my way.”

  “More or less. What time was this?”

  “It would have been around half-eleven.”

  “So he got out of your way eventually. Then what? You walked home?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did you see where he went?”

  “I didn’t look back at him. He said he had a date, so maybe he went to his hotel room to freshen up and make himself presentable for the lucky lady. But maybe things didn’t go as planned, since he ended up killing — or allegedly killing — Jordyn Snider. I don’t know how you can stomach the man as a client. A hateful creature like that. This must stretch your ‘innocent till proven guilty’ principles to the limit. But back to the Midtown confrontation, I paid him no more mind after I left.”

  “That’s what he said? A date?”

  “That’s what he said.”

  “Anything more about that?”

  “Not really.”

  “What do you mean ‘not really’?”

  “I didn’t prod him for details.”

  “And you told this to the police.”

  “Yes.”

  “Have they contacted you again?”

  “No.”

  “They will. They’ll want you as a Crown witness for the preliminary inquiry and, if things go that far, for the trial.”

  “Crown witness! The British Crown.”

  “Well, even though the style of cause is Regina v. Podgis, it won’t be Her Majesty sailing over on the Royal Yacht Britannia in a wig and gown to prosecute the case. She has people who do that sort of thing for her. You are familiar with our Crown prosecutor service, I believe.”

  Brennan was all too familiar with it, from his own time in the dock. But that was in the past. Now the tables were turned. He could imagine the reaction he would get from his Irish Republican relations in Dublin, if they got word that he might be an informer for the peelers, for the Crown! It did not bear thinking about.

  He changed the subject and talked music with Collins until they got to the Athens for their dinner.

  Monty

  The Crown prosecutor would be busy trying to find out whatever he could about the accused, Pike Podgis. For his part, Monty had to find out whatever he could about the victim, Jordyn Snider. About the people in her life, about other possible suspects. Suspects he could dress up and parade before the jury, figuratively anyway, as people who might really have committed the murder, while poor Pike Podgis had to endure the slings and arrows of a miscarriage of justice. In the usual course of things, the first suspect in a killing of this kind was someone closely associated with the victim: husband, boyfriend, ex-boyfriend.

  If there was one part of his job Monty detested, it was knocking on doors interviewing witnesses, or informants, or gossips, about a case. It was something he seldom had to do, but this time it could not be avoided. He had had a brief appointment with Podgis, told him what he was going to do, then hustled Podgis out of the office, so he could get to work. He had to learn more about Jordyn Snider and her circle of acquaintances. It sounded mercenary to put it this way, but the more questionable the background, the bigger the pool of other suspects.

  Monty had put it off by starting with her teachers earlier in the day on Tuesday. But none of them seemed to know her well. She had moved to the Fairview area of Halifax just before high school. The principal of the school said the family had lived southwest of the city in Tantallon before that; if Monty did not get anywhere with her acquaintances from age fourteen to nineteen, he might go back to her time in Tantallon. But he hoped that would not be necessary. She had followed a patchwork program of studies in grades ten to twelve, with a few academic courses supplemented by offerings called Contemporary Life Issues and Diversity in Community. She graduated, but barely, with an average of fifty-four. Her highest mark was in Audiovisual Explorations, her lowest in Math Studies. That did not sound like real mathematics to Monty; did they just talk about math and not actually do it? She missed many, many days from school and did not spend much time in conversation with her teachers. She tended to sit in the back of the class when she was there, and fiddle with her hair and makeup. Her parents had never attended any of the parent-teacher nights or other school events, as far as anyone could recall.

  Now, on a long street of rental properties in Fairview, just off the Halifax peninsula, Monty was introducing himself to Rhonda Hillier, in the apartment next to that of the Sniders in their building. But Rhonda was not all that forthcoming.

  “I know you have a job to do, and you have to act for her killer, but — ”

  “I represent the person accused of the crime, but of course I believe the police arrested the wrong man. So anything I can learn about Jordyn might, I hope, lead to the real killer. The first place to look, of course, is boyfriends or old boyfriends.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t know anything about that. I just used to see her go in and out of the building. Didn’t really know her.”

  “Did she seem happy the times you saw her? Or could you tell if anything was bothering her?”

  “No, I wouldn’t be able to tell one way or the other. Teenagers, you know! There’s nothing I can help you with.”

  “Her family — ”

  “Hardly ever saw them. I have to go now. Sorry.”

  It was much the same at the other doors. Nobody had ever seen much of Jordyn or the members of her family. A couple of people mentioned that Jordyn’s mother seemed nice, quiet, almost shy. There was an older sister, but she too seemed to come and go without connecting with the other residents of the building. The brother, Jason, was never there; he lived somewhere else.

  Finally, at a little one-and-a-half-storey house across from the apartment block, he found someone willing to chat. Lorena Gouthro invited him in for tea and told him she had been living in the house since leaving Cape Breton in 1971, and still dreamed of going home. But here she was, still in Fairview, still missing New Waterford.

  “So, Lorena, is there anything you can tell me about Jordyn, the people around her, anything that might help ensure we find who really killed her?”

  “I used to be a little concerned about her.”

  “Oh? Why’s that?”

  “Nothing definite at all. It’s just that I used to see her coming home very late at night. I don’t mean night. It was morning, but it would be dark. I’m up at five in the mornings because of medication that I’m on; it conks me out early in the evening, and I wake up early in the morning. But I suppose I shouldn’t make too much of the hours Jordyn would keep. She was a teenager, so late nights go with the territory. And I never saw her with a boyfriend, if that’s what you’d like to know. I’m sure she dated; she was a very pretty girl. But I don’t remember s
eeing her with a fellow here in the neighbourhood.”

  “Are you acquainted with the Sniders?”

  “Dana, the mother. I see her once in a while at the Bluenose getting groceries, though I haven’t seen her to speak to since the murder. I slipped a card under their door, but haven’t had a chance to convey my sympathy in person. Poor Dana, she’s a very nice person. Always friendly. A bit timid, but she always says hello, asks how I am, cautions me to watch out for the ice on winter days, that sort of thing.”

  “That’s what other people have told me, how quiet Jordyn’s mother is. Was, even before this tragedy. Was Jordyn a quiet girl, or . . . ?”

  “Wouldn’t have to be at her age. She could get out with her friends, blow off some steam, carry on with other young people. But of course I never saw her anywhere but here on the street.”

  “You said ‘blow off steam.’ Was there something going on, something that makes you think she might have had to blow off steam?”

  “Oh, I have no idea, honestly. I really didn’t know the girl. I was just thinking of the mother. It didn’t look as if she got out much.”

  “How about Jordyn’s father?”

  “Stepfather. He wasn’t the fellow that was here when they first moved in. I’ll get a nod or a hello from him when I see him, but I’ve never had a conversation with him.”

  “Anything else? Can you tell me a bit more about these late homecomings?”

  “Just that I’d see her walking home in the wee hours. Not with anybody, and that’s why I worried a bit. A young girl alone on a dark street. Probably just coming home from a party. And before you ask, she didn’t look as if she was drunk or on drugs. But when I think of it now, it was only on a few occasions. And it was years ago. Not recently at all.”