by Anne Emery
There was nothing in the record about the victim being moved. That may have been because the question never arose, because she had been attacked and killed in the spot where she was found. But at least there was nothing definitive to preclude making the argument. And there was nothing to say one way or the other whether blood had been spattered for any distance beyond the scene of the killing.
Chapter 7
Monty
Monty had nearly forgotten that Befanee Tate had another claim to fame besides her status as a visionary. But on the first Monday of November his secretary, Tina, gave him the rundown of the week ahead and reminded him that he had scheduled a discovery examination in Tate’s wrongful-dismissal suit against the church. Discovery was the opportunity for each party to question the other on oath before trial. He would question Befanee Tate; at some point later her lawyer would question Monsignor O’Flaherty and Father Burke. The fact that discovery was proceeding so expeditiously was an indication of how simple — and, from Monty’s perspective, how frivolous — the lawsuit was. Monty considered the whole thing a waste of time and a waste of the church’s money. Tate should have taken the month’s pay she had been offered. Instead, she apparently hoped to milk the claim for all she could get, including damages for mental anguish. Not a chance.
He made a call to St. Bernadette’s to let the priests know that the discovery was on but they were not obligated to attend. Burke was out but O’Flaherty was there, so Monty filled him in. The monsignor, however, had something else on his mind.
“You’ll never guess who’s coming here, Monty.”
“Who?”
“A man from the Vatican!”
“Oh? What’s the occasion?”
“He’s coming to conduct an investigation into the sightings!”
“No! They’re taking this seriously? I have to say I’m a little surprised.”
“That makes two of us. These matters are normally investigated by the local bishop first, before any Vatican involvement, but I haven’t heard a word about Bishop Cronin looking into it.”
“Maybe he’s hiding in his office with the phone off the hook.”
“Could be.”
“So what will happen now?”
“The Church has very elaborate procedures to evaluate claims of this nature, Monty. The man coming from Rome today is an expert. He will carefully consider all the facts and make his report to headquarters, so to speak, and then we’ll have our answer.”
“What do you know about the fellow who’s coming?”
“I don’t know his name. All I know is that he is with the Congregation for the Causes of Saints. That’s the office that looks into events like this one. He’s going to be our guest, or so I would assume, and I’m looking forward to assisting him in his inquiries. I’m going to be out when he’s scheduled to arrive, but Brennan will be greeting him and making him feel at home. Which is good in case his English is not up to snuff. Brennan speaks Italian, as you know. Though I wouldn’t be surprised if the two of them will be conducting their meetings in Latin!”
“So what do you make of this whole thing yourself, Michael?”
“Personally, I think — or I did think — it highly unlikely that this is a genuine apparition. But I’m not the expert from Rome. And it’s often been the case that the people chosen to receive these visitations seem to be the least likely people to be chosen for divine favour. And maybe that’s the point. To humble the rest of us!”
“Maybe so. And nobody can judge it if nobody else can see it. Or hear the messages.”
“Well, of course that is one of the biggest problems with these things. Even if there is a genuine revelation, the person tries to describe it in his or her own terms. So you end up with layers of subjective interpretation, human interpretation, which you always have to treat with caution. You’d be familiar with this: an eyewitness to a crime gives evidence of what he thinks he must have seen, what he assumes must have happened. Ain’t necessarily so.”
“You can say that again, Mike.”
“That’s why St. Bernadette is so highly regarded by the Church’s experts. She didn’t embroider her account with any interpretations of her own. When the local monsignor asked her, ‘Do you expect me to believe you saw the Virgin Mary?’ she told him she wasn’t there to make him believe; she was there to report what she had seen. And of course when she dug in the ground where she had been instructed to and found the spring of water, well, that was a physical fact. The spring was there and has been, since 1858.”
“You’re not holding your breath for the finding of a miraculous spring of water in this case, I take it, Michael.”
“I expect to be drinking from the kitchen tap well into the foreseeable future, Monty.”
“How long do you expect the man from Rome to be in town?”
“Could be quite a while. It’s a painstaking process. I’ve read volumes of material in some of these investigations in the past. It could take days. Maybe weeks. I sent out a press release first thing this morning.”
When Monty got off the phone, Tina came in with an envelope. The Crown had just delivered the blood-test results from the lab. Monty did not so much as blink when he read that the blood on his client’s shoes matched that of the murder victim. He had never thought otherwise. Nor had Podgis, judging by his subdued reaction when Monty called him with the results.
Brennan
Brennan heard a car pull up outside the parish house, and he walked over to the window. He recognized a young priest from St. Mary’s Basilica at the wheel, in conversation with someone in the passenger seat. The passenger emerged a couple of seconds later, a carry-on bag draped over his left arm. He was wearing a well-cut black overcoat and a fedora. The Vatican’s man. Brennan decided to get out there and welcome him before he was spotted by the housekeeper, Mrs. Kelly. Greeting the visitor himself would save time and a lot of pointless blather.
He opened the door, and a clump of reporters and two television crews appeared as if out of nowhere. They called out to him.
“Father Burke, are you going to introduce your investigator?”
“Could you give us a statement, Fathers?”
“Buongiorno, Padre! Una statement, per favore?”
Brennan ignored them, as did the man from Rome. Brennan ushered his guest inside.
“Welcome to Nova Scotia, Father,” Brennan said, extending his hand.
The priest from Rome was around Brennan’s age, maybe a little older, mid-fifties, with a red-tinged face and bright blue eyes that radiated intelligence. He shook Brennan’s hand and said, “Thank you. It’s my first time here. Lovely place.”
Brennan laughed. “You didn’t grow up in the streets of Rome, Father.”
“Nor did you. Maybe we kicked a football at each other in Dublin back in the day.”
“Could be.”
“Donal O’Sullivan. Glasnevin.”
“Brennan Burke. Mountjoy Street, and then Rathmines.”
“There you go.”
“Come in, Donal. How was your flight?”
“Long.”
They entered the rectory and went into the priests’ office. O’Sullivan unbuttoned his coat, removed his fedora, and placed it on the desk.
He looked around the office and said, “Who’s this Tate girl, Brennan?”
“Former secretary here in the parochial house. We had to let her go after four months. Not up to the job.”
“Not a friendly parting, then.”
“She’s suing us.”
“Is she now.”
O’Sullivan’s eyes scanned the small office and came to rest on O’Flaherty’s film poster of Jennifer Jones in the old classic The Song of Bernadette. He said, “Lovely girl, Jennifer Jones.”
“Yes.”
“Won the Oscar for her portrayal of the saint, if I’m not
mistaken.”
“She did. O’Flaherty is quite talkative on the subject.”
“I see. So, Brennan” — he picked up his fedora from the desk — “where do you drink?”
“Let’s go. Out the back way.”
Monty
The discovery examination in the Tate wrongful dismissal suit got underway on Thursday, November 5. The parties had provided each other with the documents they would be relying on, bound and separated by numbered tabs. Tate’s lawyer had requested, and Monty had agreed, that there would be no questions about the claimed sightings of the Virgin Mary. Monty would not need that to make the plaintiff’s case fall apart.
So, on Thursday afternoon, Befanee Tate and her lawyer, Louise Underhill, were seated at the table in the boardroom of Stratton Sommers with a court reporter on hand to record and transcribe Tate’s sworn testimony. After going through the basic identifying information, Monty wasted no time in getting to the subject of Tate’s employment.
“For the record here, what date did you start work at St. Bernadette’s?”
“May the fourth.”
“Of this year.”
“Yeah.”
“How did you come to be working in the office at St. Bernadette’s?”
“They had an ad in the paper for a secretary.”
“So what did you do? Send in an application form? A resume of your qualifications?”
“No, I just, like, showed up and asked for the job.”
“Who did you talk to?”
“Monsignor. He’s the older guy there.”
“Monsignor O’Flaherty?”
“Yeah.”
“Tell us about that.”
“He invited me in and asked me if I wanted a cup of tea, but I was too nervous about what I was going to say, so I said ‘No, thank you’ about the tea. And then he asked me some questions.”
“What kind of questions?”
“About what school I went to and what jobs I did.”
“Did you have any secretarial experience?”
“Not . . . well, sort of.”
“How do you mean?”
“I did filing and stuff at my other job.”
“Which was where?”
“Nova Sun Glow.”
“What’s that?”
“A tanning salon.”
“I see. What all did you do there?”
“I was an attendant, and I brought the people into the tanning rooms, and I cleaned them.”
“Cleaned the . . .”
“Rooms and the equipment. But sometimes I also typed some stuff. And put papers in the files.”
“So you told all this to Monsignor O’Flaherty?”
“Yeah.”
“And what did he say?”
“He said there was a bunch of other people trying out for the job, but I had a good chance too. He was going to let me know.”
“Did anyone else interview you at the church office, besides Monsignor O’Flaherty?”
“No.”
“Did you meet Father Burke when you were applying for the job?”
She made a face that suggested she might have been quite happy never to have met him. “No. He was away somewheres.”
“And had you been hired by the time he came back?”
“Yeah, I was there.”
“Was it your job to greet visitors to the rectory? Were you a receptionist as well as a secretary?”
“No, I never saw anybody. They had people go into the living room.”
That would explain why Monty had caught only rare glimpses of her when visiting the priests at the rectory; he had been in the living room, the kitchen, and the priests’ rooms but never, as far as he remembered, in the office.
“Who did you do most of your work for, Monsignor O’Flaherty or Father Burke?”
“At first it was Monsignor. He was really nice.”
“And later?”
“Burke too.”
“Anyone else?”
“When they went to Ireland for most of the summer, it was Father Drohan. That was the guy that filled in.”
“That would have been early July to mid-August?”
“Yeah. It was good then.”
“Good because?”
“I didn’t have Burke lording it over me.”
“How did he do that?”
“He would bark questions at me. ‘Where were you yesterday?’ And I’d tell him I was sick. And he’d say, like, ‘What was the matter with you?’ And I’d say it was personal. Then he’d order me to tell him what I was doing all morning, or who I was on the phone with. And he’d be like, ‘Nobody has to be called on the phone here. So stay off the phone and get those letters done.’ And there was one day when I told him I couldn’t type for a long time. I had to take breaks. And he just said, ‘Do your job,’ and walked out. That’s the way he’d talk to me. And he never called me by my name.”
“What did he call you?”
“Miss Tate.”
“But that is your name . . .”
“He never called me Befanee.”
“Ms. Tate. I’m going to show you a letter. Please turn to the plaintiff’s list of documents, tab five. Do you have it?”
“Yeah.”
“We’ll mark it Exhibit One. Do you remember this letter?”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“Please take the time to read it over again.” She bent over it, her lips moving along with the words. “Does anything strike you about that letter?”
“What do you mean?”
“Do you see anything wrong in it?”
“Like what?”
“Any words spelt wrong?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so. Except that name. The singer. I just guessed.”
“You guessed that was how the opera singer’s name was spelt?”
“He dictated it. So, like, how was I supposed to know how to spell her name?”
“Who dictated it?”
“Father Burke.”
“He didn’t tell you how to spell it?”
“He told me to look it up.”
“And did you?”
“I didn’t know where.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I couldn’t look it up because I didn’t know how to spell it.”
“I see. Why didn’t you just ask him?”
“Because he left. So I just guessed at it.”
“Right. And you don’t see any other mistakes?”
Silence
“Spelling? Punctuation?”
“What’s wrong with it?”
If English was her first language, Befanee, like so many others these days, was not even unilingual.
But, for the record, he had better check.
“What is your first language, Ms. Tate?”
“First language? I only know, like, one.”
No, you don’t.
“What is your education level?”
“Um, high?”
“How far did you go in school? What grade did you attain?”
“You mean, like, pass?”
“Yes.”
“Grade twelve.”
“You graduated from high school?”
“Of course!”
“Did you take any English courses in high school?”
“Yeah. We had to.”
“How about before that? In elementary school or junior high?”
“Yeah.”
“How did you find the English courses you took in school?”
“They were easy.”
In Monty’s opinion, it was time for the ministers of education from all across the continent to be in the witness seat somewhere, to be grilled about the easy English courses th
at allowed people to graduate from high school sounding like Befanee Tate.
“Do you have any post-secondary education or training? Any college program or course?”
“I took business at community college. Or I started to, but I didn’t need it, because I got the job at Nova Sun Glow.”
“All right. So you would occasionally prepare letters for Father Burke.”
“Yeah. Like I said, he was away when I started in the office. New York or somewheres. When he came back it was really hard to work because he didn’t write things out for me like Monsignor O’Flaherty did. Father Burke just dictated it all out loud, and I was supposed to figure out how to spell everything! Then he’d blame me if it was wrong.”
“So, returning to the letter to the opera singer, Kiri Te Kanawa. You sent it off like that? The way we see it here?”
“Yeah. I had the address, so I knew she’d get it anyway.”
“All right. Would you turn to tab eight of your list of documents? Tell us what that is.”
“It’s photocopies of my day timer. My schedule.”
“We’ll mark it Exhibit Two. You used this at the office?”
“Yeah, to remind myself if I had to go somewheres or what I had to do. Like send the receipts out for the big school.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“People come from all over the world for the adult choir school. Priests and stuff. They pay money and we send them a receipt.”
“What other kinds of notes did you make to yourself?”
“If I was getting my hair done, I’d put the hair appointment in my book. Or if I was meeting friends for lunch the next week, I’d write in the time and place.”
“Okay, now let’s look at page fifty-six of the list, one of the pages in your day book. What’s written there?”
“It’s just an initial.”
“What initial?”
“S.”
“And what does S stand for?”
“Sick.”
“Meaning you were sick that day?”
“Yeah.”
“Could you flip through your book there and count up the S entries for me?”
“Uh, okay.”
