by Anne Emery
“I’m Al Hunt,” he said quietly. “I’m the driver. I didn’t know they were under there. I swear to God. I am so sorry. I didn’t know. I had my radio on loud. I told the police everything.”
Tommy looked at him. “It wasn’t your fault. We heard all about it. The baby just ran out. We know that.”
The truck driver looked at the two people in the bed and said, “He could have been killed. People were calling him a hero. But he was having none of it. He just said, ‘He’s my son.’”
Maura looked at the man. Her eyes filled with tears.
“Is he . . .” the driver started to ask.
“The doctor is on his way. He’ll be here in a minute.”
Everyone stood awkwardly at the bedside, in the hope of deliverance.
A doctor arrived with papers in his hand, and smiled at the group. “He’s going to be all right, folks. Broken arm, serious friction burn to his leg. We’re sending him to plastics to do a graft. A few scrapes and bruises. He’s sedated, that’s all. No head injury. He’s going to be sore for a while, but you’ll have him back in one piece.” He reached over and ruffled Dominic’s black hair. “Looks as if this little fella doesn’t want to go anywhere.”
“He won’t leave him,” Maura replied. “We tried to pry him away. He won’t leave him.”
†
Brennan said a Mass for Monty and his son, and returned to the hospital the next morning, accompanied by Michael O’Flaherty. Monty was lying as he had been the day before, eyes closed and bruises even more prominent. Michael took his uninjured hand and held it while saying a quiet prayer over him.
Monty’s eyes opened, and he stared at his visitors. Recognition dawned a few seconds later.
“Fathers.”
“How are you feeling, my lad?” asked Michael.
The patient tried to shrug, and winced with pain.
“Some things you can’t shrug off, young man. Like what you did to save little Dominic.”
“Is he really all right?” Monty asked. It was the first time Brennan had ever seen Monty look fearful. “I’m afraid maybe they’re not telling me everything.”
Brennan said, “He’s A-one, really, Monty. Herself tells me he’s in perfect health. He had nightmares last night. Well, you can imagine. But physically, he’s fine. And they say you yourself will be back amongst us soon.”
“Did they check his hearing? The noise under there . . .”
“Everything is fine. That’s not your drinking arm, is it?”
“Would I put my drinking arm at risk, Burke?”
“Of course not. Please disregard what I said.”
“I’ll let it go. This time.”
“You two,” said O’Flaherty. “What a pair. Is there anything that would make you lose your cool?”
“It would have to be something serious, Mike. Eh, Brennan? Nothing serious ever happens to us clowns.”
“Life’s a circus. Just go to my churchyard if you don’t believe me.”
Monty brightened up. “No, no. That’s over.”
“What?” Brennan asked.
“I tried to call you. Whenever it was. We settled the claim. You don’t pay anything, and I don’t nail her with costs. All she has to do is make a public statement that she was ‘mistaken’ about the Virgin Mary, and it will all go away.”
“Well done, Monty. Thank you!”
“Good work, Collins,” Burke added. “Now what can we do for you while you’re laid up in here? Anything?”
“We’re not five minutes from the Clyde Street liquor store.”
“Ale? Lager? Whiskey?”
“A shot of Irish would ease the pain. If your own pain-free, carefree life is any indication. Wouldn’t mind some of that.”
“Fiat voluntas tua.” Brennan turned to Michael. “Do you want to stay with him while I pop out on my errand of mercy, Monsignor?”
“Certainly, Father. You run along now.”
Brennan left the room and walked the length of the corridor, careful not to look at any of the equipment lined up along the walls. He didn’t want to know. Careful, too, not to catch a glimpse of any of the patients in the rooms. He was not a man for hospitals. He and O’Flaherty divided their tasks amicably: Father O’Flaherty visited the sick, Father Burke the imprisoned. Stone killers and armed robbers were easier on the head than bedpans, tubes, and bags of mysterious fluids being pumped into patients’ veins. Or arteries. Whatever the case.
He crossed the parking lot, walked up South Park Street, then turned right towards the venerable Clyde Street liquor store. He bought a quart of John Jameson, and retraced his steps to the Victoria General.
When he was back in Monty’s room, he picked up a glass from the bedside table, held it up to his eye, and examined it for any sign of, well, whatever might get on a glass in a hospital. Again, he didn’t want to know. But it appeared to be clean, so he poured a couple of fingers of the golden liquid and helped Monty sit up to sip it.
“Ah!” Monty sighed with pleasure. “That hits the spot. Miracle cure. No wonder you’re always the picture of health, Father Burke.”
“Father! What are you doing?”
The MacNeil.
“I’m just, em, administering this man’s medication. He has to keep his fluids up. He is in need of — ”
“He is in need of whatever the doctors say he is in need of, and I suspect that whatever it is, it’s not supposed to be combined with alcohol!”
“Sure, it won’t hurt him at all,” Monsignor O’Flaherty stated for the defence. “In fact, not a word o’ lie, a doctor actually prescribed a pint of Guinness a day for one of my parishioners in this very hospital. Vitamin G right there in the doctor’s orders!”
“Well, you two quacks are in big trouble if it’s not in the doctor’s orders for this patient.”
“Dada! Dada!”
Dominic had arrived, in the arms of his sister, and he began kicking and reaching out to Monty in the bed.
“He wants to see you, Daddy!” Normie said. “He’s been asking for you all morning and all last night. Can he get into the bed with you?”
“Of course he can. Hello, Dominic, you little sneak!”
The little fellow burst into laughter and grinned at Monty. Normie tried to lift the baby up high enough to get over the rails of the bed. Michael O’Flaherty started to help, but Brennan gave him a little shake of the head, and directed his eyes to the child’s mother. Maura leaned over, took hold of her son — their son — and gave him to Monty in his bed. Brennan saw husband and wife exchange a look. Dominic curled up on Monty’s right side and smiled.
Brennan gave Michael the eye, and the two men withdrew from the room, leaving the family together.
Chapter 20
Brennan
Kathleen Boyle-MacIvor stood on her front porch and waited while Brennan emerged from his car and walked towards her.
“Father Burke, welcome. I heard your car turn in.” She lifted her face to the elements. “Smells like snow.”
“You can tell that?”
“Oh, yes. You wait. But I don’t mean to leave you out on the stoop. Come in, come in.”
Brennan had just driven an hour and a half northeast of Halifax, to the town of New Glasgow, after getting a call from the social worker, Lena Vanherk. Lena had made contact with Ignatius Boyle’s Aunt Kathleen, and she had expressed her willingness to receive Father Burke at her little house on Highland Drive.
She was in her eighties, but her step did not falter and her handshake was firm. She was dressed in a green wool suit, with gold earrings and a chunky necklace. That day’s Globe and Mail rested on the arm of her chair in the living room. She smiled at him, and he got the impression she was enjoying a private joke.
“I’ve been expecting you. For months now.” He must have looked surprised, bec
ause she said, “Not you in particular. But I wondered how long it would take for someone to come around. Let me turn this off first.”
He looked at the television in the corner. NHL hockey, a Leafs game. “You’re a person of faith too I see, Mrs. MacIvor.”
“Faith, hope, and charity, Father. I dedicate all those virtues to the Toronto Maple Leafs. Someday, someday.” He laughed. “That’s a tape. The games go too late at night for me, so I record them.” She switched off the tape and the set. “Would you like a cup of tea?”
“I’d love one, if it’s not too much trouble. Would you be having one yourself?”
“I would, and it’s no trouble at all. You have a seat and I’ll join you in a minute.”
He sat on a chair across from hers and looked around at a room filled with well-kept old furniture, family photos, books, and news and sports magazines. Mrs. MacIvor returned bearing a tray containing cups and saucers, ornate silver spoons, a jug of milk, and a bowl of sugar.
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome, Father. Now,” she said as she took her place again, “you’re wondering about Ignatius. So are a lot of other people, I gather.”
“True.”
“You’re wondering whether he spoke French at any time in his life.”
“Did he?”
“There was nobody French-speaking in our family. We lived in the north end of Halifax. My husband and I moved here to New Glasgow when he retired; he grew up nearby. But I’m a Halifax girl. We’re like you, Father. Transplanted Irish on the Boyle side and on the Whelan side. Ignatius’s mother was a Whelan. But you should know that Ignatius spent some time out of his home when he was young.”
That struck a chord. “Right. He told me he had been in the hospital as a child, but he could not recall what condition he had. Ignatius blames his drinking for his problems with memory.”
“He wasn’t in the hospital, though he may remember it that way, I don’t know,” Kathleen said. “My brother Dermot — Ignatius’s father — was troubled all his life. Troubled by drink and instability. He couldn’t hold a job. Sad, but that’s the way he was. His marriage to Doreen Whelan was turbulent, to say the least, and he finally just disappeared, leaving Doreen to cope with Ignatius and his sister, Irene. There were just the two children. Irene is dead now. Ignatius is the only one of his immediate family still alive. His mother was not a strong person. To put it bluntly, Doreen used to go on benders for weeks at a time. When she’d go on a toot, neighbours would go in and look after the children. Or they’d call family members in. There were a couple of times when Doreen was about to go off with one of her ‘companions,’ and neighbours saw her staggering down the street, towing poor Ignatius and Irene by the hand. Doreen deposited them, without asking first, with the Sisters of Charity at their convent in north end Halifax. My husband and I had five children of our own, and couldn’t take Dermot and Doreen’s children in. I wish we could have, but it was impossible. But I visited Ignatius and Irene during their stay at the convent.
“There were some French-speaking sisters there and one of them, Sister Marie-Hélène, was a great one for quoting the saints. That’s where Ignatius would have picked up a bit of French. Whatever he said last fall never made the newspapers, but I suspect it would have been some lines from Sainte Thérèse de Lisieux or Saint Francis de Sales, the good sister’s favourites among the sanctified. Ignatius would have forgotten all that in the ensuing years, especially with the drink, but everything we learn is still in us, isn’t it? Buried in the deep recesses of our brains. Suffer a head injury and you can lose your recent memories, and recover your old ones. I’ve heard of it many times. No miracle in that.”
“No.”
“How is he otherwise, do you know?”
Brennan was not about to unload on her the recent woes of Ignatius Boyle. “He seems healthy enough. He’s off the drink, he tells me.”
“Well! There’s the grace of God working in him, even if he is not exactly a miracle worker.” She picked up her teacup and smiled. “I’ve been following the story, of course. And I know I should have contacted somebody — the press, the hospital, the church, I don’t know who — but there’s a bit of mischief in me, I guess. And I said to myself, ‘Why not let poor Ignatius enjoy a bit of glory for once in his life?’”
†
The visit with Ignatius Boyle’s lovely aunt made it even more distressing to contemplate what role the poor man had had in the death of Jordyn Snider. On the drive back to Halifax in lightly falling snow, Brennan made up his mind to try yet again to question either Ignatius or Maggie Nelson. They both knew more than they were letting on, and it was time for some answers.
So on Saturday morning he picked up the phone and called Maggie’s number. A little girl answered. “Hello?”
“Hello, is this Florrie or Celia? It’s Florrie, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, it’s me! I know you. You’re Brennan. I remember your voice. Are you going to give me the song you promised?”
He scanned his brain to try to find the reference. “‘Pussy Got the Measles’?”
“Yeah! Are you going to . . . Celia just butted in and told me I’m not being very polite. So I’m sorry for bugging you about the song.”
“No, not at all. I did promise you and I am definitely going to give it to you. I’ll put some guitar chords to it.”
“Really? Wow, that will be great!”
He could not bring himself to use the child’s eagerness for the music to engineer a visit to the house in the face of Maggie’s resistance. “Tell you what. I’ll put it in the mail for you.”
“Okay! Celia! When a letter comes, don’t open it. It’s for me! Thank you very much, Brennan.”
“You’re welcome, Florrie. Is Maggie there by any chance?”
“Yeah, she’s just outside. She doesn’t have to work with the rats on Saturdays. I’ll call her. Maggie! Phone! It’s Brennan!”
So much for that. He steeled himself for a blast.
He heard the receiver banging against something, then heard Maggie. “You guys go out and make snow angels. I’ll come back out in a minute, after I deal with this.”
Deal with him, she meant.
“What were you saying to my sister?”
“The time I was there . . .”
“The time you wormed your way into my house and spent a whole lot of time with two very young girls. Right.”
“Please believe me, Maggie. I have only the best of intentions. I am harmless.”
“That’s what they all say.”
“Perhaps they do. But I assure you I mean no harm to you or to your sisters. I am only trying to find out what happened to the young girl who was murdered in my churchyard.”
“And you think trespassing on my property and making promises to my little sisters that you have no intention of keeping is the way to investigate this murder? Maybe somebody should be asking where you were that night! Since you’re so interested in young girls!”
“Somebody did ask and, in fact, I was probably the person closest to the murder scene, with the exception of the killer himself. So, yes, the police did question me, as you might expect. They know I’m innocent. And I am not ‘interested in young girls’ in the way you are suggesting. But I think you know that, Maggie. I am very concerned about Ignatius Boyle and the trouble he might have brought upon himself, with his relationship to the victim, whatever it was, and with that photograph. And his answers about the night of the murder are not at all satisfactory. I do not think Ignatius Boyle is an evil man, but I know there was something going on.”
“And you want me to what? Help you frame Ignatius for the murder of Jordyn Snider?”
“Not frame him. Help me understand what happened between them. What is your own relationship with Ignatius?”
“I don’t have a relationship with Ignatius Boyle!”
<
br /> “I didn’t mean to insinuate an improper relationship. I just meant: how do you know him?”
“You’ve insinuated enough. And none of this is any of your business. What?” She interrupted herself to respond to something happening off-stage. “Tell him to wait down there. No!”
There was a touch of panic in her voice. And was Brennan hearing things correctly? It sounded to him as if he heard Florrie saying to Maggie, “It’s okay. He knows Brennan!” But Brennan would never know, because Maggie returned her full attention to him and told him yet again never to call, never to show his face, and never to contact her sisters again, or she would have the police on him. Then she slammed down the phone. Once again, he was made to feel like a stalker, a pervert, a creep who made phone calls to young girls.
†
Brennan had more luck on the phone Sunday afternoon. The MacNeil called, apologized for missing Mass in the morning, and he absolved her in good grace. She had called to give him the good news that Monty was out of the hospital and, although still looking a little battered, was feeling fine. He would be at work on Monday because how could he justify whooping it up at the Flying Stag Monday night if he had taken a sick day from work?
“He’s playing at the Shag? How’s he going to do that? Isn’t his arm in a sling?”
“He’s not going to play guitar, sing, or blow the harp. That is all going to be done for him by somebody else. Another band.”
“So why is he going, if Functus isn’t playing?”
“Because the whole show is to honour Monty for his actions in saving Dominic. The bar owner wants to do a tribute to him, so we’re all going. And you too, we hope.”
“Of course. Wouldn’t miss it. That’s grand of them to do this for Monty.”
“Well, he’s been bringing business in to the place for twenty-five years! But, more than that, they like him there. And the best is — ta da! The band for the night is Dads in Suits!”
“Tommy Douglas’s band. Great!”
“Tommy is over the moon. They’re having the show early to comply with the liquor laws, because the boys are still under age. Starts at seven, over by nine. See you there.”
