The Death of an Irish Sinner

by Bartholomew Gill

  Sobbing now, she said nothing.

  “Mary-Jo was murdered tonight. You seem to know why.”

  Still nothing.

  McGarr stood. “If you get up again, I’ll shoot you. Am I understood?” He prodded her ribs with the toe of his shoe, and she let out a wail.

  “Am I?”

  She cried out again.

  “I’ll take that for a yes.”

  Geraldine by name, she was the housekeeper and martial arts expert who—along with the myriad electronic gadgets—had been in charge of security for a frail woman in her late seventies. And who had failed.

  To the priest, McGarr said, “I need a list of everybody who was present in this house and on the grounds this afternoon. How many other people possess cards to the front gate?”

  “Everybody.”

  “Everybody who has ever been in residence here?”

  “No. The codes change daily, such that a card that can open the gate on one day can’t on the next.”

  “How do your guests get these cards?”

  “Geraldine slips them under their doors every morning, along with the Times.”

  Rather like a pricey hotel, McGarr thought. But a curious hotel, to say the least. Certainly Mary-Jo Stanton had been rich, and the house contained objects that had been the target of thieves in the past, according to the priest.

  But the security precautions had been excessive and ultimately worthless.

  “How many guests are there?”

  “Today, only three, not counting me.”

  “You mean you consider yourself a guest here?”

  “Yes, of course. Mary-Jo owned the house.”

  “How long have you lived here?”

  “Oh”—Father Fred had to think—“nearly twenty years.”

  Which would have placed him in his early thirties when Mary Jo was in her fifties.

  McGarr was about to ask if the priest had occupied some other religious office for all that time when he heard voices below them, loud and official—obviously the Tech Squad or members of his own staff. Which was good.

  Suddenly his wrist and the side of his face were throbbing, and he sorely needed to take something for the pain. Preferably a large whiskey.

  There had been a time—pain or no pain—when McGarr would have rounded up everybody in the house and interviewed them one by one—all night, if necessary—before the killer had a chance to formulate an alibi.

  But McGarr no longer felt the need to be the chief operative as well as the chief administrator of his agency. He had trained his staff well, and Ward and McKeon—whom he could see in the hallway below him—could conduct the initial interviews, gather information, and deal with the Techies about the physical evidence.

  Nor would he put up with banter.

  “Would yiz look at him,” Bernie McKeon, his chief-of-staff, said to Hugh Ward as McGarr stepped off the last stair. “Isn’t he forever telling us, ‘Lads—yiz’ve got to use your heads.’”

  “But literally, like that?” Ward replied. “He asks too much.”

  “It’s leadership by example.”

  “There’s a woman up on the third floor who’s to be brought in and charged with assault.”

  “On you?”

  “Chief—say it ain’t so. Could it be time for the gold wristwatch and the cottage in Tralee?”

  “I want the whole thing worked out for me by the morning.”

  “After his beauty sleep.”

  “Bios of the residents and anybody else on the property today, possible suspects, the initial physical findings, and a rundown of the security system that you’ll find underneath the stairs. Ring up the outfit that installed it. They must offer twenty-four-hour service.

  “And finally, I want an inventory. Could theft have been the motive?”

  Which quelled their comments. “But this place is huge, and there’re only two of us.”

  “Get help.”

  Out in the car, McGarr eased into the contour seat that wrapped his back like two soft soothing hands. Bed, of course, would be better.

  But it was not to be.

  CHAPTER 7

  A CAR WAS blocking the drive in the street outside the gate. With arms folded, a tall, thin man was leaning against the fender, his eyeglasses glinting in the beams of McGarr’s headlamps.

  As the gates closed with a solid clump, McGarr waited for the man to move, and when he didn’t, McGarr flashed the car’s brights and rolled a few feet forward.

  Only then did the man step forward.

  Gangly, mid-forties, he had a sprightly gait, more like a kind of lope, that McGarr believed he had seen before. But where?

  Rolling down the window, McGarr reached for the butt of the Walther, which was again tucked under his belt. He had made mistakes enough for one night. “Help you?”

  “Know me?” the man demanded, bending so his face was in the window.

  McGarr said nothing, the face—like his odd gait—being only vaguely familiar.

  “You don’t know me?”

  Still, McGarr waited.

  “And there I was hoping you’d be the consummate Sherlock—never forget a face and all that rot. You’re Peter McGarr. I’m Dery Parmalee, publisher of Ath Cliath. Doubtless you remember me. We’ve met several times.” His large right hand now accompanied his face in the open window.

  Yet McGarr continued to regard the man. Named after the Irish language phrase for Dublin, Ath Cliath was a weekly tabloid newspaper that was distributed free of charge on streetcorners and dropped off at shops citywide.

  But unlike so many erstwhile publications of the sort, Ath Cliath had flourished, if page numbers were any measure of success. The weekly tabloid was now the size of a thin book, and Noreen herself had taken to advertising her painting gallery in the rag.

  “Why?” McGarr had only recently asked her, since the expense was nearly as great as advertising in one of the national dailies. Also, the quality of the stories was more than a little suspect. They were based mainly on scandal, innuendo, and gossip. Many began with the lead “Sources have revealed to Ath Cliath…” And Parmalee himself was often in the news fighting some slander charge in court.

  “Ach, it’s ‘the word behind the hand,’” Noreen had replied, “what everybody in this town can’t get enough of, and you know it. The inside scoop, what the other papers are afraid to print.

  “Also, they cover all the films, plays, and concerts better than anybody, and the reporting about museums and galleries is the best I’ve ever read in Ireland. People pick it up to know what’s going on. Add in a few gossipy exposés”—she had shrugged—“and it’s a winner. Tell you true, I can’t afford not to advertise in Ath Cliath.”

  McGarr now remembered that the cover exposés were nearly all written by Parmalee himself.

  Who now withdrew the hand and straightened up. “To business then? I know what happened inside, what’s going on, and why you’re here.” Parmalee waited for McGarr’s reaction.

  Seconds went by.

  “I think there’s several things you should know.”

  Removing his hand from the butt of the Walther, McGarr slipped the Rover into neutral.

  “Mary-Jo Stanton? She was a numerary—an acolyte—of Opus Dei. In fact, this”—the hand gestured at the bronze gate—“is no mere private dwelling. It’s an Opus Dei compound, their unofficial headquarters here in Ireland, with Fred Duggan in command.”

  “Father Fred?”

  Parmalee nodded.

  McGarr tried to remember what exactly Opus Dei was. In Latin, the phrase meant “the work (or works) of God,” he knew from the years he had been forced to study that ancient language. Could it be a Catholic religious order? He seemed to think he had heard or read the name before. “Opus Dei?” he asked.

  “John Paul the Second’s reactionary shock troops,” Parmalee said. “They fashion themselves as modern-day Crusaders, and they’re zealots of the worst sort. They’ll say and do anything to promote what they th
ink is God’s work. How did their thaumaturgic founder, José Maria Escrivá, put it? ‘Our life is a warfare of love, and in love and war all is fair.’”

  José Maria Escrivá was the name engraved on the brass plate of the painting that had been cut out and stolen from Mary-Jo Stanton’s rifled study. But thaumaturgic? What exactly did that mean?

  “Pillería is what Escrivá called the campaigns that Opus Dei has carried on around the world in the name of God’s work. Dirty tricks, such as massive bank frauds with the money going into Opus Dei coffers, assassinations of political figures like Salvador Allende in Chile, and perhaps even Pope John Paul.”

  “The Pope?”

  Parmalee nodded.

  “But isn’t he alive?” McGarr asked.

  The man closed his eyes dismissively. “The first John Paul. The John Paul who initiated all the liberal reforms in the Church, who championed Liberation Theology and birth control. They—the conservatives and Opus Dei—they thought of him as a mistake, an anomaly, and they got rid of him in thirty-three days.”

  Again McGarr waited, wondering if Parmalee were a bit off. Or perhaps he had something to tell him more germane to Mary-Jo Stanton’s murder. Parmalee had a tic in his left eye; behind the octagon lenses of his eyeglasses it kept straying and darting back.

  “They poisoned John Paul and claimed he’d suffered a heart attack, even though he’d just had a physical conducted by his doctor of over twenty years. It included an electrocardiogram. The man declared of John Paul ‘Non sta bene, ma benone.’”

  “Not just well, but very well,” the phrase meant. Before joining the Garda, McGarr had spent over a decade on the Continent, working for Criminal Justice in Marseilles and later for Interpol. “When was that?”

  “John Paul died in September of 1978.”

  McGarr seemed to remember hearing or reading about some controversy regarding that Pope’s death. But he also knew that the Vatican and the other institutions of the Roman Catholic Church had more than a few detractors. Claims of conspiracy and murder were floated whenever Popes died and were succeeded.

  “Wasn’t there something about no autopsy?”

  Parmalee’s eye snapped to the side and remained there. “Not just no autopsy. No forensic tests of any kind, no official death certificate. The body was embalmed almost immediately.

  “Only a few weeks earlier, the Russian Orthodox Archbishop of Leningrad, who was only forty-nine years old, also died of a massive heart attack, while waiting in a papal antechamber before meeting with John Paul about a possible softening of the Church’s attitude toward Moscow. Opus Dei didn’t want that either.”

  McGarr shrugged. “Why are you telling me this?”

  “Because just as Opus Dei murdered Allende and John Paul when those two got in their way, they also murdered Mary-Jo this afternoon.”

  “Why?”

  “To keep her from committing the ultimate betrayal by sending the manuscript of her biography of Escrivá, the Opus Dei founder, to her publisher in London.”

  McGarr sighed. It was getting late, and he would have a busy day on the morrow, handling the investigation and fending off the press. “I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

  The slight smile had reappeared on Parmalee’s face. “Because the manuscript contains the revelation that José Maria Escrivá de Balaguer may have been—and probably was—Mary-Jo’s father.”

  “Her spiritual father?”

  The man shook his head, the smile now almost gleeful. “Her fleshly father.”

  “You have proof of this?”

  “No, of course not. Only a DNA match could prove that conclusively, and I’m sure Opus Dei would fight that with every resource at their command. But I was hoping you found a copy of the manuscript tonight, or it’s still up in the study of her quarters on the third floor.”

  McGarr thought of the intruder who had cut Escrivá’s portrait from the frame. There was too much…background—about Mary-Jo Stanton, the house and estate, and the Church—that he didn’t understand. And how did this Parmalee know that she had been murdered in the afternoon, when McGarr had contacted his office only an hour or so ago. “Buy you a drink?”

  “At this time of night?”

  “Move your car and get in.”

  “But might I get towed?”

  “Perhaps this might help. Fix it in a window.” McGarr handed Parmalee one of his cards.

  CHAPTER 8

  AT ILNACULLIN, MCGARR turned the car down the avenue of beeches that lined the drive.

  “Nice place—yours?” Parmalee asked, as they passed the house and parked in the stable yard.

  McGarr only shook his head. “So, Dery—may I call you Dery?—how do you know all of this?”

  “Mary-Jo was a close personal friend of mine. A decade ago we worked on a hagiography of Aquinas together.”

  McGarr added hagiography to his mix of verbal ignorance. Aquinas he knew of vaguely, having had to read excerpts of his writings while in school. “How did you come by your knowledge of the Church?”

  There was a pause as Parmalee seemed to be phrasing a reply; they were out of the car now, walking toward the house. “I guess you could say that I’m a failed priest.”

  “What order?”

  “Jesuit.”

  “Why did you leave?”

  “Woman. Women.”

  “Anybody in particular?”

  “After Mary-Jo, not really.”

  McGarr regarded the man, who could only be in his mid-forties. A decade earlier, Mary-Jo Stanton would have been in her early sixties. “How do you know Mary-Jo was murdered?”

  “I intercepted your telephone message to your headquarters in Dublin.”

  “How?”

  “A snooping device I have in the car.”

  “And you were where?”

  “Just down the road in the village. I’ve been working on an exposé of Opus Dei’s activities in Ireland, and I overheard your call to your headquarters. Felicitously.”

  “Which is illegal.”

  Parmalee hunched one shoulder and smiled. “Not nearly as illegal as what I’ve discovered about Opus Dei’s ‘warfare of love,’ as they call it.”

  The others in the house had long since gone to bed, and after reviving the fire in the den, McGarr poured Parmalee a drink, then excused himself. “I’ll be back in a jiff. Make yourself at home.”

  Well out of earshot in the kitchen, McGarr used the phone on the wall to ring up his headquarters. “There’s a car outside the gates of the murder scene in Dunlavin with my calling card in the window. Impound and go over it bumper to bumper. I’ve been told it contains eavesdropping equipment. Copy any tapes or disks.

  “I also want you to find out everything you can about a Roman Catholic order called Opus Dei—who they are and how important they might be in this country. I want that done by the morning.”

  “Where are you, Chief?”

  “Home,” McGarr blurted out, before adding, “In Dunlavin.”

  Asking the desk sergeant to switch on the tape recorder, he then recounted the details of what he had encountered at Barbastro. Typed up, it would save him the bother of writing a report in the morning and his staff would be a step ahead.

  Back in the den, he found Dery Parmalee standing by the gun racks where McGarr’s father-in-law kept his sporting weapons. Several times All-Ireland field champion, Fitzhugh Frenche owned a splendid collection of birding guns and had trained both of his children to be crack shots.

  “Gorgeous guns,” Parmalee said. “Any of them yours?”

  McGarr shook his head.

  “Handguns being more in your line of work, I trust. Don’t I remember reading that your wife, Noreen, is some sort of champion?”

  McGarr waited. It wasn’t a question. The man was again letting him know that he was more than simply well informed, he was powerfully well informed with data that could be used in any way he chose—to ennoble or descry.

  “All-Ireland skeet champ, isn’t
it? In her age group, that is.”

  McGarr poured himself a whiskey and took the seat on the other side of the hearth from where Parmalee had placed his own drink. “Tell me about Opus Dei. From the beginning.”

  “The very beginning?”

  McGarr nodded. “I know very little about the Church.”

  “You’re not a practicing Catholic, then?” Parmalee took his seat.

  McGarr shook his head. In recent years he’d been inside churches and synagogues only for weddings and funerals. “And you?”

  “No. Not anymore.”

  “You don’t go to church?”

  Parmalee shook his head.

  “What about your former order, the Jesuits—have anything to do with them?”

  “Individuals—my friends, a mentor or two—yes. The hierarchy, no. I’ve put all that behind me.”

  “But you’re still interested in the affairs of the Church. Like this José Maria Escrivá.”

  “Fixated, I think, would be the better word.” Parmalee’s eye strayed toward the fire. “I’m interested in how faith plays out in the institution of the Church. The form it takes, how and why it becomes warped, and”—he sighed—“the grotesqueries that result.”

  “Like Opus Dei?”

  “Particularly Opus Dei, which is the most pernicious and retrograde institution that has yet been created within the modern Church.”

  “Founded by José Maria Escrivá,” McGarr prompted. “Who was?”

  “A poor Spanish priest, born around the turn of the last century. He had a vision of how Church doctrine had misinterpreted a key passage in the book of Genesis. Or so they claim.”

  “They?”

  “Opus Dei, the order that was created by him. They claim God spoke directly to Escrivá about the passage and other matters.”

  “Which key passage?”

  “The fifteenth verse of the second chapter. It says,

  ‘And the Lord God took the man, and put him into the Garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.’ After meditating on the text when he was only twenty-six years old, Escrivá decided that Aquinas’s interpretation seven centuries earlier had been wrong.”