by Anne Emery
“But, as you know now, she was seen with MacNair not far from your house the night she died.”
“I have no idea what that was about. I wish to God she had confided in me about whatever problem she had with him.”
“What can you tell us about Ms. Keller’s acquaintance with Alban MacNair?”
“It was MacNair who introduced me to Meika, actually. There was a dinner at the Army mess, you know, at Royal Artillery Park.”
“When was that?”
“A year or so after my divorce from my first wife. The divorce was in 1978.”
Monty restrained himself from being distracted by the reference to a first wife and got back to the transcript. “You were at the dinner by yourself then, or . . . ?”
“Well, with some of the other men and their wives, other naval officers, fraternizing with the Army. We were all in a group. I saw MacNair there, and we greeted each other.”
“How long had you known Alban MacNair at that point?”
“Forever. I was Navy and he was Army, from an Army family going way back, but we would see each other at various events. Of course, I frequently left port to carry out my responsibilities, and he was posted to other parts of Canada and other parts of the world, but we would see each other during our times here in Halifax. I would call him an acquaintance, not a friend.”
“Were you on unfriendly terms?”
“No, just not close at all. And I have to say I always found him peculiar with regard to Meika.”
Oh, Christ, thought Monty.
“In what way?”
“Just, well, not completely at ease whenever we were in the same room together.”
“They had a relationship before she started seeing you?”
“Whatever they were to each other, it had ended long before she and I met at RA Park. He was married to Connie.”
“And you’re not sure what accounted for the awkwardness, if I may put it that way.”
“Right. If he was carrying a torch for her, the feeling was not reciprocated by Meika, though she was always cordial to him.”
Exactly the opposite of what Alban MacNair had told Monty.
“So, you and Meika began seeing each other after that initial meeting and eventually married.”
“Yes, we married a year or so after that. Year and a half.”
“And your children lived with?”
“They lived with me.”
That was fairly unusual. Most often, in Monty’s experience, the children lived with their mother. The police hadn’t pursued it.
“You and Meika would see MacNair from time to time at military events in the city?”
“Yes, though as you likely know, MacNair had a number of overseas postings, and he spent a considerable amount of time at the Army base in New Brunswick — Gagetown — before he returned to Halifax last year.”
“And he acted odd or peculiar in Meika’s presence.”
“In my view, yes.”
“Had they seen each other recently? I don’t mean the night of her death, but recently otherwise?”
“Not as far as I know. Not as far as I knew, I should say.”
Monty picked up the phone and called Bill MacEwen. They greeted each other, then Monty said, “I just read through the transcript. This will come with more of your disclosure, but I’d like to ask you a couple of questions now.”
“Ask away.”
“Can you tell me something about the opera singer, Habler, and his relationship with Meika Keller?”
“They went to school together in Leipzig. And in fact she was not Meika Keller back then.”
“Oh, I didn’t know that.”
“Yeah, she was Edelgard Vogt-Becker. Changed her name after she fled East Germany. Habler didn’t get out until the wall came down and Germany was reunified. He went to Vienna and signed up with the Vienna State Opera. He came to this country just after Christmas to do master classes in the music department at Dal and also at the University of Toronto. When he arrived here, he met up with Meika — for the first time since they were in school. He gave a little spiel about their reunion at a reception some weeks after they met up. Meika wasn’t there on that occasion; she’d gone to Europe. But apparently it went over well. People who knew her were pleased to hear him speak about her with such affection. And he had Meika and her husband over to his place one evening for dinner. So that’s the story on Habler.”
“You say she went to Europe?”
“Yes, a short trip. Left here January twenty-sixth and was back on the thirty-first. Just an opera excursion, Monty. Inspired, I assume, by meeting up with Habler again. Take in a few performances and then fly home, and back to work. Nothing dramatic for her on European soil this time.”
“Quite a dramatic life she had before, though, leaving East Germany under stressful circumstances, being shot at during her escape.”
“Yes, and her daughter died not long afterwards, while they were still in West Germany.”
“The poor woman, going through all that. I assume the police have given consideration to the possibility that something from her past came back to haunt her? After Habler went public with her new identity and location?”
“It’s not a new identity and location. She’s been in this country, as Meika Keller, since 1974.”
“New perhaps to those who had known her in Germany.”
“She left Germany twenty-two years ago. We’re not in the business of chasing phantoms, Monty. We’re confident we have the right man. Look at the evidence. She and MacNair together, overlooking the water the night she died, him chasing her behind the houses, being away from his car for at least seven or eight minutes, and we don’t know how much longer after that. And the spate of phone calls. That says stalker to me, and of course we know he was particularly aggressive on the night of February sixth.”
“That’s not the way he explains the relationship.”
“Well, he’s not likely to portray himself in an even worse light, is he?”
“Still, it’s pretty thin. No evidence at all connecting him to her actual death or her presence in the water.”
“I don’t see it that way.”
“I know. Well, thanks for your time, Bill. Bye for now.”
Brennan
Brennan had headed off to O’Carroll’s the previous evening after talking to his brother on the phone, and it was one o’clock the next morning when he made his way through the slushy streets to the parish house; the Book of the Names of the Dead didn’t even enter his mind. He had only one thought in his mind: to have one more drink for the road to oblivion. He had a smoke, downed a glass of Jameson, performed his ablutions, and collapsed into bed. But oblivion didn’t come; Meika Keller’s face, nearly translucent under the shallow waters, her blue eyes riveted on his own, made its appearance in his mind, in his conscience, and it felt like an eternity before the image faded and he drifted away into sleep. He was jolted into consciousness a few short hours later by the sound of a vacuum cleaner being dragged along the corridor and banging against his door. His throat was dry, his stomach sick, and his mood murderous. The hallway did not have to be vacuumed at half seven in the morning. That one was trying to make a point again, in her far from subtle way. He tried to get back to sleep, but it wasn’t going to happen. And, besides, wasn’t there something he had to do? He was going to look up . . . the Book of the Names of the Dead, that was it. He raised his head, painfully, and pulled his body up out of the bed. He scrabbled around his desk and found a couple of oatmeal cookies, which he wolfed down with a glass of tap water. Then he brushed his teeth and had a shower. Didn’t bother to shave.
He left his room and walked on silent feet into the hallway. There she was again, still bent over her noisome and utterly unnecessary labours on the floor. He started to walk past her, and she leapt a foot off the ground, then whirled
around clutching her heart. “Oh! Father Burke! You scared me!” The woman would be frightened of the Lamb of God. He ignored her and kept going.
He went downstairs, out the door, and crossed over to the church. He entered the sacristy, where Monsignor O’Flaherty kept the books in a cabinet. What year was it when he saw Meika Keller entering a name? Four years ago? He had forgotten the name, but he knew he would find it just above the name of the young prisoner who had been murdered. That happened in 1992 or 1993, Brennan remembered; he had been invited to speak at the funeral. He reached into the cabinet and brought out the books. Ah. There it was, in 1993. Dwayne Brandon Gowly. But the name a few spaces above it on the page, which had been written in by Meika Keller, was now unreadable. It had been scratched out, scribbled over with black ink. He couldn’t make out even one letter. At some point, someone had decided that a certain name, a certain person, should not be remembered.
Chapter VII
Monty
Monty suspected that the Crown attorney was right, that Monty was chasing phantoms on behalf of his client. And those phantoms, if that’s what they were, gave him no rest over the weekend. He kept returning to the notion that the evidence against Alban MacNair was patchy enough that the Crown would have difficulty establishing guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. But a murder case always sat more comfortably with Monty if he could come up with a competing theory about the death of the victim. And in this case of course he had one. Suicide. Meika Keller’s body had floated in on the tide and landed on the beach at Point Pleasant Park. But what drove her to such a desperate act? People who knew her, including her husband, were adamant that nothing had happened to plunge her into a state of depression. But if she had been despondent over MacNair’s rejection of her advances, would she have masked her anguish, leaving her family oblivious? She was out of sorts after her trip to Europe, but her husband said this was because her holiday photos had not turned out. It did not sound as if she had been noticeably distressed about anything. There was no medical crisis, no failure in her career, no sign of anything like that. She was, by all accounts, a brilliant professor of science, popular with the students and faculty. She was a tireless champion of the arts, particularly of music, and her charitable and fundraising work was appreciated and acknowledged publicly and often. He recalled seeing her name in connection with fundraisers for the IWK children’s hospital here in the city.
If there was nothing in Halifax that could explain her death, was there something in her past? Something in Germany? Well, he’d been over this ground before. She had met up again with a schoolmate from the old country, the renowned operatic tenor Fried Habler. He had relayed the news to people back home in Leipzig. That city of course had been on the eastern side of the border when Germany was still divided. Had the reunion with Habler set off a chain of events that came to a deadly climax on February 6 in Halifax?
Meika’s phone records had been checked and yielded nothing but bad news for Monty’s client. Nine calls to the victim’s office from MacNair. None to her office or home phone from Germany or anywhere else in Europe. Meika did not have a cellular phone. Computer checks showed that she used her workplace computer solely for her work. She and her husband had recently set up an electronic mail — email — account; both had access to it, and Hubert Rendell gave investigators the password. There was nothing questionable in the messages found. There was no indication one way or the other whether either of them had a private email account. Rendell said that, despite her background in science, his wife had shown little interest in the new world of information technology. Had there been any regular mail at the house, letters or packages, which might have caused concern?
Monty could hardly call the commodore on behalf of the man accused of killing his wife and ask whether some third party had been sending her letters. But the police must have checked this. So, on Monday morning, Monty sought to enlist the assistance of his adversary once again. He called the Crown’s office and left a message for Bill MacEwen. Bill returned his call half an hour later.
“Bill, sorry to bother you again.”
“No problem, Monty. What can I do for you?”
“Don’t tempt me like that, Bill, lest I suggest that you drop these unfounded charges against my client and call a press conference to announce that honourable and courageous decision on your part.”
“No, I probably can’t accommodate you there, you shyster. So, if there’s nothing else . . .”
“There is something else.”
“Kind of thought so.”
“You told me about the phone records and the computers, but what about the mail? Did the police get anything on that?”
“Nothing there. They asked Hubert and, more to the point, they asked the housekeeper. She works mornings Monday to Friday, and she’s there when the mail arrives. Of course, at first, she claimed she never looks at the family’s letters, never even notices the envelopes, but eventually she came clean and said she sorts it out into separate piles for each member of the family. So, of course, she eyeballs everything that crosses the transom. Nothing strange or threatening. Nothing foreign apart from some flyers about opera productions in Italy and at the Met in New York. There were letters from a couple of acquaintances in the United States. Those people were called and found to have nothing useful to add.” Before Monty could ask, MacEwen said, “And it was pretty much the same situation at her workplace. The person who receives and distributes the mail at Saint Mary’s said she never noticed anything unusual. There were mailings that seemed to be mass-produced, from physics departments at various universities and think tanks in this and other countries. She did not recall any personal letters from Europe. And she did not recall Ms. Keller ever appearing alarmed after mail time — or at any other time, for that matter.”
“All right. Thanks again, Bill.”
“There’s nobody on the radar except Alban MacNair, Monty.”
After lunch that afternoon, Monty’s secretary, Tina, stepped in to say he had missed a call from a Mrs. Kelly, who was supposed to come to the office ten minutes from now. “She said there has been an unavoidable delay. The bishop arrived, or at least that’s what she said.”
Monty laughed.
“Who is Mrs. Kelly?” Tina asked.
“She’s the priests’ housekeeper over at Saint Bernadette’s church. I’ve got her as a witness. Meika Keller stopped in at the church the night she died.”
“Oh!”
“And it would throw Mrs. Kelly right off course, the bishop arriving unannounced.” Monty had seen her fluttering around Archbishop Dennis Cronin on several occasions. “That’s fine, Tina. I’ll see her when she gets here.”
Monty returned to his regular preoccupation, trying to think of something he could produce that could get this case dismissed far short of a trial. He might have some luck at the preliminary inquiry, which would be held for the purpose of determining whether there was enough evidence to send the case to be tried. All the evidence was circumstantial, which was often the situation. There was no direct evidence linking MacNair to Meika Keller’s death. The only witnesses were those who had seen her earlier that evening. Well, all right, late that night. A few hours before her death.
And here was one of those witnesses now. Mrs. Kelly, the housekeeper, was ushered into his office and now stood, uncertain, in front of his desk. He rose to greet her. God love her, she had certainly dressed for the occasion. Monty had seen her countless times at the rectory in a housedress and apron, her faded blond hair sometimes held back by a kerchief.
Now she was decked out in her best go-to-Mass-on-Sunday ensemble. She had on a fur coat of a kind Monty had not seen since his aunts had worn them decades ago. It smelled of mothballs, and Monty suspected she had taken it out of storage especially for this occasion. And, perhaps looking ahead, for the trial. She had on a pale-blue felt hat that Monty would have described as a tam except that it rose up in s
ort of a crown on one side. He could see stitches, and he had the impression that it might at one time have had a veil attached. Monty helped her off with her coat and hung it on the coatrack. Her hair had just been done in a Margaret Thatcher–style helmet, and Monty could smell the hairspray. Mrs. Kelly’s dress matched the hat in colour and had a short jacket over it. She wore matching blue high-heeled shoes, in spite of the slushy weather outside, and completed the outfit with a blue leather handbag and white gloves. The outfit wailed “doesn’t get out much” and Monty immediately chastised himself for being uncharitable.
“Mrs. Kelly, thanks for coming. Please have a seat. Would you like tea or coffee?”
“Oh! A cup of tea would be lovely. Cream and sugar if it’s not too much trouble.”
“No trouble at all.” Monty buzzed Darlene at reception and ordered the tea.
“I’m sorry to be late, Mr. Collins! But His Grace came by just as I was about to leave. He was looking for Father Burke.” Her lips compressed themselves into a thin line of disapproval. Darlene came in with the cup of tea and handed it to Mrs. Kelly, who thanked her profusely. She took a sip. “Lovely! Anyway, as usual, he was nowhere to be seen. Father, I mean. I don’t know how many times His Grace has come looking for him, and nope, not there. Today, he said to me — the bishop said — ‘Mrs. Kelly, I know he’s a hard man to keep track of.’ You can say that again, I felt like saying to His Grace, but of course I didn’t say a word.”
“Of course.”
“But anyway, it was ‘Mrs. Kelly, whenever you see him, ask him to give me a call.’ And then he thanked me and left.”
Monty let her ramble for a few minutes and then got down to business. “Now, Mrs. Kelly, did you know Meika Keller?”
“Oh, I only saw her at Mass from time to time. But she usually went to the Latin Mass with all that high-falutin’ music.” Father Burke’s Mass, she meant. “She was really nice. Not the kind that would go on and on talking your ear off, but friendly anyway. Real smart, taught science at the university. The things women can do nowadays!” Monty was grateful that his wife, Professor MacNeil, was not on hand to hear that.
