Murder at the National Cathedral (3 page)

Apt stretched another thin smile.

“And you’re also familiar with what Canon Casson told the executive council,” Singletary said. “That the Gospel isn’t believable unless the church relates to its neighborhoods—including the larger neighborhood called the planet.”

“So endeth the lesson!” Apt stood. “I have another appointment.”

“So do I. I’m already late.”

“Safe journey home, Paul.”

“Yes. Please tell the archbishop how disappointed I was not to be able to see him on this trip.”

“You didn’t come to London just to see him, did you?”

“You know I didn’t. Still, first things first …”

“You’ll be staying a few days?”

“One more day. I have a meeting tomorrow in your limpid countryside. Then back to Washington on Thursday.”

Singletary picked up his black raincoat from the chair. Apt opened the study door. And began to accompany him. Singletary said, “It’s okay, Malcolm, I know my Luke, Matthew, and the way out.”

Singletary had been provided a car and driver by the London Word of Peace Committee for his visit to Lambeth Palace. It was at his disposal for the evening. He climbed in the back of the navy-blue Ford and gave the driver an address in Mayfair, near Berkeley Square. When they
reached it, the driver slowed to read numbers. Singletary said, “This will be fine.”

“Shall I wait?” the elderly British driver asked.

Singletary wrinkled his brow and pursed his lips in thought. “No, Bob, I think I’ll be here awhile. I’ll take a cab back to the hotel or walk. It isn’t far. Thank you very much for your courtesy.”

Singletary waited until the car had been driven away. Then, after looking left and right, he walked back to the corner of Charles Street and went up Davies Street. At number 418 he climbed the short set of steps and announced his arrival with three brisk raps of the brass knocker on the red door.

“Paul?” a voice asked from behind the door.

“Yes.”

The door was opened by a tall and slender, broad-shouldered woman of thirty-one. Clarissa Morgan possessed what Singletary considered a rare combination—black hair and eyes with milky-white skin. She wore pink silk lounging pajamas. “Come in,” she said, her accent edged with a touch of Welsh clarity. “I was about to become worried.”

Singletary stepped into the foyer, and she closed the door behind them. “He kept me waiting, didn’t even see me,” he said.

“Poor dear,” she said, taking his coat. “Hardly the sort of behavior one would expect from the archbishop of Canterbury.”

“Exactly what one would expect of
this
archbishop of Canterbury, considering the fact that he’s to the right of Thomas Cartwright.” Realizing that she didn’t understand the reference, he muttered, “Another puritanical right-winger of the faith.”

He walked into a small, tastefully decorated parlor and went directly to a cupboard, opened its doors, and pulled out a metal bottle of Danska. Clarissa came to his side
carrying a bucket of ice. “You?” he asked as he put ice and the vodka into a glass and removed his jacket.

“I prefer wine.”

They touched glasses and sat on a very contemporary-looking leather sofa, a jarring note in the midst of the room’s antique furnishings. She touched his cheek with slender fingers tipped with nails the color of dusty roses, smiled, and said softly, “You look older when you’re angry. Don’t be angry, at least not tonight.”

He managed to smile, downed half of his drink, and removed his clerical collar. “Where are we eating?”

Her voice now had a softer quality. “I thought we’d eat right here. If that’s all right with you, of course.” She looked into his eyes. “It
is
all right that we stay here, isn’t it?”

His face said that the anger he’d felt since leaving Lambeth Palace was fading fast. “Yes, it’s all right with me. Very all right. What are we having?”

She smiled and stood. “Cold tarragon chicken, a simple salad with raspberry dressing, rolls and butter, and a peach tart for dessert. How … hungry are you? All of it will keep nicely. But will you? Will I? Do you know how sinfully handsome you are?”

He stood and embraced her. The smell of her hair and perfume filled his nostrils as he touched his lips to her neck. His hands slid slowly down her back. The only words spoken between them as they entered the bedroom came from Clarissa. “If you’d like to unleash a little bit of that controlled anger now, Reverend,” she said, “I’d love it.”

As the Reverend Canon Paul Singletary communed with Clarissa Morgan, the driver called Bob pulled up in front of the Red Lion pub in Mayfair. He told the barmaid that Mr. Leighton’s car was waiting. She disappeared into the back dining room while Bob returned to the Ford. A few minutes later a tall, gray-haired gentleman with a Burberry raincoat neatly folded over the sleeve of his brown tweed suit left the
pub. He carried an umbrella, and walked with an odd slight leaning to the left, as though too many years of toting a heavy briefcase had bent him that way. Bob opened the back door of the Ford, and the man got in.

“Home?”

“Yes.”

After driving a block, Brett Leighton asked, “Well, did you take our clerical friend someplace interesting?”

“To the house in Mayfair with the red door. Actually, to a nearby address—but he walked to his final destination.”

“Yes.” Leighton smiled to himself. “A most beautiful altar at which to pray.”

Bob said nothing.

“His plans?”

“He said he would be going out of town tomorrow.”

“Out of town. You’ll be driving him?”

“Not likely. The dispatcher said nothing about it.”

“Let me know if you do.”

“Of course, sir.”

Bob dropped Leighton in front of a white townhouse in Belgravia. “Thank you, Bob,” Leighton said.

“My pleasure,” said the driver. “Will there be anything else tonight?”

Leighton handed Bob a sealed envelope, which, after Leighton had disappeared inside his house, the driver opened. He put the hundred-pound note in his pocket and drove to the Lamb and Flag on Rose Street in Covent Garden, a pub formerly known as the Bucket of Blood, where he ordered a clanger and a Directors bitter and joined his friends at a round corner table.

“Good day?” Eddie asked.

“A bloody bore ’cept for the traffic. I swear it gets worse every day,” Bob said. “Can ’ardly see where you’re going. Have to keep your eyes open for sure. Bloody Americans everywhere. No idea how to drive.”

After eating his pastry roll of bacon, onion, and herbs,
Bob considered leaving. His wife would be angry that he was late again, but what did she know? He deserved his relaxation, with the important work he did. Couldn’t tell her. Just as well.

He bought the next round. And another. And the hundred-pound note became smaller in proportion to Bob’s growing expansiveness.

The National Cathedral, Washington, D.C.—The Next Night, Wednesday

Joseph Kelsch idly pulled sheet music from a large pile on the table in front of him. The choirboy knew there really wasn’t any need to refile the music. Ordinarily, the cathedral’s vast collection of religious music was meticulously maintained; Joey had been assigned the unnecessary task as punishment for having disrupted that afternoon’s rehearsal of the boys’ choir. What was especially annoying to him was that he was ten years old, it was nine o’clock at night, and he’d been told by the choirmaster, Canon Wilfred Nickelson, that he was to continue with this make-work until eleven, after which he’d surely be twenty years old, and which also meant he would be unable to participate in the Ping-Pong contest that was going on at that moment back in the boys’ dormitory. Joey was one of the better Ping-Pong players in the school and had advanced to the final
round, the winner to be decided that evening. Canon Willy Nickelson has caused him to lose his opportunity to be the winner.

If Joey Kelsch, the boys’ choir’s finest young voice and biggest cutup, had been honest with himself, he would have admitted that the worst thing about his punishment was having to be alone in the choir room at night. He’d turned on all the lights. Still, there was something murkily forbidding about being here alone, about being alone
anywhere
in the vast cathedral after dark. Every sound was magnified and caused him to stiffen. His eyes darted from window to window. Thoughts of the tournament took his mind off his fears for a moment. That nerd Billy would probably win, now that Joey couldn’t compete. A series of black thoughts about choirmaster Nickelson filled Joey’s head as he lazily shuffled another piece of paper onto a pile. He was
better
at Ping-Pong than Billy. This wasn’t fair. He hadn’t done anything terrible during rehearsal, just talked too much after Nickel-Pickle had twice told him to stop.

As he sat at the long table in the choir room, Joey heard voices a few times when people passed in the hallway outside the door. He recognized Bishop St. James’s rumble on one occasion, and he considered going into the hallway to voice a complaint to the bishop about his punishment. “The punishment doesn’t fit the crime,” he would say to St. James if he went into the hallway. He didn’t; Bishop St. James was a nice man, but he would say, “I suggest you take this up with Reverend Nickelson.”

Joey sighed and looked at a clock on the wall. Another whole hour and a half to go. Though he wasn’t always on the side of the angels, in the soft, subdued light he resembled one. “Crap!” he muttered.

Across the hall from the choir room, behind the altar in the Bethlehem Chapel, which had been Mac and Annabel
Smith’s wedding site, a man stood in the shadows. He cocked his head at the sound of footsteps on the hard stone floor. They became louder, then stopped. A figure appeared at one side of the altar, paused, looked down at the vault in which the Right Reverend Henry Yates Satterlee, first bishop of Washington, and his wife, Jane Lawrence, had long ago been interred, looked up at an alabaster tomb bearing a recumbent likeness of Bishop Satterlee, and then, through narrowed eyes, peered at the man in the shadows. They began to talk, their tones low, their anger soon evident. The one who’d been second to enter the chapel closed the gap between them; they were only a few feet from each other now, their voices rising in intensity and volume, their words coming back at them in fragments off the hard walls.

“Ssssssh, keep your voice
down.
”

“You won’t get away with this.”

“How dare you …?”

“…  too far. You went …”

The tall man who’d been in the shadows made a sound of disgust and began to walk toward the small door at the front of the chapel that led to the hall. The other quickly turned to the Satterlee vault. Two large, heavy brass candlesticks used during Communion services had been left there by a member of the Altar Guild; they would be polished the next day by another of the guild’s devoted, reverent women.

A hand grabbed one of the candlesticks by its top. A few quick steps after the man from the shadows. The candle-holder was raised in the air, then swung down and around in a wide, vicious, and accurate arc. As the base of the candlestick caught the man in his left temple, there was the sound of bone being crushed, followed by a low, pained moan when the man hit the stone floor as if driven into it like a flame-hardened nail.

*   *   *

Joey Kelsch stiffened as the noises from the chapel reached him. The choirboy had been listening, had heard only one voice, but not the other. He hadn’t been able to make out the words, but he knew the speaker was very angry. Other people’s anger was always frightening. Besides, he had heard enough of it from the choirmaster. Still, Joey went to the door that led to the corridor and pressed his ear to it, heard footsteps in an irregular pattern, heard laborious breathing, heard what sounded like something being dragged along the floor, a large sack of flour, maybe, or a big cardboard carton. The sounds faded in the direction of the stairs that led up to the north entrance to the cathedral, where the tiny Good Shepherd Chapel remained open twenty-four hours a day.

Joey carefully pushed the door out an inch; its hinges made some noise, but not much. He continued opening it until there was room for him to poke his head into the corridor. Looking to his left, he saw empty corridor. Looking to his right, he saw a figure, nothing more than a black shroud really. He thought it a statue until he saw that it was about to turn the corner and go up the stairs with whatever was being dragged behind.

Joey closed the door, felt his heart threatening to beat through his chest wall. He waited, unsure of what to do. Then he heard footsteps returning. The door was open just enough for him to peek through the crack. Now it was not just a form in the distance. There was, for a split second, a face. The hands belonging to the face were carrying two red hand-crocheted kneeling pads from the chapel, their faded renderings celebrating Bethlehem and the birth of the Baby Jesus.

The face returned to the Bethlehem Chapel and disappeared from Joey’s field of vision.

Joey quietly pulled the door closed, tiptoed across the choir room, left through another door leading to the outside,
and ran as fast as he could to his dormitory. Other students were finishing the Ping-Pong tournament in the room, but Joey didn’t stop to join them. Trembling, he raced up the stairs, went into his room, quickly got into his pajamas, climbed into bed, panting, and pulled the covers over his head.

Until then, he hadn’t cried.

The Next Morning, Which Would Be Thursday

Although the sunrise was only a suggestion, the Right Reverend George St. James, bishop of Washington and dean of the National Cathedral, had already completed his daily contemplative stroll, had ridden his stationary bike, and had said his morning prayers. Now, as he stepped from the shower and vigorously began drying himself, he focused on the day ahead.

The major event was to be the funeral of Adam Vickery, a former attorney general of the United States, scheduled for nine o’clock in the cathedral’s nave. Vickery and his wife, Doris, had been active in cathedral affairs for many years. Vickery had sat on the cathedral’s chapter—its “board of directors”—for the past seven years, and as head of the building fund had received deserved accolades for his deft handling of it. His death had been sudden and unexpected. Seemingly in the best of health, he’d been found slumped inertly over his desk three nights before, the victim, apparently, of a massive coronary.