Murder at the National Cathedral (36 page)

“That’s not true. I hated the fact that he was involved with a woman like you, a user, a woman who cared nothing for him except what you might get from him. I told him that many times.”

“Yes, you did, and he didn’t believe it. He also never hesitated to tell you about me, about his feelings for me. I suppose it was cruel of him to do that, but I’m glad he did.”

Clarissa Morgan knew that Paul never really loved her, but she also knew that he felt increasingly, desperately trapped by his relationship with Carolyn Armstrong. It was something she did not admire about Paul, his tendency to talk freely about other women. He’d talked about Armstrong a great deal on the plane, and Clarissa had begged him to disassociate himself from her, to give himself a chance to see whether he did—could—love
her.
He promised her he would give himself that chance. He wasn’t allowed to live long enough to follow through on that decision.

Hearing movement behind her, Morgan turned. Merle was walking toward the crouched, shaking Joey Kelsch. The boy looked up into Merle’s eyes, then looked at Morgan as she said loudly, as though addressing a crowd, “She murdered him!”

Joey shoved his hands against Merle’s legs, scrambled to his feet, and ran toward the rear of the chapel. Merle lost his balance, then started after the boy.

“Watch out!” Buffolino yelled from the door.

Carolyn Armstrong had lifted a brass candlestick from the altar and was coming at the other woman with it. Morgan whirled, tensed, and pulled herself into a defensive shell, hands covering her head, knees bent.

Smith and Buffolino ran into the chapel. “Get the boy, Tony,” Smith called. He vaulted the altar rail and said to Armstrong, “Why not give that to me, Reverend.” He extended his hand.

“You don’t understand how it was,” Armstrong said, her body shaking.

“No, I probably don’t, but I’m sure you can explain it.”

Then, suddenly, Armstrong raised the candlestick again and threw it at Clarissa Morgan. It missed and ricocheted off the stone floor with a deafening clang. As the sharp sound of metal hitting stone reverberated throughout the chapel and faded, Buffolino came from the rear of the
chapel. Joey had tried to hide in a pew, and Buffolino had half-coaxed him, half-dragged him from it. He held Joey by the arm, firmly but somehow gently herding Merle, too.

“Tell them how it happened, Jonathon,” Armstrong said in a whisper.

Merle looked desperately at Smith and Buffolino. “I don’t know what she’s talking about.”

“Tell them how after I hit Paul,
you
offered to move his body to Good Shepherd so that it might seem that an outsider killed him. Tell them, Jonathon. You are a man of God. For God’s sake, tell them the truth!”

There was silence as all eyes turned to Merle. He didn’t seem to know what to do, what to say. He looked from one face to the other, then finally fixed upon Mac Smith. The taut muscles of his gaunt cheeks and chin sagged; his thin lips began to tremble. Slowly, he raised his hands palms-up at Smith in a weak plea for understanding. “I … I didn’t want to move him. Oh, God, no, I didn’t want to do that. It was terrible seeing him on the floor, blood running from his head. It made me sick. I was so sorry—for both of them.”

He glanced at Armstrong, then back at Smith. “She didn’t mean to do it, Mr. Smith. I know that. God knows that. Singletary could be cruel to her. I saw it more than once.” He looked at Armstrong before continuing. “She wouldn’t have hurt him if he hadn’t driven her to it. How much can a person take? I asked her once to give him up and to be my friend. I told her I could help her forget him and make her happy.”

Smith looked down at the floor. This sudden tenderness by the stiff-necked Jonathon Merle, whose severe features were the stuff of caricatures, embarrassed Smith.

Merle continued, “I told her I wouldn’t do it, but she pleaded with me. She told me that if the police thought Paul had been murdered by an outsider, they wouldn’t suspect her. Even so, I still refused. But then she told me that the
cathedral would be ruined if it got out that one member of its clergy had killed another. I believed that, Mr. Smith, I really did, and I took Paul’s body to Good Shepherd for that reason.”

Smith thought of Bishop St. James and his ill-advised attempt to hide the murder weapon because of the same faulty reasoning. How many wrongs are done in misguided attempts to do right?

Smith said to Armstrong, “I believe Reverend Merle. He’s telling the truth, isn’t he?”

Carolyn Armstrong’s face was tight and bitter. But then her body convulsed as she started to sob. Her hands went to her face, and she sank to her knees in front of the altar.

Merle, too, started to cry, but the only visible signs were large tears that ran slowly down his cheeks and found the corners of his mouth. “There was one other reason,” he said, with difficulty. “I love her.”

Smith went to Joey Kelsch and put a large hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Joey, I know you’ve been through a lot, but everything is going to be all right.”

Joey looked up into Smith’s eyes. “I saw him,” he said. “I saw him moving Father Singletary the night I was in the choir room.”

“Yes, we know,” Smith said. “We know now what happened.” He spoke to Buffolino. “Make sure neither of them leaves here. I want to make sure this boy gets back to his family. And I want to call Finnerty. On time for once. And he’ll be coming back here again tonight.”

Two Nights Later—A Lovely Fall Evening in the Nation’s Capital

“Sad, huh?” Tony Buffolino said.

Tony, Mac, Annabel, and Alicia sat in a banquette along the wall of Tony’s Spotlight Room. Alone on the bandstand, a sallow-skinned man with flowing gray hair, wearing a blue tuxedo jacket with sequins, lethargically played a keyboard while an electronic drum machine provided a cha-cha-cha rhythm.

“Well, maybe it was just the wrong idea in the wrong place,” Smith said. “Maybe Washington, D.C., just isn’t ready for a Las Vegas nightclub. Besides, there’s no gambling.”

“No gambling? This whole place was a gamble. But you’re right, Mac. I had a good idea, but I bet against the house. I was ahead of my time in D.C.”

“Exactly,” Annabel said.

“Don’t be too hard on yourself, Tony,” Alicia Buffolino
said. She touched his hand and smiled. “It just wasn’t meant to be. Besides, I have to take some of the blame here. I wanted you to be more than a private detective following cheating husbands. I wanted you to be a businessman. This was just the wrong business.”

Tony grinned at Mac and Annabel. “Ain’t she somethin’?” he said.

“Yes, I think she is exactly that, Tony,” Annabel said.

“Do you know what the shrink told us this afternoon?” Buffolino asked.

Mac and Annabel raised their eyebrows.

“The shrink—she’s a woman, which don’t exactly make me happy, but she seems pretty straight—she told me I don’t always sound the way I’m thinkin’. She got us into a conversation and taped it on a videocamera. Then she played it back. I got her point. There I was thinking nice things and telling them to Alicia, but when I see myself on the tape I sound mad, like I’m puttin’ her down.”

Smith smiled, said, “We’re all guilty of that at times, Tony. Sounds like you’re going to get a lot out of marriage counseling.”

Alicia said, “All I want out of it is a good marriage with this knucklehead.”

“Hey, don’t call me a knuckle … Whatta you …?” He broke into a big smile and embraced her. “Yeah, I guess sometimes I am a knucklehead.”

The only other person in the club was a Hispanic busboy who also functioned as bartender for Tony and his guests.

“Did you cook up our meal in the kitchen?” Smith asked.

“Nah,” Buffolino said, “I had takeout brought in.”

The Chinese food was set out in bowls on the table. A sign on the front door said:
PRIVATE PARTY IN PROGRESS—NO ADMITTANCE
.

Annabel tasted an eggroll and said, “I really feel sorry for Clarissa Morgan.”

“Not Carolyn Armstrong?” Smith asked, spooning beef with snow peas onto his plate.

“Of course I feel sorry for Carolyn, but in a way Clarissa’s story touches me even more.” She sat back. “I could see myself ending up in that kind of life. I mean, it must have seemed exciting in the beginning, a beautiful young woman being a paid agent for British intelligence, at first merely dating, then later seducing men who have secrets important to the state, living the high life and being paid well on top of it.”

“Didn’t get her far,” Buffolino said through a vast mouthful of shrimp fried rice doused with sweet-and-sour sauce and Chinese hot mustard.

“I know,” Annabel said, “and that’s my point. She did what she was told to do, and then simply because she fell in love with Paul, they cut her loose.”

“Not quite as cruelly as Reverend Priestly was cut down in Buckland,” Smith said.

“Why did British intelligence kill Priestly, Mac?” Annabel asked. “I’d have put my money on the murder being the work of someone from Word of Peace.”

“Then you’d have won your wager. Maybe you should put in gambling here, Tony. The problem was that Priestly, who once was a Young Turk allied with Paul Singletary, had gone over to MI5. He was no longer trying to pass along useful data and weapons information and such to help Word of Peace; he’d become suspicious of certain characters high up in it and went over to become an agent for the Brits, who fed him bits of this and that. His role now was to get the goods on the bad apples in the peace movement. Problem was that the heavy hitters in Word of Peace got wind of it—twigged to it, as the English say—and wanted to eliminate this source who had become a danger to them. Once Paul was killed here, in such a distinctive fashion, Mr. Jin Tse, who was not only a mover and shaker in Word of Peace but an acknowledged terrorist and assassin to boot, flew to
England and hit Priestly in a manner calculated to make it seem that the murders were parallel—to divert attention, obviously, from his organization—since he knew that they
hadn’t
killed Paul Singletary.

“But wait a minute, Mac,” Annabel interrupted, “how could Jin have known to kill Priestly with a candlestick? At that time nobody but Armstrong, Merle, and, I guess, St. James, knew what the murder weapon used on Paul was.”

“I think one other person knew,” Mac said, “and George confirmed my suspicion yesterday when he told me that one of the cathedral custodians skipped town the night of the storm, the night the evening news carried the story about the FBI sweep of Word of Peace’s petty spies. My hunch, and this is all based on circumstantial evidence until the police can find him for questioning, is that the maintenance man at the cathedral saw St. James switch candlesticks, and make a nervous display of it at that. George is a charming guy and a wonderful bishop, but I assume he’s not the smoothest of men when it comes to removing murder weapons. The maintenance guy reported it to Jin Tse, who is smart
and
inscrutable. He saw the opportunity to use a similar weapon in the Cotswolds. As it turned out, he’s more inscrutable than smart considering the time he’s facing. Of course, Word of Peace might have gotten to killing Paul anyway because of the unwanted attention he’d been attracting with his over-active love life, or at least sex life. Not only that, he was tottering on the edge of being accused of feathering his own nest with their funds. Which he was, in fact. The trips to England to see his mistress; the very expensive security system in his apartment, installed because Paul was beginning to think that his whole life, the whole shaky, secret edifice, could bring him down. Whether he was afraid of MI5 or the CIA or others in the peace organization may never be known—but he wasn’t paranoid. Treason is a good reason to be fearful. And he was sincere about almost everything in the movement.”

“You mean attempted treason,” Tony put it, “don’t you? Didn’t I hear that the street value of the tapes meant they were not exactly prime stuff?”

“Right. But stealing the wrong stuff and turning it over, or holding it to turn over at the ‘right time’ to a nation’s enemies, is treason whether the tapes were outdated or not. The British only let Priestly get hold of weak material from the start, and he and Singletary held on to it too long. It’s like strong narcotics or weak narcotics—it matters to addicts but not to the law. When MI5 confronted Priestly with knowledge of his taping and other acts, stuff he had been feeding to Paul, he had an extra reason to be ‘turned,’ and to work for them. Also, he was beginning to want out, didn’t much like using his friends, made the mistake of letting that show. Jin and company figured that he might tell all he knew about Word of Peace, information he’d gotten from Paul, to buy his way clear.”

“What I don’t understand,” Annabel said, no longer attempting to eat, “is why those two priests should have been engaged in intelligence trafficking, anyhow.”

“Oh, sure you do. They met when both were in the military, engaged in joint exercises of the two navies, and became good friends. You can almost hear the conversations between them, young idealists, ministers in the military, bemoaning the money spent on weapons while much of the world is dirt poor, deciding over a few beers late at night that they had to do something to help prevent further escalation or nuclear destruction.” He frowned. “The problem with those two was that they were naive, inept. Priestly eventually paid the price, as Paul might have, long after most other young idealists have put on pinstriped suits and taken managerial jobs with defense contractors. Really a shame.”

“What a world,” Annabel murmured. “Believe in peace and work for it, and get killed because of it.”

“You are, as usual, too nice. Paul wasn’t killed for his
commitments but for a lack of them. Especially toward women.” He sipped Chinese tea, now cold. “Well, at least they gave Clarissa Morgan the option of leaving England and settling in the British Virgin Islands, which, I might point out, is not exactly hardship duty.”

“She seemed so resigned about going back there. This Mr. Leighton … what did she call him, her ‘control’ … seems to call all the shots in her life.”

“Your expression is almost too appropriate. I propose to call the shots at this table: a toast.” He held his glass of Blantons high over the table. Buffolino picked up his glass of Don Q rum and Coke, and Annabel her white wine. “What are we toasting?” she asked.