Murder at the National Cathedral (8 page)

“Damn,” Mac said, pouring himself a small glass of Blanton’s bourbon over ice.

Annabel was sitting on a couch. She’d changed into a Kelly-green silk robe over nothing else, and was flipping through the latest issue of
Art in America
while watching the news. In her hand was a delicately shaped balloon glass with
a small amount of white wine. She looked up. “Have you been retained by the cathedral?”

“Can’t they get anything straight? Of course not.”

“Have you told George that you would do more?”

“No. Well, I did say that I would do what I could to make his life a little easier … give some advice, that’s all.”

Annabel smiled, the sort of smile Mac could do without and this for the second time that day. “Uh-huh,” she said with deliberate sweetness, returning her attention to the magazine.

The phone rang, not an unwelcome interruption for Smith. It was a reporter from
The Washington Post
, who wanted to confirm a rumor that Smith had been retained by the cathedral to defend one of its clergy in the Singletary murder.

“Nonsense!” Smith said.

Other calls came over the next hour, each an attempt to run down a rumor concerning Smith’s involvement, or a likely suspect.

“Let’s go out for dinner,” Smith said after hanging up on yet another caller.

She shook her head. “Put the answering machine on. I’d just as soon bring something in from the American Café.”

“All right. What’ll you have?”

“Mac.”

“Yes?”

“Reality has set in. You are going to be up to your neck in this, aren’t you?”

“An overstatement, but yes, I do feel I have to help find the murderer of the man who married us.”

She smiled gently and genuinely. “I understand. What will you do first?”

Smith sat down next to her and shrugged. “I told George I’d make some inquiries here and also while we’re in London.”

“Inquiries about what?”

“About Paul’s movements there prior to his returning to Washington. About whatever we can learn here about motives and such.”

“The trip to London is our honeymoon. You are aware of that?”

“Of course. And remember that we decided to combine business and pleasure. I have to address that group of barristers, and you wanted to trace down leads on those Tlatilco female masks. I’m not suggesting an extensive investigation of what Paul did in London, just some questions. Jeffrey Woodcock should be helpful. I’m eager for you to meet him. He’s a nice guy.” Woodcock was a highly respected London solicitor, whose firm’s clients numbered, among others, the Church of England. He and Smith had been friends for many years, and when Smith and Annabel were planning their honeymoon, Smith had called Woodcock and arranged for them to meet for dinner.

Annabel continued to browse through the magazine. She lowered it to her lap and said, “I’ve been thinking a great deal about Paul Singletary.”

“So have I. Hard not to.”

“I’ve been thinking about his death, of course, but there’s more. He was so charming, and so committed to good deeds … but that’s really all we knew about him.”

“What else would you like to know?”

She shrugged.

“We never know everything about anyone. If we did, no one would ever get along, or marry.”

She laughed. “How true. Maybe I’m just naturally suspicious … no, skeptical, or at least wary, of anyone in the limelight here in Washington. How much do we really know about the whole life of Paul Singletary?”

“Wary? Even of me?” Smith said.

“
Especially
of you.”

Smith grunted. “I’ll have to ponder that. What’s your
pleasure?” he asked as he pulled a restaurant takeout menu from a drawer.

She tossed the magazine to the floor and sat up straight, the folds of her robe falling loose and exposing the slope of one lovely white breast. “
You’re
my pleasure, Mr. Smith.”

“Are you about to make conjugal demands on this aging body?”

“To the contrary. I am abandoning my role as a wife, and reverting to the whorish role that I enjoyed for so long
before
we got married.”

“You’re sure this is the time for sex, Annabel? There’s been a murder in the national place of worship, of all things.”

“And nothing will change that. If I am going to lose you so early in my marriage to your need to meddle in murder, I insist upon due compensation.”

“What about dinner?”

A tall woman, she stood up and allowed the robe to fall in a soft green pile around her feet. Nude, she looked down at him and said, “Somehow, I don’t think we’ll be hungry. But if we are, I’ll play wife again and whip up a sandwich for my dear husband. I make excellent tuna-fish salad. Or hadn’t you heard?”

With a rolled-up magazine, they convinced Rufus to vacate the king-size bed, and for twenty minutes or so—neither was counting—forgot about everything except themselves. Murder would just have to wait.

Friday Morning—Sunny, but Rain Forecast

Long before the automatic coffee maker had a chance to trip on, the phone started ringing. Two calls were from press people; the other was from the bishop, who asked if Smith had time to meet with him late that afternoon. Smith said it looked like a full day, with two classes, one a seminar, but that he would find an hour. They settled on four o’clock at St. James’s home.

“What should I tell others who call?” Annabel asked sleepily. She stood near the front door in robe and slippers as Smith prepared to leave for the university.

“Tell them I expired,” he said, slipping into his raincoat.

“Don’t even joke about something like that,” Annabel said.

“Tell them there is no sense in calling me, because I have no official connection with the investigation of Paul’s murder.” He kissed her on the cheek, then changed his mind, found her lips, and pressed hard. “I wish I had time to stay
around. You exude a certain heightened sensuality early in the morning.”

“Don’t feel you’ve missed anything,” she said. “I exude a certain exhaustion but I’ll be out of here in a half hour. Lots going on at the gallery today, including a meeting about the fund-raising exhibition we’re doing for St. Albans.” St. Albans was the Episcopal church on the cathedral grounds that served a local congregation. Annabel had recently taken over a vacant store next to her gallery in Georgetown and promptly committed the new space to St. Albans’s mission fund for a showing of artists who had some connection with the church. It would take a month for renovations on the gallery’s addition to be completed; the exhibition was scheduled to be hung in six weeks.

Smith took Rufus for a long walk before going to his class. Rufus needed the exercise and Smith needed to think. They wandered Foggy Bottom, an area of Washington defined by Eighteenth Street on the east, Constitution Avenue on the south, the Potomac River and Twenty-sixth Street on the west, and Pennsylvania Avenue on the north. Originally a malarial marsh incorporated as Hamburg but called Funkstown after Jacob Funk, who’d purchased the original land, it eventually became known as Foggy Bottom, an unkind reference to the foul emissions produced by the many industries that once had been settled within its boundaries. Today, it is an attractive neighborhood that is home to the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, George Washington University (the second-largest landholder in Washington after the federal government), and the departments of State and Interior. It had been Mac Smith’s home ever since his wife and son were killed and he’d left his luxurious Watergate apartment suite and bought the narrow two-story taupe brick house on Twenty-fifth Street, its trim, shutters, and front door painted Federal blue, its rooms devoid of painful memories that had started to suffocate him as a Watergate widower.

He returned Rufus to the house, and after carefully checking his briefcase, which he had checked and repacked the night before (he could not go to sleep without having prepared his briefcase for the following day), and taking his raincoat from the closet, as rain was predicted, headed for Lerner Hall. A reporter from the
Post
was waiting on the front steps, along with two uniformed officers from the MPD.

“Mr. Smith, could I have a word with you?” the reporter asked. One of the officers motioned Smith to approach them. Smith excused himself with a word to the reporter and went to where the officers stood. “Mr. Smith, we tried you at your home, but your wife said you’d left.”

“Yes, I took a walk. My dog and I, that is. What can I do for you?”

“Chief Finnerty would like a word with you.”

“Now? I have a class to teach.”

“He said for us to bring you to him as quickly as possible.”

“You’ll just have to tell him I won’t be available for the next two hours.”

“I’ll call in,” the other officer said. He returned from the squad car and said, “The chief says we should wait for you, Mr. Smith. He says you should teach your class, but that he would like to see you right after it.”

Smith looked at his watch. “All right, but you have two hours to kill.”

“No problem, Mr. Smith.” Of course not, Smith thought. Cops were experts at killing time. They had to be.

Smith headed for the door, but the reporter intercepted him again. “Mr. Smith, I’m Mark Rosner from the
Post.
Give me a few minutes?”

“Sorry, I can’t. I’m already running late for my class. Besides, I have nothing to talk about.”

“The Singletary murder,” Rosner said. “Aren’t you serving as counsel to the cathedral?”

“No.”

“But it’s my understanding that—”

Smith flashed a broad smile. “I think you should find better sources. I’m a college professor who happens to be a personal friend of the bishop of the cathedral. Excuse me, I don’t want to be rude, but I’m afraid I’m about to be.” He walked away, leaving the reporter with an expression on his face that indicated both annoyance and ambivalence.

When Smith entered the lecture hall, most of his students were in their seats. They were a decent lot for the most part, with a few exceptions. That they were bright went without saying; you didn’t get into GW’s law school unless you could demonstrate as much. The problem, Smith often thought, was that, as with medical schools, intelligence and grades were virtually the sole determining factor for admission to law schools. But how do you judge a young man or woman’s sense of humanity, commitment to decency, to social justice, to using an excellent legal education to give something to the world and not just to take from it? When he dwelt too much upon that subject, as this morning, he became depressed, so he pushed it from his mind, went to the lectern, unloaded his carefully arranged briefcase, and wished the students a good morning.

“Professor Smith,” Bob Rogers said, “anything new on the murder of the priest?”

Smith had expected questions about Paul Singletary’s murder, and had decided during his walk to dismiss the subject as quickly as possible. He looked at the questioner over half-glasses and asked, “Have you read the newspapers, watched television?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then you know as much as I do.”

There was a ripple of sarcastic laughter.

“What’s funny? No, sorry, that’s not true. Father Paul Singletary was a friend of mine.”

Another student, Joyce Clemow, retorted, “Which is why we thought you’d know what was going on.”

Before Smith could answer, another aspiring lawyer, Joe Petrella, said, “I heard you’re going to defend whoever in the cathedral murdered Father Singletary.”

Smith placed his glasses on the lectern and shook his head. “What kind of attorney will you end up being, Joe, if you’re content to go with rumor that has no basis in fact?”

Petrella sheepishly lowered his head. Beside him, Smith’s best student, April Montgomery, a thin, pale young woman with a facial tic that made it appear that something had lodged temporarily in her nose, said, “Do you believe it was an outsider who killed Father Singletary—say, a homeless person who came into the cathedral early in the morning?”

“I have no idea,” Smith said. “The police have just begun their investigation.”

“Have they found the woman who discovered the body?”

“Not that I’m aware of,” Smith said. Other questions sprouted until he threw up his hands in a gesture of surrender. “Look,” he said, “we have a great deal to cover here this morning, but okay, since the only thing on your minds seems to be the Singletary murder, let’s take fifteen minutes to discuss it.” He leaned on the lectern, thought for a moment, then said, “Here is what I do know. Father Singletary was killed by a blow to the side of his head. It appears upon casual observation of the wound that the object was heavy, and that it had a lip or ridge that caused considerable compression of the skull. MPD’s Forensic Unit did a thorough job of analysis of the crime scene, which was the tiny chapel known as Good Shepherd. Singletary was found sitting in a single pew, his body slumped against a wall. There appears to have been little bleeding, which has caused those who were on the scene to raise a question.” He paused. They looked at him. “Which is—?”

April Montgomery said, “Whether he might have been killed elsewhere and moved to the chapel.”

“That’s interesting,” Joy Collins said. She was the most exuberant of Smith’s students. “They didn’t have
that
on TV or in the papers.”

“It will be, as soon as enough of the right questions are asked and facts digested. An autopsy is being performed or has been performed on the Reverend Singletary, and perhaps that will determine a number of things, including—what?”

Several raised their hands.

“The approximate time of his death, lividity, the advancement of rigor mortis, body temperature, the level of potassium in the eye fluid, rate of decomposition,” said Bob Rogers, who usually had such lists at his command.

“Right. All will be taken into consideration. Many color photographs were shot, and detailed sketches were made. Each of you, of course, is familiar with the techniques used to evaluate a crime scene.” He surveyed their faces; he’d become a forensics expert when he was practicing criminal law. It was vitally necessary to understand forensic medicine in order to mount a credible defense for a client. Some of his students didn’t seem to be interested in such things, aside from morbid curiosity.