The Christmas Night Murder (16 page)

BOOK: The Christmas Night Murder
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“And he has the good luck to be released from prison that morning.”

“Exactly.”

“We still have the problem of the extra car at the thruway rest stop.”

“True, but that will solve itself when we have the whole picture. What happens next is that after Hudson's car is found in Riverview, you seek out Mrs. Farragut and start asking questions.”

“And Foster gets scared. He thinks Sister Mary Teresa put me onto his grandmother, that she's made a connection between Hudson's disappearance and her telling Foster where and when Hudson was arriving.” It was plausible; it fitted a lot of what we knew.

“For all we know,” Joseph said, “Foster may have been staying with his grandmother and may have heard your conversation. He decides then he'd better speak to Mary Teresa and he makes an appointment to see her that night. Her mind had been undependable lately, sometimes sharp, sometimes very ragged. He may not even have known that before he met her. We'll never know what she said, but he may have felt he had to silence her to protect himself.”

For the first time I had the feeling we might be getting somewhere. There were some problems. Sister Mary Teresa would surely not have written to someone in prison, but perhaps she had written to a box number and his grandmother had forwarded his mail. It was a small point. Like the extra car at the rest stop, it would work itself out.

And then it hit me. “Mary Teresa didn't know Julia had a brother,” I said. I remembered our conversation very clearly. “I mentioned the name to her and it didn't ring a bell. She had never been to the Farragut house. She didn't know there was a brother.”

Unexpectedly, Joseph smiled. “Take a break, Chris. You've learned so much and you've pushed yourself so hard. It will come together when it's ready. If someone has been keeping Hudson alive, they'll do it another day. And if he died on Christmas Night, we will always remember him for what he was.”

I picked up the two letters and left her office. I didn't want to think of Hudson as dead, but there had been no ransom request, no phone calls, no sightings, just a vehicle left on the street a healthy walk from a closed train station. Father or son, son or father. I went down to my room and tried to clear my mind.

23

I remember the walk back to the mother house after Jack and I had said our vows. We kissed in the back of the chapel and then went out into the sunshine. I have never felt happier, never felt so surrounded by friends. We stopped about halfway along the path and greeted our guests. There were several I had never met and plenty of nuns that Jack had not yet met, and everyone was smiling. Out of the corner of my eye I saw someone videotaping and someone else taking shots with a camera. I hadn't arranged for any of it; it had just happened.

When our impromptu receiving line had come to an end, we followed the crowd to the Mother House. There we had our wedding feast, laid out in a sumptuous buffet prepared by Jack's sister, Eileen, and supervised by Melanie Gross's mother, who had truly understood that we wanted less than a formal banquet and more than an informal bite to eat. How Marilyn Margulies and Eileen Brooks had managed to work together so well is still a mystery to me but one the international community ought to explore.

The community room had been cleared of its heavy furniture and filled with round tables covered with deep pink damask. Jack and I sat with Sister Joseph, my cousin Gene, the Golds, and Jack's parents, while everyone else was free to sit wherever they wanted. Mrs. Margulies had not really approved of that, but I had insisted. Everywhere I turned there were happy people, including several children dressed so extravagantly that I was surprised they were having such a good time. Jack's mother, who had very much wanted a wedding in New York, seemed to be having the best time of all.

It was everything I had wanted, a day in the country, a
meeting of friends, a good meal, a happy occasion. For the year that I had known Jack I had been tasting his sister's food, leftovers from her catering business or new dishes she was experimenting with. For our wedding everything was perfect, not only in taste but in appearance. It was a far cry from convent fare, not to mention my own cooking. Eileen outdid herself that day, and I think she picked up some future clients.

On that day all the leftovers went to St. Stephen's. The only thing we took for ourselves was the top layer of our wedding cake, which Eileen boxed for us and froze, to be eaten on our first anniversary if Jack doesn't come home famished one night and decide he can't wait.

I closed my eyes and thought of how beautiful that room had been, how sweet the flowers had smelled, how sure I was that I was taking the best step of my life. Joseph was right. It was good to think of something else when you're caught in gridlock.

—

I must have been asleep because the knock on the door roused me harshly. It took a moment for me to remember where I was, and when. I half expected to see green leaves out the window.

“Chris?”

“Yes, come in.” I went to the door, but Angela was already inside.

“Gosh, sorry. I didn't mean to wake you.”

“It's OK. I don't have time to waste. Is there a call?”

“Someone's here to see you—Sister Mary Teresa's niece, grandniece actually, I think. She just drove in from Syracuse.” For the funeral, although Angela didn't say so. “Joseph thought you would want to talk to her.”

“I'll just wash up. I'll be right down.” I used cold water and brought myself back to thinking clearly. This would be Ann-Marie, who had written letters to Mary Teresa, a young woman with children, someone who cared about her aunt.

She was sitting near the lighted Christmas tree with the still unclaimed presents in the cotton snow underneath. Joseph was with her and they were both drinking tea, something I thought I would appreciate myself.

“This is Mary Teresa's grandniece Ann-Marie,” Joseph said, rising as I approached. “I'll leave you two together. There's a cup for you, Chris. Put some sugar in it. You look like you need some quick energy.”

“I didn't know it showed.” I turned to the niece and we said hellos. She was a young woman, not very tall, a little busty, a little rounded in the hips. She looked nothing like Mary Teresa. Probably for the benefit of the nuns she was wearing a navy wool skirt and a pink-and-gray-striped cotton shirt. Her face was pale and had only a little lipstick that had mostly worn off and her hair was pulled back, more, it seemed, to keep it out of the way than to make a fashion statement.

“Sister Joseph tells me you think my aunt's death is connected to the death of that novice several years ago,” she said when we were sitting down.

I recounted Hudson's disappearance and my conversations with her aunt, telling her I was sure there was a connection.

“I just can't believe she died that way.” She had put her cup down and was staring into a place I could not see.

I wanted to say something, but nothing sounded right. She had wanted her aunt to die quietly in her sleep after a long life. “I knew her for a long time and I always liked and respected her. She was kind to newcomers, tolerant of mistakes, helpful, principled. She knew how to laugh.”

“Yes, she did.” Ann-Marie turned toward me. “And she told a good story.”

“A lot of good stories.” I sipped my tea. I wanted to ask some questions, but I didn't want to interfere with her grieving, to appear unfeeling. I was almost ready to give up and do it later when she said, “She was my grandmother's sister, you know. She was the last of her generation. When that poor girl died six or seven years ago, my mother came out here to help my aunt get over it. I was twenty-one, I remember. It was before I got married. Aunt Mary never believed that girl killed herself.”

“We talked about that, that Julia may have changed her mind at the last minute, when it was too late, when things had gone too far.”

“That's not what she meant at all. She thought Julia was murdered. She told me that.”

I felt like ice. The Mary Teresa I had known had been a team player. She did not talk behind people's backs; she didn't snipe; she would not have known how to be sarcastic. That she had believed Julia was murdered, that she had said as much to this young grandniece, was a surprise and a shock.

“Would you tell me—do you remember what she said?”

“My mother brought her home after the girl's funeral, to help her get back on her feet. We had a guest room for her. She used to visit us on vacations. I remember my mother tiptoeing around and telling us to be quiet because Aunt Mary was trying to rest, and Aunt Mary came out of her room and said if she rested any more she surely wouldn't be able to sleep at night and what she really wanted was a good stiff drink of Scotch.” Ann-Marie laughed. “I'd never heard her say anything like that before.”

“Did she get her Scotch?”

“She sure did. My mom poured it for her and I watched her drink it. Then she started to talk.”

I was almost holding my breath, waiting for her to go on. She moved in her chair and her elbow touched a branch of the Christmas tree and bells rang softly. Ann-Marie turned toward the tree as she heard them and shook another branch, smiling at the sound. It was distant sleigh bells, children going to grandmother's house. As much as the smell of cookies is Christmas, the sound of those bells is the essence of the holiday.

“She told us this kind of wild story, of a young girl just out of high school entering St. Stephen's as a novice. Aunt Mary said how nice she was, what a fine young person she was, and how something seemed to go wrong after the first month or so. I don't remember all the details, but it sounded like the girl—did you say her name was Julia?”

“Yes. Julia Farragut.”

“That Julia had awful problems. Someone in the family was sick, I think.”

“Her mother wasn't well.”

“OK, her mother. And her mother killed herself, didn't she?”

“On Thanksgiving.”

“And then Julia left the convent.”

“That's right.”

“But there was more to it,” Ann-Marie said. “There was someone else, a man—I wish I could remember.”

I didn't want to put words in her mouth. “Julia was counseled here before her mother's death,” I said.

“Yes, that's the priest who's missing now, isn't it? Sister Joseph was telling me about him before you came down.”

“Father McCormick.”

“Aunt Mary thought he was a fine person. She really never said anything bad about anyone she knew.”

“Do you remember anything she said about why she thought Julia was murdered?”

“She said Julia had a great desire to live and she was a very good Catholic. And she said that Julia was a little wisp of a girl—that's how she put it—and anyone could have killed her and made it look like suicide.”

I recalled the snapshot of Julia with Miranda Gallagher. It was true that Julia was slight, but it must be a lot harder to fake a hanging suicide than one with a gun. The story we had been told was that no one was home with Julia except her grandmother. “This man your aunt mentioned, if you think of anything…”

“It wasn't someone she knew. It was someone she talked to once, I think. Anyway, she couldn't have known many men at St. Stephen's.”

“Did she talk about this again? About Julia and her theory, about anything to do with it?”

“She didn't dwell on it. Sometimes she would say, ‘It's this many years since that poor girl died.' That's about all.”

“And the man?”

“I don't know.”

“What I think, Ann-Marie, is that Mary Teresa kept in touch with someone—or he kept in touch with her—after Julia's death. She may have told this person, whoever he is, that Father McCormick was coming to St. Stephen's on Christmas Night.”

“And this man kidnapped the priest?” Her eyes were wide and bright.

“I believe someone who knew Father McCormick was
driving to St. Stephen's was responsible for his disappearance. After the kidnapping, when I started asking questions, he may have arranged to meet Mary Teresa at the convent at night to find out if she was saying things that would incriminate him. It's possible she confronted him with questions he couldn't or didn't want to answer.”

“And he killed her.”

“If that's what happened, I would say she was an exceptionally brave woman.”

“Her mind was going, you know. For the last year, maybe longer. She would ramble. Sometimes she didn't know what year it was.” She sounded very sad.

“But not always,” I said. “I was with her when she became her old self, when her mind cleared and she spoke with authority.”

“It would be nice to think that she died in a battle with evil.”

“I believe that she did.”

“Sister Clare Angela would be proud of her. They were good friends. Did you know her?”

“Very well. I was a nun here when she was the superior.”

“She was a tough old gal, wasn't she? My father used to say she ran a tight ship. It's all different now, isn't it? This Sister Joseph, she's different, she's a different generation. Do you know her well?”

“I think I feel about Sister Joseph the way your aunt felt about Sister Clare Angela.”

“You're friends. When did you leave the convent?”

“A year and a half ago.”

“A lot of nuns leave now, don't they? I hear about it all the time. Even friends of mine who went in a few years ago are out. It isn't like the old days. Do you think you would have left if Sister Clare Angela was still the superior?”

The question caught me by surprise. I had never thought about it, never considered whether what I wanted to do was a function of a particular time, a prevailing attitude, a certain individual occupying a position of authority. I touched my wedding ring, my husband's gift to me on that beautiful August day, and said, “I don't know.” What shocked me was that I really meant it.

—

I took Ann-Marie to Sister Mary Teresa's room in the villa. The police had gone through it yesterday morning after her body was found, and after I had finished my quick, surreptitious search. I had not been there since. The police had left the room very much as I remembered it, but then Sister Mary Teresa did not have drawersful of clothes to rummage through, trinkets, jewelry, and such things that you would find in a secular woman's room.

Ann-Marie took a brief look in the closet, opened a few drawers, and touched the papers on the desk.

“The convent will recycle the clothes,” I said. “Nothing will be wasted. When the police return her medals, I'm sure you'd like to have them. And Sister Joseph has some of the personal things that I'm sure you'll want to keep, her missal and Bible—”

“Yes, I should take those.”

“Let's go to her office.”

Joseph had everything in one place. “Was there anything you needed?” she asked me.

I knew she meant the Bible. “I think there was a little scrap of paper,” I said, realizing too late that I should never have brought Ann-Marie here until I checked through Mary Teresa's things once again.

Joseph handed me the Bible and I leafed through it. The scrap that I wanted was sticking out, the unattributed number starting with 67-. “Here it is.”

And then I did one of the stupidest things I have ever done in my entire life. I pulled it out of the Bible and put it in my purse.

BOOK: The Christmas Night Murder
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