The Dark End of the Street: New Stories of Sex and Crime by Today's Top Authors (4 page)

His use of the title in the abstract rather than a simple pronoun—say,
up to you
—solidified Amanda's fear that Christopher Taite was among those unready to accept, even after all these years, that women could be properly ordained as priests. She wondered, sometimes, whether the traditionalists were traditional enough to endorse
Apostolicae Curae
, Pope Leo XIII's late-nineteenth-century bull proclaiming all Anglican ordinations null and void.

“I see,” she said. Then, as directly as she dared: “The congregation thinks I was forced upon them.”

“You were.” He waved aside her squawked objection. “You have no cause for apology or explanation. The canons are clear. The authority rests with the diocesan bishop.”

She nearly sagged with relief. “Not everyone agrees.”

“Once the bishop has acted, the matter is closed. It makes no difference what others may prefer.”

“It makes a difference to me.”

The hereditary thurifer said nothing. He had them walking again, now along the crumbling stone wall, eight feet high, shielding the cemetery from the side streets. Beyond stood the staid, expensive houses of the black rich, the neighborhood of the city known as the Gold Coast: the heart of the opposition to her appointment.

“Tell me about the murder,” the priest said finally.

“An affair of the heart, I'm afraid.” He uncurled his hands briefly, plucked a leaf from a tree, sniffed it, dropped it. The wind carried it before them along the path. “I find it fascinating,” he said, “that no one has mentioned the story to you. Or perhaps you read an account in the newspapers.”

“No.”

“The victim was a man named Bauer. Joshua Bauer. Killed, I'm afraid, just outside the office presently assigned to you.” Again choosing his words carefully, the way many members of the congregation did, leaving in abeyance whether she was, or was not, their actual rector.

“In the hallway?”

“In the passage between the rector's office and the sacristy.”

“Near the Lady Chapel.”

Christopher Taite nodded. He hooked a thumb over his shoulder. “Joshua is buried back there with the other Bauers, beneath the two dying elms. You can see the grave from your window.”

Amanda shivered at the casualness with which the thurifer spoke of murder and death and burial. She was a thorough materialist. The bishop knew it, and she suspected that the members of Trinity and St. Michael knew it. At her former church, she had preached rarely about the afterlife, or, indeed, about anything requiring an acceptance of the supernatural. She could do war or climate change at the drop of a hat; she would happily deconstruct images of women's sexuality in the Book of Esther; she could demonstrate how the Gospels mandated national health insurance. But the Big E and the Big O were well outside of matters she felt comfortable discussing from the pulpit.

“Who killed him?” she asked.

“Nobody knows. Not for sure.” He slowed. They had reached the far corner of the cemetery, the church building entirely hidden by the thick copse of trees. The wind was harsher here, flattening her hair, and she wondered whether it was some trick of the foliage and the walls, a tunnel effect. The bricks were newer, too, as if they had started repairing this section of wall before running short of funds. “A young man was believed to have committed the crime, but there was never a trial, and there has always been some doubt about whether he really did the deed. Would you care to sit?”

There was a stone bench, and a pretty little fountain. Water spouted from a jug held by a maquette of a cherub. Brightly colored fish glistened as they wiggled and darted.

“I've never been to this part of the cemetery,” she said.

“The rectors often come here for reflection. You might have noticed the quiet.” And she did. Birds chirped. Water gurgled. Breezes fluttered the leaves. That was all: Not even traffic noise from the side streets penetrated the magical shield of trees and walls. “I think you will find this spot conducive to prayer and meditation.”

“Thank you,” Amanda said, and meant it. For some reason she felt close to tears, perhaps because she had at last met a congregant who, for all that he might judge her failings—gender foremost among them—did not seem to regard her as an interloper sent by a left-leaning bishop to subvert the traditions of Trinity and St. Michael.

Christopher Taite seemed to read her mind. “You have to understand the people here,” he said. “We have fought all our lives to change the rest of the world, to open it up for members of the darker nation. We have battled our way to great fortunes, to positions of influence, to places in society. We have no wish to battle within the church as well. We need an island of stability, a place we can come for renewal, a place that is the same for us as it was for our grandparents. Can you understand that?”

“Of course,” Amanda said, although she couldn't, really. Her well-off family had gone from hard right to hard left in two generations. Like most people of strong conviction, she saw no reason other than sheer pigheadedness for anyone not to trace with joy the steps of her own journey.

The thurifer nodded his head. “Well, you'll learn. Give them time. Give yourself time.”

“I will,” she said, quite unpersuaded. “Thank you, Christopher. Or do you prefer Chris?”

“Mr. Taite,” he said. “My family is rather old-fashioned—”

Embarrassment burned. “Yes, I understand. I'm sorry.”

But he continued in the same tone precisely, and it occurred to Amanda that he had corrected her not out of annoyance but as a means of assistance. “Trinity and St. Michael is full of old-fashioned families. I suppose you know that. You'll get used to them. The Hennefields will criticize you behind your back, but they do that to everyone. They're all bark and no bite. The Madisons are probably the worst. They're a power in the church. You'll want to stay on their good side. Chamonix Bing was a terror, but she's gone. The one to watch out for is Mrs. Corning. Have you met her, by any chance? Janet Corning?”

Amanda frowned, trying to remember. She lacked the facility with names and faces that usually marked pastors of large congregations. She knew to the penny the cost of a single F-35 fighter, and how many hungry mouths the money could feed, but people had always defeated her. “I might have. I'm not sure.”

“Well, you will. Mrs. Corning is head of the Lectors Guild. The one you'll complain to if nobody shows up to read the Epistle appointed for the day.” A pause. “Her cousin was the reason for the murder.”

“The one outside my—outside the rector's office.”

“Yes. I suppose you'd like to know the details.”

She hesitated, not sure which answer he wanted. “I heard some of the women talking,” she finally said. “They seemed to think that some incident from the past would drive me away. Did they mean the murder?”

“Probably.”

“Why would it bother me, Mr. Taite? From their tone, I assume it was a long time ago.”

“Thirty years.” Christopher Taite climbed to his feet. “The rain is coming,” he said. “We can continue tomorrow. I will meet you in the Lady Chapel at ten sharp.”

He strode off among the trees.

V

The Lady Chapel was placed, quite properly, to the right of the altar from the perspective of the congregation. Its low gothic arches reminded her of divinity school. There were six wooden pews and a high altar of cut stone and a low altar of very fine wood. When Amanda stepped inside at five minutes to ten, Christopher Taite was already there, clad once more in tie and shirtsleeves, examining a thurible.

“It hasn't been polished in some time,” he said with soft reverence. He ran a fingernail over the gold surface. “The altar guild used to polish both the thurible and the boat, but I suppose they no longer see the need. Another tradition dies.” He put the thurible back on its hook and turned toward her, his face in the shadows. “The thurible should always be gold. And it must always shine. Revelation 5:8. The boat is for the incense, usually carried by a youngster, often a son or brother of the thurifer. The thurifer puts coals in the thurible and lights them, then takes the thurible to the priest, who spoons incense from the bowl onto the coals and blesses the thurible. The rising fumes signify the prayers of the congregation wafting toward heaven.”

“Why are you telling me this, Mr. Taite?”

“Because I believe that you will decide to reinstate the tradition, and you have to know how it is done.”

Again she tried a smile. “I assume I would have the hereditary thurifer at my side, showing me what to do.”

He showed nothing. No amusement, no perplexity, no offense. “Perhaps. One should not anticipate.” He turned back to the shelf, tugged another thurible from its hook, shook his head and clucked. “You must be sure that the thurible used in the service is properly polished.”

“Of course,” she said. “That one is dented. I noticed it yesterday.”

“It should have been disposed of.” Again his fingers ran gently across the surface. “Desacralized, melted down, proceeds given to the poor.”

“I'll see to it,” Amanda said, hoping she sounded decisive. Then: “I went on the Internet last night, Mr. Taite. I didn't find anything about a murder at Trinity and St. Michael. Joshua Bauer seems to have died of an undisclosed illness, back in the late 1970s.”

He nodded, not turning. The airless room seemed to grow darker. “They would say that, of course. That he was ill. The police were never called, you see. The church could hardly endure a scandal. We had several doctors in the congregation. They knew what to do. Whom to contact.”

“You said it was in all the papers.”

“A figure of speech,” he said in that same solemn tone. “I meant only that the facts were widely known, at least among the congregation. Do you ever pray for the dead?”

The sudden change of subject momentarily threw her. Once again the Big E and the Big O reared their scary heads. “I'm not sure what you mean.”

The thurifer nodded, as if to say he had expected as much. From a side table he lifted an aging volume he must have brought along, the
Oxford Movement Centenary Prayer Book
. “The Litany for the Dead,” he announced, then read aloud: “Have mercy, O Lord, upon the souls which have no especial intercessors with thee, nor any hope save that they were created after thine own image; who from age, or poverty, or the unbelief or negligence of their friends, are forgotten and whose day of departure is never remembered.” He glanced at her. “Nobody prays for the dead anymore.”

“We pray for the dead every Sunday.”

His stern eyes rejected this cant. “We pray for the dead we know. The dead we cherish. The dead we miss. We are really praying out of our own pain, not for an easing of the pains of those who have passed on.”

Amanda said nothing. She wondered how an otherwise intelligent man—a member of so accomplished a congregation—could possibly believe in this nonsense. Dead was dead, and that was all. But another part of her, standing in the drafty chapel, surrounded by the chalices and crosses and thuribles and candles, was terrified by the yawning possibility.

Christopher Taite, meanwhile, had laid the book in her hands. “You might have need of this one day,” he said. “Perhaps quite soon.”

She flipped to the title page. “This book was published in 1933.”

“In England,” said the thurifer. “And it is not officially recognized by the Episcopal Church. But, given some of the nonsense that passes for liturgy nowadays, I do not see why that should matter.” He lifted his chin, in the direction of the hallway: the site of the murder. “The Litany goes on at some length, but that is appropriate. The dead, too, have need of your prayers.”

“Let's go out and walk,” she said. Not adding: This place is starting to spook me.

VI

They were in the churchyard again, sitting on the same bench. She had examined the parish register that morning, confirming Christopher Taite's story about his own family. She discovered that no fewer than three of the hereditary thurifers had been named Christopher. She judged the Christopher sitting beside her to be about forty. That meant he could hardly have been much older than ten or twelve at the time of Joshua Bauer's death, or murder, or whatever it was. Amanda did not see how he could have been thurifer, any more than she saw how the congregation could have hidden the murder. She began to have the feeling that somebody was playing a terrible joke on her, a sort of hazing, meant to drive her away. She would not give in. Not to the ladies of the altar guild, not to the Madisons or the Routledges or Christopher Taite, or any of the others who hated her being white, and female, and not the right kind of Episcopalian.

“An affair of the heart,” she prompted.

“Yes.”

When nothing more was forthcoming, she threw out ideas. “Meaning what? A jealous husband? A rejected suitor? A fatal attraction?”

“An angry young man,” he said after a moment. The gray eyes lifted toward the church spire, the only part of the building visible from the secluded bench, then went higher, perhaps seeking out Heaven itself. “Joshua Bauer ran what was at the time perhaps the largest chain of funeral homes in the area. The second largest in the country owned by a member of the darker nation. His family began the business during the Civil War. That's when most of the larger mortuaries began their work. Collecting corpses from the battlefield, preserving them, sending them home to their parents for burial. That's how they all got started, black and white alike.”