The Christmas Night Murder Read online

  “Tell me.”

  “It’s Sister Mary Teresa. Harold found her a little while ago. I think she’s been strangled. Angela’s gone to call Father Kramer. Did Sister Mary Elizabeth find you?”

  “No. I woke up when I heard the commotion in the hall. She must have missed me.”

  “Listen to me, Chris. We don’t have time to talk now. I want to stay with Mary Teresa. I will have someone call the police when I think to do it. They will not enter the villa until I have personally walked through it to make certain no one is there. I want you to go to Mary Teresa’s room right now and go through it. Somehow this has to be connected to Hudson’s disappearance.”

  “I’m on my way.”

  “Do you have gloves?”

  “I’m wearing them.”

  “Good. We’re a law-abiding convent and we will cooperate with the police in every way, but they have refused to cooperate with us in the disappearance of Hudson. We have begged them to do something, anything, to find him, and they have done little or nothing. I think it’s up to us to find out whatever we can before they get here and shut us out of their investigation.”

  “Do you think she was killed in the chapel?” I asked. This was very important for the convent, as it would indicate a desecration and the chapel could not be used until it had been resanctified.

  “I don’t think so. The door was closed and the lights were off. It probably happened out here. We don’t have time to talk now. I’ll see you later.”

  She turned back to the group in front of the chapel and I took off for the villa, my mind reconstructing my last talk with Mary Teresa only a few hours before. I had mentioned the name Foster and she had become disturbed, her face screwing up, her hands opening and closing. She had not known Julia had a brother, but the name Foster meant something to her. It was she who had broken off the conversation, looking at her watch and saying she had to go. Where had she gone? Not to join the sisters. She had walked past them. Had she gone to meet someone? Had someone called her earlier in the day and arranged to meet her that evening?

  I pushed open the villa door. Inside, the nuns were gathered, old women in nightgowns and robes, their heads covered with little nightcaps the older nuns wore to bed. In case they died in their sleep, the cap was “God’s holy habit,” which would protect them.

  I dashed up the stairs as they watched me, remembering approximately where Mary Teresa’s room was. Inside, I turned on the light and pulled down the window shade. The bed was made. She had not slept in it tonight or else she had gotten up, dressed, made her bed, and gone out, and that seemed very unlikely. It isn’t easy to get up at four in the morning, even if you’re used to five. An autopsy would tell us the time of death, but I was pretty sure Mary Teresa had agreed to meet someone after she and I had had our conversation last night.

  Her missal and a black handbag were on top of her dresser. The missal had a few pages marked with ribbons but was otherwise empty. I sat on the easy chair and opened the bag, laying the contents on the night table next to me, piece by piece. There was no wallet. Sister Mary Teresa had probably never walked out with more than a dollar on her person, and that could fit easily in a change purse. There was a thick wad of tissues, folded twice, three remembrance cards from funerals she had attended this year, two of them for St. Stephen’s nuns, one for a man named Joseph J. Morgan, and a change purse on a cord anchored to the lining. Something was inside, but when I opened it, all I found was a penny and a marble. I was not surprised. Most of the time life at St. Stephen’s required no money.

  I pulled out two letters and read them quickly. One was from a young niece or grandniece, a child who wrote in carefully shaped printed letters on lightly ruled pencil lines and described school and a baby brother. The other was from an adult named Ann-Marie who was obviously reiterating an invitation to visit and sounded genuinely sincere. The return address was Syracuse. I jotted down the name and address in my own notebook.

  A piece of newsprint turned out to be a clipping from a local newspaper announcing the end of the first semester at St. Stephen’s College and the nuns’ plans for Christmas.

  General Superior Sister Joseph is looking forward to the visit of Father Hudson McCormick who has been, most recently, serving a parish in Wyoming. It will be Father McCormick’s first visit to the area since leaving for the west seven years ago.

  So it wasn’t exactly a secret that he was coming back.

  There were several safety pins of different sizes along the bottom of the bag, a loose black hook without an eye, a small tube of Vaseline, half-used, a pair of glasses in a case, and a very worn address book.

  She must have had the book for decades. I opened it to the A page and saw the name Gladys Arnold with an address and phone number and the notation Died Jan. 3, 1972. I turned to the Fs and went down the page. There were no Farraguts, no Fosters. Then I went back to the As and went through the whole book.

  They must have been largely friends and relatives, many of them living in New York State with zip codes close to the Syracuse one of the letter from Ann-Marie. An awful lot of the people listed had died, and each one had a date of death added. Whoever they were, she had kept up with them till the end.

  I put everything back and left the bag where I had found it on top of the dresser. Then I went through the drawers, feeling like a voyeur, a sad one who got no pleasure out of seeing an old woman’s underclothes, warm cotton underpants, sturdy brassieres, heavy gauge stockings, some of them carefully repaired to stop the inevitable runs.

  The drawers yielded no secrets. There were medications in the top drawer from a pharmacy in town, prescribed by a doctor who was commonly called when a nun fell ill. Sister Mary Teresa took a number of pills every day for a variety of ailments including high blood pressure and arthritis. In a lower drawer a beautifully knit brown Shetland cardigan lay wrapped in tissue paper. The label sewn into the ribbing around the neck read From the Knitting Needles of Ann-Marie Jenkins. Ann-Marie would truly mourn her aunt’s loss.

  But there were no papers, no notes, no phone numbers or names in the dresser, and when I finished, I went to the closet. A nun’s closet is monochromatic. The hanging habits were all the same shade of brown. A bathrobe in a beige washable velour was the only piece of clothing that was distinctly different. I put my hand in each of the pockets but turned up only a used tissue. No other pocket on any of the other garments yielded any more. On the floor were a pair of warm slippers and a second pair of comfortable oxford shoes. There was also a pair of warm boots that she had not needed last night because Harold had done such a good job of cleaning the paths, good enough that her killer would have left no footprints. All the shoes were empty, as I found out when I shook them.

  I closed the closet door and went over to the desk, which was standard in a nun’s room. Inside the large, shallow drawer across the top were the usual contents of desks: pencils, ballpoint pens, a box of inexpensive stationery, three stamps, a ruler from a local hardware store, a couple of buttons, and a small pencil sharpener. The only other drawer, along the right side, contained mostly snapshots of children, each with a date, and some sepia-toned photographs of people who were probably Mary Teresa’s parents and siblings, of whom there were many.

  So there was nothing. I was sure that by now Joseph would have called the police and they would be here momentarily. I stood with my back to the door, looking at the neat bed, the handbag atop the dresser, the clean desktop, the night table with the lamp on top. The night table. I ran back and pulled open the only drawer. Inside was Mary Teresa’s New Testament, some tissues, a paperback mystery with a bookmark at page 227, and another tube of Vaseline. The Bible had several remembrance cards stuck in it like bookmarks. The first one I looked at said, May Jesus have mercy on the soul of Julia Farragut. As I started to look at the card more carefully, there was a knock on the door and Joseph walked in.

  “They’re here, Chris. Have you found anything?”

  “Nothing. I was just look
ing at her Bible. The remembrance card for Julia Farragut is here along with a lot of others.”

  “Give it to me. I can carry it out more easily than you can.”

  “I’m not sure there’s anything in it that we’re interested in.”

  “No, but you’ve just begun to look at it and you’re not sure there isn’t. Round up the nuns downstairs and walk out with them. I’ll go around turning off lights in case anyone downstairs is looking up.”

  “See you later.”

  The nuns downstairs had dressed and I helped them on with their coats and let one lean on my arm as we walked outside and turned toward the mother house. “Sister Joseph will be out in a minute,” I said to the nearest police officer.

  “Thank you, ma’am.”

  I escorted the group slowly to the Mother House.

  14

  It was a terrible morning. I kept the villa nuns in the Mother House so they would not have to see the body and the investigation around it. Father Kramer, who was certain the murder had not taken place in the chapel, thereby desecrating it, insisted that the police allow the community to attend mass there. To avoid seeing either the body or the tape marking the crime scene, we entered the chapel through a rear door.

  I have never seen a group so torn apart, so filled with misery, as those nuns that Sunday morning. This was not a natural death, which would be equally mourned but could be accepted; it was an unnatural, unholy act committed against a holy community, upon a woman who had been kind and decent and given her life to the church.

  There was also fear. St. Stephen’s stood high on a hill on a large campus, separate from the surrounding towns and villages. We had always walked in peace there, believing we were safe. Although we locked building doors at night, we did not fear. Now we would. Now we had joined the other world that knew intruders as part of life.

  Father Kramer did a masterful job that morning, speaking to both the grief and the fears. I watched the faces and could see the attentiveness. The nuns were listening, reaching out for comfort and reassurance.

  Breakfast was a somber and tearful affair. The police waited until it was over to question the residents of the villa and anyone else who might know anything. Eventually, it was my turn. I sat with a detective in a corner of the community room minutes after I had had a chance to wash and change my clothes.

  “I’m Detective Lake,” the policeman said, introducing himself. He was a veteran officer with graying hair, a tall, heavily built man with huge hands that delivered a firm handshake. “I understand you were one of the last people to talk to Sister Mary Teresa last night.”

  “I went over to the villa after I ate. I’m sorry I can’t remember the time, but I was late for dinner and I ate alone. I washed my dishes and walked over there.”

  “What did you talk to her about?”

  “The Julia Farragut suicide.”

  He made a face that indicated I was way off base. “That happened a long time ago in another town. What would she know about it?”

  “She was friends with Julia, kind of a mentor. Julia confided in her. Sister Mary Teresa and Sister Clair Angela, who has passed on, were the only two nuns from St. Stephen’s to attend Julia’s funeral.”

  “May I ask what your interest is at this point in Julia Farragut’s suicide?”

  “I think there’s a connection between the Farraguts and the disappearance of Father Hudson McCormick.”

  He made the face again. “It’s likely that a common criminal killed Sister Mary Teresa last night.”

  “It’s possible.”

  “But you don’t think so.”

  “No.”

  “Did she say anything to connect the two events?”

  “She didn’t say much. I asked her if she knew that Julia had a brother and she said she didn’t know. I mentioned the name Foster and she became agitated. She looked at her watch and said she had to go. That was about it. It wasn’t a very long conversation.”

  “Where did she go?”

  “Out of the community room.”

  “Out of the building?”

  “Not that I saw.”

  “But you think she went to meet someone?”

  “I think it’s possible.”

  “Do you have any idea who this person would be that she might have met?”

  “Frankly, no.”

  “Was Sister Mary Teresa the kind of person who might just have taken a walk at night?”

  “Yes, she was,” I admitted. “Earlier in the day we talked in the Mother House and she wouldn’t let me walk her back to the villa. She said her mind failed her sometimes, but her legs never did.” I smiled, remembering the moment. “I had seen her in the chapel just before that. She’d gone there to pray for Father McCormick.”

  “So last night she might have gone back to the chapel to pray for him again.”

  “Yes, she might. And I should tell you, Detective Lake, when a nun can’t sleep, and it happens, she’s likely to go to the chapel at any time of the night.”

  He handed me his card. Detective Barry Lake. “If you think of anything, I’d appreciate a call. The McCormick case isn’t ours, you know. The car was found in Riverview. But we’re in touch with their police department, and if he turns up, we’ll know it. I think you ought to let us all do our jobs.”

  “I never interfere with the police, Detective Lake.”

  “Thank you for your time.”

  I found a telephone and called Jack. When we got past the news, he said, “OK, I’ll meet you at Walter Farragut’s house. How’s two this afternoon?”

  “Fine.”

  “And Chris, what the detective said to you, that it could be a common criminal who hit on a nun going to chapel, is a strong possibility. I think you ought to watch your rear and stay inside after dark. That goes for everyone.”

  “I heard they’re leaving a couple of cops on the grounds tonight. They’re borrowing them from the state police because the village force is so small. We’ll be safe.”

  “I’ve heard that before. See you at two. I miss you.”

  “Me, too.”

  —

  By the time I got to the chapel, the crime-scene people were finishing up. From the look of the area, the crime scene almost didn’t exist anymore. The snow all around the chapel had been trampled, although I assumed it had been photographed from all angles before the trampling began. Whatever it had looked like when Sister Mary Teresa had died, it looked nothing like that now. Jack had often lamented the fact that crime scenes were destroyed more by the police than by any other means, and it was true enough here. I got some polite hellos from the departing men as they tucked their gear in the station wagon. The body had been removed and thankfully the coroner’s van was gone. I waited till the crime-scene wagon was on its way and then went into the chapel.

  I remembered that yesterday, when I had sat here and seen Sister Mary Teresa suddenly rise from a pew, she had been down front. While it didn’t necessarily follow that she would have sat in exactly the same place another time, I thought it was likely. When I enter a church to sit and think, which I do from time to time, I always take an empty spot near the rear and usually on the left-hand side. My vision is pretty good—I don’t wear glasses—so from the back I can see the whole church, or chapel, quite clearly. But an elderly woman might choose to be close to the sanctuary so that she could see it and feel a part of it.

  I walked down the aisle past the still-magnificent poinsettias and looked inside the row that I guessed was where I had seen her yesterday. Usually, when someone kneels, you can see her back or bent head. Mary Teresa had been totally invisible, meaning she had scrunched down very low, nearly making a ball of herself.

  The row was empty, as were the one in front and the one behind. That didn’t surprise me. The crime-scene unit would have checked out the whole chapel, taking anything they found, fingerprinting the wood. If she had sat here, there might well be prints on the back of the pew in front. She would certainly have needed
the assistance of that pew to raise herself, considering her aches and pains.

  I went back out and saw Joseph coming down the path.

  “I was looking for you,” she said. “Would you like to walk?”

  “Yes.”

  We went downhill, away from the buildings of the convent and the college. In summer, this is the most beautiful place in the world and it’s not bad in winter, either. I always find walking here exhilarating, renewing, and I was sure Joseph felt the same way. She had spent many more years at St. Stephen’s than I had and would doubtlessly remain for the rest of her life. The convent and the college were her sustenance; they kept her nourished both intellectually and spiritually. What had happened here early this morning was surely one of the great tragedies of her life.

  “That’s where the old orphanage stood,” she said, facing a high, flat, treeless area that was well-known to the nuns. “You wouldn’t remember it.”

  “No.”

  “It burned down the first year I was here, an incredible fire. It was all wood, of course, so once the fire got started, it just took off. People from all the towns around saw it and the police phones rang off their hooks. The papers called it a spectacular fire. I always wondered about that word. A spectacular fire. There hadn’t been any orphans in it for several years, of course. They’d been moved to a newer, safer, fireproof building downstate. But it was a beautiful old place with fine floors and the kind of construction you don’t find nowadays. Mary Teresa used to tell me stories of the old days, when the orphanage was full and there were a hundred novices or more. She had a sense of history. She wanted people to know what had happened and when.” She turned away from the long-gone orphanage. “That’s the building where the novices lived, through those trees there. We took that building down before it caught fire. It had a wonderful fireplace, almost like the one in the mother house. You could practically stand up in it. When her memory was still sharp, Mary Teresa wrote her recollections. She’d probably never heard of oral history, but she went around and interviewed the nuns in the villa so that all their recollections would be kept. You probably can’t even picture the grounds with those two buildings.”