Authors: Lee Harris

The Christening Day Murder (27 page)

BOOK: The Christening Day Murder

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“Candy was Larkin’s daughter from a casual affair in college in the thirties, and he never helped her mother or acknowledged his daughter.”

“Both of which enraged her.”

“So she threatened to expose his paternity if he didn’t come clean on the payoff and get the town to pull out of it.” The payoff had been the one thing Fred Larkin had never talked about.

“She was a girl who had worked hard for what she had, put herself through school with the help of a mother who nearly worked herself to death to keep them going. She hated greed, especially greed at the expense of other people, taxpayers like herself and her mother.”

“I wonder,” I said, “how she knew about the deal in the first place. She was an outsider.”

“I told her.”

“Yes, of course. And you were the reason her threat against Larkin failed.”

“We were lovers,” Father Hartman said, perhaps for the first time aloud. “And Fred Larkin found out.”

I pulled my hasty sketch of Studsburg out of my bag and unfolded it. Joseph had said I needed it more than she did. For her, it had all been a question of geography. She had placed the medal on the sketch of St. Mary Immaculate, which was a brisk walk from the athletic field.

“She used to park her car at the athletic field during ball games and visit you in the rectory.”

“That’s right. How do you know all this?”

“Everybody saw her car there. It couldn’t have been much of a walk to the church.”

“It wasn’t.”

“Did Candy know about the time capsule?”

“It was her idea. She had a powerful interest in history. She wanted to be remembered.” His voice broke and I looked away.

“I’m told it was Gwen Larkin who killed her,” I said. “I’d guess Fred came to you and confessed everything he knew to keep you from talking. In return, he kept quiet about your relationship with Candy. Even when I saw him the last time, he never said a word. I think a lot of people in Studsburg may have known, or guessed. At first I thought it was Larkin they were all protecting. After a while I decided it was you. They guessed you’d made a clean break with Candy and they wanted you to go in peace.”

“You’re right about everything, Chris. We fell in love in the spring, an accident as these things always are. It was the happiest time of my life, and the only time I broke my vows or was tempted to. When school was over, Candy left. That was supposed to be it. I didn’t even have her new address. Except that she wanted to be there that last morning to put the coins in the opening in the basement. But she never came. When I went down on the fifth, I couldn’t understand why she would have sealed up the hole without putting the coins
in. I thought she was trying to tell me something that I wasn’t smart enough to figure out. I tried to get in touch with her, but I was never able to.”

“And then you found out what happened when Fred Larkin came to you and confessed.”

He was silent.

“It must have been a powerful urge that made you open that grave in the church last fall.”

When he responded, his voice was strained. “I wanted to see for myself. I had agonized for thirty years over her death and her life, over the fact that she hadn’t had a proper burial, the fect that I really caused her death.”

“You didn’t, Father.”

“If we hadn’t had our relationship, she might have been able to carry off her crusade against the Studsburg payoff. But Fred Larkin learned about our affair, and he told her he would make it public if she carried out her threat. She was protecting me by keeping quiet. Before I became part of it, there was a kind of balance of power between Larkin and Eberling. I knew all the rumors—I don’t have to tell you how I knew; I’m sure you can guess—but I wasn’t part of it. With our relationship, I was drawn into the circle. The balance now included me. Candy lost her leverage.”

I opened my bag and took out the two letters I had found in Pennsylvania. “These are yours. I promise they’ve never been opened.”

He pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and held it to his eyes. “Thank you,” he said. “It’s so long ago and I behaved so badly and I loved her so much.”

There was a sudden shout from a cluster of people near the edge of the basin. We looked toward the lake. The tip of the steeple was just disappearing as the water lapped over it. The TV crew was at work with its camera, and nearby I could see a young woman, her hair carefully sprayed in place, her coat a beautiful, photogenic shade of blue, standing with a microphone.

We walked to the edge, keeping out of the way of the crew
and the other onlookers. In a few seconds, I could no longer find the spot in the water where the steeple had been.

I turned to Father Hartman as he crossed himself.

Almost immediately the TV crew started to pack their equipment in the van, and the woman in the blue coat conferred with someone before walking away from the bank of the lake. For them the story was over and they would look ahead to the next one. The other onlookers also lost interest pretty quickly. We were alone, an ex-nun who had solved an unhappy puzzle and an aging priest whose rather handsome features were starting to show the effects of time, and perhaps of much more.

“I’d like to ask you a favor, Father,” I said in the welcome silence. “I wonder if you would hear my confession.”

He said, “I—” and stopped as though I had requested something he was unable to deliver. Then, summoning forty years of practice, he became a priest once more. “I’d be happy to, Chris. Where would you like to go?”

“I think right here would be just fine.” I turned toward the lake and my memory of St. Mary Immaculate and repeated the words I had learned in my youth. “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.”

The killing in the church was a desecration. Only when the desecration became public knowledge, that is, known outside the confessional, did St. Mary Immaculate require resanctification. As far as I know, that has not been done. Perhaps the Catholic Church, in its wisdom, decided to wait
for the next emergence of the town to resanctify the church. For an institution that has lasted as long as this one has, another thirty—or even a hundred—years is only a brief time. And by then all the principals are likely to be gone.

I went over the contents of Candy’s two suitcases one last time, finding only one small item that I had overlooked before. I gave her clothing and the bags to Good Will and turned over all the papers except for one to Deputy Drago. The investigation into the murder of Candida Phillips had stalled, and no one was particularly anxious to keep it going now that the TV cameras weren’t around. What he did with them was his business.

The last piece of paper, I burned in my fireplace. It was a receipt for a .38-caliber revolver bought by Candy Phillips before she came to Studsburg.

Even after leaving the cloistered world of St. Stephen’s Convent for suburban New York State, Christine Bennett still finds time to celebrate the holy days.

Unfortunately, in the secular world the holidays seem to end in murder—and it’s up to this ex-nun to discover who commits these unholy acts.