Once in the musty, overfurnished front room, he turned back to Father Gregory. The little man squinted in the dim, dusty light that filtered in through the kitchen. “Is it possible for me to be included in the details of the case?” the priest inquired breathlessly.
Julian studied the priest’s round face, with its large, dark eyes and white shock of wispy hair that lay twisted round his neat skull by the restless winds outside. At last, he spoke. “If… and this is very important, Father… if I can rely on your discretion. You do understand that we have a murder here?”
“Indeed, Chief J, I do. As to discretion,” the cleric paused with just the slightest of smiles, “you can’t be serious, my friend… I am a priest.”
From the kitchen came the clack and clatter of the gurney as it received its sad burden. Kitty Fischer will never return to her kitchen again, Julian thought, as he glanced over the smaller man’s shoulder. “What we have is an apparently motiveless murder, as Mrs. Fischer was neither robbed nor raped. There was no forced entry — like many folks in town here, they never locked their doors — the locals consider it a point of honor.” The chief paused to roll his eyes, then continued, “As she lived alone with her husband and they kept largely to themselves — the ‘charming’ Mr. Fischer being paralyzed from the waist down — it is hard to imagine how they might have any enemies.” The chief paused to arrange his thoughts, then resumed, “As to evidence, the only obvious thing we have is the murder weapon — a ball bat.”
Father Gregory repeated this last in puzzlement, “Ball bat, Chief J?”
“Yeah, a baseball bat we found in the yard…” It occurred to him that the Indian prelate was unfamiliar with the instrument. “Like a…” He struggled for the appropriate analogy. “…like in cricket?” He raised his eyebrows hopefully, but in vain, then continued, “You know, a bat… a club… a shillelagh.” He laughed.
“A cudgel!” Father Gregory cried delightedly, catching on. “Oh yes, I do understand! From whence did it come?”
The chief stopped smiling and answered, “We don’t know yet. It could have come from here… nearly every house in America has at least one in the closet. The victim’s husband,” Julian winced at his own attempt to distance himself from his newly murdered neighbor, “is too ‘distraught’ to be of much help right now.” He threw a glance down the hall to a closed door.
Father Gregory picked up on the policeman’s emphasis and asked, “You do not think much of this bereaved man?”
“I knew Charlie back in the days before he was a… victim, Father.” Julian hooked a thumb over his shoulder at the bedroom. “If all this had happened twenty years ago when he was still walking around, he would have been my prime suspect.
“In fact, if it had been left up to him, Kitty would have been dead long ago, and it wasn’t for lack of trying on his part. My God, the beatings he gave her… That’s why he’s in there now. He dragged her to the top of the stairs one night by a belt he had looped around her neck, and though Kitty denied it, I think he was going to try and hang her somehow. In any case, fate intervened and he lost his balance and fell down that same flight, breaking his ugly neck on the way down and landing him on his back permanently. In all my years of policing, I’ve never seen a more hateful, jealous man, nor one with less reason to be so. Kitty was a saint.”
Father Gregory remained silent, studying the outraged young officer who had suddenly appeared in place of the steady middle-aged man who governed Camelot’s police department. It faded once more into obscurity even as he watched, then vanished altogether, leaving the drawn and creased face that he was familiar with staring back at him in embarrassed silence with pale, washed-out blue eyes.
“So, certainly there is your motive,” Father Gregory pointed out. “Vengeance is a strong motive… it often crops up in the Scriptures… Old Testament, mostly.”
“Vengeance,” Julian repeated, as he turned to study the little priest more closely. “Wouldn’t that require that the suspect be able to stand on his own two legs, Father? She was struck repeatedly on the top of the head; I seriously doubt she knelt down for Charlie to have a go at cracking her skull,” he finished with some irritation.
“Fingerprints?” Father Gregory queried for no other reason than to return them to comfort.
“Yes,” Julian answered with a shake of his grey head, “plenty of those. But it will be some time before we can determine whose are whose… chances are they all belong to Kitty and Charlie… possibly the killer. Though if we don’t develop any suspects, or his prints are not on file, they won’t do us much good.”
“What if they are on the bludgeon?” Father Gregory persisted.
“Same,” Julian answered.
“What if you find only Mr. Fischer’s fingerprints on the weapon?”
Julian thought longingly for a moment of the days when he smoked cigarettes. “Father, let’s not play cat and mouse. We played this game once before and you know I find it irritating.” He was referring to a case a few months before when the Indian priest had uncovered a murderess within the pages of a discarded journal. “Spill it.”
Father Gregory appeared to think the proposition over carefully before answering. “I believe Mrs. Fischer… Kitty,” he tried on the nickname for size and found it uncomfortable, “has named her killer for us.”
“And when did she do this?” Julian asked quietly.
Father Gregory smiled at this seeming encouragement. “In her dying, and recorded, declaration.”
“I don’t recall that being in her statement,” the chief declared flatly.
“No, no, perhaps not,” the priest began enthusiastically. “But, she did say,” he cocked his round head like a bird with the effort of memory, “‘My prayers have been answered… thanks be to God!’” He brought his hands together, with their improbably long fingers, in an attitude of prayer and shook them at the policeman. “A miracle,” he whispered excitedly: “A miracle!”
“Father, are you telling me that Kitty prayed that Charlie would walk again… and that he has?”
“Yes, yes, this was her most fervent prayer! She has told me many times! The prayers of a pious and devout woman carry great weight! I knew that you, if anyone, would understand this.”
Julian stared back in amazement, unable to speak for several moments. “No,” he said at last. “No, I don’t. You don’t honestly believe that her prayers were answered with murder!”
The joy fled from Father Gregory’s face at the policeman’s logic and he appeared to consider his previous declarations carefully, then answered, “You are only half right, Chief J — the good woman’s prayers were answered, her own words testify to it. As to the husband, I believe this odious man has squandered God’s precious grace in that most pernicious act… revenge. For him, I reserve my greatest pity.”
“Pity,” the policeman repeated while studying the closed door of the bedroom, and thinking that Kitty had been found as if fleeing from someone coming from that direction — she had been running to the kitchen door, not from it. “Revenge for what?” he muttered.
Father Gregory cleared his throat and appeared embarrassed at the question. “Well, as to that, it is awkward, dear man. You see, it was told to me in confession… but as she is now no longer among us, I can say at least this — on the night of his terrible ‘accident,’ he had, or believed he had,” the priest added cagily, “discovered the proof he had been unable to beat from her on previous occasions.”
“Good God,” Julian breathed. “Please don’t tell me she shoved him down those stairs.”
Father Gregory stared blankly back at him. “He did try to harm her,” he added at last.