“Then …” Koesler closed his mouth to get the saliva moving again. “Dr. Moses Green was not Jewish?”
Sophie shook her head. “His parents were Catholic, and he was baptized Catholic.”
Koesler thought another few moments. “He certainly seemed to think he was Jewish.”
“He did!” Sophie said. “He did think he was Jewish!”
Koesler tipped his head to one side, and once again his mouth hung loose. “You mean,” he said at length, “no one ever told him this story?”
“No one. It seemed best to try to give him as much stability as possible. Especially since he had spells, that grew more frequent, of that vicious streak he maybe inherited from his real father.”
“How many people were in on that secret?”
“As few as possible. My parents and me, of course. Some of our close relatives. It got to be a solemn pact. When he married the first time, it was to a Jewish girl. We all felt the marriage wouldn’t last. She didn’t have a clue as to how to handle Moe. And, just as we expected, it broke up before long.
“When he married Margie, it was like history coming full circle. She was Catholic-just like his birth parents. Our family disowned him, for all practical purposes. I couldn’t. I couldn’t do it. All his life I tried to protect him-as nasty as he could be.
“Anyway, this girl-Margie-looked like she could handle him. As time went by, I gave it a real good chance of lasting. So, eventually, I told her.”
“You told Margie about Moses! She knew he wasn’t Jewish! And still he didn’t know?”
Sophie sat further back in the chair and nodded more vigorously.
“This verges on the incredible.”
“Believe me,” Sophie said with utmost seriousness, “if I had known Margie as I do now, I would never have let her in on the secret. Oh, no!”
“What do you-”
But Koesler’s question was interrupted by the announcement that the memorial service was about to begin.
There was a shuffling of chairs, and Sophie rose to join the others. Her parting words to Koesler were, “Be careful.”
The memorial ceremony largely escaped Koesler’s awareness. Ordinarily he liked to compare liturgies of Catholic and non-Catholic denominations. Often he was able to pick up useful insights.
But this afternoon, his mind was numbed by Sophie’s revelations. All he could think of was Moses and Margie and all that had happened to them and their relationship.
Then, as if by magic-a magic that Koesler had experienced occasionally in the past, all the pieces seemed to fall into place.
He knew.
Chapter Thirty
The memorial service concluded. It had been conducted by a clergyman of some Protestant denomination. Koesler could not identify the denomination, nor could he have recounted what the service had been about.
There were only thirty-some mourners. Nowhere near the crowd that had gathered in St. Joseph’s Church for the first of these services. Nor, aside of the widow, were the principals here. Not David or Judith Green, or Bill Gray, or Jake Cameron. Claire McNern and Stan Lacki were dead.
Besides Sophie and Margie, Koesler knew no one else. He guessed that many of those attending were Moses Green’s medical colleagues and their spouses.
Koesler hung back as the guests began to leave the funeral home after a parting word with the widow.
As Sophie left, she gave Koesler a supportive wink.
At the end, Koesler and Margie were alone. There was no need to repair to the alcove for privacy. They had all the seclusion they needed here in the viewing room.
Margie seated herself in an upholstered chair at the front of the room. She gestured to a nearby chair and Koesler took it.
“Did you have a good visit with Sophie?”
“It was very revealing,” he said. “Do you know what she told me?”
“If I had three guesses, I think I would get it on the first try.” She looked completely washed out. It was understandable that she be exhausted.
“I do want to talk with you,” he said. “But if you’d rather not right now, I understand.”
She took a lace-fringed handkerchief from her bag and touched it to her forehead. If there was perspiration there, the makeup absorbed it. “To be perfectly frank, Father,” she said softly, “I would just as soon not go over this with you ever. But … I do owe you. You played a necessary part in this. You wouldn’t let me give you money. If conversation is what you want, you shall have it. But, before we begin … I believe there is some coffee in the lobby. Would you get me a cup?”
“Of course. You take yours black?”
She nodded.
He returned with two cups of coffee.
“Hot,” she said after tasting it.
“Good,” he said after tasting his. “But not up to your quality.”
She smiled faintly. “Let’s get this over with.”
Koesler wrapped both hands around the mug as if to warm them. His hands didn’t need to be warmed. “Sophie said she told you about Moe’s real parents sometime after your marriage because by that time she had decided your relationship would last. I believe her. The proof that you didn’t know before that is obvious to me.”
She looked at him without expression.
After a moment he continued. “I remember Jake Cameron’s telling me you insisted that Moe get an annulment before you would marry him. If you had known then that, far from being Jewish, he was a baptized Catholic, it would have been so much easier getting that annulment. He married a Jewish woman. Surely it wasn’t witnessed by a priest.”
“Moe didn’t know what a priest looked like before he went out with me.”
“But, as a baptized Catholic, he would have had to have his marriage witnessed by a priest for validity. That would have been so easy. Actually, by far, the easiest and quickest reason for granting an annulment in Catholic marriage law. What reason did you use to attack the validity of the marriage?”
“That he denied her the right to have children. There was a good bit of perjury in that case. It didn’t seem to bother either Moe or his first wife.”
“That’s a tough case to prove. If you’d known Moe’s Catholic connection, the annulment would have been granted with a minimum of time and bother.”
Margie sipped the coffee. “Sophie told me along about the time we were expecting David. By then she was pretty sure we were going to make it.”
“You never told Moses.”
“I held it in reserve. With Moe you never knew when you were going to need what weapon. No, I didn’t know about Moe’s antecedents before I married him. That came later. What difference does it make?”
Koesler looked around the room. No one was present or even lurking about. He and the widow would be left in peace. The staff undoubtedly assumed the clergyman was comforting the widow.
“It would have been out of character-at least the impression I’ve been building about your character-for you to have known Moses’s secret and not made use of it. On the other hand, it is entirely in character for you to wait some twenty years before using the secret-and then in a negative way.”
“What are you getting at?”
“Shall I start at the beginning?”
Margie glanced at her watch. “Look, I said I owed you. And I agreed to this chat. But can you spare me the details?”
“I think so. A week ago Monday, I met you for the first time that afternoon when you asked me to wake your husband who had died just hours earlier. Your reason for wanting the Catholic connection seemed logical enough. The immediate family and most of those who might be mourners were Catholic, you said. But still I had to check it out in Church law. You were perfectly content to let me do all the checking I needed. For a person so apprehensive about a requested favor, you seemed pretty confident of what I might find in the current Church law. Also, I found it interesting that you were aware that Cardinal Boyle was winging his way home from Rome. That was not exactly front page news.