Grace and Disgrace (21 page)

Tuohay awoke to hushed voices, quickly discerning them as the familiar laughter of the wind frolicking with the windowsill. Blinking the sleep from his eyes, he was attentive to the crimson light of evening spilling through the open crevices between the curtains of the hotel study. One particular crimson glow caught his attention, and with a start he realized it was a single ember still burning in a half-spent clove cigarette where it rested on the floor, half crushed.

Pulling his watch from his coat, Tuohay checked the time. It had only been an hour since he had left the archbishop. Eldredge was not in the dunes as he had expected, leaving him to hobble back to the hotel as inconspicuously as possible.

After a moment he realized the whispering was not only the wind, but a murmur from beyond the door. Grabbing the cigarette, he had it lit by the time the door creaked open. Eliza stepped through, her curls wet from the weather. Eldredge followed, his countenance soft.

Tuohay regarded them through a bluish haze. “Where did you run off to, John? I checked the dunes and you had disappeared.”

“It didn’t feel right, spying in that manner. I… spotted the archbishop, and that was enough.”

The scent of wet cloves filled the room. “You are a better man than I.”

“Tell us something we don’t know, Jack,” Eliza scoffed.

Eldredge shrugged. “Truth be told, I desperately needed a bite to eat.”

Eliza laughed, the musical sound drifting through the taut air like a warm embrace.

Weariness not yet conquered by the brief respite swept over Tuohay, but he forced a smile. “Ten years was too long, my friends.”

Eliza crossed her arms defiantly, but gentleness filler her eyes. “
You
left
us
, remember?”

Tuohay offered his cigarette to Eliza, who took it without hesitating. He eyed her critically. “Are we truly fine?”

“We are, Jack,” she answered solemnly. “And that’s the end of it, I promise.”

“I leave it to you.”

“Well, there
is
one thing. No more secrets. No matter whether it’s for our protection, for your protection, or whatever foolish reason you try to think of.” She took a drag of the cigarette to mark her words. Coughing, she pulled it away and made a face as she peered at the burning stub in her hand. “This tastes terrible. What, did you find this on the
floor
? It looks like the one I crushed out.”

“No more secrets,” Tuohay pledged. “And therefore, yes I did find that on the floor.”

Eliza gave him a pitied stare. “You are in desperate need of help.”

Eldredge’s voice rose from a stack of books near the corner of the room. “Shall we speak briefly of the financial ledgers belonging to Father Donnelly?” He was already transferring the stack of the leather-bound ledgers onto the desk before him.

“By all means,” said Tuohay.

Opening the top ledger with one hand, Eldredge removed a loose paper from it as he adjusted his spectacles with the other. “As you both recall, Mary Hart gave these ledgers to us during our interview with her and the doctor. They had been given to
her
by Aiden Kearney shortly before his death. And he, in turn, had found them during his investigation. There is something interesting in their details.”

“As was expected,” Tuohay said, taking the clove cigarette back from Eliza.

“The ledgers are for the years 1887 to 1898,” Eldredge began. “They include detailed parish costs such as church office rent and mortgages, travel costs, education expenses, almshouse expenses, furnishings for the rectory, furnishings for the church, construction and updates to the parish and rectory, pastor miscellaneous expenses…well, you get idea.”

“Yeah, we get the idea, Johnny,” Eliza sighed, perching herself on the windowsill. A breeze blew in from behind her, tossing strands of hair across her face.

“Well, the long and short of it is—the numbers are fabricated.”

“How do you know?” Tuohay asked. The cigarette was little more than ash in his fingers, and he flicked it out the window. “Are there unaccounted for expenses? Anomalies?”

“No, everything is accounted for neatly,” replied Eldredge. “Too neatly, in fact. And on pretty much any day of the week the ledgers would easily pass a fiscal audit.”

Eliza leaned forward. “But?”

“
But
I am not an auditor,” said Eldredge. “I am a statistician. I look at things in a different way.” He straightened his ascot with an absent-minded smile. “You see, there is a man I know—an old colleague from my astronomy club days, to be precise—named Simon Newcomb. And he did a fascinating thing with natural numbers.”

Tuohay scratched his forehead. “Natural numbers?”

“Numbers generated through natural circumstances. What Newcomb determined was that not all digits—take one through nine as an example—occur with the same frequency at all times.”

Tuohay scrabbled in his pocket for his lighter. Locating it, he slipped a new cigarette from the silver case and partnered it with the flame. Inhaling with fervor, he slumped against the wall. “Are you trying to tell me that one number occurs more frequently than another? Say, if I were to roll a die, a one would come up more often than a six? Seems unlikely, old boy.” The room was renewed with the scent of wet cloves.

“No, that circumstance is governed by random behavior. But look at this—I brought it as an example.” Eldredge pointed at a sheet of paper with numbers in pencil scratched across the surface. “When I was at my mum’s, I took the Boston Globe for the last seven days and listed every number printed on the front and back pages, fourteen pages in all. Examples of numbers include ‘
six
days ago’, and ‘
two
home runs’, those types of things. My mum keeps weeks of these papers for the fireplace, which was handy.”

Eliza padded over to Tuohay and swiped the cigarette. “Sounds like you need a new hobby, Johnny.”

“Just the opposite,” said Eldredge, pushing his spectacles up. “This is fascinating subject matter. I classified each number by its first numeral, tallied its occurrences, and determined its overall frequency compared to the others. Here, I made copies.” He passed yellowed paper with pencil scratchings across them to Eliza and Tuohay.

“What does this tell us, exactly?”  Tuohay asked.

“This experiment is representative of the actual frequencies, in nature, that these digits occur. My colleague, Mr. Newcomb, discovered the phenomenon years ago when he noticed that the pages of logarithmic tables in a logarithm reference book were more worn than others. The logarithmic tables of smaller digits, such as one and two, were much more worn from use than pages with logarithmic pages for the higher digits, such as eight and nine. He built a fascinating theorem around it, and sent it to several of his colleagues, including me.

“For my part, I tested it over the years on different domains in my spare time,” Eldredge continued, “such as the heights of different mountains, the sizes of various populations in the UK, a list of atomic weights in a chemistry handbook, and, as it so happens, the financial accounts of dozens of government businesses spanning a minimum of five years. And, most recently, the pages of
Boston Globe
to use as an example for you.”

Tuohay frowned thoughtfully. “Truly?”

“Truly. I captured the frequencies from this massive pool of data, as I will show you in a moment.”

Eliza gave Eldredge perplexed look. “Johnny, shouldn’t you publish these findings? It sounds like a pretty big deal.”

Eldredge waved the question away, blushing slightly. “No, no. This is just the noodling of a semi-recluse. I do not think it’s worth pursuing beyond fancy.”

“Are you sure?”

“I do not like attention, as you know. In any case,” Eldredge continued, tugging at his ascot with anxious fingers, “there is financial data in the Plymouth accounting books that do not follow the expected rate of decimal frequency. Instead, the digits appear at a nearly consistent rate. This occurs in the ledgers between 1892 to 1896, whereas data from 1887 to 1891 and 1897 to 1898 match the expected natural patterns.”

“So… the strange patterns in the financial data for the Plymouth parish appear only for a specific period of time,” said Tuohay. “How confident are you in these findings?”

“I must grant, the numerical examination will not hold up in court, for the statistics are, shall we say, before their time. But the analysis is solid. Thus, the span from 1892 to 1896 is indicative of fraudulent values, of someone fixing the accounts. Misappropriation of funds, most certainly. You can trust me on this.” Eldredge removed his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose with his thumb. He passed another set of notes to Tuohay and Eliza.

“There is a significant amount of data analysis that goes into these numbers,” said Eldredge, pointing at a stack of papers rife with mathematical formulas and calculations. “Especially the original data used to create the expected value, such as the various population sizes and atomic weights and so on. If you would like, I would be more than happy to explain further—”

“We trust you, old boy,” said Tuohay, raising his hand. “These dates of fraudulent behavior… they appear to be the dates that Miss Hart was Father Donnelly’s paramour.”

“It fits if he was taking from the church coffers to spend money on her,” added Eliza, “bolstering the truth of her claim that he was infatuated with her.”

“There is one more bit of information in the ledgers,” said Eldredge. “In 1897, a sizable series of expenses appear on the books. The costs are all linked to the relocation of a medieval stained glass window from an abandoned church in Glendalough, Ireland to St. John’s seminary in Brighton. Shipping expenses, restoration of the glass, and installation at St. John’s are noted for a period of several months. It was evidently quite the feat, based on the margin notes.”

“Interesting,” agreed Tuohay. “I wonder how Father Donnelly’s nephew ties into it.”

“Father Abrams?” Eliza mused, exhaling a trail of lavender smoke. “What does he have to do with anything?”

“I am quite sure he was dead by that time,” Tuohay continued, “but Father Donnelly mentioned that Abrams was involved in the study of classical stained glass art. And, more compelling yet, he is the father of the young man.”

“What young man?” Eliza handed the cigarette back. “Use names, will you? I’m trying to keep track here.”