Murder Makes a Pilgrimage (26 page)

Finally, the archbishop of Santiago de Compostela entered the cathedral with Canon Fernández at his side. Carrying his curved, golden crozier in one gloved hand, the archbishop blessed the crowd with the other as he moved down the main aisle. In his jeweled miter, pectoral cross, and cockleshelled cope ablaze with gems, he looked taller and mightier than he ever could hope to in his plain black suit. With his golden cope waving behind, the archbishop swept on to the baroque sanctuary, where he blended in perfect harmony with the gilded altar.

Meanwhile, two short, balding men in bright crimson cassocks approached the sanctuary. On their shoulders they bore a long, thick pole, and from the pole hung an enormous silver-plated censer, the famed
botafumeiro
.

The hushed crowd watched six more crimson-clad men rush around the sanctuary. One unfastened a thick hemp rope from its hook on a nearby pillar and brought it to the middle aisle. One end of the rope was attached to a complicated-looking
series of pulleys on the ceiling. The other end was quickly lashed to the huge iron loop attached by chains on top of the censer.

A haunting organ melody filled the church. Spellbound, Mary Helen watched the eight red-robed men grasp the rope and pull it taut. They tugged. The censer rose several feet off the ground. The archbishop, flanked on either side by priests holding back his cope, stepped forward. He lifted the lid and ladled incense onto the hot coals. With a metallic rattle, the lid fell back into place. Smoke circled and curled around the enormous thurible. Gingerly the archbishop gave it an initial shove down the transept.

At some silent signal the eight men pulled the rope, and with a jerk
el botafumeiro
rose just above the upturned faces of the crowd. In a rhythm perfected by time, they strained at the thick hemp until the censer, like some giant smoke-throwing pendulum, began to swing across the breadth of the cathedral. At first its arc was shallow, but with each pull the height and momentum grew until it seemed to take on a life of its own.

Higher and higher it rose. Faster and faster it swung, spitting out sparks and throwing clouds of incense. Before Mary Helen’s astonished eyes, the censer soared toward the ceiling, then fell like a missile of silver, cutting across the dim cathedral, perfuming the air as it flew. Each pull propelled it close to the roof. There it hesitated, trembled, then roared down again, whizzing past with sickening speed until it flew out level with the ceiling some ninety feet above.

Mary Helen sucked in her breath. The next pull of the rope would surely send
el botafumeiro
crashing through the roof. Just as that seemed certain to happen, the impetus was imperceptibly checked, and inch by inch, the heavy, hot vessel began its descent toward the floor.

All around her Mary Helen heard her fellow pilgrims releasing their breaths, like a collective sigh of relief. A little
prematurely, she thought, as the censer skimmed past her at what seemed seventy miles an hour. The thing could still do a lot of damage if the coals went sailing or if, God forbid, it hit anyone. She’d feel a lot better when it was safely on the ground.

“How do they stop it?” she whispered to Eileen.

“They grab it, I think.”

“It’s a frickin’ Disneyland,” Bud Bowman remarked irreverently.

Mary Helen covered her nose against the cloying incense. Head raised, she watched the huge
botafumeiro
climb fifty feet into the air. Someone bumped against her, not a gentle, accidental nudge, but a deliberate, hard push.

A hot streak of fear shot through Mary Helen. Her thigh hit the altar rail. She pushed back against the pressure, struggling to keep her balance, not to topple forward.

High above them,
el botafumeiro
trembled in space, hesitated, then plummeted toward the sanctuary. Mary Helen felt a second nudge. Harder, more vicious than the first. She was being pushed over the rail into its path. She tried to twist, to glance behind her. Stop! she wanted to shriek, but fear closed her throat.

The seconds seemed frozen; she was like an animal caught in headlights. She watched the huge censer, spewing sparks and smoke, speed toward her. Closer, closer. Eileen screamed and clutched at her, but Mary Helen felt herself teetering, off-balance, right into its course. Dear Lord, here I come in a blaze of glory, she thought crazily. Her whole body tensed for the collision.

The world stopped for a moment until Ángel Serrano’s voice jerked it back into motion.

“Get it!” he shouted in Spanish. And one small red-clad figure lunged forward in a kind of flying tackle to grab the chains. With the echoing clang of metal, he hurled himself
around the censer, and using his own weight and momentum, he brought the smoking
botafumeiro
to a abrupt stop, inches from where Mary Helen stood.

“Thank God, for the nefarious,” she said, giddy with relief. It was the only thing she did say before she fainted.

“I never faint,” Mary Helen protested, removing a cold washcloth from her forehead. “I never even feel faint.”

“Anyone would have under the circumstances,” Ángel Serrano assured her. “I almost fainted myself.”

Pale-faced, Eileen stood beside Mary Helen’s bed with a glass of water. “Take these.” She handed Mary Helen two white tablets, which she obediently swallowed.

“How did I get here?” Mary Helen wiped drops of water from her upper lip.

“Those dear little red-coated men carried you on a stretcher.” Eileen peered down, her gray eyes swimming with concern.

“Those poor devils are really paying for their ancestors’ sins.” Mary Helen tried to act glib, but an act was all it was. Her insides were as cold and shaky as tomato aspic, and she felt that at any moment she might explode into tears.

“What did I just take?”

“Something to relax you,” Eileen said, and, aware of Mary Helen’s abhorrence of pills of any sort, added, “Probably just the Spanish version of aspirin.”

“Do you have any idea who pushed you?” Ángel’s face was drained of all color except for two bright red circles on his chubby cheeks.

“None whatsoever.” Mary Helen took a deep breath. “Could it have been an accident?” But even as she asked, she began to shiver and to become conscious of the soreness in the small of her back.

“Too many accidents, I’m afraid, Sister.” Ángel’s eyes were hard.

“Who was behind us?” Eileen wondered aloud. “Everybody and nobody,” she answered herself.

“I have questioned them all. Several times.” Ángel sounded frustrated. “Everyone says the same thing. ‘I did not do it, and I did not see who did. I was looking up.’ They all were looking up,” Ángel muttered. “The whole congregation was looking up.”

“It’s a good thing you weren’t.” Mary Helen patted his chubby hand. “Thank you,” she said, feeling tears well up in her eyes.

Embarrassed, Ángel cleared his throat. “Rest today, Sister. I have put Officer Zaldo at your door. No one is to come in without his permission. If, after a rest, you feel like going out for anything, even to dinner in the salon, I implore you to take him with you.”

When the
comisario
left, Mary Helen and Eileen eyed each other. “That was close, old dear, too close.” Eileen’s brogue was thick. “We have to figure out what you know or have that is making someone want to . . . silence you.”

Mary Helen could barely summon up the energy to agree.

“Think, Mary Helen. Think of something, anything we can start on.”

“I’ll try,” Mary Helen said, “but right now my mind is about two blocks beyond exhaustion.”

“I’ll bet it is.” Eileen clucked. “Why don’t you try to get some sleep? I’ll think for a while.”

Mary Helen struggled to keep her eyelids up, but they were too heavy. “Maybe if you flip on the television for a while, we’ll get our minds off everything, and things will be clearer when we get back to them.” She knew the sentence was circuitous, but she was too groggy to straighten it out.

With a click the television came on. Mary Helen lifted her eyelids for a second. Before her, cavorting on the screen, was Daffy Duck. Was he speaking Spanish?

“Is that our Daffy Duck?” she asked, her eyelids slipping shut.

“We’re all a little daffy, ducky!” Eileen’s voice sounded far away.

Only when she actually laughed at Eileen’s horrible pun did Mary Helen realize what the white pills were: a sedative. She was whirling toward a deep darkness. They have given me a sedative.

Head down, Ángel Serrano made his way through the choked streets of Santiago toward the police station. By a hair he beat a cloudburst into the front entrance.

“I do not want to be disturbed,” he barked at anyone within shouting distance, then slammed the door for emphasis.

Ignoring a stack of messages on his desk, he dropped into his swivel chair, pushed it back, propped his feet on the desktop, closed his eyes, and tried to reconstruct the scene in the sanctuary. He wanted it clear in his own mind before he continued to question the Americans. When he spoke to them, none claimed to have known exactly what had happened.

“Maybe the smell made her dizzy,” Cora said sensibly. “I was feeling a little dizzy myself.”

Roger DeAngelo agreed, and Bootsie fluttered her thick false eyelashes to stress the point.

“The poor thing.” Rita was sympathetic. “It scared me to see her slip forward like that. What if—” María José’s face had blanched, and Rita knew enough to stop.

“Who was directly behind Sister?” Ángel had asked bluntly.

“I’m not sure,” Roger said. “I was so busy looking up at that contraption I’m not sure who was directly in front of me. Besides, when that Japanese group squeezed in next to us, we all shifted.”

“Could it have been one of them?” Cora asked hopefully.

Ángel knew that the picture was there somewhere in his brain. He must concentrate, remember where each one was standing. Remember how they shifted. The two nuns were in front, he was sure of that. Their tan Irish knit sweaters stood out in contrast with the bright colors surrounding them.

His niece, he remembered, ended up in front, too. Closest to the main altar. That made sense, since María José had led the group up the aisle and into the sanctuary.

He placed her there in his mind’s eye, right next to Sister Eileen, but she did not look right. Something about the picture was off. Someone else, short, was between them. Heidi. That was who.

He remembered now. Heidi, with hair the color of caramel candy, was a contrast with Ho-Ho’s magenta mop. Encouraged, he reconstructed the front line. María José, Heidi, Sister Eileen, Sister Mary Helen.

A sharp rap at the door broke his concentration.
“Pase!”
he shouted.

“
Perdón
, Comisario.” An officer cracked open the door. “It is the mayor on the line. He has been trying to get you all morning.”

“Tell him I am busy.” Ángel waved the man away. “Busy thinking, if I ever get the chance,” he added to the closed door.

“My niece, Heidi, the two nuns.” Ángel reviewed the front row in his mind. “Next to Sister Mary Helen?” He concentrated,
trying to see who was there, but the person remained a blank.

Now the back row, he thought, those behind. He remembered the round, placid face of Dr. Fong peering over his half glasses at
el botafumeiro
. His face appeared between María José and Heidi. Next to him . . . Ángel squeezed his concentration harder, hoping a face would appear.

A stiff rap came on his door.

“Pase!”
he shouted angrily. The door opened, and the archbishop’s secretary, Monsignor Varela, strode into the office as if by divine right. With him was Canon Fernández. The monsignor peered down his aquiline nose at the soles of Ángel’s shoes.

“Monsignor!” With a slam of his chair Ángel was on his feet. “I wasn’t expecting a visit from either of you. Why didn’t you simply call?”

The monsignor was tall and, in Ángel’s opinion, thin enough to hang on a clothes hanger. This morning his face looked as if he had just found a flea in his hair shirt. By contrast, the canon was a bantam of a man whose bluster kept him perpetually rosy-checked.

“The canon tells me he has been calling all morning,” Monsignor Varela said, “only to be told that you are busy.”

“Indeed, it is true.” Ángel frowned. “I have been trying to reconstruct the whole series of events in my mind, to figure out, you see, who had the motive, the opportunity, the means.”

“Figure all you please”—the monsignor’s tone was superior—“but do it quickly. The archbishop is very distressed with the events that have taken place during the past week in his cathedral. I understand that your niece has been involved. The archbishop is also very concerned and, I daresay, displeased about a young lady from our city being involved in such a crime. We don’t want to displease God’s servant the
archbishop, so I urge you to solve this quickly.” The monsignor didn’t say so, but his tone implied “or else.”

The canon, smirking like a satisfied tattletale, held open the door. With a flourish the monsignor swept out of the office, leaving Ángel mentally telling God’s servant the archbishop what he might do with his distress, concern, displeasure, and, yes, his “or else.”

“God, forgive me,” he whispered, rolling his eyes toward heaven. “It’s nothing personal to You! None of us can help our subordinates.”

The clerics’ visit ruffled Ángel’s powers of concentration. He closed his eyes and rubbed his temples in an attempt to regain the scene. After several tries it seeped back into his mind.

In the front row he saw María José, Heidi, Eileen, Mary Helen, and someone else. Behind them, Neil Fong, someone tall, Bud Bowman’s head over Eileen’s right shoulder, Cora, someone else, and Pepe on the end. That made sense. Pepe would have brought up the rear.

An insistent knocking interrupted him again. This time Ángel walked to the door and opened it himself. He was glad he did. It was the bold young reporter from
La Voca de Galicia
, and he had no intention of letting the man get a foothold in his office.

“I am busy.” Ángel’s voice echoed through the entire floor of the building.

“The people have a right to the news,” the reporter said quietly.