Stained Glass (28 page)

Authors: Ralph McInerny

Tags: #Mystery

BOOK: Stained Glass

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Age is a mysterious thing, or so Amos Cadbury found it to be. Or perhaps the mystery lies in memory and its selective retention of the past. After the trial, the venerable lawyer had flown off to Florida and the condo on Longboat Key that a client had put at his disposal. It had been Amos's practice over the years to discourage clients who wanted to buy rather than rent when they went south in the winter, but his advice was seldom taken. He did not understand this compulsion to multiply the nuisances of ownershipâa home in Fox River, perhaps a condo in the Caribbean, boats both in a Lake Michigan marina and in the Gulf. The complications of taxes should be enough to make renters of us all. Now, though, he was glad that his advice in the matter was seldom followed. He sat on a patio under a pergola, smoking a pensive cigar and thinking of Jane Devere, trying to relax.

The old woman's long-ago affair with Angelo Menotti preyed on his mind. Finally she had put aside indirection and discretion and told Amos of her conviction that her son, James, was the fruit of her affair with Menotti.

“Jane, he is his father's son.”

“What have I been telling you?”

Amos had meant Jane's husband, William, but her confidence soon had him seeing, or thinking he saw, Menotti traits in James. Suddenly the specter arose of the claims that might be made on the Devere fortune by Menotti or his descendants. What a scandalous case it would be if the whole Menotti menagerie felt that they had a plausible claim on the fortune begun by August Devere and subsequently considerably enlarged by James. Such thoughts robbed Amos's stay of the relaxation he had sought, and after five days he flew back home.

His driver met him at O'Hare, and Amos immediately called Father Dowling.

“You're in Florida, Amos?”

“I have just returned. I must see you, Father.”

“Of course.”

“Could I come to the rectory?”

“Now?”

“Yes.”

“I'll have Marie set another place at table.”

“Will there be others?”

“Phil Keegan might stop by later.”

“Pot luck,” as Marie Murkin dismissively described the meal she prepared, consisted of veal, potatoes au gratin, and asparagus. The housekeeper came and went throughout the meal, muttering apologies, blaming Father Dowling for not telling her that Amos Cadbury was coming.

“Marie, I just landed. I telephoned Father Dowling on my way here. I would have come if only for this wonderful meal.”

An equivocal wave of the Murkin handâwas she trying to stop flattery or encourage it? After cherry cobbler, the two men adjourned to the pastor's study.

“Jane Devere,” Amos said when they were settled. “You remember that I told you of the legal puzzles she liked to pose?”

“I remember.”

“They were hints, of course. Now she has made it clear.” Amos paused. “Of course, this is in the deepest confidence.”

At Father Dowling's nod, he went on. The priest did not react as Amos had expected when he told him Jane's conviction that her son, James, had Angelo Menotti for a father. “Has she told you this, Father?”

The priest looked away, and Amos immediately regretted the question. Jane's confidence to him had been more one between old friends than between lawyer and client, but whatever Jane had told Father Dowling came under the most solemn of embargos.

“Let me just say what she has told me.”

Father Dowling nodded, almost with relief.

So at last Amos was able to lay out the potential complicationsâlegal complications, to say nothing of emotional complicationsâthat would follow if Jane was right.

“Surely she doesn't intend to make an announcement, Amos.”

“She thinks she owes the truth to James.”

“Good Lord.”

“Indeed.”

“How can she be sure, Amos? I don't understand these matters, but at the time she had a husband as well as a lover, did she not?”

Amos lifted his eyes.

“It could be decided, of course. Verified or falsified.”

Amos thought, sat back. “Ah.”

“We can put the matter to Phil Keegan when he comes.”

Phil listened, sipping beer. He began to nod before the story was complete.

“I can have the lab do it. A routine test. I can tack it on to the Menotti case. That's still open.”

Amos undertook the task Phil assigned hm with enthusiasm, taking strange pleasure from bringing the necessary samples to the police lab. While he was at it, he decided to be thorough. Jane's DNA would be compared both with James's and with Fulvio's. While he was at it, he added Susan to the list.

“Uncle Amos, he hasn't even proposed.”

“It's just a matter of tying up loose ends, Susan.”

Some days later, Phil Keegan and Father Dowling came to Amos's office, and the venerable lawyer tried to read their expressions to see what lay ahead.

“Adam and Eve, maybe,” Phil said when Amos had put the two men in chairs facing his desk.

“Adam and Eve?”

“There's no later connection, Amos.”

Phil handed the lab reports to Amos, and he paged through them, waiting to feel a sense of relief that did not come.

Father Dowling understood. “I'll talk to Jane, Amos.”

Father Dowling brought holy communion to the Devere home and was led upstairs to Jane's apartment, where the old woman reverently received and then as usual spent some minutes at her prie-dieu while Father Dowling sipped coffee in the next room. When she joined him, she poured herself a cup of coffee, looking thoughtful. “I told Amos Cadbury my story, Father.”

He nodded.

“The question is what I must do now.”

“What does Amos advise?”

“Of course, he sees everything as a lawyer. It is your advice I want, Father Dowling.”

The tests, Phil's mention of Adam and Eve, quoting the lab technician, brought on long thoughts on the vast concatenation of destinies that stretched back over the centuries, over millennia, the uncountable generations of human beings, succeeding one another, parents, children, grandchildren, on and on into ever more distant prefixes. The unity of the human race was a theological as well as a biological truth. In that sense, we are all blood relatives to one degree or another. Of course, Jane Devere had something far more specific in mind. It occurred to Father Dowling that the decision he faced was at least as complicated as hers.

“Do I have the right to withhold the truth, Father?”

That was akin to the question he put to himself. Did he have the right to keep from Jane what all the testing had brought to light? Or not brought to light. Throughout her long life, Jane had lived in the conviction that her affair with Angelo Menotti had wrought a permanent effect on her children and grandchildren. James and James's children, Susan and Hugh, were, she thought, descendants of Angelo Menotti and not of her husband and thus not true Deveres.

“Imagine being told such a thing about yourself, Jane.”

“Doesn't the truth set us free?”

After a silence, Father Dowling leaned toward her. “Jane, this is my advice. Keep your secret. Saying what you think would have most unwelcome consequences, and what would be gained?”

She looked at him, and gradually an expression of relief came over her face, seeming to smooth away the wrinkles. “I think I hoped you would say that.”

“It's best.”

“The secret can go with me to the grave?”

They sat on for a time while Father Dowling considered the secret that would indeed be interred with her. The secret that there was no secret. On the drive back to the rectory, he told himself he had been right not to tell Jane her lifelong suspicion was unfounded. Would she even have believed him? The thought of bringing those lab reports to the old woman seemed grotesque. Let it remain one of the infinity of truths that will come to the light on the last day.

The letter from the chancery was lying on his desk when he returned to the rectory. Marie watched warily from the doorway as he picked it up. He looked at her.

“And the winner is â¦”

After he read it aloud, he let Marie's joyful cry suffice for them both. Off she went then, to spread the good news. Father Dowling lit his pipe.
Not my will, O Lord, but thine be done.
Of course, it is easier when they coincide.

Also by Ralph McInerny

Father Dowling Mystery Series

Ash Wednesday
The Widow's Mate
The Prudence of the Flesh
Blood Ties
Requiem for a Realtor
Last Things
Prodigal Father
Triple Pursuit
Grave Undertakings
The Tears of Things
A Cardinal Offense
Seed of Doubt
Desert Sinner

Judas Priest
Four on the Floor
Abracadaver
The Basket Case
Rest in Pieces
Getting a Way with Murder
The Grass Widow
A Loss of Patients
Thicker Than Water
Second Vespers
Lying Three
The Seventh Station
Her Death of Cold

Bishop as Pawn

Mysteries Set at the University of Notre Dame

The Green Revolution
Irish Alibi
The Letter Killeth
Irish Gilt
Green Thumb
Irish Coffee

Celt and Pepper
Emerald Aisle
Book of Kills
Irish Tenure
Lack of the Irish
On the Rockne

Andrew Broom Mystery Series

Heirs and Parents
Law and Ardor
Mom and Dead

Savings and Loam
Body and Soil
Cause and Effect

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

www.minotaurbooks.com

eISBN 9781429987837

First eBook Edition : March 2012

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

McInerny, Ralph M.

Stained glass / Ralph McInerny.â1st ed.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-0-312-58264-7

1. Dowling, Father (Fictitious character)âFiction. 2. ClergyâFiction. 3. CatholicsâFiction. 4. IllinoisâFiction. I. Title.

PS3563.A31166S73 2009

813'.54âdc22 2009028430

First Edition: October 2009