Authors: Thomas Gifford
“I say,” he muttered, trying to cope with the flood of new information.
“My sister somehow found out about the
assassini
and somebody didn’t like the risk in that, so she had to die before she could get the word out … that’s why Horstmann tried to kill me—”
“I don’t quite follow you, old bean.”
“And the beauty part is … Horstmann takes his orders from somebody in Rome.”
“And he tried to kill you? You’ve lost me—”
I went on explaining myself to him and drinking his scotch and most of what I said turned out in the end to be quite wrong. But it sounded good that night and I was partly right, too.
Before I left him, Clive Paternoster fetched his old atlas of the British Isles down from the bookcase. There, with a dirty, chipped fingernail, he pointed out the monastery of St. Sixtus.
F
ather Dunn got a personal call from Drew Summerhays the next morning, the day of their two o’clock appointment. “Am I right,” Summerhays said in his thin, reedy voice, “in suspecting that you have personal—or at least not strictly professional—matters on your mind?”
Father Dunn chuckled, standing by the windows, trying to see the ducks in Central Park without the aid of his binoculars. “Let’s say I don’t expect a bill at the hourly rate.”
“Well then, let’s say it’s personal and you might indulge a very elderly party and drop by my little house—would that be possible, Father?”
“My pleasure.”
“Good. Just come down Fifth all the way to Washington Square. I’m in the little mews off Fifth.” He mentioned the single-digit number. “Till two o’clock, then.”
Dunn got out of the cab and crossed Fifth to the cobblestone mews that was blocked to automobiles by posts set in cement. Bright cold sunshine threw the scene into sharp relief. The little house was pristine yellow and white and olive and looked as if it had been freshly painted the day before. The yellow flower-boxes were now planted with miniature evergreens that poked up out of the black potting soil like the tops of huge trees. He tapped the doorknocker which was a reproduction in brass of one of the gargoyles of Notre Dame. It seemed to be smiling, a gargoyle of welcome.
Summerhays’s man, Edgecombe, answered the door and ushered Dunn into a skylit sitting room, cheery with yellow and white slipcovered couches and chairs. Bookcases, a small formal fireplace with a neatly stacked rack of logs, bowls of flowers freshly cut, and through the French doors at the far end of the room a tiny, carefully maintained garden prepared for winter, still in the sunshine. A recording of one of Erik Satie’s
Gymnopédies
was being dispensed through hidden speakers, each note dropping like a precious stone into a reflecting pool of perfect stillness. Dunn wondered how anyone got such a complete, perfect handle on things; maybe it was this environment that had helped keep Summerhays alive such a long time. It seemed to Dunn that dying, leaving such a world behind, would give death an extra sting.
He was looking out at the garden when he heard the thin, precise, clipped voice behind him. “Father Dunn, how very nice. You found your way.”
Summerhays stood ramrod straight and trim, sleekly barbered and smelling of a hint of bay rum, and turned out in a gray herringbone suit, starched white shirt, red and olive club tie, shell cordovan shoes. It was so absolutely perfect that Dunn smiled, jotting down a mental note. This would find a spot in his next book.
Summerhays sat in one of the slipcovered chairs and Dunn, who felt uncharacteristically self-conscious, perched on the end of the couch. On the white brick wall behind Summerhays was a large painting by Jasper Johns. American flags, reminding you, if you thought about it, that this was the home of a patriot.
Edgecombe brought a silver coffee service, left it on a low table, and shimmered away.
Drew Summerhays said, “Father, I am very pleased to see you, but I admit to extreme curiosity. My assumption is that what may connect us at the moment is the Driskill family. Would I be far wrong there, Father?”
“Direct hit. Look, I don’t want to dance around the edges of this. Shall I plunge right in without even a passing comment on Jasper Johns?”
Summerhays’s eyes twinkled. “Mr. Johns will never know.”
“All right, then. Am I right about your long friendship with Hugh and Mary Driskill? You go back a long way?”
“About as far as there is,” Summerhays said.
“This isn’t easy.”
“You’re a priest. You are experienced in discussing delicate matters. So am I. Between us we’ve been talking about the hard things for a century. Let’s just do it, Father.”
“I have recently heard a remarkable story,” Dunn began. “It is the sort of thing that could be true but needs verification. It’s a farfetched story in terms of the ups and downs of everyday life—”
“In our businesses there are no farfetched stories.” Summerhays smiled frostily.
“Well, I’m not altogether sure of that anymore. This one’s about a priest who’s been dead fifty years, a woman who’s been dead thirty years, and one of your closest friends.…”
Summerhays smiled with a hint of resignation. “I’m not altogether surprised that this should have come up. But it has been a long time.” He leaned forward and carefully poured two cups of coffee. “Cream?”
“I’ll have mine straight today.” Dunn burned his tongue on the strong black brew. “It’s funny … that’s what she said. She’d been waiting for someone to come to her about this for half a century.”
“Who could this be?”
“An old nun, a friend of the Driskill family. Taught Ben and Val. She was close to Mary Driskill. Sister Mary Angelina …”
“Ah, yes. Of course. I’ve met her. Strikingly attractive woman.”
“Tell me—I’ve wondered about this, what did Mary Driskill look like?”
“Mary. Lovely woman, tall, stately, a woman of great natural dignity. Light brown hair, fair complexion, a sense of humor that could sneak up on you. She didn’t make friends easily. That was Mary. She had only one
real weakness, that old debil rum … she was so proper, so very well-bred, so restrained, some might even have said Mary was a little on the remote side.” He sipped coffee, held the Spode saucer with his other hand, then placed both cup and saucer on the broad arm of his chair. “In many ways Hugh and Mary were a good match. Not exactly overflowing with emotion.”
“But they were in love?” Dunn asked.
“Well, love is not always essential in marriages between such people. Theirs was more a friendly alliance, a great fortune—Driskill’s—absorbing a somewhat smaller one. I’d say it was a sound marriage—”
“Like a takeover or a merger?”
“Any way you want to say it, Father. You’re the wordsmith. But where is this line taking us? Sister Mary Angelina was expecting someone to come to her about this thing—what was it?”
“The death of Father Vincent Governeau.”
“Ah. That.”
“Sister Mary Angelina was very close to Mary Driskill, a confidante. Something like a female confessor. Someone she could talk to intimately.”
“Many women these days prefer the services of a female gynecologist, I’m told. I suppose the principle is much the same.”
“Mary Driskill came to Sister Mary Angelina several years after the death of Father Governeau who was, you recall, found hanging from a tree in the orchard out by the skating pond.”
“Indeed, I remember well. I believe, as Hugh’s attorney and adviser, I was the first person he called.” He offered a wintry smile. “A kind of unindicted co-conspirator.”
“Did anyone ever offer any explanation of why Father Governeau killed himself?”
“The same weary old reasons,” Summerhays said. “Depression, crisis of faith, alcoholism, all the reasons why priests occasionally slip off the edge.”
“You bought the suicide story, then?”
“What are you saying, Father Dunn?”
“You were satisfied with the suicide conclusion.”
“Well, he had apparently hanged himself from a tree—”
“Why do I have the feeling that you know perfectly well that Father Governeau was murdered?”
“I can’t imagine, Father. Was it something I said?”
“No. It’s just that you’re too much an inside man not to know. Father Governeau was murdered and strung up afterward … and because Hugh Driskill was and is Hugh Driskill, the truth never came out. I’ve spoken to the cop who investigated the case. There’s no doubt that it was murder. When Sister Valentine came home, the day she was killed, she called the present chief of police just full of questions about the Governeau matter. Think of that, Mr. Summerhays—she’s been doing research in Europe for months, her mind is full of a thousand other things, she’s running for home, she’s just hours from her own death … and she calls the law about Father Governeau! Amazing, isn’t it? Why? I’ll tell you why—I’ll bet you a quarter that Sister Valentine didn’t believe he’d killed himself either. Now, you’re just too much in the know to still be chewing on the old suicide story.…”
“For the moment, Father,” Summerhays said, smiling thinly, still interested, “let’s say you’re right about Father Governeau’s death. I have the feeling we’ll never get off the dime, otherwise, so far as this conversation goes. Which should be bringing us back to the vicinity of Sister Mary Angelina.”
“Ten years after Father Governeau’s death, after the war, when she had two children and a husband who was on the cover of
Time
and was the inspiration for a movie—when her life should have been at its absolute high point, Mary Driskill was drinking herself to sleep every night, she was in all probability undergoing a long-drawn-out nervous breakdown. Is that the way you remember it?”
Summerhays inclined his head slightly. “Hugh was very worried about her. Mary was so fragile. It was hard on the children—a succession of nannies, poor Mary would babble on to the children, frighten them … she
was very unstable, then, and of course not long after …” He gave a nearly imperceptible shrug of his shoulders. “She died.”
“I’d bet that really
was
a suicide,” Dunn said.
“No, you’d lose. She was intoxicated, she fell, it was poor young Ben who found her. He was fourteen or fifteen, I believe. It was an accident. They couldn’t refuse to bury her in consecrated ground.”
“ ‘They’ being the Church?”
“Who else?”
“All right, back to Mary Driskill. When she was going through this breakdown, this severe depression, she felt unable to turn to the Church. At least not officially. She couldn’t simply make her confession to a priest, not with what she had on her mind. But there was her friend whom she knew she could trust with anything, a woman
and
the Church—Sister Mary Angelina. She made an arrangement with Sister Mary Angelina, they met at the house in Princeton, the kids were in bed, Hugh was out, and Mary Driskill told the nun about what happened to Father Governeau.”
“And now,” Summerhays said, “Sister has told you.”
“That’s right. And I want to know if what she told me could possibly be true. You’re the only person I know who might be able to verify the story. Will you hear me out?”
“Try and leave without telling me.” Summerhays seemed disconnected from his smile, his eyes distant and clear and icy.
“Mary Driskill said that she had met Father Governeau back before the war when Hugh was still in Rome working for the Church. Governeau came out to the house to say mass at the chapel a few times. He was a decent, serious, honorable man, a man of God. Mary trusted him. But he fell in love with this pretty young woman who was so alone … it’s 1936, ’37, whenever, I’m not great on dates—”
“It makes no difference, Father. Go on.”
“In short, they became lovers. Obviously they were
both consumed by guilt. But they were also overcome by sexual passion. It was a desperate affair, midnight visits to the Princeton house, all pure John O’Hara, two devout Catholics tearing themselves apart. And then it was time for Hugh Driskill to come back from Rome—what was going to happen with Mary and Father Governeau? They decided it was time for their relationship to end, it was the only thing to do. Somehow they would remake their lives … it wouldn’t be easy, but it was the only way. Well, it wasn’t easy … it was impossible. For Father Governeau anyway. He called her, she wouldn’t talk to him. He wrote her notes, she wouldn’t answer them. That pushed him a little too far.
“He came to the house one night when Hugh was out somewhere—Hugh was always out somewhere—and Mary tried to make him leave, she told him it was over, they talked back and forth through the evening, and finally Father Governeau had had enough. He threw Mary Driskill down on the floor, tore her dress off, and raped her … it went on for a long time, too long … it was a snowy, windy night, Hugh’s meeting ended earlier than it was supposed to so people could get home—well, Hugh got home all right. He walked in on his wife being raped by a man he knew as a priest.… Hugh saw red. He grabbed the closest thing, a silver bear from Asprey in London, and he cracked Father Governeau’s head open with it … killed him. Together, Hugh and Mary came up with the suicide thing, Hugh hung him in the orchard … and the cover-up ensued … and the crazy thing about it, the thing that drove Mary Driskill almost all the way to crazy, wasn’t the fact that her husband had quite unnecessarily killed Father Governeau, no, no, what bothered her was that Governeau had been buried as a suicide, outside the Church … she couldn’t bear it, so she told Sister Mary Angelina, who waited all these years.” Dunn finished his coffee. It was cold. “Now, Mr. Summerhays, all I want to know is, is that the way it happened?”
Summerhays stared at him for quite some time. Then at last he sighed and shifted slightly in the chair.
“No,” he said softly, “that wasn’t the way it happened. No, she’s got it all wrong. Let me have Edgecombe bring us some fresh coffee and then I might as well tell you what really happened.…”
Another night spent in the small, anonymous room with its narrow bed, the single bookcase, the two old brass lamps, one with a dead bulb that had burned out two months earlier. Another night alone in the room with its smell of priest and scotch. The tiny refrigerator hummed loudly in the kitchen nook. Thick clouds of cigarette smoke hung in the damp air. The window was open. A steady rain beat the paving in the narrow street and rushed down toward the Tiber, gurgling in the gutters. The regular whore stood on the corner in a doorway, peering listlessly into what was going to be a slow night.