The Dark End of the Street: New Stories of Sex and Crime by Today's Top Authors (5 page)

“I see.”

“Mr. Bauer was always a member of the vestry. Senior warden, junior warden, treasurer. Always held an important position. He had this daughter—Theresa, known as Terry—who was, by common consent, the most beautiful young woman in the church.” For the first time, a tinge of emotion colored Taite's tone. A warmth, perhaps, but mixed somehow with awe, even fear. “The Bauers were not particularly religious, you should understand. Mr. Bauer did the vestry because that was how one maintained one's position, both social and commercial. But his commitment to the enterprise was entirely financial. He gave generously, but also collected greedily. I daresay half or more of the congregants in those days buried their relatives through his funeral home.”

“I see.”

“The Bauers had several children, but Terry was their pride and joy. She had the easy charm so many young women just miss. The boys, I fear, chased her—at times literally. Even when she was a little girl, here at the church, they would chase her around the parking lot. When she grew older—well, as I say, the Bauers were not particularly religious. Their children mostly ran wild, but Terry they shielded. They wanted her unsullied by the world. One might have described their attitude toward her as idolatrous. Certainly they loved that child more than they loved their God.”

“I see,” Amanda said again, trying to understand the disapproval in his voice. She would have assumed that a traditionalist such as Christopher Taite would approve of a daughter being overprotected by her family.

“Terry, however, was quite faithful. She never missed a Sunday, even when the rest of her family chose not to attend. She was the first girl to serve as acolyte at Trinity and St. Michael. She even talked about becoming a priest, if you can imagine. In the seventies.”

When the national church was first fighting over the same issue, Amanda marveled. Terry sounded like a battler. The priest realized that she liked her.

“Despite the vigilance of her parents,” Christopher Taite continued, “Terry naturally had her suitors. There was one young man in particular who coveted her. Wally. He, too, was from an important family in the parish. They might have made precisely the sort of marriage for which the older families of the darker nation yearn, a merging of two senior clans. Wally, however, never met the approval of Terry's parents. He was a bit of a ne'er-do-well, what we might call, if you will forgive the allusion, the black sheep of an otherwise successful family. Did poorly in school. Often in trouble. The Bauers barred him from their house. They wanted no contact between Wally and their precious Terry. The congregation chose up sides. It was very nearly open warfare.”

“And that's what led to the murder?”

“You are getting ahead of yourself, Miss Seaver.” It was the first time he had referred to her by any name. Most of the congregants called her “Amanda.” A few were willing to venture “Reverend Seaver,” in Episcopal terms a vulgar neologism. Nobody would attempt “Mother Mandy,” the affectionate name by which she had been known in Massachusetts.

“Remember what I told you about the incense,” the thurifer continued. “Everything is methodical. First the coals, then the incense, then the blessing, then you cense the altar. You return the thurible to the thurifer. He censes the servers and the congregation. You must get the order right, or the entire effect is ruined.”

She apologized, but softly, so as not to break the flow.

“The passion that stirred between Wally and Terry was the coal,” he said. “The hot coals are always the symbol of sin, you see. Sin, then the layering balm of repentance, then prayers. The addition of incense and blessing would mean solemnizing their union in Christian marriage.”

“Which never happened.”

“Correct, Miss Seaver. It never happened. They ran away together, Wally and Terry. Not for marriage. Simply for—oh, in those days we simply called it intimate relations. They ran away, and that was the coals being lighted, but without the blessing. Her parents of course were furious, and Wally's family was not much happier. The Bauers had money. They hired detectives. Finding the kids wasn't that hard. They were just out of high school. They had no skills. The detectives tracked them to Pittsburgh, beat Wally quite badly, and dragged Terry back. When she turned out to be pregnant, her family packed her off to relatives in Atlanta, who arranged a hasty marriage to an unsuitable young man.”

Christopher Taite was off the bench now, crouching near the pond. He had gathered small stones from the path and was plinking them into the water, smoothly, the way a younger man might have.

“Wally must have been angry,” she said gently.

“He was. He came back to town. He tried to see her, and was refused. He tried again and again, and was refused.” Another stone. Plink. Another. “When they sent her South, I suppose the young man snapped. He confronted Mr. Bauer in the church.”

“Outside the rector's office.”

Plink, plink, plink. “I'm afraid their argument grew violent. There was a bit of shoving back and forth—” He glanced up at the clouds. “More rain,” he announced.

She was beside him. “Wally hit him with the thurible. That's why it has that terrible dent.”

“One would think it would have been repaired by now. Or, as I said, desacralized and melted down. Alas.” Plink.

“He was carrying the thurible because he was the thurifer, wasn't he? Or maybe the boat bearer, learning from his father, say, what being the thurifer entailed.” Christopher Taite said nothing. Standing so close, Amanda saw the faint crinkling around his eyes. She supposed she could have been wrong about his age. Maybe late forties. “With all those Christophers in the family, you would all need nicknames—”

The thurifer turned toward her, his face as blank as before, the youthful excitement gone. “I can see why you would think what you're thinking,” he said. “But Wally, I fear, took his own life a couple of days later.”

“No.” The pain almost bent her over. She was unaware until now of how the story had affected her.

He nodded. “A grievous sin. Perhaps they still teach the fundaments in divinity school? You'll have read Augustine on suicide?”

“I might have missed that day,” Amanda began, struggling to lighten the mood, but his frown reminded her once more that levity was unwelcome. “Yes,” she murmured meekly. “I know that suicide is a sin.”

His gray eyes held hers for a long moment. Then he turned away. “The peculiar part is that Wally denied that they ever in fact were intimate. He told anyone who would listen. He had stolen Terry away to protect her, not to defile her. That was his word, Miss Seaver. Defile.”

“Protect her from what?”

“Nobody believed the poor boy. The baby had his crooked eyebrows.” The thurifer touched his own forehead. “The Taite eyebrows. Very distinctive.” He was on his feet. “Same time tomorrow,” he said, and left her.

VII

Amanda dined that night at the home of a younger family in the congregation, Patsy and Lawrence Morrow. Although members of the darker nation, the Morrows lived not along the Gold Coast but in a small, nicely appointed town house in Georgetown. Lawrence was something important at the White House; Patsy was a congressional aide; the children were delightful, and spoiled. Three other couples were at dinner, along with a single man, obviously invited with matchmaking in mind, and just as obviously not interested in Amanda; nor, for that matter, interesting to her.

He left early, pleading another engagement.

Over dessert—a slightly soggy tiramisu—Amanda mentioned that she had met Christopher Taite, who had been filling her in on some of the recent history of the church.

Silence around the table.

“Which history is that, exactly?” asked Patsy, alarm in her eyes.

“He didn't
scare
you, did he?” murmured somebody else.

“Are you sure he said
Christopher
?” demanded a third voice.

Amanda was taken aback by the chorus of dubiety. She had hoped to discuss the murder from thirty years ago, not the bona fides of her informant.

“Is there something I should know about him?” she asked.

“There's an old Trinity and St. Michael's tradition,” said Lawrence Morrow, his tone thoughtful. “A new rector shows up. A few days later, Christopher Taite drops by to frighten him. Pardon me. Her. Nobody takes Mr. Taite seriously.”

“Some people do,” said Patsy, glaring at her husband.

“Three other rectors left,” Amanda objected. “Did he scare them all away?”

“They were interim,” said Lawrence, before anyone could get a word in. Plainly he wanted to put an end to the topic. He was a lawyer, and had the lawyer's precision with sophistry. “They were leaving anyway. Hence the word
interim
. Whereas you”—he was on his feet, signaling an end to the evening—“you, Mother Seaver, we hope will be around TSM for many decades to come.”

The use of the honorific was meant to reassure. But as she said her goodbyes, nobody would meet her eyes.

VIII

Home was an apartment on Sixteenth Street, backing on Rock Creek Park, but Amanda decided not to return there. Not yet. Instead she drove up to the church. Although the building was shuttered and locked, a light burned, as always, in the spire. Exterior floodlights illuminated the facade on the street side.

She let herself in through the garden entrance, shut off the alarm, flipped on the lights, headed for her office. She spent a moment examining the dented thurible, then pulled from the shelf two volumes of the church registry, immense leather-lined folios in which, by hand, deaths and births and other significant events were recorded. She found the year that Joshua Bauer had died, then the month, finally the week.

Sure enough, there was the handwritten entry, in the beautiful script of Granville Dean, in those days the rector. Most of the names of the departed had a cause of death inked alongside, but not Bauer. He had been sixty-one when he passed away. In the margin was a small glyph, also handwritten, a cross, ornately drawn but turned at an angle, like the letter
X
. The symbol stirred a memory from divinity school.

The angled cross was called a saltire, or crux decussata: sometimes known as a Saint Andrew's cross because church tradition held that Andrew, the second Apostle to be called, had been martyred on one. Father Dean had been recording the murder without seeming to, sneaking it past whoever was reading over his shoulder.

A new rector shows up,
Lawrence Morrow had said.
A few days later, Christopher Taite drops by to frighten him
.

She flipped the pages. One week later. Two.

There it was.

An eighteen-year-old dead “by his own hand.” A further notation: “
Not cons. gr.
” Amanda recalled the thurifer's emphasis on the sin. In those days the Episcopal Church must have taken the rules very seriously, or at least this one did.
Not consecrated ground
, Father Dean's brief note meant. The dead teenager could not be buried in the churchyard.

“Christopher Wallace Taite,” the line in the ledger read.

Known, she was sure, as Wally.

Three hereditary thurifers named Christopher, and Wally, a suicide at eighteen, who never succeeded to the post. A ne'er-do-well. The black sheep of the family. Unlikely to have been chosen as thurifer of Trinity and St. Michael, even had he lived.

But the church would not have left the succession to chance. There had to be another candidate: someone in training.

And the congregation of today, when the national church had long resolved the issue, was unalterably opposed to women as priests.

Not weighing our merits, but pardoning our offenses
.

Amanda took a flashlight from her desk and stepped out into the hall, then jumped against the wall because she heard the creak of footsteps. But she had locked the door behind her, so it had to be the building settling.

Right. A hundred-fifty-year-old church built of solid stone, choosing just this moment to settle.

She listened. No more creaking.

Amanda took a moment to slow her breathing, reminding herself that the supernatural did not exist. There was only this life, this planet, this existence. The rest was repressive bunk.

Fortified by her own denials, the priest made her careful way to the end of the hall and opened the heavy wooden door to the churchyard. In the darkness, nothing stirred. She clicked on the flashlight and tried to remember the path. She walked slowly, turning neither to the left nor to the right. The ghosts in the trees were only the night sounds of the material world. The watchful Heavens above were empty space. She recited this mantra, her desperate dying faith, as she reached the Taite family plot.

There were the headstones.

Not weighing our merits …

She played the flashlight beam over the names, one by one. No Christopher Wallace Taite. Of course not. Wally was not buried in consecrated ground.