Chapter 18

(Normie)

I phoned Daddy and caught him just before he left to play hooky from work. I had to tell him about the great day we had at school.

“Hi, Daddy!”

“Hi, Normie. How’s my girl?”

“Good! It was so cool today in history class! We had a combined class with the big kids. All the grades were there. And guess who taught the class?”

“Oh, let me see. You?”

“No!”

“Mum?”

“No!”

“I can’t guess, then. Who?”

“Gordo!”

“Gordo . . . oh, right. Richard’s uncle.”

“Yeah!”

“How was it?”

“Great. We learned all this new stuff. Did you ever hear of the CIA?”

“Yep.”

“The KGB?”

“Yep.”

“Well, he taught us about them and about all these governments that got overthrown, and about death squads that these governments allowed to operate! It was spooky. And the Americans really do have a plan to take over our country. It was made up after the First World War and it was called War Plan Red. And guess what? The first city to be captured was Halifax! And they said they would drop bombs on us if we didn’t give in!

“The kids were staring at Gordo they were so amazed, but he had all these papers to prove what he was saying. Father Burke sat in on the class and thanked Gordo, and invited him back! And another day, Monsignor O’Flaherty and Father Burke are going to teach us all about Irish history. And, um, he said something about you.”

“Who did?”

“Father Burke. He said you’re half Irish and you were never taught the history of your own people, and he expects to see you in the front row with a pen and a notebook when they give the Irish history lesson!”

“Well, I can’t very well disobey my priest, can I? So you let me know when it is, and I’ll be there.”

“He doesn’t think you’re stupid, though, Daddy. He knows you know all kinds of other history, but he said your dad, my granddad, never told you enough about the old country. It’s not your fault.”

“Thank you, sweetheart. So, tell me, what did Gordo have on when he taught the class today?”

“He wore his usual clothes, you know, raggedy jeans and a T-shirt. The kids gawked at him when he came in. They didn’t think he was the guy who was going to teach the lesson; they thought he got in the school by mistake.”

“What did his T-shirt say?”

“It was funny. It showed this old president of the United States asleep at his desk, with a red phone ringing beside him, and the words ‘Bedtime for Bonzo!’”

“Love it. So, what else is new, angel?”

I talked with Daddy for a few more minutes, and he told me he’d see me soon and we said goodbye.

(Monty)

On the drive home from work, I pictured Gordo as I had seen him the night of the Robertsons’ choir party, and I imagined that he was well able to keep the attention of his students in class. A good storyteller. He had recounted a story about Beau Delaney. Beau was his lawyer in a lawsuit over something, an oil leak, and I suspected there was the occasional drug charge as well. What had he said about Beau? Beau had failed to show for a court hearing, and Gordo ended up in jail. Represented himself. Contempt of court, that was it, for making an insulting remark about the judge. Beau hadn’t failed to show up, I remembered then, but was double-booked that day and had to go out of town for a psychiatric conference. That made sense; the question of mental illness arose frequently in the world of criminal law.

This brought Corbett Reeves to mind again. I saw Corbett as a sword of Damocles hanging over Delaney’s future, specifically his future in the courtroom if we were forced to go through a new trial. Corbett with his World War Two and Nazi fixation, his grandiose ideas of his place in the world, his attempts to intervene in the murder trial. Kyle described him as twisted, a psycho. Did Corbett have some kind of mental illness? Personality disorder? More than likely, by the sound of things. I remembered another detail from Gordo’s anecdote then: the conference was in Toronto, put on by Dr. Brayer. Quinton Brayer, an expert in psychopaths! Were we getting into deep, murky waters here? I wondered about Corbett’s background. Even Mrs. Vickery, his great-aunt, didn’t seem to know where he had been born or where he had spent his early years. He hadn’t started out in Nova Scotia, if I remembered my conversation with her. Community Services had tracked her down. Up until then, Mrs. Vickery hadn’t even known the child existed. Did this mean he had no other family? Where had he been before the Vickerys and the Delaneys? My mind lurched then to Normie’s talk about an asylum. No, surely he was too young to have been confined to an asylum. Was the word even used anymore?

I had to rein in my imagination. There was no point trying to imagine where Corbett had been, apart from the Vickery and Delaney homes. But I did wonder whether his presence might have been a factor in Delaney’s decision to sign up for the conference in Toronto. I knew Corbett had been with the Delaneys several years ago and then again for part of last year. Springtime through fall. When was the conference? Gordo would remember when it was, given that he wound up in jail during Beau’s absence.

When I got to the house, I looked up the Robertsons in the phone book and dialled their number. No answer. I could do some research and find out when Gordo’s costs hearing took place, but the direct approach would be quicker. I called directory assistance and got the number for the psychiatrist, Quinton Brayer. I would simply ask when the conference had taken place. To save time explaining who I was and why I was asking, I’d use Beau’s name. I made the call, and a woman answered.

“Dr. Brayer’s office. Marsha speaking.”

“Good afternoon, Marsha. This is Beau Delaney. You may recall the time I was up to see Dr. Brayer last year. I’m just wondering if you could give me the dates. I’ve forgotten and I’d like to . . .”

“Certainly, Mr. Delaney. How are you?”

“Fine, thank you.”

“Just hold on for a second. I’ll grab those records.”

Records? She was gone for a minute or so, then returned. “Sorry to keep you waiting, Mr. Delaney.”

“That’s all right.”

“Let me see. Wednesday, March 8, and then it was Fridays, March 15 and 22, April 5, 12, and 26. Is there anything else I can help you with today?”

“No, no thanks, Marsha. That’s all I needed.”

“Well, I hope you and your family are well, Mr. Delaney. Call us again any time. Bye-bye!”

What had I done? It wasn’t a psychiatric conference. Somebody had been seeing Brayer as a patient. Delaney? A member of his family? Corbett Reeves? I had impersonated Beau and — without intending to — I had been given confidential information that was none of my business.

I thought again of the asylum in Normie’s vision. Where or what was that? I picked up the phone again, and called Debbie Schwartz. She was a clinical psychologist who helped out with clients from time to time. Her receptionist told me she was busy with a patient, but I heard from her a while later.

We exchanged a bit of small talk, then I got down to it. “I won’t trouble you with the convoluted reasoning behind my question, Debbie, but here it is: do you know where there is a psychiatric institution that has the word ‘asylum’ in its name?”

“Not that I can think of. The Nova Scotia Hospital used to be called an asylum, but not in recent times.”

“This place would have the word ‘asylum’ carved into the facade, according to my information. And the name ‘Vincent’ somewhere as well.”

“Vincent?”

“Yeah. It’s a long story.”

“Okay. Well, I can’t think of a place around here, Monty. Though I can’t speak for the other provinces. Ontario or wherever. There’s an institution in New Brunswick. Moncton? No, it’s in Saint John. I’ve never had occasion to visit, so I don’t know what it’s called. Or what the building looks like. I could make some inquiries for you.”

“No, don’t do that. Thanks anyway, Deb. I know somebody from Saint John and if he can’t give me any information, maybe I’ll call you again.”

“Sure.”

“Appreciate your help. See you.”

“Bye, Monty.”

My expert on Saint John, New Brunswick, was Monsignor Michael O’Flaherty. He had grown up there. I got into the car and headed downtown to St. Bernadette’s.

Michael was showing a group of Japanese tourists around the church when I arrived. I watched with amusement as they took turns opening the doors of the confession box, sitting in the penitents’ seat, and posing for photographs. I could see Michael trying to maintain his usual good cheer in the face of such cavalier behaviour on sacred ground. When he had shepherded them onto their bus and waved goodbye, I walked over to him.

“Not a word out of you, young Collins. I haven’t the humour for it today! I had to shoo them off the altar, as politely as I could. So, what brings you here, Monty? ”

“Well, Mike, you may find this an odd question.”

“It couldn’t be any more odd than the questions that came my way over the last half hour. Ask away, my lad.”

“All right. There is a mental hospital in Saint John, isn’t there, Mike?”

“Indeed there is. We always used to say: ‘Go on out of that, or they’ll be sending you to Lancaster!’ It’s not Lancaster anymore. It’s all amalgamated into Saint John now. But that’s where it is.”

“Is the name Vincent connected with it?”

“No. It’s never been called that. In fact, its old name was the Provincial Lunatic Asylum! It was built in the nineteenth century.”

“They didn’t mince words in those days.”

“Funny you should say that. At the time it was established, the place was in the forefront of the new, more humane treatment of the mentally ill. It was the first institution of its kind in Canada, the first place for the mentally ill that was separate from a jail. But why are you asking about it, Monty?”

“Somebody mentioned an asylum, but it also had the word ‘Vincent’ on a sign; I’m not clear on the details.” I didn’t tell him I was repeating a reference I had heard second-hand, and that even the first-hand account was only a description of a place seen in a dream. Or a psychic vision! The less said the better.

“Well, now, that might be the St. Vincent’s Orphan Asylum.”

Orphan asylum! “What’s that, Mike?”

“The infants’ home in Saint John. The orphanage.”

I realized I was staring at him. Normie had seen a baby. And a little child. Now I was hearing about an orphanage.

“What does the place look like, do you know?”

“I know it well. It’s right around the corner from the cathedral. I lived not far from it myself. The infants’ home is a red-brick building, nineteenth century, with Gothic windows and a couple of holy crosses at the top.”

That was it. That was the place Normie had described, although she hadn’t mentioned the crosses.

“The sisters are still there, although it’s not an orphanage anymore. They used to run a school as well.”

“Sisters?”

Monsignor O’Flaherty looked at me as if he thought I’d gone a little simple. “The Sisters of Charity, Monty. They have a convent there, and they used to run the orphanage and the school.”

“Yes, of course. Sorry, Mike, my mind was off on a bit of a tangent.”

“Sure we all have moments like that. Any particular reason you’re asking, or have you just taken a sudden interest in my old hometown?”

“There’s a reason, but if I tried to explain . . .”

“No need, Monty. But if you ever decide to visit the place, let me know. I’d love to have company on a trip back home.”

“You never know, Mike. If it comes to that, I’ll give you a call.”

I didn’t play music or read or take a walk when I got home. The Delaney case was the only thing on my mind, so I gave in to that, and put Righteous Defender in the VCR. I had watched it before the trial, but it warranted another look. The film opened with a shot of Delaney — Jack Hartt playing Delaney — standing in a courtroom with a flock of other lawyers in their black robes and white throat tabs. The scene switched to the judge saying: “You are free to go.” We then saw Delaney’s client shake his hand and thank Delaney effusively for his hard work and the perfect result. You know you’re in the world of fiction when the client takes the time to thank you. Well, maybe there’s something about the drama of a Supreme Court jury trial that induces elaborate protocol even in the clients; looking back on some of my jury trials, I believed I had occasionally been the recipient of a proffered hand and a word of thanks. That never seemed to happen in the lower courts. I recalled one guy I had for trial on a busy day in the ornate nineteenth-century provincial courthouse on Spring Garden Road. By the time our matter was called at eleven thirty, the Crown’s main witness had still not shown up. I managed to stave off the Crown’s request for an adjournment, prompting the prosecutor to withdraw the charges. I gave my client the good news, in case he hadn’t caught on. The trial was not going ahead; he was no longer facing criminal charges; he was free to go. His reaction? “I wasted my whole fucking morning.”

But things were going a little better for Delaney on the screen. He returned to his office and took time to gaze at a portrait of his parents on his desk. This led to a flashback to his childhood, shown in black and white. We saw a little boy of about seven, dressed in a checked shirt and a blazer, coming home from school carrying a bookbag. His fair hair was brushed over to the side. The camera followed him as he ditched his schoolbag in the driveway to his house, ran to the back, and climbed up onto a swing. He pumped his legs furiously until he gained the desired height, then sailed off the swing and into a pile of raked leaves. He got up, with leaves sticking to his clothes and hair, and did the same thing again. At that point, his mother came out the back door, called Beau’s name, ran over and scooped him up for a big hug. Then we heard a car horn, and saw a big black sedan pull up in the driveway. Dad emerged, wearing a topcoat and fedora. He held his arms out and the young Beau flung himself into them and was hoisted high into the air. The scene switched back to a smiling Beau in his law office.

We went from there to the tiny rural community of Blockhouse in Lunenburg County. We saw the robbery at Gary’s General Store. The two terrified young store clerks were shot. Seventeen-year-old Scott Hubley lay dead on the floor. Cathy Tompkins, sixteen, lay grievously wounded, her face a portrait of shock and horror. Then it was Scott’s funeral, and his burial, with Cathy at the gravesite in her wheelchair, her hair shaved off and her face disfigured. Beau gave his client, Adam Gower, a brilliant defence, and Adam walked away from the courthouse, cocky and defiant.

Jack Hartt, as Beau, was shown receiving death threats over the phone and by mail. Then we saw Gower back in Blockhouse, strutting by Gary’s store and peering inside. Next thing we saw was Gower being beaten to a pulp somewhere out in the country. Then, a midnight knock on the door at the residence of Cathy Tompkins’s brother Robby, and the police bundled him into their cruiser, reading him his rights as they booked him for murder.

The next scene in the movie was Beau sitting in his office, tie off, feet up on the desk, reading a legal tome. The phone rang. He answered, answered again, then listened. We heard a voice, which could have been male or female, telling him the brother didn’t do it. The police should have looked harder, should have expanded their search to the outskirts of town. Had Beau ever heard of an old creep by the name of Edgar Lampman? No? Well, Beau might be interested in what Lampman had buried in his backyard. Click. The scene faded out with Beau sitting there in silence, telephone receiver in his hand.

After that, we saw Beau at the door of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police detachment in Lunenburg, and then it was Beau’s car and an RCMP cruiser pulling into the yard of a small, ratty-looking brown bungalow.

The camera followed the Mounties and Delaney as they entered Edgar Lampman’s house and looked around. A shabby brown chesterfield had stuffing and a spring sticking out. Where you might have expected to see a coffee table, there was a television propped up on plastic milk cartons. The cable for the TV came in through a corner of the front window; it served as a makeshift clothesline for a pair of dingy underwear and work socks. In one corner of the room was an old wooden desk, with a model of a World War Two-era battleship and an ancient manual typewriter on it. The police opened the desk drawers. A close-up of one of the cops showed his eyes narrowing in response to something he had found. He drew a pile of news clippings from the drawer, cleared a space on the desktop, and spread them out. They were news stories about Cathy Tompkins and the man who had shot her. One small news item, circled in red, reported a rumour that Adam Gower was coming back to town.

The scene switched to Lampman’s backyard, where the Mounties moved towards a small mound of earth and grass. A bit of careful digging produced a manila envelope, which had been sealed with duct tape at both ends. Words were printed on the envelope with red and black marker, in large block letters: “PERSONAL AND PRIVATE!!!! TO ONLY BE OPEN AFTER MY DEATH!!!!” The envelope was photographed, dusted, and otherwise processed, and in a later scene we got to see the contents: a brown leather wallet with darker brown stains, a pewter or silver ring in the design of a skull and crossbones, and a letter, which Lampman had composed for posterity: “Let the world know the truth. And Cathy Herself. I done it for her. I killed that scum with my bare hands! I bided my time. I knew he’d come back to the scene of the crime, so I tricked him to go into the woods and I said ‘Scum, now you die!’ This here is his skellating ring off his finger. This here is his own blood. I told ‘somebody’ but nobody believed I had the guts!!!!”

Following that scene, we returned to Beau’s office, where two RCMP officers stood by as Beau pulled out his file on the Gary’s General Store case. In reality, this would have been several bankers’ boxes full of documents, but in the movie it was a buff folder. He opened it, and sifted through some papers until he came to a yellow legal pad. The camera zoomed in on his handwritten notes. There were drawings and doodles in the margins, including a drawing of a skull and crossbones ring, which had apparently caught Beau’s eye while he was interviewing Gower before his trial. Lampman had taken the ring off Gower as a souvenir. Beau and the Mounties stared at the pictures. They had their man.

I was curious about Edgar Lampman, and wanted to see what he had looked like in real life. I ejected the Hollywood version and stuck the local news documentary into the VCR. I pressed fast-forward until I got to Lampman. He was a bizarre individual who affected, with some success, a rakish air. His appearance was distinguished by a white goatee and a supercilious expression on his face. He wore a navy pea jacket; a yachtsman’s cap sat at a jaunty angle on his head. He lived on a combination of welfare and long-term disability benefits; I inferred that his disability was of a psychiatric nature. On cheque day, he would go into Gary’s General Store and load up on provisions. Cheque day inevitably turned into jail night. He would head to the local tavern, get drunk, tell tall tales of his past exploits, real or imagined, then threaten someone, throw a punch or pull a knife, and be carted off to jail for the night.

Lampman’s past exploits, the real ones, included a long and occasionally violent criminal history. He had been in the navy, but had been dishonourably discharged for undisclosed reasons. He had served short sentences in prison for theft, fraud, and common assault. His longest stretch was four years for terrorizing his ex-wife and her new boyfriend; Lampman had kept them tied up in the basement of the woman’s house for two nights, feeding them dog food, threatening them, and inflicting minor cuts on their faces and arms with a knife. He walked out and left them there. On the third day of their captivity, their cries attracted the attention of a passerby, and they were freed.

I turned off the video and reflected on what I had seen. I thought about Lampman and about Cathy Tompkins’s brother, Robby. I thought about Beau Delaney’s dedication to the defence of the innocent, and the guilty.

Edgar Lampman wrote that he had tricked Gower into entering the woods along the 103 Highway. The beating of Adam Gower, to the point where he was unrecognizable, did not speak to me of trickery. To me it was an act of uncontrollable rage, the anger of someone who cared very deeply about Cathy Tompkins. Would Lampman have felt that strongly about a young girl he knew only from his occasional visits to the general store? The documentary had showed an arch sort of individual, who seemed to enjoy the eccentric image he cultivated. He was a violent man, to be sure. He had served several years in prison for the forcible confinement and wounding of his ex-wife and her boyfriend. If ever there was a crime of passion, it was a jilted lover’s lashing out at an ex-wife or girlfriend who had moved on to another man. Yet, Lampman’s actions in that case were those of a torturer, who toyed with the couple either for revenge or for his own gratification. He inflicted frightening but minor wounds, kept this going for two nights, then walked away. What was missing from that crime was the element of rage. The kind of wrath that was let loose on Adam Gower.

The man who did that was a man whose emotions were laid bare, someone who couldn’t stop himself from what he was doing. Someone like the brother of a young girl whose life had been destroyed by the man who shot her. Had Cathy’s brother committed the crime after all? The jury had thought so. Was the Lampman angle a set-up? Delaney had received the information from an anonymous caller. Was that caller Robby Tompkins, or someone acting on his behalf?

There was something else that bothered me about the Delaney movie and documentary: the skull ring that was found in Lampman’s stash of souvenirs from the murder of Adam Gower. Had anyone ever come forward and said Gower had worn such a ring? Not that I could recall. How then had the police connected the ring with him? Through Delaney’s sketch of it. Lawyers, like so many other people, occasionally doodle on paper while they’re waiting for something to happen. I remembered noticing the little cartoons drawn by Gail Kirk, the Crown attorney prosecuting the Peggy Delaney murder case. She tended to do this when her co-counsel was handling a procedural motion, or when we were waiting for the judge to come in. She did not do it when she was listening to a witness on the stand. The only time I heard Beau Delaney’s pen scratching paper was when he was scribbling a note to tell me what to do in court, in case I forgot. Beau didn’t draw pictures in the courtroom. And I was willing to bet he didn’t do it when he was sitting across from a client in his office, taking down information and wanting to move him out so the next client could move in.

All of this painted a picture for me. It told me Delaney knew perfectly well that Cathy’s brother Robby wasn’t innocent. And Delaney didn’t care. The way I saw things now, Delaney acquiesced in the Lampman frame-up, even helped it along with the fiction of the skull ring, redoing or inventing notes and adding drawings of the ring. Delaney was determined to save Robby Tompkins, whom he viewed as another victim of the Gary’s General Store shooting, someone who did not deserve to sit in jail for a murder he committed in a fit of grief and fury.

“I know about Robby Tompkins. I want to hear the full story.”

Delaney went perfectly still as he faced me across the desk in my office on Friday morning. He didn’t speak.

“If the Crown is determined to appeal your acquittal and if they dig into your background, the tangled protective web you wove around Robby Tompkins could unravel, and you could be hit with all kinds of charges arising from that.”

He finally found his voice. “Let it be, Monty. Leave it alone. Edgar Lampman is six feet under, and the Tompkins family has suffered enough. This stays buried. Period. Now if that’s all you have to say, I have work to do. You may have called this meeting, but I’m adjourning it. Good day.”

He got up and walked out. I wasn’t about to chase him down Barrington Street, so I let him go. I tried not to dwell on the ramifications for Delaney, for me, and for the Tompkins family, if the true story got out.

(Normie)

I always thought of Father Burke as being really big, but not after I saw him standing in front of Mr. Delaney, with Mr. Delaney looming right over him and talking down into his face. Father didn’t look so big anymore and I was scared for him. Because it looked as if Mr. Delaney was yelling. Except he wasn’t. He was talking so low that I couldn’t hear what he said, but you could tell he really wanted Father Burke to pay attention and do whatever Mr. Delaney wanted.

This was at school on Friday, and the grade fours were going from math to gym class. I was straggling behind because I knew Richard Robertson was going to be standing up in front of the grade six class reading a funny story and making faces to go along with it, so I wanted to peek into his classroom to see him doing it. But the door was closed, and I couldn’t very well go up and peer inside and everybody would look up and see this face pressed up against the window gawking in, and they’d laugh at me. So I didn’t. But that’s when I heard great big loud footsteps down the corridor behind me, and I turned around. Mr. Delaney had caught up with Father Burke, who had just come into the corridor carrying a prayer book, the kind with the coloured ribbons to mark your place.

Even if I hadn’t been able to see the expression on Mr. Delaney’s face, I would have known there was something going on, because I could sense strong feelings around him and coming out of him. I can’t explain it, but it was like being in a big, dark storm with lots of wind.

Father Burke put his hand on Mr. Delaney’s arm, and I could tell he was trying to calm him down. I wondered if Father had done something that got Mr. Delaney all upset, or made him mad. Anyway, they started walking away, out of the school, with Father Burke in front and Mr. Delaney behind him. That’s when I got even more scared. Was he going to clobber our priest on the back of the head? Or take him somewhere and beat him up? That’s not the kind of thing I would normally think about people, but the storm of feelings around Mr. Delaney made me think something scary might happen. I even wondered if I should call the cops, or tell one of the teachers. But if it turned out to be nothing, I would be in trouble for being a tattletale and not minding my own business. So I went to gym class and was almost late for the first lap around the room. After that, I asked if I could use the school phone, and I called Daddy to tell him about what I saw. But all I could do was leave a message because he wasn’t there.

(Monty)

I had no intention of letting Delaney off the hook. I didn’t want to stir things up, or do anything to draw attention to the elaborate criminal justice coup he had orchestrated all those years ago. But I wanted to know the story, so there would not be any surprises out there if the court ordered a new trial for the murder of Peggy Delaney.

First, though, I had to focus on an emergency injunction hearing in Supreme Court — the last thing anyone needs on a Friday afternoon. My firm’s client wanted to tear down a row of Victorian townhouses and put up a parking garage; the local heritage group wanted an injunction to stop the demolition. I did my best, but wasn’t the least bit sorry when we lost, and the buildings were given a reprieve. When I got back to the office, I took my stack of phone messages and returned the calls. One was from Normie during school hours. I tried the choir school, but she had already left, so I called Maura’s number. Normie answered on the first ring.

“Daddy! Maybe nothing happened to Father Burke, but you should check!”

“What, sweetheart?” I tried to keep the alarm out of my voice. “What do you mean?”

“Mr. Delaney came to the school, and I could tell there were bad feelings whirling around him, and he was standing over Father Burke and made him leave the school and go somewhere!”

“When was this?”

“At gym class time.”

“When’s gym again, dolly, remind me?”

“Just before lunch.”

“So the two of them left the school together at that time?”

“Yes!”

“Well, I’ll check on Father Burke and make sure he’s all right. I’ll let you go now. Don’t worry. It’s probably not as bad as it looked.”

“Okay, okay, Daddy, get going!” Slam.

I made a call to Brennan’s direct number at the rectory. No answer. That didn’t mean anything one way or the other. I would go and see if someone knew where he was. Two minutes later I was in the car and on my way to St. Bernadette’s. When I squealed to a stop in the parking lot and got out of the car, I met Michael O’Flaherty emerging from the rectory. I made an effort not to look rattled.

“Afternoon, Monsignor. How’s it going?”

“Ah. Monty. Just grand, and yourself?”

“Can’t complain. I just popped over to see your curate. I tried to reach him on the phone.”

“No, you wouldn’t be able to get him on his line.”

“Is everything all right?”

“Oh yes, you’ll find him in my room, watching a movie on my TV.”

Relief coursed through me. All I said to Michael was: “Now there’s something you don’t see every day: Burke in front of a television. What movie is it, The Bells of St. Mary’s?”

“No, it’s something a little closer to home. The Hollywood movie about Beau Delaney. Righteous Defender. Brennan rented the video. He said they had several copies at Video Difference.”

“Is that right?”

“Yes, and I suffered through the viewing.”

“You didn’t like it?”

“Oh, it wasn’t that. It’s a fascinating story about a fascinating man. But watching it with Brennan was aggravating beyond words. He kept pressing the rewind button over and over.”

“Oh?”

“He must be intrigued by the new technologies. We’ll bring him into the 1990s yet.”

“I never think of him as a techie sort of guy. But he has surprised me on occasion.”

“True enough. Anyway, on this particular occasion, he kept replaying certain parts of the movie.”

“Which parts did he like?”

“I didn’t keep track of the interruptions, Monty. I just know that’s not the way I prefer to watch a show. He’s on to the news documentary about Delaney now. He got it from the TV station. I didn’t stick around for that.”

“I’ll go up and watch it with him.”

“Sure thing. Go right up, Monty. I’ll see you later.”

“See you, Mike.”

Never mind that I had already seen both shows. I had new reasons for wanting to view them now, or rather, I had reason to be curious about what parts Brennan found so important. Add that to my curiosity over the scene Normie had witnessed earlier in the day.

I went into the rectory and headed up the stairs to the room I knew belonged to Monsignor O’Flaherty. The door was ajar, and I saw the back of Brennan’s head. The VCR was on pause, and I peered in to see what he was looking at. But I couldn’t make it out. Then he resumed playing the video. There was Peggy, talking about the murder of Beau’s client, allegedly done in by a member of the Hells Angels. Peggy said: “That was the longest night of my life.” Brennan pressed rewind and watched it again. Then he sensed my presence and turned around. He gave a little start when he saw it was me. But he did not look as if he had been in any kind of scuffle with Beau Delaney. He nodded, turned back to the VCR, and switched it off.

“What?” I said, entering O’Flaherty’s room. “I’m not going to see the show?”

“You’ve seen it.”

“So have you. Why are you watching it again?”

“I don’t have The Exorcist so I’m watching this.”

“You kind of remind me of the younger priest in that, come to think of it. The kind of dark, brooding, haunted . . . but I guess he was Greek.”

“The character was Greek. The actor was an American Irishman, Jason Miller.”

“Well! Who knew you’d be such a fount of movie trivia?”

“There’s nothing trivial, Collins, about the battle for supremacy between the forces of good and evil.”

“I stand corrected, Father.”

“It’s about time. So, what’s up?”

I didn’t want to spring Normie’s story on him right away, so I came up with something more benign.

“Dinner and drinks at O’Carroll’s? I was going to give MacNeil a call about it.”

“Sounds good.”

I thought of something else that I had been meaning to do, and reached for my chequebook. I grabbed a pen from O’Flaherty’s desk and wrote out a cheque.

“This is for Patrick, to reimburse him for his mercy flight to Halifax on Normie’s behalf. Make sure he gets it.”

“He doesn’t want it.”

“Make him want it. Do whatever you have to do.”

“My brother and I had a grand time together. He was due for a visit.”

So I took the cheque, scratched out the name Patrick Burke, wrote in St. Bernadette’s Church, initialled it, and slapped it down on the desk.

“Ready?”

“I will be in five minutes. I’ll get cleaned up.”

When had the fastidious priest ever been dirty? But I followed him to his own room, gave Maura a call about dinner, then sat at Brennan’s table by the window and waited while he performed his ablutions in the bathroom. When he emerged, we headed out together.

“How are things?” I asked him.

“Good.”

“Anything new?”

“Nothing.”

I would try another tack.

“What were you looking for in that documentary?”

“Nothing in particular.”

“Well, then, why were you rewinding and playing parts of it again?”

“The sound wasn’t very good. I couldn’t hear it.”

This was a man who could hear when a note sung by one section of a four-part choir was off by a quarter of a tone. Well, I could hear too. And what I was hearing was that it was none of my business what he had been looking for. I knew that something about the program had struck a false note for me when I watched it, too, but I would figure it out later.

Brennan and I arrived at O’Carroll’s and made ourselves at home at the bar. I ordered a pint of Guinness and he got a double Jameson. He had downed it by the time I’d had two sips of my pint. It didn’t make him garrulous, by any means. He ordered a second drink and stared into it, as if he had forgotten there was anyone else around.

“Is everything all right with you, Brennan?”

“Sure, yes, I’m grand.”

He made an obvious effort to rally. If there was something on his mind, he put it aside, and told me a long, funny story about the Gaelic football team he played on as a young boy in Ireland, and the mishaps they endured on their trip to play a team in Mayo-God-Help-Us. Maura joined us half an hour later.

“You look as if you were born and raised, schooled and ordained, right there on that bar stool, Burke,” said Maura. “You, too, Collins.”

“Ah, just like the oul country itself, so it is,” Burke replied in a stagy brogue.

“Well, if you can detach yourself from it without doing internal damage, I’d prefer to have dinner at a table.”

“No worries, no damage.”

So we got ourselves settled at a table, ordered drinks, and procured menus. Conversation resumed.

“Speaking of the old country, now, Mr. Collins.” Brennan raised his glass to his lips, and his left eyebrow to me. “Your father’s people were from Cork, you’ve told me, and came over here around the turn of the century.” He took a sip of his whiskey. “Your mother’s family, on the other hand, was long established in Halifax by that time.”

“Right. They’d been here almost since the city was founded in 1749. Originally from England. Catholics, though, Brennan, as you know.”

“Bless them and save them,” he said with mock piety.

“The Earls of Halifax were Montagues, you know, back in the day,” Maura put in, affecting a snooty British accent. She pointed at me. “He’s schizo, Brennan. Lord Halifax by day, Irish rabble-rouser by night.”

“An Irish rabble-rouser is exactly what he should be if my speculations are correct. His crowd was still in County Cork when Michael Collins was toddling around in his nappies. No doubt if he made even the most elementary inquiries, he’d uncover a connection with that illustrious branch of the family. Have you made any efforts in that regard, Montague Michael Collins?”

“Well, no, I haven’t.”

“No sense of history. Did your father never tell you tales of your Irish ancestors when you were a boy?”

“Oh, he did, but you know what kids are like. They don’t listen. Then they grow up and want to know, and they find out they’ve left it too late. I hear there’s going to be an Irish history lecture at St. Bernadette’s Choir School, Brennan.”

“There is, and you’ll be expected to attend. A command performance, let us say.”

“I wouldn’t miss it, Father.”

“There’s hope for you yet, then.”

“Monty’s father helped make history, Brennan,” Maura said. “Did you know that? He did very secret intelligence work, code-breaking, during the war.”

“Right. Didn’t someone tell me he was at Bletchley Park in England?”

“Yep,” I said, “my dad had left Halifax to do his Ph.D. in math at Cambridge University. Bletchley Park recruited him from Cambridge and got him working on the codes. They couldn’t have broken the German ciphers without him, I’m convinced. My mother boarded a ship here and sailed over to be with him. Brave soul, to sail the Atlantic during the war years.”

“Montague didn’t make his appearance till they moved back here, though, a couple of years later,” Maura said.

“Hey, I could wait! Putting Hitler away was more important than getting me started.”

“I’ve never heard you so humble, Collins,” she said. “But what about you, Brennan? You were a wartime baby. What year did you come into the world,” Maura asked him, “bringing joy and laughter to those around you?”

“The people walked in darkness until 1940. Then they saw a great light.”

“Yeah, it was called the Blitz.”

“No blitzkrieg where I came from, in Dublin.”

“That’s right. You guys were neutral during the war.”

“During the emergency. That’s what we called it in Ireland.”

“Do you remember anything from those times?” she asked him. “Did young boys play at fighting Hitler, or did you sit around being quiet and doing nothing and pretending you were Swiss?”

“I know you’re takin’ the piss out of me, MacNeil, but I won’t reply in kind. I do recall listening to news on the wireless about the war. It was a long time ago so I couldn’t tell you exactly what the broadcasts said, but . . .”

I tuned them out. I went through the motions as we ate our meal and gabbed, but I was distracted all the while. Because I had just caught on to something that was so obvious I had simply overlooked it before.