The priest looked as if he had wandered out of The Name of the Rose.
He was wearing sandals and a brown caftan that could have passed for a cassock, a small polished wood-and-silver crucifix hanging on the front of it from a black silk cord. His shorn bald head was fringed with a halo of brown hair that matched his brown eyes. He had just finished shaving when he opened the door for Matthew; his face was littered with blood-stained scraps of toilet tissue. Matthew guessed he was in his late forties, but the bald head may have been misleading.
He offered Matthew a cup of coffee, which Matthew was immediately sorry he’d accepted; it tasted as if it had been laced with strychnine. Sitting in the snug, warm rectory lined with bookshelves containing theological works in dusty leather covers, a fire blazing in the small fireplace, the rain slithering along stained-glass windows, Father Ambrose told him what had happened on the morning of January thirtieth.
Rain.
The sound of rain drilling the cedar shakes on the rectory roof, awakening him long before dawn. In his narrow bed in his narrow cubicle, he listens to the sound of the rain and hopes it will end before tomorrow; attendance on Sundays always drops off when the weather is bad.
A gray dawn palely lights the small stained-glass window in his room.
He hears shouting.
Voices raised in shrill, shrieking anger.
He thinks at first — the shouting is so loud — he thinks it is coming from just outside his window, on the lawn someplace, or perhaps on the beach, teenagers sometimes drink beer on the beach and get rowdy. He stumbles out of bed in the near-gloom, slips into his sandals, throws on a Burberry raincoat over his under-shorts — he sleeps only in boxer undershorts — and goes out into the rectory proper, the room in which they are now sitting, moves directly to the front door, and throws it open to the howling storm.
He squints through the driving rain.
There is no one on the lawn.
No one on the beach, either.
But the voices persist, rising in renewed anger, drifting on the strong wind, slashing through the slashing rain.
The voices are coming from the Parrish house.
He knows a homosexual lives in that house. Sometimes, in fact, the midnight parties there get a bit loud. But this is something else again, this is not revelry he is hearing, this is rage. A rage as cold as the rain, he shivers at the sound of it. He cannot discern what the voices are saying, the words are tumbled on the wind, a jumble of accusation and denial, but even without a grasp of their meaning he can sense impending explosion in their force, and suddenly he crosses himself and mutters, “God save us.” For he knows with an immediate and frightening certainty that rage such as this can only terminate in violence greater than the violence of words alone.
Words.
Unintelligible on the wind, carried brokenly on the driving rain. Words pregnant with the threat of imminent horror.
And then a single understandable word.
Sharp. Clear. Unmistakable.
Knifing through the wind and the rain.
No!
And a scream.
A terrifying scream.
The fire suddenly crackled and spit. New wood.
Father Ambrose shook his head.
Matthew watched him.
And now the rectory sitting room was silent except for a low steady hiss from the fireplace and the steady pelting of the rain on the cedar-shingle roof
“Did you hear just that one scream?” Matthew asked. “Following the word ‘No’?”
“Just that one scream.”
Ralph Parrish had told Matthew he’d awakened to the sound of voices arguing, his brother screaming. And then he’d heard his brother—
“Did you hear anyone shouting, ‘I don’t have them, I don’t know where they are’?”
“The only word I could make out was the word ‘No.’ The other words…”
He shook his head again.
“Father Ambrose… you said when the voices awakened you…”
“No, the rain woke me up.”
“But later you heard these voices arguing…”
“Yes.”
“… and went to the rectory door and looked out at the lawn…”
“Yes.”
“And then looked out at the beach, is that right?”
“Yes.”
“I’m assuming you could see the beach from the rectory door.”
“Oh, yes.”
“And there was no one on the lawn, and no one on the beach.”
“No one.”
“Was there anyone on the beach after you heard the scream? Did you see anyone running away from the Parrish house?”
“I don’t think I checked the beach again. Not after I heard the scream.”
“What did you do?”
“I closed the rectory door. It was raining very hard. I was getting wet.”
“You closed the rectory door…”
“Yes.”
“And then what?”
“I locked it.”
“Why did you lock it?”
“I was frightened.”
“But you didn’t call the police.”
“No.”
“You were frightened, but you didn’t call the police.”
“No.”
“Why not? You had just heard a violent argument, you had just heard a scream, you say you were frightened… but you didn’t call the police.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I didn’t want attention drawn to St. Benedict’s.”
“In what way would attention…?”
“There are homosexuals in my congregation, Mr. Hope. Our choir, our entire Music Department has a very high gay population. If there was some kind of trouble in the Parrish house up the beach, I didn’t want it reflecting on the law-abiding homosexuals in my parish.”
“So you remained silent.”
“Yes.”
“Until when? When did you go to the police?”
“I didn’t.”
“You didn’t? I was informed yesterday that the State Attorney intends calling you as a witness.”
“I was visited on Thursday by a detective from the Sheriffs Department. He was making what he called a routine canvass of the neighborhood. I couldn’t very well lie to him about what I’d heard on the morning of the murder.”
“Did he ask you specifically about what you’d heard on the morning of…?”
“No, his questions were general. He wanted to know if I’d seen or heard anything out of the ordinary.”
“On the morning of the murder?”
“Yes, and in the twenty-four hours preceding the murder.”
“Had you seen or heard anything out of the…?”
“The argument. I told him about the argument. And the scream.”
“I meant in the twenty-four hours preceding the murder.”
“No. Nothing out of the ordinary.”
“You didn’t see anyone wearing black, did you?” Matthew asked. “Anywhere in the vicinity of the Parrish house?”
Father Ambrose looked up at him.
Matthew knew that look.
Recognition.
Gold.
“Did you?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Did you see someone in black…?”
“No,” Father Ambrose said.
He watched the Karmann Ghia pulling out of the driveway, watched it as it disappeared into the falling rain. And then he watched only the rain, and wondered why he had not told Matthew Hope about the couple he’d married on the day before the murder.