Erasmus smiled at her patiently, tore open a packet of sugar, and stirred it into his own cup.
“Does that mean you don’t remember, or you won’t tell me?”
He put the cup to his lips.
“It may simply mean that he can’t think of a quote that fits the answer,” suggested the dean. Erasmus smiled at him with an air of approval.
“Did you know the man they called John?” she persisted.
“I knew him, Horatio,” he said clearly and without hesitation.
Thank God, one answer anyway, thought Kate. I’ll just have to choose my questions to fit a classical tag line.
“Do you know his last name?”
Erasmus thought for a moment, then resumed his drinking. With a regretful air?
“Do you know where he came from?”
Erasmus began to hum some vaguely familiar tune.
“Do you know where he stayed?” There was no answer. “What he did? Who his close friends were?”
Erasmus looked at his cup.
“Why do you do this?” Kate threw her spoon down in irritation. “You’re perfectly capable of answering my questions.”
Erasmus raised his eyes and studied her. His eyes were remarkably eloquent, compassionate now, but Kate could make no use of that kind of answer. Suddenly he leaned forward, held his hand out in an attitude of pleading, and began to speak.
“I am a fool,” he pronounced. “And thus I clothe my naked villainy with odd old ends stolen forth of holy writ, and seem a saint when most I play the devil. Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, all is vanity. A man’s pride shall bring him low,” he said forcefully, and his eyes searched her face—for what? Understanding? Judgment? Whatever it was, he did not find it, and he turned to the dean. “A man’s pride,” he said pleading, “shall bring him low,” but the dean gave him no more satisfaction than Kate had. He turned back to her, the muscles of his face rigid with some powerful but unidentifiable emotion. He swallowed and his voice went husky. “Then David made a covenant with Jonathan, because he loved him as his own soul. Would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son. Behold, I am vile. What shall I answer thee? A fool’s mouth is his destruction.” Seeing nothing but confusion in his audience, he sat back with a thump and forced a weak smile of apology. “I am a very foolish fond old man, forescore and upward, not an hour more or less, and to deal plainly, I fear I am not in my perfect mind.”
While we’re talking quotations, thought Kate, how about “crazy like a fox”? They were interrupted by the waitress bringing two plates, and Kate instantly regretted not ordering something to eat. She half-expected Erasmus to say a prayer, or at least bow his head over his food, but instead he calmly spread his napkin onto his lap and began to eat.
“So,” she said, “you cannot tell me anything about the man John?” She did not hold out much hope for an answer, but he surprised her.
“A back-friend, a shoulder-clapper,” he said promptly, his face going hard. “The words of his mouth were smoother than butter, but war was in his heart. His words were softer than oil, yet they were drawn swords.” He took a forkful of food and chewed it thoughtfully for a moment, then added, “Choked with ambition of the meaner sort. His heart is as firm as a stone, yea—as hard as a piece of nether millstone.” He returned to his omelette.
“You don’t say. Your friend Beatrice would certainly agree with that.”
Erasmus’s stern features relaxed. “Her voice was ever soft, gentle, and low—an excellent thing in a woman.”
“Do you know how John died?”
He paused briefly.
“Can a man take fire in his bosom, and his clothes not be burned?” He began to butter a piece of toast. “Mors ultima ratio.”
“ ‘Death is the final accounting,”“ translated the dean sotto voce, around a mouthful of eggs and cheese and chili peppers.
“And John had much to account for?” Kate suggested. She did not know whether or not to take the first part of his statement as an assertion that John had actually died by fire—something to be explored later.
“Forbear to judge, for we are sinners all. Close up his eyes and draw the curtain close, and let us all to meditation.”
“That’s fine for some,” answered Kate. “However, it’s my job to find how he died and if someone hurried him on his way. Even an obnoxious sinner has a right to die in his own time.”
Erasmus surprised her again, by smiling hugely.
“O tiger’s heart wrapped in a woman’s hide!” he boomed into the startled restaurant. The dean stifled a laugh, but Kate refused to be distracted. She looked him in the eye and bit off her words.
“Do you know anything about John’s death?”
The seriousness of her questions, what they meant for the man on the pyre and all involved with him, seemed suddenly to reach the figure in the cassock. Erasmus studied the food on his plate as if searching for an answer there, and when he did not find it, he brought his left hand up and laid it flat on the table, studying the worn gold ring that encircled one finger. Gradually his mobile features took on the same appearance they had shown when he had knelt on the ground to declare his abject inadequacies. He was not far from tears. “The voice of your brother’s blood is crying to me from the ground,” he whispered finally. The dean choked on a piece of food, shot a brief glance at Kate, and then, despite the half-full plate in front of him, he looked at his watch and began to make a business of catching April’s attention. Kate ignored him, staring at Erasmus, who seemed mesmerized by the gold on his hand.
“Erasmus, do you know how he died?” she said quietly.
The man took a long breath, exhaled, and then looked up at her. “Am I my brother’s keeper?”
The dean stood up so rapidly, his chair nearly went over. He looked from Kate to Erasmus helplessly, and when the bill was placed in his hand by the passing waitress, he could only throw up his arms and go pay it.
“Erasmus,” Kate began evenly, “you have the right to remain silent.”
♦
SEVEN
♦
He was, among other things, emphatically what we call a character.
Kate closed the back door of the departmental car and turned to the unhappy man standing beside her on the sidewalk.
“Is this really necessary?” he said, more as a plea than a protest.
“You heard what he said back there. Even I know the Bible well enough to remember that ‘Am I my brother’s keeper?” is how Cain answers the accusation that he killed Abel. Which, if I remember rightly, he did. That comes very near to being a confession, the way Brother Erasmus talks. You can’t argue with that,“ she pointed out, though in fact he was not.
“The man’s mixed up, but he’s not violent, never harmful.
You can’t arrest him on the basis of biblical passages.“
Kate was not about to go into the technicalities of precisely what constitutes an arrest, particularly in a fuzzy situation like this one. Still, she had to tell him something. “I haven’t actually arrested him. I read him his rights because at that point he changed status, from being a witness to being a potential suspect. He is not in handcuffs,- he is with me voluntarily.”
“What will you do with him?”
“As you heard me tell him, I’ll take him back to the City, interview him, and then we’ll either let him go or, if information received during the interview demands, we’ll arrest him. Personally, I doubt that will happen, at least not today.”
“I’d like to be informed,” he said with authority.
“Certainly.” Kate retrieved a card from her shoulder bag and handed it to him. “I have a few questions I need to ask, if you don’t mind.”