Grave Doubts (20 page)

“Please,” she said, “if we’re not interfering.”

“Tell us about the paintings,” asked Morgan, genuinely interested.

“Well, I have to proceed slowly. They are frescoes done by an anonymous master, one of those itinerant artists from the old country — I’d suspect in this case from Tuscany — making his way through the new world until domesticity took hold in one form or another and he became a common immigrant, like the rest of us, one generation or another in our past. His offspring probably became bakers or farmhands or lawyers. He was inspired, yes, and you’ll notice he was also very accomplished — trained in the best schools of Florence. And, fortunately for us, his work was covered over in haste. Relatively little damage was done. If anything, the work has been preserved. The plaster covering was smeared on, in some places it barely adheres, nothing more holding it in place than inertia and the will of the Lord.”

“Are you Roman Catholic?” asked Morgan, surprised by Pope’s turn of phrase.

“In spite of the papal surname, I am not. In fact, I am rather opposed to religion. I was speaking of the Lord ironically, Detective. I am sure whatever God might have dwelled in this building has long since taken refuge in Rome.”

“Yet,” observed Morgan, “there is something of the sacred remaining.”

“Perhaps the residue of God, Detective. The deity has fled but his influence remains. Gods do not die easily in the Western world.”

Miranda found his condescension irritating, although it didn’t seem to bother Morgan, perhaps because she wanted to like the man and Morgan was indifferent. She was fascinated by the quality of the frescoes, but Morgan’s interest had shifted to the story they revealed and it would take more than an overbearing interlocutor to keep him from finding how it unravelled.

“Are you doing the restoration for the Church?” Miranda asked.

“Absolutely not. This building no longer exists as far as the Church is concerned. A private enterprise — my mentors.”

“Art lovers, no doubt,” she said.

“It is a labour of love, yes it is.”

“So tell us, Alexander. What happened here?” Morgan asked.

They were walking about slowly, absorbing the atmosphere of what seemed, away from the murals, a vast, grey sepulchre robbed of its resident bones. Alexander Pope apologized for being abrupt with them, which struck them as odd, since he seemed quite relaxed. He explained that he had had interruptions not so welcome as theirs and his work was impeded by what he described as his natural inclination to be hospitable. All three laughed at that and they were friends.

“Beneath this floor,” he said, “lies the body of a saint. Her story is inscribed on the walls. She was never sanctified,
canonized, or beatified and she died in disgrace. But for many she was a folk saint, the people’s saint, and to this day there are believers who come here in defiance of their Church and pray for her intervention with God. They have kept the place up for over a hundred years, carefully leaving no sign of their presence. That in itself is a miracle. If the Vatican requires three miracles as the prerequisites for sainthood, their quiet devotion is a good place to start.

“Imagine, people coming here to pray and pay homage. They are not supplicants, they are pilgrims. They ask for nothing. They come singly, sometimes in twos and threes. They come at all hours. Sometimes in the dead of night, when I’m working late, I’ll turn around and find someone just behind me, staring at the revelation of their venerable saint. Often, when I return in the mornings, I’ll find my instruments have been carefully cleaned, the floor underneath my scaffold meticulously dusted. In the daytime, they tend to stay clear of me, labouring quietly, especially the women, sweeping and scrubbing and dusting and polishing. The men sometimes pick up bits of debris. They seem more distant — they follow the women as helpers or stand by, passively observing. When I try to engage any of them in conversation, they are shy. They listen, but they do not ask questions. When I tell them something from my research about the church building itself or about Sister Marie Celeste, they nod knowingly. I’m not sure whether I offer nothing new, or merely nothing surprising.

“These pilgrims converge on this place from other worlds and treat it as home. I look forward to them, although at times I do find them intrusive. They are not a community, a secret society — as far as I can tell, they are absolutely independent of each other, some of them meeting here openly for the first time ever. It is impossible to say how many there are. If
they gathered, would there be multitudes or only a handful in each generation? These are not zealots, yearning for the End of Days and the Divine Rapture. They are modest followers of a compromised saint.

“No one has objected to my restoration project. The Church has no interest, claiming they no longer hold title. Yet there’s no record of sale, and the property remains tax-exempt. Curious, isn’t it? Almost like it doesn’t exist. The people who look after the place, I think they’re pleased with what I’m doing. Turning up the light on their darkened world.”

“How very strange,” said Miranda. “What a wonderful notion, that such things go on in our midst and we don’t even know.”

“It would not be so wonderful if we did.”

“What about the manse, the parsonage, the rectory… whatever they call it? And what about the cemetery?”

“The rectory, Morgan. It is derelict, of no interest. The cemetery, no interest.”

“How so?”

“It is all in how the story unfolds,” said Pope, somewhat cryptically. Then, in a sudden shift, he inquired, “What time is it?”

“Half-past nine,” said Miranda, glancing at her watch.

“Saturday?” he inquired.

“Yes, Saturday, 9:30 a.m.”

“Then you two are here for some other reason.”

“How do you mean?” she responded.

“You would not be here this early for a casual visit. It’s close to a four-hour drive.”

“It’s about Shelagh Hubbard.”

“The anthropologist from the museum. You say she took a course from me in London.”

“Yes,” said Miranda. “Apparently she’s missing.”

“Pardon me,” he said, “but you’re looking for her a long way from home.”

Morgan, who had been gazing about, absorbed in the atmosphere of the abandoned church that struck him as at once very sad and somehow still sacred, returned to their conversation. “She has a farm near Owen Sound. She appears to have been abducted, although there is a strong possibility it’s a set-up.”

“A set-up?”

“A con. She may have arranged her own disappearance.”

“And why is that of concern to the Toronto Police, Detective Morgan? You two are a long way from home.”

“The Owen Sound constabulary called us in as reinforcements,” Miranda quipped.

“The OPP, actually,” Morgan said. “It turns out Dr. Hubbard may be important to our investigation of the Hogg’s Hollow murders.”

“She’s a suspect!” said Pope, apparently delighted. “How very droll. She was one of your forensic experts, wasn’t she?”

Morgan flinched imperceptibly. “She was. As were you.”

“My dear Morgan, you must find such a convoluted case intriguing. What happens when you find her?”

“At this point she is wanted to assist in an ongoing investigation,” said Miranda. “That’s how we say it to protect ourselves from libel and the public from hysteria.”

“But you are in fact quite sure she’s your murderess.” The word seemed to hiss from his lips. “I do wish I could remember the woman.”

Miranda and Morgan exchanged brief knowing looks.
Murderess
is a term of diminution, suggesting something less on a semantic scale than
murderer
. It exoticizes the crime, lending an air of titillation. They had discussed this before, noting that it was a word frequently used in the tabloids. They
were surprised to hear it issue from the rather fastidious mind of Alexander Pope.

“We may eventually need your testimony,” said Morgan. “If she acquired skills from the master, then perhaps the master will confirm his influence on her work. I’m surprised you didn’t see it at the scene.”

“In retrospect only. At the time I was not looking for signs of my own inadvertent complicity. Of course, I will testify —”

“We have to find her, first,” said Miranda. “At this point, we can’t even issue a warrant. She’s still in the category of ‘missing.’”

“One mystery at a time,” said Morgan, trying to swing the conversation around. “Tell us more about your secular saint.”

“Not secular, Morgan. Merely not sanctioned nor sanctified by Mother Church.”

“She had a vision, I assume. An encounter with the Virgin Mary?”

“She did. In 1891. The church building was completed in 1867. There were plans to bring the railway through to a Georgian Bay terminus at either Midland or Penetang. This was the median point between. The whole province was swarming with promise. Rail beds were being laid every which way. Confederation promised prosperity. This seemed a likely place for a church, in anticipation of settlers and commerce. Mills no longer determined townsites. The church would provide the locus. At one time there was a school beside the rectory and a Presbyterian church across the road. They burned down years ago.”

“1891? Her vision?” Miranda was anxious to hear the story, more than the history, although to Alexander Pope, as to Morgan, the two were inseparable.

They walked at an ambling pace about the empty building as Pope continued.

“There were two resident priests. The school had been built, but students were not forthcoming. The nuns who had been sent here to teach were recalled to Toronto until the population of the area grew sufficient to the enterprise. The priests had a series of housekeepers — usually elderly widows who needed their beneficence. In 1890, a young woman named Lorraine Eliott from a farm several concessions over appeared at their door. She was quite simple, apparently, and could not find work as a domestic until such time as she got married, as girls then often did. Her family, she confessed, were lapsed Catholics. She would work for the priests in exchange for upkeep and religious instruction. By all accounts it was a satisfactory arrangement. Lorraine’s family started coming regularly to church and she, herself, learned her catechism slowly but well.”

“Where did you find an account of such things?” Morgan asked.

“I have spent large portions of my life in local archives, Detective, pouring through bundles of fading correspondence, diaries, unpublished manuscripts, records. It is surprising how much of our past awaits us, if we take the time to explore.”

“And she became devout and had a vision,” said Miranda.

“Exceedingly devout. One day, Lorraine was praying at a small grotto she had constructed from boulders against the cemetery wall. The Virgin appeared to her. In radiant glory, as they say. The girl took holy instruction from Mary, her divine mentor, in a vision of sustained ecstasy. She returned late to the rectory. The priests had company — three nuns from Toronto who were negotiating to reopen the school. All five were annoyed that supper was not yet on the table, but the girl appeared before them and spread her arms open with her palms exposed. They were bleeding at the centre, as if nails
had just been withdrawn. She spoke, and the nuns reported she was cast in a splendid light and an odour of violets filled the room.

“‘I am Sister Marie Celeste,’ she said in a soft voice. And then, she was struck dumb, and never spoke again. She collapsed on the floor.

“The nuns took her into their bedroom and dressed her wounds. When they changed her clothes into the best habit they could spare, they brought her again to the parlour. The priests seemed distressed by the intrusion on their ordered lives. They did not understand, but the nuns knew what had happened and were deeply moved.

“One nun, the most profoundly affected, kneeled beside the young woman and took her hands, palms upward. She began to speak, and it was in a voice altogether more resonant than her own. She spoke in the first person, but the words were those of Sister Marie Celeste: ‘The Virgin Mother appeared to me, and told me of many things so wonderful I cannot express them. She asked me to share with her the sorrowful burden of our Lord’s crucifixion and the glory of His resurrection, our Son’s blessing for all the world.’ One of the priests was incensed. ‘This is blasphemy,’ he said. And Sister Marie Celeste smiled, and through the nun holding her hands, she said, ‘Our Heavenly Mother forgives her priest his innocence.’

“The priest who had not spoken was so taken aback by the inspired authority of the voice that he dropped to his knees in submission, and was joined almost immediately by the other. The remaining two nuns, not to be outdone, prostrated themselves fully on the Persian carpet. Only the young nun holding the hands of Sister Mary Celeste with the stigmata exposed remained still. Again, the voice spoke: ‘It is not by my words or my deeds but my very life that you shall be redeemed.’”

Morgan was uncertain about how much of Pope’s story was artistic licence. The question of authenticity never crossed Miranda’s mind, although, like her partner, she did not consider herself a person of faith, and certainly not a believer in visions — at least, not those of the Virgin Mary.

Pope had stopped speaking, gathering his resources. They continued in their meandering journey inside the church. The vast interior space seemed smaller, more intimate.

“Someone wrote this down, then?” Morgan inquired.

“The youngest nun did. She lived until the 1950s. She insisted in later years that when she was the voice of Sister Marie Celeste, who in turn proclaimed herself the voice of the Virgin, she was possessed —”

“By the Devil?” exclaimed Miranda.

“By God. She went to the grave a believer, despite excommunication.”

“She was excommunicated?” exclaimed Morgan. “For what?”

“For believing. The word spread of Mary’s appearance. It happened in April. By September there were crowds each Sunday, and even during the week, if the weather was bad, when the farmers could get away from their fields and their herds. The bishop, the archbishop, the cardinal, all sent investigators. Even the Vatican was aware of Sister Marie Celeste. Naturally, the clergy was cynical. Miracles are much better received out of history than as immanent experience. They demanded further miracles. The vision was not enough.