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recognized Eleanor when she came to the front door of the rectory. Of course, it had been many years since she had seen or even thought of the woman, and Eleanor had more reason to recognize Marie, having come to the rectory often. Marie remembered herself as having been an ombudsman between Eleanor and the flaky Placidus. You never knew what a Franciscan would do next, and your ordinary lay people had insufficient experience with priests to make allowances. It was when she called McDivitt to make sure Alfred Wygant got a proper send-off that the little undertaker, a faint scent of bourbon riding
his breath, had confided in her about the condition of the deceased. How it all came back to her now. McDivitt had always preferred dealing with her rather than the Franciscans.
    â€œHe had a snoot full, that’s for sure.” This was crude coming from the dapper little undertaker.
    â€œDrunk?”
    â€œWho’s to say what drunk means,” McDivitt said and slipped a peppermint into his mouth. On second thought, he offered Marie one. “These household accidents are always mysterious.”
    â€œIn what way?”
    â€œWygant never drank.”
    â€œThe widow told you that?”
    â€œAnd the family. Of course they were interested in avoiding any talk.”
    â€œOf course.”
    â€œI suppose the autopsy would have measured the alcohol in his blood.”
    McDivitt had known he could tell Marie these things without fear they would go further. “I think he took a dive over the upstairs bannister.”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œSheer speculation of course. Based on a lifetime’s experience.
    Of people diving over upstairs bannisters? McDivitt was a gossip, no doubt of that, his character all twisted out of shape from simulating grief at the death of strangers. What were such people called in the gospel? They had laughed at Our Lord when He said the child was merely sleeping. She could imagine McDivitt in that derisive chorus.
    â€œIf Jessica Bernardo calls I will see her,” Father Dowling said.
    Marie had already surmised that the niece was the cause of Eleanor’s visit. Jessica the novelist. Marie had tried to read one
of Jessica’s novels, but it was not her sort of thing, and she told Father Dowling as much.
    â€œHer aunt is of the same opinion.”
    â€œOf course I’m no judge. I understand they were well received.”
    â€œDo the Bernados strike you as a promising topic for a novel?”
    Aha. Marie would have thought less of herself if she had not put two and two together. Eleanor had come to express concern about her niece Jessica. Jessica was a novelist. Now he wondered if the Bernardo family could inspire a novel. It was as plain as the nose on your face. Eleanor was worried that Jessica would stir up curiosity about the way Alfred Wygant had died.
    But the moment of triumph was brief. How could Marie not sympathize with Eleanor’s reluctance to think that her husband had ended his own life? A suicide presents the ultimate pastoral problem. Of course Placidus would have buried Judas Iscariot with a solemn high requiem Mass. What would Father Dowling have done? It was unnerving to think that in this he would have been indistinguishable from Placidus. But after all, what did anyone know for sure? The deceased deserves the benefit of the doubt if anyone does.
    When the call came from the hospital telling her that Fulvio Bernardo had been brought in, having suffered a stroke, Marie exercised similar latitude. No need to tell Father Dowling that Fulvio had not darkened the door of a church in living memory. The call came from the son, Andrew.
    â€œMy father is in intensive care at St. Mark’s. My mother wants a priest to see him.”
    Marie brought the word to Father Dowling, and within ten minutes he was on his way to the hospital.

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    Andrew took Jessica in his arms in the waiting room of intensive care, and she assumed the worst had happened.