Murder at the National Cathedral Read Online Free PDF Page A

had ridden his stationary bike, and had said his morning prayers. Now, as he stepped from the shower and vigorously began drying himself, he focused on the day ahead.
    The major event was to be the funeral of Adam Vickery, a former attorney general of the United States, scheduled for nine o’clock in the cathedral’s nave. Vickery and his wife, Doris, had been active in cathedral affairs for many years. Vickery had sat on the cathedral’s chapter—its “board of directors”—for the past seven years, and as head of the building fund had received deserved accolades for his deft handling of it. His death had been sudden and unexpected. Seemingly in the best of health, he’d been found slumped inertly over his desk three nights before, the victim, apparently, of a massive coronary.
    Now toweled dry, the bishop looked at his naked image in a full-length mirror in the rectory’s second-floor master bedroom. The enticing aroma of coffee drifted up from the kitchen. St. James heard his wife, Eileen, singing along with a popular song of another decade that came from a radio, a song the bishop began to hum although he couldn’t put a title to it. His wife would know the title
and
the words and carry the tune. He looked at himself in the mirror again and smiled; God had a reason for everything, even personal tragedy and sociological disaster, but what could possibly have been on His mind when He—okay, or
She
, the bishop reminded himself—decreed that in middle age weight must settle in the midsection? St. James was the same weight he’d been while attending the Yale Divinity School almost thirty years before, but the same number of pounds had found an unwelcome redistribution center between his chest and his hips. Maybe I’d better start riding more of it off—or up—on the bicycle that goes nowhere, he thought.
    He dressed, joined Eileen in the kitchen, kissed her cheek, and ate the scrambled eggs and dry toast she’d set before him.
The Washington Post
was beside his plate at the table. No need to look for the Religion section; it wasn’t Saturday. Then again, politics was the city’s religion, and there was always plenty of
that
in the
Post
each day. Which was not to say that religion—the spiritual variety—didn’t play a role in the nation’s capital. Lord knows there were enough prayer breakfasts every morning in Washington to save a regiment of souls. Prayer breakfasts in the White House were very much in vogue with the new administration, and the Cabinet, the House, the Senate, myriad governmental agencies, and even the military kicked off their days with a few words to a Higher Authority.
    St. James had once delivered a sermon based upon the theory that religion played less of a role in Washington than in almost any other city in the world. He used the numerousguidebooks to Washington as an example, pointing out that they scarcely mentioned the city’s religious life, and suggested that an interdenominational committee be formed to encourage better coverage in future editions. Nothing ever came of it, which did not surprise him.
    What really bothered him (although he did not give a sermon on this) was that Washington’s churches were usually better known for
whom
they attracted rather than for the quality of salvation being offered. President John F. Kennedy virtually put St. Matthew’s Cathedral “on the map” because of his frequent attendance there, and because it was where his funeral Mass had been conducted.
    Directly across from the White House, on Lafayette Square, stood St. John’s Episcopal Church, known as the “Church of the Presidents” because virtually every American president showed up there at least once, including Gerald Ford, who privately and understandably asked for divine wisdom while contemplating a pardon for Richard Nixon. Nixon, of course, enjoyed having the church and clergy come to him at the White House, as opposed to presidents Carter and Truman, who frequently