Aisle of the Dead Read online

“…and that was almost two hundred years ago.” Father Sieger concluded his brief history of St. Alban’s.

  “How interesting,” Pat commented and meant it. He had not missed one word the priest had said. “I look forward to visiting your church one day soon.”

  “That would be nice. Yes, I should thoroughly enjoy showing off our church, especially to someone like yourself who would obviously appreciate it.”

  “You said on the phone, Father, that you knew my Aunt Molly. She is not a member of Saint Alban’s.”

  “No, no, but… I’m sure you’ll agree with me Molly Montgomary knows just about everyone in Philadelphia.”

  Pat laughed. “Yes, and I think everyone knows her.”

  “I served on a historic commission with her recently. She is quite knowledgeable on the subject of architecture.”

  “Almost a student of the subject.”

  “And of human nature. Frightfully so. She took me aside a couple of days ago after one of our meetings and said she was worried about me. Said she knew it was none of her business, but asked if there was anything wrong.”

  “Dear Aunt Molly can read right through anyone. She brought me up and, believe me, it wasn’t easy going through adolescence with someone who could read your mind. No one can ever fool Molly.”

  Father Sieger nodded. “I can believe that. And it must be equally difficult to resist her questions. Next thing I knew, I was admitting there was a… were, problems. She urged me to come see you and your sister immediately. I hate to interrupt your vacation like this, but Molly insisted it would be all right.”

  “If Aunt Molly insisted, then she thought it important. I--we--would like to hear more about it.”

  “I probably shouldn’t waste your time,” Father Sieger protested. “It really is nothing, not that terrible, actually. I shouldn’t have called. I shouldn’t have driven from Philadelphia down here to Atlantic City, I guess. Really.” He made a motion as though to rise from his chair.

  Pat was used to people having second thoughts when it came to using their services. He had become quite expert on reassuring them, especially on their first visit. “I’m only sorry Phillis is not here. It’s important that we both hear your story.”

  “Miss Montgomary thought you and your sister might be able to help,” the priest said. “If you’ll forgive me, I would like to ask… ask… what are your.…”

  “What are our qualifications?” Pat helped him.

  Father Sieger seemed embarrassed.

  “None.” Pat smiled. “We have no qualifications. We are not detectives. We don’t have licenses. We don’t carry guns or tail people or stake out suspects. All we do have, Phillis and I, is a bit of common sense and a desire to help others, sprinkled with a bit of curiosity. In Phillis’ case, it’s more than just a sprinkling. She can’t stand not knowing the why, who, and wherefore of a thing which interests her.

  “A while back, we got ourselves involved with a murder, right in our own back yard. Our neighbor was murdered on our patio. Before we knew it, we were involved with the police, being followed by a strange man, and in an empty house late at night with a killer. In our own way, we were instrumental--especially Phillis--in apprehending the murderer. Since then, we’ve been trying, when we can, when their problems seem to warrant it, to help others. We’ve helped a number of people, everything from finding a pet mongrel who was dognapped, to discovering the whereabouts of a pair of maiden aunts who hadn’t been seen in thirty years, to solving several brutal murders in the gay community which had the police stymied. There’s precious little we won’t tackle, if the circumstances are right, and we do make it a point to take on special clients. By that, I mean people whose problems can’t be solved through ordinary means, such as the police, or a lawyer. It might sound like bragging, but we prefer to take on cases that seem impossible or hopeless.”

  “Dear me, I never thought of my problems as being impossible or hopeless or.…” Father Sieger began to object. “You won’t want to hear what I came to say.”

  “Yes, we will. You may or may not be impossible or hopeless, but you come with the best recommendation in the world: Aunt Molly.”

  “I appreciate that.”

  “I would prefer Phil and I hear what you have to say together. Why don’t you let us decide just how terrible your problems are? Who knows, maybe just talking to someone about them will help put them all in a new perspective. At the moment, I have no idea where my sister is. Shopping? Maybe. On the beach? Very definitely a possibility. With half the lifeguards on the island interested in her, she could be just about anywhere. Can you stay in the city this evening? We--Phil and I--would like to hear your story together. I’m sure we’re free this evening.”

  “I hadn’t planned, but--”

  “Join us for dinner.” Pat reached for the telephone. He quickly dialed a number. “Hi, Mattie, any vacancies?” He put his hand over the mouthpiece. “Mattie’s a good friend of ours and she has a very nice guesthouse on the beach in Ventnor and you could stay there this afternoon. Terribly discreet and all that. That way, you can have dinner with us and decide later whether you wish to go back to Philadelphia tonight or stay over. Maybe it would be wiser to go back in the morning.”

  Father Sieger nodded.

  “Save a single,” Pat said into the phone, then replaced the receiver. “We’ll pick you up at seven-thirty, if that’s all right with you. And in the meantime, relax. Take a walk along the beach. It’s so beautiful in Ventnor. We’ll have plenty of time this evening to talk, and who knows, we may be able to get to the bottom of it all before you have to go back to Philadelphia.” He stood up and held out his hand.

  Father Sieger took Pat’s hand. “Thank you. I feel better already. Yes, I think just getting away from it all, coming here, has already made a difference.”

  As soon as Father Sieger left, Pat walked over and knocked on the door across the room.

  “Come in,” a voice called out.

  He entered the adjoining room. “I heard you come in a little while ago,” he said.

  “Did I hear voices?” Phillis Toner asked her brother. “Or shouldn’t I ask?” She was wearing a robe over her bathing suit. She was shorter than Pat and had the Toner auburn hair rather than the Montgomary jet-black hair. The plumb color of her eyes was the thing everyone noticed first about Phillis. After that, they usually saw that she was shapely, and possessed of a beautiful face and a bewitching smile.

  Pat explained about his visitor of the afternoon and the nature of that visit.

  “So, Aunt Molly’s been up to her usual good deeds,” Phillis said and laughed. “Leave it to her. Not even the rector of Saint Alban’s is safe from her sharp eye. What do you suggest we do about this priest in trouble?”

  “I asked him to join us for dinner. Okay with you?”

  “Sure.”

  “If you saw him, I think you’d agree it might be serious,” he went on as he walked over and stood at the window. “He needs help, a good deal of help, if one of my feelings is right. I suspect he’s on the verge of a total breakdown.”

  “And what makes you think we can help him?”

  “I don’t necessarily think we can, but we can at least listen to him. If someone doesn’t help him and help him soon, I hate to think what might happen to him.”

  “Here we go again,” Phillis said good-naturedly.

  CHAPTER III

  At seven-thirty, Pat and Phillis pulled up in front of the large ocean-front home of Mathilde Alte in Ventnor, a town which shares Absecon Island with Atlantic City. The house was a classic example of Art Deco architecture, built in the mid-thirties with rectangles and circles of stucco intended to blend in with the white sand of Ventnor’s beach. Many years ago, an uncle of Mathilde’s died and left the house to her, his only heir. Even though she was just out of school in Germany, she pulled up roots, left her family, and came to America. With only the house and little money, she soon turned it into a moneymaking guesthouse for those wanting b
oth the ocean and discretion.

  In honor of their sacerdotal guest, Phillis was wearing a simple, modestly cut, green linen frock. Pat was wearing summer whites with a light blue blazer and striped bo’s’n shirt. They ran up the front steps and Pat rang the bell, then opened the screened door. “Mattie, where is you?” he yelled out in his best falsetto.

  Mathilde came through a pair of swinging doors at the end of the downstairs hall, brushing back her short-cropped blonde hair with a hand, which also held a long wooden spoon. She was wearing an apron from which a cloud of baking flour billowed as she walked. She threw her arms around both of them at the same time, then kissed each. “Darlinks, you look mar-vel-ous, just like the front cover of J. C. Penney’s summer catalogue,” she said in a fake vaudeville German accent.

  “Whatever you do, don’t encourage her,” Pat said to his sister.

  Mathilde stopped smiling and poked her wooden spoon in Pat’s stomach. With a jerk of her head, she indicated she wanted her two friends to follow her towards the back of the house. She pushed open the swinging doors and went into the kitchen.

  “Something smells delicious,” Phillis commented.

  “So, what gives with this rabbi you two dumped on me this afternoon?” she asked as she leaned against a counter and folded her arms in front of her generous bosom.

  “He’s a priest,” Pat corrected her. “But we wouldn’t expect a heathen like yourself to know the difference. If it isn’t something you can cook, you don’t…. Just what’s wrong with him?”

  “He’s as jumpy as Elsa, the dachshund bitch I once had, remember? If you look at this guy, he’ll scream. Closet case?”

  Pat shook his head. “We don’t think so. He evidently has some pretty serious problems. We don’t know what they are, but we intend to find out before this evening is over.”

  “Gut. Fill me in later with all the details,” Mathilde said with more than a little exaggerated glee, rubbing her hands together. “Nothing I like better than to hear a member of the clergy is having trouble.”

  “You know perfectly well,” Pat said, “that anything Father Sieger tells us we can’t discuss with you or with anyone else. Strictly confidential and all that. We must get going. Reservations at Oscar’s. Would you call your guest for us?”

  “Glad to. But first, there’s something I must ask you.” She shot glances at each of them as she turned towards the large butcher-block table in the middle of the floor and went back to kneading a large mass of dough. “Tell me, what is the very last thing in the world you’d expect a priest to be carrying, to have with him?”

  “I have an idea what you might think it should be,” Pat said. “But I give up. What’s the last thing a priest should be carrying?”

  “A gun.”

  “A what?” Phillis exclaimed. “You mean…?”

  Mathilde nodded. “Yes, Liebschen, a gun. If he wasn’t a friend of you two, I would have asked him to leave when I saw it.”

  “Are you sure?” Pat asked. “Where did you see it?”

  “In his little black bag, there’s where,” she answered as she covered the pastry dough with a damp cloth. “I saw it by accident. After I showed him upstairs, I discovered that dummkopf I hired never put clean towels in the room. I went to get them and wasn’t gone more than three minutes at the most when I returned to his room with those towels. I knocked and opened the door and went in and there he was standing in front of the dresser, his little black bag open and tilted back towards the mirror. I don’t know if he saw me seeing it in the mirror, but there it was plain as day. A gun!”

  Pat looked at his sister. “It seems our priest doesn’t rely solely upon the Providence of God to protect him. Thanks, Mattie. We really do appreciate it, and don’t worry about that gun being in the house. We’ll take care of it during dinner. Besides, he’ll be leaving in the morning, if he stays the night. Now, we really do have to leave.”

  They went back to the front of the house while Mathilde went upstairs to summon Father Sieger. She returned a few minutes later with the priest coming down the staircase behind her.

  “This is my sister, Phillis Toner,” Pat said as he introduced her. “Shall we?”

  Fifteen minutes later, they entered Oscar’s Restaurant with its walls decorated with photographs, playbills, and other memorabilia of Oscar Wilde, and were shown to their table.

  Phillis and Pat were now staring at the priest, waiting for him to continue, to tell them about the noises--the noises in the middle of the night at Saint Alban’s rectory.

  CHAPTER IV

  Pat and Phillis had done justice to their dinners, but Father Sieger had only picked at his.

  “Noises, Father? What kind of noises?” Pat asked after Hal had cleared the table and poured coffee.

  “Noises.” Sieger cleared his throat twice. “Noises in the night. And footsteps. Footsteps on the staircase leading up to my room. It’s an old building, the rectory, and when I first moved in, I experienced something quite frightening. You see, at night in winter, when you turn down the heat--and I always turn it down, can’t stand sleeping in an overheated room--the old wood, especially in the staircase, begins to cool off, and creaks as it shrinks and since heat rises and the wood on the lower steps cools off sooner, the sound of the wood contracting gradually comes up the stairs. It sounds just like someone coming slowly, deliberately up the stairs. I soon got used to it, after being quite frightened the first few nights.

  “But this was nothing like that. These were footsteps, believe me, heavy deliberate footsteps. The first time it happened, I was awakened from a sound sleep. I lay there for a few moments, listening, then told myself that it was my two cats playing on the staircase or maybe it was our assistant coming in late and I rolled over and tried to go back to sleep. I almost fell asleep when I remembered Father Paul was away for several days. I lay there for some time, then they started up again, this time reaching the top step. I jumped out of bed and ran over and threw open my bedroom door. It’s no more than a dozen or so feet from my room to the top of the staircase. No one was there. I was determined I was going to get to the bottom of this nonsense once and for all.

  “The next night, I took a thermos of hot coffee upstairs with me and sat in a chair just inside my bedroom door. I stayed awake the entire night, never fell asleep even for a second. Nothing happened. Nor the following night. Over the next few weeks footsteps on the staircase happened three or four times, exactly as the first time. I was reaching the point where I was afraid to go to bed at night. Two weeks ago, I was awakened in the middle of the night, around three-thirty. This time, I leaped out of bed and made it to the hallway in record time. Again, nothing. I searched the entire rectory, all three floors and basement. Nothing seemed out of place, no indication of forced entry or the presence of anyone; nothing disturbed anywhere. Defeated, I returned to my bedroom and sat down on the edge of the bed, trying so very desperately to fathom it all out, to come up with some explanation, no matter how far-fetched it might seem, that would help me understand what was happening. Finally, out of sheer fatigue, I leaned back on the pillow and pulled my legs up onto the bed. I was weary and it felt wonderful to stretch out full length on the bed. I reached down and drew the blankets up about me. I always sleep on the left side of the bed. I now stretched out my arm, my right arm, and if you had been anywhere within a mile of the rectory that night, you might very well have heard my scream.”

  “What happened?” Pat felt the skin crawl along his temples.

  “There was someone in bed with me. I felt the body. Warm, breathing, alive. I think I screamed again and jumped--no, fell--out of bed, the covers wrapped about me mummy-fashion in my attempt to escape. I knocked over the lamp in my fumbling efforts to turn it on. Lying on the floor, the lamp next to me, I finally succeeded in getting it to turn on. Light filled the room. I extricated myself from the blankets and pulled myself up and stared at the bed. There, in front of me, was--”

  “Will there be anything els
e? Dessert? After-dinner drink?” Hal asked in his most professional tone as he stood next to the table, running a pencil up and down the column of figures on their check.

  Pat looked up at him and through clenched teeth said, “No, nothing more, Hal. If we want anything, we’ll call you.”

  Phillis and Pat stared intently at the priest.

  “Nothing,” Father Sieger said and sighed.

  “Nothing?” Phillis raised her voice. “What do you mean, ‘nothing’?”

  “Precisely that. There was nothing in my bed. I stood there, I don’t know how long, unaware how cold the room was or I was. Finally, I think I must have slumped down on the floor, for I awoke several hours later propped against the bed, quite cold. That day, I went to see my doctor and told him I thought I needed something for my nerves. I couldn’t bring myself to tell him of the things that had been happening. I guess I secretly feared he would have me put away ‘for a rest,’ as they politely say when referring to a priest who needs professional help, and that is the very last thing I want or need.”

  “But you fear for your life.” Pat had been studying the priest with an intensity that seemed to penetrate to the very soul of the cleric.

  “Why…? Oh, the gun. Mathilde told you, I see. Yes, I’ve been carrying it ever since.…” His voice trailed off. He seemed deeply lost in thought.

  Pat and Phillis looked at one another again. She shrugged. “Ever since what, Father?”

  “Uh? Oh, yes, yes. I was just thinking. This is a gay restaurant, isn’t’ it?”

  “Does that bother you?” Pat asked.

  “Good heavens, no,” Father Sieger replied. “You forget Saint Alban’s is in the heart of downtown Philadelphia. We have a very large gay membership in our parish. No, it’s just that I did not realize it at first. Guess I was too engrossed in what I wanted to tell you.”

  “You said, ‘ever since.’ Ever since what?” Pat pressed him.

  The priest stared at him as though not comprehending.