Corpus Christmas

Lowry paused and Sigrid said dryly, “You’ve omitted two people: Oscar Nauman and me.”

There was an interested silence.

“For the record, Professor Nauman and I were together during the pertinent time period. If it becomes necessary, I can supply corroboration. Question?”

“No, ma’am,” said Lowry.

“Moving on then.” Sigrid laid out the blowups Paula Guidry had made of the great hall on Thursday morning. “As you see, the ma

They went down Lowry’s list, from Jacob Munson-“That old guy?” said Elaine. “He may be old, but he’s feisty,” Jim told her-to Winston Reinicke. “Lainey has a theory about him,” Jim gri

Lieutenant Harald was not amused by their byplay. This was where she missed Tillie the most. By this time, he would have provided a timetable with each suspect’s movements and motives carefully logged.

“Has anyone heard when Tildon’s expected back?” she asked abruptly.

“They keep saying sometime after New Year’s,” said Matt. “I talked to him two days ago. He was supposed to go to Chuckie’s Christmas play last night, his first time out except to see the doctor.”

Elaine Albee gave Sigrid a sympathetic glance. “You miss him, too, right?”

“I miss his thoroughness,” she answered, with a pointed look at Eberstadt. “I don’t suppose Peters remembered that he was supposed to interview the Zajdowicz woman this morning.”

Eberstadt patted his pockets. “Yeah, he gave me the name of the place and the time. I wrote it down.”

He found the scrap of paper. “Haven Rock on Staten Island. They told him to come after eleven o’clock. That’s when the priest finishes confession. Want me to go?”

“No,” Sigrid decided. “I’ll do it.”

The rest home was in West New Brighton on the north side of Staten Island, so she took the ferry instead of driving to Brooklyn and crossing the Verrazano Bridge.

The sun had burned through the earlier clouds and even on this cold December day, the open rear deck of the boat held many camera-snapping tourists. The ferry still offered one of the most spectacular views of lower Manhattan; and although city lights made it much more breathtaking after dark, daytime wasn’t bad either, thought Sigrid. She stood close to a bulkhead out of the wind and watched the stretch of choppy gray water widen between boat and shore.

As the ferry moved out into upper New York Bay, away from the shelter of land, several passengers who had burbled about the smell of clean salty air abruptly fled inside to search for hot coffee.

Most cameras were pointed back toward the twin towers of the World Trade Center, but a few telephoto lenses were already focussing on the Statue of Liberty off to starboard. No one was paying attention to Brooklyn on the port side of the boat and Sigrid was stirred by a sudden memory of her Great-uncle Lars. He had often treated her and cousin Hilda to rides on the ferry that once ran between Brooklyn and Staten Island before the Verrazano Bridge was built.

If Albee or Lowry had been with her, she would have kept silent; but since she was alone, Sigrid turned to a nearby tourist and pointed toward what would still be the country’s fourth largest city if it hadn’t been a

“ Brooklyn,” she said.

The Japanese woman smiled and nodded and a couple of her friends looked up at the thin woman with inquiring faces.

“That tall building is the Williamsburgh Bank,” she said, imitating Great-uncle Lars’s clear didactic tone. “Five hundred and twelve feet high. The tallest four-sided clock in the world.”

“Ah!” said the women. They spoke to their men. A ripple went through the group, then fourteen cameras swung toward Brooklyn.

When Sigrid was escorted to the correct building, a priest was still working his way down Barbara Zajdowicz’s corridor, offering to hear those who wanted to confess and bestowing a quiet blessing on those who did not.

The guide with whom a receptionist at the main office had provided her was a white-haired resident, gossipy and plump and proud of his continued mobility into his ninth decade of life. As loquaciously proud of Haven Rock as if he were a majority stockholder and she a prospective customer, Mr. Hogarty described the various facilities: how residents usually began with an apartment, moved into a comfortable single room in this building when they needed medical monitoring and could no longer manage alone, and, if necessary, finished up in a medical ward for the totally bedridden.

“Me, I’m still in my own apartment,” Mr. Hogarty bragged, “but a lot of my friends are over here.”

“Here” was a clean-lined series of interlocking squares. The residential rooms reminded Sigrid of a solid block set down inside a square greenhouse. Each room opened onto the wide window-lined corridor, a common area hung with flowering baskets and green plants and made homey with clusters of sofas and easy chairs all along its length. It was a pleasant area and one that invited residents and their guests to sit and converse and look out at the small courtyard garden. The clear glass windows were curved to catch every ray of winter sun, and several of the people basking in the bright sunlight exchanged greetings with Sigrid’s guide when they passed.

As they found two unoccupied easy chairs and sat down to wait for the priest to emerge from Mrs. Zajdowicz’s room, Sigrid asked Mr. Hogarty if he knew the woman personally.

“Barb? Oh sure. See, she used to be in me and the wife’s canasta club, but then she had that first little stroke a couple of years ago and got religion and-” He broke off and gave a humorous shrug. “I mean, we’re all religious here. Me and the wife, that’s why we picked Haven Rock. Because it’s run by the Catholics, see? But when Barb had her stroke, even though it wasn’t a big one-well, you probably know how that can turn things on in your head that weren’t there before?”

Sigrid murmured noncommittally.

“Well, that’s what happened with Barb, see? So she quit playing cards and started going to confession every week and to mass every time it was offered. The wife said to me it was like being on retreat with the nuns, the way she talked; but the wife and her’d been friends ever since the begi

He shook his head. “Bad when the mind goes. The wife, she was sharp as a tack right up to the day she passed away. Beat me in cribbage that very morning, but Barb- Well, you’ll see. Although she’s usually pretty good after Father Francis has been here. You a friend of the family or something?”

“I didn’t think she had any family,” Sigrid parried.

“Well, she didn’t, far as I ever heard. Me and the wife, we both come from big families but we only had the two boys. Dick, he’s the oldest, he lives right here on Staten Island. Got grandchildren of his own, even. But not Barb. She just had a sister and brother and none of ’em ever had kids. None that lived anyhow.”

Sigrid’s mental ante

“Not her. She told the wife her and her husband couldn’t have babies. But seems like the sister had a couple of miscarriages or the baby died getting born or some female trouble like that. She never talked about it till after her first stroke. Least that’s when the wife first mentioned it to me, see, ’cause Barb’d get on these crying jags about those poor i