Gregor looked at his watch. “It’s only eight-fifteen. Surely he’ll be back by ten.”
“If I know Andy, he’ll be back at ten. On the dot. That way, he’ll get out of all the dirty work, and he won’t have time to talk to the Cardinal. Judy Eagan won’t even have a chance to kill him.”
Judy Eagan. Gregor ran the name through the river of names O’Bannion had poured out on him during their telephone discussions and came up with an identification. “Judy Eagan is president of the Parish Council?”
“That’s right. You may have seen her this morning. She’s this blond woman in a red coat. She’s being dragged all over the courtyard by a goat.”
“A goat,” Gregor said. “I’m glad you told me about that. I was beginning to think I was—”
“Seeing things? Well, you’re not. It was all Andy’s idea. Judy had to drive out to Knot Hill Farm this morning and pick it up. Knot Hill Farm is this place where they train animals for commercials and things.”
“What’s the goat for?”
“I don’t know,” Boyd said, looking depressed. “Andy never tells me anything. Andy practically doesn’t talk to me. Anyway, you can be sure it’s nothing good.”
“I have heard that Father Walsh has something of a reputation.”
“Oh, he’s got a reputation, all right, but that isn’t it. The problem is, he’s doing everything else much too right today.”
“What do you mean?”
Declan Boyd sat down on the nearest couch. “Well,” he said, “take the altar girls. We’re not supposed to have altar girls. Rome says we’re not, and the Cardinal is very tight with Rome. So usually, especially if Andy knows the Cardinal’s going to be there or somebody from the Cardinal’s staff is going to be there, he has altar girls. It’s the same with women altar servers. Extraordinary ministers, they call them. According to Rome, you’re not supposed to have anyone but a priest handing out Communion except in dire emergencies, and even if the world is coming to an end you’re not supposed to have women. So—”
“Father Walsh always has women?”
“Always,” Declan Boyd said. “He was supposed to have them today, too, but he canceled them before he left for his talk show. I take that back. He told me to cancel them, which I did. Leave it to Andy to get somebody else to take his flak.”
“Were the altar girls really that upset about not being allowed to serve?” Gregor asked. “Living this close to the Cathedral, they must have some idea what the official policy is.”
“It isn’t the altar girls I’m taking flak from. A lot of the ones Andy asked had to turn him down anyway. Their parents wouldn’t let them serve once they knew the Cardinal was coming. It’s the nuns I’ve got problems with. Andy always leaves the training of the altar servers up to the nuns. Which he isn’t supposed to do, either, by the way.”
“I’m surprised he doesn’t hand the job over to you.”
“He doesn’t hand anything over to me. He made it clear from the day I got here that he thought I was an idiot, and he hasn’t changed his mind. When I say Mass, he stands in the back of the church and practically holds up cue cards.”
“And the nuns?”
“Sister Benedict Marie nearly bit my head off,” Declan Boyd said gloomily. “Any minute now, Sister Scholastica is going to call up and threaten to cut my throat. And I don’t blame her. This would be bad enough with an ordinary Mass, and this is no ordinary Mass.”
Gregor smiled. “Not with a goat, it’s not.”
“Even without the goat, it’s not.” Declan Boyd shook his head. “You’re not Catholic, so maybe you don’t know. This is the day the priest is supposed to wash the feet.”
Actually, Gregor did know, at least about the washing of the feet. He hadn’t realized it took place on Holy Thursday, or that it was part of Mass and not a separate rite. Twelve men were chosen from the congregation to represent the apostles. The priest then poured water on the bare feet of each one and dried them off with a cloth. As Gregor understood it, it was a commemoration of Christ’s self-humiliation on the night of the Last Supper.
“What worries me about the washing of the feet,” Boyd said, “is that Andy never seemed to be doing anything strange with it. Not even at the beginning. Last year, he only washed the feet of women.”
“And you’re not supposed to wash the feet of women at all?”
“People think it’s sexist,” Boyd said, “but it isn’t, really. It’s supposed to be a reenactment of the scene at the Last Supper. And all the apostles at the Last Supper were men. Having women up there is like, I don’t know, doing King Lear and casting Jane Fonda in the title role without giving an explanation.”