Precious Blood(57)

“You mean they’ll think I’m tied down by family life, just like Judy Eagan?”

“Is Judy Eagan tied down by family life?”

“No.” Peg smiled wanly. “Judy thinks I am. At least, that’s what she always says. Andy used to say it, too.”

“Do you want to get out of here, Mrs. Monaghan? Do you want me to go drill some sense into the Colchester police?”

Peg looked at him, long and curiously, as if she were searching for something in his face. Then she looked away and put her hand on the top of the bulge under her jumper. Something was jumping around in there, active and impatient and feeling too confined.

“No,” Peg said. “That’s all right, Mr. Demarkian. I’d rather stay here and get it over with. Kath called my sister to come and look after my kids. I don’t have any place I have to be this afternoon.”

“This afternoon isn’t likely to get it over with. Especially if…”

“If it turns out Andy was murdered? Kath thinks he was, you know. She told me.”

“What do you think?”

Peg shot a quick look at the visible tip of Andy Walsh’s head and as quickly looked away. “I keep wondering who would want to murder Andy Walsh,” she said. “A lot of people didn’t like him, but nobody really hated him. Not even the Cardinal. And he was so harmless.”

“I don’t think the Cardinal would agree with that.”

“Oh, the Cardinal would be talking theologically. I suppose Andy was practically a heretic. I know he was a schismatic—I mean somebody who denies the authority of the Pope. Not that Andy ever said that in so many words. He wouldn’t have. But he did go on and on about the Pope.”

“I’ve heard.”

“But Andy was harmless on a personal level,” Peg said. “This isn’t medieval Italy. People don’t kill each other over theology these days, except maybe in Islamic countries. I don’t even think Andy cared about theology much. It was just sort of beside the point with him. He just liked to—twit people.”

“Didn’t the people he twitted get angry?”

“Oh, yes.” Peg laughed. It was a very real laugh, and she hurried to muffle it behind her hands. “He gave this homily about liberals once. Mario Cuomo was campaigning for Governor and he came to St. Agnes’s for Mass. I don’t remember why. But Andy got up and he started saying, ‘I don’t believe in social welfare programs. I think they’re bad for the country and bad for the people they serve. I think they should be abolished. But I am a liberal. There is room enough in liberalism for every shade of opinion.’ It was because of Cuomo and the abortion thing, you know. Because of all that stuff about ‘I am a Catholic but I think people should get state money for abortions.’ He had a really good eye for the kinks in things. But it only goes to prove what I said.”

“What of what you said?”

“That Andy wasn’t serious. Theologically or philosophically or morally or however you put it.”

“What you just described to me sounds very serious,” Gregor said. “In fact, it not only sounds serious, it sounds intelligent. From what I’ve heard about Father Walsh so far, it surprises me.”

“It would have surprised me, too,” Peg said, “if he’d really meant it. Which he didn’t. He wasn’t exactly pro-life, you know.”

“You mean Andy Walsh was in favor of abortion?”

“Oh, no. He wouldn’t have gone that far. That might have gotten him removed from the parish. He just wasn’t anti. It was all part of the fact that he didn’t really believe in sin.”

Gregor stood up. He had been kneeling for what felt like forever. His bones were beginning to creak. Peg scooted in along the pew and he sat down beside her.

“This gets stranger and stranger,” he said. “How does a Catholic priest not believe in sin?”

Peg stretched. “Oh, a lot of Catholics these days don’t really believe in sin. Even some of the ones who think they do. What I’ve been trying to tell you, though, is that with Andy the twitting made sense. He’d find out something really awful about somebody, some hypocritical thing. Andy always got very amused by hypocrites. He’d find out some big temperance person drank himself to sleep at night or one of the chastity-is-everything crusaders was having an affair with her boss and he’d—I don’t know how to put it. He wouldn’t tell, if you see what I mean. He’d never expose anybody, the way some priests would if they found out something like that about someone and they hadn’t heard it in Confession. He wouldn’t demand a confrontation, either. He’d just—twit.”