True Believers(38)
“Only that Bernadette Kelly died of arsenic poisoning, and that for some reason her husband is not likely to have been the one to have administered it.”
“Yes. That’s the core. That’s what started the further investigations. I must say I’m impressed with the police department for keeping what’s been going on as quiet as they have. But of course that can’t continue. In this country, the press has extraordinary access to the internal workings of government on every level.”
“Yes,” Gregor said.
“Do you know of a man named Scott Boardman?”
“No,” Gregor said.
“Mr. Boardman was a parishioner at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church and a homosexual. St. Stephen’s is directly across the street from St. Anselm’s. Later on the same morning that Martin Kelly brought his wife’s dead body into St. Anselm’s and killed himself, Scott Boardman was buried out of St. Stephen’s.”
“They thought it was a cocaine overdose,” Sister Scholastica said. “They just assumed it was. Except it wasn’t. It was arsenic, too. I’m sorry, Your Eminence.”
“Sister is understandably distressed,” the Cardinal Archbishop said. “We all are. Of course, the truth about Mr. Boardman’s death would have been known eventually—”
“I’m surprised it wasn’t known right away,” Gregor said. “There’s a law in this state that requires an autopsy after any suspicious death, and a drug overdose would have been treated as a suspicious death almost by definition”
“They did do an autopsy,” Scholastica said. “They just—”
“They allowed the funeral to go ahead even though they didn’t have the results of all their tests,” the Cardinal Archbishop said. “Mr. Boardman was well-known to the authorities. His habits were particularly well-known. And he had, apparently, been hospitalized several times for cocaine poisoning.”
“He was a mess,” Sister Scholastica said.
“There was also some concern,” the Cardinal Archbishop went on, “that if the funeral were delayed, rumors might spread that Mr. Boardman had died of AIDS. Nobody wanted the kind of situation that would cause, not even the medical examiner’s office—”
“Roy Phipps has his church on the same street,” Scholastica said. “He pickets. You know what I mean—”
“So they let the family rush the funeral,” Gregor said.
The Cardinal Archbishop sighed. “It wasn’t the family. The family had disowned him. It was Daniel Burdock, the pastor at St. Stephen’s. The family was Catholic, of course. The newspapers will have a field day with that one.”
“Is that what you’re worried about?” Gregor looked from the Cardinal Archbishop to Sister Scholastica and back again. “Because if it is, you know, I really can’t help you. I have a good deal of expertise in poisons. And I’m useful in matters of motive and in unraveling certain kinds of complications in a criminal investigation. But I’ve got no influence with the press. I can’t even affect the things they say about me.”
“The press isn’t what we want you for,” Scholastica said. “I’m sorry, Your Eminence. Twenty-five years of practicing interior and exterior silence, and now I can’t shut up.”
“I have two worries.” The Cardinal Archbishop ignored Scholastica as thoroughly as he ignored the pen holder on his desk. “One is that the pastor at St. Anselm’s, Father Robert Healy, is an open opponent of Dan Burdock’s treatment of homosexuals and homosexuality at St. Stephen’s. Dan is an interesting man in many ways, but he is a radical in theology on matters of sex and has made St. Stephen’s a haven for the sort of homosexual man who will be satisfied with nothing but the unqualified blessing of the Christian Church on homosexual conjugal union s. In order to protest that stand, Father Healy has preached several outspoken sermons, and given several uncompromising statements to the press, about the activities across the street from his church. And on one occasion he held a—a—”
“It’s called a pray-in,” Sister Scholastica said. “It’s sort of like a sit-in, except you kneel and pray instead of sit and sing.”
“Quite.” The Cardinal Archbishop looked pained.
“It’s really not anything at all like what Roy Phipps does,” Scholastica said. “It wasn’t even on St. Stephen’s property. It was right in St. Anselm’s Church. Mind you, I think it was a very bad idea, but that doesn’t mean—”