The Brothers' Lot - Kevin Holohan [99]
Sheehan sat down in front of Brother Loughlin’s desk without taking off his coat. He placed his black felt hat carefully on his right knee and listened carefully to the ticking of the clock on the wall, and to Loughlin’s silence.
“Brother Loughlin, it has come to my attention that Father Mulvey’s researches with Mr. Madden were somewhat unorthodox, to say the least. I trust you saw today’s The Way Forward?”
“I’m afraid I didn’t really get a chance to look at it.”
“Then it might interest you to know that it carried the grim story of Mr. Marcus Madden’s demise. The unfortunate man apparently hanged himself from a channel marker in Howth Harbor last night.”
“God bless us and save us, but that’s terrible. The poor man!”
“It is a sad event. It may also interest you to know that Father Mulvey delivered to me some pages of the revised Life of the Venerable Saorseach O’Rahilly which Mr. Madden had given him only this morning. A curious occurrence given that Mr. Madden hanged himself at least twelve hours before allegedly giving these pages to Father Mulvey. One would imagine that receiving written pages from a corpse at the end of a rope would be the type of thing one would comment on to one’s superior, would one not?” Sheehan smiled mirthlessly.
Loughlin stared straight into the priest’s small, intelligent eyes. They gave no indication of how much or how little he actually knew, but the overall impression was one of deep wells of information and knowledge that he would share or not according to his wider purposes. The Brother’s armpits grew hot and sticky under his cassock.
“I’m sure you would agree, Brother Loughlin, that this is a disquieting development in the preparation of a disposition for a miracle. It is, how could one put it, suspicious at best, would you not agree?”
Loughlin scurried through the twisted half-lit passageways of his mind hoping to find some appropriate response. Indignation? Angry shock? Hurt and shock at being deceived by Mulvey? He turned briefly into a dead end of dissimulated righteous rage and helplessly backed out of it.
“Uhm, yes indeed, Father,” he managed.
Sheehan nodded solemnly. He picked an invisible piece of lint from the band of his hat and dropped it to the floor. “Did you know that Mr. Madden had turned into a disreputable drunkard and Father Mulvey himself had taken on rewriting The Life of Venerable Saorseach, Brother?”
“I had no idea!” rued Brother Loughlin, delighted with the chance to say something truthful that could only damage someone else.
Again Sheehan nodded. “Did you know that Brother Boland cut his hand on the night of the oratory incident?”
Loughlin detected a derisory italicizing of the words oratory incident that made him very uneasy. He looked carefully at the figure of Venerable Saorseach O’Rahilly on his desk as if trying to remind himself of exactly how he had broken the statuette and smeared it with his own blood. He wanted to be clear on exactly what he was concealing from Sheehan.
“I can’t say that I noticed. We were all very perturbed. In a panic, shock, you know, like.”
“I am certain you were,” replied Sheehan. He joined his hands as if for prayer and put the tips of his index fingers to his lips. “I am not quite sure how to say this, Brother Loughlin, but say it I must. I believe that there is more, or rather less, of a divine nature to this so-called miracle than meets the eye. I should not like to have to defend it in front of the Bishop. I would be duty bound to voice my misgivings about the authenticity and, well, if there were an antagonistic investigation, who knows where it might lead?”
Loughlin shifted uncomfortably under Sheehan’s unwavering gaze. Did he know or was he fishing? Would it be best to own up now or try to brave it out? What if Sheehan were to have an accident? Would the process go ahead then? Even if they let the whole thing slip back into the quiet, would Sheehan come after him for his part in falsifying it? What had he already done to Mulvey? What the hell was that racket outside?
The office door burst open