Read The Death of an Irish Sinner for Free Online Page A

showed herself to have had a well-structured face with a long, thin, somewhat aquiline nose, prominent cheekbones, and a strong but not overly large chin.
    Her skin was sallow, and her hair—brilliant in the full spring sun—had retained the pattern of waves that McGarr now remembered from the press portrait and the photos on the dust covers of her books. They pictured Stanton as a much younger woman.
    The screen went dark again.
    “How could that happen?” McGarr asked.
    “I don’t know.”
    “Could you slow it down, please?”
    The priest complied, and for the next few minutes or so they watched the dark screen, until it suddenly brightened again, and there lay Mary-Jo Stanton’s corpse as Father Fred had found it. And as it now was.
    “They put something over the lens of the camera,” the priest concluded. “Watch.” Tapping more keys, Father Fred backed up the tape so slowly that they could make out the material of what appeared to be a jacket with a label being pulled over the lens.
    “Where’s that camera located?” McGarr asked.
    “On the garden fence.”
    “What would it take to cover it up?”
    “A tall person or a ladder. In back of the fence is M. J.’s gardening shed. There’s a pruning ladder in there.”
    “I’ll need this tape and all the others.”
    “Of course,” the priest replied, leaning toward the bank of monitoring screens. “Oh, and look—the door into Mary-Jo’s floor is ajar.” He turned to McGarr withfurrowed brow. “Do you think that whoever…could also have entered her apartment?”
    McGarr did not know what to think, never having been in the apartment or even at the door. But he wondered if he was being led on by the man who, only a scant quarter hour earlier, had asked him not to report the cause of his longtime companion’s death.
    “Who else could get into her quarters?”
    “Nobody, only Mary-Jo.”
    “Who could get in here?” McGarr meant the cramped monitoring room.
    “Only Mary-Jo and I. Only our cards allow access.”
    “Who else has one of those?” McGarr pointed to the remote device that had opened the gate and was, as reported by Father Fred, also an alarm.
    “Again—only we two.”
    “Where did Mary-Jo keep her two security devices?”
    “The card she kept on a lanyard around her neck. You can’t move around the house or grounds without one. But about this”—he raised his remote device—
    “she was most forgetful.”
    McGarr glanced toward the screen. “Did you notice either item on her person?”
    The priest shook his head. “I’m sorry, I didn’t. I saw only the… cilicio . As for this”—he waved the remote device—“it might be under her, given the way she’s positioned.”
    One thing was now plain: If Father Fred had not murdered her himself, then the killer must have removed the pass card from the body to have entered her quarters. At least if the facts were as reported by the priest.
    “How often did Mary-Jo leave her door open?”
    “Never, not even unintentionally. She was most private. Leaving her quarters, she locked the door. Always.”
    “Who else knows of her death?”
    “Only you. That’s why I could put forward the questions I asked you in the garden. And ask you again now.
    “Why do we have to sully the knowledge that the world has of Mary-Jo? Can’t we simply say that she died of natural causes, and then you and I can get to the bottom of this? I promise you, I’ll give you every help that I can, and you won’t regret extending the courtesy to us.”
    “Us?” McGarr asked.
    “Opus…” Father Fred paused. “Let’s just say those of us who loved her.”
    McGarr waited, but when no further explanation was offered, he pointed to the screen that displayed the open door. “Take me there.”

CHAPTER 6
    AT THE LAST flight of steps up to what amounted to the third and attic floor of the large house, McGarr touched the priest’s sleeve. “How long has she been living up here in—what did you call