Triple Pursuit by Ralph McInerny Page B

came. What would a pastor
say if he knew his housekeeper was swooning over the songs of her girlhood while the soft and intimate voice of Jack Gallagher spoke in her ear or sang along with those immortals that once had been? Marie had been reminded of these things the night of the dance, but she had wondered if she had felt as foolish as the old women who oohed and aahed over Jack Gallagher. Desmond O’Toole had been, in his way, better, using his own voice at least, and if his interpretations were echoes of familiar ones, they were not mimicry as Gallagher’s were.
    â€œIf I had known he was to be here I would have bought a ticket to the dance myself.”
    â€œStella, it was a very successful affair. We actually made money on it.”
    â€œDid you charge extra for the fight?”
    This was unworthy of Stella. Marie preferred her going gaga over Jack Gallagher than constantly alluding to the way the evening had ended. Thank God there had been no word of it in the newspapers, as there surely would have been if the prosecutor had decided to act on the matter. Jack Gallagher’s stock had plummeted in Marie’s estimate when it became clear that he had taken the matter to the police. But Cy Horvath had come and satisfied himself that there was nothing serious enough to merit attention. Nor had Jack Gallagher put in an appearance at the parish center since that memorable night. And Austin Rooney, though a frequent presence, seemed to have distanced himself from Maud, putting Desmond back in the running.
    â€œAre you thinking of leaving Sacred Heart, Stella?”
    â€œWhy do you ask?”
    â€œI’m just asking.”
    Stella had sat forward. “Are you thinking of retiring?”
    â€œRetiring! At my age? Don’t be ridiculous.”
    After that, the visit was not what it had been and Marie was not at all sorry when Stella sighed and said it was time to get back to the salt mines. The suggestion of retirement took Marie upstairs to her little apartment where she tried to surprise her reflection in the mirror,
walking past it and throwing a quick glance, as if she might catch herself not looking. How old did Stella imagine she was? But the truth was that Marie Murkin was the age of many of the regulars at the parish center. Nonetheless, in her own mind she was fifty-five and she meant to remain that age forever. Her joints ached and her limbs were not as agile as they had been but she prided herself on keeping these signs of age hidden from the pastor and all others. Retirement! She intended to die with her boots on. The only way she would leave St. Hilary’s was in a box.
    It was in this testy frame of mind that she came downstairs and found the ineffable Tuttle at the door.
    â€œIs the boss home, Mrs. Murkin?”
    â€œHow may I help you?”
    â€œI meant the other boss.”
    â€œFather Dowling is making a day of recollection.”
    â€œA day of recollection. How I envy the man. Most of us could use a day of forgetfulness.”
    â€œSpeak for yourself, Mr. Tuttle.”
    Once, the little lawyer had had the gall to entertain an amorous interest in Mrs. Murkin, which suggested he would have lost his shirt guessing ages in a carnival. For all that and for all her starchy manner, Tuttle’s lapse into romance had softened the housekeeper toward him. It gave credence to her view that her remaining single had been a matter of refusing a series of offers. Not that she could forget the absent Mr. Murkin, gone God-knows-where so many years ago, without so much as a note of farewell. Sometimes Marie imagined that he had been shanghaied and had been serving all these years as a slave on some communist vessel. He had been in the Navy when Marie met him. Or had he fallen into the Fox River the worse for drink and been swept away by the tide, eaten by fish, his bones scattered along the riverbed from here to Aurora? These macabre thoughts were preferable to the apparent truth