Nancy Atherton - Aunt Dimity's Christmas

“Snow again tonight,” the driver told me, making conversation while we waited at a stoplight. “Never seen so much snow in all my days here. Makes me wish I could go home again.” He slouched resignedly and inched the cab forward as the light changed.

Eventually, we turned onto a dimly lit street lined with massive apartment buildings. I gazed up at a solitary window framed with blinking Christmas lights and ducked when a hail of snowballs battered the cab’s roof. The driver rolled his window down and bellowed at a pair of scruffy teenagers, who made predictable hand gestures and fled into the darkness between two buildings, laughing maniacally.

“This is no place for you, missus,” said the driver, closing his window.

“I’ll be fine once we get to Saint Joseph’s,” I told him. “I’m meeting with the vicar.”

“Ah, Father Raywood.” The driver nodded. “He’s a good man. Too good for this place. I keep telling my sister to leave, but does she listen? Not likely. Here you are, missus.”

And suddenly, there was Saint Joseph’s, a redbrick Victorian pile surrounded on three sides by ten-foot brick walls and well lit by security floodlights. The church was pug-ugly—blackened by soot and striped with garish bands of rough-cut stone, its stained glass done in unappealing hues of orange and blue—yet it somehow retained an air of dignity that the shoddy postwar buildings surrounding it would never achieve.

I paid the cabbie and walked quickly toward a side entrance, where two men loitered, smoking cigarettes and stamping their feet against the cold. They were dressed as Kit had been, in grubby greatcoats and frayed trousers, and when I asked where I might find Father Raywood, they replied in voices as gravelly as Rupert’s.

“Try the soup kitchen,” growled one, jutting his stubbly chin toward the door.

“Downstairs,” growled the other.

“Thanks,” I said, and hastened inside, bracing myself for another grim journey through damp and darkened corridors enlivened by scurrying roaches and the pitter-patter of tiny, clawed feet.

To my amazement—and vast relief—Saint Joseph’s was nothing like Saint Benedict’s. The square foyer, the wide staircase, and the tiled passage leading to the basement dining area were white-painted and brightly lit, and the air was filled with the aroma of roast turkey instead of the stink of boiled cabbage.

The dining room was equally well maintained, but here the walls were hung with paper chains, silver bells, and twinkling lights, and a gaily decorated artificial tree towered in the far corner. As I entered the dining room, a uniformed cleanup crew was at work, mopping up after what must have been the last meal of the day. And there, in the midst of the bustle, with a wet rag in his hand and the sleeves of his black turtleneck pushed up, was Julian.

“Lori?” He stood very still when he saw me, as if he thought he might be hallucinating. “What are you doing here?”

I hitched the canvas carryall higher on my shoulder and walked over to him. “I couldn’t stay away.”

His brow furrowed. “But what about—”

“Family traditions?” I said. “I’ll take care of them when I get home tonight.” I shrugged impatiently. “What about Phillip Raywood? Have you spoken with him?”

“Not yet. He’s reading evensong in the Lady Chapel.” Julian leaned closer, a delicious twinkle in his eyes. “He’s very High Church. I feel quite at home.”

“Well, I can’t stand around while everyone else is working.” I unbuttoned my coat. “Show me where to stash my stuff, then tell me what needs doing.”

A half hour later, Julian and I were alone in the kitchen, sipping well-earned cups of tea. The cleanup crew had gone, leaving the place spotless. Julian surveyed the stainless-steel countertops and the restaurant-quality appliances, sighing dismally.

“I have a confession to make,” he said. “I covet Father Raywood’s kitchen.”

“I forgive you, my son.” The kitchen’s well-oiled swing doors swung shut as a man breezed into the room, his hand extended. “Phillip Raywood,” he said, by way of introduction.

The introduction was unnecessary, because, unlike Julian, Phillip Raywood looked like a priest. He was tall, austere, and angular, with a naturally tonsured head and a pair of wire-rimmed glasses that seemed custom-made to go with his clerical collar and ankle-length cassock. He betrayed a hint of disappointment as he surveyed his Catholic counterpart’s more casual garb.

“I’m sorry to have kept you waiting,” he said, after Julian and I had introduced ourselves. “I was told that you have news of Christopher Smith. He’s well, I trust?”

“I’m afraid not,” said Julian. “In fact, he’s in hospital, seriously ill.”

“May God have mercy on him.” As he uttered the blessing, Father Raywood gazed around the kitchen, as though taking stock of the equipment. “My assistant, Father Danos, will be along shortly,” he said. “I would be grateful if you would wait until he—Ah, Andrew, there you are.”

A second Anglican priest had come into the kitchen. Andrew Danos was younger, shorter, and beefier than Phillip Raywood, but he, too, was dressed in exemplary High Church fashion. He shook hands with Julian and me, then pulled two chairs up to the table and poured tea for Father Raywood. There was no doubt about the pecking order at Saint Joseph’s.

“Normally, I would invite you to the vicarage,” said Father Raywood, as he took his seat, “but this is a far more suitable place in which to discuss Christopher Smith. If it weren’t for him, you see, Saint Joseph’s wouldn’t have such fine facilities.”

“He… installed them?” Julian ventured.

“Certainly not.” Father Raywood seemed to find the suggestion ridiculous. “He paid for them.”

Father Danos, as if sensing confusion in the air, spoke up. “Perhaps, Father, if we told our guests how we came to meet Mr. Smith…”

“Yes, very well, begin at the beginning.” Father Raywood sipped from his teacup, touched a cloth napkin to his lips, and began.

“Christopher Smith first came to Saint Joseph’s four years ago, in February. There was the promise of snow in the air that night, just as there is tonight. Do you remember, Andrew?”

“As if it were yesterday,” said Father Danos. “We were struggling to keep the soup kitchen open,” he explained. “We’re not a wealthy parish, but the need for our services grows more desperate every year, particularly in the winter months.”

“Christopher Smith sat at a corner table at the far end of the dining room,” Father Raywood went on. “He ate nothing, simply watched the other men. He worried me, frankly. He seemed dazed and was clearly out of place.”

“What made him seem out of place?” I asked.

Father Raywood seemed puzzled by my question. “The men who patronize our soup kitchen do not, as a rule, patronize Savile Row.”

“He was well dressed?” I said, recalling Anne Somerville’s claim that Kit had been born to money.

“He was extremely well dressed,” Father Raywood confirmed, “and strikingly handsome. His hands were manicured, his hair freshly barbered—he was clearly a man of means.” A frown puckered his brow. “As I said, he worried me, so I sent Andrew over to have a word with him.”

“I asked if I could help him in any way,” said Father Danos, “and he looked up at me.” The young priest’s face grew troubled. “Such a look. As if he’d lost the one thing he loved most in the world. ‘No,’ he told me, ‘I don’t think you can help me. In any way.’”

“You remember his exact words?” said Julian.

“I’ll never forget them. His voice was… quite beautiful. And so very sad.” Father Danos stared briefly into the middle distance, then went on. “He began to leave, but turned back to ask if our church was dedicated to Saint Joseph of Cupertino. I told him no, that our Saint Joseph was the husband of the Holy Virgin. ‘So I got that wrong, too,’ he murmured, and left.”