Dead Cold Mysteries Box Set #2: Books 5-8 (A Dead Cold Box Set), Blake Banner [readnow TXT] 📗

on, “He called to you to let you know he was home. Did you answer? Did you say anything?”

Her bottom lip began to quiver. She made a strange, guttural sound like, “Oh, God…!” and collapsed against her, sobbing. Dehan enfolded her in her arms and looked at me, shaking her head.

I sat for a moment, watching her and thinking. When she had settled a bit, I said, “We won’t trouble you any more today, Sylvie, but we may want to talk to you again as the investigation progresses. I do understand it’s hard, but I would like you to give some thought to Detective Dehan’s questions and see if anything begins to surface in your memory. Can you do that for me?”

She nodded, blinking, and blew her nose. “I’m sorry.”

I stood. “No need to be at all.”

“I suppose I had better get back to my daughter.”

I smiled. “Y’all take care, y’hear?”

She laughed sadly and we followed her out into the nave. As we approached the transept, a shadow moved across the door at the far end, and a foot seemed to scuff the stone floor, setting up an echo in the vaulted ceiling. Sylvie stopped and peered, and blew her nose.

“Humberto?” The figure shuffled closer. Dehan glanced at me. Sylvie said again, “Humberto, is that you?”

He was tall, almost seven feet, and massive, though he stooped and had a shambling gait. Slowly, he came into the diffuse light of the candles. His features were hard to make out with the glare of sunlight behind him, but his face was broad, his jaw was big, and his brow was low on his face. He was grinning as he came closer. Both his grin and his steps were hesitant. When he spoke, his voice was nasally.

“Donna Maria, benedicta santisima, purisima mater nostra…” He laughed nervously, making a sound like a braying ass, knocked his knees and gripped his crotch with both hands, “Perdonattame, perdonattame…”

She smiled at him. “It’s okay, Humberto, you can sit and pray, orare, orare, you can sit.”

He brayed again, biting his lower lip. “Santisima madre, benedita, plena di grattia..”

He backed away and after a couple of steps, turned and dashed off into the shadows among the rear pews. Sylvie opened the side door at the end of the transept and we stepped out into the sunshine. Dehan asked it. She had to and I knew it was killing her to know.

“Who is that?”

“Humberto?” Sylvie shrugged. “He’s attached to Paul…” She sighed. “Sorry, Reverend Truelove. Nobody really knows his story. He just seems always to have been here. I suspect the reverend adopted him at some point, but he’s so humble, he never talks about it.” She shrugged. “Either way, he has found a home, literally, in the church.”

I frowned. “What is that language he speaks? It’s not Latin or Italian.”

She laughed. “It is some kind of peculiar invention of his own. It’s a generic Latin. People have identified Portuguese, Italian, Spanish, Modern Latin and classical Latin, plus a good few inventions of his own. He seems to make it up as he goes along.”

“How old is he?”

She shrugged and shook her head. “Nobody knows.”

I saw the reverend walking toward us. Sylvie held up the handkerchief. “I will wash it and return it to you when you are around next. Thank you for being so understanding. I’d better go.”

She had taken less than a dozen paces when she and the reverend crossed. We watched as he stopped and took hold of her shoulders. They looked into each other’s faces but they did not speak. After a moment, he patted her on the arm and she moved off in the direction of her stall, and Reverend Truelove—Paul—approached us with the walk of a man who owns a God who owns the world.

Without preamble, he said, “It was almost two decades ago, but to her it’s as raw and livid as though it had happened today, five minutes ago.”

“The mind is its own place, reverend, and can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.”

He looked at me curiously. “Indeed. Was she able to help any? It was a long time ago. Memories fade…”

Dehan scratched her head. “Well, Reverend, from what you just said, it was a long time ago for you, but not for her. So her memory hasn’t faded.” She affected the accent of the deep South, “The mind bein’ it’s own place, an’ all.” She pointed at the large group of people milling among the stalls. There were perhaps eighty or a hundred of them. “See those people, Reverend, how many of them do you reckon were here eighteen years ago?”

He looked startled. “I am not sure. Most of them, I should think.”

“And how many of them, would you say, knew for sure that Sylvie’s kitchen door was open that evening?”

His jaw dropped and he stared at her in astonishment.

She plowed on. “Because, Reverend, in that—much smaller—group, you will probably find a man who wanted to kill Simon Martin.” She smiled. “Kind of changes things, doesn’t it? Bit less vague and a bit more immediate.”

He did the goldfish thing of staring with big eyes and soundlessly opening and closing his mouth.

I smiled at him and asked, “Were you here that evening, Reverend?”

“Why… yes, um, I’m not sure… No.” He shook his head. “I truly don’t recall.”

I shrugged. “It’s a long time ago. I just thought, given the events of the night…”

“Oh, quite so. It just escapes my mind at the moment. I can tell you that I didn’t find out what had happened until the next morning. But for the life of me…” He hesitated. “It was a terrible shock, of course. I felt somehow guilty that I hadn’t been here for her at the time…”

I nodded, then gave a small, sideways twitch