Ralph McInerny is the author of more than thirty books, including the popular mystery series set at the University of Notre Dame, where he has taught for fifty years and is the director of the Jacques Maritain Center. He has been awarded the Bouchercon Lifetime Achievement Award, was recently named to the President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities, and lives in South Bend, Indiana.

“You don’t have to go to church to worship mystery lovers’ esteemed Father Dowling.”
---Entertainment Weekly

 

Chapter One 

The Gregory Barrett show on National Public Radio was called End Notes, and Marie Murkin, whatever she thought of the usual offerings on this tax-funded liberal network, was an unabashed fan of Gregory Barrett’s weekly book reviews and vignettes on the authors he loved.
 
“Chesterton’s Father Brown,” Marie sighed. “Whoever thought that NPR would feature such a Catholic author?”
 
“You like Chesterton?”
 
“I do. And I say that without having read anything of his, but Gregory Barrett has convinced me that I must.”
 
“I have one or two titles of his.”
 
“Barrett?”
 
“Chesterton. Of course, reading Father Brown stories would be like a busman’s holiday to you, Marie.”
 
“Are they really as good as he says?”
 
“Yes.” Just yes. Chesterton’s clerical sleuth had effectively commandeered the genre. Father Dowling doubted that anyone other than Andrew Greeley would dare open himself to comparison with G. K. Chesterton.
 
“He has to be a Catholic.”
 
“Chesterton was a convert.”
 
Marie gave him a look. “I meant Barrett.”
 
It seemed the path of wisdom not to tell Marie about Gregory Barrett. If she learned that he was a laicized priest, her estimate of End Notes would be grievously affected. Still, it was interesting that while Greg might have left the priesthood, he apparently remained in the fold, if End Notes was any indication. Roger Dowling had not seen his old classmate in years. Father Dowling passed on the Father Brown Omnibus to Marie.
 
“I read that straight through during a stay in the infirmary at Mundelein.”
 
“They’re all here?”
 
Marie balanced the green-bound volume as if it could scarcely carry the weight of Gregory Barrett’s recommendation.
 
 
Within two weeks of this conversation, an awed Marie Murkin looked into the pastor’s study.
 
“He called. He’s coming to see you.”
 
These remarks were without preamble, and Roger Dowling had no idea who the bearer of the personal pronoun might be.
 
“Gregory Barrett.” Marie whispered the name as if speaking it aloud would profane it.
 
“When?”
 
Marie shook her wrist, bringing her watch into visibility. “This afternoon. Of course I told him you were free.”
 
“I gather he is, too?”
 
A wet and scolding noise issued from the thin lips of the housekeeper of St. Hilary’s. “He asked if Wednesday was your golf day.”
 
“I won’t ask what you answered.”
 
“I told him that even if it were, you would be delighted to see him.”
 
“That’s true. Did you leave the impression that I golf weekly?”
 
“It can’t hurt you,” Marie said enigmatically, and drifted back to her kitchen.
 
Even if she was out of sight, she was on the qui vive for the sound of the doorbell at three o’clock. Father Dowling heard her scampering down the hall to the front door before the first ring had subsided.
 
The rate at which people age is irregular, the metabolism of some enabling them to wear decades as if they were but a single day. Gregory Barrett was one of them. The man Marie ushered into Father Dowling’s study was all but unchanged from their seminary days. Oh, a gray hair or two, a bit of a paunch when he relaxed, but for all that Gregory Barrett had aged gracefully and all but invisibly.
 
“You have a great fan in Marie Murkin,” Father Dowling told his old classmate. Marie had remained in the doorway, looking at their visitor as if he were a celebrity, which in a way he was.
 
“I haven’t missed a program since I first happened on it.”
 
“When was that, a week ago?”
 
Marie’s reaction was not quite a girlish giggle. “You sound like you know who.”
 
“Marie was especially impressed by your program on Chesterton’s Father Brown stories.”
 
Greg took both of Marie’s hands in his. “Thank God. I was fearful it was the program I devoted to Philip Roth.”
 
“You are doing a great work,” Marie said, and then actually choked up and ran off to her kitchen.
 
“She means it,” Roger Dowling said. “Marie is incapable of dissembling, and as for flattery, well, she never indulges.”
 
“Oh, I don’t know. She was telling me how much you have done for St. Hilary’s.”
 
“Even Homer nods.”
 
“Etiam Homerus dormitat.” Barrett beamed. “Have you noticed how many such allusions go right over people’s heads now?”
 
“You have.”
 
“Roger, the new illiteracy is beyond belief. Do you know Thomas De Koninck’s La nouvelle ignorance?”
 
“I feel I am being given an assignment.”
 
“You’d love it.”
 
“What an interesting career you have devised.”
 
“End Notes? I would starve if that were all I did. I have a faculty appointment at Loyola since returning to the area.”
 
“The Jesuits?”
 
“There aren’t that many around.” Thus the great topic was introduced. “This house brings it all back. What a nice parish plant you have, Roger.”
 
“It was considered exile when I was assigned here.”
 
“At Mundelein it would have seemed a dream appointment.”
 
Mundelein, all those years ago, and Quigley Prep before that. How their paths had diverged.
 
“You teach literature?”
 
“Would that I did. No, I am in something called religious studies. Meaning an occasion for skeptics and unbelievers to trash the credulity of the simple.”
 
“Tell me about it.”
 
Gregory sat back in his chair and studied Father Dowling. “I have often wondered what someone like you made of those of us who went over the wall.”
 
“My own career has been a bit checkered.”
 
“Roger, here you are, all these years later. That kind of stability should be celebrated. I have come to think that people who keep their lifetime promises are heroes and heroines, if there are any.”
 
“There are no heroes at St. Hilary’s. Except maybe Marie Murkin.”
 
“For liking End Notes?”
 
“It is a good program, Greg.”
 
“Have you heard it?”
 
“Many times. I missed the one on Chesterton but marveled at you on Paul Claudel. Could any of your listeners actually read him?”
 
“The NPR audience is pretty sophisticated, Roger.”
 
“You mean they would understand about Homer nodding?”
 
Roger had been filling his pipe and now put a match to it. Greg...