The Carter Conspiracy

The Last Rites

The Last RitesDom Clem turned into Benton Place and walked up the U-shaped drive of the expensive Washington residence. The house was much bigger than neighbouring properties. It had been built in the colonial style, with four gleaming white pillars holding up a portico that towered disproportionately over the front door. In the Corinthian arch of the uppermost part of this structure had been engraved a crest and a motto – neither of which Clem could make out in the bright morning sunshine.

On the driveway directly outside the house was parked a cluster of cars, mainly expensive SUVs and, Clem noticed, two British built Range Rovers. During his days in the army, Clem had driven – well, usually been driven in – the Range Rover and he had never got over the extraordinary way in which the car could cross muddy, wet, hilly fields without so much as a slip or hesitation. It remained a mystery to him why these cars were so popular in Washington – a flat city with tarmac roads and no mud. He did once imagine that it would be possible to drive a Rangie up the steps of the Capitol building or through the waters in front of the Lincoln memorial – but the “why” question usually brought such thoughts to an untested end.

He also noticed that none of the cars had been neatly parked, as if the owners had had other thoughts on their mind when parking, or been in a rush; which brought Clem back down to earth, back to the reason for his visit. These were probably the family members’ cars and the poor parking merely reflected the reason for their visit: the patriarch of the house was dying.

Clem pressed the brass doorbell and a man dressed as a faux-butler opened the door – he had clearly been expecting a priest and did not give the monk’s appearance a second thought. Clem walked into the reception hall.

The surroundings caused Clem to pause. During his time at Downside Abbey, he had frequently been invited to the stately homes of the English gentry – often as a dinner guest whose job was to say grace and allow the hostess to bathe in a glow of religious one-upmanship amongst her assembled friends – but nothing he had seen in Washington or on his trips around the rest of the US compared to the scale and opulence of those buildings, most of which had been built on the back of the huge wealth generated by the British Empire, including of course the country in which he now stood.

Clem’s mind had a tendency to whirl – to jump around between a number of thoughts and ideas, with only the most tenuous link to connect them. During the time he took to step from the front porch into the hall, his mind took in the architecture, compared it to previous experiences, smiled wryly at snobbishness of the English upper class’s behaviour and noted the irony of his current location and the historical gathering of wealth at the expense of the American colony. This was a typical thought process.

“I’m here at the request of Mrs Nixdorf. She’s asked me to talk with her husband.”

Clem wasn’t sure whether he had put this very well, but he could hardly say out loud why he was there. The butler however was clearly fully apprised of the situation, evidenced by the moistening of his eyes as he asked Clem to wait in the hall while he went to fetch Mrs Nixdorf.

Mary Nixdorf had first met Clem at a British embassy reception. She had been there on her own, explaining that her husband was unwell at the time. The conversation had started on the usual subjects, the beautiful weather for the time of year taking up the first few minutes. Clem had noticed during the twelve months since he arrived in Washington that the Americans believed that all Englishmen like to talk about the weather – a cliché that was particularly inappropriate for Clem who liked all climates and believed the weather was something to experience, not to discuss.

Fortunately, they had moved on to more spiritual matters and Clem had immediately taken to Mary when she began to express her doubts about the concept of the virgin birth.

Clem’s Catholic beliefs had to be underpinned by that belief, which was one of the stand-out tenets of his faith, but Clem’s contrary and argumentative nature led him to wonder whether the idea was a spiritual one rather than an absolute. Not that this “wondering” could be expressed to anyone – it was one of his internal debates, in which he both proposed and opposed the motion, all in his head.

This kept them chatting for several minutes, until the ambassador’s wife intervened and took Clem off to meet an ex-pat from Stockport called Nick something. The most interesting thing about this man was that his red hair was receding from the neck upwards rather than the more normal crown downwards. Clem found this fascinating, which was more than could be said for Nick, who spent the rest of the evening talking about money and football: one of the most boring combinations on Earth. Clem later caught Mary’s eye – she saw who he was talking to and pretended to yawn. He decided he liked and respected this eighty-year-old woman, who in turn liked being in his company and would have discussed any subject that kept him interested, smiling and attentive. Since their first meeting, Clem had been round to the house on a couple of occasions and had enjoyed tea and intelligent conversation with Mrs Nixdorf. He found himself filled with admiration for her, for her social conscience and religious fervour. In many ways, it was a meeting of like minds.

Today however, the woman who walked down the main staircase to greet Clem was unrecognisable as the flirtatious old lady of those earlier meetings. Her make up, normally immaculate, was poorly applied and smudged around her eyes. She looked tired, emotional and in a great deal of pain.

She kissed Clem’s hand – another uniquely American habit that he normally found intensely amusing. Not today though.

“Dom Clem – thank you so much for coming at short notice. I am afraid Art’s got steadily weaker over the last twenty-four hours and the doctor, who’s here now, thinks it’s a matter of hours or even minutes until…”

Clem wrapped his arms around her and held her as the tears turned to sobs and her strength evaporated. He had never realised quite how tiny she was. He caught sight of the two of them in the hall mirror and noticed that Mary had nearly disappeared into the folds of his cassock. His heart went out to this woman.

Once she had regained her composure, she explained.

“Art’s never been particularly religious, although he was brought up a Catholic and used to join me and the family for Mass on the rare occasions when he wasn’t working on a Sunday… and yet, just before I phoned you, he took my hand and asked me to fetch a priest so he could give his last confession. I was going to ring Father McCarthy from our local church, but in the time I’ve got to know you, I’ve come to appreciate your calmness and spirituality and… well, I just thought you were the right person to call.”

Mary led Clem up the stairs – past the family portraits, one of which was of a young and strong-looking Arthur Nixdorf – and they turned into the main corridor of the first floor. At the end of the passage was a large feature window through which the sun streamed, giving the appearance of leading the corridor out of the building and up into the sky. Clem realised that he was having what he called a “Hollywood moment”, something that was happening more and more since he came to the US. He put these thoughts away as Mary turned the handle of a large door. Together they walked inside.

Art was propped up on several pillows in the middle of a huge four-poster bed. Around him were the three children, none of whom Clem had met before. A doctor was listening to Art’s breathing and when he saw Mary, he got up and collected his medical bag. He walked towards the door, stopping to kiss her on the cheek and, with one slow shake of the head, gave his final prognosis.

Mary stepped to the bed and kissed Art on the forehead. She introduced Clem

“Darling, this is Dom Clem Appleberry, a wonderful man who’s here to talk with you and hear your confession – if you still want that.”

Clem noticed that she did not refer to his “last confession”.

Art seemed to re-focus, firstly on the scene around him and then directly into the eyes of the tall, robed Monk who now stood by the bed. Then, to everyone’s surprise, he turned to Mary and asked,

“Mary, take the children out and leave me alone with the priest.”

Mary hesitated for a second, before getting up and offering her outstretched hand to her daughter, a beautiful girl in her twenties. Slowly the two women walked towards the door, followed eventually by the two boys.

Clem took out a purple stole from his pocket together with a worn Bible presented to him by the abbot before he left for the US. He kissed the stole and placed it around his neck. Then, having taken Art’s hand and placed it on top of the Bible, he started the confession with an introduction he had used a few times previously.

“Art, my name’s Clem. I took the name Clement in honour of St Clement who was martyred by the Romans. They tied an anchor to his feet and threw him into the sea. It’s said that once a year, this sea receded by over two miles leaving a divinely built shrine standing where his body had been sunk. St Clement shows us that death is not the end, either in heaven or on earth. Where great men have existed, a shrine or legacy or accomplishment remains on earth and God welcomes them into his kingdom, into heaven in reward for their great achievements. I have come to hear your last confession. Use this to cleanse your spirit of any sins you’ve committed, genuinely repent of those sins, and you’ll surely be forgiven and welcomed into the kingdom of God.”

“No, I won’t,” said Art, a response that Clem admitted to himself was unexpected.

In fact, Clem was completely flummoxed by it. He regained his composure. Clearly this was not going to be a routine confession. It had happened before. He had once attended a “last confession” in which an old man confessed, with his wife sat in the background, that he had fathered at least two children outside of his marriage and had been having an affair with his PA for more than ten years. Clem still smiled at the recollection of his granting forgiveness and setting the penance while in the background the wife was telling the old man that he would “rot in hell”.

Art took a deep wheezy breath and began.

“Bless me Father for I have sinned, it has bee…”

He hesitated, struggling to remember when he had last confessed. Clem tried to help.

“Art, it doesn’t matter when you last confessed. All that matters is now. Carry on.”

“Father, I’m responsible for the murder of nine honest hard-working innocent young American men. I’ve borne this burden in desperate secrecy for over twenty years. Not a day’s passed when I didn’t think about their fate, when I didn’t want to turn back the clock and do things differently.”

Art began to cry – the tears formed at the corner of his eyes and Clem noticed that the pupils and irises were now grey, unlike the brilliant black and bright blue of the man in the portrait on the stairs.

“Father, I want to ask God for forgiveness… I understand this won’t be enough to get me to Heaven. I want him to know that I was acting in the best interests of my family and my business. I want him to know that I didn’t realise that I was condemning these men to their death when I acted as I did. I should have realised but I didn’t. Please forgive me.”

Art went silent. Clem tried desperately to focus. The confession had completely thrown him. Arthur Nixdorf was a pillar of Washington society, a generous supporter of charities throughout the state, the father of three children, each of whom was by all accounts a successful member of the local community. This was the husband of Mary Nixdorf, a truly beloved doyenne of Washington society, about whom he had never heard a bad word.

None of what he had just heard made sense. Clem began to feel a little nauseous as the adrenalin surged round his body, as his stomach muscles tightened. He realised that he had no idea what to say, or what to do. Should he grant forgiveness? Are mass-murderers forgiven before the execution? Was there a standard penance for such an offence?

Momentarily, Clem was lost.

He found serenity and support by focusing back on Downside and the abbey. This was, he realised, his comfort zone and inspiration. He wondered what the abbot would do. Abbot Hilary Crouzet had, at an earlier stage of his life, been the visiting priest to one of Britain’s maximum security jails, housing the worst criminal offenders in the country. Confessions of murder were the norm for Dom Hilary. He once explained to Clem that the severity of the sin only had to be matched by the sincerity of the remorse for God’s forgiveness to be earned.

“There is nothing man can do that is so bad that it cannot, with contrition, be granted forgiveness by the Lord. Remember, Jesus forgave those who betrayed him and who crucified him.”

Clem was dragged back into reality and away from his thoughts by the sight and sounds of Art, who was clearly dying in front of him.

“Art, you’ll shortly be able to seek forgiveness from God himself. I feel that you have already served your penance here on Earth, through the remorse you’ve felt for whatever actions you once took. I hereby grant you absolution, in the name of the Father and of...”

Art’s bony hand left the bible and grabbed Clem’s arm. For a dying man, Art had a very strong grip – like a blacksmith’s in fact. Clem was taken aback.

“What about the treason, Father? What about my betrayal of this country that I love so much? How will my family feel if the truth’s ever revealed? What sort of shrine have I left on Earth, Father? What sort of shrine?”

He paused. Clem could see the fire in the eyes subside, could feel the strength in the grip fade away. Art took in a deep, deep breath and continued.

“I can’t believe I killed…”

Art began to sag, the words got quieter and more slurred.

“My day is…”

And with those final words, Art Nixdorf passed away.

Chapter 4