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The Feast of Stephen

by Rosemary Aubert

Rosemary Aubert sets her novel and its protagonist in Toronto, Canada, where she lives. This gives The Feast of Stephen a vaguely English cast – vague because her writing also has slight American overtones; perhaps because she was born in Niagra Falls, New York. The Feast of Stephen is her second murder mystery featuring Ellis Portal, aka Angelo Portalese, an Italian and disgraced former judge in the Toronto courts. Ellis is a mature male in his fifties, experienced in many areas of living, from the exalted surroundings of judgeship to the poorest conditions of homeless street people.

The Feast of Stephen refers to the well-known, traditional Christmas carol, Good King Wenceslas, with the entire novel built around phrases excerpted from those stanzas. There are several murders, every one connected in some way to the carol; and with each murder, a Biblical verse is discovered in possession of the deceased.

When The Feast of Stephen opens, Ellis Portal is still living rough at an abandoned outpost of The Ministry of Natural Resources, twenty miles north of Toronto, at the headwaters of the River Don. There he is visited by a woman named Queenie, an old friend from his homeless days in the city, who calls him only by his street name, 'Your Honor.' She persuades him to return to Toronto to help her find the killer of her friend, Melia.

Ellis does go back to the city with Queenie. He still has some money in the bank, and finds a room to rent in the house he once owned. Queenie's friend, Melia, was once a court groupie – one of those people who sat in on every court trial they could manage, since there was nothing much else to do, and the proceedings were sometimes more exciting than TV. So Ellis and Queenie decide the best way to track down Melia's killer would be to observe the people who populate that particular milieu. Ellis has a number of reservations about this, being afraid he might be recognized, but is willing to try. He begins by making himself as unnoticeable as possible. However he's still recognized by an old acquaintance; and winds up in a job as a Court Services Officer, where he can, and does, observe everyone in a courtroom freely and without restriction.

The story has its subplots, and some of them are directly tied to the death Ellis is attempting to track down. One of those is his reacquaintance with a former love, now dying of Alzheimer's. Another is his landlady, a very young woman with the unlikely name of Tootie. Still another is the rediscovery of his own daughter as a lawyer in the very courts of which he's now a part. In rapid succession, several other street people are killed, each on a significant date, and each in possession of a verse from the Bible. It becomes evident that not only Melia, but all those down on their luck, disgraced in some way and out of favor with the general public, have been targeted by some self-styled angel of mercy who thinks that death is preferable to life in the gutter. Ellis himself is one of the targets, and both he and Queenie suffer near-deaths as a result.

Although the police originally put Melia's death down to freezing, Queenie and Ellis are both familiar enough to know that street people don't die of freezing in November. The homeless are wise in ways of keeping warm during the winter. It evolves that each death is the result of a quick-acting poison – usually injected either into food eaten or into the person themselves by means of a syringe. Hunting down access to the poison and syringes, along with a partiality to religion, eventually supplies Ellis with the name of the murderer. The Feast of Stephen ends as the killer is discovered just in time, about to commit still another 'act of mercy.' We're left with Ellis beginning to teach his friend Queenie how to read, and the hope that he will finally regain his place in Toronto society.

Unfortunately, The Feast
of Stephen is not as good as Ms. Aubert's first novel (Free Reign). Everything isn't completely resolved, and Ms. Aubert's writing lacks the spark of more seasoned writers. We can only hope Rosemary Aubert gets better with her next effort.

Alan Paul Curtis

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