Today is the day that the librarian was killed some sixty-odd years ago, mere feet from where I sit typing. Her name was Catherine and she worked here at the Cathedral and she was murdered on this day.
Truth is, at this point, mixed inextricably with rumor. That's just how it is. I have read the original article about the murder in an old Washington Post. I have asked people around the Cathedral. Everyone seems to have heard a slightly different story. I'm going to mix and match. How much is true? Some, but not all.
There was a handyman who worked here and Catherine did not like him. In fact, she disliked him so much that she piled a bunch of dirt beneath her desk and showed it to his supervisor in an attempt to frame this man for doing a poor job cleaning up around the office (sorry, I can't recall his name and I don't have the article at hand right now).
Now, imagine it is March 2nd, 1944. Catherine goes home (right across the street) to prepare lunch for herself and her invalid mother, with whom she shares an apartment. She returns to work in the afternoon. The Cathedral grounds are quiet. No one is stirring in the library where she works (and where I now work). The handyman comes into the room and confronts her about setting him up. She calls him a lazy nigger. He is angry and makes no attempt to hide it; he becomes violent. Catherine tries to escape and is trapped near the large fireplace on the southeastern wall. Handyman tries to quiet her by placing his hands around her throat, and then by smashing her head with a piece of firewood. There is a lot of blood. Handyman (this is an unfortunate detail) removes her panties in a vain attempt to clean up the blood. He moves the body up two flights of stairs in an attempt to hide it. No good. He carries it back down to the basement (where I sit right at this very moment) and dumps it into a dark, unfinished sub-basement. There are those who say that she was still alive, that she regained consciousness after being dumped in the sub-basement and that she tried to climb out. I don't know. That sub-basement is still there and it is still unfinished. The only way down into it or up out of it are by these metal rungs attached to the wall. It would've been a bitch to climb out.
It was a very public event here in the District. Handyman was arrested the next day at a popular U Street cafeteria. He was carrying a gun at the time and tried to make a public getaway. I know he was tried and convicted; I have heard that he was executed. The whole story created a huge racial controversy at the time and I believe that Handyman was the last person ever executed in the District of Columbia.
Did I mention my belief that her spirit has come back as our Cathedral cat, who is napping in the next room? The cat's name is also Catherine and sometimes she gives me this look...
Anyway. That happened today. I feel like I should light some candles or something. Pray against the darkness that lives in men's souls. Offer some sort of remembrance.
But I have a bunch of work to do...and I'm not staying late. It's Friday.
