Larchmont is one of those suburban Gold Coast towns in Westchester County that was an easy-to-reach summer resort town for wealthy New Yorkers who built mansions you can still see amidst the wooded areas along the Long Island Sound. It has been home to dramatists Edward Albee and Moss Hart, film director Ang Lee and comedian Joan Rivers, and an episode of “Succession” was filmed in the village’s St. John’s Episcopal Church. 
       The town has a significant French population and once had one of the finest country French restaurants in America, La Panetière. But most of the eating places around town are fairly staid and predictable. Torcello, on Boston Post Road, is a two-year-old, very good Italian restaurant that is named after a small island near Venice where Hemingway used to go duck hunting.
          Partners Imer Rraci and chef Avni Brahimaj, from Kosovo, took over a previous Italian restaurant in a spacious house of white walls and archways hung with black and white photos of Italy, an antique mirror, and dark wood floor tiles. The lighting lends conviviality, and tables are nicely draped in white linens with small candles.
        Rraci is a 30-year veteran of the hospitality business, having worked for the former Giambelli’s in Manhattan and Valbella in Old Greenwich, and you will be greeted with sincere warmth and professionalism by a well-trained staff.
        The menu follows the traditions of upscale Italian restaurants in the Tri-State area, and Brahimiaj is clearly committed to purchasing the finest ingredients, apparent in the glistening tuna tartare with avocado and chips ($18). There are two piadine flatbreads ($16) that make for a good nibble, one with figs, goat’s cheese, honey and virgin olive oil, the other with pears, Gorgonzola, pecans, arugula and a balsamic glaze (right).
        Four of us happily dug into a rich dish of eggplant rollatine (below, right) with creamy ricotta, spinach and a light tomato sauce ($15), perfect for a springtime evening. Clams oreganata ($17) were tender, piping hot with seasoned breadcrumbs.
       Pastas are sumptuously served, and the sweet and acid-balanced tomato sauce is among the best in the region, properly seasoned, the right texture and not too much on the plate. The grandest of the pastas was a half-lobster sprawled atop linguine with a chunky, well-spiced marinara sauce ($38).  Mushroom ravioli came dressed with porcini and truffle sauce ($26), and, nicely nuanced with meat, vegetables and tomatoes was a hearty bolognese sauce mixed with house-made rigatoni ($26; left).
           Among our entrees was a lavishly presented veal chop parmigiana in a rich moat of vodka sauce ($46), and veal Martini lightly breaded with Parmigiano and served in a tangy lemon and white wine sauce ($30). I might have tried the pollo scarpariello ($26), but it was boneless chicken, which can be short of flavor. The fish of the day was swordfish ($40), somewhat overcooked that evening in a lackluster brown sauce.
         Desserts ($9-$14) are predictable but very delectable, too, including chocolate tartufo truffles, ever-lovable New York cheesecake, a rich dark molten lava cake, and very good crème brûlée.
         The wine list, with 65 selections, has most of the Italian favorites.
         Torcello adds measurably to Larchmont’s otherwise staid dining scene, and the hospitality and ambience of the dining room and service is key to understanding its popularity well beyond the village.

Open for dinner nightly.

            Katie and David turned to see an old cleric walking slowly towards them, slightly stooped, his hands folded behind the back of his black cassock. His face and neck were wrinkled, his hair white, his eyes behind thick spectacles.
                  “As a matter of fact we are,” said Katie. “Are you the pastor of the church here?”
                  “No, there’s no pastor anymore,” he said with a decided brogue. “It’s too small, with too few parishioners. I come by to say Mass on Sunday for those who still come. My name’s Father Draney. Are you American tourists?”
                  Katie said, “Actually we are Americans but I’m a journalist and this is my associate, David Greco, and we’re researching a story on the Magdalene Laundries.”              
                 “And the murders, I suppose? Terrible, terrible thing. Very sad.”
                 Katie and David nodded. Katie asked, “Are the graves still visible, Father?”
                  The priest shook his head. “Ah, no, they’re gone.”
                  David asked, “I’m sorry, Father, but how could they be . . . gone?”
                  “Well, I wasn’t here when the burials took place—they’d been going on for a hundred years—but this place has always had a horrible reputation going back centuries. Had a history of body snatchers in the last century doing their dirty work as soon as a body was buried. For a long time they had to have a watchman at all times.”
                  “Is there one now?” asked David, hoping to be able to speak with him.
                  “Nah, nobody but a part-time caretaker who comes in now and again.”
         “Well, do you know what happened to the bodies?”
         “I do, I do.”
         Katie and David waited for an answer.
         “About ten years ago the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity owned the property, and they decided to sell it to a developer, who had to obtain an exhumation license to dig up the ground, and I hear the Sisters fought that like banshees. They knew what was down there, and in 1993 the Department of the Environment found out what it was.
        “So, it was a shockin’ revelation, most of them women and even a few infants. One hundred fifty-five bodies they found. A horrible business. One of the girls was buried here as recently as 1987. I remember her name, Bridget O’Neill.
                  “They could only identify some of the bodies. The rest they called ‘no trace women,’ and gave them names, ‘Magdalene of Lourdes’ and ‛Magdalene of St. Teresa,’ and so on. All of them, like the Laundries themselves, named after the adulterous woman Christ saved from bein’ stoned to death. True Irish irony at its worst.”
         Katie was dumbfounded. David asked, “What happened to the bodies after that?”
              Father Draney crossed himself and said, “They were brought to Glasvenin Cemetery (left) in Dublin and cremated. And the developer moved in and started to build immediately after.”
             The words “destroy the evidence” ran through David’s mind.
         “That’s all I know about the dirty business,” sad the priest. “And for most people around here, that’s all they want to know. They like to think it’s all over. Nothin’ to be done.”
        His words echoed those of the taxi driver who’d taken the Americans out to the graveyard.
          Realizing there was nothing more to see—and nothing to see at Glasvenin Cemetery—Katie and David thanked the old priest and walked back to the entrance of the graveyard, finding no trace of what had been a series of horrific crimes over nearly a century. 
        They got a taxi back to town, but neither had an appetite for lunch, so they walked around Dublin until the sad taint of Drumcondra wore off.  That night they had a quiet dinner and made plans for the next day,     when they would split up, she to interview an authority on the Laundries, he to connect with Inspector Max Finger at the Dublin Police.
 

                                                                        *                     *                         *

                  When Katie came down to breakfast in the hotel dining room, David was already there, looking very grim.
                  “What’s up?” asked Katie, pulling out her chair.
                  “This,” he replied, handing her the day’s newspaper, whose headline read,  “THIRD NUN MURDERED IN ONE WEEK.”
                  Katie gasped and looked up.
                  “Oh, My God, David, I can’t believe it.”
                  “Whoever did it doesn’t seem like he’s going to stop any time soon.
                  Katie read on, finding that the murder had been of a Sister of Charity named Clare Donovan, who was known to have been one of the nuns at the Dublin Magdalene Laundries in the 1980s.
            The paper said, “The crime was as grisly as the other two involving nuns, one of whom had been strangled with a rosary, the other stabbed with a schoolroom pointer through the heart. In this latest case, police contended that Sister Donovan ‘was apparently the victim of having been savagely beaten on the face with what seemed to be a glove attached to some kind of sharp abrasive.’ According to the coroner’s report, the victim’s face was unrecognizable due to bloody lacerations and that the cause of death was from repeated blows to the head.”
                  Knowing what David’s answer would be, Katie asked, “What the hell is going on?”
                  “Sounds to me like a very vengeful member of the Magdalene Laundries trying to get back at the nuns who tortured those women.”
                  “You mean one of the women forced to work there?”
                  “Probably, but it could’ve been one of the nuns or ex-nuns murdering her colleagues out of deep remorse. Or, it could’ve been a relative. Father, mother, brother getting back at what the nuns did to their daughter or sister.”
       “So where do we go from here? Obviously the police will be hell bent to get to the bottom of this.”
         “Absolutely, which is why I have to get to Inspector Max Finger ASAP, before he gets too involved to give me any time. Matter of fact, I’m due to meet him in twenty minutes, so I better haul my ass.”
aid Katie. “You go. I’m off to visit this woman who’s supposed to know the whole history of the Laundries. Meet you, when?”
         “Let’s say three o’clock. Here.”
         David could see Katie was very shaken by the news and knew she was processing in her mind her own past and connections to the Catholic Church. As for himself, David had long ago left the Church behind—the typical “lapsed Catholic” who felt bound only by cultural ties to his Italian-American Christian heritage. 
        He hoped that Inspector Max Finger would have no compunctions about going as deep as was necessary to find a killer who might well have the public’s sentiment on his or her side.That is, if Finger was even assigned to the case.