Rueful Death (6 page)

"Doctor Townsend?" Mother frowned. "Since Perpetua fell ill, he's been here quite often. Whether he was here when the fires broke out-You must ask Sister Rowena. She's our infirmarian. I'm sure she keeps track of his visits." She shook her head. "Really, Margaret Mary, I can't see a
doctor
setting fire to our chapel. Can you?"

"Can you see a nun doing it, Mother?" Maggie asked bleakly.

Mother Winifred's hand went to her mouth. "Oh, dear," she whispered.

It was time to ask another question-one that had been at the back of my mind for several hours. ' 'Mother Hilaria's death-you're absolutely sure it was an accident?"

Mother took a deep breath. "Oh, there's no doubt about that," she said. "The hot plate was quite old, and it's no surprise that it malfunctioned. Doctor Townsend said the shock probably wouldn't have been fatal if she hadn't been standing in some spilled milk. And of course she had a bad heart, and high blood pressure too. She was trying to untangle the financial business you see. She was under a great deal of stress."

' 'Could I have a look at the hot plate?''

"I'm sure it's in Sister Ruth's storeroom." Mother Winifred smiled wryly. "It takes God's signature on a piece of paper to get our housekeeper to throw anything away. I'll ask her to show it to you."

I came back to the arson. "So you agree with Deputy Walters that the fires are an inside job?"

She glanced reluctantly at Maggie. "Yes, I'm afraid so. I understand your arguments, Margaret Mary, and the Lord knows that Carl Townsend isn't one of my favorite people. I just don't believe that someone from the outside could have set the fires without being seen." Her voice became firm. "And of course Deputy Walters isn't at all the right sort of person for an investigation like this-an inside job, as you say. You have to be
shrewd.
You have to listen and detect things cunningly, the way Brother Cadfael does. You've read the books about him, I'm sure-the medieval monk who grows herbs and solves mysteries." She looked at me brightly. "I'm confident that you'll do a much better job than Deputy Walters."

"I'm not Brother Cadfael."

Her smile was winsome. "But you're the detective God

saw fit to send us. The handmaid of the Lord."

I had never pictured myself the handmaid of the Lord. If the Deity had picked me out of a lineup of potential detectives, He-or She, if you were of Sister Gabriella's persuasion-must need glasses. But it was probably futile to resist. I thought of what happened to Jonah, who refused a first-class ticket to Nineveh and wound up going steerage in the belly of a whale.

"Do you have any suspects, Mother?" I asked. "Perhaps a sister who is behaving erratically?''

Mother looked weary. "Lately, we've all been behaving erratically. It's the strain of merging two very different communities and trying to create some sort of shared future." She pursed her lips. "But no. I have no suspects."

"Or to put it another way," Ruby said sagely, "everybody is a suspect."

Mother's eyes were sad. "I am afraid you're right, my child."

"You've alerted the sisters to watch for suspicious behavior?" I asked.

"Yes, although my warning may have made things worse. People are already apprehensive and suspicious." She paused. "And please remember that we are monastics. We spend a great deal of time alone. It would be easy for one of us to set a fire."

Maggie's fingers tightened on her cup. Her voice was tense. "Or push a letter under a door."

I glanced at her, then back to Mother. "Tell me about the letters."

"In July," Mother said, "Sister Perpetua went to see Mother Hilaria. Perpetua was terribly distressed. She had received a letter accusing her of stealing a book of psalms from the library in Sophia. She had apparendy forgotten to check it out."

"Forgetting isn't a sin!" Ruby exclaimed, indignant. "She didn't intend to steal it, did she?"

"Of course not. That's what Mother Hilaria told her. But

Perpetua felt that the letter-writer was accusing her for the good of her soul, as we used to do in the Chapter of Faults." She glanced up. "Do you know about that practice?"

"Maggie told us," Ruby said. "It sounds pretty barbaric."

"Not if it's done in the spirit of Christian love," Mother Winifred said. "Chapter of Faults was a way of airing minor problems before they became major. Although I have to admit-" She stopped and shook herself. "But that's beside the point. The letter was written in the somewhat archaic language of the Chapter of Faults. T accuse you of the theft of a book of psalms from the library.' It instructed Perpetua to confess and make a public penance-to stand at the door of the refectory every mealtime for a week, holding the book. Given her age and physical condition, it was a rather stiff penance."

"Where is the letter?"

"Mother destroyed it. She kept the next one, however. Two others were brought to me several weeks ago."

"May I see them?" I asked.

Mother Winifred produced a key and unlocked a desk drawer. Each of the three envelopes she placed on the table contained a sheet of plain white paper. The messages, brief and explicit and accusatory, were printed in black ink in block letters. The first was dated August 15 and addressed to Sister Anne.

/
accuse you of lewd behavior, of baring your nakedness when you were bathing in the river yesterday. You must make confession, and in penance, resume your full habit.

My eyebrows went up. "Sister Anne was swimming nude?"

"Hardly." Mother coughed delicately. "Her suit was rather revealing. One makes allowances for modern customs, however, and our swimming spot
is
private. The penance was quite out of the question for Anne, who gave up

the habit some years ago. In any event the letter-writer had no authority to demand a penance. Mother told Sister Anne to disregard the letter. But a week later, somebody stole her swimsuit out of her room." Her tone filled with distaste. "It was found hanging from the cross in the chapel, smeared at certain strategic places with what looked like… blood. It turned out to be ketchup."

Ruby made a face. "How obscene!"

Obscene, but not particularly threatening. Still, in a closed community where the atmosphere had already been poisoned…

"There was quite a furor among the older nuns," Mother Winifred went on. "It was several days before things got back to normal."

Maggie pushed the other letters at me. "There's more," she said tersely.

The second and third letters, one addressed to Sister Dominica and the other to Sister Miriam, were dated December 2 and printed in the same block letters. They were identical. I read one aloud.

/
charge you with indulging in a particular friendship. Your lewd and lascivious behavior must be punished by public exposure arid removal to separate houses elsewhere in the order.

"That's crazy," Ruby said, bewildered. "What's so lewd and lascivious about friendship?"

Maggie opened her mouth to answer, but Mother Winifred silenced her with a look. "When we live in community, Ruby, it is important for us to care equally about everyone. A 'particular friendship' is the term we give to a relationship that becomes so intense that the two friends forget their obligation to others."

Maggie's lips had tightened. "It's a lesbian relationship," she said quietly.

There were two bright spots of color on Mother's weathered cheeks. "Margaret Mary, must you always be so definitive? Not all particular friendships involve… sex."

"Lesbian relationships don't always involve sex, either," Maggie said bluntly. ' 'But they do involve passionate feeling. And human passion, whether it's heterosexual or otherwise, makes the Church very uncomfortable. People who are devoted to God are supposed to be passionate only about God."

"What happens if people get passionate about one another?" Ruby asked.

"What happens to priests who want to marry?" Maggie asked with a shrug.

"In the past," Mother said quietly, "nuns have been expelled from the order for being particular friends."

Maggie gave me a straight, clear look. "Or they have voluntarily abandoned their vocations."

"I see," I said. Suddenly I saw a lot of things.

Maggie cleared her throat. "There's no point being oblique about this," she said. "Dominica and I were once very close. I wanted us to be even closer, but Dominica felt-" She stopped. "It wasn't what she wanted. I didn't know how to handle it, and things got pretty uncomfortable between us." She took a deep breath. "I began to think of finding another house somewhere else in the order. Then my father died and left me the money. As I said, it seemed like a sign that it was time to go back to the world."

"But you and Dominica have kept in touch," Ruby said sympathetically.

Maggie nodded. "We write to one another a couple of times a month. She wrote the day after she and Miriam received the anonymous letters. She was quite upset, as you can imagine. She says that the accusation isn't true, but of course it's impossible for her and Miriam to defend themselves. If their accuser wants to make trouble, she can- especially if Olivia becomes abbess." She closed her eyes briefly, opened them again. "She's known to be very strict about particular friends. If it was Olivia's decision, they'd be transferred immediately."

"Just like that?" Ruby asked in surprise. "But what if they don't want to go?"

"We have made a vow of obedience, my child," Mother Winifred said mildly. ' 'If our superiors feel we would be of greater usefulness elsewhere in the order…"

Ruby's eyes flashed. "But that's not fair! St. Theresa is their home!"

"Nobody asked the St. Agatha sisters if they wanted to move," I said.

"Dominica was one of the first sisters to come to St. T's," Maggie said. "Leaving would be very difficult for her."

"I pray it doesn't come to that," Mother said.

Maggie's face was grim. "We might have to do more than pray, Mother."

I looked down at the letters spread on the table in front of us. "How were these delivered?"

"They were slipped under the doors sometime during the night," Mother Winifred said. She shook a leaf from one of the envelopes. ' 'Each one also contained a pressed leaf."

I picked up the leaf and turned it in my fingers. "Rue," I said.

"The herb of grace, Shakespeare called it," Mother said bleakly. "There's no grace in this matter, I fear."

In the early church, rue was dipped in holy water and shaken in front of the doors and in the aisles to repel demons and evil. It was also believed to be an antidote to poison, and in medieval Europe, was thought to be capable of revealing who among your friends was a witch. By the sixteenth century, the plant had come to be associated with the idea of ruefulness and repentance, with sorrow for one's wrongdoing. Perhaps that was why the poison-pen writer had put it into the envelopes. Rue, regret, repentance, grace. It was a powerful symbol.

I glanced out the window. Rue was growing in the apothecary garden, its leaves glowing blue-green against the win-

try foliage. "Is the plant grown anywhere else on the grounds?''

"No." Mother Winifred anticipated my next question. "I'll give you the names of the sisters who work in the garden. But many use it for prayer, and the gate is never locked. Anyone might have picked a few leaves."

I looked down at the letters. "The three recipients accused-are they St. Agatha or St. T sisters, or both?"

"They're all St. T sisters," Mother Winifred said sadly. "I'm afraid that's not a coincidence." Her voice trembled. "You can see the difficulty we're in. We are a deeply divided community, both sides resentful of the changes imposed on us by our merger. The fires have made us suspicious and fearful. And these letters-" She gave me a pleading look. "We
must
discover who is responsible, China. You will help us, won't you?"

I sighed, thinking again of Jonah. "I'm not sure what I can do," I said. "But I'll try."

Mother's face relaxed into a smile. She looked as if I had just turned water into wine. "God's blessing on you, my child."

"There's a condition," I said. "I want you to tell the sisters who I am and what you've asked me to do, and that I'll be talking with several of them. In particular, I need to talk to those who have received the letters."

"Sister Perpetua is very ill, but I could take you to her this evening."

"Thank you. And please ask everyone to bring me any information they may have about either the fires or the letters."

"I thought you were going to be undercover," Ruby said.

Mother frowned. "That's right. Won't an announcement give you away? Won't it alert whoever's behind this?"

"Yes," I said. "But it may also rattle them. People who are rattled are more likely to make mistakes."

Maggie looked at me. "So you think there are two sep-

arate crimes here? Arson and…" She paused, frowning. ' 'Is it a crime to write a poison-pen letter?''

I shook my head. ' 'None of these letters threaten actual violence. They're not criminal, at least according to the Texas Penal Code."

"Criminal or not," Mother said firmly, "the letters
are
violent. They disrupt the recipients' peace of mind and threaten the stability of the community. And the writer is placing her soul in jeopardy. We must find out who she is. I'll speak to the community tonight at supper, China, and tell them that you're here to help us." She paused. "There's something else I should mention. Mother Hi-laria's diary."

"Her diary?"

"Yes. A spiral-bound notebook, black, as I recall. Every evening, she was in the habit of jotting down the events of the day, the weather, her meetings with individuals, her plans. After Reverend Mother General appointed me, I went to Mother Hilaria's office to get it. I thought I should see whether there were any ongoing projects I should know about. The diary was gone. I've searched everywhere, but it hasn't turned up."

"Can you think who might have taken it?" I asked.

"No, nor why. Mother Hilaria was a very open person. She didn't have any secrets."

If she did, they'd stay that way. Mother Hilaria was dead.