A Demon Summer (43 page)

“Tell me. How did you come to hear of the treasure? For you've been here since before Frank Cuthbert's book made such a splash.”

“There was an American girl here for a while as a postulant.”

“That's right,” said Dame Fruitcake to Max. “Remember, I told you about her? Very chatty and overfriendly, like a big puppy? Liked to ‘share.'”

“Yes. I wondered if she weren't a mole of some kind. Sent by someone to scope things out. And when her garrulousness became apparent, the nuns, trying to keep their secret, might have told her she wasn't suited to the life. But DCI Cotton's people looked into that. She did indeed attach herself to a missionary order when she left here. An order better suited to her temperament.”

“Right,” said Mary. “I met her while I was traveling around myself, killing time waiting for a plane. She ‘shared' with me that she knew of this fabulous, secret treasure.”

“Which you told Piers about straightaway. And you and Piers put your heads together and came up with this plan to infiltrate the convent from the inside. Clever of you: it almost worked.”

“I found nothing, though,” she said disconsolately.

“That's too bad. I didn't pay enough attention to Xanda's declarations that she could hear people moving about the guesthouse at night, for I assumed as she did that was Paloma and Piers meeting up after hours. Nor did I quite register the importance of the fact that Xanda heard the bolt to the guesthouse door slide open at night—something that could not be done from inside the guesthouse, but only from the outside, by someone in the cloister itself. It is a safety precaution, of course, meant to separate the nuns at night from the guests, who, after all, are not vetted in any way. There could be a serial killer asking to stay here and the nuns would welcome him or her, because their rule says that they must welcome anyone seeking refuge, a place to stay, a place of safety.”

Max looked at Piers's Hollywood-handsome face—the face tanned more deeply on the left side of his face than his right. For Piers's earlier claim to have just returned from a ‘two-week trip driving alone around Britain' could not be true unless he spent half the time in a tanning bed with his face turned to one side. Which was just possible, but unlikely. What was more likely was that he'd been driving around a sunny country, a country other than England with its right-side driving gear. For if he'd been driving in England, he wouldn't have such a deep tan, and what tan he had would be on the other side of his face. Why, Max had wondered, did he lie?

The answer had been easy once he came to think about it. Piers was lying to conceal an affair from Paloma. It had little to do with the case, but he'd been at the wheel of a vehicle with controls on the left-hand side. He might have been somewhere sunny driving about, but most certainly he had not been in England.

Max studied Piers's expression as he pointed out this fact to him and to the others. From Piers's guilty glance at Paloma, Max's suspicion was confirmed: Piers had been having a dalliance with Mary Benton, somewhere out of Paloma's sight. A last fling before they came to the abbey to look for the treasure, she in disguise.

And if Lady Lislelivet's hints were to be believed, Piers might be having an affair with her, too, or at least be in her sights. Perhaps Piers had been the reason for her own Roman holiday, which Mary Benton might be very unhappy to hear of. Tempting as it was, Max saw no reason to chuck Piers completely into it with all these ladies. Let them get it sorted later, amongst themselves.

Besides, thought Max, it was nothing to do with the case. Just one of those annoying details that needed to be slotted into place.

“So which one is the killer?” asked Dr. Barnard. “Piers or Mary?”

“Neither,” said Max. “I have quite another person in mind for that role.”

 

Chapter 37

NONE SO BLIND

May the scales fall from your eyes that you may see the Truth.

—The Rule of the Order of the Handmaids of St. Lucy

“We began by looking for a poisoner, and it's still someone with knowledge of herbs and poisons that we seek,” Max told the group. “Someone who knows, for example, that certain plant poisons do not show up on a routine toxicology screen.”

Several of the nuns, Max noticed, stared ahead in a way that told him they were desperately trying not to let their eyes slide in the direction of one of their sisters.

“Putting aside the poisoning of Lord Lislelivet's fruitcake, for the moment—what if the goal was not to kill someone, but to discredit someone? To cause someone to hallucinate, perhaps? Or to impair their vision, so their testimony was worthless?

“What if we were looking for someone who knew all the ins and outs of belladonna, for instance?

“Belladonna means ‘beautiful woman,' something I rather forgot when talking with Dame Petronilla, the infirmaress, about ingested poisons—poisonous berries and so forth. Belladonna is poisonous if eaten—again, those black berries to watch out for! They look harmless and children are attracted to something that looks so sweet and edible—but belladonna got its beautiful name because it dilates the pupils, and this was thought to make a woman attractive to men. Such a dangerous practice: at a minimum, it can cause blurred vision and sensitivity to light. If you've ever had an eye exam that required dilation of the pupils, you will know what I mean. You can't see your hand in front of your face, and to walk outside into the sunlight without sunglasses is nearly painful.

“Outside of an eye exam, it is difficult to see the use of it, unless you wanted to temporarily blind someone. And why, I ask, would anyone want to do that?” He left a significant pause. Most waited expectantly for his answer. In one case, the answer was known and written plain in the expression on the face.

“I'll tell you what I think. I think you would do that, temporarily blind someone, so that if they were a potential witness to something or someone, they couldn't see well. This potential witness, let us say, if she had poor eyesight to begin with … well. Putting a solution of belladonna into her eyes would certainly make it hard for the witness to recognize, say, the contours of a face shrouded by a coif and wimple, a veil and hood. Without the usual identifying features of hair color and style, the habit does what it was designed to do: make all nuns look as alike as possible. If one has difficulty seeing—if one is elderly, say—this would nullify their ability to witness anything.

“Of course, the same goes for someone wearing a hat, a scarf, an enveloping cloak of some kind.”

Abbess Justina looked over at Dame Hephzibah, an expression of kind concern on her face. Dame Hephzibah seemed not to think anyone could be speaking about her in the context of failing eyesight.

“All clues pointed to a poisoner with a better-than-working knowledge of plants, and poisonous plants in particular. And that could only mean Dame Pet, the infirmaress, with her knowledge of medicinal herbs was involved.

“
Or
it could simply mean that she was being set up to absorb all suspicion.

“The only other person with some knowledge of plant life was the novice, Sister Rose, who was studying the properties of plants with Dame Pet, and who seemed to have a natural affinity for dealing with the plant and animal worlds here at the abbey. It was also just possible that Dame Ingrid, in creating her fruitcake recipe, had a better than working knowledge of which berry-producing plants were poisonous or had medicinal properties.

“But once I remembered how belladonna got its name, and the use of belladonna to dilate the eyes, I realized there was one other sort of person who would be fully familiar with its properties. And that person would be a trained ophthalmologist.”

His own eyes flashed with anger as he turned with deliberation and pointed across the room.

“That person would be Dr. Barnard. In the U.S., an ophthalmologist is a trained M.D. Somewhat different from the requirements here in the U.K.”

The doctor shifted uncomfortably under the spotlight of the priest's regard.

“Isn't that a fact, Dr. Barnard? That atropine, from deadly nightshade or belladonna, is used by doctors to dilate their patients' pupils before eye surgery?” This was one of the little facts he had picked up from Awena.

“Yes, of course it's true. And anyone would know that, or be able to look it up. So what? What are you implying?”

What indeed. Max, knowing he was right, also knew he'd have to approach from a slightly different direction in order to prove it. But then, Dr. Barnard made it easy for him by saying, “And how am I supposed to have gotten here?” he scoffed. “Climbed the hill, then climbed over the walls? You forget I arrived after Lord Lislelivet was killed.”

“No, although it is just possible. A skilled climber could have managed it.”

“Well, how then?” He glanced down at his slight paunch. “I am no ‘skilled climber' and there is no other way into the abbey. The place was designed to keep men out, remember.”

“You arrived by boat,” said Max simply. That stopped Dr. Barnard cold. The effort it took not to swivel his eyes over to meet his accomplice's was palpable; instead he fixed his stare for too long a beat on Max's face, clearly trying to think his way out of the dilemma.

Max, sensing his advantage, began to hit his stride.

“You waited until you knew the nuns would be at Vespers, reducing the already slim chance you would be observed. You dressed in some sort of concealing garment like a hooded fisherman's coat or slicker. You must have looked like a yellow monk—and this is what Dame Hephzibah saw when everyone thought her delirious. You rowed up to the black door over the river that at one time was used for dumping refuse. Sister Rose mentioned in passing to me the terrible problems there once had been with sanitation. There had to be somewhere an opening into the river that made this dumping possible. St. John's College in Cambridge has just such a door. Interestingly, it is said to be the site of a murder, but that was a murder for another day and age. This is a modern tale. A tale of greed.

“Alongside another tale, and that is a tale of revenge.

“You rowed up to this door, conveniently left unlocked for you, thus bypassing the need to get in through the gatehouse—the only other means of entry to a place that, as you say, was designed to keep out the world of men. You moored the boat on the rusted old pins driven into the wall. And in that place you waited for your accomplice.

“The steps of your plan were so carefully worked out, as in sequence dancing. One wrong footfall would put everything out of alignment. Your partner had to keep in perfect step with you.”

“Partner?”

“Yes. Of course, you had a partner.

“Now, the poisoning of Lord Lislelivet had all the hallmarks of an impulsive act, perhaps immediately regretted. A seeking of petty revenge. But for what?

“Was it done by someone defending the abbey? Someone trying to drive people or a certain person away?

“Monkbury Abbey recently has become the focus of media interest, because of the rather silly book that has captured the public's imagination. It is said that an icon of special value to the faithful has been hidden here for centuries. The Face, as it has come to be known. Its value might be intrinsic, or it might be an object of pure gold. It might even be a golden chalice—the Holy Grail of legend.

“So it seemed obvious from the outset that the overriding motive here was greed. Greed motivates nearly every visitor in the guesthouse.”

“Not me,” Xanda told the room. “I don't give a rat's. I just want out of here.”

“Me, too,” said Piers.

Max ignored them both. “When a wall collapsed during an earthquake, exposing the Face, the nuns were thrilled, but they didn't want—most of them—the notoriety, the crush of visitors stirred up by Frank Cuthbert's book. Finding the Face just confirmed Frank's crackpot speculation, but the nuns—again, most of them—didn't want anything to do with it. They didn't want sightseers with treasure maps, the way Paris and London and, in particular, Rosslyn Chapel became overrun with visitors when Dan Brown published his book.

“The nuns wanted, actually, to keep this miraculous and lovely find to themselves, at least for the time being, while they figured out what to do. But first, repairs must take place, the walls must be shored up, or the shrine honoring the Face would be destroyed.

“This is where creative accounting came into play. The nuns couldn't ask for money for such a secret project, and so money intended for the new guesthouse was diverted to refurbish the crypt. To create an altar for private worship of the icon, a project of which the bishop almost certainly would not approve, and to shore up the crumbling masonry. Wall coverings, pews, kneelers, and so on were needed. And after a while, people like the Goreys, who after all had contributed in good faith to the guesthouse renovations, began to ask where the money went. The abbess began to stall them. The pressure was on, because the abbess's desire to keep this quiet was not universally embraced, was it?”

The abbess said nothing, but she shook her head either in disagreement or remorse.

“Once I saw the Face for myself, I wondered whether Dame Sibil, the cellaress, might be all in favor of revealing it and inviting in the tourists. For in talking with her I was struck by her calm certainty that the ranks of applicants to the nunnery would one day swell. What made her so sure? Was it the certainty of the fanatic, or the certainty of someone with a marketing tool up her sleeve? The marketing tool being a relic that would draw not just sightseers and the curious, but religious converts?”

“I knew for myself that the Face was miraculous,” said Dame Sibil. “It saved my failing eyesight. Would you expect me—would you expect anyone?—to keep that knowledge hidden from the world? Marketing—call it that if you will, but I am no snake-oil saleswoman. The Face is
real
. It is a miracle, one entrusted to our care. The world had to know of it.”