Rueful Death

by Susan Wittig Albert

  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.

  Chapter Six

  If gun-flints are wiped with rue and vervain, the shot must surely reach the intended victim, regardless of the shooter's aim.

  C. M. Skinner Myths and Legends of Flowers, Trees, Fruits, and Plants

  I asked for a roster of room assignments and a map of the monastery's grounds. Mother also gave us an information sheet and keys to our cottages. Maggie was staying in Ezra. Ruby, who was here just for the night, was in Ezekiel. I'd been assigned to Jeremiah.

  As we were leaving, I thought of one more thing. "I promised a certain young Cowboys' fan that I'd put in a prayer request for tomorrow's game," I said. "Maybe it sounds a little strange, but would you mind-"

  "Not at all," Mother Winifred said with a smile. "In fact, I believe that Sister Gabriella has already been praying for them. But God moves in mysterious ways, you know," she added. "Tell your young friend that we can triumph even in defeat."

  I didn't think Brian would buy that idea, but I only smiled and nodded.

  Ezra, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel were a mile from the main complex by road, although the hand-drawn map revealed a shorter trail through the meadow. We drove, then parked the car and grabbed our bags, agreeing to meet again just before six. "You'll hear the bell outside Sophia," Maggie

  told us. "It's rung for every meal." Then we split up to go to our separate cottages, which were about fifty yards apart along the river.

  Jeremiah was a wood-shingled cottage with a screened porch. Its two small rooms-a bedroom-sitting room and a bathroom-dressing room-were clean and simply furnished, with a bed, an upholstered chair, and a wooden desk and chair. There were brown plaid drapes at the windows and a crucifix on the wall. In the bathroom was a Texas-sized cast-iron bathtub with old-fashioned claw feet, almost big enough to swim in. On the bathroom shelf, I saw a hot plate, a coffeepot, and a cache of tea and coffee supplies. The cottage was surrounded on three sides by a dense growth of cedar. The porch looked out over the river only ten yards away, at the foot of a gravel path. I imagined myself sitting there in the evening, listening to the water and watching the sun set behind the high cliff.

  I spent a luxurious half hour hanging up my clothes, organizing the books and other belongings I'd brought, and making up my narrow bed with the sheets I found folded on the pillow. Then I sank into the chair and gazed around the room, letting its clean spareness sink into me, its healing silence wash over me. It had been so long since I'd been alone, truly alone-no other people, no telephone, no television, no radio. I could picture myself sitting here in quiet meditation for days on end, writing in my journal, reading a little, sleeping a lot.

  But I sat for only a few minutes. The conversation with Mother Winifred weighed heavily on my mind. The accusing letters seemed to be the most pressing problem from her point of view. But while poison-pen letters are spiteful and traumatic, arson can be fatal. The fires had to be stopped before somebody burned to death.

  I got up and found the handwritten report I'd gotten from the sheriff's deputy, which turned out to be very sketchy and nearly illegible. Walters hadn't been called to the October fire, because Mother Winifred had decided it was

  accidental. He'd been called after the other two fires, however.

  I read the report and made a list of the people Walters had talked to, noting the names of the three people who had shown up at both scenes. Dwight was one, which wasn't surprising, since it was his job to be available for emergencies. Father Steven was another. Sister John Roberta, whose name I hadn't previously heard, was the third. I looked her up in the roster and decided she must be a St. Agatha nun, since she lived in Hannah.

  I put the report aside and stood up and stretched. Three fires had been set in a community where forty nuns lived within arm's length of one another. Somebody was bound to know something. I was hoping that tonight's announcement would jar loose some essential piece of information. I wanted to get to the bottom of this thing and spend the rest of my time doing what I had come to do: nothing. I smiled wistfully. Two whole weeks with absolutely nothing to do. Except, of course, for going riding with Tom Rowan.

  The thought made me restless. I pulled on my jacket and walked down the gravel path to the river's edge, where I stood for a few minutes, hands in pockets, breathing in the spicy fragrance of cedar, the crisp, clean smell of windswept meadow.

  How well had I known Tom Rowan? At the time, of course, I'd thought we were intimate. We certainly talked enough over the restaurant meals we shared after work, and during the late-night hours when we lay in one another's arms. But now, with the clarity of hindsight, I had to admit that we hadn't been intimate at all-that we hadn't known the first thing about intimacy. Mostly, we'd talked about our careers, about work-who had won that day's battles, who had lost, how we had somehow managed to come out on top. And beneath the talk there was always a hard, brittle edge of competitiveness. Tom was poised to top my story about the day's achievements; I was ready to do him one better. We'd been lovers, yes, but our relationship probably

  had more to do with sex and power than with love.

  Now, thanks to McQuaid, I knew a little more about intimacy-enough to realize that what Tom and I had back then was the kind of shallow, casual relationship that career people often substitute for genuine caring. To give us credit, of course, neither of us had much choice in the matter. When you're on your way to the top, the climb oc
cupies most of your waking hours and a big hunk of your dream time. It's practically impossible to have both a rising career and a deeply engaged relationship. It was for me, anyway.

  I made a wry face. When I left my career and found McQuaid, I'd gotten what I wanted: a warm and nurturing connection that grounded me and held me close. The irony was, though, that being held close also made it hard to find space for myself, and being grounded made it tough to fly free. It was a dilemma a lot of women might welcome, but not me.

  I thought back on the lunchtime meeting. Leaving the city and coming back to rural Texas must have been hard for Tom, after all those glittering successes in Houston. What had brought him here? What kept him here?

  I looked around and saw part of my answer. This part of Texas has to be one of the most beautiful spots on earth. The Yucca River rippling at my feet was a broad, shallow stream, bordered with mesquite and cedar. Across the stream rose the rugged limestone cliff I had seen earlier, fringed with willows and hung with maidenhair fern. It was a Garden of Eden, a paradise of peace and profound tranquillity, punctuated only by the inquisitive whistle of a mockingbird and the soft, sweet whisper of-

  Ka-boom!

  I ducked for cover behind the nearest boulder as the high-pitched ricochet whined over my head. Somebody was shooting at me!

  I poked my head cautiously over the rock, which was barely big enough to hide me. "Hey!" I yelled, indignant. "What the hell do you think you're-"

  A second report, followed by the flat, hard slap of a bullet hitting the water ten yards to my left.

  I ducked down. The shooter was on the cliff on the other side of the river. The Townsend side. Was it one of the Townsends up there, carelessly enjoying some Saturday afternoon target practice? "Hey, lay off, you idiot!" I yelled. "You're going to kill somebody!"

  When the third shot came and the bullet thwacked into the trunk of the cotton wood six feet to my right, I didn't wait around. I scrambled over the rocks to a thick clump of willows, where I flopped on my stomach and caught my breath.