How Like an Angel

by Margaret Millar

  “A stupid and reckless position for a woman you describe as intelligent.”

  “In order to understand the situation, you have to under­stand more about the colony itself. It operates as a unit almost entirely separated from the rest of the country. The True Believers, as they call themselves, do not feel bound to obey our laws or follow our customs. When a man enters the Tower he sheds his other life completely, his name, his family, his worldly goods, and, last but not least, his sins. Under our system it’s illegal to harbor a murderer. But look at it from the viewpoint of the sect: the victim belonged to a world they no longer recognized, the crime is punishable under laws they don’t believe in or consider valid. In her own eyes Sister Blessing was not acting as an accessory after the fact of murder. Neither were the others, if they knew about the murder, and that’s a big if.”

  “You’re making a lot of excuses for her, Quinn.”

  “She doesn’t need my excuses,” Quinn said. “I’m only trying to help you realize that in a short time you’ll be dealing with people whose attitudes are vastly different from your own. You’re not going to change them, so you might as well under­stand them.”

  “You sound like a member of the Peace Corps making a report on Cuckooland,”

  “Cuckooland may not be quite as cuckoo as you think.”

  “All right, all right, I get the message.” Lassiter yanked irritably at his collar as if he were being choked by new ideas. “So how do you fit into the picture?”

  “I’d lost my shirt in Reno and was hitchhiking a ride to San Felice to collect a debt. The driver, a man named Newhouser, works on a ranch near the Tower. He was in a hurry to get home and couldn’t take me all the way to San Felice. I went to the Tower for food and water. During the course of my overnight stay there, Sister Blessing asked me to find a man called Patrick O’Gorman. Just find him, that’s all. I have the impression now that at the time she hired me she wasn’t even sure O’Gorman had ever existed. It’s possible that, when the murderer confessed killing O’Gorman, Sister Blessing didn’t quite believe it, she thought the whole business might have been a delusion. Naturally she wanted to find out the truth, although it meant breaking the rules of the colony and subsequent punishment. As it turned out, no delusion was involved. O’Gorman had existed all right. He was murdered near Chicote five and a half years ago.”

  “You told the Sister this?”

  “Yes, a week ago.”

  “Did it frighten her?”

  “No.”

  “She wasn’t afraid that the murderer might regret con­fessing his crime and make sure she didn’t inform anyone else?”

  “Apparently not. According to Karma, the girl who was with her this morning, Sister Blessing was in high spirits, singing about a good day coming.”

  “Well, it didn’t get here,” Lassiter said grimly. “Not for her, anyway. What made her imagine there was a good day coming?”

  “I don’t know. Perhaps she was thinking not of herself but of the colony as a whole. It’s been going downhill for a num­ber of years and the appearance of a new convert must have been encouraging.”

  “Meaning George Haywood, or the man you think is George Haywood?”

  “Yes. She had no reason that I know of to suspect Haywood wasn’t a genuine convert.”

  “Someone else obviously had,” Lassiter said. “Now that’s a funny thing, isn’t it?—Sister Blessing knew a week ago that the murder was no delusion, it had happened, and yet it wasn’t until Haywood appeared on the scene that the murderer made sure she wouldn’t talk. How do you figure it, Quinn?”

  “I don’t.”

  “What’s the present size of the colony?”

  “There are twenty-seven people, including two children and the sixteen-year-old girl, Karma.”

  “Can you eliminate any of them as suspects?”

  “The children, certainly, and Karma. Sister Blessing was Karma’s only hope of getting away from the colony and going to live with her aunt in Los Angeles, The Master himself would probably have to be eliminated—at the time of O’Gor­man’s murder he was in charge of the colony when it was still located in the San Gabriel Mountains. His wife, Mother Pureza, is both frail and senile, which makes her an unlikely prospect.”

  “Poisoning doesn’t require brawn or brains.”

  “I don’t believe any female members of the colony are in­volved in the murder.”

  “Why?”

  Quinn knew the answer but he couldn’t say it aloud: The letter to Martha O’Gorman was written by a man. “It seems improbable to me. Sister Blessing’s role in the community was almost as vital as the Master’s. She was the nurse, the manager, the housekeeper. The mother figure, I guess the psychologists would call her. Pureza’s title of mother is purely nominal. She doesn’t, and probably never did, function in that capac­ity.”

  “Tell me about some of the men in the group.”

  “Brother Crown of Thorns is the mechanic, a bad-tempered semiliterate, and probably the most fanatic believer of them all. Since he reported Sister Blessing’s infringement of the rules and caused her punishment, she had reason to dislike him and quite probably he didn’t like her, either. But I can’t see him committing a murder unless he received his instructions in a vision. Brother Tongue of Prophets is a timid neurotic suffering from partial aphasia.”

  “What the hell’s aphasia?”

  “Inability to talk. He is, or was, as dependent on Sister Blessing as a little boy, and for that reason an unlikely suspect. Brother of the Steady Heart, the barber, poses as a jolly fat man, but I’m not sure he is. Brother Light of the Infinite, who looks after the livestock, is humorless and hard-working. Per­haps he works to the point of exhaustion in order to purge him­self of guilt. At any rate he had access to poison in the form of sheep dip. Brother Behold the Vision is the butcher and the cheesemaker. I saw him only briefly, at a distance. I don’t know any of the others by name.”

  “It seems to me you know quite a lot for a man who al­legedly spent only a short time at the Tower.”

  “Sister Blessing was a good talker, I’m a good listener.”

  “Are you now,” Lassiter said dryly. “Well, listen to this: I don’t believe a word you’ve told me.”

  “You’re not trying, Sheriff.”

  The car had started to climb and the altitude was already having an effect on Lassiter. Even the slight exertion of talking made him breathe faster and more heavily, and, although he was not tired or bored, he yawned frequently.

  “Slow down on the curves, Bill. These bloody mountains give me the heaves.”

  “Think about something else, Sheriff,” the deputy said earnestly. “You know, nice things. Trees. Music. Food.”

  “Food, eh?”

  “Roast prime ribs, medium rare, baked potatoes—”

  “Forget the whole thing, will you?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Lassiter leaned his head against the back seat and closed his eyes. “Do they know I’m coming, Quinn?”

  “I told the Master I intended to report Haywood’s death.”

  “What kind of reception do you think I’ll get?”

  “Don’t expect a brass band.”

  “Damn it, I don’t like these cases involving a bunch of nuts. Sane people are bad enough, but at least you can predict how they’re about to act. Like you said, this is practically going into a foreign country where they don’t speak our language, observe our laws—”

  “Welcome to the Peace Corps,” Quinn said.

  “Thanks, but I’m not joining.”

  “You’ve been drafted, Sheriff.”

  In the front seat the deputy’s shoulders shook in silent laughter. The sheriff leaned forward and spoke softly into his ear: “What’s so funny, Bill?”

  “Nothing
, sir.”

  “That’s how I figure it. Nothing’s funny. So I’m not laughing.”

  “Neither am I, sir. It’s just the altitude, it gives me hiccups.”

  Lassiter turned his attention back to Quinn. “Think they’ll try and keep us out? I’d like to be forewarned if there’s going to be any violence.”

  “Theoretically they don’t believe in violence.”

  “Theoretically neither do I. But I sometimes have to use it.”

  “They have no weapons that I know of. Unless you count sheer force of numbers.”

  “Oh, I count it all right.”

  Lassiter’s right hand moved instinctively toward the gun in his holster. Quinn noticed the gesture and felt a protest rising inside him. He thought of Mother Pureza the way he had first seen her, looking up at the sky as if she expected it to open for her, and the Master, torn between pity and duty, trying to guide her back from her wanderings through the halls of her childhood... Brother Tongue with the little bird on his shoulder to speak for him . . . Brother of the Steady Heart plying his razor, and like any barber anywhere, talking about anything: “In my day, the ladies were fragile, and had small, delicate feet.” …

  He remembered the harassed voice of Brother Light as he brought the can of sheep dip into the storage shed: “I have a hundred things to do, but Sister says I must fix the mattress or the stranger will be eaten alive by fleas.” . . . And Brother Crown, the prophet of doom: “We all carry a devil around inside us, gnawing our innards.”

  Quinn said, in a voice that sounded ragged, gnawed by his own devil, “There must be no violence.”

  “Tell them that.”

  “I’m telling you first. By your own aggression, you might scare them into acts of destruction.”

  “More Peace Corps stuff, Quinn?”

  “Call it that if you like.”

  “You suddenly bucking for sergeant in the army of the Lord? Maybe you’re hearing voices, too, eh?”

  “That’s right,” Quinn said. “I’m hearing voices.”

  One, in particular: “I have renounced the world and its evils. I have renounced the flesh and its weakness. I seek the solace of the spirit, the salvation of the soul. Having done without comfort, I will be comforted by the Lord. Having hungered, I will feast. Having trod the rough earth, my feet uncovered, I will walk the smooth and golden streets of heaven. Having here forsaken the pride of ornament, I will be of infinite beauty. Having humbled myself in the fields, I will walk tall and straight in the hereafter, which does belong to the True Believers.”

  Quinn looked out at the desolate landscape. I hope you’ve made it, Sister. I hope to God you’ve made it.

  NINETEEN

  Nothing seemed to have changed since Quinn’s first visit. The cattle grazed in the pasture, tails to the wind; the goats were still tethered to the manzanita tree, and the sheep in their log pen stared incuriously at the car as it passed. Even the spot on the path where Quinn had met Mother Pureza earlier in the day bore no traces of the encounter, no drops of blood, no foot­prints. Oak leaves and pine needles had drifted over it, and the dark orange flakes of madrone bark that looked like cinna­mon. The forest had hidden its records as effectively as the sea.

  Sheriff Lassiter got out of the car, glancing around uneasily as though he half expected to be ambushed from behind a tree. He gave orders for the deputies in the second car to stay where they were until he had a chance to inspect the place, then he and Bill, the driver, followed Quinn up the sharp ascent of the path.

  There was no sound. No wind moved the quiet trees, the birds had not yet started to forage for their evening meal, and if the three men were observed as they approached the dining building, the observer gave no audible alarm. Now and then a tired little wisp of smoke climbed out of the chimney and disappeared.

  “Damn it, where is everybody?” Lassiter said. His voice sounded so loud in the thin air that he flushed with embarrass­ment and looked ready to apologize if anyone had appeared to accept the apology.

  No one did.

  He knocked on the kitchen door, waited, knocked again. “Hello in there!”

  “They may all be at prayer in the Tower,” Quinn said. “Try the door.”

  It wasn’t locked. When he opened it, a draft of hot dry air struck Lassiter’s face, and the sun pouring in through the enormous skylight almost blinded him.

  The long wooden table was set for the next meal, tin plates and cups and stainless steel utensils. The kerosene lamps were filled, ready to be lit; the fire in the wood stove was going and more logs lay piled neatly on the floor beside it, to be added later when Sister Contrition arrived to start supper.

  The place on the stone floor where Sister Blessing had fallen had been scrubbed clean, and there was an acrid smell in the air like burning wool. Lassiter went over to the stove and lifted the lid with the handle. The charred remnants of the cloths used to clean the floor were still smoking.

  “They’ve burned the evidence,” Lassiter said in helpless fury. “Well, by God, they’re not going to get away with this if I have to lock every one of them behind bars. Put that in your peace pipe, Quinn.”

  He made several futile attempts to retrieve some of the remnants of cloth with a poker, but they fell apart at a touch. He threw the poker down. It barely missed his foot and he glowered at Quinn as if Quinn had been the one who had thrown it. “All right, where’s the Tower? I want to ask these buddies of yours a few questions.”

  Bill was watching his boss anxiously. “Take it easy, Sheriff. Like Mr. Quinn says, this is foreign territory. Maybe we sort of need an interpreter, somebody can talk their language. What I mean is, sure, you have a viewpoint, but maybe they have a viewpoint, too, and if we kind of go easy at first—”

  “What’s happened to you?” Lassister said. “You getting soft in the head like Quinn here?”

  “No. But—”

  “O.K., then. No buts, Billy-boy.”

  The only sounds as they walked were the occasional crunch of an oak leaf underfoot and the squawk of a scrub jay sensing danger and giving the alarm. In silence, the three men passed under the entrance arch of the Tower into the inner court­yard. The dead man lay where he had fallen, in front of the shrine.

  The body had been covered with a blanket, and on a bench nearby sat Mother Pureza, clutching a rosary and watching the intruders with unblinking eyes. She had been washed and wore a clean white robe.

  Quinn spoke to her softly. “Mother Pureza?”

  “Dona Isabella, if you please.”

  “Of course. Where are the others, Dona Isabella?”

  “Gone.”

  “Where?”

  “Away.”

  “They left you here all alone?”

  “I’m not alone. There’s Capirote—” She pointed a bony forefinger at the dead man, then at Quinn. “And you. And you. And you. That’s four, and I make five. I’m not nearly as alone as I was when I had to sit up in my room with no one to talk to. Five is a good little conversational group. What shall we choose as an opening topic?”

  “Your friends. The Master, Sister Contrition, Karma—”

  “They are all gone. I told you that.”

  “Are they coming back?”

  “I don’t think so,” she said with an indifferent shrug. “Why should they?”

  “To take care of you.”

  “Capirote will take care of me when he wakes up.”

  Lassiter had removed the blanket from the dead man and was bending down, examining the head wounds. Quinn said to him, “I can’t believe her husband would have left her like this to fend for herself.”

  Lassiter straightened up, his face grim. “Can’t you?”

  “He seemed very fond of her.”

  “This is another country, remember? Maybe fondness
isn’t a word in their language.”

  “I think it is.”

  “All right, what do you suggest? That they haven’t really gone away, they’re out there playing hide-and-seek in the trees?”

  “No.”

  “What then?”

  “Either the Master plans to return, or else he left his wife here deliberately, realizing the time had arrived when he could no longer care for her properly. He knew we’d be coming, that she wouldn’t be alone for any length of time.”

  “You mean he felt the old lady would be a hindrance while he and the rest of them were on the run?”

  “No. I think he intended her to be found and to be put in an institution. She needs custodial care.”

  “Your interpretation of the Master’s motives are pretty charitable,” Lassiter said. “It doesn’t change the facts: a mur­der has been committed, perhaps two, and an old lady sick in the head has been abandoned.”

  “He would never have abandoned her for purely selfish reasons.”

  “You’re having another peace-pipe dream, Quinn, and the smoke’s gotten in your eyes.”

  “I can’t hear you,” Mother Pureza interrupted sharply. “Are you saying anything interesting? Speak up, speak up. What’s the good of conversation that can’t be heard?”

  “For Pete’s sake, keep her quiet,” Lassiter said. “She gives me the creeps. I can’t think.”

  Bill, who had gone on a brief inspection of the upper levels of the Tower, returned with the news that the place was empty. He glanced sympathetically at Mother Pureza. “I have a grandmother like that.”

  “So what do you do to keep her quiet?” Lassiter said.

  “Well, she likes to suck Life Savers.”

  “Then for Pete’s sake give her a Life Saver, will you?”

  “Sure. Come on, Grandma. Let’s go sit outside. I’ve got something nice for you.”

  “Are you a good conversationalist?” Mother Pureza said, frowning. “Can you quote poetry?”

  “You bet.” Bill helped her to her feet and led her slowly toward the archway. “How’s this? ‘Open your mouth and close your eyes, and I’ll give you something to make you wise.’ “