A Demon Summer

by G. M. Malliet

  But his mind would not cooperate. His eyes, refusing to stay shut, roved across the faces of the black-faced sheep, and his mind was soon making a game out of noticing their differences. They had ceased their desperate baa-ing for the most part, and having determined that Max was neither a source of food nor entertainment, they drifted to the further end of the field.

  Max stood and stretched. It would soon be time for his meeting with Cotton. As he walked back up the hill and past the small forest glen, he saw the novice, Rose Tocketts, in the herb garden, near the rows of berry bushes. She was humming a tune as she worked—a chant he recognized from one of the Divine Offices. She looked up as he approached.

  She stood and wiping her gloved hands said, “Well, I guess this is providential. I was wondering whether to tell you. And here you are.”

  She reached in one of the deep pockets of her skirts and pulled out an object. The keen young eyes in the square face looked at him apprehensively.

  “What do you make of this, Father?”

  * * *

  A few minutes later, Max sat beside her on a wooden bench that ran along one side of the tool shed in the garden.

  “It is my turn this week to act as chambress,” she said, pulling off her canvas garden gloves to reveal tanned, work-hardened hands. “To some degree we have all taken over the function of the chambress, a full-time position which has been eliminated until the number of new recruits to the abbey increases. Which may, of course, be never. The nuns take turns, under the loose supervision of the cellaress, in taking care of the nuns’ cells. Beyond simple day-to-day making of the beds and so on, each sister is responsible for daily maintenance of her own room—and the guest-mistress is responsible for taking care of the guest rooms.”

  She hesitated, until he said, “Go on.”

  “You see, it’s just that … more and more, the nuns have to take care of their own things, as I say. But there are certain items of clothing that are collected by whoever is acting as chambress. Aprons, things like that. It makes much more sense to just chuck them all together and wash them as one batch.”

  “Okay. And you found this in an apron?”

  “In a pocket. It’s a lucky thing I search the pockets or we’d have had smelly wash water staining everything.”

  Max leaned toward her. Because this was of course the crux of the matter.

  “Is there any way to tell whose apron it was?”

  “Not really. They are one-size-fits-all things, and they tend to get used by whomever. It is forbidden to start thinking of any object as ‘mine,’ anyway. We own nothing. That’s the deal. It is never ‘my’ apron or ‘her’ apron but an apron belong to the nunnery.”

  “So it is difficult to say who was wearing it last?

  “That’s right.” She was wringing the garden gloves in her hands, twisting them back and forth. This was as far from the sturdy, practical young woman he had met previously as could be. She was frightened, agitated. “I shouldn’t be telling you this,” she said. “I should have cleared it with the abbess.”

  “But you didn’t.” He looked at the object she had found, which he held in the palm of his hand. It was a cigarette butt, a filtered iteration of a popular brand. “Where did you find the apron?”

  “Hanging on a peg with several others. There is a hallway just outside the infirmary.”

  Meaning, someone who was not a nun had found their way into the cloistered area beyond the infirmary. Unless he was to believe one of the sisters had taken up smoking? Not entirely impossible, he guessed, although it begged the question of from where she had got hold of the packet of cigarettes. He played out the different scenarios in his mind. Someone offering a nun a cigarette? A nun walking into a shop and buying a packet? It was nonsense. Much more likely that someone had gained access to the cloister from outside. And that would be one of the guests in the guesthouse, none of whom he had seen holding a cigarette.

  That didn’t mean none of them did. It only meant he hadn’t seen them doing it.

  And of course there was Xanda, with the habit he’d encouraged her to quit.

  It was weird. Definitely, it was weird.

  “Why didn’t you ask the abbess about this?” he asked. Her face flushed a bright red, and he had his answer. “You were not sure who to trust in the abbey, not anymore, were you? Even Abbess Justina.”

  “Yes!” she cried out, in what was nearly a wail. “And I’m sure it’s too wrong of me to be thinking that way. The abbess, after all! But I don’t know what to think any more—what to think, or who to believe. I’ve just been dithering, back and forth—what to do? And since you came here ‘new,’ so to speak, and couldn’t have had anything to do with these goings on, it just seemed best to talk to someone about it who was completely neutral. You do see?”

  “Of course I do. Calm yourself, Sister Rose. I think you acted quite correctly, under what are unusual circumstances.” Given the parameters under which she lived, her every waking moment mapped out by one rule or another, Max thought it little short of a miracle that she retained the ability to think for herself, listening to her own instincts. How many others in the monastery would have done the same, thoroughly indoctrinated as they were after following the Rule for years?

  Max looked at the cigarette butt. In and of itself, it didn’t mean a lot. And there was also the possibility it had found its way into the pocket by innocent means. That someone had handed it to a sister, and she had pocketed it. That she had found it lying about, and picked it up.

  Or even, that someone had planted it in the pocket to incriminate, thought Max. A much darker and more sinister explanation, that. The thought of a betrayer dwelling among these innocents was disturbing.

  “Thank you, Sister Rose,” he said. “You were right to tell me.”

  “There’s more, though! The night of the murder, I had the night watch. To wake the others for prayer, you know. I went for a walk by myself, trying to stay awake—I’d fallen asleep earlier and was terrified of doing it again. And I saw someone running. A nun. Running through the cloister garden.”

  “And? Yes?”

  “We don’t run. We’re forbidden to run.”

  “I see.” And Max did begin to see. “Running away from the well?”

  She nodded. “And there was one other occasion. It was just odd, that time … outside the church. Outside.”

  “What?”

  Reluctantly she told him, adding, “I must tell the abbess all this.”

  “I would much rather you didn’t.”

  He got a look much like the look Eve might have given the devil as he held out a delicious red apple for her inspection. Tempting as it was, Eve just wasn’t quite sure …

  “You obviously don’t understand,” she said at last. “I’m on probation here, and I’m the worst case they’ve seen in years. Well, me, and maybe one other. But I’m nearly always the last to get to the choir for the canonical hours. I’m nearly always late to chapter meetings. I burned the bread the other day—three entire loaves.” Her lip trembled. “I’ve been punished for these things, countless times. And still I screw up.”

  “Punished how?”

  She bent her head and shrugged, not able to look at him. “Made to eat my meals alone. Excluded from sitting in the warming room as the others sit having their tea and embroidering. That sort of thing.” She hesitated, murmuring: “It gets lonely. But the more I try to do better, the worse I seem to get.”

  Today we would call it bullying, he thought. Cutting someone out of the herd—in this case, to “correct” their misbehavior. But whatever the reason, the end result was to make a person feel small, and isolated, and alone. It was a glimpse into the way of life he had not really seen before and did not much like.

  What would Jesus do? Certainly not this.

  “I must tell.” She rose and started to walk away from him. But turning, she added, “Tomorrow morning, in chapter. I must tell. It would be a serious fault to hide this from the abbess or my s
isters. Good day, Father. I hope you catch whoever did this.”

  He felt as if he had been given a deadline.

  But sometimes, he realized, a deadline, inexorably closing in, focuses the mind in a wonderful way.

  He rose and walked back to the guesthouse, now late for his meeting with Cotton. But the delay had been worth it.

  * * *

  “Among the last things you’d expect to find in a nunnery, isn’t it?”

  Max sat with Cotton in the guesthouse’s living area, case notes spread before them on a low coffee table. They were alone, the guests having been banished to the kitchen. Max had made one further stop on the way, to look in on Dame Meredith.

  He had handed the cigarette end over to Cotton.

  “That or a spliff,” Cotton had replied.

  “Xanda smokes,” Max told him. “For what it’s worth, so does Lady Lislelivet.”

  “Forensics should be able to help with a DNA analysis,” Cotton said, before sending it off with one of his constables for examination.

  They sat now, looking at the forensic evidence to date.

  “Whoever it was left no traces,” Cotton was saying. “Probably wore gloves. Although with this type of killing—no knife or weapon—traces are thin on the ground. There were signs of a scuffle at the top of the stairs leading from the cloistered area to the crypt. We may get something there, but we expect to find the victim’s traces, not the killer’s. The doorway to the stairs is hidden, by the way, in the back of a utility closet. No one was meant to find that crypt in the normal way of things.”

  “Rather interesting, that.” He paused, and Cotton waited in hope that Max would tell him what he found so interesting about it. But he waited in vain.

  “Do you remember the timetable I drew up?” Max asked him. “I’ve made a few additions and changes that I think may interest you.”

  Cotton took the sheet of paper. He studied it for a long while, his eyebrows inching up and up as he read. He handed it back.

  “That is interesting,” he said. “One for the books, in fact. But—you’re sure?”

  “Quite. It’s the only thing that makes sense.”

  “I must say, your powers of deduction are remarkable.”

  “Undoubtedly,” said Max, smiling. “It also helps that I have a signed confession.”

  “A confession to the murder?”

  “Not that. That would be too much to hope for. But I do know the motive.”

  Cotton stared at him.

  “I think we will have to be content with that and deduce the rest,” said Max.

  “I don’t suppose you could give me a hint?”

  “I can give you several,” replied Max evenly. “One question I began to ask myself was why such an obscure place as Monkbury Abbey attracted so many rich donors. There are many worthy causes fighting over a dwindling number of dollars and pounds sterling, and yet two rich Americans and a wealthy lord swan in and start writing cheques the moment it is announced funds are needed for an extension to the guesthouse. They start staying in the existing guesthouse—which everyone agrees is completely out of character in the case of Lord Lislelivet. One could argue the nuns are a worthy and attractive cause, yes. And the guesthouse needed work, yes. But was there an additional reason? A motivating factor—a factor especially motivating for people both of a religious persuasion and with a keen sense of how to exploit an opportunity?

  “We know these people had caught wind of the rumors swirling around the place—the ludicrous rumors reignited by the sudden popularity of an obscure book by an even more obscure man named Frank Cuthbert of Nether Monkslip. But these were hardheaded people of business and sound financial judgment, both the Goreys and Lord Lislelivet. They were not the types to throw a lot of money around based on mawkish sentiment. No, they would want—what? A payoff. Proof.

  “But proof of what, I wondered?

  “And then, in doing a little quiet snooping about, I found in the crypt the very thing that had drawn them to this place.

  “I found The Face.

  “So, while the wealthy donors at first were—and continued to pretend to be—bent out of shape over the disappearance of their money, they were in fact on a treasure hunt. Somehow they learned what the earthquake had revealed—probably workmen in the village, while sworn to secrecy, had been unable to resist claiming that they had seen proof of what that crackpot book was claiming. The abbess should have known it was human nature not to be able to keep this ‘knowledge,’ this wild speculation, quiet for long.

  “I think that when Lord Lislelivet stayed at the inn in Temple Monkslip, he heard something. The place was the hub of village life, as such places are. And what were the chances some of the same workmen who had come to work on repairing the crypt were later to be found drinking in their local? I’d say the chances were very good indeed.

  “The inn is in fact the only gathering spot of its kind in the village, and the bar is the sort of snug little place frequented by all sorts of people from all walks of life. And having a pint in that bar, Lord Lislelivet undoubtedly heard whatever rumors were flying about. He prided himself on being a man of the people, able to talk to people high and low. Whether the lowly always appreciated his condescension may well be another matter. But over a pint he perhaps overheard the workmen talking about the crypt at Monkbury Abbey. About what they’d found there. What they’d seen. What the abbess had in fact begged them to keep to themselves. She was used to obedience, and these men were used to doing as they pleased, especially after a round or two.”

  “Lady Lislelivet said something of this when I spoke with her,” said Cotton. “Her husband had mentioned running into two men who had been involved in the repair work in the church. Her husband had said no more than that, and otherwise couched his visit here in terms of his sudden need to restore his soul or whatever. And then, of course, she never saw him again.”

  “And his probing into the matter, we assume, led to his death? Now, why would it? It makes no real sense.”

  Cotton replied, “Because one of the nuns is so unhinged she doesn’t want the secret to come out?”

  “That was possible. A monastery, like any closed group, can be a breeding ground for that sort of instability. But was it credible? No.” Max shook his head. “No, he was murdered for a simple reason, for a straightforward reason. He was murdered because he was recognized.”

  “Certainly that’s to be expected. He was a well-known man.”

  “Not to a group of women who haven’t seen a newspaper in decades. Nor to an American, I daresay.” Max clapped his hands together. “Okay. Let’s gather the suspects. Right here in the guest living room should do fine.”

  “Oh, please tell me we’re not doing the Poirot thing again? The suspects in the library with the candlestick or whatever?”

  Max looked at him. “Fruitcake, in this case. And what would you prefer? A car chase? It’s the most efficient way to flush out a killer, as Dame Agatha Christie well knew.”

  “All right. Whatever you want. Just the guests?”

  “The nuns, too. Meeting here, we don’t invade the sanctity of their cloister any further than it’s already been invaded.”

  “All of them?” Cotton looked around him. “We’re going to need a bigger boat.”

  “Not of all them will be needed.” Max rattled off a handful of names, ending with Sister Rose Tocketts, the novice.

  “They’re all suspects?” said Cotton, incredulous.

  “They’re all involved in some way, as we know. But only one of them holds a key that can help me solve a murder.”

  PART VII

  Compline

  Chapter 35

  MAX AND THE CORRECTION OF MINOR FAULTS

  A sister found guilty of constant relapse into a minor fault shall be excluded from meals and from the oratory. No one shall converse with her, and she shall work and live alone. She shall not be blessed by anyone, nor shall her food be blessed, until her fault be corrected.

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

  There had been the expected protest from Abbess Justina to the effect that this was an outrage and a sacrilege, but she had been convinced that dragging her nuns down to headquarters one by one was a far worse alternative. Cotton himself requested that she gather “her people” together and sent Sergeant Essex to collect the guests.

  Everyone was told to appear at a time nicely chosen by Max not to interfere with the nuns’ cycle of prayer.

  And so they assembled, in pairs and singles. The guesthouse inhabitants in the forms of the three Goreys, Paloma Green and Piers Montague, and Dr. Barnard. The nuns in the forms of the elderly portress, the guest-mistress, the kitcheness, the librarian, the infirmaress, the cellaress, the novice, and the postulant. Dame Meredith was excused from attending—she had taken yet another turn, and Dr. Barnard had decreed she must be spared this sort of ordeal. Max had agreed.

  They all, thought DCI Cotton, were looking as nervous as pigs at a luau: thrilled to be invited but suspecting a trap. That one nun couldn’t stop fiddling with the linen thing around her face. The wimple. And the pretty librarian nun kept polishing her glasses.

  “Let’s start,” said Max, “where it all began. With the poisoning of Lord Lislelivet. He came here to visit his dying aunt—so he said. And, having found religion, to answer the call of God to pray for his own soul. But we suspected that he was drawn here by tales of the vast wealth hidden somewhere inside the abbey. He left instead with the ‘gift’ of a poisoned fruitcake. Yet he came back to the nunnery, instead of staying away like a sensible man would do. Why?”

  “I can answer that,” said Clement Gorey. “He would have felt it was entirely worth the risk. An antiquity possessing miraculous powers would fetch untold sums at auction. Particularly with all the free publicity being generated by that recent bestselling book. It’s not just a curiosity. It’s the Holy Grail. The actual Holy Grail! Sotheby’s would have to turn billionaires away at the door if it came up for auction.”