As Death Draws Near

by Anna Lee Huber

  I didn’t wait for Bree to respond, instead throwing open the door and marching downstairs. However, I noticed she quickly followed in my wake, and joined me in the task of organizing the remaining staff. If Gage should become angry at me for disobeying him in this, he would soon learn how little I intended to allow him to boss me around, particularly when it was unwarranted.

  As it was, he was so exhausted and filthy when he returned to the house, I don’t think he even noticed I’d disregarded his order. He attacked the tea and sandwiches with the same fervor as I imagined the men belowstairs doing, and then dragged himself upstairs to scrub himself as vigorously as he could manage in a hip bath. The Priory had no modern plumbing, or even a cistern on the roof, so in days past we’d had to make do with the servants carrying up buckets of heated water to fill the bathtub. Given the night’s activities, I’d decided Gage could wait until the morning to take a full bath.

  “Were you able to save the building?” I asked from my perch on the end of the bed as I watched him bathe.

  “Yes. Thanks to the rain earlier. The wood was still damp.”

  “That’s a relief.”

  He sighed. “Yes, but it still suffered significant damage. Which we’ll pay to fix, of course.”

  “Why ‘of course’? I’m thinking your father or Lord Wellington should be given the bill,” I replied tartly.

  He didn’t even spare me a glance for that, his eyelids were so heavy. I slid from the bed to hand him a towel as he finished rinsing himself. I knew he was too tired to answer questions, but I had one more I could not go back to sleep without asking.

  “Who were they?” I whispered as he rubbed the towel over his shoulders.

  His hand stilled and he met my eyes, sensing the fright that still gripped me. “I don’t know for certain, but I did notice two or three of them wore a green ribbon in their buttonholes.”

  I tilted my head in question.

  “That means they’re Ribbonmen.”

  My head spun in confusion. “But why?”

  “They don’t trust us.” He scrubbed the towel over his damp hair again before dropping it to the floor beside the hip bath. “That and they’re hiding something they’re afraid we’ll uncover.”

  I opened my mouth to ask what, but he forestalled me.

  “I don’t know what.” His mouth flattened into a thin line. “But I intend to find out.”

  • • •

  I tried not to yawn as I sat waiting for the mother superior in the parlor the next morning, but it was rather a losing battle perched on those soft cushions as I was after such an eventful night. We’d risen from bed later than normal, but those few extra hours had not made up for those lost in the middle of the night. So I pushed to my feet to wander the room, absently examining the contents of the shelves and paintings on the walls. She found me studying an embroidered verse hung on the wall over a small bookshelf, clearly a recent addition to the room. It read, Go forth and set the world on fire with the love of God.

  “St. Ignatius Loyola,” Reverend Mother told me softly. “It is what he told St. Francis Xavier when he departed to spread the Gospel in India and Japan. And it is what I shall tell my sisters when I send them out to establish convents further afield.”

  I turned to look at her more fully, her face still lifted to the ornate words. “Is that what you intend?”

  “Oh, yes. There are so many who are in need of God’s love. So many in the world who have thus far been beyond His message. So many girls who need our attention and guidance, and the education we can provide them. It is both our privilege and calling to take it to them.” She led me toward the settees. “Plans have already begun for a convent in Navan. And someday we hope to move beyond Ireland. To Canada, and India, and Australia, and Africa.”

  I considered her words, thinking of how I should feel to be tasked with such an endeavor. “That must be a rather daunting undertaking.”

  “For the sisters who shall leave us? Yes, in some ways.” She smiled gently. “But we cannot truly serve the Lord if we aren’t willing to push past what is comfortable. We must let Him guide our paths, even when it frightens us.”

  I returned her smile with a rather weak one, her words cutting a little too close to the bone. I didn’t think anyone could argue I hadn’t pushed past what was comfortable. Examining dead bodies and chasing murderers were hardly easy or safe. Though perhaps that was not the Lord’s will, but my own folly. A torment of my own making.

  I turned aside to stare into the fireplace, wishing I could singe away these doubts as easily as the fire had consumed the brick of peat whose ashes now filled the hearth. I had begun to wish I’d never heard of callings. There were enough things weighing on my mind without the added worry that I was somehow wallowing in macabre earthiness with these inquiries when I should be focusing my thoughts on higher things. Or at the least, concentrating solely on painting portraits.

  “You are troubled,” Reverend Mother observed, interrupting my thoughts. Her voice rang with empathy. “How can I help?”

  “It’s just the investigation,” I lied, offering her an apologetic smile as I forced my mind back to the matter at hand. “Two are dead, and we don’t seem to be any closer to catching whoever did this than we were before. If anything, I’m more confused. And then there’s the added worry of whether he intends to strike again.” I rubbed a hand against my throbbing temple. “We also had some rather hostile callers in the middle of the night.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Masked men with torches who would rather we left matters alone.”

  She reached up to clutch her pectoral cross, shaking her head. “I’m sorry I brought you into this.”

  “No, please. That is not why I told you. I merely wished to explain my melancholy demeanor, and to warn you.” I scowled. “Besides, those men are fools if they think their threats will work on us. We have encountered worse.”

  Her eyes swam with curiosity, but she did not ask. “Thank you for telling me.”

  I nodded. “There are a few things I need to know. You gave us a list of all the people who have been to the abbey, including visitors, but I noticed you’ve only listed those from the last month.”

  “Yes. I wasn’t certain how far in the past you wished to know.”

  “I wondered if you might remember if Mother Mary Fidelis, or Miss Lennox for that matter, had any visitors even prior to that. Perhaps in the last three or four months?”

  “Miss Lennox, no. She never had visitors.”

  I felt a pang for the girl, all but shunned by her family.

  “But Mother Mary Fidelis did.”

  I sat taller.

  “About . . . six weeks ago.” Her expression was drawn. “I remember because she came to see me after they’d gone.”

  “Do you know who it was?”

  “Her uncle and brother. They wanted to inform her that her father had died and . . .” She hesitated.

  “And to ask her for money,” I guessed.

  Her stunned expression was confirmation. “Yes. How did you know?”

  “Several of their letters to her inferred it.”

  “I see. Well, as you can imagine, she was distraught, and deeply concerned she’d done something wrong, that she’d sinned against them in some way.” Her eyes dropped to her lap. “I tell you all of this in confidence, and yet there are some things I will not share. However, I think that if I tell you that Mother Mary Fidelis had numerous interior trials, you will understand enough. Her wisdom and perception were hard won, and her serenity even harder. Harsh as it seems to say, her family was a stumbling block to her, and their sudden reappearance here after many years was not done as a kindness, but an accusation.”

  Having read their letters, I thought I grasped at least some of what she was saying.

  Reverend Mother met my eyes almost in c
hallenge. “Do you think they had anything to do with this?”

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. “But their reappearance is something to consider. Mr. Gage is asking at the local inns to see if they might have recently stayed nearby.”

  He also intended to visit the constabulary yet again, to inform Corcoran of our midnight marauders, as well as to ask about the gentlemen living in the area and the local activity in aid of the tithe rebellion. But she didn’t need to know all of that. Not unless it became pertinent.

  “I also hoped I might be able to speak with Miss O’Grady.”

  “Of course,” she declared, rising to her feet. “I anticipated as much. She’s waiting in the library.”

  • • •

  Miss O’Grady was seated at one of the only tables in the room, her hands clasped before her, the knuckles white from clenching. She looked up sharply when I entered the room, as if frightened I would pounce. There were dark circles under her pale brown eyes and deep sadness etched in the line of her mouth.

  I slowly crossed the room toward her and spoke in a soft voice as I touched the back of the chair across from her. “May I?”

  She nodded, watching warily as I pulled the chair out from the table and sat down. I waited, letting her study me, grow accustomed to me, as I’d seen Gage do many times with anxious witnesses and suspects. He seemed to have a knack for setting people at ease that I lacked, but I figured his techniques were worth the attempt.

  When she inhaled a breath slightly deeper than the ones before, I decided that was as good as I could expect. “I don’t wish to upset you. I know talking about what you saw yesterday is difficult.” Her breathing hitched again. “But I need your help. I need to know if you saw anything that could help us find whoever did this.”

  She shook her head. “I didn’t see anyting.”

  “I know you think you didn’t, but you may have without realizing it.”

  She shook her head again, close to tears.

  I searched my mind, trying to think of a way to get her to talk to me. “Forget what happened outside the wall for a minute. Block that from your mind, if you can, and just tell me what you remember about when you were walking through the orchard. You went to look for Mother Fidelis because you had a question?”

  “I did,” she stammered, swiping away a tear. “About my drawin’. I . . . I didn’t think she could’ve gone far.”

  “Is there a reason you set off in the direction you did, toward the wall? Did you see something that made you think she went that way?”

  She frowned. “I don’t know. I started walkin’, and . . .”

  “Did you call her name?”

  “I did, sure I did. And den . . . I tot I heard someting. But I don’t know what. Maybe a twig snappin’. Someting. And I started walkin’ faster. I couldn’t understand why she’d not heard me. And den . . .” She inhaled shakily. “And den I saw the wall, and the gap, and . . .” She couldn’t seem to bring herself to say the rest.

  “When you peered through the wall, did you see anyone? Did you hear anything?”

  She shook her head, and then lowered it to her chest, wrapping her arms around her torso as if to burrow inside herself.

  I didn’t press her further, suspecting she was being as truthful as she could and more questions would not yield other answers. “Thank you.”

  She didn’t respond. I turned in my chair to see one of the sisters whose name I could not recall standing next to the mother superior. At my look she came forward to comfort the girl, and I took my leave, figuring my presence would not help.

  “I wish I could have spared her that,” I told the reverend mother as she led me from the room.

  “You did well,” she replied, responding to the distress in my voice and not the words.

  She guided our steps toward what I knew to be the art classroom, and I glanced at her in question.

  “I thought perhaps you might wish to speak to the others in her class. They’re supposed to be painting today, but without Mother Fidelis to instruct, I thought it might be best to have them draw.”

  “Who will teach the class now?” I asked, and then felt awful for even thinking of so trivial a thing so soon after her death.

  She did not chide me, answering this as calmly as she did everything else. “I suspect we shall have to hire an outside instructor. I don’t think any of the other sisters possess the necessary skills.”

  We paused before the open door of the classroom, watching as a girl dressed as Miss Lennox must have, in the simple gray dress and short white veil of a postulant, struggled in vain to convince the students to stop talking, and for two girls who had crossed the room to return to their seats. By no means would the scene before us be considered rowdy, but it was definitely not the abbey’s normal standard.

  I glanced at the mother superior to see her reaction, and was surprised to see that it was more resigned than angry. Even so, she clearly was not going to allow this behavior to continue. She moved toward the front of the room. One could not fail to note how quickly the girls hushed and found their seats then. Even the postulant seemed abashed.

  The reverend mother turned to stare out at the girls, seeming to pause on each one of them. “From your response, I can see you understand your behavior is unacceptable. I daresay Mother Mary Fidelis would be extremely disappointed were she here to witness it. We are searching for a new instructor for this class, but in the meantime, you will respect Miss Finch’s authority. Do I make myself clear?” Her voice never rose, but remained perfectly level the entire speech, and was all the more effective for its calm.

  The girls responded as one, promising they would.

  She searched their faces a moment longer, as if to be sure of their sincerity, and then looked to where I still hovered near the door. “Now, Lady Darby and her husband are here to look into the matter of both Miss Lennox’s and Mother Mary Fidelis’s deaths. I’ve asked her to join your class today, so that if any of you know anything pertinent, you may tell her. I also understand she is a rather renowned portrait artist, so perhaps she might offer you some assistance with your drawings.”

  I bit back a humorless smile, noticing how cleverly she had arranged this. I had not even realized she was aware of my artistic career, but I could not fault her maneuvering. Not only could I give her students some small amount of tutelage, but it also provided me a way to mingle with them instead of standing at the front of the classroom a bit like a statue.

  I dutifully wandered through the desks, peering over the girls’ shoulders at their sketches and offering what suggestions I could. Most of them were quite atrocious, as was natural, and so I made the broad statements any instructor must repeat for beginners twelve times a day. Try to draw what you truly see, not what you think you should see. Remember your scale—how big is that object compared to the one next to it? Where is your shading?

  However, there were a few students who showed promise, in particular the blond-haired girl I had helped the day before. Her still life was well executed, if a tad lifeless, as still lifes tended to be. I praised her effort, learned her name was Miss Cahill, and offered some more advice on how to approach the manner in which she captured light and reflection on the clear glass vase. She listened intently and then dove in to attempt it.

  The half an hour passed pleasantly enough, but it yielded no results in terms of the investigation. Several of the girls eyed me with a wariness that seemed unwarranted, unwilling to meet my eyes, and if they did, glancing away quickly. I was even more certain some of them were hiding something, and I felt increasingly sure it was pertinent to our inquiry. The difficulty lay in convincing them to confide in me before it was too late.

  When the class was over, I made my way out to the gardens, waiting near the portico in sight of the doors leading to the kitchen, as I’d told Bree I would. The air was cooler that day, making me glad of the amethy
st pelisse with black corded leaf designs and a triangular epaulette-like collar I wore over my gown. I turned my face up to the sunshine, enjoying the feel of its warmth on my cheeks until I heard the door behind me open.

  I turned to see Bree and Mrs. Scully emerge, though the latter refused to come farther than the dooryard. Her eyes darted left and then right, chary of something. Yesterday’s events had upset her if her sudden skittishness was anything to judge by.

  I crossed over to where they stood. “We could talk somewhere else, if you like?” I told Mrs. Scully, trying to set her at ease.

  “This’ll do, this’ll do,” she replied hastily. “What I’ve to tell ye is short-like anyway.” Her gaze again swept the limited view of the gardens we could see from where we stood.

  “I’m listening.”

  Her fingers pleated the apron over her gown as if still uncertain. “’Tis only . . . ’tis only there are goin’-ons in town, goin’-ons I think Miss Lennox may’ve gotten herself involved in.”

  I glanced at Bree, who appeared just as baffled. “What ‘going-ons’?”

  She shook her head vehemently. “I can’t say. But ye’d best be talkin’ to Father Begley at the chapel. He’ll tell ye.”

  Well, that was as ambiguous a bit of information as ever I’d heard. “Mrs. Scully . . .” I began, but she cut me off.

  “I must go,” she insisted and turned to hurry back inside the kitchens, leaving Bree and me to stare after her.

  I opened my mouth to speak, but hesitated at the sound of footsteps. A moment later Davy’s copper head came into view, followed by Mr. Scully’s gray one. They did not see us, and I took the opportunity to observe them. Had Mrs. Scully been worried about her husband seeing her speak to us? Is that what had made her so fidgety? But why? Did she suspect him, or Davy, for that matter, of something terrible? Or were they simply involved with these “going-ons” she referred to so obliquely?

  Well, whatever the truth, I hoped this Father Begley would speak to us as Mrs. Scully implied. Otherwise, we were going to be left with yet another question we couldn’t answer, and that was one more than I could already stomach.