She had lost a few teeth with the passing years but still she could offer a good and welcoming smile, the soft folds of her face settling comfortably around her eyes and mouth. Her grip on his hands was firm. Indeed it could be said she clung fiercely to him in her struggle to remain upright. Now she inched back and peered up into his face, making a study of him. She smelled of soap—lavender and another flowery scent he could only guess at—and of sunlight and starch. There was also the pleasant but faint odor of honey that he decided came from the beeswax candles that were dotted around the room behind her to the right. A hand-lettered wooden sign identified it as the portress’s lodge.
Max bore the scrutiny patiently, without flinching. It was her job, after all, to assure the safety and security of the abbey by not allowing in random strangers, although he began to think her age and various evident infirmities might make her the worst possible candidate for the job. Indeed, he thought he detected behind the thick lenses of her glasses a film over the eyes that might be the beginning of cataracts.
Finally she seemed satisfied by what she could make out of his appearance. “You’ll be wanting the guest-mistress,” she shouted. “I’ll go and fetch her, presently.” Slowly she turned, as good as her word, and began a measured shuffle toward her desk in the lodge’s reception area, behind which some sort of primitive call system anchored her to the rest of the building. Max, who had followed her through the large wooden door, shutting it behind him and slotting all the barriers back in place, watched her wobble slowly to behind the counter where she apparently spent much of her day reading and praying, for surely there were few visitors to occupy her time up here. A little prayer book lay open at the page where Max by his appearance had interrupted her contemplations.
As she continued the long walk back to her station, Max assayed a friendly greeting and a trial question or two, and it soon became apparent she was quite deaf, replying in a nonsensical way to anything Max said. He did manage to establish that her name was Dame Hephzibah. When he asked her how long she had been at Monkbury Abbey, she replied that she felt fine and thanked him kindly for asking. “And God willing, I’ll live to be a hundred,” she added. He imagined that inability to hear might come in handy during the Great Silence, but right now it only added a wrinkle to his investigation. Finally, pulling out the notebook he always carried with him, Max wrote down in large block letters his most pressing question.
HAS DCI COTTON LEFT A MESSAGE FOR ME—FATHER MAX TUDOR?
The DCI had promised to keep Max updated with anything breaking in the case. What Max most wished to hear was that it was solved and he could return home to Awena.
She took the notebook from him and holding it up to her eyes, studied it closely. Finally she removed her glasses and looked closer still. The glasses caught on the edges of her coif, complicating their removal.
“Good heavens, no!” she yelled at him. Like many people who were hard of hearing, Dame Hephzibah compensated for the loss by shouting. Max felt his pulse quicken slightly as her response reverberated off the stone walls. For an elderly, small woman she had tremendous vocal power.
“And to have a detective inspector need to call here at all,” she added. “Bless my soul, I never thought to live to see the like!”
Turning away, she continued her penguin-like progress, and Max at last realized her destination.
There was a bell pull hanging from the ceiling, and much like Lady Grantham in Downton Abbey, Dame Hephzibah apparently used it to communicate that she needed assistance. Grabbing the rope, she clung swaying to it for dear life, much as she had clung to Max, and by using her meager body weight as a force of gravity, managed to yank the bell three times as three times her feet left the ground. The three-bell ring probably was a sort of code for “Visitor at the Gate.” Max walked further inside the lodge and stood with his arms held slightly out from his body in order to catch and break her fall if need be. It was a very near thing that she might not be able to return to earth and could sway up there forever like a woman ascending a rope version of Jacob’s ladder.
But at last she landed safely on her tiny orthopedic shoes, releasing the rope with the expert timing born of years of practice.
And smiling happily, she said, “Dame Tabitha, our guest-mistress, will be with you shortly. She will show you your lodgings in the guesthouse.
“Would you like some tea while you wait, Father?”
Chapter 6
THE RULE
All are to follow without questioning the teachings of the Rule as set forth herein. Let no one dare to deviate from these instructions.
—The Rule of the Order of the Handmaids of St. Lucy
Max followed the portress’s directions to park his “motorcar,” taking a dirt road that ran around the outer wall of the guesthouse to the gated visitor’s area. The gate was equipped with a solar-powered keypad for which he had been given the passcode.
A nun waited for him at the door to the guesthouse. He assumed this was the guest-mistress, Dame Tabitha. Dame Hephzibah had confided that her nickname among the nuns was Dame Tabby, but, “Best you not call her that unless she gives you permission.”
Dame Tabitha was an immensely large woman with a bouncer’s build. She had Dame Hephzibah’s kind eyes, but hers were younger eyes, and they sat rather far apart in a wide face.
“You’ll be Father Maxen Tudor,” she said, consulting her clipboard with brisk efficiency. She made as if to relieve him of the small valise he carried, but he demurred.
“Please call me Father Max,” he said. “Everyone does.”
She showed him to a small entryway and down a long hallway, pointing out as she went the guest kitchen and the bath facilities.
Max was well aware of the dictum of St. Benedict that guests of a monastery were to be welcomed as Christ himself. This open-door policy was sacred to monk or nun, down to the present day. Max had to wonder how often this utopian innocence had been repaid with thievery and worse.
At one time, monasteries had been duty-bound to provide sanctuary for criminals on the run. Once inside the walls, no sheriff could touch them, whether they be murderers or pickpockets.
Or embezzlers.
Or poisoners.
Which rather brought Max to the point for his visit.
“I gather,” said Max to Dame Tabitha, “that many of the people here this week are repeat visitors.”
“I think they all are,” she said vaguely. “Their gathering here—I believe—has something to do with the plans for the new guesthouse.” She massaged the knuckles of her large hands like a prizefighter contemplating a rematch.
“You are not pleased to have a new guesthouse?” he hazarded.
“Oh, it’s not that. It’s that, well.” She was clearly wondering if this were idle gossip. She seemed to decide it was mere opinion and thus okay. “From the architectural plans I’ve seen, it looks like an asylum, and I don’t mean as in ‘sanctuary.’ It looks like a home for the insane, but with big windows. Very modern, you know.”
“Ah,” said Max neutrally.
“Still, it is not my place to comment,” she added virtuously.
“They were all here in the fall?” Max prompted. “Everyone connected with these plans in some way?”
She paused. “It was in the fall when the plans for the guesthouse expansion were being finalized. An architect was here to talk with the abbess and the cellaress. And Lord Lislelivet was here.” A dark shadow seemed to cross her face at the name. “That’s all I remember for certain. The Americans weren’t here for long—that I do recall. Mr. Gorey is a hearty eater, and keeping his plate filled is always a challenge. And he is a meat eater. We do not serve meat except to those who are ailing. It is against the Rule.”
“I see.”
“He and his wife have always been most generous to the abbey,” she added sternly, as if Max had suggested otherwise.
“Very kind of them, I’m sure,” he murmured.
In a former life Da
me Tabitha might have worked in a pub, keeping the hooligans at bay. Max was guessing at her background and would continue to do so until he had had time to study the potted histories provided by the bishop’s office, but she gave every impression of being worldly-wise and gruff almost to the point of rudeness.
Max again tested the waters.
“There are other visitors now?” he asked, knowing the answer full well from talking with Cotton.
“A pair from Monkslip-super-Mare. I don’t gather they are married. Even if they were they’d get separate rooms.”
Max beamed his approval at this chaste arrangement. This seemed to soften her, just one degree. The massive shoulders relaxed. “I was forgetting the girl: Xanda is her name. The Goreys’ daughter. A bit of a handful. No harm in her, I don’t think. But pink hair and blue fingernail polish? I mean, really.”
“It all comes out in the wash,” commented Max.
“Hmph. At least,” said Dame Tabitha, “you have good weather for your visit. This past spring was a trial. We thought the lambs would wash away the minute they were born.”
“It’s peaceful here,” observed Max. He had become aware of an almost eerie absence of sound. Probably something to do with the thickness of the abbey walls. “It almost takes some getting used to. I can see why people are drawn to the abbey.”
“People nowadays are seeking something. Most of them don’t know what.”
He’d been following her down a secondary, narrow hallway lined with doors. Finally she came to a stop before a plain wooden door at the far end. It was painted blue and bore a small brass plate that labeled the room MATT. 9.
She turned to throw open the door, which was unlocked.
“More private for you here,” she said, flipping on a light switch. This was answered by the feeble illumination of a low-wattage, energy-saving bulb.
“I see.” That was nice, although Max wasn’t sure privacy was what was wanted in an investigation. Being in the thick of the action was more like it. Still he nodded, indicating his pleasure with a smile—a smile that was not returned. In fact, Dame Tabitha seemed unwilling to meet his eyes. Perhaps it was their proximity in the small room. She stood awkwardly, her large frame blocking the door once he had entered—blocking him in.
She cleared her throat.
“Here’s the drill,” she said, and launched into what was undoubtedly a much-rehearsed speech: “Matins, or Dawn Prayer, is at four a.m. Lauds is at six, Terce at nine, Sext at noon, None at three, Vespers at six, and Compline, or Night Prayer, at nine p.m. Got that? The Great Silence follows immediately after Compline. Matins at four means rising at three forty-five a.m., when our sisters assigned to the night vigil come to wake us. You may join us at any service you choose.”
Pausing in her narrative, Dame Tabitha peered at him from her wide-set, tilted eyes. Like a cat’s eyes, they were, and suddenly Max saw how she got her Tabby nickname, with her small chin and wide cheekbones enhancing the illusion. The litany she had just recited was a test, Max felt, of his devotion: Would he embrace this military-style regime? She did add, with a tiny access of compassion, “When you get to be my age, Father, you’re generally wide awake at four a.m. anyway, so it’s not the hardship it once was. I have learned to welcome the sound of the wake-up call to prayer—even in the dead of winter, when it is very hard to force these bones out of bed. Apart from fireplaces, the convent is heated by generators and solar power—and the hydroelectric generator we installed in the river last year has been a Godsend.”
Max acknowledged this by a nod of his head. At just the thought of Monkbury Abbey in the middle of an English winter he could feel his temperature drop a notch. The advantage of the old stone walls in summer would be that, outside the sun’s direct rays, one would be comfortably cool. There was of course no air-conditioning.
“After Matins, we have some quiet time to ourselves, she continued. “After Lauds comes the end of the Great Silence, then breakfast.”
Max reflected that, for many people, that would be a full day put in already, and time for a nap. But they were only getting started.
“Guests join us for our midday meal and for supper. For breakfast, you are on your own in the guest kitchen, where cold cereal and fruit and so on are provided.”
She paused. Was he taking all this in? He nodded.
“We work after the midday meal and after three p.m. prayer we have a light tea. Afterward is private time for those who choose, but for postulants and novices, there are readings and reflections that are a part of their training. We have one of each at the moment—Sister Rose and the postulant named Mary Benton.” She sighed. “Things are not as they were in my day, when we would easily have had a dozen of each, like hens running underfoot.”
“Time marches on,” Max murmured sympathetically.
“Lights out at ten p.m. sharp. I cannot emphasize enough that the time of the Great Silence is sacred and can only be broken with permission from the abbess or in an emergency.”
Again she peered closely at him, as if gauging him for tendencies toward late-night carousing and general debauchery.
“The door that links to the abbey proper is kept locked at all times,” she said with, he thought, unnecessarily pointed emphasis.
“So if a sister were to enter the guesthouse on an errand, she would lock the door behind her?”
If she found this question strange she gave no sign of it. “At all times,” she said.
“Even if she were going to be here only a moment or so?”
“All times.” She was starting to economize on syllables, so Max didn’t see that he could get much further with this line of inquiry. If Dame Tabitha were to be believed, and he didn’t doubt her for a minute, there was no access to the off-limits cloistered area from the guesthouse.
Dame Tabitha was looking at him as if to be certain he quite understood everything that was expected of him, behavior-wise.
He smiled, hoping he looked sufficiently innocent of plans to break uninvited into the nun’s dormitory.
“Do you have any further questions, Father?”
“Why, yes, if you wouldn’t mind.”
Her expression suggested that had she been wearing a watch, she would pointedly have consulted it. But she waited, again massaging her giant’s knuckles.
“Do you get many visitors?” Max asked.
She shrugged and allowed herself a small smile. Was it his imagination, or was she relieved at the general nature of his question? “We’ve a full house most weekends,” she told him. “During the week, it’s mostly retired and unemployed folk. They are wise, I think, to use their free time to contemplate their next move. For the unemployed, we don’t charge. We ask them to make a donation when they are better equipped to do so.”
“That is really most kind of you.”
She blushed, as if it were all her own idea.
“It used to be the policy never to ask for a specific sum but after we had entertained several dubious guests we had to begin suggesting a minimal amount. One person stole the light bulbs, if you can believe it. But after we mentioned what it cost us to keep the guesthouse running, guests generally exceeded the suggested amount, sometimes by hundreds of pounds. There is no accounting for people.”
“No, indeed. You must be kept very busy.”
“My, yes. I’m kept busy, praise God. But not as much as the guest-mistresses of the past. Monkbury Abbey has had its share of queens and duchesses and their entourages come to lodge with us. They seem to have been nothing but trouble.
“I do not wish to boast,” she added, “but we have always been famous for our hospitality. And for our cooking. And for our choir.”
“Everyone is welcome at all the services?”
“Absolutely. We also invite people to lend a helping hand with whatever needs doing. Male visitors are invited to help chop wood and do the heavy lifting.” She looked meaningfully at her latest male visitor, assessing his potential for manual labor. Max resisted the i
mpulse to flex his biceps.
“Oh, of course,” he told her. “I’d be delighted to help where I can.” If nothing else it would give him an excuse to mingle with whoever was about.
“We have trouble taking in the deliveries sometimes, you see,” she said. “The bags of flour and whatnot for the fruitcake. Ah, I see you’ve heard of our fruitcake? Yes. And of course there is the garden. I heard Dame Petronilla say the other day she was getting behind with the vegetable garden. She’s coming down with a cold.”
“Just let me know. I would welcome the chance to be out of doors.”
“Many of our visitors seem to feel the same way. Some are in search of the ‘simple life.’” There was just the merest hint of scorn on the last phrase, but she went on to say, “We’ve never had anyone refuse to help in the garden, for example, although we have had visitors whose help has been on somewhat of a sliding scale. I can’t say our resident artist has been of much help.” Her voice dripped irony on the word “artist.”
“I wasn’t aware you had an artist in residence,” he said, knowing from Cotton’s brief descriptions she must mean Piers Montague, the photographer, and friend of Paloma Green.
“My, yes,” she said. “You’ll come to hear of him, I’m sure. He’s already been asked several times not to photograph the sisters; we are not on display.”
She had edged away from the doorway and now stood in the corridor, illuminated by a single electric bulb augmented by sconces between each door.
“It’s all quite atmospheric,” said Max, and indeed this was an understatement. It was dark enough he felt he’d have trouble finding the door in an emergency. “Haunting.”
“The guesthouse was at one time a lazar house,” she told him. “A leper hospital. Twelfth century. It was the sort of place nuns were sent to serve as a penance for, erm, moral incontinence and other serious lapses. The hard cases who never seemed to learn anything. Of course, there were always the truly devout nuns who asked to serve in this way—they saw it as a privilege, you see.”
4 A Demon Summer Page 6
