A Demon Summer (47 page)

How poor Frank Cuthbert, Author, would despair at hearing his book thus characterized, thought Max. The wonder of it was how much that “silly” book had played into the tangle of events at Monkbury Abbey.

“But I never thought beyond setting Lord Lislelivet up for a fall.”

“Dame Petronilla, please. You surely—”

“I swear it. It was wrong of me to want revenge of any kind, I know that. I know that was where I took the first wrong turning. But I never wanted this—to take a life.”

“It was an accident,” began Dr. Barnard. “It had to have been an accident.”

Max decided to relent. “I will say I don't think it was either of you who killed him, as much as you may have wanted to. No. That was another person entirely.

“Here is how I reconstruct what happened. In chapter, Abbess Justina announced the guesthouse was hosting an important visitor. And when you got a close look, Dame Petronilla, you knew exactly who he was. Older, more polished and urbane, rounder and balding—not the twenty-year-old kid you'd rarely set eyes on eighteen years ago. But back then he was Ralph Perceval. In the intervening years, you've had no access to the newspapers or broadcasts. I would imagine that after your experience with the media, part of the peace accorded you by the abbey was that you could avoid the daily news. So if Lord Lislelivet had appeared on television at any time in the past eighteen years promoting some bill or position or cutting a ribbon or riding to hounds or whatever he was doing, you wouldn't have known about it.

“But, on closer inspection, his face with its superior expression? That strutting walk? Oh, yes. You recognized him as the self-important little man whose false accusations had led to the guilty party's making a clean escape, while suspicion ruined so many lives.”

Max turned to Dr. Barnard, watching him closely. “Dr. Barnard has lived in the U.S. all these years, and, unlike people living in the U.K., he has been spared the sight of Lord Lislelivet on television. But once he was pointed out by Dame Pet—oh, yes.

“She told the doctor of this unprecedented interest in the nunnery by Lord Lislelivet. They talked, coming to no resolution then as to what to do, but the seeds were planted in the doctor's mind. And when Lord Lislelivet scheduled a return visit, well…”

“If he'd not come back he'd still be alive,” said Dame Petronilla.

“Was the poisoning a warning, then?” Max asked. But she did not reply.

“Soon the pair of you began to speak of a way to force the truth from Lord Lislelivet,” Max continued. “Of a way to establish an alibi for yourselves.

“And as you spoke, you were overheard.”

The pair exchanged startled glances.

“You were overheard by Dame Meredith.

“It was a simple plan, really. The first step was to neutralize any witnesses. The novice was given a drink before her watch began. There was nothing easier than to add a sleeping draught to her tea.

“Dame Hephzibah, now … she was more of a problem. You had to nullify her ability to witness. She had complained that her failing eyesight made her eyes tired and sore, so you gave her some eye drops. But what was in those eye drops was belladonna. That way, her eyesight, always bad, would be terribly blurry. She might also suffer confusion from the drug—a common side effect. That is how desperate you were that your scheme work. I don't think poisoning an elderly woman was in the usual repertoire for either of you. To take any chances with an elderly woman's health.”

“No!” Dame Petronilla said, stung by the accusation. “It was an accident. She got it on her hands somehow and rubbed her eyes.”

“Hush!” commanded Dr. Barnard

But the fight seemed to have gone out of Dame Petronilla. She could accept being an accessory to the murder of Lord Lislelivet, but not a poisoner of helpless old Dame Hephzibah. As strange a distinction as it was, Max could somehow see the logic.

“She rubbed her eyes … her eyes were always were dry, you see—she complained they bothered her. Old age, you know. If I'd known … if I'd realized … but I didn't.”

“And this is why she couldn't see?” said Max. “I don't buy it. I think she ingested some of it, too. Her symptoms were severe, even taking her age into account. Her confusion was extreme.”

Dame Pet turned to Dr. Barnard accusingly. “Did you—?”

“Hush,” he repeated, this time in a soothing voice. “It will be all right.”

Max went on, relentless now he was so close to the truth. “To be honest, I don't think she was completely hallucinating that night. She just couldn't see clearly what she
did
see, because of the drops in her eyes. She said she saw a ‘yellow monk.' We thought she might mean a Buddhist monk or nun. I apologize, Dame Hephzibah, for doubting you.”

She looked around at the others, an “I told you so” expression on her face.

“She did see someone that with her compromised eyesight looked like a figure wearing a yellow monk's robe with a hood. And she said she saw a “white nun,” too, at which point her testimony was completely discounted. What she meant of course was that she saw either the novice Sister Rose in her white novice's habit or Dame Pet in her white nursing habit.

“I am now inclined to take her at her word. She could see—not well—but she was not having hallucinations.”

“But … Dame Pet was in the choir,” said the abbess. “We all saw her. She wouldn't have had time to commit the crime.”

“There!” said the doctor, rallying. “You can't get around that, can you? She was in the choir. Her presence vouched for—by a group of nuns, no less.”

“Yes, it all does seem very airtight, doesn't it?” said Max mildly. “But no. It was not airtight at all.” He turned around, gathering their attention to him. They were all preternaturally still. The nuns, especially, looked perplexed and anxious, and he was sorry for it. He began to speak:

“What we are dealing with here is an elaborate double bluff. Seeing the nuns in their all-enveloping habits every day, it is easy to see how a woman or a man could impersonate a nun. It would be the easiest thing in the world to do. But what if this particular plan took things one step further? What if a person dressed in a nun's habit to act as a decoy, providing an alibi for the nun? And what if, simultaneously, a nun dressed in ‘street clothes,' for the same reason—to provide an alibi for her partner?”

“O-k-a-ay,” piped Xanda, thinking it through. “I can see that possibility. But how? How exactly did they do it? And why?”

“The time of the murder had to be carefully established so the alibis would hold. Lord Lislelivet's death was surrounded by such a lot of deliberate hubbub that no question could be raised about the apparent time of his murder.

“Once I began to think of the timing as being very deliberate and specific, very much of the essence, as it were, I began to wonder why. If it weren't done in such a way as to clear all those nuns in the choir, one in particular. There they were, all lined up and accounted for. There are so few of them these days that one missing nun would immediately be noticed.”

Abbess Justina was nodding her head as he spoke. “It was always evident that my sisters were innocent of involvement this.”

“It was evident as far as the eye could see,” said Max. “But was that in fact the case?
Were
all the nuns in choir for Compline?”

She nodded emphatically. “All thirty-one. We always sit in our assigned places. An empty place would be obvious, I tell you. Like a missing tooth.”

“Ah,” repeated Max. “An empty place would be obvious, yes.”

“So…” This was Xanda.

“So there were thirty-one bodies in the choir stalls at the service. But not all of them were nuns. One of them was an imposter dressed in a white nun's habit.”

He turned quietly.

“Which can only mean…”

Xanda's kohl-lined eyes widened as she took in the implications.

Max said, “It was in fact Dr. Barnard who had taken Dame Petronilla's place. Because she was recovering from a cold, or so she said, no one noticed that her low voice was just a whisper that night.”

“Dr. Barnard?” Several of them spoke at once, heads swiveling, looking for confirmation of the impossible.

Dame Olive spoke up excitedly. “My stall is next to hers in choir, and while I know this sounds odd, I thought she had a slightly different, well,
odor
about her that night. At first I imagined it was tobacco, but since that was impossible I discounted the idea. But she was always working with different herbs, so it could have been anything, really. If she were in a hurry she'd dry herbs in the infirmary oven. Lately she often smelled of coriander. She'd been giving it to Dame Meredith for her upset stomach caused by the chemo, poor thing. She'd also use it as a massage oil to help with Dame Hephzibah's arthritis.”

“But if any of us had kitchen duty—well, you never knew what you were getting. I can always tell when Dame Petronilla on my left or Dame Agatha on my right had had kitchen duty because they would smell of whatever we would soon be eating or had just eaten. Fish days were often rather unpleasant. Or I might get the scent of flowers if it was someone's day to place fresh flowers on the altar or in the refectory.”

“Thank you, Dame Olive. I am certain your perceptions are correct.”

But she was not quite finished. “That night, I had the idea Dame Pet had been working in the cloister garden with its fruit trees. It was that smell of coriander, but mixed with a stronger scent of citrus. Rather a woody, spicy smell, it was. Coriander is quite popular in aphrodisiac blends.” She added: “Or so I am told.”

“Thank you, Dame Olive,” said Max again. “Probably you were picking up the scent of Dr. Barnard's cologne mixed with the odor of tobacco.

“Here is what I think the plan must have been.” He returned his gaze to Leroy Barnard's face. “You, Dr. Barnard, arrived at Monkbury sometime after the Vespers service, which begins at six, and before Compline, which begins at nine. You arrived not on foot or by car but by boat, and you were met at the black door—the door beneath the infirmary, opening onto the river—by Dame Petronilla. There was a trail of water leading down the short corridor to the infirmary—perhaps it was not water from an overflowing flower arrangement as Dame Olive thought, but water dripping from your yellow rain slicker. In any event, that is the ‘yellow monk' Dame Hephzibah saw.

“You followed Dame Pet to the examination room in the infirmary, where you exchanged your outer garments for her robes—probably staying behind the screen in the examination room in case anyone walked in. You put on her white nursing habit, and she put on the clothing you wore beneath the rain slicker: your raincoat and trilby hat and neck scarf. She even put on your Wellies, so she was covered from head to toe. Even her shorn hair peeking from under the hat would be a match for yours. Your patient Dame Meredith appeared to be asleep, and so was the the novice assigned to watch her. Dame Hephzibah in her gatehouse had been blinded by the belladonna, so there was no one else to see. Even if there had been, from a distance, the impersonation was close enough no one would suspect.

“Then you, Dr. Barnard, in disguise, walked to the church for Compline, and Dame Petronilla, dressed as you, sat at the beside of Dame Meredith. No doubt you had given Dame Meredith something to make her sleep, too, although she did not take it. She needed her wits about her.

“Why all the subterfuge? To establish that Dame Petronilla could not have been murdering Lord Lislelivet. Your main concern, doctor, was to provide the woman you love with an alibi. Just as you were her main concern.

“Again, timing was all, and the system of bells helped. When the bell rang at five minutes to nine, Dame Pet—rather, her impersonator—had to stop what she was doing and leave. This allowed just enough time to keep a prearranged rendezvous with Lord Lislelivet. Dame Pet had promised to meet him in the crypt and show him where the treasure was hidden. He was to wait there for her, which of course he could be counted on to do. I think your secret plan, Dr. Barnard, was to kill him immediately, and to set his enormous Rolex ahead, smashing it to jam the works, pinpointing the time of his death as occurring during the service of Compline. You then would continue on to take Dame Pet's place in the choir stall.

“That is what happened—almost. Because when you got to the crypt, Dr. Barnard, in your disguise, Lord Lislelivet was already dead, wasn't he?”

“Yes. I—I don't know that I could have gone through with it. Please believe that. I
wanted
to. But as you say—he was dead already. His watch was broken, with the time set ahead. Everything as you said. Everything as I had planned. But I didn't do it. And neither did she—I know it!”

“But you suspected she had,” Max said, “for whatever reasons of her own. And this is why you didn't raise the alarm. How could you, anyway, dressed as you were? How could you ever explain the charade? So you carried on into the church for services, wondering the while who had saved you the trouble of killing your worst enemy.”

The doctor allowed himself a sigh of relief, his rigid shoulders dropping as if a yoke had been removed. “That is it exactly. I couldn't believe my luck, if I can call it that. At the same time, I couldn't figure out who had killed him ‘for' me, so to speak. So I just carried on, as you say. In the choir, I kept my voice low, almost inaudible—Dame Pet had already established that she had a cold and could not fully participate. As soon as Compline was over, the Great Silence started for the night, of course, which made everything easier—no one was going to stop me to look me in the face and start chatting about anything. I returned to the infirmary, where I told Dame Pet what had happened—although I wasn't sure she believed me.”