Death on a Starry Night

by Betsy Draine

  As luck would have it, I was able to get through to Saorge. A harried-sounding male voice answered on the seventh ring. I asked politely if it would be possible to visit.

  “The monastery is closed until March,” the voice responded gruffly. Well that was that. I put my hand over the receiver and relayed the message to Toby.

  “Tell him you’re an art historian from the United States and you’d like to see the frescoes. You won’t be here in March.”

  That cut no ice with the man on the phone. “I’m alone up here and there’s damage to attend to because of the storm. I have no time for visits. I’m sorry, madame.” There was a click and the line went dead.

  “What now?” I asked Toby.

  “Try the lieutenant again.”

  I was listening to a repeat of the recorded message when Sister Glenda knocked on our door and came in with Angie. Our plan had been to check out of the hotel after breakfast. “Have a seat,” I said. “There’s a lot to tell you.” Toby and I moved to the edge of the bed, and they took our places at the table while I gave them the gist of what we now knew. “So we’re trying to get through to the lieutenant but we can’t. I did reach someone at the monastery, but he said they were closed.”

  “And we need to get up there today,” said Toby.

  “I might be able to help you with that,” said Sister Glenda. “What’s the number? I’ll call from my room.”

  Ten minutes later she was back, suppressing a smile. “It’s all set. We can see the monastery this afternoon, if you want to go.”

  Toby was incredulous. “How did you manage it?”

  “I told him who I was and that I’m in charge of an important convent back home.”

  “And that changed his mind?”

  “Professional courtesy,” she deadpanned.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” said Toby.

  “That could be arranged too,” said Sister Glenda. She had a twinkle in her eye. Toby grinned back. “There’s just one thing,” she continued. “You have to take me with you.”

  “Me too,” said Angie.

  “Hold on. If we go, you two should stay here,” said Toby. “The weather’s terrible. Plus it’s a winding road. You wouldn’t be comfortable in the back seat.”

  “It’s me they’re expecting,” said Sister Glenda.

  “What about me?” said Angie.

  “And my postulant,” said Glenda, folding her arms. “Plus two of my colleagues,” she added as a postscript.

  Toby bit his lip and sized up the situation.

  “I’ll get the kitchen to pack us a lunch,” said Glenda, clinching her argument.

  Toby glanced at his watch and gave in. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you about the ride.”

  “What about Lieutenant Auclair?” I asked.

  “Try again.” I did, with the same result.

  “We’ll reach her on the way” said Toby, grabbing his jacket. “Sooner or later we’ll get through.”

  Before leaving the hotel, we made arrangements to stay another night. On the way out, we ran into Maggie. I hadn’t had a chance to comfort her over the loss of Emmet, and I apologized. It turned out she and Thierry were staying over too. “Then we’ll have dinner together tonight,” I promised. “I’m sorry we’re in such a hurry. I’ll explain later.” I waved to her as I went out the door.

  The rain had slowed to a dreary mist but the sky still looked ominous. Although the shortest route to Saorge from Saint-Paul was northeast by way of minor roads, Toby decided it would be faster to go south to connect with the A8 toward Italy and turn north at Menton. Given the conditions, the more ground we could cover using the autoroute, the better.

  It was a grim ride, even from the start. Weak morning sunlight, obscured by its passage through fog, created a ghostly glare. The going was slow until we accessed the autoroute. Once we were headed east on the A8, the miles passed more swiftly, but the spray from passing trucks mucked the windows. “Better get into the right lane,” I reminded Toby. On a French superhighway, the left lane is for passing only, and as soon as you’re in it there’s a Mercedes behind you playing bumper cars. Toby stepped on the gas and moved into the right lane, shooting in between two cars that were themselves speeding. I was grasping the armrest more from fear than for balance. I closed my eyes for a minute and listened to the rhythmic hum of the tires. Then I turned around to ask Glenda, “Do you know anything about a law in 1901 that closed the monasteries? Maurice La Font mentioned it in his letter.”

  “I do, because it was a calamity. It just about eliminated religious communities in France—which was its intention.”

  “Why did they do that?” asked Angie.

  “It was a blow aimed against the church. There was a wave of anticlerical feeling at the time. The politicians claimed that centuries of government support for religious organizations made it right to confiscate their property and shift their services to the state. Saorge is an example. The monks at Saorge took care of the ill. But under the new regime they were expelled and the monastery was turned into a public hospital. That sort of thing happened all over France.”

  “The poor monks!” said Angie. “Imagine giving your whole life to an order like the Franciscans, working hard every day to nurse sick people—and there you’re tossed out, as if you’d done something wrong.”

  Glenda began to tick off examples of precious works of art that had been lost or damaged when the religious communities were closed, but then she broke off. “Don’t get me started,” she concluded.

  “It’s about the separation of church and state,” said Toby. “It’s—”

  I nudged him with my elbow, and he let the subject drop.

  Before we knew it, we were approaching Menton, where we were going to turn north. “The exit’s here. See it?” I pointed ahead. We made the turn and looked for signs to Sospel, the first major town on the way to Saorge. The sign was small and hand-lettered, and we almost missed it.

  “Uh-oh, a detour,” Toby said. Yards ahead of us, behind a temporary barrier, was a mountain of orange earth with boulders and tree branches protruding from it. There had been a landslide. The road was completely blocked. We came to a halt, with me fearing a rear-end collision, but thankfully there was no one behind us. Glenda spotted a second hand-made sign and we followed it, making several turns, anxiety rising. Without notice, we found ourselves back on the A8 with no remaining exits before Italy. We had skirted Menton, the last French town on the autoroute.

  “Do you have your passports?” I asked the backseat ladies.

  “No,” said Angie. “It’s in my suitcase.”

  “We won’t need them,” Toby said. “We’re in the EU. The borders are open.” Sure enough, there wasn’t even a checkpoint as we crossed from one country into the other, just a small sign that said Italia. The first exit, Ventimiglia, came up immediately. The woman who took our euros at the tollbooth said, “Grazie.”

  The GPS had been repeatedly scolding us to “do a legal U-turn,” but she settled down when we started north, on the Italian side of the border. The map said we’d cross into France again somewhere in the mountains south of Breil-sur-Roya, and that would put us on the road to Saorge. In fact, we hadn’t gone too far out of our way. The distance from Ventimiglia to Saorge was only about fifty kilometers, but the road was sinuous. “This is where the driving gets tough,” Toby said to our passengers in the back. And it had started to rain again.

  My cell phone jingled. It was Auclair. “Lieutenant, I’ve been trying to reach you all morning.”

  “Yes, I’m sorry. Our lines have been down. I’m calling about your meeting at the asylum yesterday. But first, I can tell you that your friend Madame Bennett is better. She’s out of the hospital.”

  “That’s good news. I’ve been worrying about her.”

  “They found a poison called aconitine in her system. It was in the perfume too. It’s derived from the monkshood plant, and it can be absorbed through the skin. It may be fatal if ingested, so t
hat’s what killed the dogs. A human can recover from a small dose. She was lucky in that respect.”

  Monkshood? That rang a bell. But before I could complete the thought, the lieutenant pressed me for information about my meeting with Juliette La Font. I started to explain where we were and why, but the connection cut out. She redialed a moment later.

  “Italy? What are you doing in Italy?”

  This time the connection held long enough for me to tell her about Maurice La Font’s letter and our suspicion that the murder was tied to a hidden painting by Van Gogh. “When we couldn’t reach you, we started out for Saorge to look for it. But you can’t get to Saorge from Menton because the road is blocked.”

  The lieutenant’s voice grew stern. I covered the phone with my hand and relayed her message to Toby. “She wants us to turn back. She’s dispatching a car from Vence and wants the police to handle this.” That’s what I thought she’d say.

  But Toby was having none of it. He was like a hound tracking a scent; his blood was up. “We’re more than halfway there. They haven’t even started. By the time they get there, the painting may be gone. Let me have the phone.”

  I relinquished it, watching the road to make sure that one-handed driving didn’t do us in.

  Toby said, “Lieutenant, tell your men they’ll have to go through Ventimiglia.”

  She said something back. I could hear her voice crackling.

  “It will be better if we wait for the police at the monastery,” Toby insisted. “We can tell them where to search.”

  She barked a command.

  “Sorry, I can’t hear you,” Toby replied. “You’re breaking up. What? Say again. I can’t hear you. Hello? Hello?” He handed back my phone. “The line cut out again,” he explained.

  “Did it really, or are you just saying that?”

  The slightest trace of a smile creased his lips. “So you want me to turn around?” The truth was, I didn’t.

  Angie said, “Don’t worry, Nora. If they send Roe-bare, he’ll arrive before we do. He drives like a demon.”

  Glenda observed, “In for a dime, in for a dollar.”

  So we drove on. Now that I had a chance, I began thinking over what Auclair had said about Shelley. Her poisoning must be connected in some way with Isabelle’s. Both women had been poisoned by extracts from deadly plants—foxglove and monkshood. I recalled Jane pointing out a blue flower of that name during our walk and warning us of its dangers. Who else had been on that walk? Klara, a trained chemist, if that meant anything. Shelley. And Maggie, who pulled Emmet away from the flowers to prevent him from touching them. Something Jane said at the time struck me as curious, but now I couldn’t recall what it was. It would come to me if I gave it time.

  Toby whipped around a curve, and I woke up to our surroundings. We were enveloped by gray—an aluminum-gray sky, slate-gray mountains, and olive-gray scrub. The dingy atmosphere wasn’t just an effect of the weather. The terrain we were passing through was bleak. The phrase “pre-Alps” had summoned visions of The Sound of Music. I’d expected green meadows atop rolling hills, calling little children to burst into song. Instead, I felt oppressed by the stolid rock face ahead and then, as the car turned a corner, dwarfed by jagged mountains towering over a cavernous black valley.

  I don’t believe that Angie’s Roe-bare could take the turns any faster than Toby did. What we call “hairpin turns,” the French call lacets, or laces: I picture shoelaces, zigzagging up your foot from toes to ankle. Shoelaces, once tied, lie there securely; a car on a lacet careens from left to right, making the passengers nauseated. Toby was bearing it fine, as the driver tends to do. But for the rest of us, tossed against the door and then against our seatmate, the ride was an ordeal. We followed the Roya River for the entire route. Most of the way, the water was shallow enough to run roughly over stones. Often it fell into cascades the color of chrome. The gunmetal river seemed driven by a force that would overcome any obstacle. It took that level of force to push through these mountains and this stony soil.

  When we reached the town of Breil-sur-Roya, with its medieval square and bustling main street, it seemed the Alpine equivalent of an oasis. We stopped briefly near a park and ate our packed lunch in the car, anxious to get back on our way. We made use of the public facilities and set out again. By then the rain had relented to a mist.

  The change in weather was a boon, since the dizzying Gorge of Saorge stood between us and our destination. It was a harrowing traverse, but Toby brought us safely through the winding passage between two mountains, and it wasn’t long before a sign appeared for Saorge. In a few minutes, we were in a long tunnel cut through solid rock. Emerging from its vault, we saw ahead of us an almost unearthly village of whitewashed buildings hanging from the side of a gray mountain, with larger snowcapped Alps behind. A sign reading Old Franciscan Convent came up immediately, and the GPS said, “Turn right!”

  The narrow road was difficult to negotiate, with frequent “laces” and only a log fence to prevent a car from plunging over the side. We came to a dead end at a chapel next to which was a small parking lot occupied by a white Renault and a black motorcycle, both thoroughly muddied. From there the road appeared to continue as a footpath. A young man and woman in orange ponchos emerged from around a bend in the path and headed toward the motorcycle. A brief conversation confirmed that the path beyond the bend did indeed lead to the monastery but it was a steep climb. “Up there, a sign said it was closed,” the young man warned.

  We thanked them but didn’t mention we had an appointment. We watched them drive off and started to climb. It was hard going, especially for Sister Glenda. The angle of the slope was forty-five degrees, or at least it felt like it. Every few yards, a stair-step, intended to ease the climb, instead proved a tripping hazard. The path itself was too narrow to accommodate a car, but someone had brought a motorbike up. It was parked to the side of one of the stone houses on the right side of the path, facing the ravine. A high stone wall edged the left side. No one was there but us. The only sound other than our footfalls came from the Roya surging through the ravine. I looked down and saw a white waterfall. We stopped to catch our breath. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” said Angie. “It must have been so peaceful for the monks here.”

  It’s odd the way memory works. Monks here. Monkshood. Something clicked. Now I remembered what it was that Jane had told us about monkshood. At that moment everything came into focus and I was pretty sure I knew who the poisoner was. “We’ve got to hurry,” I said.

  “Let me take your arm,” Toby said to Glenda. “It can’t be too much farther.”

  As we continued climbing, the peak of a salmon-colored bell tower came into view. Then we rounded a corner and were gazing up at the gold and pink façade of the monastery. It wasn’t as I had pictured it. This seventeenth-century monastery tucked away in the French Alps looked remarkably like a California mission. It had a façade of spacious arches with a square pediment perched above them and stucco walls painted in soft colors. But we weren’t here to admire the architecture. We stepped carefully across the grassy yard, which was sopping from the rain. We were headed for the church stairs, but Angie pointed to a door to the right, marked Billets, Tickets.

  Sister Glenda strode up to the massive wooden door and clanked the knocker. She knocked again when there was no response. After another moment, a voice from behind the portal said, “Oui? ” Sister Glenda announced who she was, and we heard the sound of a heavy bolt sliding on metal. The door swung open. “Bonjour, ma soeur,” said a bearded young man. “Your colleagues are already here,” he added, as we stepped inside the ticket office.

  Glenda looked puzzled. “My colleagues are with me,” she said, pointing to Toby and me.

  It was the young man’s turn to look confused. “From the art conference. Didn’t you say that two colleagues from your conference in Saint-Paul-de-Vence were coming today?”

  “Who—?” Toby began, but I interrupted.

  “I think I
know who. Come on, Toby.” I grabbed a map of the monastery from a stack on the counter and headed through the doorway leading inside. Toby followed, leaving Sister Glenda and Angie to deal with the tickets. The doorway led into a cloister open to the cloudy sky. The arcades of the gallery rested on pillars, and at the far end of the courtyard was a well with a conical roof. A painted sundial adorned one of the gallery walls. According to the map, the gallery level housed the former monks’ cells. “If there’s an attic, it must be up there somewhere,” I said to Toby.

  “This way,” he said, pointing to a door on the north wall.

  Inside, a stone staircase led to the upper level. There we began to go from room to room, looking for an access to the attic. By then Angie and Glenda had entered the cloister. Angie called up to me from below. “Stay down there,” I shouted, “where you’ll be safe.”

  Toby, already ahead of me, had reached the room at the end of the corridor. I caught up with him. Inside the empty room, a narrow door stood ajar. It looked like a closet but led to a flight of wooden stairs. “Let me go first,” Toby said. There was no banister, and the stairs were so narrow that he had to climb sideways, touching the wall for balance. I came up behind him.

  There was a startled cry as Toby’s head cleared the landing. I was beside him in a few quick steps. The attic was sharply pitched, its headroom partially obstructed by the oak beams that supported the roof. The light was dim, coming from a series of tiny triangular openings at floor level. I could see well enough, though, to confirm my suspicions. There was Shelley. But she wasn’t with Ben.

  Ray Montoni was kneeling beside an open trunk, having forced its hinges; a screwdriver was on the floor by his knee. Shelley stood next to him, clutching a rolled canvas. Her eyes darted around the room, looking for an exit. Ray reached for the screwdriver.

  “Don’t even think about it,” said Toby, inching forward. “You’ll only make matters worse.” Ray looked panicked.