Rueful Death

by Susan Wittig Albert

  "I don't understand," I said. "What happened to it?"

  Her hands twisted nervously. "I don't think… I wish you hadn't…" She stopped, clasped her hands as if to quiet them, and spoke with an effort. "It was taken. From this room."

  I stared at her. "Someone stole it?"

  ''Stole it?" She looked horrified. "Of course not!" A corner of her mouth was trembling. ' 'This room is never locked, so it couldn't have been stolen."

  I couldn't argue with her logic. I spoke more gently. "When did this loss occur, Sister?"

  "A few weeks ago. Before Christmas." Her words were stumbling, as if her tongue had gone numb. "I'm afraid I can't be precise. It was soon after Sister Rowena inquired-" She caught her lower lip between her teeth.

  Sister Rowena, the infirmarian, who had been with Per-petua when she died. "Sister Rowena asked about the hot plate?"

  She dropped her head so that all I could see was the veil covering her hair. "I know I should have confessed to Mother Winifred that I misplaced an object assigned to my care. But it was Christmas and I had so many other things to do. I felt the hot plate would surely turn up again. There are bare wires in the switch, and it isn't safe to use."

  "Bare wires?"

  She nodded. "Anyway, no one would wish to use it after…" Her voice trailed off. She was fumbling with her rosary.

  "I see," I said.

  "I will speak to Mother immediately and inform her of my carelessness."

  "Thank you for your trouble," I said.

  "I am very sorry that I couldn't be more helpful."

  "You've been very helpful," I said.

  She pulled the light cord. The room went dark.

  When I got to Rebecca, the building that housed the St. T sisters, I had two matters to take up with Sister Dominica. I started with the one that was at the top of my mind.

  "Foxglove?" Dominica repeated. Her normally expressive face was blank. "Did I? 1 really don't remember."

  I pushed aside a pair of jeans and sat down on her bed. I felt much more at home here than I had in Hannah. The space was more like a college freshman's bedroom than a nun's cell. A battered Spanish-style guitar stood in one corner on a stack of sheet music, the pink flowered bedspread was rumpled, and books and papers were piled on the dresser and shelves. A coffeepot sat on a hot plate, beside an untidy tray of coffee makings and packaged snacks.

  "Come on, Dominica," I said. "You can't have forgotten. Why did you ask?"

  Dominica was wearing a flowing blue robe with gold moons and stars printed on it. Her loose hair was parted in the middle and rippled over her shoulders. She made a face. "It seems sort of silly."

  I sighed. "It's not silly, Dominica. What made you ask the question?"

  "It wasn't a what. It was a who."

  Aha. Maybe we were getting someplace. "Who was it?"

  "Agatha Christie."

  "Agatha…Christie?"

  "Yes. Have you read Postern of FateT'

  "I don't think so," I said, feeling distinctly let down. "Is that one of the Miss Marple books?"

  She shook her head. "Tuppence and Tommy. Somebody accidentally confuses foxglove and spinach, and puts them into a salad. The whole family eats it and gets sick. But I didn't see how that could have happened. Spinach doesn't look anything like foxglove-or am I wrong?"

  "No, you're right," I said. "The leaves of both plants are lance-shaped, true. But spinach is smooth and foxglove is hairy. Foxglove is a different shade of green too."

  "Actually," Dominica said, "the victim doesn't die from the foxglove. The killer takes advantage of the accidental poisoning and deliberately puts digitalis in the coffee." She smiled. "Fiendishly clever, wouldn't you say?"

  "Fiendishly," 1 muttered. Personally, I think it's unfortunate when a writer uses a plant to kill somebody. It gives plants a bad press. That's not to say that people don't die of herbal poisonings, of course. Before firearms were invented, plants were the weapon of choice. Tens of thousands of people must have died from ingesting hemlock or monkshood or foxglove, with no one the wiser. In fact, I read recently that in the last ten years, there have been something like five thousand digitalis fatalities. Not an insignificant number. Still, if you're inventing a fictional murder, there are plenty of other creative ways to bump somebody off.

  "Here," Dominica said, taking a book off the nightstand. "You might enjoy reading this. You can decide for yourself whether Agatha Christie got it right or not."

  "Thanks," I said, and took the book.

  "Anyway," Dominica went on, "the same week I was reading Postern of Fate, it was my turn to weed the herb garden. I looked down and there it was, right under my nose. Foxglove, I mean. No flowers, just a bunch of hairy green leaves, wearing a name tag. I was curious about the poison and I thought maybe-" She shifted uncomfortably, as if she wanted to say something else.

  "And?" I prompted..

  She gnawed her lip. ' 'We really do have problems here, you know, and Olivia is responsible for a lot of them. It crossed my mind that it would be easy to sneak some foxglove leaves into her salad and…" She made a nervous pleat in her blue robe. ' 'It was only a stray thought, but it

  was very wicked. It isn't anything I'd really do," she added hastily. "When I made that silly remark about getting rid of her, I was just joking."

  ' 'It doesn't pay to joke about poisons," I said. ' 'If somebody dies, people have a way of remembering-''

  Her eyes flew open and her hands went to her mouth. "Sister Olivia hasn't died, has she?" she whispered in an anguished voice. "If she did, I'd feel terrible! It was so wrong of me to wish her ill!"

  Dominica's response was a bit over the top, but I didn't think it was an act. Anyway, she was worrying about the wrong person. "Olivia's fine," I said. "As far as I know, that is. I haven't been able to find her. I need to ask her what she knows about the letters."

  Dominica's eyes went dark. "From what Mother said at supper last night, I gather she's told you about the one I received. And Miriam too."

  ' 'Yes,'' I said. We had come to the second matter I had to take up with her. "You still don't have any idea who wrote it?"

  She glanced at me, her cheeks reddening, and I thought how vulnerable she looked. "That's what makes it so awful," she said bleakly. "I keep wondering who has such a horrible, poisonous malice in her heart. What could I have done to make someone hate me enough to write that kind of lie?"

  "Could the writer have seen something that led her to the wrong conclusion?"

  "I suppose." She lowered her voice, as if someone might be listening outside the window. "Since Margaret Mary left, Miriam is my best friend. We go for walks together. We touch. Sometimes we hug-the normal kind of contact between friends. But we're not lovers." The blush rose higher. "I've been tempted, but not with Miriam."

  ' 'What did you make of the rue leaf in the letter?''

  "I didn't know what to think. Was I supposed to feel

  rueful? Repentant? But I didn't do anything wrong!"

  "No one knows about the letters but Miriam and Mother Winifred?"

  "And Margaret Mary. I wrote and told her." She looked down at the toes of her shoes-gold plastic slippers-peeping under her robe. "It might not seem like much to you, being accused of having a woman lover. But I was very hurt. I felt… violated, as if the letter-writer had stolen something from me."

  I felt her pain. It was her reputation that had been damaged, perhaps, but more than that. Her estimation of herself. Her peace of mind.

  "I was glad I could tell Margaret Mary," Dominica said simply. "She knows my deepest heart."

  "Has one of the sisters given you a clue-a word; a look, even-that she knows about the letter?''

  She gave her head a sad shake.

  "Has anyone referred to you and Sister Miriam as particular friends?"

  Another headshake, sadder.

  "Have you been threatened, or has anything happened to your belongings?"

  "You mean, like Sister Anne's swimsuit? No, t
hank God." Then she paused, pulling her brows together. "Except for…" Her eyes went to the guitar in the corner.

  "Except for what?"

  ''I really don't think it can have anything to do with-''

  "Tell me, Dominica," I said firmly.

  "That guitar belongs to my cousin. I borrowed it because mine got burned up in the fire."

  "The Thanksgiving fire?" No, that was a grease fire in the kitchen. "It must have been the Christmas Eve fire."

  She nodded. "I'd left it inside the sacristy, you see. Miriam and I-she plays the flute-were going to play Christmas carols for the congregation at the end of the service. We'd been practicing for a month, and we sounded pretty

  good. But then the fire happened, and my guitar burned, and we never got to perform."

  "How about Miriam's flute?" I asked. "Was it destroyed as well?"

  "No, she'd kept it with her. It was just my guitar. I didn't really think much about it at the time. We were all so frightened by the fire, you see. But afterward I began to wonder about it. How my guitar got burned."

  "What do you mean?"

  There was a crease between her eyes and her voice was troubled. "I'm almost a hundred percent positive that I left it just inside the door of the sacristy, where it would be handy when I needed it. But when the fire was out, there it was at the back of the room-what was left of it. It had been leaning against the curtains. The only thing I could think of was that somebody had moved it."

  "Did you ask?"

  "No. I mean, I wasn't absolutely sure where I left it, and it didn't seem all that important-in comparison to the fire itself, I mean." Her voice faltered. "Do you think that the person who wrote the letter also set the fire?"

  "No," I said. Dwight was many things, but he wasn't literate enough to be the poison pen. Dominica might have forgotten where she put the guitar. Or someone else might have thought it was in the way and moved it to the back of the room. Or the letter-writer, chancing on the fire, had seized an opportunity to exact a penance-a fitting penance, she might have reasoned, since Dominica was about to perform with Miriam.

  "How about Miriam?" I asked. "Has she experienced anything of the sort since the two of you received the letters?"

  "You mean, like what happened to my guitar? I don't think so, but you could ask." Dominica frowned. "You're thinking that my guitar was burned because I wouldn't do what the letter-writer told me to do?''

  "Maybe," I said. The whole thing was setting much

  more complicated. "Back to the fire-where were you when it occurred?"

  "In the choir with the other sisters. Father Steven had started saying Mass. I smelled smoke, and then John Roberta-she was sitting at the end of the choir next to the sacristy-got up and slipped into the sacristy to see what was happening. Then she ran out and whispered something to Father Steven. He told us all to leave."

  John Roberta had been in the sacristy, alone, with the fire and the guitar? "Did the sisters leave the choir area immediately?"

  "We couldn't. Father Steven got fuddled-he really doesn't think very clearly sometimes-and told everybody to go out the main doors at the back of the church. Which meant mat the congregation had to leave first. There was a lot of confusion. Dwight ran up with the big fire extinguisher from the front of the church, and he and Father went into the sacristy. And Gabriella and Rosaline went to get the hose. And of course the men of the congregation were milling around, trying to be helpful. Carl Townsend was telling them to carry the statues out and a couple were trying to lift the stone font, and John Roberta was having one of her asthma attacks, which she does whenever she gets anxious."

  John Roberta again. "Do you know her well?"

  "Not really." Dominica hesitated. "She's an odd sort of person, very shy and anxious about everything-afraid of her shadow, really. I feel sorry for her. She wants to go to a sister house out in Arizona, where the climate would be better for her. But she can't."

  "Why not?"

  "Oh, the usual." She made a disgusted noise. "Mother Winifred told her she could go, but Reverend Mother General hasn't approved her request because Olivia thinks she should stay here."

  "Why?"

  "Because without her, the score would be nineteen to

  twenty in St. T's favor, that's why. Poor John Roberta is so paranoid that she sees a devil behind every tree, but this time she's got it right. She's a prisoner here until Olivia is safely installed as abbess." Dominica made a face. "I'm sure John Roberta wasn't glad to hear that Perpetua had died, but if she was, I for one wouldn't blame her. Maybe now she can get to Arizona."

  "I see," I said. As I said good-bye, I couldn't help wondering just how badly John Roberta wanted to leave St. T's. And how much she knew about foxglove.

  Sister Anne's bedroom was at the other end of Rebecca. Unlike Dominica's cluttered room, it was immaculate and tidy, although it had none of the starkness of Ruth's. The bed was covered by a blue plaid spread and a heap of blue-flowered pillows. Under the window stood a low, cloth-covered table on which were arranged a statue of Mary, another of Kwan-yin, the Japanese goddess of mercy, and an enigmatic jade buddha. Sister Anne did a lot of reading, I noticed. Neatly stacked on her desk was a book on running, one or two on yoga, and several about women and spirituality, including one I had read, Rosemary Reuther's book, Womanchurch. My eyebrows went up. When it came out, Reuther's feminist book had raised plenty of controversy, because it suggested that women should establish their own alternative worship, rather than accommodating themselves to the traditional male-dominated worship service.

  Anne was dressed in black ankle-length tights and a loose white cotton shirt with the sleeves rolled up, which made her look like a teenager. She was barefoot and her long dark hair was fastened at the nape of her neck with a leather thong. I didn't have to introduce myself, and she waved away my use of "Sister." She directed me to sit in an upholstered chair by the window, which looked out onto a sloping lawn bordered by a dense, shrubby mass of mes-quite and cedar.

  "I've been expecting you." She sat down on the bed. "I thought you might want to talk about the letter. And die swimsuit too, of course.''

  "The whole thing must have been unnerving," I said.

  Anne gave a small shrug. Her olive skin was smooth, her small, triangular face closed and private. She looked as if she wouldn't be easily unnerved.

  "Do you mind telling me about it?"

  She folded her legs into a lotus position and spoke with a quick, active intelligence. "The spot where we swim is secluded. My suit was an ordinary swimsuit, not at all revealing. Actually, the letter struck me as being kind of crazy. Nobody in her right mind would write stuff like that. And there was that little bit of rue." Her chuckle was ironic. ' 'Herb of Grace, Mother Hilaria called it. She said the priests used to use it to sprinkle holy water and drive the devil out of the church. So maybe the rue was supposed to purify me." Her eyes glinted. "Or drive me out, like the devil."

  "Your swimsuit was stolen from your room?"

  She nodded toward a dresser. "From the second drawer."

  Something about Anne's response puzzled me. I had expected her to be offended, even outraged by the theft, but she seemed almost to brush it off. "Was your door locked?" I asked.

  "We don't lock doors around here," she said. "There's no need."

  Obviously there was a need, considering that Mother Hi-laria's hot plate had also been taken. I persisted. "How did you feel when it happened? Did it bother you that somebody would steal a piece of your clotiiing and trash it?"

  She shrugged. "Sure. But it bothered the others a lot more."

  "The others?"

  "Some of the older sisters went to pieces when they saw it hanging on the cross in the chapel." The corner of her

  mouth quirked. "I guess it was the ketchup on the crotch that set them off."

  "On the crotchV

  She laughed deep in her throat. "Mother didn't tell you?'' She pulled her thick rope of hair over her shoulder and twisted it
around her hand. "They thought it was blood, you see. It reminded them that even though we are nuns, we're real women, with real bodies. Women's bodies. Every month, we shed real blood." A smile flickered briefly and disappeared. "I wanted to leave the bloody thing up there to give us something to think about. But Olivia said it was obscene. Mother Winifred said it was blasphemous. So I took it down."

  "You can't blame them," I said.

  She tossed her hair back and leaned forward, her eyes bright. "Exactly! They're not to blame. For hundreds of years, the church fathers have taught us that women's blood is obscene-that women are obscene. The Church is afraid of our bodies, afraid of sex. That's why all this insistence on celibacy. The Church is afraid of womenV

  Anne's face had come passionately alive as she spoke. I studied her for a moment. Her political agenda might be irrelevant to what had happened. On the other hand…

  "So the bloody swimsuit didn't bother you," I said quietly. "I suppose you were even glad to see it hanging where everybody had to look at it."

  She unfolded her legs and slid off the bed. ' 'Mother Hi-laria was wrong when she told me not to talk about the letter. Every woman here should have been talking about the attitudes that spawn that kind of poison." She walked to the window. "But that bloody swimsuit-it was right there where people had to see it. Mother Hilaria couldn't tell people not to talk about it."

  "Did they? Talk about it, I mean."

  "Not as much as I would have liked." She sighed. "It's hard for women who have grown up in the Church to confront its attitude toward women. But they've got to see how

  it can poison everyone. The letter-writer, for instance. Her poison comes from the Church itself."

  "But surely someone who writes such letters-"

  "Don't you understand?" Anne's dark eyes were flashing, her body tense with the vitality of her argument. "It's not her fault! She's as much a victim as somebody who gets one of her letters. It's the Church that's poisoning people's hearts!"

  Anne would have made a great trial attorney. She had just delivered the criminal-as-victim defense as passionately as I'd ever heard it. I paused for a moment, letting the energy of her words ring in the quiet room.