A Demon Summer

by G. M. Malliet

  “She is charming, then.”

  “Oh, yes. She is possessed of quite a natural charm. Loads of charm.”

  “How long has she been the abbess?”

  “Not long. Her predecessor was elected in the 1980s, I believe, and was reelected in 2000. She died a few years ago.”

  “And what did Abbess Justina do in—let’s call it her civilian life?”

  “She was a financial consultant.”

  “You’re not serious.”

  “Oh, yes. She was quite a successful one. Made mucho dinero in the City. Then one day, she just packed it in. Not unlike yourself, Max. You came to us rather out of nowhere, it seemed.”

  Max nodded, acknowledging the comparison and avoiding the possible invitation to elaborate on his past. “It takes a person like that sometimes—a vocation, I mean. Although I didn’t have all that much dinero to give up.”

  “Men such as yourself are not motivated by money.”

  “Thank you,” murmured Max, pleased and flattered by the comment. “There is no prioress?” he asked. The norm in this sort of outfit was that there be a second-in-command—the real power behind the abbess, who was often more of a figurehead.

  The bishop shook his head.

  “The cellaress of Monkbury is in charge of the physical running of the place. She is the prioress in all but name, but they’ve had to mothball that title.”

  “You did indicate it was a thriving operation,” said Max. “That should negate the ‘need’ for any financial chicanery.”

  “You would think so, wouldn’t you? Yes, the nuns are extremely enterprising. They grow all manner of fruits and vegetables and sell their leftover crops. They are also very much into drying herbs and making preserves and so on, which they sell with great success. They have a little gift shop connected to the guesthouse, and they also sell products online; they have quite a professional-looking Web site: MonkburyAbbey.com. It’s a natural fit—the online store allows them to maintain their isolation and independence while bringing in a steady revenue stream for repairs and ongoing expenses. They also loom rugs and throw pots and things, and as I recall they make a significant living from their embroidery, making vestments, christening robes, things like that. But by far their biggest success is their fruitcake.”

  “The fruitcake.” Okay. This did not strike Max as a money-making proposition any more than selling plum preserves, but he was willing to be surprised.

  “You’ll see,” said the Bishop. “My wife ordered several last Christmas as gifts. It was a Christmas we’ll not soon forget. It packs an astonishingly high alcohol content. I can see how the alcohol might mask the flavor of anything that should not be in there.”

  “I’m sorry. Did you say, ‘should not be in there’?”

  “Yes. I’ll get to that in a minute. They recently teamed up with the National Trust to sell some of their goods via the trust’s stores. Quite an astute financial move—I gather the cellaress was the moving force behind this plan. The partnership has been a runaway success and the nuns could name their price but are charging basically what the goods cost to make. I gather the abbess insisted on that. The pottery pieces have become collector’s items, in particular the terra-cotta crèche scenes.”

  “The fruitcake?” Max asked, desperately trying to get the bishop to the point, even though he suspected he was not going to like it once they arrived there. “There was a problem with the fruitcake?”

  But the bishop breezed on. “Dame Potter they call one of them—she runs that show. Louise Dietz was her name in civilian life. She also does some work in stained glass that to my mind is of museum quality. By the way, my secretary can provide you a file with names and some background on all the sisters.” Before Max had time to wonder why he should need such a thing, the bishop swept on: “Dame Potter makes things like garlic pots, wassail mugs, bowls, and salt pigs—I had to ask the wife. You keep salt in it. I don’t know why. This is the sort of useful thing you’ll learn when you’re married, Max.”

  But Max was not quite ready to cross that river. He had news for the bishop with regard to his marital arrangements that, for the life of him, he could not see how to introduce into the conversation. An announcement that a child was on the way would, as sure as rain comes from storm clouds, be followed by joyful inquiries about when Max had gotten married, and by hurt feelings at not having been invited to the wedding, and by the need for explanations that might make matters worse. Max was rather hoping that the problem would resolve itself in a few weeks’ time with the bishop never knowing there was an “issue.” Instead Max said, his voice carrying a high note of optimism, “Fruitcake?”

  The bishop sighed. “Fruitcake, yes. I am afraid accusations have been made. Wild, unsubstantiated rumors. Someone—someone rather well known, alas—is claiming he became ill from eating some fruitcake he brought back from a visit to Monkbury Abbey. He went on a religious retreat there, you see.”

  “Who is this person, if I may ask?”

  “Lord Lislelivet.”

  “Lord Lislelivet?” Max repeated, not even bothering to keep the scoff of skepticism from his voice.

  “Yes, I know,” said the bishop. “My reaction was much the same as yours.”

  “Lord Lislelivet has no known connection to Monkbury Abbey, has he?”

  “Actually he does. Like you, he has an aunt in the religious life. But it’s been many years since he visited her. I gather he has shown a sudden interest in going on retreat.”

  “That’s totally out of character,” said Max flatly. He knew Lislelivet by reputation and his appearance at a nunnery retreat was a laughable concept, barring miraculous conversions. Which, Max reminded himself, always remained in the realm of possibility. Max was a dealer in miracles himself—miracles were his stock in trade, it could be said. And so he had to hold out the wild hope that even such as Lord Lislelivet might be brought into the fold. Still …

  “You do see the problem,” said the bishop. “It’s a criminal matter or it soon will be if Lord Lislelivet cannot be calmed down. There has to be an innocuous explanation. They are nuns, for heaven’s sake. They don’t go around poisoning people.”

  “When did this happen?” Max asked. “I mean, when did he come to—obtain—the fruitcake in question?” Max struggled hard to maintain a professional demeanor, but really. This was just the limit.

  “It was last fall—months ago. Perhaps there was a batch of bad fruitcake from that time—they are still trying to sort out what may have happened.”

  “The accusation is that the cake was poisoned?”

  The bishop nodded, a look of such misery on his face Max immediately felt sorry for the man, his instinct to help kicking in. His mind turned over the possibilities and surrounding questions. Why poison? Was someone trying to create scandal? Why? Was it a plan by one of the nuns to keep visitors away? Revenge by someone with a grudge against the church? An accident?

  The question as to why Lord Lislelivet had been the target of foul play took Max down quite a different path. Max had never met the man and knew of him only from newspaper accounts, but nothing spoke to his being a well-loved and cherished member of the nobility, or even an admired if feared one. In a privileged category bound to inspire envy and resentment, Lord Lislelivet stood out from the rest—a leader, as it were, in arousing class warfare.

  “What,” Max asked, “does the abbess have to say about this? You’ve spoken with her?”

  “Yes, yes, by satellite phone. I spoke with her right away. She has no theory as to what happened and is as baffled as anyone.”

  “My first thoughts are that this poisoning, if such it was, was an attempt to create bad publicity for Monkbury Abbey. It might almost be a personal vendetta, even one against the abbess herself. A strong leader is not by definition popular in all quarters.”

  “Yes, of course that is a possibility. An abbess is the linchpin holding a nunnery together, for she wields near-total power, appointing all subordinates. Even though
in theory decisions are made democratically, she always makes the final decision.”

  “There is perhaps some bad feeling about some of her choices?”

  “That is possible,” the bishop acknowledged. “That would need to be ferreted out.”

  Max suddenly was feeling decidedly ferrety. Surely the bishop didn’t intend him to—

  “I want you to go there and find out what you can, Max. All you can.”

  Well, this was a new one. In all his days with MI5, he had never been sent to spy on nuns. Not even once. He said as much.

  “The scandal must be stopped in its tracks,” replied the bishop. “I’ve asked the police for discretion while we launch an internal investigation. It is at least on the surface a criminal matter but one taking place months ago, so I gather it is not a priority with them. No one died, you see, and all these months later it will be jolly hard to sort out.”

  With a sigh, the bishop put his hands on top of his desk, the fingers spread, as if he might be trying to cause the desk to levitate. The gold of his very large episcopal ring caught the sunlight. His hands were surprisingly rough and reddened; Max knew the bishop was a keen gardener, and visitors to the beautiful cathedral grounds were unaware that the man with a hoe in overalls turning over the soil in the flowerbeds might be the bishop himself, dressed in mufti to escape detection.

  “You can see how the scandal would ruin them overnight,” the bishop continued. “And it puts me in rather an awkward position. I have given them almost complete free rein and autonomy. In return they’ve been self-sustaining—not once have they called on the church for financial help, even during the lean years, and they did have a few of those. The abbess before Abbess Justina was a bit of a spendthrift and given to what I’d call ornamental changes—but even there I just let her go, as it didn’t seem to be anything requiring my attention. So what once would have been lauded as benign management might now be…”

  “Might be regarded as dangerous neglect,” Max finished for him. “Even active neglect. I do understand.”

  “So if you were to look into it and find that the nuns are blameless in all this … you do see, Max?”

  Max did see. The bishop was hoping against hope that a theory of an “outside agency” would hold and that Max would uncover evidence in support of that theory.

  “Yes,” said Max. “But, Bishop, whatever I may discover, if it is the truth—well, then it is the truth of what happened. I won’t be able to alter or undo what I find, as awkward as it may prove to be for the church.”

  “Of course not. I wouldn’t expect you to. I just hope … and pray…”

  “Quite,” said Max. “That it’s not an inside job. When did you last talk with Abbess Justina in person?”

  “I visited there only last year. It was a formal visitation, you know, to see that all was well.”

  Max nodded. Part of the creaking machinery of the church in post-Reformation Europe had been increased vigilance over the goings-on in convents and monasteries.

  “And was it?”

  “No. No it wasn’t. And that is of course what is bothering me now. That I should have heeded my instincts. Asked more questions. And now there’s what might be a case of attempted murder. Could I have prevented it somehow? That will haunt me.”

  “What did you sense was wrong—the finances only? Or something more?”

  “No, no. Finances looked all in order then, on paper at least. I’m no forensic accountant but the bottom line looked sound. Business was booming, in fact. It was when I talked with each nun in turn. Something that was not being said was what I heard, if you follow.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t want to prejudice you by telling you specifics in advance of your visit. You can’t investigate something like this from a distance. I’ve made arrangements with—what’s his name? That DCI who was involved in the affair at Chedrow Castle.”

  “DCI Cotton,” Max supplied for him. DCI Cotton operated out of Monkslip-super-Mare and generally investigated homicides and other major crimes. It spoke volumes that he was involved already; things had to have crossed a certain threshold for Cotton and his team to be poised to run about, notebooks blazing. Lord Lislelivet must have complained loudly.

  “Yes. Yes, that was it,” said the bishop. “DCI Cotton.”

  “You can’t fill me in a bit more?”

  The bishop studied the ornately carved ceiling of his office as he searched his memory. “They were jumpy, some of them, when last I saw them. Decidedly jumpy. It was most un-nun-like behavior. Nuns should be serene. They should just glide along, cool, calm, and collected. But I could get nothing out of them. I did ask. However, I didn’t press when I was assured all was well. Again, one doesn’t want to micromanage, and the abbess is a completely competent sort of woman.”

  “Did you get a sense of an ongoing feud, personality conflicts, anything like that?”

  “They had the usual petty squabbles—you can’t shut people up together in such isolated circumstances and expect otherwise. But this? Attempted murder in order to discredit the place? No.

  “Max, I’ll speak plainly. I want you to go out there. I want you involved. If anyone can get to the bottom of this, you can. There have been other complaints, you see, one from an individual well placed to make trouble.”

  Max was in the midst of his usual dilemma when confronted by a crime. The investigator part of his nature was champing at the bit to get started. The priest in him was dismayed at all the projects in Nether Monkslip that would be left in abeyance for his return, the Christmas ensemble band being the least of his worries. And now to leave Awena’s side for even a day … Monkbury Abbey was only a few hours from Nether Monkslip, but even so …

  “One can’t ignore the fact that money talks,” the bishop was saying.

  Max dragged his mind back to the conversation. “Anyone I would have heard of?”

  “Clement Gorey and his wife, Oona. They’ve been major benefactors of Monkbury Abbey over the years.”

  Max whistled softly. Nearly everyone knew the eccentric American by name and reputation. “I suppose a financier of Clement’s caliber would be particularly incensed at being played for a fool financially.”

  Again a look of despair enveloped the face of the ginger-haired prelate. He must have been working in the garden recently, thought Max, for his complexion was a red several shades darker than normal.

  “And now Lord Lislelivet and his wife are hopping up and down about poisoned fruitcake. Just imagine the headlines—no! It doesn’t bear thinking about. Both the men and their wives are quite concerned—naturally. The situation must be contained.”

  A bell had sounded in the far reaches of Max’s brain, the part where cold cases were filed.

  “Wasn’t there an earlier scandal involving the Lislelivet family? A kidnapping?”

  “Lord Lislelivet’s brother disappeared. Yes. An appalling tragedy, that. So you see, this coming on top of everything is bound to attract attention—too much and of the wrong sort.”

  Max, despite himself, was intrigued. “I’ll of course see what I can do. But I can’t hold out a lot of hope. What is probably needed with regard to the missing funds is some sort of forensic accountant. I can barely get the books of St. Edwold’s to balance each month. I—”

  “No, of course, your bailiwick is murder most foul, not fiscal shenanigans and pranks—just do your best. I must say, the whole fruitcake thing strikes me as a lark designed to harm the reputation of Monkbury Abbey. Not something, well, more serious.”

  “Not attempted murder.”

  “We shall soon know more. There was fruitcake remaining in Lord Lislelivet’s larder—there always is; fruitcake does linger so—and it was sent to the police lab for testing. But I think diplomacy might be what is needed right now, more than business savvy or analytical skills. Whatever is going on, we need to keep Mr. Gorey satisfied that we are conducting an open and thorough inquiry. Calm him down until we know what is what. T
he same goes, of course, for Lord Lislelivet. In his case, I rather get the impression he is weighing whether news of an attempted attack against his person would ruin or enhance his reputation. While he is deciding, there is still time.”

  Max smothered a laugh. Lord Lislelivet was known for waffling on every issue under the sun, from the care of children to that of old-age pensioners. He voted not with his heart, God knew, and not with his pocketbook, but with the flair of the born politician looking for whichever angle would ensure his survival. If he was up against Abbess Justina and she was as smooth an operator as the bishop said, he may have met his match.

  The bishop, catching and misreading the smile playing at Max’s lips, said, “Good. So you’ll do it. I admire your can-do attitude, Max. Always have. That’s set then. Just be sure someone covers your duties at St. Edwold’s for a few days. See if Father Arthnot is available. Good-bye and keep me posted.”

  “Erm…” Max knew he should be used by now to these sudden dismissals, but somehow the bishop always caught him flat-footed.

  “Oh, by the way,” the bishop turned from his computer, where an incoming e-mail had caught his eye. “Try to get there before nine tonight.”

  Tonight? Who had said anything about tonight? “Why is that?” Max asked.

  “They keep the Great Silence after Compline, which is at nine p.m. You won’t get a word out of them until after Lauds the next morning. This is a such conservative group.” The bishop seemed to feel that fact could not be emphasized enough. “Oh, I’ve had chats with them here and there over the years, little pep talks, trying to egg them further into the twenty-first century. I could grant special dispensation to let them talk to you, but under the circumstances I think it best that you see them as they are and not ruffle any feathers by throwing them off their usual schedule.”

  If a possible attempted murder by poisoning hadn’t done that already, Max didn’t know what would, but he saw the bishop’s point. Better to cause the least disruption possible on first arrival.