“I could celebrate the Eucharist for them while I’m there,” he offered.
“A sort of special guest appearance! Yes, yes—that’s a good idea. I’ll see that Father Riley is notified—he is their usual celebrant. Some of the nuns, the highly, highly traditional ones, still prefer a male priest. Which is odd when you think about it. Anyway, I’m sure they would welcome the little change in routine.”
“I’ll do what I can, but—”
“You can be there tonight, can’t you?” The bishop reached for the immaculate pile of paper printouts stacked at one side of his desk.
Max said, “Not for at least a day, Bishop, I shouldn’t think. Loose ends to tie up at St. Edwold’s before I go, you know the sort of thing.”
“Oh.” The bishop did a poor job of hiding his disappointment. “Well, that will probably be all right. Lord Lislelivet has said—quite loudly—he will be on his guard while he’s there.”
“While he’s there?”
“Oh, didn’t I say? Yes, he is there this week. I don’t know for how long. I’m surprised he hasn’t hired a food taster, but what he means of course by being ‘on his guard’ is that he won’t eat anything that isn’t offered to the community at large. He’s probably travelling with a large supply of energy bars and such.”
“I can’t imagine why he’s there at all, frankly. It seems quite a mad thing for him to do.”
“Me, either. Surely it would be wiser to stay away until this mess is cleared up. He claims to have had a religious experience when he was there before.”
“A what?”
“I don’t understand it either,” the bishop said impatiently, with a pointed look at the pages now spread before him on his desk. “Nor do I believe him. I rely on you to get to the bottom of it, Max.” He looked up. “Oh, I suppose I should mention: all the people currently on retreat at the guesthouse were there some time in the fall, just not all at same time. And the fall is when Lord Lislelivet picked up the fruitcake in question.”
“That is an odd coincidence, surely,” said Max.
“DCI Cotton says they are all there again.”
“What? That seems beyond coincidence.”
A latent interest in crime was showing on the bishop’s face, mixed with genuine concern. He’s become an eager participant in all of this, thought Max.
“Not when you think about it. The whole thing is coming to a head out there. You’ll see. Well, good-bye and Godspeed, Max. Toodle-oo. I’m really frightfully late for my next appointment.”
And Max, seeing no option, rose, made a deferential bow, and left the office.
The Right Reverend Bishop Nigel St. Stephen stopped shuffling his papers and punching his computer keys long enough to watch him go. The bishop thought of himself as a patient man, a big-picture sort of bloke. In his mind, the two things went together. A benign philosophical stance combined with the patience to watch and wait as the Creator made all things clear. But the incidents at Monkbury Abbey had shaken him from this Siddhartha-like pose.
Something had to be done about the situation at the abbey, and something had to be done ASAP, before all hell broke loose.
But ASAP would not be soon enough.
When Max reached the vicarage later that same evening, he found two urgent messages waiting for him in Mrs. Hooser’s hieroglyphic scrawl. One was from Bishop St. Stephen, and one was from DCI Cotton of the Monkslip Constabulary. Somehow, Max knew even before he picked up the heavy Bakelite phone to begin dialing that the two messages were connected.
PART III
Terce
Chapter 4
MONKBURY ABBEY
But let us ask the Lord: Who will find rest upon your holy mountain?
—The Rule of the Order of the Handmaids of St. Lucy
Monkbury Abbey lay almost directly to the north of Nether Monkslip, past Monkslip Cathedral, a few miles past Muckleford Piddle and a few further miles east of the roundabout at Temple Monkslip. Max made record time the next day in light traffic, stopping once for petrol at a motorist convenience stop. He decided against the “healthy” option on the menu there, opting for a quick pub meal in Temple Monkslip.
Afterwards he entered rolling countryside that in ages past had been as flat and sodden as a rice paddy. Spotting the nunnery in the distance, he pulled into a lay-by to take in the full postcard-worthy view. A marvel of medieval construction surrounded by a wide river, Monkbury Abbey clung to the craggy, steep mountainside like a walled castle of the Languedoc, to which it may well have owed its inspiration. It was difficult to tell what was rock and what was building.
An evening mist rose from the river at the mountain’s base, enveloping the bottom, so that the abbey seemed to float suspended against a turquoise sky shot through with copper. Greenery grew nearly to the summit of the walled precinct; a narrow road could be glimpsed winding to the top like a swirl of soft ice cream. A cruciform church with Norman tower was the crowning glory; from there the abbey buildings tumbled higgledy-piggledy down the hill, clinging to the sides until they came to a stone wall. This plunged straight into the river like the long train of a lady’s skirt.
Max thought, smiling to himself, that the only possible word for the nunnery was “impregnable.”
He had consulted a drawing and photographs on the Internet before setting out and knew the steepest wall comprised one side of the infirmary. The buildings where the nuns slept, ate, and worked surrounded the eastern and southern sides of the cloister garth. To the west, set slightly apart, was the guesthouse.
Animals, specks of white and brown, could be seen grazing on fields surrounding the complex. The place looked utterly self-contained—mysterious, forbidding, and inexpressibly beautiful.
And despite its splendor, Max did not want to be there. He did not want to be anywhere Awena was not.
He put the Land Rover into gear and set off up the hill.
* * *
His phone conversation of the previous night with DCI Cotton had lasted half an hour. The DCI had confirmed the lab results were back on the fruitcake retrieved from the country home of Lord and Lady Lislelivet. The cake had definitely been tampered with.
“But whether deliberately or accidentally, of course they can’t say,” Cotton told him. “To some people—me, for example—good-for-you berries look exactly the same as bad-for-you berries. That’s why I avoid the great outdoors at all costs. As far as I’m concerned they invented the supermarket to keep me out of forest glens. But the experts suggest it may not have been an attempt to kill outright, but to make someone decidedly uncomfortable. Who, after all, in their right mind would eat more than a few bites of fruitcake?”
“It was something in the nature of a cruel prank, you mean. But why would anyone go to the trouble?” Max wondered.
“It’s an unorthodox situation, to say the least—if you will pardon the expression. When all this first came up, the Bishop of Monkslip himself called the station, asking to speak with me. Once the switchboard determined it was not a hoax they put him through to my flat, where I sat blamelessly watching a Downton Abbey rerun. The bishop is desperate to have us approach the matter with all diplomatic caution. I gather he has already asked you to look into a few things at the abbey. I’ve had a brief look-see myself but I didn’t have a lot of time to devote to it.”
“Yes, he asked me to take a look around,” said Max. “He said that beside the berry incident, there might be some financial irregularities. Perhaps he was hoping against hope the berries would prove to be harmless—the lesser of two evils. It is not impossible that Lord Lislelivet would raise a big stink over a minor matter for publicity purposes.”
“Ah, you know him.”
“I know enough of him,” Max replied. “So. Whether we are talking of a prank or attempted murder, this ninny apparently has taken himself off to the abbey to be right in the thick of things.”
“Apparently. It’s set to blow sky-high once Lord Lislelivet hears someone’s tampered with his f
ood in a meaningful way. I would agree with your bishop that it all needs to be contained—cleared up as quickly as possible. Quietly, if it can be. If the situation called for discretion before, it now calls for the highest diplomatic finessing we can bring to bear.”
“The press—”
“The press and media have not been informed,” Cotton told him. “Yet. Of course they’ll learn of it in time, but right now they’ve no idea. Even Lord Lislelivet seems not to have told them. If he had, it would be all over the news by now.”
“Oh, but surely…” Max trailed off, tried again. “You must—”
“Surely nothing. Must nothing. There is no clause in my oath of office that requires me to broadcast every detail of every case to the media immediately I become aware of it—or before I’m even certain there is a case. Quite the opposite. I spend more of my time than I care to fending off people with notebooks and microphones so they don’t bugger up every investigation, for me and for whoever might be a suspect. The media find out about things in the usual ways, using their usual methods—some of them, like bribery or wiretapping, not particularly attractive methods. But so far we’ve got a window of opportunity before they come swooping in, shirttails untucked, ties untied, swearing to high heaven and trailing cigarette ash all over the place. And that’s just the women.”
“The women are much better behaved,” objected Max. “As a rule.”
“Generally smarter, too. They run rings around the men.”
“All the more reason, you’ll have to play it straight with any reporters. If and when they find out you kept this quiet they’ll have your guts for garters.”
“Of course I’ll be straight with them. It’s just a question of when I’ll get around to it.”
Max, after taking a brief survey of his conscience, found he wasn’t overly concerned about the ethics of keeping details from the media. There were centuries of precedent, after all. As a theological conundrum, he thought it was in the category of wondering how many angels could dance on the head of a pin. If justice or reputation were at stake, certainly then concealment would be out of the question. But delaying media inquiries into the investigation? A gray area. Dark gray, but gray. He mostly wondered how on earth Cotton thought he would get away with it for longer than a few hours. A day at best. A week? Never.
As if reading his mind, Cotton said, “We won’t get away with it for long, of course. But Monkbury Abbey is its own little world, isolated from the outside, undisturbed by modern inconveniences. And therefore completely unable to withstand any sort of media onslaught. I shudder to think of it, Max—when it happens, and it is bound to, it’s going to be awful. Simply a bloodbath. As always, the innocent will suffer along with whoever is responsible. And these women—these nuns—are true innocents.”
“Except perhaps for one of them.”
“Well, yes. It doesn’t bear thinking about.”
“What makes you think the BBC isn’t at this very moment rolling up to the front gate of the abbey in one of its vans?”
“The abbess has told no one but the bishop about what’s happened. And Lord Lislelivet is being the soul of discretion. Totally unlike his usual self.”
“But the financial irregularities … surely there is a connection?”
“That is why I need you, Max. I have to say I don’t see the connection.”
“The bishop said much the same cast of characters as were at the abbey in the fall with Lord Lislelivet are there now.”
Max heard the rattle of a sheet of paper being unfolded.
“We have a family group: Clement Gorey, Oona Gorey, and their daughter, Xanda Gorey. The Goreys have donated a king’s ransom to Monkbury Abbey over the years. An amount nicely calculated to ensure they are remembered in perpetuity. Clement seems to be the ringleader in this financial investigation.
“Then we have Paloma Green. She owns an art gallery and was apparently responsible for holding a big fund-raiser for the abbey at her gallery. You know the sort of thing, where people who know nothing about art show up and eat little canapé things wrapped in bacon and drink white wine until they’ve bid an insane amount on some photo or painting that’s captured their fancy because blue is their favorite color. Anyway, this shindig raised a lot of money to expand and improve the existing abbey guesthouse. To blend the medieval with something that can be heated in winter. Paloma’s boyfriend, Piers Montague, is with her at the abbey now, although he was not among the guests when Lord Lislelivet carried off the tainted fruitcake. The boyfriend is a photographer specializing in gloomy portraits of ruined monasteries.”
“Is there any other kind?” asked Max.
“No, I see your point. Not in England, at any rate. They always look so depressing, don’t they, those images? But in a beautiful way.
“And then there is himself, Ralph Perceval, the Fifteenth Earl of Lislelivet. A walking advertisement for the sound thinking behind the French Revolution, if you ask me, however much we may despair of their extreme methods. He does not appear to have the same investment of money or reputation in the situation as do the others. What reputation? I hear you ask. But still, what his wife thinks is that he is there on a treasure hunt.”
“Come again?”
“A treasure hunt. It has been rumored that something is buried in the abbey precincts, something of incalculable value. Something Holy Grail-ish. There’s some book just come out that’s sparked a renewed interest. The nuns will have their hands full as it is, dealing with the fortune hunters flocking to their gates. Combine that with poisoned fruitcake and missing charitable donations, and they’ve got a perfect storm of trouble.”
“Holy Grail?” Max repeated. “You are kidding me, right?” It was so—what? So feudal, so archaic. Max could almost feel the centuries begin to dissolve around him. The electric candles in the vicarage seemed to shape-shift into rushlights as he stood incongruously clutching a telephone, his spare modern garb transformed into the long folds of a cleric of the middle ages.
Cotton had the grace to keep silent while Max turned everything over in his mind. Or perhaps Cotton was busy reading a report on his computer. He was the ultimate multitasker.
Finally Cotton said, “So, when can you get there? Time really is of the essence, Max.”
Max Tudor sighed. He supposed the peace and quiet of the abbey might at least give him an idea for his sermon.
“As soon as I can pack a few things and find someone to cover for me here. I really do need to work on my sermon. More importantly, there’s someone I must visit in hospital. It can’t be put off.”
His parishioner Chrissa Baker, who had resisted all sane advice and stayed with her abusive husband, had finally fulfilled one of the predictions as to her likely fate and landed in hospital with a broken jaw. Injuries suffered at her husband’s hands, of course. Max was going to bring all his persuasiveness to bear to get her to leave him. He’d already arranged a flat for her to stay for a month and was working on finding her a job in Staincross Minster.
“All right,” said Cotton. “Bring enough clothing for about three days. You can leave the laptop behind, assuming you have one. This lot is strictly of the parchment-and-quill school of sermon writing.”
As the “Zed” key on the vicarage computer was currently stuck, Max thought there might be compensations. The malfunction had played havoc with last week’s sermon, which in keeping with the Law of Sod had been about the prophets Ezekiel and Zechariah.
“Oh, and Max?”
“Hmm?”
“Thanks. I owe you a beer.”
“You owe me a hefty donation to the widows-and-orphans fund.”
“Done. Gladly. I’ll write a cheque tonight.” This was what Cotton liked about Max. He wasn’t above a dab of genteel extortion in a good cause.
“And you could come to Morning Prayer once in a while. It wouldn’t kill you.”
“It might, when the roof of St. Edwold’s caved in on me,” said Cotton.
Chapter 5
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br /> THE PORTRESS
The portress should be a wise old woman not given to roaming about.
—The Rule of the Order of the Handmaids of St. Lucy
At the top of the hill, his headlamps picked out painted wooden signs that politely directed him to the abbey gatehouse and firmly away from the restricted area of the nun’s cloister.
Max parked and walked over to a wooden door set deep within the stone wall of the gatehouse. He lifted the large brass knocker, shaped like a cross, and pounded it against the massive studded door of a type most often found guarding the entries to ancient Oxbridge colleges. After waiting what seemed an unreasonable amount of time he knocked and waited again. Well, there must be someone at home, he thought. It’s not as if the sisters would have taken it into their heads to go see a movie together. Just as he was lifting the knocker to try again, an eye appeared at the peephole. “Thanks be to God!” warbled a thin, high voice from inside. Sounds of an almighty struggle reached his ears. A scraping and clanging of metal and a creaking of wood as the door opened inward, inch by slow inch. Tempted as Max was to help, he feared he might frighten whoever it was on the other side if he started pushing against the wood. Instead he waited.
And waited. To be greeted at last by a nun of prodigious, Old Testament–like age—an ancient woman, shriveled by weather and time, with a pointed nose and large, compassionate eyes, a bit like Dobby the Elf in Harry Potter. If she had Dobby’s ears, too, that fact was hidden by her white coif and black veil surmounted by a woven circlet.
Calling on all her remaining resources, the woman gave the door a final tug and then, to Max’s amazement, stood on tiptoe to kiss him, once on each cheek. She looked as delighted to see him as if he were a long-lost relative—the good sort of mislaid relative one does hope to see again. She seemed to take his arrival in her stride—probably the abbey had been alerted by someone on the bishop’s staff. But Max sensed there was more to it than that: it was as if she saw his visit as somehow inevitable. It was only fanciful thinking on his part, he knew that, but it really was as if she’d waited a lifetime for Max Tudor to appear.
A Demon Summer Page 5