Max said as much about the jostling, and the bishop replied, “Quite. There is never anything overt—it’s just human nature to have favorites, and somehow Dame Justina became the dark horse favorite. But of course, special friendships are forbidden.”
“Special…?”
“Oh, I don’t mean that sort of thing. No! No. Not at all. I meant that any hint of favoritism, of excluding others, is poisonous to communal life. It happens, and when it does it has to be stamped out immediately. A too-close friendship, private conversations—all the same sort of thing as you see outside the walls of a nunnery gets magnified in a closed community with so few inhabitants. The slightest hint of that spells disaster. Even among those committed to the ideals of peace and forgiveness and generally getting along.”
Max could see how easily, without a strong leader in charge, the whole thing could dissolve into petty feuds and taking of sides. Maintaining her distance from the fray did appear to be Abbess Justina’s strength—that and the Teflon quality of the born politician.
“I will need to step in at some point and instigate better controls,” the bishop was saying. “They need security cameras around the place, I suppose—I never thought I’d see the day. Their reputation is hanging on this, Max. Monasteries used to hold valuables for people, rather like a bank with safe deposit boxes. Because they were known to be honest, that they could be trusted.”
“I know,” said Max.
“We can’t have them lose what matters most. Their reputations for fair dealing and integrity.”
“Yes,” said Max. The whole conversation was forcefully reminding him of what he had not yet told the bishop. Talk about a lack of integrity.
“There’s something I must t—” began Max.
“I have to run now,” said the bishop. “A cab is waiting to take me to the airport. I’m attending a conference where I’m the keynote. ‘The Role of the Church of England in the Twenty-First Century’—you know the sort of thing. I do hope they don’t notice I’m starting to repeat myself.”
“I really n—”
“Talk with you soon, Max—when you’ve resolved all this at the abbey. I just know you’ll get to the bottom of it.”
And the bishop rang off.
Chapter 28
AT NASHBURY FEATHERS
Beware the sins of the flesh.
—The Rule of the Order of the Handmaids of St. Lucy
Soon afterward Max left the Running Knight and Pilgrim, setting off on the fifty-mile journey to Nashbury Feathers, the weekend home of Lady Lislelivet and former weekend home of Lord Lislelivet, deceased.
Max supposed she was the Dowager Lislelivet if she had a married son to take over the title from his father. Cotton hadn’t mentioned other family but Max recalled some news story or other about the son of Lord Lislelivet’s who, being somewhat of a rake, had been sent to spend his days raking in warmer climates.
DCI Cotton had related to Max something of his conversations with the dowager, for Cotton had stopped by Nashbury Feathers on his way to the nunnery. Of course the attempted poisoning had brought the matter to Cotton’s attention initially, but now it had all landed squarely back on his desk.
“The wife,” Cotton had told Max, “is concerned about what the coroner may find.”
“That’s only natural.”
“But again, she seems mostly to be concerned because of the insurance angle. It can’t be death from a heart attack, from where she stands. Or she would prefer it not be.”
“Yes, more money for her if it’s murder or accident, as the policy is written. What’s her theory on what drew him to the nunnery?”
“Lord Lislelivet had had a very public religious conversion,” Cotton said, “about which his wife is highly derisory. She thinks he knew a scandal was coming and was trying to do prewash publicity. She—” Cotton interrupted himself. “I don’t want to put preconceived notions in your head. But I think she knew her husband very well.” Cotton had then sort of squinted at Max and added, “You’ll be lucky to get out alive.”
“What do you mean?”
But Cotton, grinning, had just shook his head. “You’ll see.”
* * *
And so Max had driven up the long, tree-lined drive to Nashbury Feathers and found himself admitted to the fine old manor house by a housemaid wearing jeans and a T-shirt that advertised her support for the Monkslip Badgers. He had been announced—actually, he had just heard his name being bellowed outside, followed by some sort of hushed admonition—and then she had come back into the hallway to lead him into the Presence.
The interview took place on a wide terrace stretching across the back of the house, with a view over rolling green hills to the sea, a view interrupted only by the strip of blue water in the swimming pool. Max sat beside the bereaved wife, pulling a lawn chair near her chaise lounge but downwind of the cigarette she held in one hand. The Dowager Lislelivet was of middle years—to all appearances, frozen there in time by the skillful wielding of a plastic surgeon’s knife—and wore a bikini that left nothing to the viewer’s imagination. Her hair was of an artificial champagne-blond shade and of a texture usually found on a child’s doll, with dark fake eyelashes adding to the largely plastic illusion. Max in his clerical collar felt as if he had stumbled into a bad French farce. It was an impression compounded when he was asked if he’d like the maid to bring him a martini.
Cotton had recounted how Lady Lislelivet had saved the remaining fruitcake brought from the nunnery by her husband, observing that “you could live off the stuff for years, really.” But she had been planning, she told Cotton, to foist it onto the maid when her husband wasn’t looking, or failing that, quietly tip it into the rubbish bin. The remainder had been analyzed at the instigation of Lord Lislelivet, as Max knew, and the tainted berries found.
After refusing the martini and exchanging some preliminary pleasantries and expressions of condolence, Max asked her, “How was your husband in recent days? Did anything unusual happen that could be behind this unfortunate incident?”
Max’s choice of words seemed to remind her that she was supposed to be in mourning. She pulled a little sad face but just as quickly wiped it away, perhaps thinking outward signs of mourning might cause wrinkles. Or perhaps already tiring of the pretence.
“Nothing, really,” she said. “That blond DCI asked me that, too. Ralph was about the same. Irritable and difficult to live with. Staggeringly full of himself. The usual.”
“And before? Around the time when he visited the nunnery in the fall?”
“He was up to something, but I don’t know what. Preoccupied.”
“Worried?”
“Maybe. And that wasn’t like him. Ralph tended to just bowl through obstacles in his life. He was a ‘doer,’ is how he put it. That’s shorthand for ‘bully.’”
“And he came back from that visit with the fruitcake.”
“Right. We had it as our pudding one night for dinner not long after his return.”
“What did he eat besides that?”
“A pork roast and vegetables. Nothing different from what I ate. Except that ruddy fruitcake he’d brought back from the abbey.”
“You didn’t have any?”
“I don’t like fruitcake. I don’t know a living soul who does, do you? I gave mine to Scooter, the dog, who thankfully didn’t much like it either. Ralph did, though. Part of his general contrariness, to like what most people can’t stand, if you ask me.”
“And this incident encouraged him to revisit the abbey?”
“Um-hmm.” She reached for a bottle of suntan lotion and began anointing her bronzed arms and shoulders. “Keeping up with a tan is hard work. God, I miss Rome.”
“Lovely city,” agreed Max. “Did you not think it strange he’d return? To the abbey, I mean.”
“Yes. He said something about repair work and money, and then he decided he needed to ‘explore his spiritual side.’ It was enough to make a cat laugh. I didn’t really listen.
Whatever it is he was up to, I can tell you this: it’ll make the Profumo scandal look like a vicarage tea party.” She smiled winningly and added, “No offense. I’m sure you throw lovely parties at your vicarage.”
“So you think visiting his aunt was just a pretext?”
“There is no question about it. He didn’t care a toss about her, and going to see her was just an excuse. But for what, I don’t know. The nuns aren’t allowed visitors except on set occasions or in an emergency, but for years he didn’t visit. Couldn’t be bothered.”
This reference to Dame Meredith made Max slightly uncomfortable. He had not visited his own aunt very often. It was a duty, a chore, an obligation, rather than something undertaken with joy, as it should have been.
“You have to understand: my husband was always on,” the Dowager Lislelivet said. “Always putting on a performance, you know? Except when he was around me, of course. For me he didn’t bother. Hadn’t bothered in ages.”
Max did see. As with most marriages, he supposed, the spouse saw the whole picture: the good and the bad. Max was still searching for Lord Lislelivet’s good side. He had to have had one, Max reasoned. Didn’t he?
“His publicity people had gone into overdrive to broadcast that he was at the abbey seeking spiritual renewal. What a load of bollocks. Trust me,” she added, “if he was there for spiritual cleansing it was because a scandal was about to break and he was doing some preemptive image enhancement. ‘Spiritual cleansing’—hah! He actually used those words, thinking I would swallow that. He must have thought I was as gullible as the reading public. Believe me, I know him too well.” She corrected herself, first trying on and quickly abandoning her grieving widow expression. “Knew him.”
“There is no question in your mind this was murder.” It was not a question.
Suddenly a cagey look came into her heavily made-up eyes. She retrieved a pair of sunglasses from the small table that held her cigarettes, suntan lotion, and a beach read paperback: Torrid Tuscany. “I wouldn’t know, would I? I wasn’t there. But I also don’t believe he just dropped dead of a heart attack and hit his head on the way down a well. Ralph would never be that considerate, for one thing. For another, he had just received a clean bill of health from his doctor.”
“I do apologize for having to ask,” said Max. “But do you believe he would be engaged in any activity that was … uhm … sexual in nature?”
At this she let out a loud bray of laughter. It was quite a contagious laugh. If I were casting an actress to play a Wild West brothel madam, thought Max, I would pick Lady Lislelivet for the role. “My stars, Vicar. That was nicely put. But in a nunnery?”
Max smiled, seeing how he might better have phrased the question. “I was speaking generally,” said Max. “How he comported himself generally.”
“The answer is yes. If I were a betting woman, which I am, I would give you even odds he was unfaithful, although I would also bet he confined that sort of activity to London.” She paused, thinking. “But he could have been up to anything, really. I’d also offer even odds on financial malfeasance, bribery, arms trading—oh, you name it. He might draw the line at human trafficking but only with the greatest reluctance, and even then he’d first ask about the size of the profit margin.”
That broad answer seemed so oddly definitive Max could think of nothing further to ask. But it was becoming clearer that Lord Lislelivet’s visits to the nunnery were completely out of character and might indeed be what his wife believed them to be—attempts to divert the attention of the media or to polish his image in advance of some unsavory revelation or other he knew was about to burst forth. There was always the possibility of character change of a bolt-from-the-blue variety, but from what his wife was saying, Lord Lislelivet seemed to have reverted straight to type in between his visits to the monastery.
No, an ulterior motive for his stays was looking more and more likely. St. Paul may have been converted on the road to Damascus, but as much as Max disliked dismissing the possibility of miraculous conversions—they would, after all, make his job so much easier—Lord Lislelivet almost certainly had not had the benefit of such an experience.
“He had been reading that book,” she said, screwing the cap back on the lotion bottle before wiping her hands on a towel. “And that may have had something to do with his sudden interest in the place. He read that book in one go, which was not like him.”
That book. “That would be Wherefore Nether Monkslip?”
“That’s right. He was highlighting pages and so on. Really, totally unlike him. He barely read a newspaper except to see if he was mentioned. And then there was the letter.”
“The letter?”
“Ralph got some letter from the nunnery. I saw the seal on the envelope—that woman with a crown thing. He opened it and you should have seen his expression. I swear all the blood drained from his face.”
Max, instantly on alert, leaned further in toward her, straight into the fumes of coconut oil and cigarette smoke. Cotton had said nothing about a letter. And Cotton would have said if he’d known. “Did you see what the letter said? Or whom it was from?”
“No. But that is why I remember what happened so clearly. He threw it in the fire and then pretended it was nothing. He said it was some sort of fund-raising appeal letter. He was an accomplished liar—just ask his constituents—and quick with a cover-up tale, but over the years I could generally spot when he was lying. Generally. After a while I didn’t care. I developed … outside interests.” Again she smiled, perhaps assessing Max for inclusion in her list of interests.
“Did he ever mention Piers Montague or Paloma Green in connection with fund-raising for the abbey?”
“No,” she said. But she said it too quickly, dropping her eyes. Reluctantly, she added, “Piers is a distant relation to Ralph. A third cousin thrice removed or something.” She perked up. “And a very dishy morsel is he.”
“Could the letter have been from his aunt? Wouldn’t that be the most logical person to be in touch with him?”
“I asked him that. He sort of went from snotty to outraged in an instant—he was good at that—and he was adamant that it was not from his aunt. He repeated that it was a fund-raiser, and he said it loudly, because he hated repeating himself. Once he started bellowing about anything I knew it was time to keep my head way down and drop the subject. Are you certain I can’t have the maid get you a drink, Vicar?”
Max shook his head. “And it was after this he paid his first visit to Monkbury Abbey—his first visit in many years, at any rate?”
“That’s right. And that is when he came back with the fruitcake.”
“It seems like some sort of warning, doesn’t it, that fruitcake?”
“That’s what I thought, too.”
“But instead of heeding the warning, he returned to the nunnery. You don’t find that odd?”
She adjusted her sunglasses, shaking her head. “No, I don’t. Ralph thought he was invincible. There was something at Monkbury he wanted and apart from taking a few precautions as to what he ate while he was there, he wasn’t going to stay home quivering over some mishap with the fruitcake.”
She blew a smoke ring. It hovered over her head like a halo before dissolving in the air.
“I can tell you this for free,” she said. “He was snooping around there. He told me himself he looked at printouts of their financials.”
“How did he get hold of such a thing?”
“He waited until the cellaress’s back was turned, then took a peek.”
“What did he find?”
“He said it all looked balanced. They were doing very well, he said. Everything in order.”
So Lord Lislelivet, unsurprisingly, had no compunction about prying where he had no business prying. Max wondered if Lord Lislelivet had seen a more current—or accurate—statement somehow, on this most recent visit.
The visit that had led to his murder.
Chapter 29
IN OLDEN
DAYS
No sister may neglect the times appointed for reading, or engage in idle talk during those times, as this would bring harm to herself and distraction to others.
—The Rule of the Order of the Handmaids of St. Lucy
Leaving Nashbury Feathers, trailed by longing looks from the newly minted dowager, Max was struck by a thought. Wasn’t it likely Dame Olive would have obtained a copy of Frank’s book for the Monkbury archives, dealing as it did with the history—or rather, the legends—of the abbey?
So on his arrival back at Monkbury Abbey Guesthouse, he went to seek out the librarian, Dame Olive, before the bell could call her to her meal or to Vespers.
He found her at her desk, so completely focused on whatever she was reading she didn’t look up until he had cleared his throat to get her attention. She abruptly closed the book; much to his astonishment, Max saw it was a copy of Frank Cuthbert’s Wherefore Nether Monkslip. Dame Olive blushed. There was nothing salacious in Frank’s book, so far as Max could recall. But for anyone with any aspirations to serious historic scholarship, he supposed, it wasn’t exactly like being caught reading Robert Graves.
As if echoing his thoughts, Dame Olive said, “It is a guilty pleasure, reading this thing. Of course, I could claim that since it mentions the abbey, even in passing, it is my duty to read it. But I find myself captivated by the … by the somewhat swashbuckling narrative style. The author has quite an imagination. It’s transporting. Did you have something you wished to discuss, Father Max?”
Max, who was still adjusting to this new view of Frank Cuthbert and his book as anything other than a huge village embarrassment, took a moment before he said, “I don’t suppose you could lend the book to me?”
Her reluctance was palpable.
“I’m not quite finished,” she began. “I’m just getting to rather a good part.”
There’s a good part? “I promise I’ll return it quickly. I’m only interested in the bits about Monkbury Abbey. The sections on Glastonbury and King Arthur’s grave and so on probably aren’t relevant.”
A Demon Summer Page 26