by Jane Willan
“Has she done that? Kept it away, I mean?”
“Aye.” He let the ewe go and stood up. “I looked at the old pony and I think we need to get the veterinary out.”
“You do?” Bartimaeus was the blind Shetland pony the sisters had brought home from a petting zoo in the village a few years back. They didn’t like the way he was being treated, and when they complained to the owner of the zoo, he told them callously that it didn’t matter, as “the moth-eaten old thing was about to be put down anyway.” The sisters had taken Bartimaeus home with them, coaxing him to follow them up Church Lane with bits of apple. He had been living out his golden years at the abbey ever since, fat and happy. But lately he had begun to fail. Sister Agatha knew she was ignoring the inevitable—that he was perhaps getting to end of his long life.
“Aye. Don’t worry. I’ll give the old boy an extra bit of warm mash. It will set him right in this cold weather.”
“Thanks, Ben.” Sister Agatha tucked her scarf around her neck and slipped out into the cold. She couldn’t imagine Ben hurting the little dog. On the other hand, who else could have done it?
The wind picked up as Sister Agatha walked across the meadow back to the abbey. The large sheep meadow was neatly sectioned off by stone fences that had stood sentinel for the past century at least, built by the early inhabitants of the abbey back when it was a monastery run by Cistercian monks. They were true farmers, she thought, picking her way across the frozen ground. Their entire livelihood, from the food they ate to the clothes they wore, was produced by the sheep, the gardens, and the other livestock. Was that not a better time, she thought to herself? Well perhaps not. No wi-fi, central heating, or Netflix. No interlibrary loan or aspirin or comfy yogapants. No. Not a better time, but perhaps, she had to admit, a time more authentic to the calling of a religious order.
The shadows were growing long and the words to the psalm read in chapel that morning came to her: Truth shall spring out of the earth; and righteousness shall look down from heaven. There was something about the season of Advent that called one back. Back to the real reason they gathered as an abbey. As a community. She wrapped her scarf tighter and made her way across the garden, now in snowy drifts. The lights were on in the cheese barn and that meant that the sisters were hard at it. Although she really wanted to climb the steep steps to the attic library, where she could think through this puzzling event, she didn’t. She turned instead and walked to the cheese barn. The Wine and Rind needed their Gouda.
* * *
Sister Agatha sat down on the bench at the kitchen table. Normally Wednesday was the day of the week on which she got caught up. Not today. She had rescued a kidnapped dog, talked with Ben, helped in the cheese barn. Add to that all the other things she had managed to accomplish—cataloging books in the abbey library, packing food baskets, and meeting with Sister Matilda in the greenhouse for a book discussion.
Sister Matilda had partnered with Lewis Colwyn, botany teacher and avid gardener, to teach a winter gardening class at St. Anselm’s. They had been burning the midnight oil to get the class planned, and that afternoon they had called upon Sister Agatha to help them with curriculum resources. Sister Matilda and Lewis were up to their elbows in potting soil and starter bulbs when she met them in the abbey greenhouse for a conversation about potential classroom resources. Usually a conversation about books was her favorite thing, but this evening she had been tired. The conversation must have continued long after she left them because she just saw Lewis’ car pull out of the abbey drive.
She reached across the table for the tin of gingerbread that Sister Gwenydd always kept at the ready. Just as she was removing the lid, the door to the kitchen opened and, with a gust of cold wind, Lucy stepped in. It was unusual to see the young woman anywhere other than slipping into her studio or walking the little dog. But then, she had spent most of the day helping the sisters in the cheese barn, so maybe she was feeling more at home. “Looking for a late-night snack?” Sister Agatha asked. “I can offer you gingerbread and tea, if you wish.”
Without smiling, Lucy pulled off her mittens and brushed snow out of her red hair. She sat down at the table and, unzipping her purple ski jacket with one hand, reached into the tin of gingerbread with the other. “I love gingerbread. But not tea so much. At home I drink only Starbucks. But thanks for the offer.”
Sister Agatha shook her head. All Starbucks and no tea sounded dreary indeed. “How are you doing?” she asked. “And where’s the puppy?”
“He’s in my studio. Reverend Mother had Ben put another lock on the door and so I took the chance and left him alone.”
“Are you really heading back to Providence?”
“I guess not. I texted my mother and she said I should stick it out. That everything is an adventure and Vincent van Gogh wasn’t hurt and it would all work out. My mother is like that. Always positive.”
“Not a bad trait to have in a mother.”
“I suppose.” Lucy finished off her slice of gingerbread and took another out of the tin. Sister Agatha intuited that Lucy had something she wanted to say. She would force herself to wait her out. As Rupert McFarland often advised, Sometimes being quiet with a suspect is best. If you keep talking, all you may ever hear is yourself.
“I went for a walk on the beach,” Lucy said, her mouth full. The sisters at Gwenafwy Abbey spent many hours each summer enjoying their close vicinity to the Irish Sea, and on a warm, sunny day, a walk there made for a pleasant afternoon outing. But not in December. Although the snow had stopped and the sun had broken through the clouds, it was still bitterly cold.
“Reverend Mother let me drive the van. That way I could take my easel. I needed to get away. Think about things. And paint.”
“And did you? Think about things and paint, that is?” Sister Agatha put the kettle on. This could be a two cups of tea night.
“Not really. First of all, it was way too windy for me. I started off by just walking, but then I met up with this woman who was painting. She was incredible.” Lucy bit into a piece of gingerbread. “I mean amazing.”
At least walking in frigid weather had gotten her mind off the gruesome kidnapping of her dog. “An artist? On the beach?”
“Yeah, all set up with an easel.” Lucy waited while Sister Agatha took the teakettle off the stove and poured the teapot full. “I guess I could have some tea. It might be nice. You guys don’t do a lot with central heating, do you?” Without waiting for a response, Lucy continued. “I loved it. I mean, I’m not into painting nature. But the Welsh coast is so spectacular. Anyway, we spent the whole time talking about art.”
“Who was it?” Sister Agatha poured out the tea into her own cup, adding sugar and cream to her own.
“Her name is Millicent. Millicent Pritchard.” Lucy picked up the tin and looked into it. “I hope Sister Gwenydd doesn’t mind but we’ve cleaned her out of gingerbread.”
Chapter Five
Early the next morning, Sister Agatha walked up to the Bryson house for the second time in a week. She had slipped into the village that morning with the excuse of needing to run an errand for Sister Gwenydd. Which was true. In a sense. Sister Gwenydd did say she was out of cilantro, and Sister Agatha was more than happy to make a quick run to the Lettuce-Eat-Vegan to purchase some. And interview a suspect on the way home.
The toys that had cluttered the lawn last time had disappeared and been replaced by new ones. She recognized a Batman action figure, a Sponge-Bob Square Pants, and an old Tonka truck. Loud shrieks and shouts reverberated from inside the house. She could hear a television blaring and a dog barking. She rang the doorbell, and this time it wasn’t a tired, red-eyed Vonda who met her but a tired, surprised Vonda. Although still a bit disheveled, she was wearing linen pants, a silk blouse, and heels. Behind her two small children chased each other around the living room. Apparently, the brood was back.
“Sister,” she said. “Come in. I wasn’t expecting anyone.” As Sister Agatha stepped into the vesti
bule, she saw a young teenage girl whom she recognized from Father Selwyn’s confirmation class, sitting on the couch, reading to a much quieter child. The other two stopped running long enough to wrestle each other to the carpet over a toy. “I’m about to step out. The sitter is here.”
“Oh, sorry to interrupt. I just wanted to talk for a moment.”
“OK. Sure. I have a minute,” Vonda said, waving her into the kitchen. The room was equally cluttered, though clean. Clean dishes rested in the dish drainer and the table held a tray of tea things. Sister Agatha sat down, and after hesitating and looking at the clock, Vonda did too. “Are you here about the funeral dinner? I would say that Sister Gwenydd and I have it pretty much set.”
“No … it’s not that.” Sister Agatha was suddenly completely at a loss as to how to proceed. Could she just blunder in as she wanted to, asking Vonda where she was the night of the murder? Or would she have to take a subtler approach, which Father Selwyn had made abundantly clear did not fit her personality? She decided to go with subtle—or at least as subtle as she could manage.
“I was just doing some asking around about Tiffany. To gather information about her for Father Selwyn’s eulogy.” Sister Agatha felt her scalp tingle with her lie.
“Oh really? You do that for him? Well, I suppose there is a lot I don’t understand about how you do things, you know, how the church works.” Tiffany took a seat at the kitchen table. “What do you want to know?” She glanced at the clock again.
“The last time we talked, you indicated that you didn’t really like her.” She wanted so badly to just come out and say it. I know you weren’t at the house watching telly the night Tiffany died. Where were you? But only a real detective could proceed that heavy-handedly with a suspect. Inwardly, Sister Agatha sighed. At the end of the day, she was a nun. Not Bates Melanchthon or Inspector Barnaby or even Stephanie Plum.
Vonda picked a dish towel up off the table and twisted it in her hands. Shrieks of laughter erupted from the living room. Vonda didn’t seem to hear it. Sister Agatha had noticed that young parents seemed a bit deaf when it came to the noise their offspring made. Especially in church.
“Well, if you want the truth, no. Not particularly. I certainly didn’t want her to die—but I didn’t like Tiffany, if you are asking.”
“Was she ever rude or hurtful to you?”
Vonda gave Sister Agatha a sharp look. “Will that be in Father’s eulogy?” She went on, “Tiffany took ‘rude’ and ‘hurtful’ to a whole new height. So yes. But then she was like that to everyone.”
Sister Agatha glanced around the kitchen. A bright-green canister sat on the counter. She had almost forgotten. “What kind of tea did Tiffany drink?” she asked.
“You want that for the eulogy? Well, OK. That’s easy. Radiance Infusion from Harrod’s. It’s the most expensive tea Harrod’s carries. At least that’s what she was always telling us at WI. I buy our tea at the Tesco, so I wouldn’t know.”
“Did you like it? Her tea, that is?”
“Never had it. No one touched Tiffany’s tea or her teacup.”
“One last question, was there anything that you did like about her? You know, for the eulogy?” Sister Agatha added quickly.
“Well, I admired her.”
“You did?” Now it was Sister Agatha’s turn to be surprised.
“Tiffany had a certain way about her that I wish I could have.” Vonda paused and gestured around the cluttered house. A house that Sister Agatha had to admit that, though chaotic, held a warmth and family-feel that seemed genuine. “Tiffany was perfect—hair, clothes, house. And while doing all that, she was an accomplished artist. And what have I done? I never finished school. I love my four boys and my husband, of course. But I haven’t done anything other than soccer practice and church work in a decade.” Vonda slumped in her chair and looked imploringly at Sister Agatha. “Tiffany might have been insufferable and generally obnoxious. But she had a life. She did something.”
* * *
Sister Agatha found that she had a lot to think about on her walk back to the abbey. She had finished the conversation with Vonda no closer to where she had been the night of the murder. For once Sister Agatha found herself happy that she was not a real detective. Sitting there at Vonda’s kitchen table, she had realized that getting a suspect statement out of Vonda was not the only important thing. Bringing some encouragement and cheer to a young woman who was doing an impressive job with her family and church was important too.
She had stayed for a while with Vonda, praising her work at St. Anselm’s and telling her how wonderful she indeed was. Being a wife and mother was underrated these days, and frankly, she couldn’t see anything more worthwhile. Or demanding. Or, as she shut the door behind her on the loud chaos of the children, more thoroughly exhausting.
Thinking back on her conversation with Vonda as she climbed Church Hill, Sister Agatha was glad that she hadn’t pushed her any further but was still concerned that she had gained no new information. She couldn’t shake the feeling that, although she possessed no concrete evidence, Vonda was somehow involved in the death of Tiffany. She knew it was a long shot. But concrete evidence was overrated. The detective’s instinct was important. Or so Inspector Rupert McFarland was often saying.
But she had to determine where Vonda had really been that night. She resolved to figure it out, and she had a lot of library work to accomplish. But now she had to get back to the abbey. The sisters were planning a long afternoon of baking for the St. Anselm’s Christmas jumble. A murdered woman, a kidnapped dog, a lying suspect, a stack of uncatalogued books. And she was going to spend the afternoon making Welsh cakes and Monmouth pudding. This would never have happened to Armand Gamache.
* * *
The afternoon sun was slanting through the attic windows when Sister Agatha finally got back to her duties as librarian. She pulled a box of books, newly acquired though gently used copies of The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, across the library table and began to unload them. She planned to spend the rest of the afternoon making spine labels. Setting the books out in order and lining up her supplies, she realized that the image of Vincent van Gogh trapped in a crate out in the field haunted her like a bad dream. What kind of depraved person steals a puppy, puts the little thing in a box, nails it shut, and dumps it out in a field? A horrible person. A dangerous person. And the bigger question, why? Why steal the dog? A murder in the church and two days later a dognapping at the abbey. Were they connected?
She felt fairly confident that it wasn’t Ben. He was abrupt and crusty, but kind. And he seemed to have a compassionate heart for animals of all sorts—even dogs who didn’t earn their keep. True, he had no alibi. But she knew something about Ben that no one else knew. She knew what he liked to read. And a person’s choice of reading material, in her mind, was not only personal and confidential, it was an excellent indicator of their personality. Their integrity. Who they really were as a person. Ben read romance novels. And not the steamy, graphic kind. He preferred the more gentle, idealist stories of a hero rescuing a heroine. Any man who read Moonlight and Magic or Love at the Villa would not viciously hurt a little dog. She was sure of it.
Slipping on ear buds, Sister Agatha tuned into Inspector Rupert McFarland’s latest podcast “Collecting Evidence.” She needed something to occupy her mind while making the spine labels. If someone had come onto abbey grounds, gone up to Lucy’s apartment, and stolen Vincent van Gogh, wouldn’t they have left some sort of evidence that they had been there? She listened carefully to Inspector Rupert MacFarland’s entire thirty-minute podcast and then started it over and listened again.
With the spine label task completed, and her inspiration to track down the intruder high, she neatened up the library work table and then headed down the stairs. Her mind was racing. Who did this and why? And the bigger question, did it have anything to do with the death of Tiffany Reese just two days ago in the village? And what did the perpetrator take away, and wha
t did he leave behind? It was time to collect some evidence.
* * *
Sister Agatha pulled her woolly hat down over her ears. The sun had dropped below the yew trees and the wind had risen. Armed with a tape measure from Sister Callwen’s sewing box, an old toothbrush, three plastic sandwich bags, and a pair of salad tongs from the kitchen, she felt ready. She stuffed all her evidence-gathering items into the pockets of her red jumper along with the purple notebook and set forth. Inspector Rupert MacFarland recommended latex gloves, but her fur-lined leather gloves from last year’s St. Grenfell jumble would suffice. It was just too cold for latex.
She started off thinking about where the intruder might have come in. It was likely that he or she drove, as only the nuns made the walk back and forth to the village. And what self-respecting criminal is without a car? And anyway, yesterday had been absolute brass monkeys. No one would have strolled up Church Lane. Unless, of course, the person didn’t need to arrive at the abbey. What if he/she already lived here? Sister Agatha banished that thought from her mind. She refused to believe the dognapping was an inside job.
She made her way down the long drive to the Church Lane where the perpetrator’s vehicle would have entered Gwenafwy Abbey property. Walking through the wrought-iron gate and stepping onto the lane, she saw immediately a lone tire tread in the frozen mud. Someone had driven up over the berm and left a gouge next to the gravel drive. She followed it back down the gravel drive to the abbey, but it disappeared.
Sister Agatha imagined the person turning into the drive and then perhaps cutting the engine and rolling to a stop in the drive, so as to not attract attention. Stealthily pulling a wooden crate out of the back of a car. Cutting across the brown frozen vegetable garden to the dovecote at the back of the main buildings. All of this would have had to be done quickly, as the person would have had no way of knowing how long the sisters would remain at breakfast.