Bad Faith

by Aimée; David Thurlo

  “The scanning work is lost?” Sister Agatha’s heart dropped to her stomach.

  “We won’t know until I get this beast up and running again, but it may be,” Frank said.

  Weeks of hard work, gone, just like that. Sister Agatha bit back tears of frustration. “We can’t afford to lose that work— or that computer. Do whatever you have to.”

  Sister Bernarda joined her. “I’d like a word with you, Your Charity.”

  As they stepped out into the hall leaving the door open so that their visitor would not be within the enclosure unsupervised, Sister Bernarda glanced back inside the room. Satisfied no one would hear them, she continued. “I have a very serious matter to discuss with you.”

  “What’s happened?”

  “We’d made a great deal of progress last night. This morning when Celia and I came in all the computers were working fine, and everything was in order. Then, when Sister Mary Lazarus joined us a few minutes later, first the computer she was working on crashed—that’s almost normal around here— but we couldn’t get it to boot up again. She wanted to call Frank immediately, but I held back. I wanted to take a look at it myself and see if maybe I could fix it. Then, in order not to lose more time, Sister Mary Lazarus tried to work on the one you’ve been using, but it crashed too.”

  “Are you saying that you think she found a way to make them crash on purpose? But why?”

  “I think she wanted to see Frank, Sister. And when Frank came—which he did almost right away—he insisted on having her help him.”

  “Insisted?”

  “Politely, but there it was. He said that he knew I was needed to supervise the postulant’s work and that Mary Lazarus could give him a hand more easily than I could. That was true, of course, but so is the fact that he really wanted to work with her.”

  “Do you think they have feelings for each other?”

  Sister Bernarda glanced at Pax, who had just come padding down the hall and, finding Sister Agatha, lay down by her feet. “I don’t know. But there’s something going on and, as I was watching them, a thought occurred to me. What if Sister Mary Lazarus has been meeting Frank after hours? We know she wanders about at night. Maybe she hasn’t been sleepwalking every time. And if she’s been leaving the door open when she wanders, almost anyone could have come into our monastery.” Sister Bernarda took a deep breath. “But now that I’ve said it, I feel guilty about having such uncharitable thoughts.”

  “Leads are often nothing more than hunches played through. Don’t feel guilty. Just remember that we’re all fighting for the same thing—our monastery.”

  When they stepped back into the scriptorium, Sister Agatha sat down across from Frank and Mary Lazarus. She said nothing, she simply watched them. Under her gaze, Frank managed to get one computer going in record time. The second computer followed a short time later. To everyone’s relief, no data had been lost.

  “A memory problem,” Frank said as she walked him outside. “Will you make your deadline, Sister?”

  “I think so,” she answered, “particularly since you were able to resuscitate the computers.”

  “That’s good. I know you’ve all been working very hard and putting in all the time you can. Sister Mary Lazarus mentioned it to me.”

  “I’d like to talk to you about Sister Mary Lazarus. This is a very difficult time for her. She is about to make some very important decisions about her future.” She paused then, meeting his gaze, and added, “Do you think she’ll stay with us, Frank? I know you two were close once.” Although she watched him carefully she couldn’t see any reaction to her comment or her question. He hid his thoughts well.

  “She’s at a crossroads, as you say. But I think she’ll stay. Don’t you?”

  He’d turned it right around on her. “I guess we’ll all just have to wait and see.”

  After he’d left, Sister Agatha returned to the scriptorium. The phones wouldn’t be manned this morning. Nor would the monastery door be opened. It wasn’t a free day—one where no one worked—but Reverend Mother had given the externs and their team her blessing to work nonstop in the scriptorium. The money made on the quilt had gone to make the overdue loan payment for work done on the monastery and for a partial payment for work on the Antichrysler, but the fees they’d collect for their scriptorium work were now needed to help them catch up on other bills.

  Today they would stop to observe the liturgical hours but for nothing else. Such progress would come at a price to Sister Agatha’s joints, but by the end of the day, there was no doubt in anyone’s mind that, barring some fresh disaster, they’d make deadline on all scriptorium projects.

  During recreation that evening, Sister Agatha found it hard to keep her eyes open. She was exhausted, but using the discipline she’d learned in more than a decade as a nun, she refused to give in to her weariness. One couldn’t command one’s own body by giving in to it. She sat on one of the benches outside and watched as Mary Lazarus went off on a walk by herself.

  Sister Bernarda came up to join her. “I know you’re tired. Feel free to close your eyes. I’ll watch our novice for you.”

  “If I close my eyes, I won’t wake up before morning,” she answered with a weary smile. “But there’s no need to keep really close tabs on Mary Lazarus anymore. If I know generally where she’s gone, I can still track her. I made a mark on her shoes,” she said, and explained further.

  “Then I’ll talk to you so you can stay alert. There’s something on my mind I need to discuss.”

  Sister Bernarda leaned down to stroke Pax’s massive head. “Do you remember last April, when Reverend Mother assigned us all our spring work duties? Sister Mary Lazarus specifically asked that she be allowed to continue caring for the flower beds.”

  “Yes, I remember that well. It was a surprise to everyone after that terrible allergic reaction she’d had her first day in the gardens.” She stood, realizing that she’d lost sight of Mary Lazarus, and began walking around casually with Sister Bernarda, hoping to spot her again.

  “The thought that occurred to me was this—what if it wasn’t an ordinary allergic reaction at all? What if she’d been handling monkshood? The toxicity of the plant itself might have caused the symptoms we saw.”

  “You think she planted the monkshood?”

  “Not necessarily. She might have simply found it accidentally, and only decided to take advantage of its properties later.”

  Sister Agatha considered that possibility for several moments. “Celia pointed out some time ago that the monkshood on the alb was most likely intended to affect me, not Father Anselm. I just can’t see Sister Mary Lazarus wanting to harm me for any reason, can you?”

  “Did she ever get particularly angry with you about something, or resent a task you’d asked her to do?”

  Sister Agatha considered it carefully. “Not that I remember. Novice Mistresses can seem exacting, I know, but I really haven’t been hard on either of them.”

  They continued walking and searching for the novice while trying to appear uninterested in everything but their own conversation. “There she is,” Sister Bernarda said at last, “on the far side of Sister Clothilde’s vegetable garden, near the wall.”

  “What on earth is she doing back there? I better go have a look around there later. For right now, let’s head back. She’s turning this way, and I don’t want her to know she’s being observed.”

  As Sister Bernarda fell into step again beside Sister Agatha, her silence spoke of her concerns more effectively than words could have. “What do we do next?” she asked at last. “How can I help?”

  “Once recreation is over, take Celia and Mary Lazarus with you to Compline. I’ll stay out here for a bit longer and make use of the daylight that’s left.”

  “To do what?”

  “I want to check out the route Mary Lazarus walks during recreation. After last night’s rain, the ground should be soft enough to show the marks on the soles of her shoes.”

  A half hour
later, the bells rang for Compline. Sister Agatha saw Sister Bernarda signal for the novice and postulant to follow her as the nuns headed to chapel.

  As arranged, Sister Agatha lagged behind. Then, while the nuns’ voices rose from choir, she made her way around the building to the spot by the wall where they’d seen Mary Lazarus. She searched the ground carefully, but there was no evidence of monkshood, not even any upturned earth that might have indicated someone had uprooted some plants recently.

  Frustration and disappointment washed over her. She’d been so sure….

  Unwilling to give up, she followed the novice’s tracks on the soft, sandy earth. At one point, from what she could see, the novice had gone around the building and in through the kitchen doors.

  Tracking her on brick floors was impossible, so Sister looked around the kitchen, hoping to figure out what had brought Mary Lazarus back here.

  Mary Lazarus had always seemed to head for the kitchen whenever she’d had her sleepwalking episodes—with the exception of the other night when Sister Agatha had seen her outside. Maybe she’d done that simply to mislead them— especially if her sleepwalking had been a ruse all along.

  Lord, open my eyes. She wandered around the kitchen slowly searching for a clue. Then she saw it. There were several tiny clumps of wet sand on Sister Clothilde’s otherwise spotless floor, inches from the basement door.

  21

  As Sister Agatha started to go down the steps, Pax ap-jLipeared at the door. Without waiting for an invitation, he went down ahead of her into the darkness.

  The descent consisted of only seven steps, but there was no railing to hold on to and the light was at the bottom of the steps. The basement of the old farmhouse had been built as a larder mostly, to store canned and dried food. It had a hard dirt floor, which was somewhat uneven.

  When she reached the basement, she switched on the light-bulb that hung from a cord in the middle of the room.

  The basement was stark, mostly stuccoed in the gray scratch coat, with one brick supporting wall. It had a dungeonlike feel that made her think of the catacombs used during the early days of Christianity. She hated coming down here, and most of the other nuns did as well. Sister Clothilde had categorically refused to store food down here. Janitorial supplies were the only things kept in the basement, except during winter when some of the garden tools were brought down as well.

  As she looked at the ground, Sister Agatha clearly saw Mary Lazarus’s tracks imprinted on the dusty earth floor, mingled with a surprising number of other tracks. The marked heel tracks stopped before a solid-looking eight-foot-wide brick wall that served as a support for the building above.

  Sister Agatha looked up at the wall, perplexed. Why was Mary Lazarus coming down here to stare at the wall? Had she fashioned her own penance?

  Stymied, she went across the small room and sat down on the last step, Pax beside her. For several minutes she stared at an indeterminate spot on the wall, lost in thought. Celia wasn’t the only one who realized that when something didn’t make sense, you needed to change your perspective.

  She thought about everything she’d learned, arranging and rearranging the bits of information as one would the pieces of a puzzle. There was no monastery duty that could have brought Mary Lazarus down here. That left personal reasons. But the only personal interest Mary Lazarus had these days, apparently, was Frank Walters.

  Pax stood, shook himself, then walked over and sniffed the corner where the brick wall met the concrete pillar of the monastery’s foundation. Picturing old movies and television shows about haunted houses, Sister tried pushing several bricks to see if they would move. Maybe the old farmhouse had been built with a secret passageway of sorts. She tried every section of the wall, especially those areas with bricks that seemed to have less mortar between their joints, but the wall seemed solid.

  At long last, Sister Agatha made her way back up the stairs. This was getting her nowhere. She’d try a new tack. Even if Mary Lazarus had either found or planted monkshood, to be guilty of the crime that had been committed, she would have had to make a concentration of the herb. For that, she would have needed some of the supplies in the infirmary.

  From what she’d learned, monkshood had to be dissolved and concentrated, but it couldn’t be heated. Mary Lazarus would have had to soak the herb in water or some form of alcohol, leaving the bottle open so that the liquid would evaporate a bit, then repeat the process until she’d amassed the toxic preparation that had been used on the alb.

  During the Great Silence, the house stood quiet. Only the incessant hum of the night insects marred the stillness. Trying to be as quiet as her surroundings, Sister Agatha slipped into the infirmary and checked the supplies in the inventory book. Everything had to be carefully accounted for, and any discrepancies, however small, had to be noted.

  Sister Eugenia’s record keeping was flawless as Sister Agatha had expected, and everything the infirmary had on hand was listed, down to each and every aspirin. The less perishable supplies were listed as well, and one small medicine bottle with a dropper lid had turned up missing in early June. Sister Eugenia had left a note to herself in the margin to continue to look for it, but from what Sister Agatha could see, the bottle had never been found.

  Placing the book back on the desk, she looked around, noting the careful way everything from pills to Band-Aids had been stored inside the dispensary. She knew without being told that the missing bottle had driven Sister crazy. She’d have to talk to Sister Eugenia about it tomorrow.

  After Lauds the following morning, as everyone went to the refectory, Sister Agatha managed to catch up to Sister Eugenia.

  “Do you need some of your pills, Your Charity?” Sister Eugenia asked quickly as Sister Agatha joined her.

  “No. My joints seem to be doing much better. Maybe it’s because I’ve had something else on my mind.” She smiled. “No room for pain, you see.”

  Sister Eugenia smiled. “It works like that sometimes.”

  “Sister Eugenia, I’m sure you’re aware that Reverend Mother has asked me to look into Father Anselm’s tragic death.”

  She nodded. “All the sisters are praying for you. I know Celia has a perpetual novena going on your behalf, as do Sister Ignatius and myself.”

  “I appreciate that, but I need something more material from you now.”

  “Name it, Sister Agatha.”

  “I’d like you to tell me about the dispensary. I specifically need to know about anything that’s turned up missing lately— even if only temporarily.” She already knew about the dropper, of course, but she needed to find out if there had been any other items.

  “Sister, you know how careful I am with everything that’s in my charge. An infirmarian must be precise, and willing to serve the monastery as she would Our Lord Himself. But several weeks ago, during an inventory, I realized that one amber glass dropper bottle was missing. I looked everywhere for it. I even asked each of the nuns who had been assigned to help me in the infirmary if they’d had occasion to use it, and broken or lost it. Sometimes they’ll take something and forget to tell me in perfect innocence. But, in this case, the bottle never turned up. I’m still searching for it.”

  “Are you able to pinpoint exactly when it disappeared?”

  “No, that would be almost impossible, because I didn’t use it to dispense medication. If I had, I would have noted it It could have disappeared anytime between my regular monthly inventories.”

  “Should you find it suddenly, please don’t touch it. Just let me know.”

  “All right,” she said. “Do you think the monkshood used to kill Father was stored in that bottle?”

  “I don’t know for certain, but there’s a good chance that it was.”

  When Sister Eugenia bowed her head to utter a prayer, Sister Agatha joined her.

  After Divine Office, Sister Agatha took the novice and postulant aside. “For the next few days, you will work exclusively in the scriptorium. That will be your
second highest priority.” She knew she didn’t have to explain what their first priority was. That part came as naturally as breathing to a nun.

  “Mother Mistress, if you don’t mind my saying so, the real problem is that you and Sister Bernarda are the only ones who work on the manuscripts that need to be scanned into the computer. That’s the most important job on the schedule now, and it’s way behind. If only you would let me help with that, I know we could catch up. I don’t need as much sleep as some of the others, so I could come in at night. If you’d give me the combination to the safe, I’d be happy to work while others are resting or asleep.”

  Sister Agatha stared at Sister Mary Lazarus, a new realization dawning. She’d been searching for a motive all this time, and maybe she’d finally found it. The manuscripts in the safe were extremely valuable and some collectors, she was sure, would gladly look the other way about how they were acquired in exchange for the thrill of possessing them. Mary Lazarus might have hoped that with her out of commission from contact with the monkshood, she’d be given access to them.

  “That’s a generous offer. I’ll consult with Sister Bernarda and let you know.”

  “Mother Mistress, Sister Mary Lazarus is right,” Celia added. “If both of us were to able to start work on those manuscripts when you were out, or when Sister Bernarda had portress duty, we could get that job done on deadline without any problem. And there’s no reason you can’t trust us to lock up afterwards.”

  “I don’t understand why those manuscripts are kept locked up anyway. It’s not like we work in a public place,” Sister Mary Lazarus said. “The scriptorium is within the enclosure.”