Graceful, stately, her footsteps hushed by her flowing white habit, Sister Angela arrived as if she were the avatar of a snow goddess who had stepped down from a celestial palace to assess the effectiveness of the storm spell that she had cast upon the Sierra.
“Sister Clare Marie says you need to speak with me, Oddie.”
Brother Constantine had accompanied me from the bell tower and now joined us. The mother superior, of course, could not see him.
“George Washington was famous for his bad false teeth,” I said, “but I don’t know anything about the dental situations of Flannery O’Connor and Harper Lee.”
“Nor do I,” she said. “And before you ask, it has nothing to do with their hairstyles, either.”
“Brother Constantine did not commit suicide,” I told her. “He was murdered.”
Her eyes widened. “I’ve never heard such glorious news followed by such terrible news in the same sentence.”
“He lingers not because he fears his judgment in the next world but because he despairs for his brothers at the abbey.”
Surveying the reception lounge, she said, “Is he here with us now?”
“Right beside me.” I indicated his position.
“Dear Brother Constantine.” Her voice broke with sentiment. “We’ve prayed every day for you, and have missed you every day.”
Tears shone in the spirit’s eyes.
I said, “He was reluctant to move on from this world while his brothers believed that he’d killed himself.”
“Of course. He’s been worried that his suicide might cause them to doubt their own commitment to a life in faith.”
“Yes. But also I think he worried because they were unaware that a murderer had come among them.”
Sister Angela is a quick study, with a steel-trap mind, but her decades of gentle service in the peaceful environment of one convent or another have not stropped her street smarts to a sharp edge.
“But surely you mean some outsider wandered here one night, like those the news is full of, and Brother Constantine had the misfortune to cross his path.”
“If that’s the case, then the guy came back for Brother Timothy, and just now in the tower here, he tried to murder me.”
Alarmed, she put one hand on my arm. “Oddie, you’re all right?”
“I’m not dead yet,” I said, “but there’s still the cake after dinner.”
“Cake?”
“Sorry. I’m just being me.”
“Who tried to kill you?”
I said only, “I didn’t see his face. He…wore a mask. And I’m convinced he’s someone I know, not an outsider.”
She looked at where she knew the dead monk to be. “Can’t Brother Constantine identify him?”
“I don’t think he saw his killer’s face, either. Anyway, you’d be surprised how little help I get from the lingering dead. They want me to get justice for them, they want it very bad, but I think they must abide by some proscription against affecting the course of this world, where they no longer belong.”
“And you’ve no theory?” she asked.
“Zip. I’ve been told that Brother Constantine occasionally had insomnia, and when he couldn’t sleep, he sometimes climbed into the bell tower at the new abbey, to study the stars.”
“Yes. That’s what Abbot Bernard told me at the time.”
“I suspect when he was out and about at night, he saw something he was never meant to see, something to which no witness could be tolerated.”
She grimaced. “That makes the abbey sound like a sordid place.”
“I don’t mean to suggest anything of the kind. I’ve lived here seven months, and I know how decent and devout the brothers are. I don’t think Brother Constantine saw anything despicable. He saw something…extraordinary.”
“And recently Brother Timothy also saw something extraordinary to which no witness could be tolerated?”
“I’m afraid so.”
For a moment, she mulled this information and pressed from it the most logical conclusion. “Then you yourself have been witness to something extraordinary.”
“Yes.”
“Which would be—what?”
“I’d rather not say until I have time to understand what I saw.”
“Whatever you saw—that’s why we’ve made sure the doors and all the windows are locked.”
“Yes, ma’am. And it’s one of the reasons we’re now going to take additional measures to protect the children.”
“We’ll do whatever must be done. What do you have in mind?”
“Fortify,” I said. “Fortify and defend.”
CHAPTER 27
GEORGE WASHINGTON, HARPER LEE, AND Flannery O’Connor smiled down on me, as if mocking my inability to solve the riddle of their shared quality.
Sister Angela sat at her desk, watching me over the frames of a pair of half-lens reading glasses that had slid down her nose. She held a pen poised above a lined yellow tablet.
Brother Constantine had not accompanied us from the reception lounge. Maybe he had at last moved on from this world, maybe not.
Pacing, I said, “I think most of the brothers are pacifists only as far as reason allows. Most would fight to save an innocent life.”
“God requires resistance to evil,” she said.
“Yes, ma’am. But willingness to fight isn’t enough. I want those who know how to fight. Put Brother Knuckles at the head of the list.”
“Brother Salvatore,” she corrected.
“Yes, ma’am. Brother Knuckles will know what to do when the shit—” My voice failed and my face flushed.
“You could have completed the thought, Oddie. The words hits the fan wouldn’t have offended me.”
“Sorry, Sister.”
“I’m a nun, not a naïf.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Who in addition to Brother Salvatore?”
“Brother Victor spent twenty-six years in the Marine Corps.”
“I think he’s seventy years old.”
“Yes, ma’am, but he was a marine.”
“‘No better friend, no worse enemy,’” she quoted.