The Hour of Death Page 21

“Well, anyway. I needed to know. So I contacted Bernardo’s and they sent me a letter identifying my birth mother.”

  “It’s that easy?” Sister Agatha said. “I thought those things were kept a secret?”

  “Not since 2002 with the Adoption and Children Act,” Lucy said.

  “So Bernardo’s told you who your birth mother was. What about your birth father?” Reverend Mother asked.

  “His name isn’t on the birth certificate. I inquired, and they said that either no one knows who he is or he left his name off deliberately.”

  “So the woman signs, takes all the legal responsibility, and the man just disappears?” Sister Gwenydd said, placing a tray of lemon squares on the table. “Typical.”

  “No kidding,” Sister Agatha said. “I guess things don’t change that much after all.”

  “Are you saying that your birth mother is in Wales and you came here to find her?” Reverend Mother asked.

  “Yes. When I heard from Bernardo’s, I started trying to think of ways to get to Wales. So I was googling stuff, like, you know, art opportunities in the UK, and your ad on Craigslist popped up. You were looking for an artist-in-residence to rent your studio. And since it was North Wales, it was perfect.”

  “You mother is in the North?” Reverend Mother asked slowly.

  Sister Gwenydd coughed, and then stood up abruptly and moved over to the window, looking out on the dark night. Sister Agatha wasn’t sure, but she thought her shoulders were shaking.

  “Well, once I knew my birth mother’s name, I found her on the Internet. In fact, she’s all over the Internet.”

  Lucy glanced at Sister Gwenydd, who had turned around and stood leaning against the sink. Her head was bowed and she held the bridge of her nose pinched between thumb and forefinger, as if she had a headache. Not a good sign, Sister Agatha thought.

  “Really?” Reverend Mother said. “And right here in North Wales? How intriguing. That’s lovely.”

  Reverend Mother’s enthusiasm sounded a bit forced to Sister Agatha.

  “Have you contacted her yet?”

  “No,” Lucy said hesitantly. “She’s not exactly what I expected. Or hoped for. I wanted to observe her from a distance first.”

  “You wanted her to be an artist. And it sounds like she’s not.” said Reverend Mother.

  “No. Not an artist. Not even close.” Lucy frowned.

  “Good heavens, just tell us. Who is she? What is she?” Sister Agatha had had enough.

  “She’s a bishop in the Church of Wales.”

  The room fell silent. The bell in the village clock tower chimed once. Sister Agatha thought that she could feel time itself slowing down. She was vaguely aware of Sister Gwenydd pulling a chair out and sitting down next to her and that Sister Gwenydd was staring at Reverend Mother.

  “Not …” Sister Agatha said. She couldn’t continue. She looked at Sister Gwenydd. “She doesn’t mean …?”

  Sister Gwenydd nodded. “She does.”

  “Your birth mother is a bishop in the Church of Wales?” Reverend Mother said. Her voice shook slightly, but overall Sister Agatha thought she was holding up admirably.

  “Which bishop?”

  “Reverend Mother, there is only one female bishop in all of Wales,” Sister Agatha said quietly. “As you well know.”

  “I want to hear it from Lucy. It could be that there is a misunderstanding.”

  Talk about hope springs eternal, Sister Agatha thought.

  “My birth mother is the Reverend Suzanne Bainton, bishop of Saint Asaph.” Lucy sighed and took a lemon square from the blue platter. “A religious person. Like you guys.” She bit into the lemon square. They watched as she chewed and swallowed. “Not an artist at all.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  “Suzanne Bainton is Lucy’s birth mother? She has a child? Who is twenty-three years old?” Father Selwyn sat down heavily on the sofa in his office, staring at Sister Agatha.

  The morning sun filtered through the stained-glass window, casting squares of warm light on the worn carpet. Sister Agatha pulled off her blue woolly hat and mittens and tossed them into the corner. Running her fingers through her short hair, she sat down in the wingback chair across from Father Selwyn.

  “I’m speechless,” he said, still staring at her.

  Before Sister Agatha could respond, there was a knock at the door and Bevan came in. “Would you like tea?” he asked. Bevan paused. “Father Selwyn, are you all right? You don’t look so good.”

  “I’m fine, Bevan, and yes to tea. If there ever was a time Sister and I needed tea, it is now. Thank you.”

  “I’ll put the kettle on,” Bevan said, shutting the door behind him.

  Father Selwyn looked at Sister Agatha. “So what happens next?”

  “Reverend Mother is talking with the bishop this morning. She left right after breakfast. She felt that too many people knew and she didn’t want Suzanne to hear it through the grape vine.”

  “Good heavens, no.” Father Selwyn shook his head. “Can you imagine what a shock this is going to be for her?”

  “Actually, I can’t imagine. Our bishop doesn’t like to be blindsided.”

  “This is about as blindsided as it gets.”

  “And once she’s dealt with a problem, she doesn’t like it to resurface.”

  “Certainly not.” They both sat in silence for a moment, considering the bishop and her somewhat overwhelming personality.

  Bevan came in with the tea tray and set it on the little coffee table between them.

  “Everything OK in here?” he asked, this time looking at Sister Agatha.

  “Depends on how you define ‘OK.’ ”

  She watched as Bevan poured a cup of tea for Father Selwyn. She noticed that he emptied white powder from a little pink packet into the tea and then followed it up with milk so weak and thin it was nearly blue.

  “Don’t worry, Sister Agatha,” Bevan said. “I’ve brought a pitcher of real cream and a bowl of real sugar for you.”

  Just as he was about to leave, Bevan turned back.

  “Is it true that Millicent Pritchard is in jail?”

  “Good heavens!” Sister Agatha exclaimed. In all the excitement and shock about Lucy, she had forgotten about Millicent. She’d started to speak when Father Selwyn said, “Yes. I’m afraid so.”

  “Does Constable Barnes really think she killed Tiffany? I can’t quite picture it.”

  “I pray it was not Millicent, but …” Father Selwyn’s voice trailed off and he looked at Sister Agatha. They sat in silence for a long moment. Sister Agatha wished she had something comforting to say about Millicent. But she really didn’t.

  “All right then. Call me if you need something.”

  Bevan stood in the doorway looking at both of them. After a minute he stepped out and closed the door behind him.

  “In all the excitement about last night, I forgot to tell you—on the way home the van was sideswiped.”

  “Constable Barnes told me. He said you were run off the road.”

  “We were, and in the process of explaining it all to him for his report, the whole story about Millicent came out.”

  “I’m relieved he knows. We were wrong not to go directly to him last night. If we had, we might have kept the accident with the van from happening.”

  “Well, maybe. The Wizard of Oz stuff, the dog, the murder, the article in my desk—I still think they’re all related, but for the life of me I can’t figure it out.” She accepted the cup of tea he handed her. “It’s all a big muddle. I keep trying to think of what Inspector Rupert McFarland would say. And really I have no idea.”

  “What about your go-to folks? Agatha Christie, Inspector Barnaby? Jessica Fletcher? And what’s-his-name? The guy in Quebec.”

  “Chief Inspector Armand Gamache.” Sister Agatha took another sip of tea and looked thoughtful. “What would the chief inspector do?” She looked at Father Selwyn, who still seemed a bit in a state of shock. “You know what?” she
said, putting down her teacup. “He would slow down. He would have a chocolate latte and a licorice pipe and just think.”

  “Are you saying we need chocolate and licorice?”

  “Well, chocolate and licorice are always helpful. But we need more than chocolate and licorice. I’m saying we need to really think. We’ve been rushing too much. It’s time we pulled together all the facts and looked at the big picture. The forest, not the trees.”

  Sister Agatha paused, and then her face brightened. “I know what the chief inspector would do. We should have done it a week ago.” She stood up and reached for her bookbag. “It’s time we set up an incident room.”

  * * *

  “I don’t think the kindergarten Sunday School was actually meant for solving murders, but I do have to admit, this giant white board and all these colored markers are perfect.” Father Selwyn was standing in front of the Noah’s ark play set, resting a hand on the head of a small giraffe. “And having Noah here is quite cheerful.”

  “Don’t forget the yarn for connecting one suspicious incident to another.” Sister Agatha looked around with satisfaction. They had just listed all the players on the huge floor-to-ceiling white board in the children’s room, attaching photos with magnets shaped like the letters of the alphabet. Lengths of yarn connected individuals to events and to each other. It was quite impressive, Sister Agatha had to admit.

  “The only drawback is that we have to remove everything before Sunday morning. I don’t want the children to walk into their classroom with the words murder, poison, and the names of their parents’ friends written in bright purple. You know, where they are used to seeing pictures of Jesus, Moses, and Abraham.”

  Father Selwyn unscrewed the lid from the thermos he had brought along and poured two cups of tea. “My goodness, these Sunday School rooms are cold.”

  Father Selwyn stepped back, surveying the white board. In the center was a huge pink oval. The oval was empty, and radiating from it were five arrows made of pink yarn connecting to nine names. Vonda, Millicent, Kendrick, Ben, Lucy, Vincent van Gogh, Wizard of Oz guy, Judy Garland, Suzanne Bainton.

  They stood silently studying the diagram until Sister Agatha broke the silence. “I wonder what’s going on with the bishop. Not the morning she expected.”

  “Is Reverend Mother is at the bishop’s office right now?”

  “At this very moment. I keep watching for a text from her. But nothing.” Sister Agatha took a step back and stared at the pink oval. “All of these events have to have one thing in common. Right? And that one thing is what we’ll put in the pink oval.”

  “That’s the theory.” Father Selwyn pulled up one of the children’s chairs in front of the board. When he sat down, his knees came up to his chin. “I did have one thought. Do you think anyone else knows about Lucy and why she came to Wales?”

  “Well, she told Sister Gwenydd.”

  “Which means that she could have told someone else.”

  “And remember, she’s from the city; she may not realize how word travels in a small village. She probably has no idea that in Pryderi everyone is connected in some way to everyone else. So if she told one person, she probably thinks that person doesn’t know anyone connected to her or the abbey.”

  “Good God!” Sister Agatha felt her stomach heave. “She told the Art Society when she was their guest speaker.”

  “The Art Society? Why would she tell them about Suzanne?”

  “No, she didn’t tell them about looking for her birth mother. But I know she told them that she was adopted.”

  “So Tiffany heard her say she was adopted?”

  “Yes. And the next morning, Tiffany was dead.”

  Sister Agatha stared at the white board as if something might jump out at her. She picked up the purple marker and twirled it in her hand. Just like Jean Beauvoir in Three Pines, she thought. She uncapped the marker and noticed it smelled like grape. “Did you realize these markers are flavored?”

  “I heard that. One of the teachers told me after I inquired why all the children had blue tongues.”

  “Why blue?”

  “I guess blueberry is a favorite among the seven-year-old set.”

  Sister Agatha moved the blue marker from the white board tray to the sand table on the other side of the room.

  “If Tiffany heard Lucy’s story, then the two of them are connected.” She drew a grape line between the two of them. “And their connection is knowledge of the adoption, but not knowledge of the birth mother’s identity. I have an idea,” Sister Agatha said, capping the marker. The grape aroma mixed with the kindergarten smells of construction paper, glue, and wax crayons—a smell that was both nostalgic and nauseating. “We need to consider every name on this board and see if we can connect them with Lucy.”

  “With Lucy? Why?”

  “Because I think Lucy is the one who belongs in the pink oval.”

  * * *

  Sister Agatha sat at her desk peering out the window at the front door of the dovecote three stories below. She expected Reverend Mother to emerge from Lucy’s studio at any minute. Sister Agatha did not have a good feeling about the whole fact of the bishop finding out that the daughter she had given up long ago had suddenly reappeared and that she was living at Gwenafwy Abbey. On the other hand, Father Selwyn had all confidence in Suzanne Bainton, and he knew her better than Sister Agatha did. So why was Reverend Mother still in the art studio talking with Lucy nearly an hour after getting home?

  Sister Agatha opened her purple notebook. The events of the night before raced in her head and she needed to make some sense of them. Looking back, the entire evening seemed surreal: Millicent’s admission that she had been in the parish hall and stolen the painting, stepping over Tiffany’s dead body to do it. The van being run off the road and totaled. And then Lucy’s revelation that Bishop Suzanne Bainton was her birth mother. Yet, as disturbing as the last twenty-four hours had been, she kept coming back to one image—the pink oval on the white board in the kindergarten incident room. Lucy’s name belonged in the pink oval. The one common thread running through everything from Tiffany’s death to all the weird things that had been happening at the abbey was Lucy. But why?

  Time to review the evidence. Sister Agatha pulled the broken teacup out of her drawer and sat it in the middle of her desk. Next to it she placed the tiny nail, and then the bag of Welsh Brew. Was the teacup the vessel for the poison—the extract of aconite, the Wolfsbane? And if so, what if anything could Lucy have had to do with it?

  She thought back over the crime scene. Tiffany slumped on the floor, leaning back against the wall. The empty spot above her head where the painting had hung. The teacup on the floor. She had clearly just finished a cup of tea when she suddenly died. According to Dr. Beese, she had had a heart attack. Sister Agatha opened her laptop and clicked into the Medline database. There were some advantages to being a librarian and one of them was access to some of the best databases available. She typed poison and then Aconitine into the search function.

  Several articles popped up, and she clicked on one and began to read quickly. Aconitine was the key toxin in Wolfsbane. But she knew that without going into Medline. The estimated lethal dose of aconitine, 2 mg which can cause death within 4 hours. How much was two milligrams? She googled it. Tiny. And therefore easily concealed. She switched back to Medline. The taste of aconitine is so bitter that it is seldom actually ingested. Most people spit it out. If it tasted so bad, how was it that Tiffany ingested enough to kill her? Tea with cream and sugar. The tea in Tiffany’s Queensware canister was Welsh Brew. But hadn’t Vonda insisted that Tiffany only drank Radiant Infusion from Harrods? So why was there Welsh Brew—an inexpensive workingman’s tea—in the canister? Had someone mixed aconitine into the Radiant Infusion that Tiffany had used to make a cup of tea that late night at the parish hall, drunk it, and died? Then did the person come back, throw out the expensive tea, and just refill the canister with the first tea they found on hand? But who
?

  She pulled Christie’s They Do It With Mirrors off the shelf and flipped through the pages until she found what she wanted. “Poison has a certain appeal.… It has not the crudeness of the revolver bullet or the blunt weapon.” Miss Marple knew that not everyone wants a messy death. Something nice and neat. Civilized. What was more civilized than a cup of tea?

  If only she had thought to check the tea canister or searched the kitchen while the crime scene was still fresh! Sister Agatha sighed. The disadvantage of being an amateur sleuth and not a real one. She made a final entry in her notebook—Was anyone seen at the church that night?—then answered her own question. Emeric was up in the choir loft practicing, Millicent was in the parish hall stepping over Tiffany’s dead body, and Kendrick was at least in the vicinity of the church, as the race took place close by. She thought for a moment. Bevan had told them that he had ridden by on his bike. She started to write his name and then crossed it off. Not Bevan.

  Sister Agatha tapped her Sharpie on the desktop and looked out the window. The door of the dovecote had not opened. Reverend Mother was still in there. She sighed and turned back to her notes. Vonda. She had looked so promising in the beginning but had turned out to be irrelevant. She sighed. Getting rid of a suspect was a little like the day she realized that chapters three through thirteen of her murder mystery no longer worked and had to be cut. It was painful, but she had done it; she had hit delete. So she did it again. Only this time she uncapped her Sharpie and drew a heavy line through Vonda’s name.

  Next, she divided her list into two columns: Actual Suspects and Weird Events: The Dogs, People, Objects, and Movie Stars Involved. In the Actual Suspects list she wrote: Millicent, Kendrick, Ben, Suzanne Bainton, Emeric, and Lucy. In the second column, she wrote: Vincent van Gogh/Toto, Judy Garland, Blue Subaru, teacup, bird painting. She thought for a moment and added 4.50 From Paddington.

  She began with Millicent, who was, at the moment anyway, both at the top of her suspect list and in jail for the murder, although Constable Barnes didn’t have anything on her worth a charge of murder. No weapon at least, and it wasn’t a crime to read murder mysteries, even if Millicent’s choice of reading seemed suspicious. But Millicent had admitted to being at the crime scene and she had removed evidence. She admitted hating the victim, but she wasn’t the only one, and that didn’t mean she was the killer.