Elizabeth George - Just One Evil Act

She took the arm of the nun, and together they disappeared behind the lattice from which they’d emerged. In a few minutes, though, the captain was back. With her was a different nun altogether, and she didn’t shrink from their presence as had the other. This was Mother Superior, Captain Mirenda told them. It was she who had summoned the carabinieri to Villa Rivelli.

“Your wish is to see Domenica Medici?” Mother Superior was tall and stately, appearing ageless in her black-and-white habit. She wore the rimless spectacles that Salvatore remembered on the nuns of his youth. Then those glasses had seemed quirky, an antique fashion long out of vogue. Now they seemed trendy, striking an odd note of modernity out of keeping with the rest of Mother Superior’s attire. Behind the glasses, she fixed upon him a gaze that he remembered only too well from the classroom. It demanded truth, and it suggested that anything less would be quickly uncovered.

He recounted what he’d learned from the parents of Domenica Medici: that she lived on the grounds of Villa Rivelli and that she served as a caretaker. He added to this what he’d already told Captain Mirenda. This was a matter of some importance, he concluded. A child’s disappearance was involved.

It was Captain Mirenda who spoke. “Domenica Medici is here on the grounds,” she said. “And there is no child within the convent walls.”

“You have made a search?” Salvatore said.

“I have not needed to,” Captain Mirenda said.

For a moment, Salvatore thought she meant that the word of Mother Superior was good enough, and he could tell that Lynley thought the same, for the other man stirred next to him and said quietly, “ Strano ,” in a low voice.

Strange indeed, Salvatore thought. But Mother Superior clarified. There was a child, she said. From within the convent, she herself had both seen and heard her. She had assumed the girl was a relative come to stay for a time with Domenica. The reason for this was that she’d been delivered to the place by Domenica’s cousin. She played on the grounds of the villa and helped Domenica with her work. That she might not have been a member of Domenica’s family had not occurred to anyone in the convent.

“They have no contact here with the outside world,” Captain Mirenda said. “They did not know that a child has gone missing from Lucca.”

Salvatore very nearly didn’t want to ask why the carabinieri had been sent for, then. This was of no import, however, since DI Lynley did the asking himself.

Because of the screaming, Mother Superior told them quietly. And because of the tale Domenica had told when she’d been sent for by the nun and questioned about it.

“ Lei crede che la bambina sia sua ,” Captain Mirenda interjected abruptly.

Her own child? Salvatore thought. “ Perché? ” he asked.

“ È pazza ” was the captain’s answer.

Salvatore knew from speaking to Domenica’s parents that the girl was, perhaps, not right in the head. But for her to believe that the child brought here by her cousin was her own daughter took things in a direction so strange that it suggested the girl was, indeed, more mad than she was slow.

Mother Superior’s quiet voice filled in the rest of the details and comprised the information she’d gathered preceding her phone call. This man who had brought the child to the villa had once made Domenica pregnant. She’d been seventeen at the time. She was now twenty-six. To the poor girl, the age of the child seemed right. But it was, of course, no child of hers.

“ Perché? ” Salvatore asked the nun.

Again, the captain answered for her. “She prayed for God to take that child from her body so that her parents would never know she was pregnant.”

“ È successo così? ” Lynley asked.

“ Sì ,” Captain Mirenda confirmed. That was indeed what had occurred. Or at least that was the tale Domenica had told Mother Superior when she’d been summoned into the convent upon the terrible screaming of the little girl. Captain Mirenda herself was on her way to question Domenica Medici about this. She would have no objection to the other policemen attending her.

Mother Superior spoke one last time before they left her. She murmured, “I did not know. She said it was her duty to prepare the little girl for God.”

VILLA RIVELLI

TUSCANY

Lynley had followed the conversation perfectly well, but he very nearly wished he hadn’t been able to do so. To have managed to track Hadiyyah to this place—for who else could it be but Hadiyyah brought into the Alps?—and to find themselves just hours too late . . . He couldn’t imagine how he was going to tell the girl’s parents. He also couldn’t imagine how he was going to relay the information to Barbara Havers.

He walked slowly in the wake of the carabinieri officer and Lo Bianco. Captain Mirenda had been told where Domenica Medici was to be found. A short distance from the villa and sheltered from it by a hedge of camellias in bloom, a stone barn stood. Within this barn a woman dressed in garb similar to the Mother Superior’s sat on a low stool milking a goat, her cheek resting on the animal’s flank and her eyes closed.

Lynley would have thought she was a nun herself, save for the subtle differences in her clothing from the habit worn by the Mother Superior. The essentials of it were the same: a white robe, a simple black veil. Most people, seeing her, would assume she was a member of the cloistered community.

She was so involved in what she was doing that she wasn’t aware anyone had entered the barn. It was only when Captain Mirenda said her name that her eyes opened. She wasn’t startled by the presence of outsiders. Less was she startled by the fact that one of them wore the uniform of the carabinieri .

“ Ciao, Domenica ,” Captain Mirenda said.

Domenica smiled. She rose from her stool. A gentle slap on the flank of the goat sent it on its way, and it moved to join three others who were gathered at the far end of the barn, near a door the top half of which was open, revealing a fenced paddock beyond it. She brushed her hands down the front of the garment that went for her false nun’s habit. In a gesture reminiscent of cloistered nuns Lynley had seen depicted on television and in films, she buried her hands in the sleeves of this garment, and she stood in an attitude that mixed humility with anticipation.

Lo Bianco was the one to speak although Captain Mirenda shot him a look that indicated he was out of place to be doing so. The carabinieri had, after all, been the agency of police first on the scene. Courtesy demanded that Lo Bianco allow the other officer to get down to business while he and Lynley observed.

He said to the young woman, “We have come for the child that your cousin Roberto Squali gave into your keeping, Domenica. What have you done with her?”

At the question Domenica’s face took on a look of such placidity that for a moment Lynley doubted they’d found the right person. “I have done God’s will,” she murmured.

Lynley felt the grip of despair. His gaze took in the barn. His thoughts shot from one place to another where the mad young woman could have hidden the body of a nine-year-old girl: somewhere in the woods, somewhere on the grounds, a shadowy corner of the villa itself. They would need to bring in a team to find her unless the woman could be made to speak.

“What will of God have you done?” Captain Mirenda said.

“God has forgiven me,” Domenica replied. “My sin was the prayer and the relief in having the prayer granted by Him. Ever since, I have walked the path of penitence to receive His absolution. I have done His will. My soul now magnifies the Lord. My spirit rejoices in God my Saviour.” Again her head bowed, as if she’d said all she was going to say on the subject.