Susan Albert - Rueful Death

"Come on, Dominica," I said. "You can't have forgotten. Why did you ask?"

Dominica was wearing a flowing blue robe with gold moons and stars printed on it. Her loose hair was parted in the middle and rippled over her shoulders. She made a face. "It seems sort of silly."

I sighed. "It's not silly, Dominica. What made you ask the question?"

"It wasn't a what. It was a who."

Aha. Maybe we were getting someplace. "Who was it?"

"Agatha Christie."

"Agatha…Christie?"

"Yes. Have you read Postern of FateT'

"I don't think so," I said, feeling distinctly let down. "Is that one of the Miss Marple books?"

She shook her head. "Tuppence and Tommy. Somebody accidentally confuses foxglove and spinach, and puts them into a salad. The whole family eats it and gets sick. But I didn't see how that could have happened. Spinach doesn't look anything like foxglove-or am I wrong?"

"No, you're right," I said. "The leaves of both plants are lance-shaped, true. But spinach is smooth and foxglove is hairy. Foxglove is a different shade of green too."

"Actually," Dominica said, "the victim doesn't die from the foxglove. The killer takes advantage of the accidental poisoning and deliberately puts digitalis in the coffee." She smiled. "Fiendishly clever, wouldn't you say?"

"Fiendishly," 1 muttered. Personally, I think it's unfortunate when a writer uses a plant to kill somebody. It gives plants a bad press. That's not to say that people don't die of herbal poisonings, of course. Before firearms were invented, plants were the weapon of choice. Tens of thousands of people must have died from ingesting hemlock or monkshood or foxglove, with no one the wiser. In fact, I read recently that in the last ten years, there have been something like five thousand digitalis fatalities. Not an insignificant number. Still, if you're inventing a fictional murder, there are plenty of other creative ways to bump somebody off.

"Here," Dominica said, taking a book off the nightstand. "You might enjoy reading this. You can decide for yourself whether Agatha Christie got it right or not."

"Thanks," I said, and took the book.

"Anyway," Dominica went on, "the same week I was reading Postern of Fate, it was my turn to weed the herb garden. I looked down and there it was, right under my nose. Foxglove, I mean. No flowers, just a bunch of hairy green leaves, wearing a name tag. I was curious about the poison and I thought maybe-" She shifted uncomfortably, as if she wanted to say something else.

"And?" I prompted..

She gnawed her lip. ' 'We really do have problems here, you know, and Olivia is responsible for a lot of them. It crossed my mind that it would be easy to sneak some foxglove leaves into her salad and…" She made a nervous pleat in her blue robe. ' 'It was only a stray thought, but it

was very wicked. It isn't anything I'd really do," she added hastily. "When I made that silly remark about getting rid of her, I was just joking."

' 'It doesn't pay to joke about poisons," I said. ' 'If somebody dies, people have a way of remembering-''

Her eyes flew open and her hands went to her mouth. "Sister Olivia hasn't died, has she?" she whispered in an anguished voice. "If she did, I'd feel terrible! It was so wrong of me to wish her ill!"

Dominica's response was a bit over the top, but I didn't think it was an act. Anyway, she was worrying about the wrong person. "Olivia's fine," I said. "As far as I know, that is. I haven't been able to find her. I need to ask her what she knows about the letters."

Dominica's eyes went dark. "From what Mother said at supper last night, I gather she's told you about the one I received. And Miriam too."

' 'Yes,'' I said. We had come to the second matter I had to take up with her. "You still don't have any idea who wrote it?"

She glanced at me, her cheeks reddening, and I thought how vulnerable she looked. "That's what makes it so awful," she said bleakly. "I keep wondering who has such a horrible, poisonous malice in her heart. What could I have done to make someone hate me enough to write that kind of lie?"

"Could the writer have seen something that led her to the wrong conclusion?"

"I suppose." She lowered her voice, as if someone might be listening outside the window. "Since Margaret Mary left, Miriam is my best friend. We go for walks together. We touch. Sometimes we hug-the normal kind of contact between friends. But we're not lovers." The blush rose higher. "I've been tempted, but not with Miriam."

' 'What did you make of the rue leaf in the letter?''

"I didn't know what to think. Was I supposed to feel

rueful? Repentant? But I didn't do anything wrong!"

"No one knows about the letters but Miriam and Mother Winifred?"

"And Margaret Mary. I wrote and told her." She looked down at the toes of her shoes-gold plastic slippers-peeping under her robe. "It might not seem like much to you, being accused of having a woman lover. But I was very hurt. I felt… violated, as if the letter-writer had stolen something from me."

I felt her pain. It was her reputation that had been damaged, perhaps, but more than that. Her estimation of herself. Her peace of mind.

"I was glad I could tell Margaret Mary," Dominica said simply. "She knows my deepest heart."

"Has one of the sisters given you a clue-a word; a look, even-that she knows about the letter?''

She gave her head a sad shake.

"Has anyone referred to you and Sister Miriam as particular friends?"

Another headshake, sadder.

"Have you been threatened, or has anything happened to your belongings?"

"You mean, like Sister Anne's swimsuit? No, thank God." Then she paused, pulling her brows together. "Except for…" Her eyes went to the guitar in the corner.

"Except for what?"

''I really don't think it can have anything to do with-''

"Tell me, Dominica," I said firmly.

"That guitar belongs to my cousin. I borrowed it because mine got burned up in the fire."

"The Thanksgiving fire?" No, that was a grease fire in the kitchen. "It must have been the Christmas Eve fire."

She nodded. "I'd left it inside the sacristy, you see. Miriam and I-she plays the flute-were going to play Christmas carols for the congregation at the end of the service. We'd been practicing for a month, and we sounded pretty

good. But then the fire happened, and my guitar burned, and we never got to perform."

"How about Miriam's flute?" I asked. "Was it destroyed as well?"

"No, she'd kept it with her. It was just my guitar. I didn't really think much about it at the time. We were all so frightened by the fire, you see. But afterward I began to wonder about it. How my guitar got burned."

"What do you mean?"

There was a crease between her eyes and her voice was troubled. "I'm almost a hundred percent positive that I left it just inside the door of the sacristy, where it would be handy when I needed it. But when the fire was out, there it was at the back of the room-what was left of it. It had been leaning against the curtains. The only thing I could think of was that somebody had moved it."

"Did you ask?"

"No. I mean, I wasn't absolutely sure where I left it, and it didn't seem all that important-in comparison to the fire itself, I mean." Her voice faltered. "Do you think that the person who wrote the letter also set the fire?"

"No," I said. Dwight was many things, but he wasn't literate enough to be the poison pen. Dominica might have forgotten where she put the guitar. Or someone else might have thought it was in the way and moved it to the back of the room. Or the letter-writer, chancing on the fire, had seized an opportunity to exact a penance-a fitting penance, she might have reasoned, since Dominica was about to perform with Miriam.