A Demon Summer Read online

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  This book is dedicated in fond memory of crime writer Robert Barnard

  (1936–2013).

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  My thanks to the historians, guides, and staff of Fountains Abbey, Mount Grace Priory, Rievaulx Abbey, and Whitby Abbey for their vast knowledge, patience, and ability to make the distant past real to visitors from the twenty-first century. Particular thanks to the “sheep farmer’s wife” of Mount Grace Priory and to the Rev. Peter Canon at Fountains Abbey for sharing their enthusiasm and knowledge. As always, all mistakes are my own.

  Special thanks to all the warmhearted and welcoming people of North Yorkshire, England.

  CAST OF CHARACTERS AT MONKBURY ABBEY

  MEMBERS OF THE ORDER OF THE HANDMAIDS OF ST. LUCY

  ABBESS JUSTINA—the superior of Monkbury Abbey

  DAME HEPHZIBAH—the elderly portress of the abbey

  DAME TABITHA—the guest-mistress, nicknamed Dame Tabby. A gruff woman with a bouncer’s build, she makes sure guests of the abbey toe the line.

  DAME INGRID—the kitcheness, affectionately called Dame Fruitcake

  DAME OLIVE—sacrist and librarian, she has an encyclopedic knowledge of the abbey’s long history

  DAME PETRONILLA—the infirmaress, nicknamed Dame Pet. Responsible for the care of the sick and dying at Monkbury Abbey, she is also an expert on plants and herbs.

  DAME SIBIL—cellaress of the abbey

  DAME MEREDITH—formerly the cellaress, now a patient in the abbey’s infirmary

  SISTER ROSE—ex-military, now a novice preparing for admission to the order

  MARY BENTON—a postulant preparing for the novitiate

  ABBESS GENEVIEVE—a visitor from St. Martin’s, the order’s motherhouse in France

  VISITORS TO MONKBURY ABBEY GUESTHOUSE

  MAXEN “MAX” TUDOR—a former MI5 agent turned Anglican priest, he is sent by his bishop to investigate certain unusual disturbances at the old abbey.

  CLEMENT GOREY AND HIS WIFE OONA GOREY—wealthy American benefactors of the nunnery. They want their souls prayed for and are willing to pay top dollar for the privilege. But where has all the money gone?

  XANDA GOREY—their willful and wily teenage daughter

  PALOMA GREEN—a flamboyant businesswoman who owns an art gallery in Monkslip-super-Mare, she organized a fund-raiser for the restoration and expansion of the guesthouse at Monkbury Abbey.

  PIERS MONTAGUE—Paloma’s lover, a photographer and expert on medieval architecture. He helped Paloma raise funds for Monkbury Abbey, donating several of his famous photos. Then the funds began inexplicably to dry up.

  DR. LEROY BARNARD—a summer squall forces him to stay overnight at the abbey.

  RALPH PERCEVAL, 15TH EARL OF LISLELIVET—Lord Lislelivet’s sudden interest in religion seems out of character to everyone, particularly Lady Lislelivet.

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Cast of Characters

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  Part I: Matins

  Chapter 1: Abbess Justina

  Part II: Lauds

  Chapter 2: Max Tudor

  Chapter 3: Max and the Bishop

  Part III: Terce

  Chapter 4: Monkbury Abbey

  Chapter 5: The Portress

  Chapter 6: The Rule

  Part IV: Sext

  Chapter 7: The Visitors: I

  Chapter 8: The Visitors: II

  Chapter 9: There Was a Crooked Man

  Chapter 10: The Evil of Avarice

  Part V: None

  Chapter 11: In the Chapter House

  Chapter 12: The Kitcheness

  Chapter 13: The Librarian

  Chapter 14: The Infirmaress

  Chapter 15: The Abbess

  Chapter 16: The Novice

  Chapter 17: The Infirmary

  Chapter 18: The Abbess Genevieve

  Chapter 19: At the Altar

  Chapter 20: Darkness Falls

  Part VI: Vespers

  Chapter 21: Nighthawks

  Chapter 22: DCI Cotton

  Chapter 23: Suspicion …

  Chapter 24: … And Suspects

  Chapter 25: At the Cavalier

  Chapter 26: Dossiers

  Chapter 27: On Leaving the Abbey

  Chapter 28: At Nashbury Feathers

  Chapter 29: In Olden Days

  Chapter 30: The Cellaress

  Chapter 31: In Olden Days II

  Chapter 32: Spiral

  Chapter 33: The Orders of the Abbess

  Chapter 34: All the King’s Horses

  Part VII: Compline

  Chapter 35: Max and the Correction of Minor Faults

  Chapter 36: Max and the Correction of Serious Faults

  Chapter 37: None So Blind

  Chapter 38: Ties That Bind

  Chapter 39: The Devil You Say

  Epilogue

  Also by G. M. Malliet

  About the Author

  Copyright

  They had their lodges in the wilderness,

  Or built their cells beside the shadowy sea;

  And there they dwelt with angels like a dream.

  —Robert Stephen Hawker, Vicar of Morwenstow

  PROLOGUE

  “I have a surprise for you,” said Lord Lislelivet to his Lady, as the maid cleared the last course from the vast expanse of their mahogany dinner table. Lady Lislelivet may have imagined it, but wasn’t there just the hint of a smile playing about the woman’s lips as she hoofed her way back to the kitchen? Such impertinence.

  Lady Lislelivet narrowed her eyes, watching Maybel’s retreating back. The dog, Scooter, geriatric but game, shambled along in her wake, no doubt hoping for table scraps. Tonight Maybel wore a T-shirt with “Born This Way” scrawled across the back. Well, that explained it. Lady Lislelivet’s many attempts to talk the woman out of jeans and T-shirts and into a more suitable maid’s ensemble had failed. Still, it was hard enough to get any help these days, let alone good help. One took what one could get.

  Lady Lislelivet dabbed at her lips with her napkin, to hide her annoyance both at the maid’s constant mutinies and her husband’s hints at pleasures to come. Hardened by the grindingly slow passage of the years of her marriage, and skeptical as to her husband’s definition of “surprise,” she did not look as thrilled by the prospect of a spousal treat as might have been expected. Often, Lord Lislelivet’s surprises sprang up, to coin a phrase, when he was between mistresses. Altogether, Lady Lislelivet preferred it when her husband was kept otherwise occupied in London. That way, she could pursue her own surprises, unimpeded.

  Her eye caught on the photo decorating the wall nearest her. Her husband was suffering buyer’s remorse over it now, as it didn’t really suit the grand style of the house. Caught up in the excitement of the auction, and goaded by her and by a few drinks, he had paid too much, never intending to get stuck with a dark, moody photo of Monkbury Abbey. What was really needed for this room was an oil painting of some august ancestor or another astride a horse.

  Setting down her wineglass, Lady Lislelivet uttered a cautious, “O-o-oh?” just as Maybel returned with two plates containing lumpen mounds of something that looked like currant-studded coal.

  “Yes. You remember the fruitcake? The little gift from the nunnery? I thought it was time to pry open the tin, as it were.”


  Was that all? Still, he knew how she hated fruitcake. Or he had known at one time. His fleeting concern for what she liked and disliked had gone with the wind, like so much else.

  On further reflection, it was jolly difficult to imagine anyone apart from her husband actively liking fruitcake. A holdover from his days of being coddled by a nanny, no doubt. Only the upper classes would think to poison their children with the type of vile nursery puddings they went in for. She wouldn’t use rice pudding to plaster the walls of her house in Tuscany. Just for one example.

  “It’s not Christmas,” she said flatly, as Maybel practically threw the plate down before her. Typically, she had forgotten to provide a pudding fork and, on being reminded, plunked down a soup spoon instead. Lady Lislelivet had begun to suspect Maybel saw through m’lady’s thin aristocratic veneer and was choosing these not-so-subtle ways to show her contempt. So much for working-class solidarity.

  “It is Christmas wherever you are, m’dear,” said Lord Lislelivet.

  Gawd. It was hard to say which was worse: the fruitcake or the forced gallantry.

  Lady Lislelivet felt a little scruffle of fur against her ankles. Scooter, begging as usual. She handed off a few bites to him when her husband wasn’t looking and scooped the rest of the fruity sludge into the napkin on her lap.

  Fortunately, as it turned out, the dog ate only a bite or two. Scooter didn’t seem to care for the fruitcake, either. So his symptoms were much milder than those of his master.

  Lord Lislelivet, wolfing down his fruitcake with carefree, childish pleasure, would be taken very ill, indeed.

  PART I

  Matins

  Chapter 1

  ABBESS JUSTINA

  The community as a whole shall choose its abbess based on her goodness and not on her rank. May God forbid the community should elect a woman only because she conspires to perpetuate its evil ways.

  —The Rule of the Order of the Handmaids of St. Lucy

  The bell rang for Matins in the middle of a dream, as it often did. Just as she would enter deep sleep—the scientists had a name for it, she could never recall what—Abbess Justina of Monkbury Abbey would be awakened by the bell. This was seldom a welcome interruption, for Abbess Justina was given to pleasant dreams, more often now dreams of her childhood and young girlhood, dreams in which she would be reunited with her family.

  It was just before the hour of four a.m. in June, millennium Domini three.

  She rose from her narrow bed and dressed by candlelight, first sluicing cold water over her face. Long habit made short work of putting on her habit. It was a costume whose basic design had not changed much over the centuries: atop her sleep shift of unbleached muslin came a black tunic that fell to the tops of her feet, tied at the waist by a cord, and over that was worn a scapular of deep purple—an apron of sorts that draped from the shoulders, front and back, falling to below the knees. The fabric at her wrists was smocked in a pretty diamond design halfway to the elbow, to keep the voluminous sleeves in check. For all its antique quirkiness, it was a practical garment, suitable for work and contemplation, the fabric handwoven on-site of wool from abbey sheep. On ceremonial occasions and in chapter meetings, she would carry her staff of office with its little bell as a symbol of her authority and her right to lead. Otherwise her garb was identical to that of the women in her care.

  Nothing in her costume was made of leather, not even her sandals, just as nothing in her diet came from the flesh of four-footed animals. In summer, out of doors, she wore wooden clogs. Meat was forbidden except in cases of illness, when the Rule of the Order of the Handmaids of St. Lucy allowed it for those recuperating.

  The abbess still marveled at herself, at times—that she, such a clotheshorse in civilian life, such a devourer of women’s style magazines, given to obsessing over the latest hair products and adornments, had adapted so readily to the habit. Coco Chanel would probably have said the classics never go out of style.

  Well, it was difficult to say what Coco might have made of the clogs.

  Now Abbess Justina’s hair was cut straight across the nape; every few months or so she would wield the scissors herself, chopping away without the aid of a mirror. She wrapped her shorn head tightly in a linen coif, pinned at the crown, a bit like Katharine Hepburn’s in A Lion in Winter. Over that was draped a black veil, held in place by a narrow woven circlet meant to represent a crown of thorns. She tied a linen wimple like a baby’s bib around her neck. Pinning the coif and attaching the veil took some minutes, the pins stubborn in her swollen fingers. The headgear was worn back from the forehead to allow half an inch of hair to frame the face, the single concession the order had made to modernity. In medieval times a wide starched headband would have sat atop the coif fitted so tightly around face and neck. Truth be told, in those days the headdress might have been adorned with pearls and gemstones, for the nuns of yore had on occasion had a little trouble keeping to their vows of poverty, not to mention chastity and obedience.

  Abbess Iris, who had ruled just before Justina, had been the one to decide on the need for a change of habit, modifying the traditional style. The color of the scapular was the major innovation—the deep blue-purple of the iris, as it happened. Of course it all had to be done with the bishop’s approval. The poor man had been absolutely flummoxed at having to pronounce on women’s fashion. He was shown several sketches, like a magazine editor being presented with the new fall line, and vaguely pronounced any of them suitable. The deep purple he thought a slightly racy departure from the centuries of black but he did not demur.

  Dear Abbess Iris. A flamboyant but wise character. Now long gone and buried in the cemetery of Monkbury Abbey.

  Pity, thought Abbess Justina, she’d done away with the style that covered much of the head, for it would have hidden the gray hair and jowly neckline that had come as one of the booby prizes of late middle age. But at least the coif and veil still prevented one from looking like a Persian cat as the gray hair gained its ruthless hold, like kudzu. If they’d had to change anything, she thought they might have shortened the skirt length, for she still had strong, shapely legs, the product of a youth spent climbing the Welsh mountains like a billy goat. Nun or no nun, one liked to present a pleasing and vigorous appearance to the world.

  Following timeless ritual, Abbess Justina reverently kissed a large wooden cross before draping it round her neck to lie flat against her chest. Around her shoulders she now buttoned a hooded mantle. In choir she would pull the hood over her head, for warmth, and for privacy. It also was wonderful for hiding the expression. A strategic bend of the neck and tuck of the chin and one could be as private as a turtle pulling in its head. These little things, these momentary escapes into solitude, were what made living in a community possible.

  Learning how to put all this on without the use of a mirror was one of the biggest challenges of the life. She had yet to see a novice who didn’t need extra time in the morning to get all the bits and bobs attached in the right order.

  That and mastering the Great Silence. And learning to loosen family ties. And any other number of things that made people wonder why they bothered, these crazy women who chose to live in the middle of nowhere, working and singing and praying. There was no answer to that, but the single-word answer that could be given was Joy. We do it for Joy.

  Sometimes she caught a glimpse of herself in the plate-glass window in the kitchen: she liked taking a turn at kitchen duty now and again, even though she was exempt from chores because of her position. It kept her humble. It also gave her access to the thrum of what was really going on in the convent. Interplays and tensions and little personality conflicts that could grow into internecine warfare if not closely watched. Lately there had been undercurrents, of that she was certain. They seemed to date to the time of the earthquake, she thought, registering the irony. That had been a year ago, almost to the day, and measuring just over five on the Richter scale, it had rocked the abbey from side to side in the most
terrifying way. For who in England was used to earthquakes?

  But the “emotional” undercurrents seemed to be connected with the appointment of the new cellaress, an unpopular choice in some quarters, she knew. The sisters had formed an attachment to Dame Meredith in that role, but of course there was no question of her being able in her weakened condition to carry on that heavy responsibility. And of course forming attachments of any sort had to be discouraged.

  There was also some tension surrounding the new novice, although whether she was the cause or the result wasn’t clear. She was not adjusting well to the religious life, which was never a completely easy transition for anyone. Post-traumatic stress disorder they called it now. PTSD. And no wonder, given Sister Rose’s history. The new postulant, as well—Abbess Justina had serious reservations about the new postulant, Mary Benton. Vocations were so rare nowadays. She supposed it was possible they had, unwittingly, lowered the standards somewhat, allowing Mary to sneak past.

  Still, what was clear was this: There was great change afoot at Monkbury Abbey. What was uncertain in Abbess Justina’s mind was whether all that change would prove to be for the good.

  PART II

  Lauds

  Chapter 2

  MAX TUDOR

  Most willingly and in all humility shall the followers of St. Lucy heed the voice of authority, avoiding disobedience, which leads to sloth and chaos.

  —The Rule of the Order of the Handmaids of St. Lucy

  A few weeks after Abbess Justina’s reluctant awakening, as the days stretched lazily toward the time of the summer solstice, Max Tudor, the vicar of St. Edwold’s Church in Nether Monkslip, also woke early. To be sure it was not nearly so early as the ordained rising time of the abbess and the other nuns at Monkbury Abbey, but Max was still bleary-eyed from last night’s tryouts and rehearsals for the Christmas ensemble band, and to him it felt like the crack of dawn. To say the least, the tryouts had not gone well, becoming an occasion for umbrage, hurt feelings, and the occasional stifled sniffle. Max knew he had no one to blame but himself—in the bulletin enlisting participants he had, in a moment of typical good-hearted optimism, specifically stated that all ages and skill levels were welcome to participate.