"Do you have a copy?"
"Yep. How about this afternoon?"
I thought. I'd agreed to talk to John Roberta at one-thirty, I had to find Olivia, and I needed to put in a call to DWight's probation officer. "How about tomorrow morning? Around ten-thirty?"
"That'll do," Sadie said. She hoisted herself out of her chair.
I stood too. There was one other question on my mind. "The Reverend Mother General who heads up the order now-is she the same one who was there when the deed was executed?"
Sadie shook her head.
"Do you know whether she's looked at the deed?"
Sadie's eyes were very bright. "I doubt it. It's more than twenty years old. Who cares anymore?"
"That's a good question," I said.
Sister John Roberta wasn't in the refectory for lunch while I was there, which I took to be a bad sign. But I didn't see Olivia, either, or Maggie. It was probably just my timing. But I did see Mother Winifred, who ate with Gabriella, Sadie, and me. She seemed subdued, and even more drawn than she had this morning. Sadie seemed to think she was grieving over Perpetua.
"It's too bad about poor old Perpetua," Sadie said. "We'll all miss her." She patted Mother's hand in sympathy. "When is Father Steven saying Mass?"
' 'When we have a body to say it over,'' Mother Winifred said. "We haven't heard when the autopsy will be done."
"Autopsy?" Sadie scowled. "What's that damn fool Royce doin' that for?"
"He wants to know how she died," Gabriella said. "It's a perfectly natural request for a doctor to make."
"He wants to make trouble, that's what he wants," Sadie muttered. "Which is perfectly natural, if you're a Town-send." She gave Mother Winifred a darting look. "How did Perpetua die? Heart?"
Mother spoke almost reluctantly. "It does seem to have been her heart. She had been suffering from cardiac arrhythmia. But at the end, she was quite dizzy and nauseous and had a convulsive seizure of some sort. Perpetua was in her late seventies, you know. It's entirely possible that she was having a stroke."
Cardiac arrhythmia, nausea, dizziness, convulsions. A stroke? Maybe. But another explanation came to mind. I curbed the impulse to mention it. I would ask Mother Winifred about it privately. I had to talk to her anyway, about what I had found in D wight's room.
Lunch was over at twelve-thirty. I still had an hour before I was scheduled to talk with John Roberta, so after we said good-bye to Sadie, I walked with Mother Winifred back to her cottage. We were accompanied by two other sisters on their way to the herb garden, so we couldn't talk.
When we reached her cottage and she said, "Would you like to see the stillroom now?" I was glad of the opportunity.
The stillroom was once a screened porch, now closed in, that enlarged the small square cottage into a rectangle. It had a terra-cotta floor that was warmed by the sun streaming in through two large casement windows. Some of the floor-to-ceiling shelves held large amber-colored jars, crocks, and urns, all labeled. Other shelves held dark glass bottles full of prepared tinctures and jars of oils and other materials used to create salves and lotions. There were rows of vials and jars of empty gelatin capsules arranged beside baskets filled with scoops, glass droppers, atomizers-all the paraphernalia of an old-fashioned stillroom, the household apothecary shop. A workbench stood along another wall, near a small two-burner gas countertop stove for heating herbal preparations. Above the workbench was an extensive shelf of reference books, old and new, and above that framed botanical prints. Bunches of dried herbs hung from the ceiling.
"This is very pleasant," I said, looking around. Perhaps, I could make a room like this for myself-if I had the time. "How many sisters work here?"
"Eight or ten," Mother said. "We have class once a week, and I assign them individual projects. They come here for two hours a week, on their own, to work. It's good experience for them, very educational, and of course they help prepare the salves and ointments and lotions that we use for…" Her voice trailed off. She brushed some loose leaves off the worktable and into a basket on the floor.
I regarded her. "You haven't been experimenting with foxglove, have you, Mother Winifred?"
She looked at me, and I noticed once again how pale and drawn she was. Her skin seemed cracked, like old glaze on a piece of pottery. "No, of course not." She straightened a row of lidded canisters, not looking at me. "You don't think… You really can't believe…"
"The symptoms of Sister Perpetua's illness," I said gently. "They sound like the symptoms of digitalis poisoning. Wouldn't you agree?"
Her mouth trembled. "Yes," she said finally, almost in a whisper. She turned to look out the window, across the sunny garden, where the two nuns who had accompanied us were bent over the culinary bed, cleaning off the frostbitten foliage. "To tell the truth, that thought did occur to me. In fact, it kept me up late last night."
"Had the doctor prescribed digitalis?"
"Not as far as I know." She turned around. "You can ask Sister Rowena, who manages the medications. But no, I'm sure he hadn't"
It was entirely possible that we were going in the wrong direction. But it wouldn't hurt to pursue it further-especially since a nonprescription source of digitalis was growing right in front of our eyes. "How many foxglove plants do you have in your apothecary garden?"
"Two," she said faintly.
"So it's possible that someone-perhaps one of the sisters who works here in the stillroom-could have harvested the leaves and prepared a tincture from them?" I glanced up at the row of jars. "Or filled some of those gel caps with the powdered leaf?"
"I suppose," she said slowly. "But you don't think that one of our sisters deliberately…"
"It might have been an accident," I said. "The leaves look something like comfrey. The two have often been confused."
"The comfrey is on the other side of our apothecary plot, well away from the foxglove. Both plants are clearly labeled. I don't see how anyone could have…" She gave a heavy sigh. ' 'I suppose I should tell you. A few weeks ago, Sister Dominica was weeding the apothecary garden. She brought me a foxglove leaf and asked me about it."
"What did she want to know?"
"She asked whether the toxin was in the leaves or the
root, and whether the plant could be confused with spinach."
"With spinach?" I asked. "I don't know of any spinach varieties that have hairy leaves. What did you tell her?"
"Someone came along at that moment and interrupted us. I don't believe I gave her an answer."
Dominica had also asked me about foxglove, just a few hours before Perpetua died. But her question to me came long after the digitalis-if that's what had killed Perpetua- had already been prepared and administered. I was sure Dominica hadn't had anything to do with the old nun's death. Still, her curiosity about foxglove had to have been prompted by something. What was it?
I went on to a different question. ' 'Did Doctor Townsend give you any reason to believe that he suspected digitalis poisoning?''
"No, but he barely spoke to me." She sat down on a wood bench in front of the window. "I suppose Margaret Mary has told you about our difficulties with the Townsend family." At my nod, she added, "I'm afraid Doctor Town-send is more interested in causing trouble than in finding out the truth. We wouldn't ask him to attend our sisters if there were another doctor in this area."
"But Townsend is also the JP," I reminded her. "If he wants to investigate a death, you can't keep him out of it."