Sister Rowena folded her heavy arms. "So what was John Roberta's story this time?"
"I don't know," I said. "We didn't get that far."
A look of relief ghosted across Rowena's face, and she turned away. "Well, don't bank on her to solve your mysteries for you. You can't trust a thing she says. She's totally unreliable."
Maggie spoke up. "I heard she might be moving. Is it true?"
Rowena made a clucking noise with her tongue. "Why sisters waste energy gossiping about other sisters, I'll never know."
"Is it true?" I asked, more sharply.
Rowena straightened. "Sister Olivia and I have located a house where John Roberta can get counseling, in a desert climate that will relieve her asthma. If Reverend Mother General would give her permission-" She paused. "But that's another story."
The buzzing was louder. Render the troublemaker untrustworthy, her story unbelievable, and send her away. It was an ancient trick, much used to silence difficult women. Was that what was going on here? Or was John Roberta really a paranoid hysteric suffering delusions of persecution?
Rowena was continuing. "At the moment, John Roberta is on her way to St. Louis to attend her mother's funeral. By the time she returns, I hope Reverend Mother General will have agreed to reassign her." She paused, putting an emphatic period to this part of the conversation. "Now, what else would you like to know?"
I took a deep breath. Talking to this woman was like questioning a hostile witness. I was out of practice, and not doing a very good job. ' T understand that you were with Sister Perpetua when she died. She received one of the letters, perhaps the very first one. Did she say anything that-"
Rowena smoothed her skirt over her knees. "Perpetua said a lot of tilings, Ms. Bayles, none of them very sensible. Even when she had her wits about her, she was a babbler. Toward the end, she babbled a good deal. Quite senile."
"Did she babble about anyone in particular?"
Rowena pulled her dark brows together. "I don't think I could report, in good conscience, what Perpetua said. She wasn't in control of her faculties."
Same song, second verse. John Roberta was paranoid, Perpetua was senile. There was nothing I could do to force this woman to give me information, just as I could not force Father Steven to tell me what I suspected he knew. I changed my tack. "Do you know why Dr. Townsend has ordered an autopsy?"
"Of course I know." She was scornful. "He wants people to think that Perpetua did not die a natural death. He'd like to discover that somebody brewed up some of Mother Winifred's foxglove and dosed her with it."
"Is that what happened?"
She gave me an acid smile. "I have told Mother Winifred repeatedly that it is dangerous to maintain that still-room. It is entirely possible that one of the younger sisters-they're not at all supervised, you know, no matter what Mother Winifred says-made some sort of terrible mistake."
"Did anyone other than you administer medications to Perpetua?"
Her chin snapped up. "No, of course not. And all my medicines are in that cabinet right there, locked up."
I let her think about the implications of that for a moment. "I see," I said.
She regarded me narrowly. "Well," she said, with rather less truculence, ' 'the autopsy report will settle all this nonsense. Perpetua was an old woman. She died of natural causes."
Rowena might be lying. And even if she were telling the truth as she saw it, she might be wrong. Somebody else might have helped the old woman along without Rowena knowing anything about it.
I stood up. "Who visited Sister Perpetua toward the end?"
"Several of her friends. Mother Winifred. Olivia, Ruth, Ramona. Father Steven, of course. He was here when she died. There may have been others." She shifted on her chair. "Now, if that's all you have to ask-"
"Where is the hot plate?"
The question caught her utterly off guard. Her eyes widened as she looked up at me. "The… hot plate?"
"Sister Ruth says that the hot plate from Mother Hi-laria's cottage has disappeared from the storage room. Did you take it?"
She squared her shoulders and managed a scoffing smile. "Did I take it? What in the world would I want with it? It's… it's dangerous."
"You haven't answered my question, Sister."
Her expression was half-defiant, half-apprehensive. 'Does Ruth say I took it?"
"She says it was in the storage room from the time Mother Hilaria died until you spoke to her about it. When she went to look for it, it was gone." I stood over her, keeping my eyes fixed on hers. ' 'Did you take the hot plate, Sister?"
Her lips thinned and pressed together. She seemed to be wrestling with something inside herself-the truth, perhaps. Her glance slid to Maggie, who was sitting very still. The silence stretched out. Finally, in a low, resigned voice, she said, "Very well, then. Yes, I took the hot plate."
"Why?"
She didn't look up. "Because… I was asked to take it."
"Asked? By whom?"
Her chin was trembling and her voice was scratchy. "Mother Winifred directed us to talk to you about the letters." She brought her chin under control with an effort. "She didn't say we had to talk to you about anything else. I don't want to answer any more-"
I leaned down. "Who asked you to take that hot plate, Sister?"
She pressed herself back in her chair. "What you're thinking is wrong, you know." She swallowed. "You really don't have any idea what you're-"
"I need to see that hot plate, Sister Rowena. This is a very serious matter, you know. If the sheriff's office gets involved…"
"The sheriff? But why should-" She blinked rapidly. "Well, you can't see it. Not just now, anyway. Not this minute. Maybe later."
"When?"
Her head drooped. There was a long silence. "When Olivia gets back," she said at last.
"Lord deliver us!" Maggie said as we left Hannah. "Amen," I said. "What do you think? Was she telling the truth?"
She hesitated. "I wasn't sure, in the beginning, anyway. That business about John Roberta being paranoid and Per-petua babbling and so on-it's all very convenient, isn't it? But she did tell, after all. About the hot plate, I mean."
Yes. It had taken an effort for Rowena to tell us who had the deadly hot plate, but she had told us. Which suggested that what she had said about John Roberta and Per-petua had also been the truth, at least in the narrow way she had framed her reply. People usually don't he about small things and then tell the incriminating truth about something much more significant.
Maggie turned to me. "Who's next? Who else are we going to interrogate and intimidate?"
"If that's what you think we did to Rowena," I replied tartly, "you're dead wrong. / was the one who was intimidated."
"Oh, yeah? Didn't sound like it to me," Maggie said in a wry voice.
I consulted my list. "Sister Rose is next, and after that, Ramona."
Maggie's head tilted. "Rowena, Rose, Ramona-do I see a pattern?" She frowned thoughtfully. "And John Roberta too. What's going on?"
"It's a long story. Let's find Rose and Ramona first. If there's time after we've talked to them, I'll tell you."
There was plenty of time, because our conversations with Rose and Ramona were fairly short. We found Rose in Mother Winifred's herb garden, bundled up in a red wool jacket, pruning back an unruly horehound. She was a shy, fragile, fortyish woman who spoke in a feathery voice and kept her eyes cast modestly downward.
"I'm afraid I'm not a very good source of information," she murmured apologetically. "I stay to myself, mostly. I work in the laundry for four hours every morning. Whenever I can, I come here." She glanced around. "This is much nicer than our little garden at St. Agatha's. Whatever changes Sister Olivia and Reverend Mother General are