As the clock strikes the hour, tolling twelve times, the bishop appears, his thinning hair combed over his scalp, his cassock billowing behind him as he lopes. He is tall and slender, a little hunched, and could easily be mistaken for an Ivy League academic if it weren’t for his expression. He is wearing a faint smile, his attempt to hide the anger that seethes in him at all times. But the smile never touches his eyes, and he struggles to hide his impatience when Mary Alice calls his name.
“Yes?” he asks briskly. He is teetering on the edge of unfriendliness, but even a nun can be useful sometimes, and as he moves closer, he realizes these nuns are young and remarkably pretty. Something surges in his blood and he sets a smile on his lips. He pauses and waits, his eyebrows raised in gentle inquiry.
“Bishop Sullivan! Oh, Your Excellency, please pardon the interruption. We are from the Order of the Sisters of Peace, our chapterhouse is outside Knoxville, Tennessee. Perhaps you’ve heard of us?”
He doesn’t bother to pretend that he has, but his face relaxes still further at the soft Southern drawl of her vowels. “I’m afraid I haven’t,” he says kindly.
“We are here on pilgrimage,” she tells him. “Our mother superior went to school with your sister,” she hurries on. “And she gave us strict instructions we were to find you and give you this gift.”
The bishop does not bother to ask which sister. He has six, all of them devout Catholics, scattered from Boston to Denver. Mary Alice extends the box and he takes it, his smile deepening.
“How kind,” he says.
“They are fruitcakes, Your Excellency,” Natalie puts in eagerly. “We bake them to support the order. And every one is flavored with Tennessee whiskey.”
“Fruitcakes?” His expression brightens. “Are they moist? I love a moist fruitcake and that’s one thing Italians can’t get right.”
“I promise you,” Mary Alice tells him serenely, “they are as full of flavor and moist as you could hope.”
He is almost jovial now, and he looks at Günther over the heads of the little flock of nuns. “Father, how do you come to be traveling with the sisters?”
Günther smiles vaguely. “Mother Superior was concerned about the sisters traveling alone, Your Excellency. They have never been out of the States before, so I volunteered to act as shepherd.”
“Good man,” the bishop tells him. He glances at the nuns and sees how expectant they are, how bright and young they seem. They are pathetically eager, but he likes how deferential they are. It is a balm to an ego that has been badly bruised in the morning’s finance meetings. The habits are an atrocity, plain and heavy, but his eye is practiced and he can tell the one who called his name has a lush figure shrouded underneath. He speaks impulsively.
“Would you care to visit the gardens? I could show you my favorite fountain and you won’t have to take one of those boring tours.”
The five of them are very still for a moment, and the bishop interprets this as reverence. In fact, they are reluctant because they do not wish to be any longer than necessary in his company. When he dies, questions will be asked. Video cameras will be mined for footage. Witnesses will be interrogated. And they want nothing that will connect them in any way to his death.
“Oh, we couldn’t impose!” Helen interjects, looking so awestruck that the bishop cannot be offended.
“But,” Billie says tentatively, her voice almost inaudible in its modesty, “Your Excellency, we would so love it if you would taste the cake and tell us what you think. Mother Superior will want to know.”
The bishop gives a mocking grin. “Well, if there’s one person I am afraid of, it is a mother superior,” he says, opening the box. He surveys the contents with obvious pleasure. “These look quite delicious.” He takes out one tiny cake and opens the waxed paper, sniffing deeply. “I can smell the cinnamon—and is that clove?”
Mary Alice nods. “It is, Your Excellency. You have quite a good sense of smell.”
He preens and takes a large bite of the cake. He chews thoughtfully before taking another, and finishes the cake before speaking. “You can tell your mother superior that this is the best fruitcake I have ever had. Outstanding, Sisters.”
They exchange happy glances as he starts on the second. “I know it’s greedy to eat them all myself,” he says through a mouthful of cake, “but I’ll worry about that at confession.”
Natalie gives him a shocked expression. “Oh no, Your Excellency! These were baked especially for you. Mother Superior would be very upset if she thought you gave them away.”
He finishes the second cake and closes the box. “You can tell your mother superior that there is no chance of that. These are mine and I plan on hiding them from everyone. In fact, I won’t have time for lunch today, so I’m very sure they’ll be gone before the hour is up.”
They exchange happy smiles again and Günther looks around. “Sisters, are you ready to go? I think we’ve probably taken up enough of His Excellency’s time.”
“Of course,” Mary Alice says, dropping her eyes. They take turns murmuring their thanks to the bishop, who raises his hand in a hasty blessing as they leave.
He opens the box and takes a bite of the third cake. It will be three hours before his stomach starts to cramp unbearably and the vomiting and diarrhea begin. When he is completely dehydrated and his consciousness is failing, he will be admitted to a hospital in Rome under the care of a physician who will never think to test for thallium. If he had, he would have prescribed doses of activated charcoal and Prussian blue to stop the cramping and hair loss. But since he does not, the bishop will grow progressively sicker for three weeks, until his heart gives out and he dies. The press release, phoned in from a source that is not the Vatican, will list the cause of death as pancreatic cancer. The doctor who treats him understands the meaning of the mysterious deposit into his bank account. He simply signs the death certificate and asks no questions. He never corrects the press release, and neither does the Vatican. It will be another two years before the collapse of an Italian bank reveals the extent of the corruption within the finances of the Holy See, and whispers of money laundering will continue for decades to come. But a certain bishop’s scheme to sell arms to a brutal Southeast Asian regime under the cover of missionary supplies will end, and an energized rebellion will succeed in establishing a fledgling democracy for the first time.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
It took the better part of the first day to get Benscombe in fit state for habitation. It was grim to see what had become of the place. The gardens were a tangled mess, the house was so damp that wallpaper was falling off in sheets, and the less said about the plumbing the better. We stowed our gear in the house, divvying up the smaller bedrooms upstairs. Nobody even suggested taking Constance Halliday’s room. The pill bottles from her last illness were still on the bedside table along with the book she’d been reading when she died—Angela Carter’s Book of Fairy Tales. We doubled up in the smaller bedrooms, brushing aside the worst of the cobwebs and throwing open the windows to the cold winter air.