Just One Evil Act (42 page)

Four separate corridors led from the chapel, each of them at a corner of the room and one of which they’d just travelled. Salvatore was trying to decide which of the remaining three might lead them to a human presence, when he heard the sound of women’s voices, just a quiet murmur in what otherwise would have been a place of silence and contemplation. Footsteps accompanied these voices. Someone said, “
Certo, certo. Non si preoccupi
.
Ha fatto bene
.”

Two women emerged from behind a wooden lattice that served to cover the doorway of the corridor nearest the chapel’s altar. One of them wore the habit of a Dominican nun. The other wore the uniform of a
c
arabinieri
captain. The nun halted abruptly, the first of them to catch sight of the two men—both in the clothing of civilians—standing in the convent chapel. She looked behind her for a moment, as if to retreat to safety behind the lattice, and Captain Mirenda spoke sharply.

“
Chi sono?
” This was, she told them, a cloistered convent. How had they gained entrance?

Salvatore identified himself and explained who Lynley was. They were there, he said, on the matter of the English girl who had vanished from Lucca, and he felt confident that Captain Mirenda was aware of that case.

She was, of course. How could she be otherwise since, unlike the nun who’d stepped into the shadows, she did not live in a protected world. But it seemed that she had either been summoned to the convent on another matter entirely, or she had not connected the reason she’d been summoned to anything that had gone before this moment, especially in a
mercato
in Lucca.

The nun murmured something. In the shadows, her face was hidden.

Salvatore explained that he and his companion were going to have to speak to the Mother Superior. He went on to say that he knew it was irregular for any of the nuns to meet with an outsider—particularly if that outsider was male—but there was an urgent need since a direct relationship existed between a young woman of the name of Domenica Medici and a man who had taken the little girl from Lucca.

Captain Mirenda glanced at the other woman. She said, “
Che cosa vorrebbe fare?
”

Salvatore wanted to tell her that it was not a matter of what the nun wished to do at this point. This was a police matter, and the traditions of the cloister were going to have to be set aside. Where, he enquired, was Domenica Medici? Her parents had indicated she lived in this place. Roberto Squali had died on his way here. Evidence in his car proved the child had been a passenger at some point.

Captain Mirenda told them to wait in the chapel. Salvatore didn’t like this, but he decided a compromise was in order. The
carabinieri
had sent a woman for obvious reasons, and if it was down to her to open doors in this place, he could live with that.

She took the arm of the nun, and together they disappeared behind the lattice from which they’d emerged. In a few minutes, though, the captain was back. With her was a different nun altogether, and she didn’t shrink from their presence as had the other. This was Mother Superior, Captain Mirenda told them. It was she who had summoned the
carabinieri
to Villa Rivelli.

“Your wish is to see Domenica Medici?” Mother Superior was tall and stately, appearing ageless in her black-and-white habit. She wore the rimless spectacles that Salvatore remembered on the nuns of his youth. Then those glasses had seemed quirky, an antique fashion long out of vogue. Now they seemed trendy, striking an odd note of modernity out of keeping with the rest of Mother Superior’s attire. Behind the glasses, she fixed upon him a gaze that he remembered only too well from the classroom. It demanded truth, and it suggested that anything less would be quickly uncovered.

He recounted what he’d learned from the parents of Domenica Medici: that she lived on the grounds of Villa Rivelli and that she served as a caretaker. He added to this what he’d already told Captain Mirenda. This was a matter of some importance, he concluded. A child’s disappearance was involved.

It was Captain Mirenda who spoke. “Domenica Medici is here on the grounds,” she said. “And there is no child within the convent walls.”

“You have made a search?” Salvatore said.

“I have not needed to,” Captain Mirenda said.

For a moment, Salvatore thought she meant that the word of Mother Superior was good enough, and he could tell that Lynley thought the same, for the other man stirred next to him and said quietly, “
Strano
,” in a low voice.

Strange indeed, Salvatore thought. But Mother Superior clarified. There
was
a child, she said. From within the convent, she herself had both seen and heard her. She had assumed the girl was a relative come to stay for a time with Domenica. The reason for this was that she’d been delivered to the place by Domenica’s cousin. She played on the grounds of the villa and helped Domenica with her work. That she might not have been a member of Domenica’s family had not occurred to anyone in the convent.

“They have no contact here with the outside world,” Captain Mirenda said. “They did not know that a child has gone missing from Lucca.”

Salvatore very nearly didn’t want to ask why the
carabinieri
had been sent for, then. This was of no import, however, since DI Lynley did the asking himself.

Because of the screaming, Mother Superior told them quietly. And because of the tale Domenica had told when she’d been sent for by the nun and questioned about it.

“
Lei
crede
che la bambina sia sua
,” Captain Mirenda interjected abruptly.

Her
own
child? Salvatore thought. “
Perché?
” he asked.

“
È
pazza
” was the captain’s answer.

Salvatore knew from speaking to Domenica’s parents that the girl was, perhaps, not right in the head. But for her to believe that the child brought here by her cousin was her own daughter took things in a direction so strange that it suggested the girl was, indeed, more mad than she was slow.

Mother Superior’s quiet voice filled in the rest of the details and comprised the information she’d gathered preceding her phone call. This man who had brought the child to the villa had once made Domenica pregnant. She’d been seventeen at the time. She was now twenty-six. To the poor girl, the age of the child seemed right. But it was, of course, no child of hers.

“
Perché?
” Salvatore asked the nun.

Again, the captain answered for her. “She prayed for God to take that child from her body so that her parents would never know she was pregnant.”

“
È successo così?
” Lynley asked.

“
Sì
,” Captain Mirenda confirmed. That was indeed what had occurred. Or at least that was the tale Domenica had told Mother Superior when she’d been summoned into the convent upon the terrible screaming of the little girl. Captain Mirenda herself was on her way to question Domenica Medici about this. She would have no objection to the other policemen attending her.

Mother Superior spoke one last time before they left her. She murmured, “I did not know. She said it was her duty to prepare the little girl for God.”

VILLA RIVELLI

TUSCANY

Lynley had followed the conversation perfectly well, but he very nearly wished he hadn’t been able to do so. To have managed to track Hadiyyah to this place—for who else could it be but Hadiyyah brought into the Alps?—and to find themselves just hours too late . . . He couldn’t imagine how he was going to tell the girl’s parents. He also couldn’t imagine how he was going to relay the information to Barbara Havers.

He walked slowly in the wake of the
carabinieri
officer and Lo Bianco. Captain Mirenda had been told where Domenica Medici was to be found. A short distance from the villa and sheltered from it by a hedge of camellias in bloom, a stone barn stood. Within this barn a woman dressed in garb similar to the Mother Superior’s sat on a low stool milking a goat, her cheek resting on the animal’s flank and her eyes closed.

Lynley would have thought she was a nun herself, save for the subtle differences in her clothing from the habit worn by the Mother Superior. The essentials of it were the same: a white robe, a simple black veil. Most people, seeing her, would assume she was a member of the cloistered community.

She was so involved in what she was doing that she wasn’t aware anyone had entered the barn. It was only when Captain Mirenda said her name that her eyes opened. She wasn’t startled by the presence of outsiders. Less was she startled by the fact that one of them wore the uniform of the
carabinieri
.

“
Ciao,
Domenica
,” Captain Mirenda said.

Domenica smiled. She rose from her stool. A gentle slap on the flank of the goat sent it on its way, and it moved to join three others who were gathered at the far end of the barn, near a door the top half of which was open, revealing a fenced paddock beyond it. She brushed her hands down the front of the garment that went for her false nun’s habit. In a gesture reminiscent of cloistered nuns Lynley had seen depicted on television and in films, she buried her hands in the sleeves of this garment, and she stood in an attitude that mixed humility with anticipation.

Lo Bianco was the one to speak although Captain Mirenda shot him a look that indicated he was out of place to be doing so. The
carabinieri
had, after all, been the agency of police first on the scene. Courtesy demanded that Lo Bianco allow the other officer to get down to business while he and Lynley observed.

He said to the young woman, “We have come for the child that your cousin Roberto Squali gave into your keeping, Domenica. What have you done with her?”

At the question Domenica’s face took on a look of such placidity that for a moment Lynley doubted they’d found the right person. “I have done God’s will,” she murmured.

Lynley felt the grip of despair. His gaze took in the barn. His thoughts shot from one place to another where the mad young woman could have hidden the body of a nine-year-old girl: somewhere in the woods, somewhere on the grounds, a shadowy corner of the villa itself. They would need to bring in a team to find her unless the woman could be made to speak.

“What will of God have you done?” Captain Mirenda said.

“God has forgiven me,” Domenica replied. “My sin was the prayer and the relief in having the prayer granted by Him. Ever since, I have walked the path of penitence to receive His absolution. I have done His will. My soul now magnifies the Lord. My spirit rejoices in God my Saviour.” Again her head bowed, as if she’d said all she was going to say on the subject.

“Your cousin Roberto Squali would have told you to keep the child safe,” Lo Bianco said. “He would not have told you to harm the child. You were to keep her until he came for her. Do you know your cousin Roberto is dead?”

She frowned. For a moment she said nothing, and Lynley thought that the news alone might loosen her tongue as to the whereabouts of Hadiyyah. But then she said, surprisingly, that it was the will of God that she should have witnessed what happened to Roberto. She, too, had thought her cousin was dead because God had clearly taken his car from the road and sent it soaring into the air. But the
ambulanza
had come for him and she’d understood from this that patience was required when one sought to understand the greater meanings behind God’s hand in one’s life.

“
Pazza
,” Captain Mirenda said tersely. Her voice was low, and if Domenica heard this declaration, she said nothing in reply to it. Slings and arrows couldn’t hurt her now. Obviously, she’d moved to an unearthly realm in which the Almighty had blessed her.

“You witnessed this accident to your cousin?” Lo Bianco said.

That, too, was God’s will, Domenica told him.

“And then you wondered what next to do with the child you were supposed to be keeping for him,
vero
?” Lo Bianco clarified.

All that was required was to do God’s will.

Captain Mirenda’s expression said that she wished God’s will to be that she herself should throttle the young woman. Lo Bianco’s looked only marginally different. Lynley said to Domenica, “What was God’s will?”

“Abraham,” she told him. “Deliver your beloved son to God.”

“But Isaac did not die,” Lo Bianco said.

“God sent an angel to stop the sword from falling,” Domenica said. “One only has to wait for God. God will always speak if the soul is pure. This, too, I prayed to know: how to purify and ready the soul for God so that the state of grace we all seek to be in at the moment of death could be acquired.”

The moment of death
was enough to spur Lo Bianco to action. He went to the young woman, grasped her arm, and said, “God’s will is
this
,” in a voice that boomed in the stone walls of the place. “You will take us to this child at once, wherever she is. God would not have sent us into the Alps to find her if God did not intend her to be found. You understand this,
sì
? You understand how God works? We must have that child. God has sent us for her.”

Lynley thought the young woman might protest, but she did not. She also did not appear cowed by the demand or its ferocity. Instead, she said, “
Certo
,” and seemed happy to comply. She headed for the great doors of the barn.

Once outside she went to a stairway that climbed to a door on the barn’s south side. The others followed her up these stairs and into a dimly lit kitchen, where the sight of fresh, bright vegetables in an ancient stone sink and the fragrance of newly baked bread acted as a mocking contrast to what they understood they were about to find in this place.

She approached a door on the far side of the room, and from her pocket she withdrew a key. Lynley girded himself for whatever was behind the door, and when she said, “The waters of God washed away her sins, and her purity made her ready for Him,” he saw Captain Mirenda cross herself and he heard Lo Bianco give a quiet curse.