Review
Death wears a cowl when Mother Vinnie visits a monastery rife with mysterious monks and murder....
An Alternate Selection of the Mystery Guild
From the Publisher
Death wears a cowl when Mother Vinnie visits a monastery rife with mysterious monks and murder....An Alternate Selection of the Mystery Guild
From the Inside Flap
ng at vespers...total silence between nine P.M. and morning...simple furnishings and cloistered walls--to Mother Lavinia Grey, it sounds like heaven. Actually, it's a monastery in upstate New York, just the place for Mother Vinnie, an Episcopal priest, to spend a few days and escape her problems at St. Bede's Church. But there is no rest for the wicked, as they say. And Mother Vinnie soon suspects something very sinful is afoot. Who are the mysterious robed figures scuttling around at night? What is going on between a pretty guest and a visiting politician? And what in the world has happened to elderly Brother Basil, recently back from Africa? Finding the answers exposes a twisted knot of secrets, and Mother Vinnie soon discovers that silence may be golden, but someone's determination to keep her quiet may be...murder.
About the Author
Kate Gallison is the author of six previous novels, including three Mother Lavinia Grey mysteries, Bury the Bishop, Devil's Workshop, and Unholy Angels. She lives in Lambertville, New Jersey, with her husband and son.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
"An outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace," said Deacon Deedee Gilchrist.
Recognizing a Jeopardy! question, Mother Lavinia Grey replied without thinking: "What is a sacrament?" She knew her catechism as well as the next person.
"Not in this case," said Deedee. "In this case the question is, 'What is mission furniture?'"
The two women were gazing into the cavernous library of the guesthouse of the Episcopal Monastery of St. Hugh. The library was furnished entirely with bookcases, tables, and chairs of a solid rectilinear appearance, the rich grain of their wood glowing in pools of light from curious square lamps. "Mission furniture?" Mother Grey said. "Is that what this is?"
"Mission in every sense of the word," said Deedee. "Quarter-sawn fumed oak, outwardly and visibly gracious, though not, as you see, very graceful, strictly speaking."
"I think it looks fine," Mother Grey said. It was true that nothing she saw in there was overly decorated or curvy.
"Fine, yes, and perfectly apropos. Function without worldly frills, comfort without luxury. Just the thing for the weary spirit fleeing the fleshpots of late twentieth-century American society."
"Do they make this stuff specially for monasteries?" Mother Grey asked.
"No. It's old. It used to be made specially for self-righteous aesthetes. Then everybody wanted it, and after that it went out of fashion. Some old lady left this lot to the monks in her will, twenty or thirty years ago."
"It goes nicely here," Mother Grey said. "Show me the rest of the guesthouse." She was ready for the monastery experience. They had driven up here from New Jersey in Deedee's minivan, with a few of Mother Grey's parishioners, to make a Lenten retreat for the weekend. Deedee had talked her into it. The brochures looked good, and Deedee's own brother, Brother Fergus, was the prior. Deedee had lined up another monk, Brother Basil, a most devout and erudite old man, recently retired from a stint as a missionary in one of the hot spots of the Third World, to lead the retreat.
The very notion of holy monks, vowed to poverty and solitary contemplation, running a hotel, even a hotel of spartan accommodations and spiritual uplift, seemed almost contradictory to Mother Grey. All the same, no less holy a monk than Saint Benedict himself, founder of the Benedictine order, had recommended hospitality as a ministry.
It seemed to be working, on Mother Grey at least. Her first experience of the monastery guesthouse--the sound of rain on leaded-glass windows, the smooth cool feel of quarry tile underfoot, the sight of the many books cramming the mission bookcases--refreshed and pleased her. Her car sickness, engendered by the twists, turns, swoops, and dips of the final leg of their journey, was fading. She could see herself spending the weekend in one of these comfy (though never luxurious) morris chairs, reading, thinking, and recuperating from the stresses of pastoring St. Bede's, in Fishersville.
Brother Octavian, the brisk and preppy young guestmaster, had taken the others straight upstairs to their rooms to unpack and recover from the journey. Except for Deedee, none of Mother Grey's companions--not the elderly Delight van Buskirk, nor Martine Wellworth, nor fortyish newlyweds Annabelle and Roger Smartt--had ever been to the monastery before. It was a five-hour drive from Fishersville, interstates most of the way, with one stop for supper.
The Smartts, legally wed for a whole month now, had sat in the very back, where they whispered, giggled, and spooned like twenty-year-olds. Martine and Mrs. van Buskirk occupied the middle seat. While bits of knitting sprouted from Mrs. van Buskirk's clicking needles, Martine sat in silence, staring out at the nonscenery of the rainy interstate. It was some time before Mother Grey missed Martine's usual chatter, absorbed as she was in a struggle with Deedee over the aesthetic of the tape deck.
First Deedee played her tape of the Memphis Godly Stompers yodeling "Praise Jesus All You Out There." Mother Grey endured its cheerful bathos for half an hour and then replaced it with a more satisfying recording, Pablo Casals performing unaccompanied Bach sonatas and partitas.
A little dry for some, perhaps, but Mother Grey found it altogether transporting; she shut her eyes and drifted into another dimension. After a tape and a half, Deedee called her back, declaring that she was sick to death of that stinking highbrow cello music.
Mother Grey countered that Deedee's white gospel tapes were mind-rotting trash.
"Martine," said Deedee. "Did you bring any black gospel tapes, by any chance?"
"Black gospel tapes?"
"Yes, the good stuff," said Mother Grey. "I don't suppose--" Actually, she didn't suppose. Martine wasn't the sort of down-home African American who went in for gospel. Indeed, Mother Grey hardly thought of her as a black person at all; if she pigeonholed Martine, it was as a yuppie lawyer. The way things worked out, this was a mistake, because Martine's race was important to Martine and also to certain others.
As to gospel tapes, however, Martine shook her head. "I guess I'm not that far into African-American culture," she said. "Maybe I should be. Which reminds me, Mother Vinnie, we need to have a talk."
"A talk?"
"Later on. I have something on my mind, and I need to unburden myself to you. As a friend." She handed up a cassette to them in the front seat. "Play this if you want to; I've already heard it." Martine's tape proved to be a recording of the latest legal thriller from John Grisham. But Deedee and Mother Grey wanted music.
A talk? So. Martine was brooding, and her bad mood had something to do with Mother Grey. What did I do this time? Never mind, she would find out soon enough. She set herself to searching for tunes.
She found nothing in the tote bag but more cello and some Isaac Stern.
"Unacceptable," said Deedee, handing her another tape. "Play this."
"No," said Mother Grey, handing it back. "No more New Christian praise songs." They rolled on in ill-tempered silence until at last she found another handful of cassettes under the maps in the glove compartment.
"What are these?"
"Something of Arthur's," said Deedee. The minivan belonged to Deedee's church, Holy Assumption in Ocean Prospect, of which the Reverend Canon Arthur Spelving, Deedee's boss, was the rector.
The cassettes proved to be recordings of plainsong, performed by Spanish monks. Divine. "Just the thing to set the mood for St. Hugh's," she said, and everyone agreed. But after they left the interstate, Mother Grey no longer cared about the music.
"It's the winding road," she mumbled, groping for a plastic bag. "Maybe we should stop for a minute." Fortunately they had arrived at their destination. Deedee nosed the minivan down the long wet gravel drive and into the monastery parking lot. Mother Grey got out, turned her face to the gently rainy sky, and took a deep breath of the piney woods.
Right away she felt better. When the others followed Brother Octavian upstairs to their rooms, Mother Grey was ready to go with Deedee to tour the rest of the guesthouse.
"So where are the other monks?"
"Let's see," said Deedee, whipping out her folded brochure with the schedule of offices. "Compline is just over."
"Evening prayer."
"Yes. They're back in their quarters, doing monk things. We'll see them tomorrow at matins."
"When can I meet your brother?"
"Later tomorrow. The Great Silence lasts from nine at night to eight-fifteen in the morning. After that we can talk to Fergus." They passed through a shadowy hallway and came to a pair of big doors. "This is the refectory," Deedee said. Mother Grey pushed the door open and saw rows of dining tables, walls of rainy windows.
"What a view. That's the east bank of the Hudson, isn't it?"
"Yup. You'll love the food here."
"Of course I will," said Mother Grey. She loved almost any food prepared by persons other than herself.
"Brother Mortimer came here from the CIA," Deedee said.
"A spook?"
"A cook. The Culinary Institute of America is a famous chef school, right over there across the river. Brother Mortimer does all the cooking at St. Hugh's."
"You wonder about the past lives of monks," said Mother Grey. What would prompt a man to leave a good career and come here? Oh, yes, the love of God, certainly, but still, to withdraw completely from the world--
"You wonder, but it's rude to ask," said Deedee. "Let's go check out the sleeping accommodations. You have St. Cuthbert, I believe,...
