To the Rescue Page 8
Satisfied that she could find her way, Jennifer moved on to the spiral stairway that coiled down to the ground floor. No need to bother now with the dining parlor midway along the flight.
Reaching the bottom, she found herself in a broad, stone-floored gallery that stretched away into the dimness. Her footsteps echoed on the flags as she traveled its length. There were little puffs of cold air that stirred around her. She could swear she actually heard them whispering to her.
Creepy. And silly. Had to be her imagination triggered by the gloom of this place. That and her aloneness. Again she met no one.
There was a closed door down toward the end of the gallery. She could see a hatch in the top of it covered by a grille. Ah, this had to be it! The entrance to the monastery itself!
Now all she had to do was knock on the door and wait for one of the brothers to slide the panel open behind the grille. If she was earnest enough with her appeal, Brother Anthony would be summoned to the hatch. Of course, her plan to convince him how imperative it was that he violate his vow of silence would be far more difficult.
And useless, as it turned out. At least for the moment. She’d been too sure, and too fanciful, because the door wasn’t the entrance to the monastery. That was immediately evident when she reached it. A gothic script in faded gold marked it as the infirmary.
And the hatch? Well, maybe just a method for safe communication should a patient, or patients, be contagious and need to be quarantined inside. Or was her imagination at work again?
If this was Brother Timothy’s domain, he wasn’t here to help her. No one answered her rap on the door.
There was another door on the opposite side of the gallery. The abbot’s office, according to the gilt lettering. Jennifer crossed the gallery. The door stood ajar, but when she opened it fully Father Stephen was nowhere in evidence.
Infirmary. Office. Had to mean the refectory, cells and work shops were somewhere close by. How about off the far end of the gallery where it turned a corner?
A few yards along brought her to the corner. When she rounded it, she saw on the left an arched doorway. The heavy, oak door stood wide open. She went and looked inside.
It was the chapel. Hollow and dim, it was almost large enough to qualify as a church. It was also very beautiful. The stonework was incredible. And so were the murals high on the walls. Medieval in character, faded and peeling, they must have been painted long before the brothers came to the castle.
One of the life-sized figures, a tall, lean pilgrim in a religious procession, seemed to gaze down at Jennifer where she stood in the doorway. There was something familiar about his laughing eyes and sardonic smile, something that reminded her of…
An unwanted image chased through her mind. Leo. The good-looking figure faintly resembled Leo. Damn him. Did he have to haunt her even in this peaceful place?
Tearing her eyes away from the painting, she focused on her errand. The chapel was deserted, but it occurred to her that if the brothers had a direct access to it from their cells, which seemed likely, then somewhere in its depth must be what she was looking for.
Before Jennifer could investigate, she became conscious of a current of frigid air. It originated from behind her. Swinging around in the archway, she saw another door on the other side of the gallery. It had drifted open a few inches. Snow was blowing through the crack, evidence that it was a door to the outside. The courtyard?
She watched it for a few seconds as it stirred back and forth. Then, shivering in the cold air, she went to shut it. And didn’t. Curiosity demanded a look outside. Pulling the door inward, she gazed into the courtyard she’d anticipated.
Satisfied, she started to retreat. That was when she saw the courtyard was occupied. Sheltered under the far side of the arcade that framed the four sides of the yard was a stone bench. There was a solitary figure seated on it.
It was hard to tell through the swirling snow, but his long robe told her it had to be one of the monks. Even at this distance and seated like that, she had an impression of someone as small and slight as a child. Like Brother Anthony. And if this was Brother Anthony…
Jennifer no longer hesitated. She stepped into the courtyard, not bothering to close the door behind her in her excitement at the prospect of winning an interview at last. Hugging the inner wall in an effort to protect herself from the worst of the wind and snow, she headed along the arcade, her breath smoking in the cold air.
It wasn’t until the arcade turned, carrying her to the other side of the yard, that she noticed the bench was positioned to face a simple shrine on the wall. Mounted on a recessed ledge was a stone figure with his hand raised in blessing. One of the saints, she supposed. For all she knew, it was the patron saint of the monastery.
The monk on the bench had his back to her from this angle. Head bowed, hands looking as though they might be folded in his lap in an attitude of concentrated prayer, he never stirred as Jennifer approached. She hated disturbing him at his devotions, but this could be her only chance to speak to him.
“Brother Anthony?”
She expected him to raise his head, turn to her. But he remained motionless on the bench. That was when she remembered Guy mentioning to her that the monk was hard of hearing.
Reaching him, she raised her voice. “Brother Anthony, I know I’m not supposed to bother you, but if I could just have a few words. It’s very important.”
There was no response. Was he more than just hard of hearing? Deaf perhaps?
Jennifer rounded the bench so that he could see her. When he still failed to lift his face to her, she leaned over him, touching him on the shoulder. His head rolled to one side, the cowl on his robe falling back to expose his tonsured head. Revealing, too, the raw, red welt on his throat. And his bulging eyes locked in a sightless, frozen gaze.
If she gasped or cried out, she wasn’t aware of it. She was just barely conscious of backing away from the bench. That was when she realized she was no longer alone in the courtyard with Brother Anthony. Another figure stood there now behind the bench. Leo McKenzie.
She watched him bend over the monk, silently examine him without touching him. When he came erect again, his eyes sought hers. For a few, terrible seconds there was no other reality, just Leo’s hard gaze pinned on her.
JENNIFER HUDDLED in one of the pews inside the chapel where Leo had left her. Presumably, he had gone off to play private investigator after seeing her settled here. But she wasn’t certain of that. She was still so numb that she barely remembered anything that had happened since her gruesome discovery.
Something had gone very wrong with her world. First Guy, now Brother Anthony.
As the worst of her shock eased, Jennifer recalled she wasn’t alone in the chapel. One of the other monks sat just across the aisle from her. She could hear him softly praying. For the soul of Brother Anthony?
She dimly recalled the monk solemnly telling her that Father Stephen and Brother Timothy were being summoned. He had said nothing else to her. Except for one brief thing. That Leo had taken him aside and asked him to stay here with her until he returned. That she wasn’t to be left on her own.
Jennifer didn’t want to question the explanation for Leo’s request to the startled monk they had encountered in the gallery after leaving the courtyard. She was afraid of the answer.
Seeking some image of comfort, she looked up at the murals on the walls. Her gaze went almost automatically to the tall, lean pilgrim who reminded her of Leo. But his eyes were no longer laughing down at her. They seemed instead to be hot with accusation. Like Leo’s eyes burning into hers out in the courtyard. There was no comfort here.
Quickly lowering her gaze, she turned her head and stared instead at an intricately carved stone pedestal. It supported a fluted stoup for the holy water. Both the pedestal and the basin were very old. Handsome pieces that should have been a safe subject for her attention. They weren’t.
Jennifer kept seeing Brother Anthony’s contorted features stri
cken with horror. Kept remembering how the killer must have afterward arranged his hands in his lap in that attitude of prayer. It was an obscene thing to have done, hideously irreverent.
The uninterrupted sound of the monk across the aisle droning his prayers was getting on her nerves. That and this endless waiting. Fully recovered now from her shock, angry with the wickedness of Brother Anthony’s death, she wanted answers. Determined to get them, she started to rise to her feet.
It was in that moment that Leo strode back into the chapel. She slid over, making room for him as he joined her in the pew. Turning on the seat to face him, she saw that he looked tired, as if he had just survived an unpleasant ordeal. She didn’t let that stop her from demanding an explanation. Hadn’t she suffered her own ordeal?
“Where have you been? What’s happening?”
“I was helping the abbot and Brother Timothy deal with Brother Anthony.”
“Father Stephen identified him? It is Brother Anthony for certain?”
“No question of it.”
“It didn’t seem possible it could be anyone else. But having never met him, I could have been wrong. I don’t suppose there’s any chance that he’s still…”
Jennifer couldn’t bring herself to say it. Not that she had to. Leo understood what she was asking.
“No, he’s dead all right.”
“How?”
“Garroted.”
She couldn’t stop herself from thinking about it. The monk’s bulging eyes and twisted features, his open mouth gasping for air, the angry welt on his throat where whatever instrument that was used had bit into his flesh. Yes, they were all clear evidence of strangulation. Jennifer shuddered over the cruelty of it.
“I looked around for the weapon, the cord or whatever,” Leo said. “There was no sign of it. No footprints either. The blowing snow would have covered them.”
“You disturbed a crime scene?”
“What would you have had me do? Hell, with the weather being what it is, the police might not be able to get up here for days, and by then there’d be nothing to see. Better I should check it out while it’s still fresh, even if there wasn’t anything to find.”
She could understand the wisdom of that. “And Brother Anthony…”
“Crime scene or not, the abbot refused to leave him there like that. We carried the body into the infirmary where Brother Timothy examined him. Any burial will have to wait.”
There was a silence in the chapel. The monk across the aisle was no longer chanting his prayers. He must have stopped to listen to their exchange. Leo turned to speak to him.
“Thanks, Brother. I’ll stay with her now.”
The monk nodded and slipped out of the other pew. Jennifer watched him disappear through a door at the side of the chapel. That had to be what she’d been searching for earlier, she decided. The way into the cloistered part of the monastery.
“He was guarding me, wasn’t he?” she asked Leo. “You left him here to make sure I didn’t get away.”
“That’d be a good assumption. If it made any sense.”
“Do you suppose it hasn’t occurred to me what you’ve been thinking since you found me there with Brother Anthony in the courtyard?”
“No. Why don’t you tell me.”
“That I could have murdered Brother Anthony, just as I could have murdered Guy. That what I told you back in your room, about my reason for coming here, was wildly improbable.” She knew her voice, too, became a little wild as she rushed on, unable to stop herself. “That my actual reason for being here was to silence Brother Anthony. Because I was afraid he knew something that would convince the police I had killed Guy.”
“All that, huh?”
“It’s true, isn’t it? You had to think it when I was standing there over his body, just as the charwoman discovered me standing over Guy’s body.”
Out of breath now, she gazed at him, her insides churning as she waited for his reaction. He took his time in providing a response.
“Yeah,” he said gruffly, “you could have wanted to kill Brother Anthony. Only you didn’t.”
“How can you be sure of that?”
“What are you trying to do, Jenny? Convict yourself? I’m sure because you left the door to the courtyard open, which is how I managed to find you. No killer intending to murder his victim would have been careless like that. I’m sure because I was inside the courtyard and saw you when you approached Brother Anthony. And I’m sure because you didn’t have any weapon in your hands or a chance to hide one by the time I reached you. Is that enough, or do you need more?”
It was a relief that Leo didn’t think she had murdered Brother Anthony. More than a relief. That he was on her side, at least where this situation was concerned, had her feeling all warm and weak. And that was dangerous.
Needing to hide her vulnerability, she murmured quickly, “All right, I was wrong. Then why did you have the monk stay close to me?”
“Because leaving you all alone with a killer on the loose would have been a risk I didn’t want to take.”
Leo McKenzie was protecting her? She had trouble believing it, and yet…
There went that treacherous warmth again, not just deep inside her this time but flowing out through her limbs. It was accompanied by an awareness of his big, solid body squeezed close against her. Before her senses went out of control with his nearness, she edged away from him.
“What happens now?” she asked him, forcing her thoughts in a safer direction.
“The abbot wants to meet with us in his office. He’ll send for us as soon as he’s free.”
Leo didn’t say, but she guessed that Father Stephen must be busy now making arrangements for Brother Anthony. Some kind of service maybe. And when he’d dealt with that…then, yes, he would have questions for Leo and her. Things he had the right to know. Until then, they had to wait.
Not easy to wait with Leo here at her side. With her mind in a turmoil of possibilities. She needed to express those possibilities.
“Brother Anthony,” she said, hoarseness in her voice. “Why was he murdered?”
“You tell me.”
“I don’t know. Unless…”
“Go on.”
“What if it was because he knew something that was dangerous to his killer? Something maybe connected with his uneasiness about the safety of the Warley Madonna.”
“That same mysterious something Guy told you about, huh? The thing that brought you here to Warley Castle.”
“More than that. Brother Anthony could have suspected who Guy’s killer is, just like I was hoping he might. And if he did, and the murderer realized this…”
“He’d want to make sure Brother Anthony kept his vow of silence forever. If you’re right, that means Guy’s killer is here in the castle.”
It was a chilling thought, something that hadn’t occurred to her until now. And it brought another sudden realization. One that had her hopes sinking into a state of despair.
“I’ll never learn now what Brother Anthony was so troubled about! He took that with him when he died! He can’t help me clear myself!”
Jennifer must have sounded as desperate as she felt. It seemed to worry Leo, arousing a kind of tenderness she wouldn’t have believed him capable of. He reached for her hands, his strong fingers closing around them. She should have immediately withdrawn her hands. She didn’t.
“You’re not going to go hysterical on me now, are you?” he asked her softly. Before she had a chance to assure him she had no intention of hysterics, he went on rapidly, “Because if you are, I have a remedy for that.”
“You don’t need to use it.”
Those lethal eyes of his searched her face. They seemed to darken, smoldering with something she was afraid to define. Something that suddenly deprived her of oxygen. She was still much too close to him, but she couldn’t seem to move.
“Oh, yeah,” he said slowly, his voice deepening to a sensual huskiness, “I think maybe I do.”
This is the time to stop him. Now before it’s too late.
But Jennifer found she had lost the will to do anything but submit to his attentions. No, that wasn’t true. Because when he released her hands in order to slide his arms around her waist, she did more than just comply. She leaned into him, becoming an active participant in his embrace. Betraying her eagerness for what they both wanted. Needed.
Drawing her tightly against him, a growl low in his throat, Leo angled his mouth across hers. His kiss was deep, demanding. Infused with the flavors of him, his clean, masculine scent, the taste of his wet tongue on hers.
Jennifer’s senses rioted on her. Threatened to go out of control. And might have, if there hadn’t been the deliberate sound of someone clearing his throat behind them, making them aware they were no longer alone.
Pulling away from Leo, she twisted around on the seat to find Brother Timothy framed in the doorway of the chapel. She felt her cheeks flaming with guilt, wondered if her mouth was swollen with the evidence of Leo’s hot kisses. What must the monk think to find them locked together like that in a holy place?
She glanced at Leo. No sign of embarrassment there, damn him. If anything, he was amused.
“Friar?”
“Father’s ready now for the two of you, laddie.”
They left the pew and joined the monk where he waited for them in the doorway. This was a different Brother Timothy, Jennifer realized. A sober one. She understood. It couldn’t be easy losing one of your own. Not in that way certainly. Murder.
Chapter Six
The abbot’s office wasn’t what Jennifer expected. There was no evidence of pious images, only a prie-dieu facing a simple cross. The walls were a stark white, the floor bare. The compact room might have qualified as austere had it not been for the clutter. Books and papers were everywhere.