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Автор Сюзан Уиттиг Алберт

Rueful Death

Susan Wittig Albert

During a supposedly relaxing retreat at a Texas convent, herbalist China Bayles and her friend Maggie, an ex-nun, investigate the seemingly accidental death of the Mother Superior and uncover a deadly conflict within the walls of the cloister.

Susan Wittig Albert

Rueful Death

The fifth book in the China Bayles series, 1996

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am grateful to the community of Lebh Shomea for the quiet refuge its members have offered me from time to time. Sister Maria, Sister Marie, and Father Kelly: my thanks. Your commitment and joyful sacrifice allow me a glimpse into the soul of the spiritual life and show me that God is larger than I thought. To Jean Springer, my deepest gratitude. Your gentle guidance and your insights into contemplative life have taken me further along my own path. Thanks, too, for your generous and helpful reading of this book. To Bob Goodfellow, thanks for the comments that helped fill out the basic plot idea, and thanks to Natalee Rosenstein, Berkley Prime Crime editor, for your thoughtful suggestions. And to my husband and fellow author, Bill, thanks and hugs for all you do, always.

AUTHOR'S NOTE

The fictional landscape of Rueful Death closely resembles that of the Texas Hill Country, and some of its characters eat, drink, and carry on like me people who live there. However, the town and county of Carr are wholly imaginary, St. Theresa's is a monastery of the mind, and the Sisters of me Holy Heart are a fictional creation. Don't let the bits of real life mat the author slips in from time to time fool you into thinking that the characters, settings, and events of this book are anything but figments of an insubordinate imagination.

Here in this place

I'll set a bank of rue, sour herb of grace;

Rue, even for ruth, shall shortly here be seen…

Shakespeare, Richard III

Chapter One

When Satan stepped out of Paradise after the Fall, it is rumored that garlic sprang up from the spot where he planted his foot.

Muslim saying

Afterward, when I thought about what happened at St. Theresa's, I felt embarrassed and a bit rueful. If I'd been a police officer and drawn those wrong conclusions, my sergeant would have bawled me out for my errors in judgment. If I'd been a private investigator, I might have been fired. But I'm neither, thank God. I'm just an ordinary person who was asked to do something a little unusual, and I made a mistake here and there.

But everybody makes mistakes. And every so often, our mistakes are criminal. If we get caught, we have to pay the prescribed penalty-when the system works right, which it doesn't, most of the time. But even when justice fails, there's the universe to be reckoned with, or God, or whatever you call it. One way or another, you pay for what you do. And sometimes, what you think was a mistake, or even a crime, turns out to be something else altogether.