I frowned. "Did you talk to Townsend yourself?"

"No. Rowena handles that sort of thing." She glanced at me. "Why are you asking?"

I was asking because early this morning, John Roberta had sought me out, anxious to tell me something that Sister Rowena might consider "disloyal." A few hours later, Sister Rowena had spirited her away. Those two events seemed entirely too coincidental to suit me. And what was this business about the inhalator being misplaced?

But that was beside the point, at least for the moment. If John Roberta was in the hospital, it shouldn't be all that difficult to talk to her. I could do it tomorrow morning, after I talked to Stu Walters. In the meantime…

Mother put her basket beside the cottage door. "What about Olivia?" I asked, following her into the cottage. "She isn't here either?"

Mother went to the small bathroom to wash her hands in the basin. "She's been summoned to the motherhouse at El Paso," she said through the open door, "to confer with Reverend Mother General. She drove into Austin this morning and caught a plane. She'll be back Tuesday morning."

"Isn't that rather unusual-for a sister to see the Mother General?"

"Before the merger, Olivia was St. Agatha's abbess," Mother reminded me. She sighed as she dried her hands. "I imagine they're planning strategy."

"Strategy?"

"For the election. Reverend Mother will probably telephone tomorrow with word that we should vote as soon as possible."

"But I thought Maggie's return-"

Mother Winifred came back into the room, pursing her lips. "Reverend Mother has approved Margaret Mary's petition to resume her vocation, on the condition that her voting privileges be suspended for a year. Until she's sure she wants to stay, that is." She sighed again. "A perfectly reasonable suggestion."

On the face of it, yes. But given Reverend Mother General's motives… "I suppose that means that Sister Olivia will be elected?"

"I suppose." Mother dropped into a chair. I noticed how pale she looked, her skin the color of old ivory. "I'm sorry to see the changes coming."

"But you're not willing to oppose them?"

Mother shook her head tiredly. "Hilaria would have, I'm sure." Her shoulders slumped; her voice was muffled. "But opposing Reverend Mother's authority goes against everything I've been taught. And I'm seventy years old. I'm ready to step aside and let someone else do this work."

I frowned. "I still think-"

"Don't you understand?" Mother Winifred raised her head. "After Olivia has taken over, my time will be my own. See that clump of lemongrass?" She pointed. "I forgot to dig it up and the frost killed it. Next year, when Olivia is doing this job-and doing it quite well, I'm confident-that won't happen. She and Reverend Mother General have assured me that the herb garden-especially the

apothecary's garden-will be one of the conference center's major assets."

I was beginning to sense some of the pressure that had been brought to bear on Mother Winifred. But there was another side to the argument, and I pressed it. "Don't you feel you have an obligation, if not to St. Theresa's, then to Mrs. Laney and Mother Hilaria? If it's possible to preserve their dream for this place, shouldn't you try?"

Mother Winifred gave me a small smile. ' 'Sadie is perfectly capable of preserving Helen Laney's dream. And to tell the truth, there's very little I can do."

I thought of what Tom had said. "But without your help, Sadie will be in the minority. She needs you."

Mother's voice firmed. "If God wants St. Theresa's to be a contemplative house, my dear, that's what it will be, no matter what Reverend Mother and Olivia have in mind. If He prefers us to operate a retreat center here, that's what we will have, regardless of what Sadie Marsh and Sister Gabriella want." Her eyes softened. "I feel He prefers me to look after the lemongrass."

I could hardly argue with God. There was a space of silence, then she said, "Before we go to supper, please tell me: Have you learned anything about the letters?''

"Two things," I said. "The letter-writer had nothing to do with the sacrifice of Anne's swimsuit."

Her brows went up. "No? Then who-?"

"I'm afraid you'll have to take my word for it."

An answering smile glimmered on her mouth, as if I had confirmed something she'd already guessed. "Very well, then. The other thing?"

"Mother Hilaria's hot plate is missing from the storage room. Ruth says it disappeared sometime last month, right after Rowena inquired about it."

"Oh, dear." Mother looked deeply troubled. "Oh, dear. But if you're thinking that Rowena took it, I must say that I can't agree. She's an extraordinarily conscientious woman." She thought for a moment. "But for that matter,

so is Ruth. She treats every item, even the toilet paper, as if God had assigned it to her custody. Oh, dear."

I sat down across the table. "If it won't make us late to supper," I said, "I'd like to hear about Mother Hilaria's death."

It wasn't hard to re-create the scene in my mind as Mother Winifred spoke. The day, a Saturday, had been quite cool for September, and the afternoon and evening were rainy. Mother Hilaria ate supper as usual, stepped into the office to do a half hour's worth of paperwork, then went back to her cottage on the other side of Rebecca, stopping in the garden to pick some tansy and a few stalks of late-blooming golden yarrow.

When she went into the cottage, she put the blossoms into a vase, placed it on her desk, and settled down to work. "She was always busy with one project or another," Mother Winifred added. "This time, it was Hildegard of Bingham. She was working on Hildegard's Book of Healing Herbs. I'm hoping to continue her work, when I get some free time."

Mother Hilaria had taken out a tablet of handwritten notes on Hildegard, the abbess of a Benedictine convent during the twelfth century, and began to work. At some point, she apparently decided to make a cup of chocolate. The hot plate was on a wide shelf in the back corner of the living-sitting area, next to the small sink.

"Her shelf looked very much like mine," Mother Winifred said, nodding toward it.

I turned to look. There was the shelf, with a hot plate on it, and beside that, a small sink. Under the shelf was an apartment-size refrigerator. Hie rest of the story was tragically simple. Mother Hilaria had filled her kettle from the water tap, put it on the hot plate, and got out a tin of cocoa mix. As she took a quart carton of milk from the refrigerator, she dropped it on the floor. It broke open and spilled where she was standing. Without thinking, she reached for the knob to turn off the hot plate. It gave her a severe shock,

which jolted her heart into arrhythmic spasms that quickly led to full cardiac arrest. John Roberta found her body an hour later, when she came for a late-evening talk they had scheduled.

"Did anyone examine the hot plate?" I asked. "Ruth said something about bare wires in the switch. That suggests the wires were somehow stripped."

Mother frowned. "I don't know anything about that. I thought the thing was just old, and somehow malfunctioned."

It was possible that the old insulation became brittle and simply disintegrated. But it was also possible that the process had been accelerated.

' 'I wonder-'' I said. Just at that moment, however, the supper bell began to ring, and we stood to go. But Mother had one more thing to tell me.

"This is on a much more pleasant subject," she said as we went to the door together. "I expect you'll be glad to know that one of our prayers was answered this afternoon, rather dramatically. Sister Gabriella was quite pleased. In fact, she jumped up and down a time or two. I don't think I've seen her that excited in years."

"Really?" I paused with my hand on the knob. What kind of prayer deserved that sort of response?