"The next time we have a clothing vote, I'm voting no on the habit, regardless of what Olivia says. Really, in this day and age, we ought to be able to-"

She broke off and looked at me with a scowl. There was a large dark mole to the right of her mouth and another beside her nose. Her shoulders were broad, her arms stout. Standing, she was the shape of a fireplug, with just about as much grace.

"China Bayles, eh?" Her voice was rough, no-nonsense, and she barked her words like a cadet commander. "You're the one Mother Winifred brought in to get to the bottom of the fires."

"That's right," I said. No wonder John Roberta had been in such a tizzy. Rowena's scowl alone was enough to send a nervous person into an immediate fright.

She took a towel from the doorknob. "Well, I can tell you right off that I don't know anything about any fires. Haven't seen anything suspicious, haven't heard anything." She wiped her hands and slapped the towel back on the doorknob with a And-that's-all-there-is-to-it gesture.

"You were at last night's fire."

"I was there at every fire. I live here, like it or not." She glanced down her nose at Maggie. "I understand you're coming back."

Maggie nodded.

"I hope your vocation's stronger than it was last time," she said firmly, as if she were speaking to a young girl. "And I hope you don't expect things to be the way they were before you left."

I cleared my throat. "I'd also like to ask you about Per-petua and John Roberta."

Rowena gave me a dark look. ' 'John Roberta has nothing to do with either the fires or the letters," she snapped. "She doesn't have the imagination to do anything sinful." She glanced at Maggie, then back at me. "Excuse me. I'm going to sit down." She walked heavily through the door, limping, one hand on her hip. ' 'Next time these floors need scrubbing, one of the younger sisters can do it."

There was one bed in this room, two chairs, and a small desk. Above the desk was a built-in cabinet with a lock on the door, and above that, a shelf filled with medical reference books. Maggie sat on the bed, I took one of the chairs, and Sister Rowena sat at the desk, painfully stretching her leg out. She began to massage her right knee through the fabric of her navy serge skirt. After a moment, she looked up at me.

"Maybe I can save us some time if I tell you exactly what I know," she said brusquely. "Number one, I've never received a poison-pen letter. Number two, I've never written one. So you can scratch me off your list." She snapped her mouth shut as if she had said the last word on die subject.

"I'm not suggesting that you have a direct knowledge of the letters, Sister," I said quietly. "I thought perhaps someone else might have spoken about them to you, or in your hearing. John Roberta, for instance. She stopped me yesterday morning, shortly before she fell ill. She was ur-

gent about wanting to see me. We agreed to a time later in the day, but she didn't come."

"She didn't come because she was in the hospital." She began to knead the other leg, working her powerful fingers into the muscle. "John Roberta doesn't have any more idea about those letters than I do." Her fingers stopped moving for an instant. "Of course, she may have convinced herself that she does." She began kneading again. "In my opinion, John Roberta is a very sick woman."

"I'm told she suffers from asthma," I said.

"Her asthma is real enough. But it's her emotional excitability that's making her sick. She's paranoid, to put it bluntly." She straightened. "She's hysterical."

"I see," I said. An alarm was buzzing in my head. It would be very easy for this woman, a registered nurse and the monastery's resident expert on nervous complaints, to brand a sister hysterical. Once that happened, the hysterical sister would be completely discredited. Nobody would believe a thing she said. It was a pernicious strategy.

Sister Rowena folded her heavy arms. "So what was John Roberta's story this time?"

"I don't know," I said. "We didn't get that far."

A look of relief ghosted across Rowena's face, and she turned away. "Well, don't bank on her to solve your mysteries for you. You can't trust a thing she says. She's totally unreliable."

Maggie spoke up. "I heard she might be moving. Is it true?"

Rowena made a clucking noise with her tongue. "Why sisters waste energy gossiping about other sisters, I'll never know."

"Is it true?" I asked, more sharply.

Rowena straightened. "Sister Olivia and I have located a house where John Roberta can get counseling, in a desert climate that will relieve her asthma. If Reverend Mother General would give her permission-" She paused. "But that's another story."

The buzzing was louder. Render the troublemaker untrustworthy, her story unbelievable, and send her away. It was an ancient trick, much used to silence difficult women. Was that what was going on here? Or was John Roberta really a paranoid hysteric suffering delusions of persecution?

Rowena was continuing. "At the moment, John Roberta is on her way to St. Louis to attend her mother's funeral. By the time she returns, I hope Reverend Mother General will have agreed to reassign her." She paused, putting an emphatic period to this part of the conversation. "Now, what else would you like to know?"

I took a deep breath. Talking to this woman was like questioning a hostile witness. I was out of practice, and not doing a very good job. ' T understand that you were with Sister Perpetua when she died. She received one of the letters, perhaps the very first one. Did she say anything that-"

Rowena smoothed her skirt over her knees. "Perpetua said a lot of tilings, Ms. Bayles, none of them very sensible. Even when she had her wits about her, she was a babbler. Toward the end, she babbled a good deal. Quite senile."

"Did she babble about anyone in particular?"

Rowena pulled her dark brows together. "I don't think I could report, in good conscience, what Perpetua said. She wasn't in control of her faculties."

Same song, second verse. John Roberta was paranoid, Perpetua was senile. There was nothing I could do to force this woman to give me information, just as I could not force Father Steven to tell me what I suspected he knew. I changed my tack. "Do you know why Dr. Townsend has ordered an autopsy?"

"Of course I know." She was scornful. "He wants people to think that Perpetua did not die a natural death. He'd like to discover that somebody brewed up some of Mother Winifred's foxglove and dosed her with it."

"Is that what happened?"

She gave me an acid smile. "I have told Mother Winifred repeatedly that it is dangerous to maintain that still-room. It is entirely possible that one of the younger sisters-they're not at all supervised, you know, no matter what Mother Winifred says-made some sort of terrible mistake."

"Did anyone other than you administer medications to Perpetua?"

Her chin snapped up. "No, of course not. And all my medicines are in that cabinet right there, locked up."

I let her think about the implications of that for a moment. "I see," I said.

She regarded me narrowly. "Well," she said, with rather less truculence, ' 'the autopsy report will settle all this nonsense. Perpetua was an old woman. She died of natural causes."

Rowena might be lying. And even if she were telling the truth as she saw it, she might be wrong. Somebody else might have helped the old woman along without Rowena knowing anything about it.

I stood up. "Who visited Sister Perpetua toward the end?"

"Several of her friends. Mother Winifred. Olivia, Ruth, Ramona. Father Steven, of course. He was here when she died. There may have been others." She shifted on her chair. "Now, if that's all you have to ask-"

"Where is the hot plate?"