Inspector Lynley 18 - Just One Evil Act

chapel. Salvatore didn’t like this, but he decided a compromise was in order. The
carabinieri
had sent a woman for obvious reasons, and if it was down to her to open doors in this place, he could live with that.
    She took the arm of the nun, and together they disappeared behind the lattice from which they’d emerged. In a few minutes, though, the captain was back. With her was a different nun altogether, and she didn’t shrink from their presence as had the other. This was Mother Superior, Captain Mirenda told them. It was she who had summoned the
carabinieri
to Villa Rivelli.
    “Your wish is to see Domenica Medici?” Mother Superior was tall and stately, appearing ageless in her black-and-white habit. She wore the rimless spectacles that Salvatore remembered on the nuns of his youth. Then those glasses had seemed quirky, an antique fashion long out of vogue. Now they seemed trendy, striking an odd note of modernity out of keeping with the rest of Mother Superior’s attire. Behind the glasses, she fixed upon him a gaze that he remembered only too well from the classroom. It demanded truth, and it suggested that anything less would be quickly uncovered.
    He recounted what he’d learned from the parents of Domenica Medici: that she lived on the grounds of Villa Rivelli and that she served as a caretaker. He added to this what he’d already told Captain Mirenda. This was a matter of some importance, he concluded. A child’s disappearance was involved.
    It was Captain Mirenda who spoke. “Domenica Medici is here on the grounds,” she said. “And there is no child within the convent walls.”
    “You have made a search?” Salvatore said.
    “I have not needed to,” Captain Mirenda said.
    For a moment, Salvatore thought she meant that the word of Mother Superior was good enough, and he could tell that Lynley thought the same, for the other man stirred next to him and said quietly, “
Strano
,” in a low voice.
    Strange indeed, Salvatore thought. But Mother Superior clarified. There
was
a child, she said. From within the convent, she herself had both seen and heard her. She had assumed the girl was a relative come to stay for a time with Domenica. The reason for this was that she’d been delivered to the place by Domenica’s cousin. She played on the grounds of the villa and helped Domenica with her work. That she might not have been a member of Domenica’s family had not occurred to anyone in the convent.
    “They have no contact here with the outside world,” Captain Mirenda said. “They did not know that a child has gone missing from Lucca.”
    Salvatore very nearly didn’t want to ask why the
carabinieri
had been sent for, then. This was of no import, however, since DI Lynley did the asking himself.
    Because of the screaming, Mother Superior told them quietly. And because of the tale Domenica had told when she’d been sent for by the nun and questioned about it.
    “
Lei
crede
che la bambina sia sua
,” Captain Mirenda interjected abruptly.
    Her
own
child? Salvatore thought. “
Perché?
” he asked.
    “
È
pazza
” was the captain’s answer.
    Salvatore knew from speaking to Domenica’s parents that the girl was, perhaps, not right in the head. But for her to believe that the child brought here by her cousin was her own daughter took things in a direction so strange that it suggested the girl was, indeed, more mad than she was slow.
    Mother Superior’s quiet voice filled in the rest of the details and comprised the information she’d gathered preceding her phone call. This man who had brought the child to the villa had once made Domenica pregnant. She’d been seventeen at the time. She was now twenty-six. To the poor girl, the age of the child seemed right. But it was, of course, no child of hers.
    “
Perché?
” Salvatore asked the nun.
    Again, the captain answered for her. “She prayed for God to take that child from her body so that her parents would never know she was pregnant.”
    “
È successo così?
” Lynley asked.
    “
Sì
,” Captain Mirenda confirmed. That was indeed what had occurred. Or at least that was the tale Domenica had told Mother Superior when she’d been summoned into the convent upon the terrible screaming of the little girl. Captain Mirenda herself was on her way to question Domenica Medici about this. She would have no objection to the other policemen attending her.
    Mother Superior spoke one last time before they left her. She murmured, “I did not