Precious Blood(80)

Instead, she was freezing in the middle of the St. Agnes’s courtyard, having a conversation with Declan Boyd that had not made sense when it started, did not make sense now, and was not going to make sense, no matter how long she listened. In one way, it was a blessing. There was definitely a problem with a caterer being involved, no matter how peripherally, in a poisoning. It made people skittish. In every other way, it was an infuriating annoyance. She had only come over to St. Agnes’s to drop off the rest of the Communion   wine and say hello to Kath. She had parked her car illegally in front of the church, run into the convent for two minutes of conversation, and run out again. Kath was being Sister Mary Scholastica with a vengeance, maybe because it was Good Friday and a day for being serious about religion. Whatever the reason, neither Judy nor Kath had been in the mood for a long talk, and Judy had come plowing back into the courtyard under the impression that she would soon be in her car and on her way to the furiously trivial pursuit of Mrs. Hamilton Cordell. She had heard Declan Boyd calling to her just as she passed the statue of St. Agnes that stood to the side of the path that led from the convent to the main gate, and now here she was.

Declan Boyd was bundled up against the cold in a 1950s-style car coat, complete with toggled closings. He had a big fake fur Russian hat on his head and heavy red wool mittens on his hands. Where he had found mittens big enough, Judy didn’t know. Judy herself was wearing no hat and no gloves, and her coat was open. She had on one of her favorite sweaters, which made her look pretty but the coat difficult to close. The temperature was barely ten above and she was freezing.

“The thing is,” Declan Boyd was saying, “I’ve thought about it and thought about it, and I think she ought to go to the police.”

“Who ought to go to the police?” Judy asked him.

“The woman I told you about,” Boyd said. “I saw her when I went back to call the ambulance, after Andy died. She was standing right there.”

“Right where?”

“Just off the anteroom in the hall.” Boyd scowled. There was, Judy thought, no other word for it. He looked like he was having a tantrum. “She must have seen everything, don’t you see? And maybe—maybe she touched something.”

“What?”

“Whatever there was to touch.”

“If you mean evidence, Dec, forget it. Not if she was in the anteroom after Andy died. I just talked to Ka—to Sister Scholastica.”

“So?”

“So Sister Scholastica just talked to the Cardinal, and the Cardinal had just talked to that man. Demarkian. He was at the police station. The lab reports are back.”

“They are?”

Judy Eagan was one of those bright women who secretly thought she wasn’t really bright. Faced with invincible stupidity, she usually thought it was being put on to annoy her.

“Of course they are,” she said, her voice sharp. “They’ve had more than twenty-four hours, for Christ’s sake—”

“I don’t think—”

“Oh, I don’t want a lecture on my language. Shut up, Dec. I mean it. Shut up. The lab reports came back. Andy was poisoned with nicotine, but there wasn’t any poison in the pitcher, and there wasn’t any in the bottles, either. It must have been in the chalice, and the chalice wasn’t in the anteroom.”

“Then what was she doing there?”

“How am I supposed to know? Dec, it’s freezing out here. I’ve got to—”

“She was looking at the books in the bookcase,” Boyd said stubbornly. “I saw her. She wasn’t taking them out or anything, she was just looking at them. But she must have been there for a long time—”

“Why?”

“Well, she could have been. She could have been. I was supposed to call the ambulance and then come right back, but I—I felt sick. You know. So I sat down and tried to get my stomach back, and I must have tried for maybe fifteen minutes. She could have been there the whole time.”

“Who?” Judy asked again.

Declan Boyd was not about to tell her who. That was a big part of his strategy in this conversation. That was a big part of the reason Judy was ready to kill him, too. Every time she asked, he just got that mulish look on his face and changed the subject.

Now, Judy saw, he was onto Our Responsibilities As Good Citizens and Good Catholics. All Declan Boyd’s speeches had titles.

“If she doesn’t agree to go, I’m going to have to go for her,” he was saying. “I can’t just let it pass. It wouldn’t be right. And it didn’t look right, either. There he was, dead all over the floor, and there she was, looking at books. Does that sound right to you?”