1
"I'm sorry, but that's not how I work." My voice echoed in the ancient convent corridor than I would have liked. I had one hand tucked in my coat pocket, apparently out of the slight insecurity caused by the conversation with my mother-in-law. "If you want me to investigate, I have to talk to people," I explained slightly out of tune, and I was really upset.
Three days before this conversation, my phone rang on my office desk and rattled for so long that I stopped ignoring him and picked up the phone. "Frank Downer, investigations and inquiries of all kinds, discreetly and effectively," I said, a hundred-pointed phrase and giving room for the caller. The caller was silent for a moment, cleared his throat, and finally spoke in a woman's voice. The voice sounded dignified but careful. I always watch the caller sound. The content of the message will be repeated countless times by the caller, but you simply won't get a chance to hear how it sounded at that first moment.
But the mother superior sounded dignified and careful even today, in the corridors of Mount Eagle Trinity Monastery, where I arrived ten minutes ago, after a three-hour journey from good old New York huddled in tufts of night mist. The monastery was hidden among the densely overgrown hills, and even the path leading to it from the main road was not easy to find. My AMC Matador climbed the climb safely, but he too breathed audibly after a two-kilometer climb performance upstairs. The cold September morning was like a catalog. I stretched my back and looked into the distance. The brushes of the pine crowns combed the pink-blue sky from below, and if I wasn't here for work, I would probably be able to watch for an hour.
When I convinced the mother superior of the need for cooperation, a tangle of corridors led me to my room. "Make yourself comfortable, Mr. Downer, rest along the way, around noon, Sister Elizabeth will bring you something to eat, and after lunch I'll make an appointment for you." She left with that. I looked around the room and had to admit to myself that calling it a room was a little exaggerated. Four stone walls, one window, one door. A single bed, a plain table under the window attached to the bed. Well, I wasn't expecting an alcohol fridge, and she wasn't here either. It was worse with hunger. It never occurred to me that the nuns were not eating breakfast, and my stomach was churning an hour ago at the gas station. But because I was counting on food on arrival, I only had coffee and I refused the blinking waitress with the tempting, fragrant toast with the egg. Unfortunately.
2
I should probably explain to you why I took this task, hundreds of miles away from my usual place of work. If you're thinking about a spiritual cause, you're wrong. If it occurs to you that I might suffer from a strong affection for nuns, this is not the reason either. The work of the private eye is a matter of considerable impact, especially in the sense of time, but it is also striking in the sense of personal encounters with individuals of various kinds. The impact of both types then causes significant financial losses. So when the hesitant nun's voice told what had happened to them at Mount Eagle Trinity, my last ducat in my pocket faded with hope, my head began to nod in agreement, and the words came out of my mouth, and though I certainly didn't want to go that far, the rest of Frank Downer didn't let it talk to him, got in the car and drove. And so here I am. In the room two times three meters without a refrigerator, without breakfast and so far without those ducats.
I have to admit one more thing. When the mother superior called, it was not only her voice and the promise of financial injection that fascinated me.
"Mr. Downer, hello. My name is Jennifer Atwood, and I'm the mother introduced at Mount Eagle Trinity Convent, I don't know if you've heard of him."
I haven't really heard of him.
"I am calling you on a very discreet matter. Therefore, I would like to emphasize the discretion of our conversation and possible cooperation."
I wanted to say that of course, but it didn't give me space.
"Okay," she said, as if to confirm it. "I'll say it briefly and without hesitation. I'm sure you're used to direct action."
I didn't even try to agree with her anymore.
"Two of our sisters disappeared last night."
I immediately thought of the possibility that the sisters had just bounced back to a small party, but I didn't say it out loud.
"If you thought they just went somewhere, you should know that our monastery is located in the middle of the woods, so there is nowhere to go. And other facts testify to this possibility."
"Like?"
"Like blood on the floor of their cell."
Such blood on the floor definitely testifies to a lot of things. There are few conceivable reasons why blood should be outside its carrier completely voluntarily. Involuntary blood abandonment is often, as you know, a rather unpleasant affair. This carries with it a high probability of violence or outright crime. So it has to be investigated.
With a growl in my stomach and contemplation of the blood, I survived the rest of the lunchtime, which Sister Elizabeth hesitantly brought at exactly twelve. When I finished the vegetable soup and a piece of chicken with potatoes, the part of the day when it was really nothing was over. After half past one, the mother superior came, nodded at me, and said, "Follow me."
With a feeling of claustrophobia receding, I shuffled through the tangle of corridors behind my mother superior. I hoped that during the morning she would not decide to get rid of me as an uncomfortable witness, because it would be enough to disappear around the corner and I would never get out of here again. I was just imagining my warm skeleton lying in a dark corner when we stopped abruptly, the nun opened the door and stepped inside.
The room was the same as mine, only the bed was missing. However, the young lady sitting on the chair certainly did not fulfill the common idea of a bride of God. If she had jeans and a T-shirt with a picture, she would fit into any New York club at three in the morning. I was wondering how to talk to her. The ladies and ladies probably got used to the medieval conversation here. The mother superior left. I didn't want the awkward moment to last more than a few seconds, but the young lady overtook me. She threw her foot completely leglessly and said, "so what did you want to know"? If she had a cigarette, she would light it. "Don't you have a cigar?" It shouldn't have surprised me, but it surprised me. I had it with me because I get married sometimes. I took out two.
In fact, it seemed strange to me that we could smoke in the monastery. Maybe we couldn't. I pulled hard and asked, "Are you missing your sisters here ?!" I also tried leg over leg. Cool.
"They're not losing." I thought I was taking the reins in our bizarre conversation, but I must have been wrong. She looked at the ceiling, at the walls, I thought for a moment that she was looking at my crotch, and then she was looking at the wall again, as if the previous occupant of the room had engraved messages about love that no longer wanted to be secret. "They are not lost, but now the two of us are gone. You're right. "
"Why do you, Miss, feel that you are not fully fulfilling the ordinary idea of a nun? And why do I feel that you are trying to fulfill that impression? Don't sisters want to act like sisters? ”
She laughed. How about three in the morning on Broadway just before a bottle of Beam spilled into the roadway in front of a passing lone taxi. She still surprised me. I tried to go from elsewhere. "What is your name?"
"And you?" I cleared my throat. I thought I would kill her for three seconds. But that, too, would not fulfill the common notion of how a private eye works. And someone would definitely ask me that, too. "My name is Frank Downer. New York. Something to forty. Freely entered. What else would you like to know? ”She shifted the corners of her lips symmetrically to the sides, this time without any sound.
"Good. My name is Drew. Formerly New York, now this ass. Something to twenty-six. Completely single. Besides the bundle with the one above. But we don't like each other very much. What did you want to know? ”
It looks like hard earned money.
When we had finished, I let myself be led out of the maze and had another cig at the side wall of the monastery's entrance building. Drew saw nothing. Except for the blood on the floor, because she was the one who found her and stirred the whole house with horror in her eyes. It was said that it was a puddle like rain on the sidewalk and there were no footprints in it, nor anywhere around. Well, I covered myself nicely, so it'll be a nice job. No one saw or heard anything, blood like an ox, no sign. The only house far and wide is this one, the only people far and wide are those who are already here.
3
I decided to go around the whole monastery to get an idea of the surroundings. The blue-pink sky over the pines began to churn during my conversation with Drew, and the wind changed from an ordinary breeze to a disadvantage breeze. It's like a palm that caresses you turns into a palm that doesn't know if to caress you or give you a box. Maybe if someone shaved the entire top of the hill on which Mount Eagle Trinity stood, it would turn out to be Table Mountain. However, the large plateau was densely overgrown with pines and other trees, and a view to a certain distance was possible only on one side, behind the monastery. The side from which my Matador had climbed was overgrown and nothing could be seen. There were several intertwined paths around the monastery under tall tree trunks, and without my developed sense of orientation in the "open" landscape, I would probably be able to get lost here as well as in the monastery corridors. I walked around the entire slope behind the monastery, which settled on the top in the shape of the letter "U" and whose windows with six tables flashed here and there among the tangle of emerald entwined branches. On the other side of the valley, the slope rose slightly again and the path led me to a smaller clearing. To her left was my path, to my right, about two hundred yards away, in an tall yellow grass with furry caps, sat an old house with a broken chimney. At his side, company was made by a caddy and a tool shed or something. I did not approach the house, I walked along this path at this respectful distance, and I only added to my lush imagination that for a moment I had the impression that something was flashing in the house behind the windows without curtains. Probably clouds casting a shadow.
It took me about an hour to walk around the ridge of the valley around the monastery. Early in the afternoon, it was already soaked with moisture, and the sky changed from romantic pink tones to a much more conveniently September silvery gray. I stroked the gaze of my Matador, who was graceful on the other side before I left him an hour ago, and entered the main entrance of Mount Eagle Trinity for the second time that day.
No one was anywhere. I had the idea that the monasteries were a world to themselves, but that their walls were crowded, chirping, albeit in a low voice, but still that if you stood in one place, dozens of robes would flick around and rustle in half an hour. . I had monasteries as silent anthills, with a spiritual charge in the air. Mount Eagle Trinity was neither an anthill at the moment, nor had anything in the air at all. I stood in a long corridor, stretching to either side. No sound attracted the listener's ear from a distance, no sign attracted attention, no excess light that disturbed the calm level of the air that was already in the long tubes of the corridors. However, the meaning of the word calm did not exactly fulfill my feeling of what was around me. About eighty nuns, not even a living thing, had to spend a life dedicated to their god in the monastery. If I hadn't seen my mother-in-law, the food carrier, Sister Elizabeth, and talked to Eccentric Sister Drew, I would have thought the entire building was empty. I went down the hall, to the right, to see the monastery. I passed my dungeon, sorry room, and my footsteps clapped through the long space like a pony on the castle pavement. I passed a row of doors on either side, all looking the same as mine. For some, I stopped for a moment and listened for silent prayers, religious songs, or murders of innocents. Nothing. "Hello?" I just called out as lightly as my voice would sound in that strange emptiness. It sounded strange like the emptiness. I reached the bend in the hallway and my mother-in-law almost crashed into me. "What's up here?" Yeah, it's you. ”Jennifer Atwood breathed a sigh of relief. It occurred to me that her cry "what's here" was full of something I wouldn't expect from any nun. He was full of anger. "You're looking for someone, Mr. Downer," she asked me. "Actually, I wanted to look around a bit to see if it didn't matter. "I walked outside and…" "" Surroundings? What are you… ”Jennifer burst for a second for a second in a severely suppressed explosion of anger, stemming from surprise, disapproval, and a desire to control everything. I only tell the mother of all the local nuns by her first name when they can't hear me, just for you to know. But then Jennifer always remembers that she invited me here, that she needed me, but honestly, I wouldn't want to land in the clutches of her righteous anger. "Nothing, I just wanted to get my bearings, the profile of the landscape and so on, you know?" It sounded like a lie. She smiled darkly, if you could smile darkly and still call it a smile. She left in the direction I had come from, leaving behind a few unspoken sentences, threats, and questions. I tried what it's like to say "raised your eyebrows", I found that it was nothing extra special, and I also thought that the mother superior, if she hides something herself, probably does not succeed exactly according to her ideas. . And it also occurred to me that if this mess with the missing servants of God wasn't a big mess, Jennifer certainly wouldn't have just left without driving me back to the room, sorry, the dungeon.
I shuffled half the thickness of my soles for the detective work of well-chosen shoes before slipping through a tangle of corridors somewhere where it was impossible to go any further and the door led out. The building here formed a fold, the inner side of which was hidden by the outer side against views from the surroundings, so I did not see this fold during a tour of the landscape attractions. A decorative gate led into the fold, and behind it a noise could be heard. Beehive noise. The noise of life. I walked to the sound source and opened the gate. Eighty nuns suddenly turned their heads and fell silent.
I don't know if you have experience with such a situation, so I don't. I took a breath and stood. A slight smile on my face was supposed to signal to everyone present that I was a friendly person, invited by their Jennifer, sorry, the mother introduced, with an important mission. It took about two seconds, but I could already feel my smile begin to lose its lovely nature and charm. I raised my hand half in greeting half in defense. "Um, hello, sisters, I am." "We know who you are," said an elderly woman of English appearance and speech. I have found that for some reason, life puts almost exact stereotypes of certain types of people in my way. Little cute Asians, big bald killers, red-haired English women with a deep voice and the behavior of a military instructor. We should. The Englishwoman came up to me. "Go on, sisters," she said without turning to the sisters. She took me by the forearm and led me out nonviolently but with firm conviction. "Mr. Downer, come with me, I'll tell you what's going on."
Sister Marjorie had red hair and indistinct freckles around her cheekbones. That was the first thing I noticed. Blue eyes in stark contrast to the color of her hair and the colorful colors of the religious robe added interest to this woman. Still, as I pointed out a few moments ago, she had something in her that we usually associate with the idea of a woman from the British Isles, and we don't quite praise it. Her face was more square than oval. So, I've said it out loud. She led me to her office and we each sat on one side of a large solid oak table. Sister Marjorie serves as an administrator at the convent, she told me. Basically, it meant that all the papers, except the toilet paper, passed through her hands, that no people but her killers or nun captors would escape her attention, and that she could tell me everything but things she was not allowed to tell me. As she spoke, she straightened the papers on the table, though they seemed straightened after the first two seconds. She even straightened her hair, peeking out where it shouldn't have been. She even straightened the walls of the room so that nothing would be streamed anywhere, there would be no shortage, no shouting. I got worried that the purpose of this conversation was not to compare Mr. Downer, to slip somewhere, to arrange for him to see what he should see, to hear what he was allowed to do, and so he probably only found out what he should find out. The square sister Marjorie told me the purpose of the effervescent fusion in the back of the building. A week before Jennifer picked up the phone and called a discreet New York private eye to arrive, two other sisters disappeared from the mysterious Mount Eagly Trinity. It wasn't until the pool of blood, with the disappearance of the other two, that the quiet silence of the monastery operation rocked and summoned a handsome man in the AMC Matador, gathering the lone maids of the very highest.
So four. In more tense moments, I have unappealing thoughts that I never say out loud. This time it was an idea of how long the nuns from this monastery would have to disappear at this rate so that there would be none left in the end. Instead, I asked, "I may have an inappropriate, but quite justified, given the current developments, question. So I will only ask once and I will believe that I will already know what is needed. The four lost women, is that all? No one else has disappeared, nothing but Sister Drew and my mother-in-law told me, and now you, is nothing more? I can't think of anything if you keep the facts secret from me. Did you think I'd look for the two and I wouldn't figure out if the other two had disappeared? ”
"Actually, we've been hoping for so long that the first two show up until the second ones disappeared." The nurse adjusted her restless hair in the upper left. "And so far most of us believe that the disappearance of the first two has nothing to do with the newer ones. And we actually had the negotiations that you witnessed about that. ”She smiled nervously. "Mother Superior and several others wanted to hide the disappearance of the first two. We voted on what to tell you, and they were outvoted. ”She folded her hands in her lap, as if relieved slightly.
That's why I met Jennifer in such a miserable mood. It was just decided that they would tell me that she had withheld half the information from me. But that's a flower.
Dinner was light so that my sister's belly wouldn't be pressed on her night, so shortly after I finished dinner, it was late afternoon rather than evening, so I sneaked out of my room, a dungeon, and reached the gas station with the soothing rumble of a black wild boar. I visited on the way to the monastery. The waitress was still there, the fragrant toast with the egg too. I had two.
4
Kate Rousseau is like my girlfriend. We don't live together and I've only been to her house once. Which looks very far away from my claim about a near-girlfriend. But you fight in your relationships and I will fight in mine. Kate is a nice woman in her forties and I really like this phrase with her. She looks pretty slim, even though the people closest to her know about the fake to keep quiet about. Titian hair doesn't even reach the shoulders and I like that too. Sometimes we just go for a walk together, other times we do more action, we didn't promise anything and we always come back together and don't look for any promise. I mention Kate, among other things, because I quite liked the waitress with the egg toast. As I was heading to the monastery in the mountains, I noticed that she was winking at me, and one of the reasons I arrived at this gas station tonight was that wink of her. I don't know if you will consider it a small masculine delight or a strange incomprehensible deviation from normal, but I just like it when a handsome woman winks at me. Kate is simply related to this situation. On the one hand, Miss Sue looked a lot like her, and on the other hand, when I start to like a woman more, I immediately see a picture of Kate in her flowered dress from behind her head curtain, her look without claims and laughter without coercion, and this feint of fate always thwarts me promisingly. developing romance. It was no different now. Not to mention that as I made a second toast and drank it with coffee poured from a teapot, I noticed Miss Sue winking at everyone. Not because of her morally relaxed approach to life, but simply because her eye blinks on its own. I had to smile. However, I can't say that I would drive a gas station an hour away, unnecessarily, and that I would have come up with something stupid or something. The toast, twice actually, was great, and the coffee, it definitely stung too.
I returned from the trip to the gas station in a much more uplifting mood than I had left there. The Matador parked quite quietly in the parking lot we had seen on arrival, and I sat for two minutes. One cigarette will never hurt digestion. I thought of the blinking Sue, the toast, Kate, I also remembered the eccentric sister Drew, because she was definitely one of the elements of today, whose unusualness stood out from the gray ranks of the mundane. At that, Sister Drew came out of the main entrance to the convent. I recognized her because, on the one hand, it was not yet completely dark, and then Sister Drew also had a walk, reminiscent of her past rather than her future, her stride being more striking, wild, and disorganized than prudent, calm, and moderate. I thought she'd jumped on a cigar, but she turned left and headed down the path that circled the monastery valley, where I went on a reconnaissance patrol today. I waited for him to move on, quietly slipping out of Matador's door and squeezing it behind me rather than slamming it. I avoided the fields of light thrown from the windows of the downstairs rooms and went to see Sister Drew. At least I was right that she went out to light a fire. Besides. The light of her cigarette hovered in the darkness like an orange maze, lost from a herd wandering over soaked mud. I had to be careful not to slap myself or break through a branch protruding from the forest into the path. After all, Sister Drew definitely knew the way through this path much more than I did, and my suffocating cry or howling of pain with an eye pricked on a branch would betray me safely. Now it occurred to me, are you also making funny faces while walking in the dark? A shadow flashes and your eye awaits a branch or a flying stone, a gust of air rests on your face and you are already waiting for a blow to the root of your nose? In my opinion, this idea is worth your personal, private course, of course. Let me know.
Sister Drew stalked quite briskly, stopping only about twice, either stinging a cigar or hearing a snorting pursuer, anyway, I managed to detect her act immediately after stopping, so I always stopped. I will not linger, we came to a house on the far side of the monastery valley. Drew turned out of the way, returning to the convent. Twice to the right and from behind the tall tufts of swaying grass, only her head and neck protruded. The head and neck reached the door, and a hand, a piece of which also appeared above the level of swaying grass, knocked on the door. Knock, knock, knock, I think. Someone moved inside, the door swung open, and his head and neck slid in. I suppose the rest of Sister Drew slipped in, because after my cupped arrival at the same door, there was no one on the outside of the door. Voices could be heard from within, but they could not be understood. So I moved to the front of the house, where there was a window, and I hoped to hear at least something. I heard the same mushrooms as at the door, only to hear the mood inside. Two muffled voices were arguing about something, maybe dragging on something, because at times there was the sound of moving legs, but it wasn't a classic walk. I immediately wondered if there was a match, on the other hand, the nurse would probably yell when she was able to make a muffled voice. But if she wasn't really suffocated, maybe she could only make suffocated sounds. These are exactly the dilemmas. You say: someone dies in there, should I intervene? Or, on the contrary, will you ruin the whole situation by running in there? I have had the experience that often deciding on a dilemma will solve the dilemma. However, sometimes a corpse appears on the floor after such meditation. I was right, the situation resolved itself. The door slammed around the corner and someone ran out of the house. It was Drew's sister. I was happy about that, but that didn't mean the corpse didn't show up on the floor of the house. But. But in this state of affairs, that is, in the state of search and discovery, I could do more harm than good inside again. If the other one is dead inside, I still won't help him. If he's okay, I don't have to help him. If he was injured and grunted, I would hear a grunt. I didn't hear the grunting. Sister Drew had hastily disappeared now in almost complete darkness, and I wondered for a moment if at least peek out the window and find out who the other person in the room was. Maybe it's better to come in daylight. On the one hand, it will be more visible inside, and on the other hand, there will be a less dangerous path through the forest there and back. Because the hurried footsteps of Sister Just Semempla's Club could be heard at least halfway down the path, I walked only about fifty meters from the house and lit a light. Anyone looking out the window might think she was a sister, she disappeared into the distance for a change, and the closer I came to the monastery entrance, the more likely it would sound to me just going out to smoke in the dark. That night in our non-hotel room we had something to think about and it took me at least half past one to fall asleep.
Usínání mi trvalo do půl jedné, ale vzbudil jsem se v půl čtvrté. Otevřel jsem oči a přemýšlel, proč se budím pár hodin po tom, co jsem usnul, protože to poznáte, že je ještě noc a že jste nevyspalí, že vaše tělo odpočívalo jen krátkou chvíli a že ze spravedlivého spánku jste byli nespravedlivě vytrženi. Ale čím?
Posadil jsem se a v naprostém tichu chvíli seděl na kavalci. Co to bylo? Napínal jsem uši a neslyšel nic kromě vlastního dechu. Můj šestý smysl mi napovídal, abych vstal a šel ke dveřím. S šestým smyslem mám tu zkušenost, že většinou správně zaznamená existenci události nebo jevu, ale ne vždy správně vyhodnotí, co mám v tu chvíli dělat já. Nejinak tomu bylo i tentokrát. Můj maják vlnění cizích realit mě správně poslal ke dveřím, protože dveře byly zdrojem zvuku, který mě probudil. Ovšem kdyby můj maják byl zároveň majákem moudrým, na dveře by mě upozornil pěkně zpovzdálí.
Došoupal jsem se potichu ke dveřím a přiložil ucho k jejich ploše. Skoro něžné přiložení boltce mě zkusilo rozněžnit a zapomenout na chvíli na účel mého ušního přikládání. Můj šestý smysl mě dostal do situace plné hrůzy pomalu, náhle a nečekaně. Na druhé straně dveří jsem naprosto zřetelně slyšel dech cizího člověka.
Postavily se mi chlupy vzadu na krku a na pažích naběhla husí kůže. Dech nezněl jako jemné vzdychání roztoužené ženy, jak vás třeba mohl napadnout, zvuk, vzdálený od mého ucha necelé tři centimetry zněl, jako by za dveřmi funěl medvěd, číhající na svou kořist plný hladu, touhy žrát a trhat a ničit. Dveře se otvírají dovnitř. Mohl bych návštěvníka překvapit prudkým pohybem dveří dovnitř místnosti a až by upadl, vrhnout se na něj nebo utéct do chodeb kláštera. Co když se ale o dveře neopírá a nespadne? Návštěvník vyřešil jedno z mých dilemat a vzal za kliku.
Na vteřinu jsem přemýšlel, co mě probudilo, jestli když nezvaný host přišel, zakopl a padl na dveře, nebo jestli došel ke dveřím a říhnul si, nebo … víc času na nesmyslné přemítání nebylo, dveře se otevřely a já se jemným hopnutím ocitl skrytý za nimi. Poté, co můj noční host vstoupil do místnosti, víceméně temné jako klášterní kobka, hezké přirovnání, že, jsem sám sebe pochválil, že jsem se nerozhodl k ukvapenému otvírání dveří. Slabé světlo, padající do místnosti okýnkem, ustupovalo obrovitému mlaskajícímu stínu, s pohyby dvounohého nosorožce, blížícího se k mé posteli.
Chlupy na krku se mi svíjely jako tanečníci ruského baletu se střevními potížemi a hrdlo se mi sevřelo v nečekané hrůze. Sbíral jsem odvahu cokoli udělat, něco, co se nerovnalo zoufalému čekání na nehezký konec, zároveň jakékoli čekání zmenšovalo moji šanci na jakoukoli akci. Vzhledem k velikosti návštěvníka jsem zavrhl nápad vrazit do něj zezadu a zdrhat a vynechal jsem tedy tu část s vrážením a zdrhal.
Dveře se mi povedlo jenom přibouchnout a namířil jsem si to chodbami k zadnímu východu z kláštera, kde jsem předtím našel ozdobná vrata a potkal osmdesát jeptišek. Příšerné stvoření vydalo zvuk hrůznější než byla jeho velikost, což i mě zaskočilo. Znělo to jako když se pět vlků rozhodne zavýt společně, ale neumějí správně sladit výšky svých nářků. Běžel jsem bosky a moje spěchající kroky capaly o kamennou dlažbu jako kroky dětí vesele se prohánějících chodbami letního sídla zámožných rodičů.