“Was Patrick hospitalized?” Judith asked.
“Treated and released,” the doctor replied. “He refused to stay.”
Judith frowned as Renie took a pen out of her purse. “I gather his wounds were consistent with an accident injury.”
“Possibly,” Dr. Carmichael said, “but I wasn’t the attending physician at the hospital.” He looked again at his watch. “Forgive me, I must go. I know you’re helping the police with their inquiry, but I do have to call on another patient this evening.”
“Of course,” Judith said. “I’m sorry to take up your time.”
“Quite all right,” he said, and started to walk briskly away just as Judith realized what Renie was about to do. “Stop!” she shouted.
Dr. Carmichael turned around at the head of the stairs. “Yes?”
“Not you. My cousin. Sorry.” Judith marched over to Renie and knocked the pen out of her hand. “How could you? Those pen marks better come off. These portraits must be worth a fortune.”
“I doubt it,” Renie said, studying the mustache she’d drawn on an eighteenth-century lady with a very long nose and slightly bulging eyes. “Most of them are just one step above paint-by-the-numbers.”
“You get worse as you get older,” Judith declared angrily, trying to wipe off the mustache with her finger. “You age, but you don’t act it.”
Renie uttered an impatient sound. “Did it ever occur to you that I get tired of being shoved into the background while you hold center stage? Okay, so I’ve got some ego, but if we were in an opera, you’d be listed as the star soprano and I’d get a small contralto cast credit as Lumpa-Lumpa, Donna Fabulosa’s Drab Companion.”
“For heaven’s sakes,” Judith retorted, “you have your own business, you’re a talented artist, you get plenty of credit for—”
“Not to mention,” Renie broke in, airing yet more decades-old grievances, “that when we were kids, it always bothered me because on the calendar we got every year from church, your October birthday fell on the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary, not to mention you had both Saint Teresa of Avila and Saint Therese of Lisieux bracketing your big day while I got stuck with St. Willibrord and St. Prosdocimus. Talk about obscure!”
Judith couldn’t help but feel a bit sheepish. “How could I do anything about that? Besides, we’re grown up now. As for my sleuthing, you usually encourage me. But that still doesn’t give you the right to vandalize other people’s possessions.”
Renie gazed at the portrait, which still showed a faint trace of pen mark. “Frankly, I think it’s an improvement.”
“I think it’s childish of you, and—” Judith stopped. “Saint Therese. The French one, the Little Flower of God. Who mentioned her recently?”
Renie frowned. “One of us? When we were talking about that spooky B&B in Normandy?”
Judith shook her head. “No, I don’t think so, even though my suitcase had mistakenly been removed from the train at Lisieux, but I got it back before we sailed.” She shrugged. “It’ll come to me.”
Before Renie could respond, Ogilvie came out of Moira’s suite. “Come in. We’ve finished our inquiry about the protesters.”
MacRae joined his sergeant in the hall. “Mrs. Gibbs is calmer. Dr. Carmichael’s sedative must be taking effect. She was still quite distressed when we arrived. We’ll meet you out front.” He turned to Ogilvie. “We should speak with the on-duty personnel.” With courteous nods to the cousins, the policemen made their way down the hall.
Moira looked very different from the impeccably groomed, graceful, and poised young woman Judith and Renie had encountered in the graveyard. Her red-gold hair lay in tangles on the lace-trimmed pillow; her fine complexion was ashen and her face drawn; the graceful fingers seemed more like claws as she grasped anxiously at the elegant duvet.
“You must think me an invalid,” she said in a toneless voice. “I apologize for greeting you from my bed again. I was up for a while earlier but that mob shredded my nerves. Except for Will, I’ve made Fergus turn visitors away ever since you were here. Several people have called on me in the past few days, but I simply couldn’t deal with them. Curiosity-seekers, if you ask me, though Seumas Bell had the courtesy to offer apologies for the ruckus with Patrick when you were here. I was still upset, so I told Elise to send him away.”
“Please,” Judith said, sitting in one of the two brocade-covered armchairs that had been pulled close to the bed. “You’ve suffered so many losses. And the scene this evening was really awful.”
Moira nodded once. “I understand you were there.”
“We were,” Judith said. “We got caught up in the traffic jam.”
“You’d come to call on me?” Moira asked.
“No,” Renie put in from where she was still standing at the foot of the bed. “We were going to the circus. I’ve got a gig as a clown.”
“We were headed to the Priory to see Marie,” Judith said, avoiding her cousin’s glare. “We’d heard Will was missing.”
“That’s absurd,” Moira said in a listless voice. “He was here. Marie should’ve known that. Why didn’t she call me? Why didn’t she call Will? Marie’s usually sensible. It must be the flu.”
“Did the ruckus outside disturb your baby?” Judith asked.
“Of course,” Moira answered, displaying a trifle more animation. “He cried for half an hour. My governess had to walk him all over the house. Ah. Here she is now.”
A plump and plain woman of indeterminate age entered the room. “Master Jamie has finally settled down,” she announced, her brown eyes darting between Moira, Judith, and Renie. “Shall I let him sleep through his eleven o’clock feeding?”
