A Matter of Time Read online

  “FULL FATHOM FIVE, A DEAD MAN LIES…”

  The diver saw a parrot fish and red snapper, but was intrigued by a little green fish, following it down into a wide cleft in the reef. It was on its way to join another, which was feeding on something under the pink coral. Curious, she swam closer.

  What had drawn them? It appeared to be something shiny and round, like a brown marble on the fine, white sand. A marble? She reached down to retrieve it. But it was lodged in something under the sand.

  Running out of breath—and patience—she brushed the sand away.The air in her lungs exploded into her face mask as she screamed. The marble was an eye, in the face of a man…

  PRAISE FOR DAVID MANUEL’S

  PREVIOUS MYSTERIES

  A MATTER OF DIAMONDS

  “An exciting mystery [with] refreshingly complex characters.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “An entertaining and smooth read…a classic whodunnit full of twists, turns, and red herrings.”

  —Provincetown Banner

  “Deliciously fresh characters…highly recommended.”

  —CBA Marketplace

  “Strongly recommended.”

  —Library Journal

  A MATTER OF ROSES

  “Well-developed characters, an authentic Massachusetts location…and a complex plot make this a gripping read.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Chock-full of action and character subplots, this debut mystery (and series) is totally captivating.”

  —Library Journal

  “A terrific little thriller…a sweet-smelling, suspenseful rose—but watch out for thorns!”

  —Cape Cod Journal

  “Recommended to readers who don’t like sugarcoating but who enjoy spiritual truths included in their mysteries.”

  —CBA Marketplace

  Also by David Manuel

  A Matter of Diamonds

  A Matter of Roses

  Copyright

  Faith Abbey is in spirit quite close to the Community of Jesus, the ecumenical religious community of which the author has been a member for 29 years.

  This book is a work of fiction. Except as noted above, names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  WARNER BOOKS EDITION

  Copyright © 2002 by David Manuel

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

  This Warner Books edition is published by arrangement with Paraclete Press.

  Warner Books, Inc.

  Hachette Book Group

  237 Park Avenue

  New York, NY 10017

  Visit our website at www.HachetteBookGroup.com

  First eBook Edition: October 2009

  ISBN: 978-0-446-56544-8

  Contents

  “Full Fathom Five, A Dead Man Lies…”

  Praise For David Manuel’s Previous Mysteries

  Also by David Manuel

  Copyright

  acknowledgments

  1 the dream

  2 devil’s island

  3 tu to tango

  4 the quarry cottage

  5 laventura

  6 the impossible dream

  7 busman’s holiday

  8 the white horse

  9 the gleama

  10 bermuda rules

  11 two ladies

  12 to the table down at sandys

  13 once in love with amy

  14 amy’s story

  15 fathers and sons

  16 a miserable saturday afternoon

  17 the beater

  18 always in love with amy

  19 a cask of amontillado

  20 give… and forgive

  21 flawed paradise

  22 knock you down

  23 man with no name

  24 a froggy would a-wooing go

  25 the new french connection

  26 mr. big

  27 fathers and sons, ii

  28 captains courageous

  29 tying up loose ends

  30 saving plain jane

  31 confessor

  32 witness

  33 our turn

  34 fathers and sons, iii

  35 thieves’ honor

  36 force nine

  37 one by land, two by sea

  38 a matter of time

  39 living the nightmare

  40 lukewarm pursuit

  41 frog-gone conclusion

  42 welcome to bermuda

  43 compline

  To

  my dear friends

  John and Barry French,

  boon companions

  on the pilgrim’s way

  acknowledgments

  The hardest part of writing fiction occurs before the actual writing begins. When everything is still up in the air, when the pieces have not fallen into place, and the characters have yet to reveal their past, a writer needs uninterrupted time and unrestricted space. Eventually he must narrow his focus, as a chess master reduces his world to 64 squares. But in the beginning, he needs to ramble, mentally and physically.

  Few locales are as ideal as the beach house of Charlie and Katy Towers of Jacksonville, Florida. Atlantic Beach is the best drifting/musing beach I know of. I take this opportunity to acknowledge the kindness and generosity of Charlie and Katy, who make their house available to me each February.

  I would also like to acknowledge the invaluable input of my two editors—Time-Warner’s Sara Ann Freed, whose wise and perceptive suggestions improved this book immeasurably, and Paraclete Press’s Lillian Miao, whose encouragement at a moment of deep discouragement was crucial. I should also mention my brother, Bill, and his wife, Christy, whose eagle eyes at the galley-proofing stage have saved me much embarrassment.

  Finally, I would like to express my gratitude to John and Barry French of Scottsdale, Arizona, who have opened their home and their hearts to me for early work on each of these mysteries.

  1 the dream

  A wall of green seawater crashed against the front windshield of the boat’s cabin. From the windshield’s corners, white hairline fractures streaked like lightning across the Plexiglas. One more wave like that one would stove it in and send them straight to the bottom.

  And Brother Bartholomew, peering out into the eerie, gray-green half-light of the storm, could see it coming. Building, directly in front of them.

  Watching the advancing mountain of water, he opened his mouth to scream. No sound came. Icy fingers reached up into his entrails and gripped them, forming a fist.

  It grew dark in the cabin. The wave towered over them now, blotting out the sky. As he looked up at it, its top edge started to curl down.

  Now the scream came—and kept on coming, though hands were urgently shaking him.

  “Bart! Come on, wake up!” demanded a frightened Brother William, his roommate. “It’s a dream!”

  “The—wave!” Bartholomew managed, pointing at the ceiling of the dark room.

  “You’re in bed!” shouted Brother Clement, his other roommate, turning on a light. “In the friary. On dry ground.”

  Bartholomew blinked. Reality began to seep in around the edges of what he was seeing. “What?”

  He looked around—at his roommates, the desk, the two sturdy double-decker bunk beds. Slowly the fist in his stomach loosened.

  Clement shook his head. “It’s my fault. I never should have persuaded you to come. I’m—really sorry.”
<
br />   Bartholomew tried to smile. “Not your fault, Clem. I didn’t have to go. Shouldn’t have. My father died like that, twenty years before the Andrea Gayle went down.” He shuddered. “The Perfect Storm was one movie I didn’t need to see. But when it came around again, after all those awards—” He shrugged. There was nothing more to say.

  At breakfast in the refectory the following morning, the other monks greeted him pleasantly enough. But no one jokingly asked if he’d slept well. Or seen any good movies lately.

  It must have been even worse than he thought.

  The service of Lauds, which on weekdays preceded morning Mass, provided a welcome respite. He’d not always welcomed these mini-services, known as offices or hours, during which they chanted the Psalms in Latin, in the manner prescribed by St. Gregory fourteen hundred years ago. He had chafed at how they always seemed to cut across whatever he was doing, as if his time was of no importance. Gradually he had come to see that it was God’s time, not his, and if this was how God intended him to spend it, then so be it.

  In the robing room, he went to his peg and lifted the beige robe over his head, letting it settle evenly on his shoulders. He raised the cowl briefly to put on the appropriate surplice for the day—white for Eastertide and the great feast days, red for Pentecost and the martyrs’ days, purple for Lent, blue for Advent, and green the rest of the time—then ducked his head for the chain of the small wooden cross that rested on his chest.

  Carved on the cross was the symbol of Faith Abbey, a shock of wheat with a single grain at its base—a visual reference to John 12:24, “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”

  Fingering the cross, he smiled ruefully. He’d fallen into the earth, all right, but he seemed to be resisting decomposition.

  The act of robing was like a renewal of his vows, which for a monk were like wedding vows. With his first, he had relinquished the right to own, to choose, and to marry. Five years later, secure and confident in his call, he had taken his final vow, of stability and obedience. He would accept without question the authority of the Abbot or Abbess and the Senior Brother. And he would never leave. He would be buried with his brothers in the abbey’s corner of the town cemetery.

  As they entered the sanctuary, solemnly proceeding in a column of twos, he relaxed. Slipping on his robe was like slipping into peace. No matter how much stress he was under, or how frustrated or angry, it was as if he were entering another world. A world with no end, no beginning. Of permanence and eternity.

  Was it the real world? When he first came to the abbey twenty years ago, he had wondered if he was escaping reality. He soon discovered that there was every bit as much reality within the abbey as without. But there was also a sense of abiding tranquility, which in their new basilica was even greater. As the brothers blended their voices into one, the Gregorian chant rose and fell like the ebb and flow of the sea. The thought struck him again that their 28 voices were not only blending one with another, but with the voices of monks down through the ages, who had sung these phrases in exactly the same way.

  Like the smoke of incense, the chant wafted up to the distant rafters and wreathed the lofty columns, lingering in the mind long after their singing ceased.

  As the last echo died away, stillness returned. It was far from empty. The basilica itself seemed to be listening—calmly but intently, noting every sound, every thought.

  He smiled. The peace of God did indeed pass all understanding. Long ago he’d tried to understand it. Now he just embraced it, as probably the best part of monastic life.

  Gloria Patri et Filio et Spiritui Sancto…. He felt at home. Cared for, by God. And this morning he wished he could just stay here, in the hollow of God’s hand—forever.

  After Lauds there was morning Mass, attended by the whole abbey, and after Mass there was a message for Brother Bartholomew to join Brother Anselm in the library. He found the Senior Brother in his favorite chair, by the window where he could watch the early morning sun playing on the apple trees.

  Anselm had aged gracefully. The years may have grayed his hair and added a natural tonsure to the back of his head, but the brown eyes were as clear—and as seeing—as ever. He’s only twenty years older than I am, mused Bartholomew, on the verge of fifty himself.

  They were alone. He drew up a chair alongside his spiritual director and waited.

  There was no one he trusted more or felt closer to than Anselm, though that had not always been the case. When he’d entered the abbey’s friary at the age of 28, Brother Anselm had been the novice master. He’d struck the new novice as too quick to make up his mind—and too slow to change it. “The Number One enemy of ‘Best’ is ‘Good,’” Anselm had been fond of saying, and he’d practiced what he preached, requiring the absolute best of himself always, and assuming his young charges were doing the same.

  Over the years Bartholomew had come to see that the very things he’d judged Anselm for were actually great strengths—strengths that benefited all of them. Anselm’s refusal to compromise in the pursuit of excellence had inspired the rest of them to go and do likewise.

  With the passing years, the Senior Brother had mellowed. They all had. The average age in the brotherhood was 43, and while that was three years younger than the average of the 69 sisters in the abbey’s convent, it was climbing steadily. Unless they gained some new novices….

  He smiled inwardly, recalling a poster that Brother Ambrose had once made for the benefit of the young men in abbey families. (Counting the children, the abbey’s membership was around 350, most of them civilians.) A parody of the World War I poster of a resolute Uncle Sam pointing at the passerby and summoning him to duty abroad, Ambrose’s poster featured an equally resolute, robed figure—

  THE BROTHERHOOD WANTS YOU.

  So far, only three had responded—none of whom had actually been born on Cape Cod, much less in the little harbor village of Eastport, as Bartholomew had.

  At the bird feeder outside the window, a sparrow breakfasted while two chickadees perched on a nearby bough, awaiting the next sitting. Anselm seemed totally absorbed in this gentle drama till Bartholomew felt compelled to speak. “If this is about last night—”

  The older brother turned to him. “It’s not about last night—though that nightmare’s grip on you is an indication of where you are.”

  Anselm turned back to the bird feeder. “What happened last Friday, there,” he nodded toward the apple trees, “is of more concern to me. I had to wait until I could talk to Mother Michaela before speaking to you about it.” Their Abbess was also the director of the choir, which had just returned from a concert tour.

  “You mean, with Koli? Anselm, that was not a big deal. He—”

  “You’re wrong,” the Senior Brother cut in. “It was—and is—a ‘big deal.’ And the fact that you don’t know it, is another indication of where you are—or aren’t.”

  Friday afternoon Novice Nicholas, whom everyone called Koli, had been working with Bartholomew in the apple orchard (if eight trees could be called an orchard). When Nicholas had entered the novitiate three months after his 21st birthday, he had exhibited effeminate tendencies and had admitted to having been increasingly drawn to what he referred to as “an alternative lifestyle.”

  Then God had intervened. To his utter dumbfoundment, Nicholas had discovered that God was real, that He loved him beyond all human comprehension, and that He had been waiting all Nicholas’s life for him to realize it.

  The realization had turned his world upside down, and eventually he was led to join the friary. It had been felt that he needed to be brought along by a strong, mature father figure. This would enable him to complete the father–son bonding process that had been interrupted when his own father had abandoned Nicholas and his mother eleven years before.

  Brother Bartholomew had been the obvious choice for this role model, and they had worked well together. The repatterning occurred naturally, as
Bartholomew, in charge of the abbey’s grounds, had shown Koli how to cultivate roses, spread manure, edge and trim and mow. Gradually the novice’s responses had modulated, until his previous tendencies were rarely in evidence. It was a slow process—so slow that Koli himself may have been unaware of the change taking place within him. Until Friday.

  That afternoon, after several hours of pruning in the orchard, Bartholomew had commended him on the exemplary job he had done on the two trees assigned to him.

  Overjoyed, and still desperate for a father’s approval, Koli had thrown his arm around the older monk’s shoulders and in imitation of an old beer commercial, exclaimed, “I love you, man!”

  Bartholomew had frozen, then shrugged the arm off—coldly, brusquely. With no explanation.

  The young novice had stared at him. Then, eyes filling, he had run off—and avoided Bartholomew ever since.

  2 devil’s island

  Breaking the heavy silence, Anselm spoke in measured tones. “What you did was reprehensible and inexcusable.”

  Bartholomew’s mouth fell open. In all their years together, Anselm had never spoken to him in this fashion. He knew he should just take it. Anselm was usually right, especially in matters concerning the friary.

  But he was hurt. And angry. And tired of just taking it—from Anselm, from life, from everything.

  So he didn’t.

  “Look!” he declared. “I’ve always had an aversion to—” he hesitated, “to people like that. When I’m around them, it gives me the creeps. I can’t help it; it’s instinctive.”

  “No, it is not!” Anselm shot back. “You are no more a prisoner of your instincts than Koli is.”

  “But it’s an abomination in the sight of God!” Bartholomew exclaimed, and then smiled sardonically. “Unfortunately for those who’ve made a religion of fairness, God is not politically correct.”

  Anselm refused to be drawn into debate. “I’ll grant you, God does not make mistakes. He made men to be men and women to be women, and never intended them to pair off with their own kind.”