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 Sister Agatha officiates at the Goletta convent for several years when she sees arriving one day a tramp not like the others. This latter, appearing under the name of Mitchell Carter, is no other than Mason Capwell, come to investigate into the murder of Dr. Mark McCormick of which he is suspected.
Suspicious by nature, Sister Agatha remains at first very evasive when this stranger questions her about Sister Mary DuVall or Mother Isabel, both dead two years ago. She refers to Father Michael Donnelly, who agrees with her on the fact of preventing this man from approaching Sister Sarah, another deaf-and-dumb, fragile and restless sister. Her suspicions increase when she discovers that this tramp is in fact Mason, Mary DuVall's former lover.
When a gas explosion makes a victim, everybody thinks that Mason died. Sister Agatha thus thinks the story is finished, but it is without taking into account the arrival to the convent of a new sister, Sister Rebecca. This one is no other than Julia Wainwright, come to investigate into Mason's disappearance. Agatha is immediately wary of her, and tries by all means to move her away from Sister Sarah who seems to hide a dark secret. Being afraid that Sarah finds the memory of a drama from the past, she gets opposed to Father Michael when he authorizes Julia to take Sarah in her home.
One evening, Agatha goes to Julia's house and cuts the telephone links. She threatens Julia and Sarah with a gun and leads them in a disused church. Gone crazy, she accuses Julia of having broken the tranquillity of Goletta. Michael and Cruz Castillo find their track and succeed in disarming Agatha. This one recognizes to have killed Dr. Mark McCormick in the Goletta bell tower, one evening when he was ready to rape Sarah. She then threw his body in the ocean, which derived up to the Capwell boathouse.
Agatha reserves her last revelation to Michael : Mason did not die, she saw him running away from the convent the evening of the explosion. A piece of information which restores some hope to Julia, whereas Agatha stays in prison for an indefinite
period...
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