The Sculptress (7 page)

“Can I help you?”

She turned with a smile.

“I hope so.”

A smart woman in her late fifties had paused in front of a door marked Secretary.

“Are you a prospective parent?”

“I wish I were. It’s a lovely school. No children,” she explained at the woman’s look of puzzled enquiry.

“I see. So how can I help you?”

Roz took out one of her cards.

“Rosalind Leigh,” she introduced herself.

“Would it be possible for me to talk to the headmistress?”

“Now?” said the woman in surprise.

“Yes, if she’s free. If not, I can make an appointment and come back later.”

The woman took the card and read it closely.

“May I ask what you want to talk about?”

Roz shrugged.

“Just some general information about the school and the sort of girls who come here.”

“Would you be the Rosalind Leigh who wrote Through the Looking Glass by any chance?”

Roz nodded. Through the Looking Glass, her last book and her best, had sold well and won some excellent reviews. A study of the changing perceptions of female beauty down the ages, she wondered now how she had ever managed to summon the energy to write it. A labour of love, she thought, because the subject had fascinated her.

“I’ve read it.” The other smiled.

“I agreed with very few of your conclusions but it was extremely thought-provoking none the less. You write lovely prose, but I’m sure you know that.”

Roz laughed. She felt an immediate liking for the woman.

“At least you’re honest.”

The other looked at her watch.

“Come into my office. I have Some parents to see in half an hour, but I’m happy to give you general information until then.

This way.” She opened the secretary’s door and ushered Roz through to an adjoining office.

“Sit down, do. Coffee?”

“Please.” Roz took the chair indicated and watched her busy herself with a kettle and some cups.

“Are you the headmistress?”

“I am.”

“They were always nuns in my day.”

“So you’re a convent girl. I thought you might be. Milk?”

“Black and no sugar, please.”

She placed a steaming cup on the desk in front of Roz and sat down opposite her.

“In fact I am a nun. Sister Bridget. My order gave up wearing the habit quite some time ago. We found it tended to create an artificial barrier between us and the rest of society.” She chuckled.

“I don’t know what it is about religious uniforms, but people try to avoid you if they can. I suppose they feel they have to be on their best behaviour. It’s very frustrating.

The conversation is often so stilted.”

Roz crossed her legs and relaxed into the chair. She was unaware of it but her eyes betrayed her. They brimmed with all the warmth and humour that, a year ago, had been the outward expression of her personality.

Bitterness, it seemed, could only corrode so far.

“It’s probably guilt,” she said.

“We have to guard our tongues in case we provoke the sermon we know we deserve.” She sipped the coffee.

“What made you think I was a convent girl?”

“Your book. You get very hot under the collar about established religions. I guessed you were either a lapsed Jew or a lapsed Catholic. The Protestant yoke is easier to discard, being far less oppressive in the first place.”

“In fact I wasn’t a lapsed anything when I wrote Through the Looking Glass,” said Roz mildly.

“I was a good Catholic still.”

Sister Bridget interpreted the cynicism in her voice.

“But not now.”

“No. God died on me.” She smiled slightly at the look of understanding on the other woman’s face.

“You read about it, I suppose. I can’t applaud your taste in newspapers.”

“I’m an educator, my dear. We take the tabloids here as well as the broad sheets She didn’t drop her gaze or show embarrassment, for which Roz was grateful.

“Yes, I read about it and I would have punished God, too. It was very cruel of Him.”

Roz nodded.

“If I remember right,” she said, reverting to her book, ‘religion is confined to only one chapter of my book.

Why did you find my conclusions so hard to agree with?”

“Because they are all drawn from a single pre miss As I can’t accept the pre miss then I can’t agree with the conclusions.”

Roz wrinkled her brow.

“Which pre miss “That beauty is only skin deep.”

Roz was surprised.

“And you don’t think that’s true?”

“No, not as a general rule.”

“I’m speechless. And you a nun!”

“Being a nun has nothing to do with it. I’m streetwise.”

It was an unconscious echo of Olive.

“You really believe that beautiful people are beautiful all the way through? I can’t accept that. By the same token ugly people are ugly all the way through.”

“You’re putting words into my mouth, my dear.” Sister Bridget was amused.

“I am simply questioning the idea that beauty is a surface quality.”

She cradled her coffee cup in her hands.

“It’s a comfortable thought, of course it means we can all feel good abouj ourselves but beauty, like wealth, is a moral asset. The wealthy can afford to be law abiding, generous and kind. The very poor cannot.

Even kindness is a struggle when you don’t know where your next penny is coming from.”

She gave a quirky smile.

“Poverty is only uplifting when you can choose it.”

“I wouldn’t disagree with that, but I don’t see the connection between beauty and wealth.”

“Beauty cushions you against the negative emotions that loneliness and rejection inspire. Beautiful people are prized they always have been, you made that point yourself so they have less reason to be spiteful, less reason to be jealous, less reason to covet what they can’t have.

They tend to be the focus of all those emotions, rarely the instigators of them.” She shrugged.

“You will always have exceptions most of them you uncovered in your book but, in my experience, if a person is attractive then that attractiveness runs deep. You can argue which comes first, the inner beauty or the outer, but they do tend to walk together.”

“So if you’re rich and beautiful the pearly gates will swing open for you?” She smiled cynically.

“That’s a somewhat radical philosophy for a Christian, isn’t it? I thought Jesus preached the exact opposite. Something like it’s easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.”

Sister Bridget laughed good-humouredly.

“Yours was obviously an excellent convent.” She stirred her coffee absentmindedly with a biro.

“Yes, He did say that but, if you put it in context, it supports my view, I think, rather than detracts from it.

If you remember, a wealthy young man asked Him how he could have eternal life. Jesus said: keep the commandments. The youth answered: I have kept them, since childhood, but what more can I do. If you want to be perfect, said Jesus and I emphasise the perfect sell all you have and give it to the poor, then follow me. The young man went away sorrowing because he had many possessions and could not bring himself to sell them. It was then Jesus made the reference to the camel and the eye of the needle.

He was, you see, talking about perfection, not goodness.” She sucked the end of her biro.

“In fairness to the young man, I have always assumed that to sell his possessions would have meant selling houses and businesses with tenants and employees in them, so the moral dilemma would have been a difficult one.

But what I think Jesus was saying was this: so far you have been a goodman, but to test how good you really are, reduce yourself to abject poverty. Perfection is to follow me and keep the commandments when you are so poor that stealing and lying are a way of life if you want to be sure of waking up the next morning. An impossible goal.” She sipped her coffee.

“I could be wrong, of course.” There was a twinkle in her eye.

“Well, I’m not going to argue the toss with you on that,” said Roz bluntly.

“I suspect I’d be on a hiding to nothing. But I reckon you’re on very bumpy ground with your beauty is a moral asset argument. What about the pitfalls of vanity and arrogance? And how do you explain that some of the nicest people I know are, by no stretch of the imagination, beautiful?”

Sister Bridget laughed again, a happy sound.

“You keep twisting my words. I have never said that to be nice you have to be beautiful. I merely dispute your assertion that beautiful people are not nice. My observation is that very often they are. At the risk of labouring the point, they can afford to be.”

“Then we’re back to my previous question. Does that mean ugly people are very often not nice?”

“It doesn’t follow, you know, any more than saying poor people are invariably wicked. It just means the tests are harder.” She cocked her head on one side.

“Take Olive and Amber as a case in point. After all, that’s why you’ve really come to see me. Amber led a charmed life. She was quite the loveliest child I’ve ever seen and with a nature to match. Everyone adored her. Olive, on the other hand, was universally unpopular. She had few redeeming features. She was greedy, deceitful, and often cruel. I found her very hard to like.”

Roz made no attempt to deny her interest. The conversation had, in any case, been about them from the beginning.

“Then you were being tested as much as she was. Did you fail? Was it impossible to like her?”

“It was very difficult until Amber joined the school.

Olive’s best quality was that she loved her sister, without reserve and quite unselfishly. It was really rather touching. She fussed over Amber like a mother hen, often ignoring her own interests to promote Amber’s. I’ve never seen such affection between sisters.”

“So why did she kill her?”

“Why indeed? It’s time that question was asked.”

The older woman drummed her fingers impatiently on the desk.

“I visit her when I can. She won’t tell me, and the only explanation I can offer is that her love, which was obsession ai turned to a hate that was equally obsessional. Have you met Olive?”

Roz nodded.

“What did you make of her?”

“She’s bright.”

“Yes, she is. She could have gone to university if only the then headmistress had managed to persuade her mother of the advantages. I was a lowly teacher in those days.” She sighed.

“But Mrs. Martin was a decided woman, and Olive very much under her thumb. There was nothing we, as a school, could do to make her change her mind. The two girls left together, Olive with three good A-levels and Amber with four rather indifferent 0-levels.” She sighed again.

“Poor Olive. She went to work as a cashier in a supermarket while Amber, I believe, tried her hand at hairdressing.”

“Which supermarket was it?”

“Pettit’s in the High Street. But the place went out of business years ago. It’s an off-licence now.”

“She was working at the local DHSS, wasn’t she, at the time of the murders?”

“Yes and doing very well, I believe. Her mother pushed her into it, of course.” Sister Bridget reflected for a moment.

“Funnily enough, I bumped into Olive quite by chance just a week or so before the murders. I was pleased to see her. She looked’ she paused ‘happy. Yes, I think happy is exactly the word for it.”

Roz let the silence drift while she busied herself with her own thoughts. There was so much about this story that didn’t make sense.

“Did she get on with her mother?” she asked at last. “I don’t know. I always had the impression she preferred her father. It was Mrs. Martin who wore the trousers, of course. If there were choices to be made, it was invariably she who made them. She was very domineenng, but I don’t recall Olive voicing any antagonism towards her. She was a difficult woman to talk to. Very correct, always. She appeared to watch every word she said in case she gave herself away.” She shook her head.

“But I never did find out what it was that needed hiding.”

There was a knock on the connecting door and a woman popped her head inside.

“Mr. and Mrs. Barker are waiting, Sister. Are you ready for them?”

“Two minutes, Betty.” She smiled at Roz.

“I’m sorry. I’m not sure I’ve been very helpful. Olive had one friend while she was here, not a friend as you or I would know it, but a girl with whom she talked rather more than she did with any of the others.

Her married name is Wright Geraldine Wright and she lives in a village called Wooling about ten miles north of here. If she’s willing to talk to you then I’m sure she can tell you more than I have. The name of her house is Oaktrees.

Roz jotted down the details in her diary.

“Why do I have the feeling you were expecting me?”

“Olive showed me your letter the last time I saw her.”

Roz stood up, gathering her briefcase and handbag together. She regarded the other woman thoughtfully.

“It may be that the only book I can write is a cruel one.”

“I don’t think so.”

“No, I don’t think so either.” She paused by the door.

“I’ve enjoyed meeting you.”

“Come and see me again,” said Sister Bridget.

“I’d like to know how you get on.”

Roz nodded.

“I suppose there’s no doubt that she did it?”

“I really don’t know,” said the other woman slowly.

“I’ve wondered, of course. The whole thing is so shocking that it is hard to accept.” She seemed to come to a conclusion.

“Be very careful, my dear.

The only certainty about Olive is that she lies about almost everything.”

Roz jotted down the name of the arresting officer from the press clippings and called in at the police station on her way back to London.

“I’m looking for a DS Hawksley,” she told the young constable behind the front desk.

“He was with this division in nineteen eighty-seven. Is he still here?”

He shook his head.

“Jacked it in, twelve eighteen months ago.” He leaned his elbows on the counter and eyed her over with an approving glance.

“Will I do instead?”

Her lips curved involuntarily.