Vow of Chastity (16 page)

‘We are not made of money, Sister. I am aware that Rhodesia is now Zimbabwe but the actual country is still in the same position on all the maps and you are at liberty to ink in corrections.’

All the children had scratched their names on the inside lids of their desks. It was, she pondered, tracing the spindly capitals of Petroc with a sad finger, their way of staking out their territory. Even the Penglows had put their names. The great mystery was that no teacher ever caught them in the act of doing it. No, Samantha
Olive hadn’t inscribed her desk lid. No need to establish herself or no sense of identity? Whatever the reason only the names of previous pupils marked the smooth inner surface of the wood.

She went to the main desk from which she surveyed her class every morning and took out paper and pen. The list of questions unravelled from her hand.

(i) Who has been sneaking into the chapel to take candles, flowers and holy water and why?

(ii) Why have the children been so unnaturally good all term?

(iii) Where did Sister Margaret lose her rosary and what made her remember?

(iv) What ‘evil’ did both old Hagar and Mr Holt sense?

She crumpled up the paper and aimed it neatly into the wastepaper basket as the outer door opened and Detective Sergeant Mill walked in.

‘I saw that old wreck your community laughingly refers to as a car,’ he said without greeting. ‘What the devil are you doing here, Sister Joan?’

‘I’ve a perfect right to be here. I do teach here, you know? Anyway I thought it possible there might be something in one of the children’s desks that might help –’

‘We already looked,’ he said.

‘When?’

‘When Sister – the little nun who looks like a rabbit was deputizing for you.’

‘Sister David and she’s very efficient. She’s also a Latin scholar.’

‘Thanks for the reference.’ He let amusement creep into his smile. ‘Seriously, did you fancy that we wouldn’t look here?’

‘I didn’t think – and Sister David never mentioned it.’

‘Does Sister David have to report to you?’ he enquired.

‘No, of course not.’ She frowned, thinking that Mother Dorothy might have mentioned the fact that the desks had already been searched, or had she thought
that Sister Joan might find something the police had overlooked? More probably she had decided to let her come here in the hope that it might assuage her restlessness.

‘We found nothing you wouldn’t find in any school‚’ he told her. ‘I take it that you haven’t either?’

‘Not a thing,’ she admitted.

‘You’ve been making notes.’ He stooped to the wastepaper basket and smoothed out the paper.

‘Amateur stuff,’ she said uncomfortably.

‘But quite acute. Have the kids been unnaturally good?’

‘Like angels. Very unnatural.’

‘Any ideas why?’

‘Nothing to speak of.’

She hadn’t the right to point him in any particular direction.

‘What’s this about “evil”?’

‘Old Hagar up at the camp and Timothy’s father both commented, independently, that they were conscious of the presence of evil. I suppose you don’t believe in that?’

‘You can’t be a policeman and not believe in the reality of evil,’ he answered sombrely. ‘Man is a sick animal, Sister Joan. Make no mistake about that.’

‘And can also rise near to the angels,’ she said.

‘You’re an idealist, Sister.’ He smiled at her in a companionable fashion. ‘Also it may not be such a good idea for you or any of the community to go wandering alone in lonely places. I’m only assuming the two deaths are connected but the
modus
operandi
was different in each case. So why not drive back to the convent and do – whatever nuns do all day?’

‘I have some visits to make first. Sergeant, have you seen Padraic Lee?’

‘Not this morning. Why?’

‘He is very probably waiting for you down at the station then. His little girl found a heavy candlestick this morning, flung on the edge of the camp. She assumed it was scrap metal and took it to the wagon.’

‘He brought it to the station?’ he asked sharply.

‘He didn’t know that anything had happened to Sister Margaret. Tabitha – his daughter is busily cleaning the candlestick up.’

‘Damn and blast!’ he exploded.

‘Detective Sergeant Mill!’

‘Sorry, Sister Joan, but it’s enough to make a saint swear. I’d better get down there at once. How did you happen to know?’

‘Mr Lee was driving past and saw the convent car.’

‘Get your visiting done,’ he said curtly, ‘and then get back to the convent.’

‘“Get thee to a nunnery”?’ she queried with a flash of mischief.

‘That’s the burden of it, Sister. Thanks for the information.’

He went out, and she sat for a moment listening to the car drive away. He had taken her paper with him. She wondered if her own list of queries had stirred anything in his mind, or did he see her as a meddling amateur?

There had been another question she hadn’t written down. The oddly sinister little rhyme that Samantha had produced for the homework task lingered like a bad taste.

In the deserted classroom the words had a chilling ring. She shivered slightly and hurried to lock up and get into the car.

Driving up to the greenway she thrust down the doubts that were crowding into her head. Ought she to have mentioned the rhyme to Detective Sergeant Mill? Did she have the right to direct his thoughts towards people who might be completely innocent? Children often went through a morbid phase when they were nearing puberty.

She parked below the crest in a dip of the land that
effectively concealed the car from any casual glance. On Saturdays people often went out shopping or into town. She would have her words ready should it prove
otherwise
with the Olives.

‘I’m very sorry to trouble you but I suppose you have heard of the very tragic event early this morning at the convent. I was wondering if you would care to give something towards a wreath for Sister Margaret?’

In daylight the big house lost its sinister aspect and became a large, bleak stone building that needed
repointing
and painting. She walked up to the front door and pulled the bell rope vigorously, hearing the echoing jangle within the house. Nobody came to open the door; no head poked out of a window. She rang the bell again with the same result and then walked slowly round to the back.

Here was a yard with a wash house and line. There was a washing-machine in the wash house, its gleaming white incongruous against the dirty whitewashed walls.

The back door was locked. Sister Joan scowled at it. When one contemplated action it was frustrating to be defeated by an inanimate object.

‘The coal chute?’ She asked herself the question aloud as she looked around. There was no coal shute but there was another door, its surface pitted with woodworm, its padlock not completely secured.

If I hadn’t entered the religious life I’d have made a splendid burglar, she decided, wrenching the padlock open and pulling at the door.

Steep steps led into blackness and the air was musty. The opening of the door admitted sufficient light to reveal another door at the bottom. She went down cautiously, glad that the grey habit of her Order reached only to the ankles and didn’t trail on the ground. The door at the bottom of the stairs creaked when she turned the knob and pushed it ajar.

This was the cellar which was unsafe according to what the Olives had said. She hoped the day’s adventure wouldn’t end with herself buried under a pile of rubble. So far, and making allowances for her limited vision in
the deep gloom, everything seemed solid enough.

There was nothing there but a small, bare, very grubby cellar, with a further flight of stairs leading up to the ground floor. She mounted the stairs and opened the door, finding herself in the corridor that led past the main staircase into the front hall.

This was the door from which the new au pair, Jan Heinz, had emerged on the evening she and Sister
Margaret
had come visiting. She went to the foot of the stairs, looking up, listening to her own heartbeats in the silence of the house.

Then she was climbing the stairs, uncomfortably aware that the fact nothing in the rule specifically forbade the Daughters of Compassion to break into empty houses, was no excuse at all. Only her motive mitigated her fault.

There were numerous bedrooms, most of them
unfurnished
. The one she immediately identified as
Samantha’s
had had some trouble taken over it. Fresh pink and white paper covered the walls and there were pink curtains at the windows. The furniture was white.

A pretty room for a cherished only child. With a feeling of shame at her own prying she opened the wardrobe door. Clothes hung on padded hangers, drawers at the side held neat piles of underwear. A long bookcase contained the familiar children’s classics.

I am behaving abominably, she thought. Nothing
justifies
this prying.

At the back of the wardrobe behind a row of shoes was a neat weekend case. Lifting it out she clicked up the latch and stared, with a feeling less of surprise than of
inevitability
at the candles and the bunch of browned and limp daffodils, and the two plastic bottles of water.

Samantha had stolen these items from the church? Why? What possible value could these things have? They were consecrated by virtue of the blessing conferred on everything in the chapel, but the child could have asked for them openly if she’d wanted them. Sister Joan reached in and picked up a prayer card, decorated with a sentimental Madonna and Child. The sentence on the back was in Samantha’s round hand.

Please,
dear
God,
protect
my
chastity.
Amen.

A child of eleven praying that her chastity be protected? Why? The things taken from the chapel suddenly acquired a new and poignant significance. They were protective devices, shields against fear.

The sound of a car in the drive below brought her to her feet. The Olives were back. She dropped the prayer card back, closed the suitcase and thrust it behind the shoes, sped along the corridor and down the stairs, whisking through the cellar door just as a key grated in the lock of the front door. Muffled voices sounded and footsteps.

The gloom of the cellar was intense after the daylight of the upper storey. She forced herself to go slowly down the stairs, one hand out to trail along the wall. She was at the bottom when the wall yielded to her palm, moving inwards as if it were a living creature.

A door, her commonsense told her. She groped automatically for a light switch and jumped with relief as light flooded the chamber in which she stood. This part of the cellars had been whitewashed and the floor covered with rush matting. Shelves on the wall held video tapes and albums, and suitcases were piled against the wall opposite.

A storeroom? She took out one of the albums and skirted the protruding edge of a suitcase.

Photographs were neatly arranged in plastic covers within the album. Her eyes were riveted to the page at which she had opened it. A feeling of sick horror flooded her being as the subject matter penetrated her reluctant understanding. She had heard of
pornography
, but had never, even before entering the religious life, seen anything that could be construed as more than mildly erotic. These carefully posed photographs were so sick that her mind rebelled against the knowledge that human beings had posed for and taken them.

Her hands felt dirty. She dropped the album and stumbled into the outer cellar, wanting only to get out into the fresh air and sunlight. The yard was deserted. She went through a side gate, stood retching for a
moment, and then set off at a swerving run across the greenway to where she had left the car.

The police station had its usual air of understated bustle. Sister Joan, hurrying in, was greeted by the same desk sergeant she had seen before.

‘Good afternoon, Sister. No more bad news, I hope? You’ve had your fair share of it up at the convent, I’d say.’

‘Is Detective Sergeant Mill here?’ she asked.

‘What can I do for you, Sister?’ He put his head in at the door.

‘May I speak to you for a few moments?’ she asked tensely.

‘Be my guest.’ He held open the door politely.

This wasn’t the office where she’d had her fingerprints taken but a smaller room with filing cabinets stacked against one wall and a desk on which a photograph of two small boys held pride of place.

‘Your sons?’ She took the chair he indicated.

‘Brian and Kevin. My name’s Alan.’

‘Detective Sergeant Mill,’ she said, not availing herself of the implied invitation, ‘you must go at once to the Olives’ house and search it. The two of them – Clive and Julia Olive, are earning their living from child pornography. That’s against the law.’

‘I know that, Sister.’ He had seated himself opposite her. ‘How do you come to know about this? Did the Olives confide in you or show you their collection or something?’

‘Not exactly.’ She flushed slightly. ‘I drove over to the Olives but they were out, so I – I went in. Into the house.’

‘The door was open and you waited for them in the sitting-room?’

‘I got in‚’ she said with dignity, ‘through the cellar.’

‘You broke in.’

‘I broke nothing,’ she said austerely. ‘There was a padlock on the cellar door that hadn’t been properly fastened. I went in that way.’

‘To – investigate?’ He lifted an eyebrow.

‘I thought it was an opportunity,’ she defended herself. ‘I only went into Samantha’s room. There was a suitcase at the back of her wardrobe with candles, dead flowers and two plastic bottles of water – I’d guess holy water – in it. And a prayer card asking God to protect her chastity.’

‘The items pinched from your chapel.’

‘Not the prayer card. She must have bought that somewhere. Anyway I heard the family returning so I nipped down into the cellar again and came out that way. The cellar’s been sectioned off. There are shelves full of video tapes and albums of the most sickening photographs you could imagine. Quite clearly he isn’t writing a book at all. He and his wife are in the pornography trade.’

‘You brought samples with you?’

‘Sam –? Well, no, I didn’t.’ Her flush deepened. ‘I was so shocked that I just – I think I dropped the album and came away as quickly as I could. I’d left the car some distance from the house so I drove straight here.’

‘Leaving the evidence behind?’

‘You can go and search the house now that I’ve told you. You can get a search warrant, acting on information received.’

‘Sister Joan, it is now mid afternoon on Saturday,’ he said, heavily patient. ‘The local magistrates won’t be around until Monday and the Chief Constable through whom I must request a search warrant will need more cause than the unsupported word of someone who hasn’t any evidence and made her discovery when she was in the course of committing a felony herself.’

‘That’s the silliest thing I ever heard,’ she said.

‘Nevertheless it’s the way things work. You’d be the first one to scream about violation of human rights if we could obtain search warrants at a moment’s notice and barge in anywhere.’

‘I really did see what I told you.’

‘I don’t doubt it‚ Sister – is that your real name – Joan? Or did they give you a new one?’

‘I was baptised Joan. What are you going to do about the Olives?’

‘I’ll go and see the Chief Constable and see if I can talk him round. It might help if you could explain why you drove over to the Olives in particular. Why not the Holts or the Penglows?’

‘It was the poem.’

‘What poem?’ he demanded.

‘Samantha Olive handed it in as part of her homework. The children had to write about their favourite flowers. Samantha wrote –
They
say
daffodils
are
trumpets,
I
say
daffodils
are
strumpets,
and
lads
are
bad
and
girls
black
pearls,
and
little
roses
full
of
worms.’

‘Not exactly a nursery rhyme,’ he said dryly. ‘Did she compose it herself?’

‘She says that she did. She is very bright for her age. I didn’t question her about it too closely. Perhaps I should have done.’

‘You think she’s been exposed to this pornographic racket?’

‘I think she’s aware of it. I think that’s why she stole the things from the chapel – to protect herself. Am I going to be charged with – a felony?’

‘I will endeavour,’ he said wryly, ‘to keep your name out of it. However it will be Monday before any warrant’ll be forthcoming. In the meantime I’d be grateful if you’d keep your recent exploits under your veil. No sense in alerting anybody.’

‘There is general confession today,’ she said doubtfully. ‘I reckon that I can postpone saying anything.’

‘I’d be grateful. I’d also be grateful if you’d stay in the convent for a few days and stop dashing off on impulse.’

‘Did you get the candlestick?’

‘That wretched child – Tabitha? had washed and polished it‚’ he said. ‘However there’s no doubt in my mind that it was used to hit Sister Margaret. Whoever did it swung it by the base. The shape corresponds with the wound. There wouldn’t have been much bleeding.’

A cold shiver rippled through her at the picture his words conjured up. Sister Margaret, halfway through the door into the visitors’ parlour, the assailant turning and striking. Had that been her last conscious thought? The person she had admitted turning to reveal the face of a devil?

‘She’ll be released to you this evening,’ he said more gently, watching her face.

‘Yes. Thank you, Sergeant Mill.’

At the door she stopped suddenly, her expression changing as she exclaimed, ‘I wonder what happened to it!’

‘To what?’ He had moved to open the door.

‘The candle in the candlestick. There are always candles in the candlesticks. They are lit during evening prayers and then snuffed out – that’s Sister David’s task. Your men didn’t find it in the chapel?’

He shook his head.

‘Was there anything special about it?’

‘It was thinner and taller than the candles we light before the Lady Altar. It was exactly like the other candle. They were both well burned down. Usually they are replaced on Saturday after prayers ready for Sunday.’

‘The killer probably took the candle away with him.’

‘As a souvenir?’ she asked bitterly. ‘How could anyone have hurt someone like Sister Margaret? She was a good woman – a truly good woman.’

‘The angle of the wound shows it was inflicted from above and in front. Sister Margaret was five feet four inches, so he has to be taller than that. Thank you for the information you gave me, Sister. I can trust you not to go breaking in anywhere else, I hope?’

‘I promise you,’ she said, and went out. She had not
promised not to visit anywhere else. Getting into the car she drove away in the direction of the camp.

The visit of the police had left its mark. The usual bustle was missing with women huddled in small knots about the steps of their wagons and the men watching her as she alighted from the car. Tabitha with Edith tagging behind her emerged from the Lee wagon, and came trotting over.

‘Good morning, Sister Joan. Have you come to see Dad? He had to go and get some medicine for Mum. She’s feeling poorly.’

‘I’m very sorry to hear it,’ Sister Joan said.

‘Oh, she never feels very good when she’s been on the bottle,’ Tabitha informed her cheerfully. ‘They’re going to let Petroc’s daddy out of clink –’

‘Gaol, dear.’

‘Yes, the gaol,’ Tabitha said, unabashed. ‘That policeman came and took away the silver candlestick I found. I don’t like him.’

‘He’s just doing his job.’

‘I polished it ever so nice.’ The small face was wistful. ‘I’d have got good marks for that. Maybe I’d have won the prize. Like Petroc did, only he got dead.’

‘What prize?’ Sister Joan spoke sharply, too sharply. The child wriggled and shuffled her feet.

‘Samantha’s mum and dad give prizes to the best children,’ Edith piped up. ‘It’s a secret. If we tell anyone something awful will happen, so we have to be good all the time.’

‘Who told you that?’ She tried to sound no more than casually interested.

‘It’s a secret,’ Tabitha said, giving her sister a dig in the ribs. ‘We mustn’t tell.’

‘Surely you can tell me?’

‘If we tell we might end up dead,’ Tabitha said.

‘Petroc ended up dead,’ Edith said thoughtfully. ‘I don’t think he told. We thought he’d won the prize because he’s been very, very good.’

‘What is the prize?’ Sister Joan asked. The palms of her hands were wet.

‘We get to drink real champagne‚’ Tabitha said, lowering her voice, ‘and we get our photos took.’

‘Have you already –?’ Her heart felt ready to burst.

‘Petroc won the prize first,’ Edith said. ‘He was going to tell us all about it, but he never came back.’

‘He went to Heaven,’ Tabitha announced.

‘Yes. Yes, he did,’ Sister Joan said, and hugged the little girl almost fiercely.

Study hour had already begun. She rose, wondering if she ought to warn the children to stay close to the wagon, but Conrad came past with a bucket of water, calling as he came, ‘’Afternoon, Sister Joan. Now you two stay where I can keep an eye on you until your dad gets back.’

She drove back to the convent with speculations buzzing in her brain.

‘You were a long time, Sister.’ The prioress had emerged from the kitchen as she went in the back way.

‘I’m sorry, Mother Dorothy, but there was quite a lot to do. Shall I tell you about –?’

‘Not just now, Sister.’ The voice was firm. ‘You had better hurry to your studies. I am expecting some interesting conclusions from you on the subject of the four branches of the rule.’

‘Yes, Mother Dorothy. Mother Dorothy –?’

‘What is it, Sister?’

‘I believe that it’s time to inform the detective sergeant about Kiki Svenson. It may help him obtain a search warrant. To the Olives’ house.’

‘I will telephone immediately. Your studies, Sister.’

Poverty, chastity, obedience, compassion. She went slowly to her cell, the words revolving in her mind. For a religious chastity included celibacy, but chastity itself was not always celibate just as celibacy was not always sterile. It was the damming up and diverting of the sexual instinct in order to bear spiritual fruit. Chastity was innocence and not ignorance; it was powerful and not weakly. And of all the rule it was the branch most vulnerable to temptation when one was young and spirited.

The bell for Benediction sounded before she had composed her ideas into the outline of an essay. Going downstairs, filing into the chapel, she felt the shock of loss as she saw the open coffin before the altar. The wound on Sister Margaret’s temple was hidden by her coif and there was a faint dreaming look upon her face.

‘Sisters’ Mother Dorothy was on her feet. ‘As you can see our beloved Sister Margaret has been brought home to lie among us until her burial on Monday. I say she is here but of course she is even now giving an account of herself before the Divine Throne –’

No, she is not! Sister Joan thought on a surge of rebellion. She is probably having a little chat with her Dear Lord, face to face, making Him laugh with her anecdotes about cooking and getting fish from Padraic Lee. She bowed her head and began to intone the prayers for the dead with her sisters.

‘There will be no recreation tonight,’ Mother Dorothy was saying. ‘We shall eat our supper which the postulants have kindly prepared under the supervision of Sister Teresa. Then we will have Benediction and then take our turns at watching with Sister Margaret. Sister Katherine and Sister David from eight to ten, Sister Martha and myself from ten to midnight, Sister Perpetua and Sister Teresa from midnight until two, – what is it, Sister Gabrielle?’

‘I wonder if Sister Mary Concepta and I could take the earlier vigil, Reverend Mother.’

‘I had not expected –’ Mother Dorothy began, then nodded. ‘Of course you too will wish to keep vigil. Very well. You and Sister Mary Concepta immediately after Benediction from eight to ten, Sisters Katherine and David from ten to midnight, Sister Martha and myself from midnight until two, Sister Perpetua and Sister Teresa from two until four, and Sister Hilaria and Sister Joan from four until six. After that our two postulants will watch until Father Malone comes to offer mass. Sister Marie and Sister Elizabeth, I think it would be wiser if you and Sister Hilaria were to sleep in the main house tonight. Sister Katherine will put blankets on the
beds in the two empty cells and Sister Hilaria may occupy my cell since I will not be sleeping at all. Thank you, Sisters.’

They filed out and up into the refectory. This had once been a drawing-room in the days when the Tarquin family had owned the estate and it retained its noble proportions, its gilded cornices and picture rail. Double doors that could be fastened back to make a huge ballroom separated it from the recreation room. The arrangements of flowers, the gilt-edged mirrors and spindly-legged chairs that must once have graced it were replaced by two long tables and benches with a chair for the prioress. When she had first joined the community the novices had eaten with the professed sisters. Under Mother Dorothy’s more stringent interpretation of the rules the novices now took their meals in their own quarters, but this evening they sat at the side table, blue-bonneted heads bowed.

The prioress stepped to the lectern and began to read a synopsis of the lives of various saints named Margaret – a happy touch, Sister Joan thought, and one that Sister Margaret would have approved. She ate the dish of lentils that the postulants had cooked and listened to the legend of Margaret of Cortona who had been swallowed and vomited up by a dragon, St Margaret of Hungary whose apron had been filled with roses and St Margaret of Scotland who had been a faithful wife and mother as well as a saint.