Vow of Chastity (17 page)

Sister Margaret would have enjoyed tonight’s reading.

Supper ended. The grace was intoned and the last glass of water drained.

‘Sister Joan’ Mother Dorothy beckoned her. ‘I telephoned Detective Sergeant Mill and was fortunate enough to get straight through to him just before Sister Margaret was brought home. He thanked me for the information about Kiki Svenson and said he would follow it up.’

‘Thank you, Reverend Mother.’

‘He also informed me that the weapon used was
indeed the missing candlestick from the altar.
Apparently
it has yielded no clues. I will ask Father Malone to cleanse and bless it when it has been returned to us. That is all, Sister.’

‘No general confession,’ Sister Gabrielle whispered as they went out. ‘Well, there’ll be a double ration to remember next week.’

Sister Joan nodded, her heart sinking. General
confession
, she thought wryly, was becoming more and more of an ordeal.

Going down again into the chapel for Benediction she found the questions revolving in her mind again. Had Petroc’s death been an accident? If so then why bring him to the chapel? Why –?

The telephone rang in the prioress’s parlour, shrilling through the corridor.

‘Sister Joan, be so good as to answer the telephone,’ Mother Dorothy turned to say.

‘Yes, Reverend Mother.’ For an instant she had almost expected Sister Margaret to bustle across the hall.

The voice at the other end said tentatively, ‘Is the convent, ya?’

‘Kiki Svenson? Yes, yes, this is the convent. Sister Joan speaking.’ The relief was so immense that her legs felt weak. ‘You got my message?’

‘From the lady, ya. I cannot return. I ring to tell you that. I ran away from that bad house and hide myself in the home of a friend for some time, in case they find me.’

‘Miss Svenson, can you telephone the police?
Ask for a Detective Sergeant Mill. I can give you the number –’

‘No police. My family will be – in scandal if they know where I work –’

‘Miss Svenson, a child has been killed. Please telephone the Bodmin police. It really is –’

There was a sharp click on the other end as Kiki Svenson hung up. Sister Joan stared at the instrument in impotent fury for a moment, then whirled round and went in as near a run as made no difference into the chapel.

‘O salutaris hostia.’ The sweet, sexless voices of the
community rose in unison. After Benediction came the grand silence, the vigil in the chapel – no time to say anything. The rule was heavy on her heart as she knelt and joined in the chant.

At the blessing she tried to signal with her eyes to the prioress that she needed permission to speak, but Mother Dorothy sprinkled her with the cold drops of water without looking at her. The prioress looked tired and worn, her shoulders more hunched than usual. From now on she would cling desperately to the routine of convent life, would regard the two deaths as an intrusion into the calm of the enclosure.

In her cell she took off her coif and veil and covered her shorn dark head with her white nightcap, and lay down on her bed in the attitude recommended for sleeping – flat on her back with clasped hands.

‘If you should die during your sleep you will leave your body in the appropriate position for burial‚’ her first novice mistress had instructed her.

Lying thus made her feel too much like Sister Margaret and Petroc, stretched before the altar. She twisted on to her side, her fingers automatically clasping her rosary as she began to tell her beads, the silent words dropping like the cool water of the blessing into the darkness. Her last thought as she drifted into an exhausted sleep was the guilty conviction that for praying one ought to make the effort to get down on one’s knees – on one’s knees – on one’s –

A hand shook her awake: Sister Perpetua’s large, capable hand. She nodded and sat up, rubbing her eyelids which felt gritty for lack of proper slumber. Dawn filtered through the blind at the window.

Replacing coif and veil, kneeling briefly to give silent thanks for the gift of another day, thrusting aside the sudden irritable notion that not every day was a gift to be accepted with gratitude, she rose finally and went into the corridor and down to the chapel.

Sister Hilaria was already on her knees by the coffin, her eyes dreaming into her private celestial worlds. Death held no terrors for people like Sister Hilaria,
Sister Joan thought, dropping to her knees beside her, letting the solemn quiet wash over her.

The loud ringing of the rising bell made her jump violently. For one disorientated moment she looked at Sister Margaret and wondered how on earth she could manage to be in two places at once. Then her common sense reasserted itself. Obviously Mother Dorothy had instructed one of the others, probably Sister Teresa, to ring it.

‘Christ is risen,’ Sister Hilaria said.

‘Thanks be to God.’ Sister Joan made the customary rejoinder that marked the end of the grand silence.

‘How strange it seems,’ Sister Hilaria murmured, ‘not to hear Sister Margaret saying those words. Always so cheerful. Striding across to the postulants’ quarters as if the world had been new created. Such a pretty singing voice.’

‘I didn’t know that Sister Margaret could sing.’

‘Who? Oh, no, Sister, I meant my postulant, Sister Marie. She has a very pretty voice and sings out her responses like a little bird. Not that she makes a very good cook. I was teasing her a little about not even being able to read a recipe – though the lentils were very tasty. But Sister Margaret seemed quite struck by my remark.’

Sister Joan opened her mouth but never found out what she had intended to say. Sister Hilaria was lost in her devotions again, lost in the only world where she felt at ease, the only world where her mind didn’t wander vaguely from subject to subject but could centre itself firmly on the source.

Rising, she went swiftly to the side door, passed through to the outer door, unlocked it and went out into the morning. The feeling that something was rising to a climax was very strong in her. Every instinct told her against all reason to hurry.

There was no time to ask permission to use the car. On the other hand she could ride Lilith at any time. Neither would she be breaking her promise to Detective Sergeant Mill by breaking into anywhere new. She had already broken into the Olive residence.

Lilith whickered a welcome as she hurried into the stable. The old horse had missed her customary exercise. It was a pity, she thought, that she hadn’t had time to slip on her new jeans, but if she had gone upstairs she would have been caught up in the normal Sunday morning routine.

Mounting, she tapped Lilith smartly across her broad back and set off at a gallop down the drive. Since she had been foolish enough to leave the evidence behind then she had a clear duty to go and collect it again before the Olives took fright and disposed of it, and she wanted to think as she rode, of Sister Hilaria’s vague, disconnected thought patterns. She wanted very badly to think about that.

Lilith submitted placidly to being tethered to a tree in the hollow below the greenway. As she made her way up the slopes towards the house Sister Joan felt the beauty of the early morning unfold about her. Long streaks of fine white mist wreathed about the bushes and were glinted with silver by the first light. To think of child murder, child pornography on such a morning seemed like a small blasphemy. Both smeared dirt over the chastity of a new spring day.

The house was silent, curtains drawn. Going round to the back yard she felt a definite relief that the Olives didn’t keep a dog.

The door that led down into the cellar was still not properly bolted. Presumably in such an isolated spot they had no fear of intruders. She recalled the way in which she had been neatly deflected from being shown over the house with the bland statement that the cellars were unsafe. No, the Olives felt quite secure in leaving their obscene collection down below.

The faint light that filtered down the steps into the cellar had about it a greenish, sickly quality as if something down there altered its essence. She took a deep breath, telling herself not to be an imaginative idiot and went down, trusting that her guardian angel hadn’t slept in late.

The inner door at the foot of the stairs leading up to the main part of the house was locked. She stared at its smooth varnished surface with dismay. Well, locks meant keys. Keys were generally kept – where? Perhaps on a key ring in the kitchen or in the study – if there was
a study. She hoped that nobody in the Olive household got up early on a Sunday morning.

The ground floor passage was dim and chilly. Standing in the angle between staircase and wall she strained her ears for some sound but there was nothing. At least the place seemed to have fitted carpets everywhere which muffled her light step. It would also have muffled the sound of Sister Margaret’s rosary as it broke from its mooring at her belt and slid down to the carpet. She was certain that this was where Sister Margaret had lost her rosary, had been subconsciously aware of its slipping down to the floor. In the kitchen with Sister Hilaria and the two postulants, teasing them about their inability to follow a recipe, her mind must surely have jumped to the one house they had visited that evening where no food had been consumed, no recipes talked about or given. At least her enforced silence because prayers were about to begin hadn’t cost her her life. She had been killed for some other reason.

She went into the big drawing-room and looked round without much hope. It was very unlikely that any keys were kept here. The room behind was smaller, lined with shelves on which gaudily covered paperbacks resided. There was a flat-topped desk near the door. She risked switching on the table lamp on the desk and cautiously tried the first drawer. It was unlocked, almost filled with neat bundles of cheque stubs. There was no sign, she thought cynically, of anyone engaged in the writing of a book. Neither were there any keys.

She turned off the light and went out into the hall again. Around the edges of the curtains the light was strengthening. There was need for haste. A
dining-room
and the cavernous, green painted kitchen yielded nothing to the casual gaze. Everything was faintly shabby and dusty, though certainly not as grime encrusted as Sister Margaret had mentioned. But then Sister Margaret had been picking up the spiritual dirt that corrupted the place, she reflected. Sister Margaret, with her bustling common sense, her cheerful humility had travelled far along the road to spiritual sensitivity.

The prospect of mounting the stairs, of going into bedrooms where people might well be stirring in preparation for a full awakening to the day, was beyond her courage. She went back into the drawing-room and stood uncertainly, under the gaze of Samantha’s enlarged photograph over the mantelshelf, trying to think what to do next. The Olives weren’t stupid people. The death of Sister Margaret following so closely on the death of the child must alert them to the possibility of a house to house search. By the time Detective Sergeant Mill got his warrant every video and photo album would be gone from the cellar. Probably burnt piece by piece in the furnace that serviced the huge radiators that kept the house so warm. The house was cool now, more bearable. People who lived abroad generally felt the cold when they returned to England. That might be a possibility to mention to the sergeant when she saw him next.

‘Sister Joan, oh, how lovely to see you!’

She swung round, her heart jumping into her mouth and met Samantha’s uplifted gaze. The child had on shortie pyjamas patterned with rosebuds and her feet were bare.

‘Good morning, Samantha.’ What a blessing the automatic courtesies were! ‘I came to see your parents.’

And please God, don’t let the child think to enquire how I got in.

‘They’re asleep,’ Samantha said. ‘I’ve been lying awake, thinking. How old do you have to be before you can become a nun?’

‘At least eighteen, dear. Until then people often aren’t sure what they want to do with their lives.’

‘The Little Flower did.’

‘St Therese of Lisieux was a saint,’ Sister Joan said, wondering how many naive young girls fancied they could emulate a saint whose sentimental prettiness concealed an indomitable will.

‘Maybe I could get to be a saint,’ Samantha said wistfully. ‘It must be very safe in a convent.’

‘Yes, well –’ Sister Joan hesitated, then plunged. ‘You
took the things from the convent chapel in order to protect yourself, didn’t you?’

‘I know that it was wrong.’ In the strengthening light the child’s sallow little face had flushed a dull red. ‘I could have asked for them, but if I’d asked then my parents might have got to hear of it. They don’t believe in God or things like that. I know that I should have asked, but you used to keep the convent chapel unlocked all night and I don’t mind long walks. My mother and father – they don’t pay much attention to me. They feed me and clothe me and buy me nice, expensive things, but they don’t often sit down and talk to me. When we were in India they left me with an ayah all the time and she was so stupid you wouldn’t believe. And then we came back to London and they started – well, their business and then they moved here. Daddy said that it would be – more prudent, to lie low for a bit until he could arrange the sale of – but I’m not supposed to talk about that. I’m not supposed even to know about that, but I do know and I get scared, Sister Joan. I get so scared.’

‘Everybody gets scared sometimes.’ Sister Joan moved to the window and drew back the curtain. ‘Is that why you killed Sister Margaret, Samantha?’

‘What?’ The child stared at her. ‘How could I –? Sister‚ that’s a terrible thing to say.’

‘It was a terrible thing to do,’ Sister Joan said. ‘You were afraid that she might remember where she dropped the rosary, weren’t you? So you went back to the chapel very early in the morning. It was locked. You said just now that we “used to leave the door open”. Used to, Samantha. How did you know we’d started locking it? Nobody has ever made any announcement about it.’

‘I guess that someone must have told me,’ Samantha said.

‘I don’t think so.’ Sister Joan kept her eyes steadily on the plain little face. ‘But it will be easy enough to check. We can go up to your room right now and take a look in the suitcase at the back of your wardrobe. I reckon we’ll
find the candle there. The one that fell out of the candlestick when you were trying to get away from Sister Margaret.’

‘Well, you’re wrong, Sister. You’re just wrong! That candle was nearly burnt down and it didn’t match any of the others,’ Samantha said triumphantly. ‘So I threw it away. I just tossed it into the furnace here. I’d like to toss everything into the furnace – all the rotten pictures and the videos and the – dirty, fucking – oh, I beg your pardon, Sister. That was a very bad word to use.’

‘Was it because of all that that you killed Petroc?’ She marvelled inwardly at the calmly conversational tone of her voice.

‘Petroc was a beautiful boy,’ Samantha said, licking her lips with her pointed little tongue. ‘I knew that sooner or later my parents would see him and invite him to the house and give him the sugared wine with the stuff in it, and then take photographs. In India they used to pick up street children you know. They gave them sweets afterwards and let them go, but people started asking questions. Damned rumour-mongers, Daddy said. So we came back to England but the children were all spoilt anyway. I didn’t want the ones at the school to be spoilt. Not any of them.’

‘You saw Petroc swimming with Hagar.’

‘They looked so – clean,’ Samantha said sadly. ‘I didn’t want them to be spoilt. So I told Petroc that he’d won the prize and he came to the house and I gave him the sugared wine. It wasn’t to kill him. I never wanted to kill anybody. Honestly, Sister. But he liked the taste and he went on drinking it and then he went all limp and cold and water ran out of him and I didn’t know what to do.’

‘Who took him to the chapel?’ Sister Joan asked.

‘Daddy came down into the cellar,’ Samantha told her. ‘He said not to worry, that he’d see to everything. And he took him to the chapel. It was the best place for him. He hadn’t been spoilt, you see.’

‘That was where you wanted your daddy to take him, was it?’

‘Oh, Daddy usually does what I want,’ Samantha said. ‘He knows that I’d tell on him if he didn’t. About the photographs, I mean.’

‘And you put the rosary in his pocket.’

‘It slipped down on to the hall carpet from her belt when you came over that night. Jan picked it up and I took it. I thought it might come in useful. Jan is very stupid, you know. He doesn’t speak any English and he will drive me just anywhere I want to go. I guess it’s because he sleeps in the same bed as Mummy and he wants to keep me sweet.’

‘Kiki?’ Sister Joan said in a whisper.

‘Oh, she was more stupid,’ Samantha said
contemptuously
. ‘She saw the photographs and she got scared and ran off in the middle of the night. She walked off. I daresay she got a lift or something on the main road.’

‘You took the crucifix out of the chapel,’ Sister Joan said.

‘I got Jan to drive me over,’ Samantha told her. ‘He’s so stupid; you just point him in the right direction and tell him what place to stop in. I thought it would be very big protection to have the crucifix but it was terribly heavy and so I went and sat in that box –’

‘The confessional.’

‘When I heard someone coming. When you went out again I put it back and went back to the car. It was parked right by the wall but you never noticed it.’

‘And then you came back –’

‘I never came to hurt any of the sisters,’ Samantha broke in. ‘I thought it would be nice to have something really powerful from the chapel and the crucifix was too heavy. I got up terribly early and walked all the way there, but the door was locked. That’s a bad thing to do, to lock people out of a chapel. I started rattling at the door and suddenly Sister Margaret opened it. She started to ask me what I wanted but I ran past her and grabbed the candlestick. That was heavy too but not as heavy as the crucifix. I had to yank at her veil to get past her again, but she wouldn’t let me go. She grabbed at me and fell on her knees and that made me bigger than
her so I turned round and hit her. I wanted her to let go, silly cow – oh, pardon me, Sister. That isn’t a very respectful way to talk about a nun.’

‘You picked up the candle‚’ Sister Joan said carefully.

‘And then I ran‚’ Samantha said simply. ‘I went by way of the camp and threw the candlestick there. I had my gloves on. You have to wear gloves when you’re taking things, you know. That’s very important, I kept the candle but it didn’t match the others so I put it in the furnace.’

‘You’re very bright for your age.’ She kept her voice level, mildly interested.

‘Yes, I have a very high IQ and I think that’s nice. It would make me very useful in a convent.’

‘So bright that I can’t understand why you didn’t ask someone for help if you were frightened about what was going on. People listen to children these days. There is a Help Line you can ring.’

‘But if I’d done that,’ Samantha said, ‘the welfare people would have taken me away. I like having pretty things and my own room and being able to wander about without people going on at me about where I get to and what I do. And it would be very wrong to tell on your parents. Only, sometimes –’ Her brow creased and she hugged herself as if an icy wind had ruffled the borders of her rose-patterned pyjamas. ‘Sometimes it’s like there’s another Samantha inside me that gets so frightened and wants to be safe. Isn’t it funny, Sister?’

‘No,’ said Sister Joan. ‘No – it isn’t very funny.’

‘The point is,’ Samantha said, ‘what are we going to do about it all. Was it you went into the cellar and dropped the photo album? I found it on the floor and I put it back. I didn’t tell on you, Sister. And of course you can’t tell on me.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You’re a nun and I just confessed to you. People can’t tell what they hear in confession if they’re nuns, can they? I heard that somewhere.’

‘Priests can’t tell, Samantha. Priests are bound by the seal of the confessional. Confessions made to anyone
else, even nuns, don’t count. You’re not a Catholic or you would understand that. I can tell. It’s my duty to do so.’

‘But then I won’t be able to go into a convent when I’m eighteen.’ Panic flashed into the small face. I’ll be safe in a convent and my chastity won’t be spoilt. I can leave the other Samantha outside –’

‘The other?’

‘The one who goes out and picks the pretty children and invites them home for Daddy to play with while Mummy’s in bed with someone or other. She likes pleasing her daddy because then he leaves her alone. Nobody really loves him, you see, because he’s got a club foot just like the Devil. So the children have to be brought to him and then afterwards he and I watch the videos and sort through the photos, and then some of them get sold. But I didn’t want it to be Petroc, Sister. He was a nice boy. Don’t you think he was a nice boy? If he got dead then nobody could spoil him, could they?’