Vow of Obedience (18 page)

‘Oh, Mark and I are terrible stay-at-homes,’ Daisy said brightly, gripping the wheel tightly as they turned the corner. ‘We like to watch television and then I have my sewing and Mark has his stamps. He’s building up a very nice collection.’

‘So he wasn’t on duty this weekend?’ She had spoken too quickly.

Daisy threw her an agonized glance and said on a high, brittle note, ‘Mark and I spent the weekend together, Sister. He went on duty again this morning.’

‘Oh.’ Sister Joan lapsed into silence as they drove into the hospital car-park where Daisy drew to a halt, exclaiming with
a note of triumph, ‘Done it! Since I had it fixed it’s been behaving like a lamb.’

She would have liked to go with only Sister David to the ward but Daisy Barratt was trotting along behind them and there was no way of shaking her off save through the grossest rudeness.

For a moment she fancied that Sister Hilaria lay alone but then the white-coated doctor who had been bending over her straightened up as they looked in and frowned officiously.

‘Visiting hours begin at two,’ he said sternly.

‘We just wondered how Sister was,’ Sister Joan said
placatingly
.

‘Coming along very nicely as I told your prioress yesterday. Sleeping most of the time but getting nourishment at the right times. We’re very pleased.’

‘Daisy, what are you doing here?’ Sergeant Barratt, coming down the corridor, stopped short, barking the question at his wife.

‘I was just – I wondered what you fancied for supper,’ Daisy said. Her face had paled and her hands clutched at her bag.

‘Anything that can be heated up quickly. I may have to work late. Good morning, Sister. I didn’t expect to see you here.’

‘Oh, we like to keep an eye on things,’ Sister Joan said, meeting his cold stare with a sunny smile of her own. ‘Has Sister Hilaria said anything to you yet?’

‘Only that she had a slight headache. Constable Benson is waiting to relieve me. Daisy, surely you have better things to do than run round trying to find out what I want for supper?’

‘Yes, of course.’ Poor Daisy, clearly flustered and
embarrassed
, was beetroot red. ‘Yes, I’ve simply heaps to do. Can I drop you anywhere, Sisters?’

‘It’s not far to walk to the library,’ Sister Joan said. ‘Thank you for the lift here. Is this Constable Benson?’ There was relief in her voice as she saw the approaching figure.

‘Three minutes late,’ Sergeant Barratt consulted his watch with another slight frown. ‘Since he’s here I’ll follow you back, Daisy. If I don’t you’ll spend the entire day worrying over what to cook for supper tonight. Sisters.’

He had taken his wife as firmly by the arm as if he were arresting her, his only greeting to Constable Benson a curt nod.

‘Sometimes,’ Sister David confided as they left the hospital, ‘I am more thankful than I can express that I haven’t got an earthly husband to please.’

‘I know exactly what you mean.’ Sister Joan favoured the arriving constable’s stolid back with an almost maternal smile. ‘Sergeant Barratt bullies his wife dreadfully I wouldn’t be surprised. I don’t expect to be too long in the library. We can walk back to the car and hope that Sister Teresa has saved a little lunch for us afterwards.’

There was always something about the façade of a library that made her heart beat faster. Books – the smell of them, the richness of old bindings, the shininess of new, the delicate illustrations in Victorian children’s books, these things excited her in the way a great painting sometimes took her breath away.

Today however her aesthetic sense was not engaged. She was following a hunch born out of random facts and remarks that might lead nowhere.

Leaving Sister David happily poring over an immense
Life of St Augustine
she went off to the newspaper reference section.

‘Birmingham?’ The library assistant gave her a helpful, enquiring look. ‘Are you interested in any particular year, Sister?’

Sister Marie had joined the community about eighteen months before. Sister Joan did a quick mental calculation and hazarded, ‘The year before last. I need to look through a popular newspaper that reports murders.’

It was to the assistant’s credit that she never raised an eyebrow but accepted the statement as if nuns came in every day to enquire about murder.

‘A tabloid’d be your best source then, Sister,’ she said. ‘I’ll get one set up for you for the year. All you have to do is turn the dial and the pages flick past.’

It turned out to be a little more complicated than that since it took time to set up the apparatus. Eventually she found herself seated before a screen on which the newspaper columns were neatly reproduced.

She was looking for a headline, something connected with the murder of a young girl, something that made sense of the complaints that had been made about Luther Lee, the
unfinished comment of Sister Marie about the situation being the same as she had known up north. Up north could mean Birmingham or somewhere in that area. It was, she admitted, flicking the dial swiftly as her eye ran along and rejected the columns of newsprint, the longest of long shots.

In Birmingham and the surrounding districts people fell under buses, were mugged, shot their wives, eloped with their best friends’ husbands, gave birth to babies in taxis, had visions of the Holy Virgin, threw toilet rolls on to soccer pitches and presented bouquets to minor royalties opening supermarkets.

Had visions of the Holy Virgin? She flicked the dial back and found the item.

The item had no follow-up as far as she could see. Whatever their reasons for telling the story the schoolgirls had had no publicity to flatter their egos.

She flipped the dial more slowly, grateful for the ability she had acquired during her years in art college for speedreading so that the kernels of information could be extracted from the surrounding verbiage.

She had almost turned past the item before it registered on her mind. She adjusted the dial and read the item with painful concentration.

She read the item over again, her flesh cringing from the stark image the newspaper account conjured up. Carol Preston, accidentally dead. Accidentally? No other person seemed to have been involved. The name of her companion who, with her, had taken that first fateful short cut hadn’t been revealed. She had expected something but not this. There were many questions still to be asked but her instincts told her she was on the right track though, as yet, she couldn’t see the end of the road.

‘Was there anything else you were wanting, Sister?’ The library assistant had returned and was standing respectfully by her side.

‘Would you have a list of mental hospitals in the
Birmingham area?’ If the request was a strange one the other gave no sign of noticing.

‘They’ll be in the Yellow Pages of that particular directory. Shall I fetch it for you?’

‘And a paper and pencil if you’d be so kind?’

Luther had been a voluntary patient around the time the girl had died. Were voluntary patients allowed to come and go as they pleased? That, and another idea that had leapt into her mind, needed checking.

The relevant directory brought, she hastily copied down the names and the numbers of mental hospitals in the area. Then, on impulse, she turned to the schools section and made swift notes on the Catholic secondary schools in the area. By the time she had finished her watch warned her it was past lunchtime.

Sister David, still happily wrestling with Saint Augustine, had clearly not missed her or noticed the passage of time.

‘Did you find what you wanted, Sister?’ She dragged her gaze reluctantly from the hefty volume. ‘This is a splendid work. I could read it all day.’

‘We can borrow it for a fortnight and take it back to the convent,’ Sister Joan said. ‘I think one fills in a form or something. Wait here and I’ll see to it for you.’

Ten minutes later, with Saint Augustine tucked lovingly beneath her arm, they left the library, Sister David looking as pleased as if she had just managed to decipher the Dead Sea Scrolls.

‘This will be a real treat for me,’ she said confidingly as they made for the car. ‘Finding out what one never knew before is always an occasion for satisfaction, isn’t it?’

‘Is it? I hope so, Sister. I certainly hope so,’ Sister Joan said. Her tone was sombre and, for an instant, her face had lost its brightness.

Mother Dorothy took off her spectacles, wiped them carefully with a tissue, and fitted them neatly on her nose again. When she looked at Sister Joan her eyes, magnified by the shining glass, were shrewd and searching.

‘You want permission to speak with Sister Marie?’ she said. ‘You know that during the first two years of their training the novices speak only to the prioress and the novice mistress among the professed nuns save in cases of the gravest emergency.’

‘Two young girls have been murdered and Sister Hilaria run down and left for dead,’ Sister Joan said levelly. ‘Someone broke into the postulancy and destroyed part of Sister Hilaria’s spiritual diary and left a warning on the front door. I regard that as a case of grave emergency.’

‘You believe all these things are connected?’

‘Yes, Reverend Mother, I do.’

‘And Sister Marie can throw light on all this?’

‘It’s possible, Mother, but I can’t be sure until I speak to her.’

‘Very well, Sister. If you consider it absolutely necessary then you have my permission. You may speak to her alone.’

Mother Dorothy, Sister Joan reflected, really had
admirable
traits of character. In her superior’s place her own curiosity would have prevailed.

‘I hoped to go over to the postulancy and do some cleaning there this morning,’ she said aloud. ‘Sister Katherine will want the pillowslips for the laundry.’

‘And Sister Marie can help you out. I’ll tell Sister Elizabeth to help Sister Teresa. Thank you, Sister.’

For what? Sister Joan asked herself the question as she withdrew. For finding a killer before the police did? Or
would she? Wouldn’t it be more sensible to go and see Detective Sergeant Mill and tell him of her discoveries? Was it mere pride that made her want to wrap up the solution in a neat little package and give it to him? She decided that her motives were basically good even if she didn’t care to examine them too closely and sought out Sister Marie who, on this Monday morning, she found washing the front step with a somewhat woebegone look on her grave young face.

‘Sister Marie, will you come with me over to the postulancy?’ she asked. ‘It ought to be cleaned even though it’s not occupied at the moment, and we have leave to converse.’

The woebegone look vanished as the novice scrambled up, her eyes lighting.

‘I’ll get my cloak, Sister,’ she said promptly and was off at a speed that would have earned her a rebuke had Mother Dorothy come out of the parlour at that moment. Nobody came and she was back from the kitchen in double quick time, fastening her cloak and straightening the large straw bonnet which first and second year novices wore until they were promoted to the dignity of a white veil.

‘Did Mother Prioress really say we could talk?’ she enquired as they set off through the grounds.

‘Provided we say something to the purpose.’ Sister Joan cast her younger companion a sideways glance. ‘Mother wasn’t suggesting that we gossip.’

‘No, Sister.’ Sister Marie’s voice was appropriately respectful but her glance was mischievous. ‘What subjects are considered safe?’

‘Anything I choose to talk about,’ Sister Joan said, veiling the amusement in her own eyes.

Something about Sister Marie reminded her of herself early in her own religious life. There was the same questioning of tradition, the same barely suppressed humour.

‘You’re not nervous about coming to the postulancy?’ she asked as they reached the farther side of the tennis court.

‘Because of the threat painted on the door? No, Sister. It’s only because I have your company though that I feel like that. Alone I’d be useless.’

‘Because you’ve been in the same situation yourself?’ Sister Joan turned as she stepped ahead and gave the other a steady look, noting the sudden paling of Sister Marie’s face.

‘How did …? Yes, in a way, Sister, though I wasn’t concerned directly.’

‘You come from Birmingham?’ Sister Joan asked directly, adding as the other hesitated, ‘I know that one must not talk about one’s previous life but when the situation is grave one may do so and Mother Dorothy has given her permission.’

‘Yes, Sister. Just north of Birmingham, actually. My family still lives there.’

‘I’m from the north myself,’ Sister Joan said. ‘Manchester originally.’

‘We never lose those flat vowels,’ Sister Marie said.

‘And nearly two years ago a girl died – she was found hanging by a wire loop from the bough of a tree in the school grounds of Saint Roc’s Catholic Secondary School.’

‘Yes, Sister.’ Sister Marie gave a strangled little gasp.

‘Your old school?’

‘Yes, Sister. I’d left when the – the accident happened, of course, but I knew the girl who died. She was in the junior school when I was a senior but I did know her.’

‘You knew Carol Preston?’

They had stopped at the front door of the postulancy whose door still bore traces of the scrubbing the constable had given it. Sister Joan took out the key and fitted it into the lock, letting them both into the narrow hallway.

‘Yes, Sister.’ Sister Marie’s young face was very pale now as she followed into the bleak little recreation room. ‘She was a nice kid. I knew her because she had a small part in a play we put on in the sixth form.’

‘What play?’ Sister Joan asked, sitting down and motioning to the other to do likewise.

‘It was a play about Saint Bernadette of Lourdes,’ Sister Marie said. ‘Two of the teachers wrote it and I helped to produce it. Carol had a tiny part in the first scene as Bernadette when she was little. Of course she wasn’t very old when she had her visions of Our Blessed Lady but someone from the middle school played her then. It was a big success; we raised a lot of money for the Little Way Association. Carol was very good – it was only a little part, snowing Bernadette before the visions started, but she did it beautifully. She was a bit disappointed that she didn’t get to play the part right through the play. She told me about it. She thought she could act the whole part.’

‘And then later on when she was in her teens she started having visions herself.’

‘Not many people knew that she was one of the two girls,’ Sister Marie said, ‘but I met her while the fuss was going on and she told me about it. She said that she hadn’t been allowed to see visions during the school play but that Our Blessed Lady had come anyway. I ought to have told her she was talking nonsense, but she was so convinced and it seemed a shame to disappoint her, so I told her – I told her that she ought to keep anything else that happened to herself.’

Sister Marie broke off abruptly, looking down at her hands.

‘And then she was found dead,’ Sister Joan said gently, ‘and you blamed yourself for not discouraging her more.’

‘She always looked up to me,’ Sister Marie said unhappily. ‘To tell the truth she had a bit of a crush on me, the way kids sometimes do. I think I could have influenced her. I didn’t and obviously something else must have happened and she – died. They said it was an accident but I never believed that. I never believed it because she’d never been the kind of girl to make silly experiments with wire nooses and trying to get a high.’

‘What about the girl who was with her?’

‘Julie someone or other – I only knew her by sight. Carol told me her name and insisted that Julie’d tell me the same story but I never actually asked her about it. When Carol was found dead I felt – anyway soon after that I entered the Order of the Daughters of Compassion.’

‘Wasn’t that a rather severe penance to impose upon yourself?’ Sister Joan enquired.

‘It wasn’t that,’ Sister Marie said hurriedly. ‘I didn’t rush into a convent because I felt guilty; I don’t think anyone ever really does. I’d been considering it for some time but what happened – it was so – sad, so sad and ugly, that it made the world seem a terribly dangerous place – a place where innocence was mocked. I didn’t want any more of it, Sister.’

‘And now?’

Sister Marie hesitated again. ‘When Reverend Mother told us what had happened to the two girls,’ she said at last, ‘it was as if something was starting here that I’d run away from already. I know that they weren’t hanging from trees but the wire loops round their necks – it brought back what had
happened before – and then Sister Hilaria – she’s a mystic and she sees things the rest of us don’t see. She really does, Sister.’

‘And she was seeing Our Blessed Lady?’

Sister Marie nodded. ‘She mentioned it to us – to encourage us in our vocations, but she told us not to chatter about it. She said that such experiences lost their flavour when they were exposed to public scrutiny.’

Sister Joan bit her lip, considering. What Sister Marie had told her might have been mentioned before had the novice not been under obedience to remain silent.

‘Sister Hilaria is going to be all right, isn’t she?’ Sister Marie asked. ‘We are very fond of her, you know.’

‘I’m sure she is,’ Sister Joan said reassuringly. ‘Right then, Sister, let’s collect the linen and then we can give the place a quick clean-up. Between us we can get it done by lunchtime.’

Now wasn’t the moment to question further. Sister Marie probably couldn’t tell her more than she had told her already and the novice was already fretting over her own small part in the Birmingham affair.

Not until mid-morning when they stopped for a five-minute break and the permitted glass of water did she resume the conversation.

‘Do you miss your family in Birmingham?’

It was a foolish question because everyone missed her family, but Sister Marie answered readily and politely, ‘Terribly, Sister. It does get easier as time goes on, but in the beginning I did wonder if I had any vocation at all.’

‘We all feel the same way,’ Sister Joan said, smiling at her memory of the acute homesickness that had gripped her during her own novitiate. ‘I soaked dozens of handkerchiefs, I can tell you.’

‘But it is getting better,’ Sister Marie repeated. ‘I was beginning to – well, to find my feet – and then these things started happening. I didn’t know what to do, whether or not to say anything or not. And then Sister Hilaria was so troubled that I didn’t want to burden her further.’

‘Troubled about what?’

Sister Marie considered for a moment, then shook her head.

‘I don’t know, Sister,’ she said at last. ‘It was after she told us
about her vision – a few days later. She never does talk very much but she hardly said anything at all. Sister Elizabeth asked if she was well.’

‘And?’ Sister Joan sipped her water.

‘She said she had something to work out, that was all. And then she was run over when she was beyond the gates. Sister Hilaria never went beyond the gates even for one yard. Something very important must have attracted her attention.’

‘It ought to have been a donkey.’

‘I beg your pardon, Sister?’

‘It was something that Sister Hilaria said when she was coming round in the hospital. Did she ever go into details about her vision? Mother Dorothy would want you to tell what you know.’

‘She didn’t say very much about it at all,’ Sister Marie said, screwing up her face in an effort to remember. ‘She said that Our Blessed Lady had appeared in the black habit and veil of a nun with a crown of leaves on her head. She saw her for no more than a few seconds, and then the vision was gone. She only told us because she wanted to impress upon us that the most ordinary day can suddenly be touched by glory. That was all, Sister.’

‘Well, I don’t know how it fits,’ Sister Joan said, ‘but it obviously does. We’d better get the linen made up for Sister Katherine.’

They went up the narrow stairs and began stripping pillows and mattresses. The wind, which had risen, banged against the window panes. There was a greyness over the day.

From the adjoining cell came a cry of alarm, quickly suppressed.

‘Sister Marie, what is it?’ Sister Joan whipped into the next cell.

Sister Marie was standing by the window, the pillowcase she had been changing dangling limply from her hand.

‘I thought I saw …’ She broke off, her eyes turning to the window again.

‘Thought you saw what?’ Sister Joan demanded.

‘It must have been my imagination. It couldn’t possibly be – a man I used to know very slightly.’

‘Not an old boy-friend, I hope?’ Sister Joan tried to lighten the mood. ‘Mother Dorothy doesn’t encourage that sort of
thing at all.’

‘No, of course not.’ Sister Marie was too agitated to be amused. ‘About two years ago, no, less – a man, a gypsy, was scaring people in our district – not actually harming them but following the girls around, watching them and then running away. There were some complaints but I don’t know if anything was done.’

‘Luther,’ Sister Joan said.

‘I don’t think I ever heard his name. But I’m sure it was the same man, looking up as I glanced out of the window and then he leaped over the wall and ran.’

‘Luther went into a mental home as a voluntary patient,’ Sister Joan said. ‘He came here recently to stay with his cousin.’

‘Then it was him?’ Sister Marie shivered. ‘He’s weird.’

‘A bit simple and terribly unsure of himself around women,’ Sister Joan said briskly. ‘There’s no harm in him at all. He’s supposed to be cured of his habit of following people. I hope he is.’

‘Then why was he here?’ Sister Marie asked.

‘It was probably coincidence,’ Sister Joan said, mentally crossing her fingers. ‘People do occasionally stray into the grounds without realizing they’re trespassing. Don’t worry about it. And don’t waste time gazing out of windows when you’re supposed to be changing the linen. Now, have you everything ready for the laundry bag? And did you take over everything you need to the main house? I imagine that you and Sister Elizabeth will be sleeping over there again tonight.’

‘I think so.’ Sister Marie cast a troubled look out of the window and bent to open the small locker by her bed. ‘No, I’ve remembered everything. Oh, I have some photos of my family in this big envelope – may I take them?’

‘I don’t see why not.’

The modest reminders of home that the novices were permitted to keep were precious.