Vow of Penance (7 page)

‘Which by now will have been tidied up and polished, I suppose?’

‘It was very clean to begin with. I have packed away Mrs Fairly’s clothes ready for her niece to have when she arrives.’

‘Did you glean any information about her – the housekeeper, I mean? The kind of woman she was?’

‘I didn’t pry,’ she said with dignity. ‘There was nothing to pry into anyway. Very few personal effects at all, just a couple of photographs of her own wedding and one of her niece as a schoolgirl and a bundle of letters from her niece. Clothes, some inexpensive jewellery, powder, lipstick – nothing. There wasn’t any reason for anyone to kill her.’

‘Well, perhaps nobody did,’ he said. ‘You haven’t any idea why she wanted to talk to you?’

Sister Joan hesitated, her cheeks reddening. She had a fairly shrewd idea that Mrs Fairly had remembered about Sister Jerome but since Sister Jerome had been tucked up in bed in the convent at the time that Mrs Fairly died she couldn’t possibly have been involved.

‘I can’t say that I have,’ she said at last.

‘Hmm.’ He shot her a keen look but didn’t pursue the subject, merely remarking as they finished their coffee, ‘Well, if anything pertinent to what is still a very unofficial enquiry were to come up I know you’d do the right thing. I can’t say that I’m very happy to think of you staying at the presbytery.’

‘I honestly don’t think that there’s a maniac going round killing housekeepers,’ Sister Joan said.

‘Almost certainly not, but keep an eye open anyway. I’d better get back to the station. Here comes Constable Petrie with the groceries.’

‘I paid for them myself, Sister.’ Constable Petrie said, entering the café, put down the laden basket and a bulging carrier bag with relief.

‘I’ll see you’re reimbursed, Constable. Father Stephens didn’t give me any money before I came out so I assumed they’d be charged but perhaps she did pay cash. I’ll ask him about it.’

‘Don’t worry about it, Sister. You need a hand to carry this lot?’ Constable Petrie enquired.

‘No, I can manage fine. Thank you again.’ She spoke absently, a slight frown between her brows.

‘Something wrong, Sister?’ Detective Sergeant Mill was looking at her.

‘Nothing in particular,’ she said. ‘Thank you for the coffee and thank you for doing the shopping, Constable Petrie. It was most obliging.’

It was probably nothing at all, she told herself, as she lugged the groceries back to the presbytery, but there had been no handbag among Mrs Fairly’s effects. Its absence hadn’t occurred to her since it was years since she herself had had any occasion to carry a handbag, but the remarks about payment had struck a chord. Every laywoman she had ever known had owned a handbag, receptacle for keys, purse, tissues, library tickets, bills to be paid, old bus tickets – there had been no handbag in the bedroom. Neither had she noticed one in the kitchen. And would Mrs Fairly have left it in the kitchen anyway? Sister Joan guessed that she would have been more likely to take it upstairs last thing at night along with her hot tea into which she would pour her nightly tipple of whisky.

‘You were a long time, Sister.’ Father Timothy opened the front door as she came up the path.

‘There was a lot to buy,’ she said shortly. ‘Is Father Stephens here?’

‘In the study, writing his sermon for high mass on Easterday.’

‘So soon?’ Sister Joan reflected for a moment and then nodded. Father Stephens took a certain literary pride in his sermons. They contained much that was erudite and philosophical. No doubt he worked on them for a long time, assiduously polishing each mellifluous phrase, unlike Father Malone who
frequently
forgot to write anything at all but still managed to speak fluently for the allotted fifteen minutes.

While she was preparing the evening meal she took time to look round the kitchen, to open a cupboard here, a drawer there. No handbag was revealed. It had to be somewhere, she reasoned. Handbags didn’t just get up and walk away.

The evening paper plopped through the letter box. Picking it up and smoothing it out her eye caught the black headline:
Mutilated
Body
Found
On
Railway
Line
.

‘Is that the paper, Sister?’ Father Stephens had emerged from the little room dignified by the name of ‘study’ at the back of the hall.

‘It’s here, Father.’

Handing it to him she saw the look of faint distaste on his face as he looked down at it.

‘Good news doesn’t make headlines, I suppose,’ he said.

‘I’m afraid it doesn’t, Father,’ Sister Joan said.

‘I have been working on my Easter sermon. Father Malone generally gives it but as he’s not here the task will fall to me. Unfortunately I cannot bring any sense of joy into my thoughts at the moment.’

‘Do you know when Mrs Fairly’s niece is due?’ she asked.

‘She is coming down tomorrow, I understand. I spoke to her very briefly on the telephone. Mrs Fairly had given the name and address to Father Malone as her next of kin when she first came here otherwise I’d have been puzzled as to whom to inform.’

‘Wouldn’t Mrs Fairly have had the address in her
address book anyway?’

‘I really couldn’t say.’ He looked at her blankly. ‘I don’t recall Mrs Fairly ever writing many letters except to her niece. When Miss Potter arrives – her name is Sylvia Potter – we can arrange the funeral details. Was there anything else you wanted, Sister?’

‘I shall need a key, Father, so I can come in and out without disturbing you.’

‘A key. Of course. Mrs Fairly had one – two, for the back and front doors. She kept them on a small hook in the kitchen, I think.’

‘Not in her handbag?’

‘I suppose she put them into her handbag as she went out. I really can’t say, Sister. I’ll glance through this and then prepare for benediction. I have decided to say nothing about the recent sad affair. No point in fuelling the flames of scandal.’

He turned and went back into the study.

There were two keys on a ring hanging on a hook near the back door. Sister Joan took them down and looked at them. When Mrs Fairly had gone out she would have slipped them into her handbag, but where was her handbag now? On impulse she turned and went up the stairs again. Perhaps in the panic after her death it had fallen down behind something. Getting down on hands and knees she peered under the bed and the other furniture but there was only the luggage she had packed up and her own empty bag.

She opened all the drawers again, stood on a chair to peer into the recesses of the wardrobe shelf without finding anything. The handbag, if it had ever been there, had gone.

It was nearly time to walk across to the church for benediction. From the bedroom window she could see people drifting up the road. Probably more than usual, she mused with a touch of cynicism. Perhaps they hoped this Wednesday night benediction would be more
dramatic than usual.

She went down the stairs in time to see both priests proceeding through the side door that led out of the parlour into the sacristy. Father Stephens was just ahead and behind him went Father Timothy. The latter’s sandy hair was thinning on top and his bent head had a wry, tense aspect as if he forced himself to humility. She frowned, dismissing the notion. The truth was that something about the new priest – nearly everything about the new priest – irritated her.

‘Always be respectful to priests for they are the Christ in our midst,’ Mother Agnes had counselled. ‘They are human, male and fallible but the office they hold dignifies them beyond the rest of us. It is the office and not the human being we honour.’

Christ chose some unattractive representatives, she thought, and scolded herself as she went through into the study. Christ also chose some very unsuitable brides too if her own case was anything to go by.

The study window was closed, the newspaper spread out on the table. At the convent one newspaper was delivered once a month for the prioress to read and to decide if anything in it was to be imparted to her charges. Not until she had leaned over to scan it did she admit to herself that checking on the window had been only the second reason for coming in here.

Beneath the stark column the editors had seen fit to slip in a political cartoon. Something about law and order. Sister Joan grimaced as she perused the flat, hard phrases. On the northern line a body, mutilated beyond recognition, had been found lying by the side of the track. It was not yet known exactly how the victim, a young man, had come by his terrible injuries. The public was asked to report if they had any pertinent information. The reporter had ended with a triple question:
Accident,
suicide
or
murder
?

Surely not accident, she thought. The body had been
stripped which a train could hardly have done. Would a suicide take off all his clothes in order to jump in front of a train?

At the side an opinion article called for more hospitals for the mentally ill. The political cartoon was sour and not amusing. Feeling distinctly cast down Sister Joan put on her cloak and went to benediction.

The bed was comfortable, the bedroom warm and airy, the street quiet. Sister Joan had dreamed during her novitiate of comfortable beds and warm rooms but now that she had both it was impossible to sleep. The truth was that she missed the special aura of peace that came every night with the grand silence, missed the tiny sounds all about her that told her that her sisters were sleeping, missed the plain white walls of her cell. When she opened her eyes here a street light illumined the writhing roses and buttercups on the wallpaper. It was a relief when her internal alarm clock told her it was 4.30, the hour at which the lay sisters rose and summoned the other nuns to a new day. For a moment she was seized by the mischievous desire to yell the customary greeting of ‘Christ is risen’ to frighten the two slumbering Fathers, and scarcely had she turned over, her mouth quirking with laughter at the picture she had conjured up, than she fell into a heavy sleep from which she was roused by the anxious voice of Father Stephens outside the bedroom door.

‘Sister Joan! Sister Joan, is everything all right?’

‘Perfectly all right, Father. I’ll be down in a few moments.’ She tried to sound as if she had been awake for hours, sliding from bed and grabbing at her habit and blinking at her fob watch which informed her it was nearly seven o’clock.

Washing and teeth would have to wait. She hurried
on her clothes, snatched her cloak up and headed downstairs. It was, she thought, speeding down the front path and into the church where a couple of elderly women already knelt, an inauspicious start to the day. Father Stephens entered from the sacristy and she composed herself for the service.

Father Timothy would be up at the convent. She wondered if he’d stay to drink a cup of coffee with the sisters as Father Malone did. Probably not. Father Timothy was still too conscious of his vow of celibacy to feel at ease with women.

The Angel of the Presence dismissed, she sent up a quick prayer for a little extra help to get her through what she feared would be a difficult day and hurried out again. At least the bitter cold was warming under the emergence of a fragile young sun that gilded the tips of the young leaves and – oh no! Fully awake now she stopped dead at the front gate and stared in horror at the little garden where only the day before the border had been bright with the flowers of early spring. Not a bloom had escaped some slashing blade that had been wielded to such effect that the soil was littered with dying petals amid the desecrated stems.

‘Sister, is something wrong?’ Father Stephens, divested of his cassock, had opened the front door.

‘The garden—’ she said chokingly.

‘Dear Lord! What happened here?’ He came to meet her as she opened the gate, his handsome face drawn tight with shock and distaste. ‘Vandals! I hoped that we had been spared their worst excesses here.’

‘Wouldn’t vandals just pull them up by the roots and throw them around, Father?’ she questioned. ‘These have been cut, the stems sliced through, and the heads piled up in the border.’

‘I believe you’re right, Sister.’ He bent to look, then straightened up. ‘When you came out this morning—’

‘I never looked at anything,’ she confessed. ‘I had
overslept and I was only intent on getting to church on time.’

‘Here comes Father Timothy. Perhaps he noticed.’ Father Stephens waved impatiently as the car slowed to a stop.

‘Good morning, Father. Sister Joan. I am about to garage the car before I come in for breakfast,’ Father Timothy said, putting his head out of the window and giving them both a wintry smile. ‘You’ve seen the damage then? I noticed it on my way out this morning but there wasn’t time to inform you then. The offenders ought to be severely punished.’

‘Then it must have been done late last night.’ Father Stephens cast a frowning look at the border as Father Timothy drove on into the garage. ‘Come inside and start breakfast, Sister. No point in standing here.’

He was right, of course. The damage was done and the routine of the day had to be followed. Sister Joan went into the kitchen, took off her cloak, and set about beating eggs with as much vigour as if the eggs themselves had offended.

When she took the scrambled eggs and toast into the dining-room both priests were at the table, Father Timothy putting a hand over his cup as she lifted the coffee pot.

‘Just dry toast and a glass of water for me, Sister,’ he said.

‘That’s no kind of breakfast on which to start the day,’ Father Stephens said.

‘It’s my custom to abstain in Lent,’ Father Timothy said. ‘Naturally as my superior you are entitled to order me to eat.’

‘I’m sure Father Stephens wouldn’t dream of interfering with your penitential practices, Father,’ Sister Joan said, holding her exasperation in check with difficulty. ‘You’ll take some extra egg, Father? It turned out better than I expected, and the toast is nice and hot.’

‘Thank you, Sister.’ Father Stephens seemed to cheer up slightly as he looked at his plate. ‘I have been wondering if I ought not to inform the police about the damage. First the trees at the convent and then this—’

‘Something happened at the convent?’

‘Just before you arrived, Father. A large oak tree and several holly bushes were slashed and hacked,’ Father Stephens said. ‘Mother Prioress informed me about it. It was wanton destruction no less.’

‘Vandals,’ Father Timothy said and bit gloomily into a piece of dry toast.

‘And no doubt the police have sufficient to occupy them.’ Father Stephens sighed. ‘If you see one of the constables, Sister, you can mention it to him, but there seems little point in making a specific report.’

Mother Dorothy had thought it fruitless to report the incident. What would her advice be now? Sister Joan went into the kitchen, poured herself a coffee, and took an apple and a piece of toast. There was no apparent connection between the two events but the violence implicit in both was disturbing. Mother Dorothy, she reflected, would probably tell her to use her own judgement in the matter.

Meanwhile there were the dishes to be washed, the furniture to be polished, the border to be cleared before Mrs Fairly’s niece arrived. She chewed the apple thoughtfully, finished her coffee, and rose, determined that the rest of the day was going to go smoothly.

‘Leave our bedrooms until later, Sister.’ Father Stephens emerged from the study as she started up the staircase. ‘Miss Potter will be arriving later and I feel we ought to offer her a room for the night. Perhaps you will make up the guest room?’

‘Yes, of course, Father. Will she be here for lunch?’

‘I don’t know, Sister. You had better make extra just in case.’

‘If it’s a bit meagre,’ Sister Joan said meanly, ‘I’m sure
Father Timothy won’t mind going without.’

‘Father Timothy is an example to us all,’ Father Stephens said. He sounded, she thought, rather less inspired by it than he might have been.

The guest room was larger than the other rooms and had the faint chill of disuse about it. There were twin beds lacking bedding, a large wardrobe and chest of drawers and an armchair with slightly sagging cushions. A prayer stool and a bedside table completed the furnishings. The wallpaper, she noticed, had the same riotous roses and buttercups. Reminding herself to clear away the mess in the garden border she carried linen and blankets from the airing cupboard, made up one of the beds and flicked a duster over the surfaces. Some touch of welcome would be nice but since she had never met Sylvia Potter she couldn’t make up her mind what would be appropriate. The other might prefer to go to an hotel anyway.

Opening the window to allow the fresh, cool air of the morning to circulate, she went briskly downstairs again. Cheese salad for lunch with fruit salad and cake to follow, she decided. Nothing to go cold and spoil there, and she could cheat a little by opening tins and buying the cake. She began clearing a surface on which to prepare the salad greens, brushing toast crumbs into the small pedal bin which was almost full. The remains of the breakfast eggs were decidedly unappetizing. Father Stephens hadn’t, it seemed, been able to eat a double portion. She tied the top of the bin liner and went out into the back garden where the wheeled bin stood, ready to be left outside for the weekly collection.

Lifting the lid she slung in the bin liner and stood, holding the lid up, staring at the square brown paper parcel within. Someone had made an effort to push it down among the other refuse in the tied-up black bags. She had tilted the bin as she lifted the lid, dislodging the concealing bags. The probable sequence of events ran
through her mind as she tugged out the parcel, put it under her arm, and went back into the kitchen. Tearing off the paper with its inadequate binding of sticky tape, dropping the wrapping into the small pedal bin, feeling no surprise at all as the shabby brown handbag was revealed.

The house was quiet. Both clerics had presumably departed on parish business. She took the bag upstairs, went into her room, and closed the door. It was her clear duty to inform the police what she had found and she had every intention of doing so, but first she wanted to look inside herself. It was no longer prying but investigation, she told herself firmly, as she unclasped the top and looked inside.

Two compartments were separated by a zipped section. She drew out the contents carefully. A cheque book, a plastic folder holding a library card and a bank card, a book of stamps, a birthday book with butterflies on the cover, a paying-in book, some clean tissues. Mrs Fairly had been neat and tidy to the utmost degree. Even the contents of her handbag could have been displayed for inspection. The cheque book had the amounts neatly dated and tabulated. The paying-in book recorded her monthly salary. The housekeeper had lived well within her means. She had a balance of £2,000 in her current account, no sign of any savings accounts. There was a purse containing two £5 notes and in the birthday book the names of Father Malone, Father Stephens and Sylvie were written opposite the requisite dates. The other pages were blank.

She unzipped the centre compartment carefully. A rosary and a St Christopher medal were inside, nothing else.

Sister Joan replaced the contents, turning each one over as she did so. If there had ever been anything of interest inside then it had been removed. In that case why wrap the bag in brown paper and push it down into
the refuse bin? She sat on the edge of the bed, holding the bag, trying to fathom the actions that had led to its being discarded. No! not discarded! If the bag had simply been thrown out with the rubbish then it could easily have been put into one of the black bin liners. Instead it had been wrapped in brown paper and placed in the bin, to be taken out later. That could only mean that someone wanted to examine the bag more closely. Someone had had limited time or opportunity in which to find whatever it was they were seeking, and had hastily wrapped and sellotaped the bag and thrust it into the outside bin, meaning to return and retrieve it. The refuse wasn’t due to be collected for another couple of days so there hadn’t been any pressing urgency.

She thought a moment longer, lifted her pillow and put the handbag beneath, pulled up the coverlet and went downstairs again. Lifting the telephone receiver in the study, dialling the local police station, she kept her ears pricked for the sound of returning footsteps.

‘I’m afraid Detective Sergeant Mill isn’t coming in today, Sister. May I take a message for him or is there something I can do to help?’

The voice at the other end was bright and female. Sister Joan said, ‘No, it can wait. Thank you.’

Sooner or later, she was certain, someone would go out to the refuse bin and reach down for the parcel. Someone would betray themselves. She stood a moment longer, then went swiftly back into the kitchen, fumbling in the cabinet drawer for brown paper and sticky tape, emptying a small cardboard box of its reels of cotton, hunting for a pen.

The police were hampered by regulations. Mother Dorothy had intimated that if, without breaking the rule, she could find a gentler verdict than suicide to pronounce over Mrs Fairly’s memory then she was free to use her own initiative. And nowhere in the rule was it written that one wasn’t permitted to set a trap for a
murderer in order that justice might be served.

By the time Father Stephens walked into the presbytery the table had been laid and the salad prepared and Sister Joan was on her knees, removing the last few wilting heads of the destroyed flowers.

‘Have you time to make me a coffee, Sister?’ He paused at the front door.

‘Yes, of course, Father.’ Getting to her feet she hurried towards him. He looked tired, she thought. Recent events had shaken him more than he cared to admit. ‘Is Father Timothy with you?’

‘He went to the station to meet Miss Potter. I’ve been dealing with the first communicants.’

‘If you’re not sure what time she’s arriving—?’ Sister Joan looked at him.

‘There are three trains from the north this morning. Father Timothy offered to meet them all. As he reminded me one can pray and meditate anywhere.’

‘I’ll get your coffee, Father.’

Putting on the kettle she tried to imagine how she would feel to have lost a beloved aunt and to be met at the end of a tiring journey by the joyless countenance of a strange priest.

‘I need to go to the bakery, Father.’ She set the cup of coffee at his elbow. ‘I will need some money.’

‘Handbag not turned up yet? Here you are then.’ He took a couple of banknotes out of his wallet and gave them to her. ‘Father Malone deals with the financial side of things. If you require more let me know. Mrs Fairly kept an account book in the kitchen somewhere so you can enter your purchases later.’

‘I thought I’d buy some cake to go with the fruit for dessert,’ she said. ‘Would you like me to walk along to the station and see if there’s any sign of Miss Potter yet?’

‘That would be very good of you, Sister.’ He nodded absently, his fingers fluttering towards a sheaf of notes before him.

‘Your Easter sermon?’ she asked.

‘I’m hoping to make it rather special.’

She stood irresolute for a moment, longing to say, ‘But the people don’t want special sermons at such times, Father. Easter, like Christmas, is a link with childhood and innocence, a time to renew old traditions. People want simplicity, not clever argument and obscure references.’