The Four Streets Saga

by Nadine Dorries

  ‘Aye, they can and they do,’ said Maria.

  The older woman spoke again. Kitty thought that she looked the saddest. She later discovered that she had been in the Abbey for five years and that her baby had long since gone but that she had no home and no money. Ever since, she had remained in the Abbey, working twelve-hour days every day for no pay and at the mercy of Sister Assumpta’s whim and temper.

  ‘Just be sure to never speak,’ she advised Kitty. ‘Even if you are at the rollers in the laundry and ye think the noise will drown out what ye is saying, it won’t. The witches have fuckin’ good hearing, now they do. They will hear and ye will be sent to the Reverend Mother and when ye are, she will beat ye with a stick so bad… See this.’

  She pointed to a thin, bright-red weal down the side of her neck.

  ‘And these.’

  She held out her hands to Kitty, who inhaled sharply at the sight of the cuts across the older woman’s palms.

  ‘I got the stick because Besmina disappeared, like it was my fault. Besmina was put with me on the corridors and the bathrooms this morning. I’m just warning ye…’ She tailed off as she saw the look on Kitty’s face. Kitty was appalled at the idea of a woman, the age of her own mother, being beaten.

  The light from an oil lamp at the bottom of the stairs crept under the door. In seconds, everyone had fled to their own beds.

  Kitty lay awake. The footsteps, belonging to the lamp-carrying nun, clipped away into the distance.

  The gentle breathing of her roommates became deeper as they succumbed to exhaustion. Kitty heard the unfamiliar creaks and groans of the building as it moaned in objection to the wind buffeting it from all sides. Her eyes adjusted to the starlight shining in through the skylight opposite her bed, illuminating the faces of the sleeping girls.

  She thought about the harvest, which might almost have happened weeks ago. Could it have been only yesterday that she met Aengus? She felt for the charm bracelet Maeve had given her. It was still there. She removed the bracelet and tucked it underneath her mattress in case a nun saw her wearing it and took it away.

  As the faces of Tommy, Maura and her siblings filled her mind, she thought about home. She wondered, would the baby even know who she was by the time she returned? Everyone and everything felt as though it belonged to another life, a life she had left. Was it only this morning that she had arrived?

  As she closed her eyes, she heard Sister Evangelista praising her English essay and remembered her pride when she had won a bar of Cadbury’s chocolate, the class prize for reading. A feeling of utter homesickness overwhelmed her. Tears ran silently down her cheeks. She had never slept in a room with so many people nor ever felt so alone.

  ‘Not long,’ she whispered, as she scrunched the bed sheet tightly in her hand, as though it were a rope holding her onto the edge of sanity.

  After breakfast the following morning, a novice instructed Kitty to visit the Reverend Mother’s office before she began work in the laundry.

  There had been no talking at breakfast. Everyone remained silent while the nuns ate their bacon and sausages, and the girls their milky gruel.

  Once the ordeal was over, the girls sat straight-backed on their wooden pews, hands folded in laps, waiting to be dismissed to the toilet before work. Kitty closely watched what they did and copied them, exactly.

  Once the bathroom call was over, they were sent straight down to the laundry. Some were issued with house-cleaning duties, which meant having to scrub long corridors on their hands and knees. This was regarded as light relief after washing other people’s dirty linen.

  Kitty knocked on Sister Assumpta’s door, the biggest she had ever stood in front of in her life, painted a glossy white with six tall panels. She stood with her hand resting on the large brass knob and strained to hear the instruction for her to walk in.

  The word ‘Enter’ boomed towards her from across the vast room and penetrated the door with no difficulty whatsoever.

  Kitty turned the knob and nervously stepped inside. The fading aroma of Kathleen’s 4711 eau de cologne lingered behind the door, and ushered her across the acreage of pastel-green Persian carpet.

  Kitty’s heart leapt and then sank again. There was no one in the room other than Sister Assumpta, seated at her desk. As before, she was but a silhouette against the light flooding in through the window behind her.

  Kitty hovered, not knowing what to say.

  From what she could make out, Sister Assumpta was scrutinizing a letter. On her desk lay a long-handled, bone-and-silver letter opener.

  In the absence of any acknowledgment or instruction, Kitty acted upon her own initiative and walked to the same chair in front of the desk on which she had been instructed to sit only yesterday. The dark wooden seat was upholstered in a beautiful, cream damask silk. Before she sat down, she glanced out of the window behind Reverend Mother and noticed that, on the front lawn, a long row of heavily pregnant young girls were on their hands and knees, picking at the grass with their bare hands.

  Kitty watched for a moment, amazed that this was how the vast expanse of lawn was maintained. The girls crawled backwards as they shredded the grass, harvesting daisies. Following behind them were two more girls, pushing an enormous metal roller that was at least twice the size of them both, flattening the freshly picked grass.

  ‘Did I tell you to sit?’ the Reverend Mother roared with such ferocity, it made Kitty spring back to her feet.

  She cupped her hands in front of her and stood looking down at them, for no other reason than she felt it would be impertinent to look directly at Sister Assumpta and she didn’t know where else to look.

  ‘Would you like me to send for tea, would you, Cissy?’

  Sister Assumpta’s voice was laced with sarcasm. Kitty lifted her eyes and could just make out that she was peering at her over her spectacles. She was not smiling.

  ‘No, Sister, I have had my tea, thank you,’ she replied with more confidence than she felt.

  Sister Assumpta laughed. A hollow, unkind laugh.

  ‘Have you, girl? Then, that’s just as well, isn’t it? I wouldn’t like you to be thinking you could wander in here for a cup of tea at any old time of day, would I?’

  Kitty knew she was being laughed at and remained silent.

  ‘Would I?’ Again the roar. Kitty was close to being afraid.

  Her words wobbled on the edge of tears as she replied, ‘No, Sister.’

  Sister Assumpta stared at Kitty for what seemed like an eternity.

  Kitty listened to the seconds ticking by on the grandfather clock in the corner and, with each second, her fear grew.

  A fierce heat slowly crept upwards from her neck, under her chin and onto her face, as she looked down again, afraid of causing offence if she turned her eyes elsewhere.

  ‘I have received a letter this morning, Cissy.’ She stopped. ‘Cissy.’

  Kitty’s head jerked upwards. She looked bolder than she felt. In truth she was terrified.

  ‘The midwife has written to say that she will be calling to see you. Now, that’s very special treatment, isn’t it, Cissy?’

  Kitty didn’t know how to answer but her heart skipped a beat.

  She knew the midwife, Rosie, was a relative of Nana Kathleen.

  ‘She will be here a week on Wednesday. I will see you again before she arrives. However, the reason I have asked to see you today is that I need to ensure that you always remember that many of the girls here are penitents. Just like yourself, Cissy, they are fallen women and have been placed in my care to help them find salvation through obedience and work. They do not have an esteemed midwife in the family, money, or indeed relatives gagging to take them out when the time comes. They will end their days here, seeking salvation and forgiveness from the good Lord. If you lived in Ireland, and had none of the privileges you do, you would likely be one of them, as you surely have their sinful ways, girl.’

  She stopped talking and again stared at Kitty, waiting for a react
ion.

  Sister Assumpta was not happy that she had agreed to take in this girl. She had been given no back story and she didn’t like that at all. She had not even received a letter from the girl’s priest in Liverpool, which would have been the usual means of introduction. Something was not right with this situation. Kitty and her family were hiding something.

  The Reverend Mother was no fool. However, she could not ignore the midwife, Rosie O’Grady. Since the hanging incident, it had been hard indeed to persuade a midwife to work at the convent under any circumstances. Rosie O’Grady was the matron at the women’s hospital in Dublin where she had made a name for herself as the most senior in her profession in Ireland. She was not someone to be refused.

  The most recent hanging had cast a grave shadow over the convent. The nuns had tried to keep it quiet, but bad news travels faster than any other. ‘If only the stupid girls hadn’t shouted out of the window for the laundry van drivers to help, we would have stood a better chance of keeping it quiet. We had managed it every other time,’ Sister Assumpta often complained to Sister Celia.

  She had to repair what damage had been done to the convent’s good name.

  News like this could stop the prison and the hotels sending their laundry out to the Abbey and that would be a catastrophe. The nuns would receive little help from Rome if their income dried up.

  Refusing to take a referral from Rosie O’Grady would infer they had something to hide.

  The Reverend Mother focused her attention on Kitty and noticed her tremble.

  ‘I don’t want you upsetting things and so you must not discuss your situation with anyone, do you understand me?’

  Kitty nodded.

  ‘Do you understand me?’

  Kitty began to shake. She tried not to, but she couldn’t stop herself. The trembling began in her hands, travelled upwards through her arms and soon took over her entire body. Her teeth began to chatter uncontrollably. She could not stop them. But something unexpected washed over her. The knowledge that she was loved.

  She was not alone. She was not friendless. She had people who cared about her who had brought her here out of kindness and, seemingly, at great expense.

  A confidence she didn’t know she possessed forced her to lift her head to look at Sister Assumpta straight in what she took to be her eyes.

  ‘Yes, Reverend Mother,’ she replied defiantly and almost slightly too loudly. ‘I have committed no crime. I am not a penitent. I am here of my own free will, because this is the place my mammy and Kathleen chose for me, on Auntie Rosie’s say-so. I’m glad Auntie Rosie is coming to see me next week. I shall be able to send a message home when she does and let them know I am all right.’

  Sister Assumpta peered over her glasses in surprise at Kitty. Her mouth opened and closed like a fish and then, with a wave of her hand, she shouted, ‘Oh, get out of here, girl. Get out and just remember, you are forbidden to talk. Everyone is forbidden, but you even more so.’

  With a new-found and growing confidence, bordering on reckless, Kitty forced a smile to her lips. She looked straight at the blurred dark form in the midst of the light and said, ‘Thank you, Reverend Mother,’ and, turning on her heel, she moved towards the door.

  Just as she pulled it closed behind her, she heard the voice booming impatiently behind her. ‘And don’t walk on the carpet.’

  Once safely out of the room, Kitty whispered to herself, ‘This must be what hell is like. I’ve been sent to hell. I’ll bloody beat it, though.’

  And, for the first time since she had arrived, she strode with her head held high.

  23

  HOWARD KNEW HE would have to be especially kind when questioning Daisy. He was also keen to impress Miss Devlin.

  ‘Have a heart, Howard. What can she possibly know? Sure, Daisy is a bag of nerves most of the time. This is freaking her out altogether, so it is,’ she said.

  Howard had popped into the school office to have a word with Sister Evangelista and afterwards had lingered, making pointless small talk, until Miss Devlin offered him a cup of tea.

  Had he but known it, Miss Devlin was delighted to see him again.

  She had taken to wearing her newly lightened hair in a fashionable short pixie style, in place of the ponytail tied up in a bow that she had sported since she was six years old.

  Miss Devlin had recently celebrated the universally acknowledged spinster age of thirty. Alone. Reading Madame Bovary, with a pot of Earl Grey tea and a lemon puff. As far as she and most of the people around her were concerned, she was well and truly on the shelf. Howard’s attention was an answer to her prayers. He wasn’t a Catholic, but she was so keen, she was prepared to overlook this previously non-negotiable requirement.

  Howard loved to stare at her soft powdery face, drowning in her liquid blue eyes with the first signs of crow’s feet appearing at the corners. And now, as he became transfixed by her gently moving, cherry-red lips, he had trouble concentrating on what she was saying.

  ‘Pardon?’ he asked, as she finished speaking.

  ‘I asked you, what could Daisy possibly know? She is simple and has been in the care of the sisters since she was born.’

  Before he could answer, a loud metallic crash followed by a violent ping echoed across the room as the school secretary frowned over the top of her prim and proper, horn-rimmed spectacles. She was a click of a letter away from informing both Howard and Miss Devlin that she did not approve of flirting at work.

  Miss Devlin frowned back. She made a mental note to inform the school secretary that in future she could take herself and her solitaire diamond engagement ring over to the convent for half an hour and leave them alone.

  Howard could not tell Miss Devlin what Daisy was supposed to have confided in Molly. They needed to hear it for themselves. It was no use to them as hearsay and now that Molly was dead, they had to move quickly. They didn’t want to be made fools of, yet again.

  ‘We will be very careful with Daisy, you needn’t worry.’

  ‘What is it like down on the streets? Are the women anxious about the murder whilst the men are out at work?’

  ‘It is bad,’ Howard replied. ‘Everyone is jumpy and who can blame them? They are all safe enough, though, we have officers everywhere.’

  Howard didn’t mention to her that he and Simon had a major headache. There was nothing he would have loved more than to have discussed it with her, but secrecy was a fundamental part of his job. In police work, he had to keep his own counsel.

  They had been watching Tommy Doherty like a hawk since Molly Barrett had told them that Daisy saw Tommy murder the priest. But they knew it could not have been Tommy who killed Molly. He had been in his own house at the time.

  Howard’s superiors were convinced that whoever had murdered the priest had also murdered Molly.

  Howard and Simon knew that, if what Daisy had told Molly was the truth, this just couldn’t be the case and, besides, who would believe that? There had never been so much as a burglary on any of the four streets before. This community looked after its own, and yet he would be asking everyone to believe that there had been two random murders committed by two different people in a short space of time in one community. Even Howard knew that sounded incredible. Over and over again, he had quizzed the officers who had been on duty. Their stories were faultless. Not a crack in any of them.

  Tommy had left Jerry Deane’s house the evening of Molly’s murder. He had returned home and walked in through his own back gate. He was seen closing his bedroom curtains and switching off the light an hour later. He never left the house again until the men knocked on for him the following morning.

  Tommy Doherty had not murdered Molly Barrett. This was one of the very few facts in their possession. There had been a police officer in a parked car at the end of the road, close to Tommy’s front door, and another car parked by the end of his entry all night. They had not stopped watching Tommy since Molly’s confession over the lightest sandwich cake Howard had ever
tasted.

  Molly’s house was on the other side of the road. Whoever had murdered her had been calculating and audacious. Not one of the officers had seen or heard anything, but they did have one solitary clue. A Pall Mall cigarette filter had been found on the outhouse floor. Congealed in blood, but definitely a Pall Mall. They had taken good note. Tommy smoked roll-ups. Molly smoked Woodbines.

  Until Molly’s murder, Howard and Simon had thought that they had a solid lead. They had been waiting for Daisy to recover from her attack of nerves in the convent.

  Now Molly was dead. And someone did it right under the noses of twelve of Lancashire’s finest coppers.

  There was a gnawing feeling in the pit of Howard’s stomach that, somehow, he and Simon were responsible for Molly’s death. That if they hadn’t spent so much time in her parlour, drinking tea and eating cake, she might still be alive today.

  There was only one person Howard knew who smoked Pall Mall and that was Simon. He made a mental note to ask Simon where in town he bought them to try and draw a link between someone in the streets and the filter.

  Howard placed his empty cup on the desk beside Miss Devlin.

  ‘I have to go. I’m off to brief Simon down at the station and run through the questions we have to ask Daisy.’

  ‘It’s a good job Sister has given permission for both me and Daisy to jump in the car with you at six tonight,’ said Miss Devlin. ‘I think Daisy will find it helpful having me there to hold her hand,’ she added with a smile.

  Howard grinned. ‘’Tis you who will need the chaperone if you are in a car with me,’ he replied cheekily.

  The typewriter carriage crashed and pinged and Howard flinched.

  ‘Does she fire tin tacks out of that machine or what?’ he whispered as he walked towards the steps.

  ‘You cheeky thing,’ Miss Devlin whispered back, tapping his arm playfully.