by Jo Spain
‘Oh.’ She was embarrassed. ‘There are toilets at the end of each landing.’
‘But weren’t the girls locked in at night?’ Tom asked.
He didn’t know this for sure, but something told him that was the case. If the nuns were in the habit of locking the rooms, that habit had come from somewhere.
‘Yes, I suppose they were.’ Sister Concepta pursed her lips. ‘I imagine they used chamber pots in the evening.’
‘As recently as 1985,’ Tom observed.
She looked up at him and he saw defiance flash in her eyes.
‘I feel like you want me to apologize, Inspector, for something that happened, as you know, long before I became a nun.’
He felt the force of her words. It was the first time he had seen her angry.
As quickly as it came, the seemingly uncharacteristic fury was gone.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m being too sensitive. May I ask you a question, though?’
‘Of course.’
She fixed him with a stare.
‘Do you think there’s a connection between Mother Attracta’s murder and the laundry?’
He looked at her. ‘It’s highly unlikely,’ he said, eventually.
Sister Concepta’s shoulders sagged in obvious relief.
‘In my experience,’ Tom continued, ‘when a murder’s committed, it’s usually by somebody close to the victim.’
Michael had followed Laura to the end of the room and was hunched down, examining the side of the wooden cupboard.
‘What are you looking at?’ Tom asked.
‘There are initials scratched here.’
Laura abandoned the window with lightning speed.
Tom joined them. He didn’t know what Laura’s aunt’s surname was, but he fervently hoped they didn’t see the initial P for Peggy. All he saw, though, were the initials MM, carved repeatedly in the wood.
He ran his fingers over the amateur grooves. ‘MM. That was on the back of Mother Attracta’s cross. It’s Mary Magdalene, isn’t it?’
‘Yes. Many of the older sisters have the same crucifix,’ Sister Concepta replied.
‘Why would someone carve that here?’ the inspector asked.
She shrugged her shoulders. ‘I don’t know. I suppose we have to remember that some of the poor souls who stayed in this place wouldn’t have had their full mental capacities. Repetitive behaviour can be a sign of an unsettled mind.’
‘Do you have a list of the women who stayed here?’ Laura said.
‘Many of the girls who came here were given house names to protect their privacy,’ Sister Concepta replied. ‘Are you looking for someone in particular?’
Laura nodded.
There was no denying the look of compassion on the nun’s face in that instant.
Tom observed her with interest.
‘Would you like me to look for a record?’ Sister Concepta asked Laura, her voice gentle.
‘Very much. Please,’ Laura answered, taken aback.
For crying out loud, Tom thought. An investigation within an investigation. It was time to call a halt to this distraction.
‘Sister, perhaps we should see the rest of the house?’ he said.
‘Of course. Follow me.’
Chapter 19
As they left the room, Tom felt a shift in the mood. Sister Concepta appeared relieved to have left the dormitories. Before they went back downstairs, she brought them to the end of the building, where a large window gave them a view of the land beyond the house.
‘You can’t see them at night, but there are some foundations still behind us from the buildings that were knocked down. They would have housed part of the laundry and the orphanage.’
‘Orphanage?’ Tom and Ray repeated in unison.
‘Yes,’ Sister Concepta replied. ‘It was very common for nuns to run orphanages before the state took over. There was a separate mother and baby home up in Limerick City, but it didn’t have the capacity for all the babies. Some of them were sent here, and the convent also took in pregnant girls from the surrounding rural areas. Shall we move on?’
The detectives reflected on the additional information.
‘So, how long was Mother Attracta in charge?’ Tom asked, as they walked back down the flights of stairs.
‘Twenty years, I think,’ she replied.
‘Meaning she wasn’t in charge when it was a laundry?’
‘No. But she was here. The Reverend Mother before her had been in charge since the late sixties. Her name was Mother Theresa.’
‘What was she like?’ Ray asked.
‘I never met her. I believe she was very strict.’
On the other side of the house was the nuns’ main sitting room, where they encountered more sisters. The nuns were relaxing and enjoying the warmth of an open fire. Most of the rooms in this wing had been used as classrooms and were empty.
Their final destination was the chapel.
There were six wooden pews on each side of a centre aisle, in front of a compact altar. A crucifix hung on the back wall, to its right an image of the Holy Ghost, portrayed as a dove. On the left was an icon of the Virgin Mary.
‘Would you mind if I left you for a few moments so I can check if we’re ready for dinner?’ Sister Concepta asked Tom.
‘Not at all. I don’t want to keep everyone up too late but I’d like to speak to the sisters individually after dinner.’
‘Whatever we can do to help.’
When the nun left, the detectives sat down on the hard wooden pews.
There wasn’t a sound to be heard from inside or outside the house. The silence was unsettling.
‘So, what do we think?’ Tom asked.
Ray rubbed his chin, now coarse with stubble after the long day.
‘I don’t like this place; I’m used to working out of a station. I’m just wondering what the hell we do if we get snowed in here.’
‘I know. This place gives me the heebie-jeebies as well,’ Michael said. ‘The whole Magdalene thing is creepy – locking girls away from the world like that – but I still think that’s just a distraction.’
‘Go on,’ Tom said.
‘Those empty rooms,’ Michael continued. ‘It puts it in perspective. It’s ancient history. How likely is it that someone who was in the laundry came back decades later and battered Mother Attracta over the head? The laundry closed in 1985, twenty-five years ago. If our victim was as unpleasant as Sister Concepta made out to you earlier – an opinion the local sergeant seemed to share – I think our suspect could be one of the other nuns in this house, or someone from the village. I know it’s unlikely to be a woman, but . . .’
‘I agree, up to a point,’ Tom said. ‘We should start with those around her. But so far, other than our gracious host who seems young and fit enough, we’ve seen a group of nuns ranging in age from their late forties to their seventies. I haven’t seen anyone I’d suspect would have the strength to do what was done to Mother Attracta.’
Ray shrugged. ‘She was an elderly woman, though, and didn’t weigh much. I can’t imagine a middle-aged nun killing someone, but if we’re talking trumps here, that heavyweight sister in the kitchen could take Mother Attracta every time.’
Michael snorted.
‘Jesus, Ray.’ Tom shook his head.
The image Ray had conjured broke the tension for most of the detectives, but Laura didn’t smile. She had been twisting a curl earnestly with her finger and now looked up.
‘How could one of the nuns have killed her?’ she asked. ‘They’d have had to take her on Wednesday night, and the pathologist said she wasn’t killed until Thursday, sometime around 11 a.m. She was hardly brought to the park in daylight, which meant waiting until four-ish at least to move her. A nun from here would have been gone a whole day. Surely they’d have been missed?’
‘Well, we’ve to establish that, but they might not have been gone a whole day,’ Tom said. ‘We know she was taken on Wednesday night, but if she wasn�
�t killed until the next day, the killer could have moved her somewhere close to the convent, stayed with her that night, murdered her in the morning, then come back here, before leaving again later that day and bringing her to Dublin.’
Laura raised her eyebrows in a way that implied she found the idea far-fetched, but couldn’t yet rule it out.
Tom continued. ‘It’s possible, but not probable, I know. We’ll need to ascertain in the interviews if everybody has an alibi for those twenty-four hours.’
‘How are we going to organize the interviews?’ Ray asked.
‘Let’s pair up, Laura and I in one room, you two in the other.’
‘Any word from Dublin?’ Michael asked.
Tom fished his phone from his pocket. It had been so quiet that he wondered if they had no network coverage. But no, the signal was strong and the phone fully charged.
‘No missed calls,’ he said. ‘I’ll phone them in a moment.’
‘The park thing really confuses me,’ Laura said.
‘Maybe the killer wanted her as far away as possible to throw us off the scent?’ Michael suggested.
‘Myself and Tom discussed this earlier,’ Ray said. ‘She wasn’t left in a way that destroyed any hope of us identifying her. The killer might have delayed us finding out where she was from, but didn’t prevent it. I have this feeling that our murderer was, as Sean McGuinness puts it, depositing her in our back garden. But as Tom points out, we’d have ended up on the case, anyway.’
Tom inclined his head.
‘I suppose we’ve no way of knowing if they knew that, though. Would they have assumed detectives from Limerick would be sent to Kilcross? The general public is not that familiar with garda structures, or how the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation works.’
‘What if they didn’t want a Limerick team because they might have more local knowledge?’ Laura mused.
Tom stood, massaging the backs of his thighs. The numbness in his buttocks summoned memories of enforced attendance at Sunday Mass as a child – which, he knew, had lasted no longer than an hour each week but at the time had felt like endless purgatory. How many hours had the Magdalene girls been forced to sit and kneel at these pews praying for forgiveness for imagined sins?
‘Let’s join the suspects for supper,’ he said, drolly. ‘Otherwise, we’ll be here speculating all night. Go on ahead. I’ll ring Dublin.’
He walked with them as far as the end of the corridor before stepping into the large living room where they’d seen the nuns relaxing earlier. It was empty now. Sinking gratefully into one of the comfortable armchairs by the open fire, where peat briquettes glowed invitingly, he dialled Ian’s number.
‘How are the sticks?’ Ian answered. ‘Any fear of you getting snowed in?’
‘There’s every chance, but I’m pretty sure Ray would walk ahead of the cars shovelling snow to get back to the comforts of the capital. Have you got anything for me?’
‘I was rather hoping you’d have news for us.’
‘Wishful thinking. Anything from the park?’
‘We’ve had a few calls that we’re checking out. A higher than usual number of cranks.’
‘I can well imagine. Is it out that she’s a nun yet?’
‘Surprisingly, no. The hacks are in a frenzy trying to get an identity. RTÉ is looking for an update. McGuinness has decided to keep them in the dark until the morning. He says he’ll do a presser then. He’s channelling obstructive in a big way – hoping you’ll get it solved before he has to do media.’
‘I was planning on sleeping at some point, but I’ll postpone,’ Tom said. ‘Anything more on Gerard Poots?’
‘He is who he says he is. Lovely house, not too far from you – Luttrellstown. Wife. Nice career. When are you getting your forensic scientists?’
‘In the morning. They’ll have their work cut out for them – the nuns cleaned everything up.’
‘You’re joking?’
‘I wish I was.’
‘Who gave the order to clean? If someone down there committed the murder, it would be very handy to have every trace removed before you arrived, wouldn’t it? It’s not like they’d have had time to do it while they were kidnapping her.’
‘Good thinking,’ Tom said. ‘We’re about to have dinner.’
‘Well, let Ray taste it first. If they’re planning to bump you off, he’s more expendable.’
‘I won’t tell him you said that. Speak tomorrow.’
Tom hung up and surveyed the room. There was no television – the local sergeant had been right – but the bookcases along the wall were crammed. A small unit in the corner contained board games and boxes of playing cards. At his feet there was a basket of wool, knitting needles poking out here and there.
The room reminded him of his grandmother’s house years ago, before mod cons became the norm. It was restful. He wouldn’t miss a television in a room like this. Then he smiled and shook his head. Who was he kidding? A nice cigar, though, and maybe a good book.
His musings were interrupted by the banging of the heavy brass doorknocker – a sound that echoed throughout the convent. Someone was impatient to come in out of the cold.
Tom arrived in the main hall in time to answer the front door.
Willie was back, stomping his feet on the light layer of snow that now covered the ground.
‘Making yourself at home, I see. They have you doing doorman.’
‘You couldn’t find a nice country pub for a sup, Willie?’
‘I’m shocked you have so little faith in me. I’d sniff out a pub in the desert. I’d a half-pint and, I don’t mind telling you, a very interesting conversation with some locals.’
Tom lifted his eyebrows inquiringly, but just then the door behind them opened and Sister Concepta looked out.
‘I thought I heard the door. Ah, your colleague is back. Would you like to join us for dinner?’
‘Lovely,’ Willie and Tom said, a look passing between them that said they would talk afterwards.
Chapter 20
When Sister Concepta opened the door to the dining room, the murmur of conversation died down and the rest of the convent’s inhabitants turned to look at the additional guests. All the nuns wore veils, but only some of them were in full habit. The rest wore a mixture of navy, brown or grey skirts and white blouses, topped with V-neck woollen pullovers.
Two long tables were laden with steaming tureens of stew and woven baskets spilling over with bread rolls. Ray, Michael and Laura sat at the end of one long table, so Tom and Willie joined the other, greeting the nuns on either side, as Sister Concepta took her seat at the top.
The two tables were full, but there were others on either side that sat empty, reminders of a busier convent. The walls were painted a warm beige, and heavy cream curtains gave the room a comfortable feel on the cold winter’s evening.
Tom was wondering why nobody had started eating when Sister Concepta joined her hands in prayer.
‘In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.’
Of course! Grace before meals. He made the sign of the cross and, momentarily ignoring his lapsed Catholic status, dutifully hung his head as the nun intoned the familiar prayer.
When Tom thought it was safe to look up, he saw that the sister seated beside him was holding a ladle of beef stew and pointing at his plate.
‘Shall I serve you?’ she offered.
‘Please, Sister. This smells divine.’
‘I’m Sister Gabrielle,’ she said. ‘Sister Concepta said we should all introduce ourselves to you.’
‘Detective Inspector Tom Reynolds,’ he replied.
Sister Gabrielle looked roughly the same age as Tom. The small glimpses of hair under her headdress were strawberry blonde, and she was pretty – in a farmer’s daughter way, with a plump round face, large blue eyes and dimpled cheeks.
He smiled as she generously spooned the thick meaty mess on to his plate.
‘Help yourself to the rolls,�
�� she said. ‘Sister Fidelma makes the most beautiful bread. If you snooze you lose. Some of the sisters can’t help themselves. These are like apples in the Garden of Eden.’
As she talked, she placed three rolls on her side plate, held one up to her nose, broke it apart and inhaled the rich doughy smell.
‘You’re lucky to have such gifted cooks,’ Tom observed.
He turned to thank the nun on his other side, who was brandishing a decanter of deep red wine with intent. He nodded to her to pour but held up his hand to indicate a half-glass was sufficient.
‘We tend to break out the good stuff coming up to Christmas – and especially when we’ve guests,’ Sister Gabrielle said. ‘There are many periods in the year when we’re either fasting or limiting ourselves, so I suppose we appreciate our treats all the more when we do indulge.’
‘Fasting?’ Willie chimed, from her other side, as he helped himself to a roll. ‘Now, why would you do that to yourselves?’
The nun Tom recognized as Sister Mary tittered like a schoolgirl, then clamped her hand over her mouth as though shocked that the sound had escaped.
Tom liberated a roll from the rapidly depleting pile and, following Sister Gabrielle’s lead, broke it in two. The warm aroma that rose to meet his nostrils made him salivate, and he placed one half in his mouth. It was delectable. Crisp on the outside, soft and hot on the inside. The bread tasted sweet and sour simultaneously. He’d have to sneak some of these home for Louise; he wouldn’t be able to describe how good they were and do them any justice. He washed the tasty mouthful down with a sip of the rich wine, guessing it was a Bordeaux.
The sacrifices I make for this job, he reflected, contentedly.
The inspector was abruptly roused from his bread-and-wine-induced reverie. An elderly nun on the other side of the table suddenly bellowed at him, as though seeing him for the first time.
‘What are you doing here? You men can’t be in here!’
Tom froze, mid-chew.
The nun beside her placed her hand firmly on the older sister’s arm.
‘Gladys, hush now. This is our guest. He’s a policeman, here to see what happened to Attracta.’