With Our Blessing

by Jo Spain

  ‘In any case, that night Mother Attracta blew out the candles as usual after we’d all gone to bed, then she hoisted the television from the sitting room into her office and locked it. On her own. She eventually sent it up to the old folks’ home. We found out what had happened very quickly the next morning, because Sister Gladys used to watch this talk show every day. She went in with her cup of tea and the next thing we heard this shriek. We thought she was being murdered. Then we thought she was going to murder Mother Attracta.’

  As soon as the words left her mouth, Sister Bernadette gasped and blessed herself.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, hurriedly. ‘I shouldn’t have said that. Of course she wasn’t going to actually murder her.’

  Tom held his hand up to quieten her. ‘It’s just a turn of phrase.’

  The woman in front of him exhaled. She sat back in her chair.

  ‘Is this very formal, inspector?’ Sister Bernadette asked, inclining her head towards the tape recorder at the edge of the table.

  ‘Not so formal that you have to be worried. We’re recording the interviews in case we miss something, or need to come back to something that could be helpful.’

  ‘Oh, of course,’ she smiled.

  ‘Or in case one of you confesses,’ he said, with a small laugh.

  The nun’s jaw dropped.

  ‘So, Sister, are you in this convent long?’

  ‘I’m here just over five years,’ she replied, after a few seconds had passed and she’d regained her composure.

  ‘Have you only been a nun for five years?’

  ‘No. I entered the novitiate when I was eighteen. I worked abroad. The order has always had missionary sisters.’

  ‘Where did you serve, Sister?’ Tom asked.

  ‘Latin America. For over twenty-five years. Bolivia and Ecuador, but mostly El Salvador.’

  ‘Really?’ He sat back and absent-mindedly picked up a pen to tap on the table. ‘You must have tales to tell. You were there in some troubled times, no doubt?’

  ‘I could tell you stories that would make your hair stand on end. Stories of poverty and cruelty you can’t even imagine. But I could also tell you of the wonderful people I met and all the good we did there.’

  Sister Bernadette’s face glowed as the pleasant memories resurfaced.

  ‘It must have been strange returning to Limerick after such an experience, Sister. Why did you come back?’

  She held her palms outstretched and shrugged.

  ‘My family. I was abroad when my father died, and then my mother got cancer. She’s passed now, God rest her, but I was here for her final few years.’

  ‘Here, as in Limerick? Is this where you’re from originally?’

  ‘Yes. I asked specifically to be transferred here so I could be close to her. We grew up in the village just beyond this one.’

  In different circumstances, Tom would have enjoyed hearing the nun recount her exploits in Latin America. The tumultuous political period she would have witnessed first-hand had always fascinated him, as it had many Irish people in the eighties.

  He wondered, though, how a woman who had lived so independently and seen so much could have put up with the old-style authoritarianism of Mother Attracta.

  ‘You must have been very restless to begin with when you returned?’ Tom posed the question innocently.

  ‘My mother was sick, as I said, and I spent a lot of time running back and forth to take care of her. After she died, well, yes, I found everything strangely routine. But I can’t say I didn’t find it challenging. The Lord tests us in different ways.’

  ‘You felt tested here?’

  She nodded.

  ‘In what way?’ Tom continued.

  ‘I found the systematic nature of the convent difficult to get used to. And Mother Attracta had her quirks. I couldn’t quite see the point of them.’

  ‘So you didn’t get on with her?’

  ‘No, I wouldn’t go that far. I got on with her fine. I knew how to handle her. I just didn’t like her.’ She squirmed in her seat.

  ‘I appreciate your candour,’ Tom replied. ‘You said Mother Attracta had been . . . acting differently in recent months?’

  ‘Yes. There was that episode when she accused us of being in her office. I’m not sure I can point to another specific incident, but there was a general edginess about her.’

  ‘Did you have any run-ins with her, or did you notice anyone else arguing with her?’ Tom asked.

  Sister Bernadette paused to think. ‘Some of the other sisters might have.’

  ‘Like who?’

  Tom watched as the nun sucked in her cheeks and weighed up the loyalty she felt for the other nuns against the obligation to tell him what he needed to know.

  She clearly came to the conclusion that he would probably find out from one of the other sisters.

  ‘Herself and Sister Concepta had a huge row at Hallowe’en. The others will tell you, anyway. There were some other altercations, but nothing noteworthy that I can think of.’

  Tom was surprised. Sister Concepta hadn’t mentioned any recent rows with Mother Attracta.

  ‘What was the row at Hallowe’en about?’ he asked.

  Sister Bernadette blushed. ‘Mother Attracta had seen fit to discipline a sister for something trivial. Concepta confronted her, and there were fireworks. But you need to know, Mother Attracta could pick a fight with a wall, and there’s not one of us who’d hurt a fly, especially Sister Concepta.’

  Tom tapped his pen on the table. Some nuns were well capable of inflicting pain, if the Magdalene stories were to be believed.

  ‘Did anything else happen out of the ordinary in the days immediately prior to Mother Attracta going missing?’ he asked.

  Sister Bernadette shook her head. ‘Not that I recall, no.’

  ‘What time did you go to bed the night she went missing?’

  ‘Just after dinner. I had a headache and felt like I was coming down with something. Some of the sisters have had bad colds recently. I read for a few minutes and fell asleep with my book in my hand.’

  ‘You heard nothing that night?’ Tom asked.

  ‘I might have heard the sounds of the other sisters going to bed. I know I woke up at one point when I dropped my book on to the floor.’

  ‘And the next morning, Thursday morning, what happened?’

  ‘The first thing I remember is being woken by a rapping on my door. They’d found the mess in the hall.’

  ‘And when you’d all seen it, you decided to report it to Father Seamus?’ Laura offered.

  ‘Yes, Sister Clare rang him. She’s a close friend of Mother Attracta.’

  ‘Was it her idea?’ Tom asked.

  ‘No. Sister Gladys’s.’

  Tom looked puzzled. ‘Sister Gladys is the nun who roared at me earlier?’

  Bernadette smiled again. ‘Yes. She says what she thinks, and her age incapacitates her. But her mind is sound.’

  ‘And when the police didn’t come, what did you think?’ Tom asked.

  ‘I was concerned. Everything indicated something bad had happened. Some of the sisters thought she might have cut herself and gone to get help, but that didn’t add up. I started to get worried. It wasn’t until yesterday evening, when we were listening to the news and heard the description of the woman who’d been found, that we put two and two together.’

  ‘In the meantime, you cleaned up the hall,’ Tom said.

  Sister Bernadette looked down, shamefaced. She nodded.

  ‘I’m sensing you didn’t think that was a good idea, Sister,’ Tom said.

  ‘No, I didn’t. But Concepta took a picture before we touched anything. She’s clever like that. To be fair, it really was very distressing.’

  ‘Whose idea was it to clean in the first place?’ he asked.

  The nun closed her eyes and furrowed her brow in thought. When she opened her eyes, she looked at the inspector blankly, honestly.

  ‘I really don’t know. All
I can tell you is that Sister Gabrielle saw me in the chapel and told me the plan.’

  ‘What did you do all day Thursday?’

  ‘Let me see. I spent most of the day in bed. I felt quite weak. I read for a while but in the afternoon I slept. I fetched some soup from the kitchen later on.’

  ‘Did you see other sisters that evening?’

  ‘Oh, of course. Sister Gladys is in the kitchen most nights. There are generally a couple of us congregating there or in the sitting room at any given time.’

  ‘Tell me, Sister,’ he said. ‘Do you drive?’

  ‘Yes. I never would have managed abroad if I didn’t. We covered great distances.’

  ‘I saw some cars in the garden. Do they belong to the convent or individual nuns?’

  ‘To the convent.’

  ‘Did you know, Sister, when you came here, that the convent had been a Magdalene Laundry?’

  Sister Bernadette hesitated before she answered. ‘No, inspector. I didn’t even know what a Magdalene Laundry was. I’d lived abroad from a young age.’

  ‘Do you believe the things former inmates of the laundry are saying now?’

  ‘Yes.’ She nodded her head. ‘I discovered very soon after I arrived what the convent had been and how it was run.’

  Tom was surprised. She hadn’t given them the line.

  ‘And yet you stayed,’ he said.

  ‘Why wouldn’t I?’ She shrugged. ‘Inspector, when I came home to Ireland it was for family reasons. By the time my mother died, I was settled. The Magdalene Laundries are history. Negative history. I never saw anything but good in the religious people I worked with abroad. What happened here in Ireland was inexcusable and can never happen again. But I’m sure you’ll find it wasn’t just the religious institutions that have something to answer for.

  ‘I guarantee the Garda Síochána would not come out of any objective study of the Magdalene era covered in glory. Didn’t they drag the girls back when they tried to escape? Why don’t you leave the force because of that, Inspector?’

  Tom sat back. She had a point. He suspected she had a good grasp of socio-political nuances and was well able to articulate them. This was a woman he could spend some time talking to. He dipped his head, acknowledging that she had won that bout.

  Tom looked at Laura to see if she had any further questions.

  She indicated she didn’t with a faint shake of her head.

  ‘That’s all for now, Sister,’ he said, pushing his chair back off the ground slightly with his feet.

  ‘What do you think?’ he asked Laura when she’d left.

  ‘I think the reasons for topping the old dear are mounting,’ the younger detective replied.

  ‘Because she took the telly?’ Tom teased, with a grin. ‘Sorry, it’s getting late. Do you think Sister Bernadette could be a suspect?’

  ‘I don’t know. Here’s a woman who obviously became a nun for very different reasons than Mother Attracta’s. She comes home to nurse a sick mother and ends up being stuck under the authority of a woman who sounds more like the second coming of Bloody Mary Tudor than the Virgin Mary. And she has strong views on the laundries.’

  Tom was mulling over the interview. He rubbed his tired eyes. There was something she’d said that he’d meant to return to.

  He’d have to listen back to the tape.

  Chapter 23

  They discovered little of any value in the hours that followed.

  At least half of those interviewed had been in the convent long enough to know it as a Magdalene Laundry. Virtually everybody said they had seen other sisters throughout Thursday, but none of the nuns could say if anyone had gone missing for any length of time.

  No one had noticed a power cut the night before or heard anything out of the ordinary. Nobody remembered hearing a car engine outside the convent, leaving Tom to wonder how the killer had removed the victim. Nor could anyone say for sure who had been behind the decision to clean up the blood and glass in the hall.

  They all agreed that Mother Attracta had been generally ‘unsettled’ in the last few months. It looked like she had good reason to be, Tom thought to himself.

  The inspector found Sister Ita – a friend of Mother Attracta – a particularly unpleasant character. After stating that the laundry had been ‘an asylum for penitents’, the nun then launched into a character assassination of Sister Concepta, implying the woman wanted to be the new Reverend Mother and mightn’t be afraid to kill to realize her ambition.

  Their final interviewee was Sister Concepta herself.

  ‘I appreciate it’s been a long day, Sister – for you, especially.’

  She smiled. ‘I think you may be suffering a little more than me, Inspector. I’m very fond of my sisters, but sitting in a room at this hour of the night listening to them describe their daily routines one after the other, well . . .’

  ‘All part of the job, I’m afraid.’ He shrugged, as jovially as he could manage. ‘There are just a few little things I need to clarify. You came up to us this morning on the bus, but the convent has cars. Don’t you drive?’

  She shook her head. ‘Not to cities. I’m too nervous. But I can drive.’

  ‘Couldn’t someone else have driven you?’

  ‘I didn’t want to drag the others up.’

  ‘Hmm. I asked you earlier if there had been anything out of the ordinary in recent weeks, any big rows. You never mentioned that you had a serious run-in with Mother Attracta at Hallowe’en.’

  Sister Concepta looked at Tom blankly. Then she furrowed her brow as if trying to remember the incident to which he was referring.

  It was an act. He could see her fists clenching in her lap.

  ‘Oh, yes, I remember. We did have a disagreement but, to be honest, we were always arguing. I think because I am the youngest we clashed more often.’

  ‘What was that row over?’

  ‘Well, the laundry, as it happens. Sister Bernadette answered the phone one day to a journalist. He asked her opinion of the women who had gone to the papers with their stories. All Bernadette said was that she felt sympathy for them. Mother reacted like a crazy woman. She ordered Bernadette to pray for forgiveness and locked her in the chapel.’

  Tom now realized what he’d forgotten to ask Sister Bernadette during her interview: which nun the Mother had been disciplining.

  Why the hell hadn’t Sister Bernadette told them that she herself had been at the heart of the fuss?

  It was almost midnight. Somewhere a boiler was chugging away, struggling to send hot water through the building’s creaky pipe system as the temperature outside dropped further.

  ‘Why did you get involved?’ Tom asked.

  ‘I had to. Sister Bernadette was so distressed. She was screaming and banging on the door of the chapel. I felt sick listening to her.’

  ‘A locked door for a grown woman seems unusual. Not pleasant, even. But wasn’t that a disproportionate reaction?’

  ‘It wasn’t just the locked door.’ Sister Concepta placed her elbows on the table edge and laced her fingers. ‘Attracta turned off the lights.’

  The inspector was puzzled. He was expecting something more sinister than ‘Attracta turned off the lights’.

  Then he remembered his conversation with Sister Gabrielle earlier.

  ‘Sister Bernadette is afraid of the dark,’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ Sister Concepta replied, surprised he knew. ‘She’s afraid of the dark for good reason. Sister Bernadette had only recently arrived in El Salvador when the village she was staying in was raided by a pro-government militia. Most of the inhabitants were too terrified to leave their homes, but there were men and women there from the guerrilla movement. When the militia started burning the houses, with the people inside, the guerrillas went out to fight. They were hopelessly outnumbered, and were all slaughtered in the village square.

  ‘Sister Bernadette was hiding in a roof space in one of the houses that wasn’t set alight. She was in the pitch black a
nd heard everything. The owner of the house wouldn’t let her out because she was a nun, and the militia would have raped and murdered her.

  ‘Our sister sleeps with a night light. When she talks about what happened, she says all she can remember is the darkness, the smell of burning and the screams of people being massacred. We all know that story. We all know she’s afraid of the dark. For Mother Attracta to do that . . .’ Her face screwed up in distaste.

  Tom’s expression mirrored hers.

  ‘Sister, from what we’ve heard tonight, Mother Attracta had few friends in this convent.’ He said this evenly. ‘She seems to have been quite a malicious woman. Why did you put up with it? Didn’t anybody resist?’

  ‘Of course we did.’ Sister Concepta raised her voice. ‘Why do you think I confronted her when she did what she did to Bernadette? But look at it from our perspective. Mother Attracta, whether we liked it or not, was the head of our convent. We elect our heads democratically, but we don’t stage coups and we don’t have elections every couple of years. Convents like ours are changing – they have to change – but Mother Attracta was clinging to the old method of doing things, a method that was on its way out. She dug her heels in, but she was fighting a losing battle and she knew it. Sometimes we challenged her. Mostly, though, it was easier to try to ignore her. For a quiet life.’

  Her voice was so lacking in conviction, Tom sensed that she would have fought Mother Attracta every day had it been left to her. The other nuns had obviously kept Concepta on the proverbial leash.

  No wonder, with Attracta dead, she had become their de facto head. She had been their leader-in-waiting all along.

  ‘Sister, have you thought any more about whether anybody was missing on Thursday for any length of time?’ he asked.