A VOW OF FIDELITY an utterly gripping crime mystery

by Veronica Black

  ‘Did you tell him about the note?’

  ‘No.’ Barbara shook her dark head. ‘What was the use? My own theory was that Sally had been in a personal mess of one kind or another and wanted to talk about it. By the Thursday when I still hadn’t turned up she became depressed and decided to cut her losses and throw herself out of the car-park. How could I possibly tell him that I thought it possible she’d committed suicide?’

  ‘She’d died on the Thursday?’ Sister Joan’s fingers tightened slightly on the paper.

  ‘The previous day,’ Barbara said. ‘On the fourteenth.’

  ‘Of May?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Fourteen, five, ninety-two,’ Sister Joan said slowly.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing. Just the date.’

  One of those written on the edge of the old newspaper she’d taken from Serge’s flat.

  ‘You must have felt very upset,’ she said, folding the paper smaller and pushing it deeply into her own pocket. ‘Honestly I don’t think you ought to blame yourself though. You couldn’t help not being there until the Friday and there’s not the least proof that Sally committed suicide. Why should she? She’d told you she’d be there every day for the whole week. She wouldn’t be very likely to turn up on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday and then kill herself on the Thursday. I’m sure it was an accident.’

  ‘I hope so,’ Barbara said restlessly, ‘but I won’t ever be certain.’

  They had turned and were retracing their steps, veering away from the garden to the other part of the grounds where Sister Martha had, so far, made few inroads.

  ‘When did you get in touch with Dodie again?’ Sister Joan broke the silence.

  ‘I had a letter from her,’ Barbara said. ‘She wrote to me after Bryan died.’

  ‘She knew your address?’

  ‘I ran into her one day after I came back to England. She was in town buying school uniforms for her two kids,’ Barbara explained. ‘We had a quick coffee and exchanged addresses but I never bothered to contact her again and she didn’t contact me until she read about Bryan having been killed by a hit-and-run driver and then she wrote to ask me if I’d heard and wasn’t it all very sad? You know Dodie!’

  ‘I’m beginning to think that I never knew any of you properly,’ Sister Joan said wryly. ‘Why did Dodie write to you about Bryan?’

  ‘Bryan and I had — something going,’ Barbara said. ‘I’d been out with him in college, you know — only a few times but then he started seeing Fiona.’

  ‘Sleeping with Fiona.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, sleeping with her. I wasn’t prepared to be one of a heap of scalps, so I didn’t go out with him again.’

  ‘And, of course, you left in the middle of the second term.’

  ‘To nurse my father, yes.’ Barbara met Sister Joan’s eyes with a wide look of her own. She was still sticking to her story then. Sister Joan wanted to seize her and shake the truth, whatever it was, out of her, but resisted the impulse. In her own good time Barbara would tell the whole story.

  Instead she asked, ‘Did Bryan die on the fifth of April last year?’

  ‘Yes. Yes he did. It was in the paper of course.’

  Sister Joan forbore mentioning that she hadn’t read anything about Bryan Grimes in any newspaper, but had seen the date written on the edge of one of those that Serge had kept. Friendship couldn’t be whole and entire without fidelity to the truth, without faithfulness to the memory of what had been shared. She felt a pang of sorrow at the thought that perhaps their friendship had always been a broken and feeble affair.

  ‘And Bryan’s death?’ She glanced at her taller companion.

  ‘It was a shock,’ Barbara said. ‘I’d been up to Lincolnshire to see him. He moved back there, you know, after—’ She stopped abruptly, turning to twitch a coloured leaf from a tree that leaned out from the hedge.

  ‘After?’

  ‘Oh, nothing.’ Barbara crumpled the leaf in her hand, looked at it in distaste and threw it away before striding on so fast that Sister Joan had to scurry to keep up with her.

  ‘So Dodie told you that he’d been killed,’ she said. ‘You didn’t know already?’

  ‘How could I have known?’ Barbara said impatiently. ‘I’d been up to see him, to talk over old times. Bryan thought it would be nice to remind people of our old plan to hold a reunion on the twentieth anniversary of our first day in college. I agreed and he said he’d arrange it when the time came.’

  ‘He had the photograph?’

  ‘He had the negative,’ Barbara said. ‘Lord knows why he’d kept it. It was shoved in with a whole heap of other stuff and he said he’d send the copies round in good time. Then I left.’

  ‘And a year after he died we all get copies of the photograph,’ Sister Joan said.

  ‘Bryan might have had the photograph and the negative on him when he took that walk,’ Barbara said. ‘He put them both back into his jacket pocket while I was with him.’

  ‘And you were with him the day before? The night before too?’

  ‘No, just for the day,’ Barbara said. ‘It was a flying visit from one old friend to another, nothing more. Then Dodie told me that Bryan had been knocked down and killed. I’d mentioned to her that I was going to see him, and she guessed that I wouldn’t have heard. I was naturally upset about it, but I didn’t think any more about the photograph and then copies of it started to arrive. Derek rang me and said he’d received one, and so did Dodie, and we decided to come along to the reunion and see who else turned up.’

  ‘Knowing that Bryan couldn’t have sent them.’

  ‘Someone must’ve taken them from him, the original and the negative,’ Barbara said tensely. ‘Don’t you see, Joan? Whoever drove a car at him and killed him went through his pockets and found that negative, and had it developed and copies of the group photograph made and then sent them round to us all.’

  ‘Which meant it had to be someone in the photograph who killed him?’ Sister Joan shivered slightly.

  ‘That’s what Dodie and I figured,’ Barbara said.

  ‘You should have gone to the police.’

  ‘With what evidence? Anyway it was more than a year after Bryan’s death that the photographs began arriving. That’s not evidence of any kind.’

  ‘And you were in the area yourself,’ Sister Joan said.

  Barbara stared at her and broke into a short laugh. ‘You can’t honestly think I drove my car at him, went through his pockets and then left him dead or dying in the middle of the road, do you?’ she said vehemently. ‘Joan, I couldn’t do such a thing! Surely you know that much!’

  ‘I just told you: I don’t know anything about any of you,’ Sister Joan said. ‘You tell me half-truths, give me hints, expect me to solve something without having all the facts. I don’t know any of you nowadays.’

  ‘I’m still Barbara,’ Barbara said.

  ‘Nobody ever changes?’ Sister Joan looked at her thoughtfully. ‘That’s true, I think. You were very quiet and mousy and not really very smart. Underneath are you still like that?’

  ‘You don’t pull your punches, do you?’ Barbara stared at her and laughed again on a hard, high brittle note.

  ‘And you haven’t answered the question.’

  ‘Very well!’ Barbara walked on a few paces before she said, crisply, ‘I felt stupid and mousy when I was at college because I was intelligent enough to realize fairly quickly that I really didn’t have any outstanding talents. I’d end up teaching art in a school somewhere or getting my name at the bottom of greetings cards—’

  ‘Like Fiona and Dodie? They don’t mind.’

  ‘They’re both good without being great,’ Barbara said. ‘I wasn’t as good as they are and I wanted to be great. I wanted to create something beautiful so badly that I could taste it. I could feel the sweetness of it under my tongue. And every day I looked at my latest effort and wanted to throw it down and stamp on it, smash it into bits. Of course I’d never hav
e dreamed of doing anything of the sort. I was a modest, well-brought-up girl from a middle-class home.’

  ‘So you ran away instead? Left college because you couldn’t face competition?’

  Barbara had stopped, half turning. To Sister Joan’s surprise her face was alight with triumph.

  ‘Ran away!’ she echoed. ‘Is that what you believe? Oh, Sister dear, you couldn’t be more wrong! I—’

  Heavy footsteps crashed through the undergrowth as she broke off abruptly. Brother Cuthbert stumbled through, tearing a long trail of sticky creeper from his habit. He looked as if he had run all the way from the old schoolhouse, his face as scarlet as his hair.

  ‘Brother Cuthbert! Are you all right?’ Sister Joan took a step forward, and stopped, something cold icing her backbone as she saw his reddened hands.

  ‘I do beg your pardon, Sister — ladies!’ He was making a desperate attempt to pull himself together. ‘I have had a shock, a really terrible shock!’

  ‘Are you hurt, Brother?’

  ‘No, no.’ He lifted his hands, staring at the palms in a kind of sick horror. ‘No, not in the least hurt. This is the child’s blood. His throat has been cut, you see.’

  Inside something was twisting her guts like a vice, but on the surface she knew that her face had merely paled a little. She said, marvelling at the steadiness of her voice, ‘Where is the child, Brother Cuthbert?’

  ‘On the moor not far from the convent gates.’ He spoke with an effort. ‘I was on my way here to ask if there was anything I could do to make the retreat more agreeable for the guests. I stumbled over him. At first I thought he was asleep. Then I saw as I bent to shake his shoulder — I ran here at once. I was going to the kitchen door but I heard voices—’

  ‘Barbara, will you take Brother Cuthbert to the kitchen and get him a good slug of brandy from Sister Perpetua?’ Sister Joan said. ‘Barbara!’

  Barbara turned her head slowly and jerkily as if she were on strings pulled by an inexperienced puppeteer. Her lips were a scarlet slash against greenish-white.

  ‘I can’t bear it,’ she said, her voice no louder than a whisper. ‘I can’t bear it.’

  ‘Don’t you dare faint or be sick!’ Sister Joan said roughly. ‘There’s no time for that now. Tell Sister Perpetua to ask Mother Dorothy to telephone the police. I shall stay with the child until someone comes.’

  ‘Over to the left about fifty yards beyond the gate,’ Brother Cuthbert said. ‘God forgive me but I never stopped to say a prayer!’

  ‘Go and get your brandy,’ Sister Joan said. ‘Go with him, Barbara!’

  Leaving them to make their own way to the kitchen she turned and ran towards the main gate.

  The body, laid on its back, staring open-eyed at the sky, violated the beauty of the golden afternoon. Some attempt had been made to cover it. Long branches had been laid roughly across it. She must have ridden past earlier without even glancing in that direction. She crouched down, blessing herself, her lips shaping a prayer while her eyes automatically examined the spot.

  It had to be the Boswell child. Brown-skinned and lithe in life, grotesque and disjointed in death, with that livid face above the slash of dark red. Near the stiff hand something glittered.

  She finished her prayer, bent and picked it up. A tie-pin lay on the palm of her hand, its twisted circle of gold filled with two initials also in gold. C.M. C.M?

  She slipped the tie-pin into her pocket and stood up, her eyes moving round the grass that surrounded the small figure. Short, autumn-faded grass, starred with the last of summer’s weeds, the branches piled higgledy-piggledy as they must have been disturbed by Brother Cuthbert’s large, sandalled feet.

  Anyone could have taken the child, killed him, brought him back to the moor near the convent gates. But why bring him so near? The light covering of branches wouldn’t have hidden him for long.

  She wanted to cover the body, to close the eyes, but the police would be here, and they disapproved of anything being disturbed at the scene of the crime.

  Sister Perpetua was hastening through the gates, her freckled face distressed.

  ‘My dear girl, I’ve brought you a drop of brandy!’ she exclaimed. ‘Take a good long swallow now.’

  ‘I really don’t need it,’ Sister Joan protested.

  ‘Have it anyway to oblige me!’ Sister Perpetua stepped to the pile of torn branches with their canopy of dying leaves and looked down, her mouth compressed. ‘I know the lad,’ she said brusquely. ‘Nice, friendly child. Used to scrump apples every chance he got. There’s the Devil’s work in this, Sister.’

  ‘Last evening after the grand silence there were men from the camp looking for him,’ Sister Joan said slowly. ‘When I rode down into town this morning nobody was about. I assumed the search had been called off. The police hadn’t been told.’

  ‘Here they come now.’ Sister Perpetua nodded towards the two police cars followed by an ambulance labouring up the track.

  ‘Sisters!’ Detective Sergeant Mill acknowledged them briefly and walked over to the body, Constable Petrie at his heels.

  ‘It’s young Finn Boswell, sir,’ the constable said. ‘He’d not been reported missing.’

  ‘We’ll get the area cordoned off immediately.’ Detective Sergeant Mill was impassive. Whatever his private feelings, and she guessed they were strong since he had two sons of his own, he would set them aside, concentrate on the task in hand.

  ‘Someone ought to go over to the Romany camp,’ Sister Joan said.

  ‘Perhaps you ought to go,’ Sister Perpetua said unexpectedly. ‘They know you and will take it more easily from you than from the police.’

  ‘I’m afraid telling the parents is my job,’ Detective Sergeant Mill said, coming over to them. ‘On the other hand what Sister Perpetua says makes good sense. Perhaps you could come with me, Sister Joan?’

  ‘You go, Sister. I’ll speak to Mother Dorothy,’ Sister Perpetua said.

  ‘Very well.’ Sister Joan nodded briefly as she turned towards the police car. Time was of the essence in police work, she knew, and she suspected that the boy had probably lain all night beneath the sheltering branches.

  ‘We can talk on the way,’ Detective Sergeant Mill said, getting behind the wheel. ‘Mother Dorothy rang and gave very brief details. Brother Cuthbert found the lad?’

  ‘Barbara Ford and I were strolling in the grounds when Brother Cuthbert came rushing up,’ Sister Joan told him. ‘He had walked over to the convent to ask if we needed any help with the retreat, and he stumbled over the boy. I must have ridden past this morning without even noticing.’

  ‘If the body was there then.’

  The boy had become a body, another trick to distance himself.

  ‘Someone hid him and then moved him again earlier this morning?’

  ‘We’ll find out. Guessing games aren’t in my line.’ He spoke tensely, his mouth a straight line, but his carefully controlled anger had nothing to do with her. It was anger at the violent death of a young child.

  ‘Sister Perpetua said the Devil had been at work,’ she said.

  ‘A human being,’ he corrected. ‘I’ve no faith in your Devil, Sister. A human being, outwardly like you or me, took that little boy, killed him, hid the body—’

  ‘Not very skilfully,’ Sister Joan said, frowning. ‘The first person out walking would probably have stumbled over it, as Brother Cuthbert did.’

  ‘We’ll see.’ He swung the car to the right, the track narrowing and twisting as it followed the contours of the moor. Ahead of them a couple of lurcher dogs raised sleepy Sunday heads.

  The camp had been there when the Tarquins had been squires of the district and now that the Tarquins had long since gone the brightly painted vardos of the Boswells and Evanses and Lees still stood in their accustomed places. From time to time an official from the local council put in an appearance to shake a head and mutter darkly about lack of sanitation, but the pool of clear water beyond the tip of rusting iron still p
rovided for the clan, and the children whom Sister Joan had taught in the old schoolhouse lounged past with the latest trainer shoes vying with the ancient hoops in their ears.

  ‘If you’re here about the fish—!’ Padraic Lee appeared from nowhere, trying to smile at Sister Joan, scowl at the detective sergeant, and look innocent all at the same time.

  The result was a grimace that twisted his normally pleasant features into the appearance of villainy.

  ‘It’s nothing to do with poaching,’ Detective Sergeant Mill said. ‘You have a Finn Boswell in camp.’

  ‘Hettie Boswell’s youngest, yes.’

  ‘You were out on the moor last night looking for him.’

  ‘Aye, for a bit. I spoke to Sister Joan, up near the convent wall. She couldn’t answer since it was the silence time.’

  ‘And then you called off the search? You didn’t tell the police?’ Sister Joan said.

  ‘Weren’t no need, Sister. Luther came along and told us the lad was safe. Out doing a bit of mischief like lads will.’

  His eyes, black and sharp, moved from one face to the other.

  ‘I’m afraid something has happened, Padraic,’ Sister Joan said, glancing at her companion. ‘I need to talk to Mrs Boswell.’

  ‘She’s over there, building her fire.’ Padraic pointed. ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘We found Finn Boswell,’ the detective said, his voice and face carefully neutral.

  ‘Found him?’ Padraic stared at them, eyes narrowing.

  ‘He’s dead. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Dead? How?’

  ‘He was killed by someone — we don’t yet know whom,’ Sister Joan said. ‘Someone must tell his parents and identify the body later.’

  ‘Killed? Murdered you mean?’ Padraic passed a hand over his greasy, greying-black curls. ‘But Luther said—’

  ‘We’ll need to talk to Luther,’ Detective Sergeant Mill said. ‘Do you know where he is?’

  ‘Who knows where Luther gets to?’ Padraic said. ‘I don’t understand it. Luther came and told us that Finn was all right. We called off the search. Luther may be a mite addled betimes in the head but he knows the difference between all right and dead!’