by Rhys Bowen
“I’ll help if you like,” I said.
“You can stay and clean up that mess on the floor,” Sister said. “Gerda. You help me bring her across.”
I went downstairs to get a bucket and mop from the scullery, but I’d only gone halfway along the downstairs hall when something struck me. Sister hadn’t locked her door behind her. And she’d be safely over in the maternity ward for a while yet. It was a chance I couldn’t resist. I tiptoed back along the hall to Sister’s room and turned the door handle. The door swung open and I stepped inside, closing it quickly behind me. In the candlelight there was nothing outstanding about the room. Exactly what I would have expected from a nun’s quarters, in fact. Simple in the extreme. Narrow bed, chest, and wardrobe. No sign of decoration on the walls, only the obligatory crucifix. There was a desk in the corner. I went to that and opened the drawers. Nothing incriminating that I could see.
I opened the top drawer of her chest, feeling most uncomfortable at this prying, and saw only neatly folded black lisle stockings and undergarments. The other drawers contained nothing of interest. However, in the drawer of her bedside table I found a surprise. Among the rosaries, prayer book, and holy cards was a pretty little enamel brooch-watch and some good pieces of jewelry. Surely nuns weren’t allowed to wear jewelry? Where did she acquire it, and did she ever wear it under her habit?
Then I saw something that made me pause. A pretty little statue of Our Lady, hand carved in wood. I knew with absolute certainty that it was Maureen’s statue. Katy had said she found it in a wastebasket, so sister must have taken it from Katy’s things, unless Katy had handed it over. Why was Sister keeping it? Just because she liked the look of it? Or because she didn’t want anyone else to see it? I closed the drawer quietly and went over to the wardrobe. An ordinary, coarsely woven habit hung there, plus a dressing gown. Again nothing unusual. Then on the top shelf I noticed an attaché case. I brought it down carefully, put it on the bed, and opened it. It was full of papers. They seemed to be letters. I held the first one up to the candlelight and read.
Again my wife and I wish to express our deepest thanks for our lovely baby girl. She is all we ever dreamed of and more. As agreed I am enclosing a check for a thousand dollars …
I put the letter down. Elaine had mentioned generous donations, but I had thought in terms of one hundred dollars at the most. A thousand dollars was a fortune. The convent could run happily on it for years. They could afford to install electricity, proper heating, to repair the crumbling outside of the building. I went through other letters, all promising large sums and expressing satisfaction with the baby they had received. This was a veritable business, and a very prosperous one. At the bottom of the case I came to an oilskin pouch. I opened the clasp and gasped. It was full of money—a lot of money, possibly thousands of dollars. And I knew right away that the money donated to the convent was never seen by the other nuns. Sister Jerome was keeping it for herself, for reasons I couldn’t fathom.
I stood with the envelope in my hands, wondering what to do next. Should I report what I had seen to the police? Then I reasoned that she hadn’t committed a crime. Those babies had been legally obtained and the couples had paid up willingly. Her only crime was a moral one—exploiting desperate girls for her own ends. And cheating her sisters out of money they could certainly use. And it struck me that Maureen might have posed a threat greater than just wanting to reclaim her own child. Perhaps Maureen had figured out Sister’s neat little business and had threatened to go to Mother if she didn’t get her child back. And had possibly made a fatal mistake in doing so.
I had sensed that Sister was a ruthless woman, but it was only now that I appreciated the real extent of the danger I was in. I was safe as long as I behaved like an obedient Irish peasant girl who was about to deliver a red-haired baby. But if Sister had stumbled upon that letter to Sid and Gus by now, and had worked out that I was here undercover, spying on her, then my life wasn’t worth a fig. I was suddenly alert and afraid, imagining Sister standing on the other side of that door at this moment, observing everything I had done, and then quietly entering the room to silence me.…
I stuffed the envelope back into the attaché case, put the letters back on top of it, and returned it to the top shelf before I half tumbled out of the room, almost knocking over the candle in my haste. The downstairs hall was dark and silent. I remembered the bucket and mop, found them and cleaned up the floor as instructed. The other girls had either gone to sleep or were feigning it. As I mopped I could hear screams coming from the other wing. A new fear added itself to the others: I had always known that childbirth was an uncomfortable business. My own three brothers had been born at home and I remember my mother moaning and invoking the saints, but it hadn’t seemed too terrifying. But in this place Blanche had experienced complications that led to a dead baby and now Aggie was still screaming. Was this what I had to look forward to in two months’ time? My hand went to my belly and I felt the reassuring little flutter of a kick against my fingers.
I emptied the bucket down the WC, cleaned the mop, and left them to be taken down in the morning. I’d had my fill of dark, empty hallways and I needed the safety of my sleeping companions. But I could not sleep. I lay still, hands on my belly, hearing an occasional scream in the distance. At least she was still alive, I thought. The night went on, interminably. I heard the convent bell tolling out midnight and then four o’clock. Soon it would be light. Soon I would be able to check out the chapel for a place to hide.
I must have drifted into exhausted sleep because I woke to find sunlight streaming in and birds chirping on the roof. I scrambled to my feet. It must be still early as my companions were still asleep. I could hear no more screams coming from the maternity wing and wondered if Aggie had had her baby and whether they both survived the ordeal. I got out of bed, making no sound, and crept down to the chapel. The door opened and I stepped inside, feeling the cold stone of the floor on my bare feet. I went around to the nuns’ sanctuary and started to look for a hiding place. There were a couple of statues but both were in niches with no place big enough to hide a person. It seemed impossible. I’d just have to come forward to intercept the priest when he finished mass.
Then I came up with a brilliant idea. I’d ask him to hear my confession. No priest could ever refuse that, and no sister could condemn it or even try to stop it. I felt a huge wave of relief flood over me. I could go back to breakfast, act as if nothing was amiss, and bide my time until mass.
As I was about to leave the chapel I noticed something I hadn’t seen in the darkness. A black hole in the floor in the furthest corner. I went over to it and saw a flight of steep narrow steps going down into darkness. Then I remembered what Elaine had said: the nuns were not buried because the ground was all rock. They were laid to rest in big stone coffins in the chapel crypt. I started down the stairs, holding onto the wall on one side to steady myself. And it came to me that Katy hadn’t fallen down the cellar steps at all. These were the steps down which she had tumbled to her death, because she had come to suspect what really happened to Maureen and had gone to find out for herself.
A glimmer of light shone in through a small high window like the one in the cellar. It was not enough light to show clearly what lay below. Instead it hinted at large rectangular shapes lying on the floor, looking almost like giant sleeping animals. I stood, halfway down the stair, as I realized these were the stone coffins in which the nuns were buried, one still standing in the center of the floor with wilted flowers on it. And I knew what Katy had come to check for herself. She had suspected that Maureen had been hidden down here and I thought I knew where. Sister Francine had died at about the time Maureen had vanished. It was all too possible that Maureen was lying in Sister Francine’s coffin, placed in there, covered in a sheet, before the stone lid was put on.
A draft of cold air swirled around me. I didn’t wait a second longer. I needed to get back to the safety of the dormitory. As I came back up the st
airs I found the light ahead of me blocked by a great black shape. A nun stood at the top of the steps, staring down at me impassively.
Twenty-nine
“And what were you doing where you’d no business to be?” Sister Jerome asked me.
“I came into chapel to pray.” I tried to keep my voice natural and calm. “I thought I heard a noise. An animal whimpering. So I came to investigate.”
“And did you find an animal whimpering?” she asked.
“I was too scared to go any further,” I said.
“Very wise of you. You never know what you’ll find in old buildings like this,” she said, “and the stairs in poor repair too. You wouldn’t want to slip, in your condition.”
“Certainly not,” I said. I started up the steps toward her. She hadn’t found me out. She was going to let me go. Or she wanted my baby so badly that she was prepared to keep me alive for now.
I reached the top step. She still loomed over me—tall, black, threatening.
“Now would you mind telling me exactly what you are doing here?” she asked. Her voice still sounded calm and pleasant enough. But she was still blocking my path.
“What do you mean? You know why I’m here.”
“It really is true about the Irish and their blarney, isn’t it,” she said. “I never forget a voice. I didn’t get a good look at you through the grille when you came asking about Maureen, but I remembered your voice. You’ve been putting on the Irish accent good and strong with me, but when you were chatting with the other girls you let it slip and there was something about the way you expressed yourself that brought back where I’d seen you before. And Sister Angelique said you were asking the girls questions about Maureen and about Katy. At first I wondered why, and then I realized it wasn’t the first time you’d been here snooping around. So out with it—who sent you here?”
I hesitated, unsure what to say. If I still professed my innocence, that nobody sent me, then she would know that nobody knew where I was. But if I told her that I’d been sent by the police, that they were told to come to my aid this morning if I didn’t appear, would that guarantee my safety?
“Nobody sent me,” I said in such a manner that it could have implied the opposite.
“And what are you trying to find down in our crypt? There are nothing but bodies down there, you know. Bones and bodies.”
“I know what you’ve hidden down there,” I said, staring at her defiantly even though I was still two steps below her.
“How can you know?” she asked scathingly. “You’re not strong enough to shift that coffin lid by yourself.”
“What coffin lid would that be?” I asked.
She glared that I’d caught her out. “Think you’re so clever, do you?”
Emboldened now I went on, “You must have had an accomplice yourself, Sister. If I’m not strong enough to move the lid, then neither are you.”
I saw a scornful smirk twitch at her lips. “It was no problem at all, my dear. The coffin was open from Sister Francine’s viewing. I came down to make everything ready to close the coffin and found that stupid girl, trying to hide down here. She shoved me aside and tried to run up the steps. I caught her pinafore and jerked her back. She fell and hit her head. I finished her off and laid her in the coffin. Francine was only a small person. Plenty of room for two.”
I shuddered at the matter-of-fact way she was telling me this, almost as if it was a good joke she was sharing.
“But someone must have seen when they came to close the lid.”
Again the smirk. “I covered the body and my sisters and I shut the lid together. They rely on me for everything.”
As she talked I had come slowly up the rest of the stairs until I was at her level.
“You made a big mistake in coming here,” she said. “In putting your nose where it’s not wanted. I’m not letting anyone stand in my way.” Without warning she lunged at me, trying to give me an almighty push. I had been expecting something of the kind. As she came at me I threw myself to one side, bracing myself against the rough stone of the wall. She grabbed at my nightgown. For a second I felt myself pulled downward with her. With all my strength I leaned back and sat down heavily on the stone step. Her fingers slipped from the fabric and she plunged down the steps hitting the stone floor with a sickening thud that echoed around the vaulted ceiling of that crypt.
* * *
For a long moment I stood at the top of the stairs, not moving, not daring to breathe. I could just make out the black shape of her body, sprawled on the floor below. My first instinct was for self-preservation. I told myself I should go back to my bed, as quickly as possible and pretend to be asleep. Then when her body was discovered, I could profess surprise and shock like everyone else. But somehow I couldn’t just leave her there.
I could go down to her and get her keys, a voice now whispered in my head. I could let myself out of the building and nobody would be the wiser, except that I would now be incriminating myself if the police were called in and the other girls described the red-haired Irishwoman who vanished in the night. Also I had left my dress, with my calling cards hidden inside the pocket, in the cubby beside my bed. I peered down at the body again. She hadn’t moved, but there was a chance she could still be alive.
My Catholic heritage came surging to the fore. I knew then that I couldn’t leave her to die without the last rites. Not that I thought she’d be all that ready to confess her sins, but I had to give her a chance to do so. The priest would be here soon. I turned and ran back the way I had come, out of the chapel, along the hallway, and up the stairs. “Come quickly,” I shouted. “Sister Jerome has fallen down the chapel steps.”
Several of the girls were on their feet in an instant, running ahead of me to the chapel. Gerda, always the leader, went down the steps first.
“She must have tried to go down the steps while it was still dark,” she said. I noticed that nobody had asked me what I was doing in the chapel alone at this hour or what I was doing down in the crypt myself. She reached Sister’s body first and knelt down beside it while I loitered at the top of the steps, unwilling to come any closer.
“Is she dead?” I asked. My tongue didn’t want to obey me.
Gerda put her face close to Sister’s. Then she scrambled to her feet again.
“We’ve got to get help. She’s still breathing,” she said. She made her way back up the steps to the rest of us then led us to the nuns’ entrance.
“It’s locked, of course,” she complained. “Somebody get Sister’s keys.”
“Not me,” the skinny Ethel said. “I’m not going down there for all the tea in China.”
“Oh, very well.” Gerda marched over and went down the steps again, coming up with Sister’s bunch of keys in her hand. She tried one key after another in frustration until a voice behind us demanded.
“You girls—where do you think you are going? And in your night attire too.”
We spun around guiltily to see Sister Angelique standing behind us. She was staring in horror and disbelief at us and it came to me that maybe they were in the money-making scheme together and we were somehow in danger.
“Return to your dormitory immediately,” she said. “I shall report this to Sister Jerome.”
“Sister Jerome fell down the steps of the crypt,” Gerda said. “We were trying to get help.”
“Sister Jerome? Mon dieu.” She ran over to the steps, disappeared into darkness then reappeared again. “We must summon a doctor immediately. She is badly hurt,” she said. She took keys from her own belt and opened the door. Then she scurried across to the far wall of the tower and began to tug on a rope that hung there. Far above us in the tower the bell began to toll. The result was immediate. I heard doors opening and closing on the floor above, the sound of feet tapping along the corridor and then down the stairs. Nuns came toward us, looking with amazement to see us standing huddled together in their hallway.
“Sister Jerome has fallen,” Sister Angelique
gestured toward the chapel. “In the crypt.”
“Is she badly hurt?” Sister Perpetua pushed through the crowd.
“She may be dead by now,” Gerda said. “She wasn’t moving.”
Sister Pepetua took immediate control. “You, Angelique, go and fetch Mother. Help her to come down. Gerda, go and get dressed, then wait for Father Bernard. When he comes take his pony and trap and go for the doctor. You know where he lives, don’t you?”
“Yes, Sister.” Gerda ran off, back through the chapel.
The rest of us made our way down the steps behind the nuns. “Help me to turn her over. Gently now. We don’t want to do more damage,” Sister Perpetua said, kneeling beside Sister Jerome’s lifeless body.
I watched in horrified fascination as they turned Sister Jerome over onto her back. Her face was a bloody mess, hardly recognizable as a face at all. The nuns and several of the girls crossed themselves. I heard a whimper from the back of the crowd.
Sister Perpetua put her own face close to Jerome’s battered one. “Sister, can you hear me? The priest will be here in a few minutes. Don’t go before you’ve had the last rites.”
Sister Jerome’s eyes opened, the left one half-swollen shut and bloody. Her eyes searched the group and fastened on me. “That girl,” she said in a croaking voice as she raised a hand to point at me. “She tried to kill me. She pushed me down the stairs. She’s mad. She needs putting away, locking up.”
They turned to look at me. “Not true!” I shouted and my voice echoed from the vaulted ceiling. “It was Sister Jerome who tried to kill me, the way she killed Katy. She came at me and tried to push me down the steps. But I managed to keep my balance and she went flying down the stairs instead of me.”
“Katy fell. I was nowhere near,” Sister Jerome said, gasping out the words in a rasping whisper. “You see, she’s mad. Quite mad. I don’t know what I was thinking when I let her in here.”
“Yes you do,” I said. “You wanted to make money from a red-haired baby, just like you’ve been making money from all those other babies you’ve sold.” I turned to the girl next to me. “Take the keys and go to Sister’s room. In the wardrobe on the top shelf you’ll find an attaché case. Bring it here. Quickly.”