A VOW OF DEVOTION an utterly gripping crime mystery

by Veronica Black

  ‘Sister, would you like me to make a vegetable casserole for supper?’ Sister Perpetua enquired, coming into the kitchen after lunch.

  ‘Oh, would you, Sister? That would be marvellous!’ Sister Joan said eagerly. ‘I’ve been racking my brains, thinking what on earth to give everybody.’

  ‘I’ll make my special cheese sauce,’ Sister Perpetua said. ‘We need something to cheer ourselves up a bit. Can you bring me some carrots and turnips from the garden? Sister Martha’s there with Bernadette, I think, so it’ll be quite safe.’

  ‘Yes, Sister.’

  Going out, a basket on her arm, Sister Joan hoped that they’d get back to normal before long. It irked her spirit to be constrained by fear in the very place where they ought to feel most secure.

  There was no sign of either Sister Martha or the pigtailed Bernadette. She hesitated, then went on through the gate into the garden. Beyond the further wall Sister Elizabeth’s grave was a bare mound of earth with the wreath from the parishioners and some spring flowers from the convent grounds laid on top. By the time spring was warmed into summer the bare soil would be quick with grass.

  A flicker of movement caught her eye. Someone had moved across her line of vision beyond the garden near the shrubbery that hid the old tennis court from view. It was probably one of the policemen, she decided, and wondered if it had been Detective Sergeant Mill who had ordered the surveillance.

  The movement came again and on impulse she set off across the garden, rapidly threading her way between the vegetable beds and hurrying down the path that snaked across the rough grass between the angled shrubbery. The movement had ceased but she stood now at the top of the steps leading down to the tennis court. At the far side the severe lines of the postulancy rose behind its guarding wall. The windows were shuttered, the gate latched.

  A sudden sound from the shrubbery startled her like a pistol shot. Without pausing to investigate she leapt down the steps two at a time and, empty basket wildly swinging, found herself running panic stricken across the moss-grown court, past the broken, sagging nets, through the gap in the wall and, without remembering having unlatched the gate, stood before the blank, unyielding façade of the old building.

  Her heart was pounding. She turned to look back across the tennis court to the steps at the far side, and saw nothing moving at all. Only a faint breeze stirred the branches of a holly bush to which scarlet berries still clung in defiance of the death of winter.

  ‘Joan, you’re an idiot!’ She spoke aloud, hearing her voice echo queerly in the little yard.

  But she had seen something! A movement ahead, a sound behind as she hurried forward, a sense even now that someone watched her. She took a tighter grip on the basket and turned to face the house again. It was only a few days since Sister Hilaria and her two postulants had moved with Sister Teresa to the main house but this building already had the air of a dwelling long since deserted. It was all imagination of course but if buildings had feelings then this one was lonely.

  Now that she was here she might as well have a look round, satisfy herself that nobody had trespassed, tried to break in. She stepped with conscious briskness around the corner, aware that she was humming a tune under her breath like a child whistling against the dark, and walked into a taller bulky figure.

  The breath left her body in a swoosh of terror and she stood gasping.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Sister, but I rather think that I’m on private ground.’ Sylvia Dacre stepped back, looking down with a mixture of surprise and apology on her fine-boned features.

  ‘Yes. Yes, you are.’ Sister Joan found her voice though it emerged in a strangled squeak.

  ‘I took a long walk and decided to deviate from the track. Where exactly am I?’ Sylvia Dacre asked.

  ‘On convent land. This is the postulancy.’

  ‘Where the trainees live?’ The other turned to look up at the shuttered windows.

  ‘The trainees, yes. They stay here for about two years before they join the rest of us in the main house.’

  ‘And then?’ The other woman looked curious.

  ‘They spend a year as a novice proper, helping out in the kitchen and carrying on with their studies and then they have a year’s retreat before they take their final vows.’

  ‘Which you have done, Sister — Joan, isn’t it?’

  ‘I’m Sister Joan, yes.’

  ‘The boy — the one who calls himself White Wind has spoken of you.’

  ‘He’s a nice person,’ Sister Joan said.

  ‘He and his friend,’ Sylvia Dacre said. ‘Amusing young people.’

  ‘You invited them to travel with you?’

  ‘Nice to have company.’

  Sylvia Dacre had a curious way of answering questions by some oblique, vaguely linking comment.

  ‘You weren’t old friends then?’ Sister Joan pursued.

  Sylvia Dacre shook her head. Greying strands of black hair fell from beneath the brim of a felt hat that was pulled almost down to her eyebrows. Forty-five? Less? It was difficult to guess her age. Her accent was cultured but her hands were earth-stained, callouses clear on the pads of the long fingers.

  ‘When I decided to travel,’ she enlarged, ‘I felt that it might be safer to find a congenial travelling companion. It would discourage unwanted advances from less desirable people who have elected to share the same lifestyle.’

  She didn’t look as if she would be in need of any help in repelling any unwanted advances, Sister Joan thought, a gleam of amusement lightening the last of her terror. Sylvia Dacre was tall and, though slimmer than her bulky clothes and cape revealed, obviously strong and wiry.

  ‘Yes. I suppose so,’ she said aloud.

  ‘But the travelling life wouldn’t appeal to you?’ Sylvia Dacre smiled. She had rather a charming smile.

  ‘People in the religious life are generally based in one place for long periods,’ Sister Joan said.

  ‘In a consecrated space which I have now violated.’ The smile flashed out again. ‘I apologize, Sister Joan. Is there any short cut I can take to avoid trespassing further? I took the long way round, I’m afraid, and I don’t fancy such a hike back.’

  ‘Would you like to come into the kitchen and sit down for a few minutes?’ Sister Joan asked, somewhat belatedly recalling the rules of hospitality. ‘We can give you a cup of tea.’

  ‘That’s very kind of you but I think not. I wouldn’t be at ease in a convent,’ the other said. ‘And haven’t you had a death here? I’d not wish to intrude.’

  ‘Sister Elizabeth was buried this morning.’

  ‘The sister was killed. The police took our names and addresses and asked if anyone had any information. Nobody had.’

  ‘It was a dreadful event.’

  ‘Yes indeed.’ Sylvia Dacre hesitated, then said, ‘The sister was a postulant, I understand. The detective sergeant mentioned it. I suppose it would discourage new entrants to the order if the unfortunate girls were in danger of being murdered.’

  ‘They certainly are not!’ Sister Joan said with some spirit. ‘Such events are almost unknown, thank God! Not that we get flocks of postulants either — religious vocations are dwindling these days.’

  ‘But you still have girls coming to test the spiritual waters?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  They had begun to walk slowly across the tennis court. Overhead a returning emigrant bird shrilled loudly.

  ‘Yes. There are always some vocations,’ Sister Joan said.

  ‘Have you any intending postulants with you now?’

  The question was asked too artlessly, too casually. It made the hairs at the back of her head quiver slightly.

  ‘We never discuss the internal affairs of the order,’ she said.

  ‘One reason why I would feel awkward inside a convent,’ Sylvia Dacre said. ‘So much secrecy! You mentioned a short cut, Sister?’

  She hadn’t but with some relief she indicated the shrubbery at the top of the shallow steps.r />
  ‘If you go behind there you come out onto the moor again not very far from where the new-age travellers are camped. It’s a twenty-minute walk,’ she said.

  ‘Then I’ll say goodbye, Sister.’

  Her hand was suddenly enveloped in a bone-crushing grip. Dark eyes stared down at her with something avid in their depths. Then Sylvia Dacre loosened her grip and strode ahead, not turning her head, the black cape hanging heavy to her ankles in the windless air.

  Sister Joan drew a long breath and let it out slowly. For no reason she could immediately fathom her forehead was damp with perspiration.

  There were still the vegetables to gather. She went up the steps, resisted the temptation to explore the shrubbery and was pulling carrots when Sister Martha came up to her.

  ‘I saw you from the window, Sister,’ she said breathlessly. ‘I thought I’d better run out and join you since you were alone.’

  ‘And quite safe I assure you,’ Sister Joan said. ‘You were in the garden earlier.’

  ‘No, Bernadette was supposed to come and help me, but I couldn’t find her anywhere. You haven’t seen her, I suppose?’

  ‘No. No, I haven’t. Not since lunchtime. Perhaps she’s in chapel or in her room?’

  ‘I looked in both places,’ Sister Martha said.

  They looked at each other silently.

  ‘Help me get some vegetables for the supper,’ Sister Joan said at last, ‘and then we’ll both search for her. I’m sure she’s around somewhere. After all it’s broad daylight!’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  Sister Martha bent and tugged at carrots with her small, square hands, her spectacles slipping down her nose.

  ‘Carrots, potatoes, swedes and turnips.’ Sister Joan straightened up. ‘Let’s put them in the kitchen and go look for Bernadette.’

  ‘Perhaps she went for a walk,’ Sister Martha said as they panted round to the back door. ‘She doesn’t have to ask permission.’

  ‘But surely she’d have told somebody!’

  They had reached the yard, lugging the basket between them. From the open door of Lilith’s stable came a loud whinny.

  ‘What’s wrong, girl?’ Sister Joan surrendered her part of the burden and went across to look inside.

  To her intense relief Bernadette was there, stroking Lilith’s velvety nose, turning her head slightly in the dim straw-coloured light.

  ‘It’s all right, Sister Martha. Bernadette’s here!’ She raised her voice slightly, acknowledged Sister Martha’s answering wave and turned back into the stable.

  ‘I was supposed to go and help out in the garden,’ Bernadette said.

  ‘It isn’t important. There’s never very much to do once the spring planting and sowing are over. Are you all right?’

  She asked the question sharply as a sudden shaft of light revealed a woebegone face with the unmistakable traces of tears on the cheeks.

  ‘Yes. No. I’m not sure,’ Bernadette said in rapid succession.

  ‘Pick the right answer and you get a prize?’ Sister Joan said, gently teasing. ‘If anything’s worrying you then it’s sometimes true that two heads are better than one.’

  ‘I don’t know what to do, Sister Joan, and that’s a fact.’ Bernadette moved away from the stall and sat down disconsolately on a bale of hay.

  ‘About what?’

  ‘About applying to enter the order,’ Bernadette said.

  ‘Oh, everybody feels like that,’ Sister Joan said in relief. ‘Merely coming in as a postulant doesn’t commit you for life, you know. You can leave at any time during the first two years.’

  ‘I just don’t feel that I can live up to the standard, not when I’m so full of hate!’ Bernadette burst out.

  ‘Hate’s a strong word.’ Sister Joan sat down on the three-legged stool at a little distance. ‘You don’t strike me as a hating kind of person.’

  ‘I hate Magdalen Cole,’ Bernadette said low and fierce. ‘I know it’s wrong, Sister. Even if I wasn’t thinking of becoming a nun it’s still wrong! I never hated anybody I knew before — I mean we can hate Hitler and Genghis Khan and — well, hate what they did anyway, but it’s easy to feel like that about someone you’ve only read about in books. I’ve met Magdalen and I wasn’t keen on her from the start and now I loathe her and if she’s coming here then I couldn’t stand it!’

  ‘For heaven’s sake, what’s happened?’ Sister Joan demanded.

  ‘After lunch Mother Dorothy asked if I’d step into her parlour for a moment,’ Bernadette said. ‘I went in and she said that I wasn’t to worry about not being accepted here as a postulant, that she understood I’d been scared to mention that I’d gone downstairs on the night that Sister Elizabeth was — well, she said that anyone could forget to lock a door and I was to forgive myself, but that in future when I did anything wrong it was much wiser to go to her myself and not ask Magdalen or anyone to do it for me. Well, I can certainly forgive myself, Sister, because I slept all night through and never stirred but I’m damned if I can forgive Magdalen Cole for landing me in the stew like that. She’s one of the sneakiest people I ever met!’

  ‘What did Mother Dorothy say about it?’

  ‘I didn’t say anything about it,’ Bernadette said. ‘I couldn’t.’

  ‘Couldn’t snitch on Magdalen Cole?’

  ‘Not on anybody,’ Bernadette said. ‘Anyway I was just too shocked to say anything. I just sat there like a fool while Mother Dorothy went on about not fretting over being careless. I couldn’t say a word.’

  ‘It was Magdalen who woke up and went into the chapel, of course, and then forgot to relock the door when she came back.’

  ‘I figured that out already,’ Bernadette said resentfully. ‘She’s so scared that she won’t be accepted for the postulancy that she doesn’t mind who she lands in the shit — sorry but that’s how I feel, Sister!’

  ‘At least it hasn’t affected your own chances,’ Sister Joan said cheeringly.

  ‘It wouldn’t have affected Magdalen’s either if she’d owned up,’ Bernadette said. ‘Anyway it’s shown me that I’m not the sort of person who can turn the other cheek. That doesn’t make me the ideal candidate for the religious life, does it?’

  ‘I’ve often thought that maxim was unfinished,’ Sister Joan said. ‘I mean if you turn the other cheek and get hit again there’s nothing telling you not to stick up for yourself. If I were you I’d stop being so hard on myself. Mother Dorothy is a shrewd judge of character, you know. Sooner or later she’ll realize what Magdalen Cole is all about. I know it’s hard advice but I’d forget it if I were you. After all Reverend Mother didn’t name you.’

  ‘I bet she wishes she had,’ Bernadette said darkly, and grinned suddenly. ‘All right, Sister. I’ll try not to let it bother me. Maybe Magdalen was just so scared of not being accepted that she heaped the blame on me without thinking of the consequences. Thanks for listening to me anyway.’

  ‘Any time!’ Sister Joan said, rising and extending her hand to Bernadette. ‘Go and wash your face and then see if Sister Perpetua needs any help. She’s making one of her special dishes for supper and if she sees me in the kitchen she’ll be — what is it?’

  ‘There’s something under the straw here.’ Bernadette who had also risen stooped to tug it out. ‘It stuck into my leg as I moved.’

  ‘It’s a trowel. Sister Martha mentioned she was missing one.’

  Sister Joan took the tool, glanced down and froze. The short iron handle she was holding was clogged with blood to which a few hairs adhered, dark stained in the dim dust-laden light.

  Ten

  ‘Bernadette, don’t say anything about this.’ Sister Joan spoke tensely, resisting the temptation to drop the trowel. ‘I’m going to take it down to the police station myself. If the police arrive here again and start questioning everybody then — well, I just feel it’d be better to keep quiet about this for the moment.’

  ‘I won’t say a word.’ Bernadette was staring at it with dil
ated eyes. ‘Is that the—?’

  ‘There’s dried blood on it still and a few hairs.’

  ‘I thought the postulants had to shave their heads,’ Bernadette said.

  ‘When they first enter, yes, but after they’ve completed a year in the postulancy they start growing their hair a little again. Sister Elizabeth’s had grown quite fast.’

  Fine lank brown hair, she remembered, wisps of it poking from under the short veil in which she’d been buried.

  ‘Do you want company?’ Bernadette enquired.

  ‘No, you stay and help Sister Perpetua. I don’t want to make a big issue out of this.’

  She had already handled the trowel so it probably made little difference to it if she covered it with her capacious sleeve, chivvying the younger woman towards the kitchen while she herself went to the parlour where, to her relief, she found Mother Dorothy poring over the parish magazine.

  ‘Into town again! Is it absolutely necessary, Sister?’ Her superior greeted her request with raised eyebrows.

  ‘I think so, Mother.’ Sister Joan drew the trowel from her sleeve and laid it on the desk.

  ‘Where did you find that?’ Mother Dorothy asked sharply.

  ‘Hidden in the stable, Mother. I thought it might be more discreet if I took it down to the station myself.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, we don’t want to alarm the community by a continued police presence,’ Mother Dorothy said slowly. ‘Was anyone with you when you found it?’

  ‘Bernadette was in the stable too.’

  ‘And she’ll say nothing. That’s a very nice girl,’ Mother Dorothy smiled slightly. ‘She has character. That’s important in a religious.’

  ‘Yes she has,’ Sister Joan said, as significantly as she dared.

  ‘Not, I believe, the type to persuade someone else to make her confessions for her.’ Mother Dorothy smiled again, pushed her spectacles higher on her small nose, and said, ‘You will not of course chatter about this, Sister.’

  ‘Of course not, Reverend Mother. Thank you.’

  ‘You had better put that in a plastic bag before you replace it up your sleeve. I have a bag here. Now that you’ve handled it you had better volunteer your fingerprints to the police. Come back as soon as you can.’