Sister Caravaggio

by Maeve Binchy

  ‘He had invested everything in bank shares,’ Sister Columba said in a barely audible voice.

  Sister Mercy Superior flung up the middle catch on the windows and threw them open, as if symbolically trying to cleanse the room of the facts she had just enunciated. Warm wind tore into the room and the twin curtains streamed towards the nuns like the tails of wild horses.

  ‘I panicked,’ said Sister Mercy Superior, returning to the table and sitting down heavily. ‘Without telling anyone, I started to look for savings.

  I stopped paying the security company we were meant to ring if we saw anything suspicious on the closed-circuit TV monitors.’

  ‘You refused to buy diesel for the back-up power generator,’ Columba muttered.

  ‘I never imagined that anyone in a thousand years would come in here and steal our painting!’ Sister Mercy Superior shouted. ‘This is a fortified castle, for heaven’s sake.’

  Sister Alice saw that what she had taken for guilt in the senior nun’s face was fear.

  ‘The insurance company say that they will not pay out,’ said Sister Mercy Superior in a defeated voice. ‘We were meant to have CCTV footage, but the hard drive was blank. God forgive me, but unless we get the Caravaggio back and reopen the chapel to tourists, Doon Abbey is finished.’

  Doon Abbey

  15 June, 11.45 AM

  No one spoke for at least a minute – not in itself unusual – as the full impact of what Sister Mercy Superior had said sank in. As if the scene was being followed on a celestial level, sun suddenly burst through and flooded the room.

  ‘We have no cash, we already owe the banks fifty thousand and the local manager, that – God forgive me – that fool who lost our money, has been writing us insolent letters,’ Sister Columba said angrily.

  Alice stepped forward. ‘I will help you,’ she said. ‘I am trained in such matters.’

  ‘The Lord has sent you to us,’ said Sister Columba, and for the first time Sister Superior nodded her agreement with what the novice mistress had said.

  ‘I cannot compel you to assist us,’ Sister Superior said. ‘I cannot order you or force you to do anything outside your immediate vocation. But what I can say is this: it’s the only hope we have, and you are the only person who can help us.’

  ‘Very well,’ Alice said, as her own voice sounded strange to her in the large room. ‘Let’s make a start. How did the Caravaggio come to the convent in the first place?’

  Sister Mercy Superior and Sister Columba exchanged a look.

  ‘The name “Lady Cherry de Bree” will mean nothing to you,’ Sister Mercy Superior began.

  ‘I remember her!’ Sister Mary Magdalene said. ‘She died just after I entered.’

  Sister Mercy Superior scowled at the sound of Sister Mary Magdalene’s voice. ‘She became a Catholic when she was eighty,’ the head nun said, ‘and when she died she left us the painting.’

  ‘The artist wasn’t identified for ages,’ said Sister Columba, ‘until Davy Rainbow came along.’

  The Caravaggio had come with the stipulation that the painting could not be sold until 2020, the centenary of Lady Cherry’s birth, Sister Mercy Superior explained. And if it was sold or otherwise left the wall of the chapel in Doon Abbey, it immediately reverted to Lady Cherry’s grand-nephew, an art dealer in New York whose name was Ashley KellyLidrov.

  ‘So, who’s the thief?’ Alice asked.

  Sister Superior growled, ‘We disagree on the subject.’

  Sister Columba sat very upright and composed her face in an attitude of downcast modesty.

  ‘I think that someone would like us to sell the abbey so that he can buy it, and that this is what is behind the theft.’

  ‘Oh, rats!’ Sister Superior exclaimed as she lost her patience. ‘Cyril O’Meara has been trying to buy Doon Abbey for the last twenty years. He claims that the Fitz-Johns stole this farm and castle off his ancestors and that Doon Abbey is his by right.’

  The close-together, venomous little eyes and the upraised fist flicked across Alice’s internal vision.

  ‘Whom do you suspect, Sister Superior?’ asked Sister Alice.

  ‘I don’t think it’s Joe Foley,’ Sister Mercy Superior said, as if her foremost suspicion had to be spoken first in order to be eliminated. ‘I accept that Joe was known to the police when we took him on here, but that was three years ago. Perhaps I shouldn’t have, but he’s Sister Diana’s nephew, after all. She vouched for him.’

  It was the first time Sister Alice had heard that little detail. Sister Mercy Superior drew herself up.

  ‘I’ll give you a week,’ she said.

  ‘Very well,’ Alice said. ‘But we’re not going to find the Caravaggio by sitting around here. We need to get out into the world, where the painting is. We’ve got to start in Dublin.’

  ‘We?’

  ‘I can’t do this on my own,’ Alice said. ‘I need Sister Mary Magdalene to come with me.’

  ‘Impossible!’ thundered Sister Mercy Superior. ‘She’s not been outside the castle for years! She’s a child! She’s …’

  ‘I have a fine analytical mind and I want to help!’ cried Sister Mary Magdalene.

  Sister Mercy Superior drew in breath for another broadside, but Alice said: ‘She comes, or no deal.’

  ‘I don’t like it, but very well,’ said Sister Mercy Superior, relenting unhappily.

  ‘We’ll leave immediately,’ Alice said. ‘We’ll need a vehicle; the Berlingo van will do.’

  Sister Columba began to protest but Sister Mercy Superior cut her off. ‘Go on,’ she said. ‘What else?’

  ‘Who knows the number of the convent’s new mobile telephone?’ Alice asked.

  ‘No one,’ Sister Mercy Superior replied. ‘We’ve never even used it.’

  ‘In that case, it’s perfect, we’ll take it,’ Alice said. ‘And we need cash to buy civilian clothes.’

  ‘How much cash?’ the head nun asked.

  ‘Five hundred to start with,’ Alice said.

  Sister Columba clapped her hand to her mouth. ‘Five hundred euro!’ ‘How much is the Caravaggio worth?’ Alice asked.

  ‘At least five million,’ Sister Mercy Superior said. ‘Columba, give her the money.’

  ‘And the convent Visa card,’ Alice added, ‘for emergencies.’

  ‘Very well,’ said Sister Mercy Superior darkly, ‘very well.’ The women stood up.

  ‘Are there any questions?’ Sister Mercy Superior asked.

  ‘Yes, there is something I would like to know.’

  Sister Mercy Superior blinked. She was not used to hearing Sister Mary Magdalene speak.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Something has been troubling me,’ Sister Mary Magdalene said. ‘Troubling you?’

  ‘I would like to know what happened to Sister Winifred Superior. I have waited and waited for her to return, but in vain. Now that I can speak, I want to know what has become of her.’

  Sister Mercy Superior and Sister Columba exchanged a dark look. It was the novice mistress who spoke first.

  ‘Sister Mary Magdalene, is this your idea of a horrible little joke?’

  ‘I liked her so much,’ Sister Mary Magdalene said, on the verge of tears. ‘I just want to know.’

  Sister Mercy Superior drew herself up to her not inconsiderable height.

  ‘She went away,’ she said in a voice of steel. ‘Yes, Mary Magdalene, Sister Winifred Superior went away, and she will never return to Doon Abbey.’

  Chapter Two

  Dublin

  15 June, 2.30 PM

  The taxi made its way from the airport to the city centre. A light rain had begun to fall. The passenger had never been to Dublin before. He only made these trips when there was an emergency.

  ‘Anna Livia Plurabelle,’ said the taxi driver as he tried yet another conversational gambit. ‘James Joyce himself. D’you read much at all yourself, sir?’

  No reply came from the back seat. The taxi driver’s strategy was to dr
aw his airport customers into a detailed conversation and then slip in hints about his own financial problems caused by the recession – all of them true – which eventually would result in a hefty tip. He surveyed his passenger anew in the rear-view mirror. The man was very large, had long, greasy blond hair and needed a shave.

  ‘I’m told that the best way to read Joyce is with a street map of Dublin in your hand,’ the driver ventured, trying a different tack.

  The passenger looked pointedly out of the car window. Ignorant bugger, the driver thought, waste of time trying to butter him up. He stole another glance into his mirror. The man was well dressed, all the same, and carried a small, light overnight bag. As he looked, the man, whose hair came to his shoulders, looked straight back at him. Whatever he did with his eyes, the driver got a fright, which in turn made him briefly lose his concentration on the road in front. The taxi screeched to a halt at a red light and the businessman’s case shot forward from the seat.

  ‘Sorry about that, sir,’ the driver said. ‘These traffic lights give you no warning nowadays.’

  ‘They give you the same warning as traffic lights all over the world,’ the man said quietly. ‘But if you persist in trying to draw me into a conversation in order to get a tip, and then spend long moments looking at me in your mirror instead of keeping your eyes on the road like you’re meant to, then the traffic lights will surprise you, I’m sure. So don’t speak again until we reach my hotel, and don’t look at me again. Is that clear?’ ‘Yes, sir,’ said the driver as he felt a cold shiver pass down his spine.

  ‘Quite clear. Sorry, sir.’

  County Kildare

  15 June, 3 PM

  In the brightly lit basement of the department store, just outside Doonlish, Alice and Sister Mary Magdalene waded into the oddments boxes marked ‘Any Three for €5’. To one side, a busty, middle-aged woman stood watching.

  Now that Alice was back in action, she was programmed in a way that was very familiar. She had left the convent only an hour before, but already Doon Abbey seemed an entirely impossible and unreal place in which to have spent the last three months. Still, this was no time to start analysing the convent, or her motives for going there. As she dug through skirts, blouses and knickers, she cursed herself for having put her entire wardrobe into five plastic sacks and giving them to a charity shop the week before she had entered Doon Abbey. Same with her savings: all gone – half to Saint Vincent de Paul, the other half to Children in Need. Now, with just the money from the convent, she had to get Sister Mary Magdalene and herself into civilian clothes and on the road.

  She did not want to reflect on the fact that she had no clear idea how they were going to recover the stolen painting.

  ‘Sister Alice? What do you think?’

  Sister Mary Magdalene was holding aloft a pair of sheer black tights, a tartan skirt and a white blouse.

  ‘Yes, go for it,’ Alice said, ‘but Sister Mary Magdalene, I think we need to change the ground rules before we go any further.’

  Sister Mary Magdalene blinked. ‘Yes, Sister Alice?’

  ‘We can’t go on like this – Sister this, Sister that. People will think we’re crazy. For as long as we’re out of Doon Abbey, my name is Alice.’ She tossed a pair of black lace knickers in the air. ‘What would you like me to call you?’

  Sister Mary Magdalene looked warily over her shoulder. ‘I was christened Margaret,’ she said quietly, ‘but my family used to call me Maggie.’

  ‘Maggie is a lovely name,’ Alice said as she threw a bundle of underwear at Maggie and moved swiftly to the racks. ‘Now, that wasn’t too hard, was it? Come on, Maggie, we need to get ourselves out of these habits and into something that won’t attract attention.’

  In the fitting room, Maggie looked at her reflection in the mirror. Every day for fourteen years she had put on the floor-length Aurelian habit, then the black headdress with its white woollen rim. Although Sister Mary Magdalene had always radiated calm and peace as she handed out another piece of seventeenth-century sacred music downloaded from the Internet, inwardly, Maggie sometimes seethed with doubt and asked herself if a life of cloistered contemplation until death was really for her. It was not that her vocation no longer inspired her, or that she did not pray hard during those idle moments in which distraction, not to mention temptation, pounced; rather, it was her growing awareness, delivered by the Internet, that the problems of the world might not be solved by prayer alone. She closed her eyes as her habit slid to the floor and pooled around her ankles.

  Prayer was fine, but whole continents continued to starve and evil military regimes caused untold hardship to millions of God’s children. In the confines of the library in Doon Abbey, Maggie had often wept quietly with frustration as she streamed forbidden images from the world’s trouble spots. No one else in Doon Abbey saw what was going on, but she did, and she found herself wishing she could do something! Her prayers had strayed from begging simple forgiveness to asking God to find her a role in the greater world.

  She took off her woollen convent-issue vest and tried on one of the bras from the oddments box. It was too small and tight; she threw it aside and reached for another. She had been only eighteen when she came to Doon Abbey, just a willowy young woman, reeling with sadness, far too young to make such a momentous decision, she now realised. Often she thought of all the nuns who had gone uncomplainingly before her, slept in her cell, sat in her place in the choir stalls and died safe in the arms of Jesus. But that was before the Internet. If Jesus had had a mobile phone, would He have spent all His life wandering around Galilee? Would He not have been tweeting for all He was worth? Would the original Mary Magdalene not have had a Facebook page, if she had been born two thousand years ago? Too right she would, Maggie thought, as she clipped the new bra, then slipped her finger beneath the strap on her bare shoulder and let it go with a satisfying snap. She turned sideways to check her outline in the mirror. Perfect!

  As she stepped into a pair of scanty black knickers, she frowned. Had she put on weight? Maggie turned for a further appraisal. Did those legs, which had always drawn such envious stares from the other girls in school, look somehow different? There were no full-length mirrors in Doon Abbey and it had been quite some time since she had had a chance to study her legs in this way. She stretched, the way she had been taught in the gym at school, and her long limbs rippled healthily. No problem there, thank God, she thought, and allowed herself another brief moment of vanity. Then she sat down and drew on the black tights, relishing the delicious rush from toe to thigh as she eased them up, one leg at a time.

  ‘Are you nearly ready in there, Maggie?’ Alice called.

  ‘Two minutes!’ Maggie cried as she wriggled into the tartan skirt, which ended an inch above her knees, then the white blouse, with its low, frilly neckline.

  When Alice had first arrived in the convent, everyone’s spirits had lifted. Alice was young and energetic – qualities that Maggie had almost forgotten. Then she realised that it had been years since she had mixed with people of her own age. Maggie had suddenly felt trapped in Doon Abbey. She began to fantasise about escaping, about travelling the world, doing some missionary work, maybe, but at least getting out of the daily routine with Sister Mercy Superior. It was as if Alice’s arrival had caused an upheaval within her. Maggie had prayed fervently for calmness from the sudden wildness she felt, or at least for some sign that her life was not all for nothing. And then the Caravaggio had been stolen! God worked in such strange ways!

  The final item from the oddments box was a pair of high-heeled patent shoes that Alice had chosen for her. Maggie had not worn high heels since she had entered the convent. She put them on and stood again at the mirror. God, but she felt good! She ran her fingers through her cropped, brown hair. It was still thick and shone under the store’s lights. Maggie’s heart was thumping loudly. Was it wrong to feel so excited?

  ‘Maggie?’

  Maggie rolled her convent clothes into a bundle.


  ‘I’m coming!’ she cried, and opened the door of the fitting room.

  County Kildare

  15 June, 3.30 PM

  Outside the fitting room, Alice looked at her own reflection. She had bought herself one good jacket, a short skirt and a v-necked yellow blouse. Hmm, she thought, not bad, as she imagined what Ned might think of it. She immediately put the thought out of her mind. Ned was history. As Sister Alice would be if she did not find the Caravaggio.

  They had to get out of the midlands and into Dublin, establish a base, make enquiries from the most likely art dealers, whittle down the list of suspects. Get back in touch with her old contacts, the snitches and the thieves she had used in the past, the old lags who would know when a job was on. Journalists, too, would be helpful. Time was of the essence.

  Alice also wanted to put Maggie’s research skills into gear. She had specifically asked Sister Mercy Superior to let her have Sister Mary Magdalene, because Alice had seen the way the librarian’s laptop was almost an extension of her fingers. And there was something else – a hidden, rebellious side to Maggie that Alice had glimpsed. One afternoon, when she had gone into the library looking for a life of Saint Theresa and had walked up behind Sister Mary Magdalene, the nun, who had been hunched over her laptop, snapped the computer shut; but Alice was almost completely certain that Maggie had been watching Breaking Bad.

  The door to the fitting room opened and Alice turned around. Her jaw dropped.

  ‘Sister … Mary Magdalene?’ she whispered. ‘Is that really you?’

  ‘Do you know where we pay for these clothes?’ Maggie asked. She giggled as she wobbled in her high heels. ‘I feel like I’m on stilts!’

  ‘Maggie, baby, you’re a real looker,’ Alice gasped. ‘Oh my God, you’re fantastic!’

  Maggie smiled shyly. ‘Don’t tell anyone in the convent,’ she said.