Death of a Novice

by Cora Harrison

  Nevertheless, as soon as she opened the door she repented of her impatience. Betty Kelly’s face was dead white and there were black bruises under her eyes as though she had not slept well. Of course, the poor girl had lost a father and sister during the last month. Once she saw the Reverend Mother, she jumped hastily to her feet and stuffed a handkerchief back into her handbag, standing awkwardly with one hand on the back of the chair, as if for support.

  Feeling somewhat contrite, the Reverend Mother swept forward with hands outstretched. This, after all, was the nearest relative of the girl who had died so very unexpectedly in the noviciate belonging to her convent. As such, Mrs Betty Kelly was entitled to all possible attention and commiseration from the Reverend Mother whose motherly care had failed to save her sister from death by a poisoner. The Reverend Mother winced when she thought of that. Could this death have been foreseen? Should she have banned these Irish classes from the start? The bishop, she thought, would have been sure to remark that they were, surely, a possible source of novice contamination. She should, doubtless, have first ascertained who would be present and then used all her connections in Cork in order to ascertain whether it would be a suitable venue for the novices under her care. She had long thought that it was good for novices to use the noviciate time to make sure that they were not misled by a pious impulse, but had a true understanding of all of the implications of community life and of what they were giving up from a life in the world outside. These Irish classes, she supposed, were in the nature of an experiment. And perhaps it was this experiment which had led to the death of Sister Gertrude.

  Or was it?

  Her interview with the aunt of the two girls had caused certain questions to arise in her mind. What was it that the woman had said? Not too close. Bit of jealousy between them. Patsy had known him first. Brought him home for tea. And then the prettier of the two sisters had taken the attention of the handsome young man. And the other sister had fled to a convent, not even trusting herself to attend the wedding. Surely Betty would have had some suspicions after this had happened. How had the marriage gone since? An immediate pregnancy and then birth and all of the strains that the care of a very small baby could place on a young couple may well have turned the young man’s affections back towards the sister he had known first. All these were the thoughts that came to her mind as she held out her hands.

  ‘My dear Mrs Kelly, this is a very sad moment for us both. Your sister will be an immense loss to us all. You must be devastated.’ The Reverend Mother pulled forward a chair, but the woman didn’t stir, just stood there, looking defensive. Strangely unalike, the two sisters. And not just in appearance. Sister Gertrude, the former Patsy Donovan, plump, squarely built, plain, had been self-confident and socially at ease. Confident in her brains and in her ability, she had deemed herself the equal of any whom she had met. Her sister, Betty, pretty in face, slim and graceful in figure, was, nevertheless, gauche, awkward and very much at a loss for words. She stammered something, dropped her handbag, picked it up, sat down once more at the Reverend Mother’s bidding but fidgeted uneasily. The Reverend Mother braced herself for questions, but none came. Odd, she thought. Of course her aunt would have told her what she knew, what the Reverend Mother had revealed on her visit, but it almost seemed as if the girl consciously avoided any further reference to that untimely death of her sister and showed no inclination to make enquiries about how Sister Gertrude, the once-named Patsy Donovan, had been poisoned. She listened docilely to the Reverend Mother’s funeral plans but contributed nothing to the suggestions; she had no idea what was her sister’s favourite flower for the convent’s wreath. Questions about a favourite prayer or a favourite hymn met the same shake of a head and a muttered ‘dunno’. She almost seemed impatient with the talk of the funeral, as if she were waiting apprehensively for the conversation to turn in a different direction. In the end, the Reverend Mother decided that straightforwardness was needed from at least one of them.

  ‘You will, I’m sure, be wondering what happened to your sister,’ she began.

  ‘My aunt said that she was ill, that she got sick.’ The young woman leaned forward in her seat and looked intently at the Reverend Mother.

  ‘That’s right. She vomited straight after the meal.’ And then as the girl seemed to expect more information, the Reverend Mother added, ‘She appeared dizzy.’

  ‘Wobbling?’ queried Betty.

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Panting? Did anyone take her pulse?’

  ‘It was 116, I think.’

  Betty nodded. ‘That would be it.’

  There was, thought the Reverend Mother, an unexpected shrewdness about Betty. Her eyes were intelligent, weighing up the matter. Perhaps she was just as clever as her sister, but early on their roles in the family had diverged. Patsy, the plain, plump girl became the intelligent one, while Betty, the pretty one, became the empty-headed one of the pair. The same thing had happened during her own youth when she, the plain one, had developed an obsession with education, had coaxed her father to supply a teacher for Latin, another for philosophy and, as her ambitions grew, a third for Greek; while her motherless cousin, Lucy, pretty as a picture, played the part of an empty-headed beauty. It was only in later life that she had realized how shrewd and clever Lucy really was. Now she looked across at Betty with interest.

  ‘And her speech slurred, just like she was drunk?’

  The Reverend Mother nodded. ‘Well, Dr Scher, the convent doctor, who knew Sister Gertrude well, tells me that she was poisoned.’

  ‘Seems strange.’ The girl was pondering the words.

  ‘He is not sure exactly what poisoned her,’ added the Reverend Mother, ‘but he thinks that it was some sort of alcohol.’

  That got a reaction. The girl jerked up her head and stared with frank and unmistakable astonishment.

  ‘Alcohol!’ Oddly there was almost a note of relief in her voice. Astonished, but relieved. What had she expected? Not that, obviously.

  ‘That’s right.’ The Reverend Mother decided that she would go no further. Patrick should not be hampered in his investigations and mentioning shoe polish and window cleaner and such like substances at this moment could jeopardize the finding of evidence. She sat very still and watched her visitor carefully. After a minute, though, the frightened, worried expression came over the girl’s face again and she shook her head.

  ‘Patsy didn’t drink,’ she said. ‘Never. Not even at Christmas. She was a pioneer. She always wore the pioneer pin. She used to go to their meetings and all that. My father used to take the odd drink of whiskey when he had a cold coming on, or if he were very tired in the evening, but Patsy wouldn’t ever touch a drop or let me, either. She was dead against whiskey. She wouldn’t have touched it. It must have been something that she ate.’

  ‘No one else was ill at the convent,’ said the Reverend Mother quietly. ‘And that was the only place where she had a meal,’ she added and saw the girl look uneasy, almost as though that was not welcome information.

  ‘She was going to those Irish lessons, wasn’t she? She said something about it when we were talking, the day before she died. I remember her talking about them.’ Still that air of unease about her. Still that impression that she was trying a little too hard to find an explanation for her sister’s death.

  ‘Yes, she did go to Irish classes, up in St Ita’s School on Wellington Road. I suppose she talked to you about them. What did she say about them?’ asked the Reverend Mother. Could Sister Gertrude have confided in her sister the doubts she had about her fellow novices.

  ‘Not much,’ said Betty. Her manner now was easy and relaxed. ‘Said she found them a bit of a bore. Said she didn’t know why anyone bothered learning Irish since hardly anyone spoke it. She didn’t like the crowd there, either. Thought that they were stupid. Don’t remember her saying anything else.’

  ‘I see,’ said the Reverend Mother. If only those wretched accounts had not taken up so much of her time, she
could have probed a little as to the use of those Irish classes. Sister Gertrude, she thought, was probably shrewd enough to have guessed, quite early on, that more than drilling in nouns and verbs was going on beneath the surface. She would have seen the effect it was having on the susceptible and enthusiastic Sister Joan. Still, that was over and done with now and hopefully no further harm would come of it. The death of Sister Gertrude was another matter. That had to be solved, no matter what the cost. ‘But she ate nothing there,’ she said aloud. ‘They did not provide a meal or even refreshments. Sister Gertrude, Sister Joan and Sister Brigid had their dinner here before they left to go up to Wellington Road.’

  ‘Perhaps someone gave her a bottle of whiskey to drink if she was hot and thirsty after the walk up that steep hill,’ suggested Betty. ‘They might have pretended that it was orange squash or something like that and she would have drank it unbeknownst what it was really.’

  Not a drinker, herself, thought the Reverend Mother digesting this without any outward reaction. Betty, she thought, must be quite a naïve young woman. No one who had ever touched whiskey would imagine that it could be passed off as orange squash. She suppressed a smile at the memory of her cousin Lucy and herself sampling her father’s whiskey, almost sixty years ago, and how they had coughed and spluttered and felt dizzy after a couple of teaspoons of the liquid. It would have been utterly impossible for Sister Gertrude to swallow enough whiskey to kill her, without being completely sure that it was not anything harmless. And probably not, she added to herself, without being hardened to the alcohol by months or even years of heavy drinking. Most unlikely, almost impossible if she were openly a member of the Pioneer Association. No, the likelihood was that neither sister had ever touched alcohol. Now that she looked more closely at the woman she could see the tiny round pioneer pin nestling in the lapel of her bouclé wool jacket.

  ‘I’d say that if the man who did it to her were to put a few spoonfuls of sugar in it, she’d drink it down,’ continued Betty. ‘You know what she was like, Reverend Mother. Mad for the sweets, always. “You’ll be a fat old woman once you stop riding that bike”, that’s what I used to say to her when she talked about getting a car one day.’ Betty’s voice sounded more relaxed now, almost as though finding that the consumption of whiskey might be a solution to her sister’s untimely death had relieved some of the feelings – were they of anxiety or of sorrow? The Reverend Mother asked herself that question, but was unsure of the answer.

  ‘The man …?’ She put a query into her voice.

  ‘Man, or woman,’ Betty said hastily. ‘I wouldn’t know.’

  ‘So you’d have no idea then who might have done something like that to your sister, no suspicions, no guesses,’ stated the Reverend Mother.

  Betty looked a little undecided then, almost as though seeking a possible name and then came up with the usual solution for the times. ‘It would be one of the Sinn Féin, that IRA crowd, wouldn’t it?’ she said. ‘Aren’t they behind most of the murders in this city? Did you read that article in the Cork Examiner, Reverend Mother? It’s a sin and a disgrace. But that’s who it will be. You mark my words. It will be them, or else one of the other crowd. The Treaty fellas. They’re one as bad as the other, that’s what I say.’

  ‘And what about your husband? What does he think happened to your sister?’ asked the Reverend Mother idly. The vision of the sobbing young man came back to her. What was the relationship like between husband and wife? Though she was filled with guilt for the part that she had inadvertently played in the death of the older girl, she would, she thought, hold back a little, make enquiries and hold the results within her until she was a step nearer to guessing the identity of the person who had cut short the life of the most promising novice that she had known for many a long year.

  ‘Oh, he wouldn’t have anything to do with either pack of them,’ said his wife dismissively. ‘He’s never gone in for politics. He’s got his head screwed on the right way.’ It wasn’t quite an answer to the question that had been put, but the Reverend Mother decided not to probe too much. Betty looked quite recovered now from her earlier unease and so the Reverend Mother thought that she could move onto another affair. She hesitated for a moment, wondering how to put the matter tactfully.

  ‘You remember your last visit here, Mrs Kelly, when you came to see your sister, the day before she died, I wonder whether you remember what you talked of.’

  The Reverend Mother’s mind recalled vividly the words that Sister Catherine had spoken. What had the two sisters been talking about? Why had Sister Gertrude expressed resentment that they might have been overheard, or overseen? It would be interesting to see what Betty’s explanation of the conversation was.

  A momentary look of trouble crossed the woman’s face. Perhaps that was understandable, given that it was the last meeting with her sister. However she soon rallied.

  ‘Mostly about our father,’ she said. ‘The house is to be sold so I’ve been down there sorting out all of his things. I was telling her all about it. The job that I had! Patsy, Sister Gertrude, had left her room cleared out, and there was nothing in there. Don’t think that he even opened the door once she left. He was that upset! But the rest of the place! He had a woman in to do for him, but you know what they’re like. Never do much tidying up, just push a broom around and wash a few floors. Alright when Patsy was around. She’d be one to have a sharp word, but once she went into the convent, well, that woman would just skimp through the work. Not that I blame her too much. Easier to clean than to tidy, I suppose. He was a great hoarder, my father. Would keep a matchstick if he thought it might be useful for something. Terrible job to get him to throw out half-eaten food or even a half-eaten bar of chocolate. Very generous, mind you. Just brought up poor and never forgot it, even after he started making a lot of money. Waste not, want not. That was his motto. But, my word, it meant that the house was full of junk.’

  So Betty and Patsy, the two sisters, met on the day before Patsy’s death. They shared affectionate memories of their father. Talked about the contents of the house and the clutter that had to be cleared up. The Reverend Mother thought about the words that Sister Catherine had recollected, the words that Sister Gertrude had said to her sister: ‘Be careful, Betty, there’s Sister Mary Immaculate’s little sneak over there and she will go tittle-tattling to the big white chief if we’re not careful.’ Perhaps she had found the reason for them.

  ‘Did you think that Sister Gertrude would like some memento, something to remember her father by? Something you found when you were clearing out the house.’ It would, she thought, be only natural that Betty might bring something to her sister, perhaps a pen or something else. It would, strictly speaking, be outside the rules and Sister Gertrude who had a clear mind and an excellent memory for detail would know that. On the other hand, she was a pragmatic individual with a healthily sensible attitude towards rules and regulations. If Betty had brought something practical like a pen or even perhaps an accountancy book, then she could just imagine that Sister Gertrude would decide that no harm was done to the spirit of the rule and would tuck the object into one of the capacious pockets which were set into the skirt of the nun’s regulation habit. She would, however, be conscious of Sister Catherine in the distance, mooning over her treasure. And who knows, the threat about telling the bishop about the brooch which Sister Bernadette overheard might well have come as a tit-for-tat measure. That made sense and was more acceptable as a defence against tale-bearing rather than just a gratuitous piece of ill-natured bullying.

  ‘So you brought Sister Gertrude a small memento from your father’s possessions,’ she said after she had waited for a space of time for an answer to her question. Sometimes an assertion is easier than a question. It requires a mere nod of confirmation. She made her voice sound absolutely neutral with not a shadow of blame or reproach in it.

  ‘No!’ There was a definite note of alarm in the voice. ‘No, no, I gave her nothing. No, you’ve made a mista
ke, Reverend Mother. I didn’t give her a thing.’

  Odd, thought the Reverend Mother, but there was no contradicting this vehemence, not on such scanty and unreliable grounds as an implication from Sister Gertrude’s words as repeated by a hysterical young nun. The atmosphere in the room, though, had definitely changed, now the young woman was uneasy, fidgeting; anxious to be off, perhaps. She got to her feet and stood fumbling her handbag and looking ill-at-ease. The Reverend Mother remained seated and looked at her appraisingly.

  ‘I was wondering whether you would like me to pack up her clothes and things,’ suggested Betty after a moment’s silence. ‘Denis can get the loan of a van from Ford’s and then he’ll pick them up tomorrow or the next day. Will that be all right by you?’

  ‘Certainly,’ said the Reverend Mother. She was quite taken aback. Beyond question, it was the right of Sister Gertrude’s family to take away the possessions which she had brought to the convent, but it was unusual in the least. These clothes, toiletries and shoes had all been bought by the family of the girls who entered the convent, and provided in sufficient quantities to last them for at least three or four years. However, it was most unusual, in the case of a death, for the family to suggest taking them back. Or even on the frequent occasions when the girl herself was leaving the convent. Most were glad to abandon the unfashionable shoes, the heavy stockings, the unflattering underwear, Victorian-style nightdresses, along with memories of a mistake made, or even, sometimes, acute feelings of failure and embarrassment.