Vow of Obedience

by Veronica Black

  ‘A very lovely country if I could only recall its name. But they alter so.’

  ‘Time for chapel.’ Mother Dorothy brought recreation to an end.

  Sister Joan, who had worked only a few rows of the scarf she was knitting, put wool and needles back on the table with relief and filed down the stairs with her companions. She felt a rush of relief for a different reason when, entering the chapel, she saw Sister Teresa kneeling with her fellow novices.

  The service proceeded calmly along the usual lines. No shocks or surprises to mar the cadences of prayer and worship. Part of her stood aside and marvelled that nobody turned to give her a puzzled glance. Surely someone could sense the turmoil inside her.

  It seemed not. Mother Dorothy rose and went to the door to give the great blessing; the grand silence fell like a curtain over any possibility of conversation.

  In the lay cell she swiftly changed her grey habit and white veil for the smock and straw bonnet worn by the novices during the first two years of their training. Her fingers fumbled with the strings and she was aware of her heart beating rapidly.

  Perhaps she was being a fool? Perhaps nothing would happen, no one come, or perhaps even now as she scribbled a hasty note and pinned it to the back of her door the last moments of her life were ticking inexorably past.

  And that, she told herself scoldingly, was ridiculous. She had always been capable of talking her way out of anything, according to Jacob. Strange that she should think of Jacob now, his clever, dark face, his obstinacy, his gift for making other people look at the world in a different way.

  She opened the door and looked out into the kitchen. There was still a faint warmth lingering from the old-fashioned cooker and through the uncurtained window the faint greyness of emerging moonlight. She unbolted the door, tensing as it grated a little, and stepped into the yard. For a moment she stood, feeling the cold as it swept through her smock, wishing she had had the forethought to bring a cloak. Then she dipped her head and set off across the yard into the enclosure. The heavy torch was hidden against her side. As a last resort it might serve as a defensive weapon, but she prayed silently it wouldn’t be necessary. Meanwhile she didn’t reveal its existence by switching it on, but found her way by moonlight and memory through the gates, past Sister Martha’s vegetable plot and neatly pruned roses and the tiny cemetery where other sisters slept even more soundly than those in the main house and went down the steps into the sunken tennis court.

  So far – nothing. Not a footfall save her own ruffled the silent ground. Apart from her own somewhat ragged breathing there was only the wind as it swooped down to rusting posts and a tangle of broken net.

  She had reached the postulancy. It stared blank eyed from behind the low wall. Her own novitiate had been spent in the London house where the postulancy was a separate wing and not a separate building altogether. She had taken the spare key from its hook and used it now to open the front door. It was a pity that she didn’t have a dog with her, she thought suddenly. There was something very reassuring about a large, padding dog with a rough warm coat.

  She closed the door behind her with a slight and deliberate bang. It was time to advertise her presence, to tell whoever might be lurking within earshot that the postulancy was occupied again. There was a lamp just within the door. She lit it and carried it up the narrow staircase to the cells above. Whoever had stolen the pages from Sister Hilaria’s spiritual diary had almost certainly been forced to look into all the rooms in order to find the right one. Sister Joan hoped they had noticed some evidence of Sister Marie’s occupancy of her own particular cell.

  She entered it now, setting down the lamp, moving the blind an inch so that its gleam was visible beyond the window, going to the bed to turn it down before she slipped quietly out of the cell again and went noiselessly down the stairs into the tiny kitchen where she drew back the bolt on the door.

  Now there remained only the waiting. She backed out of the kitchen and went up the stairs again. She would wait for two hours. After that Daisy Barratt would surely be missed from her bed.

  Daisy Barratt with her bullying, impotent husband, her lack of friends, was also the only person connected with the events in Birmingham two years before and the murders of Valerie Pendon and Tina Davies. And she had lied. Sister Joan drew the programme of the school play from her pocket. At the bottom below the cast list, neatly typed, were the names of the backstage crew – Lighting, Prompt, Scenery, Wardrobe Mistress and – Costumes designed and made by Daisy Smithson. Daisy had said she couldn’t sew. One small, apparently unimportant lie in the course of a casual conversation might mean nothing but was more likely to mean a very great deal. Taken in conjunction with the telephone call she had made to the mental home it added to the weight of evidence. That brief telephone call echoed in her memory.

  ‘This is Sister Joan of the Order of the Daughters of Compassion. I am making enquiries about an acquaintance of mine, a Mrs Daisy Barratt? Would it be all right to visit her?’

  A moment’s silence, the rustling of papers and then at the other end of the line a polite voice.

  ‘Daisy Barratt? I’m afraid you’re a little late, Sister. She left us a couple of months ago. Oh yes, she seemed very much better. Fortunately depression is often quite easy to treat these days.’

  And Luther Lee had been in the same hospital during the same period. It was no wonder that Luther had gone to ground. Luther too had seen what Sister Hilaria had seen just before she had been knocked down.

  It was colder inside the postulancy than outside.

  She folded the programme and slipped it back into her pocket, then took a firmer grip on the comforting torch. Whether she would be able to bring herself to use it if it became necessary was something she hadn’t yet dared to think about too closely. She prayed silently that she would never be called upon to make the decision. Quietly talking to an unbalanced person usually achieved positive results; at least that was what she had always read. With a little shock Sister Joan realized that in her whole life she had only once been in the situation of talking to an unbalanced person in order to diffuse potential violence. Now she was relying on one brief experience – staking her life on …

  Her head which had begun to droop jerked upright. The religious life made one used to early nights, she thought ruefully, and shook her head to clear away the mists of sleep. It was essential that she remain awake and alert.

  Her ears, straining to catch some sound beyond the coasting wind, caught the soft scrape of shoe against stone. Instantly she was on her feet, her eyes now accustomed to the gloom, fixed on the kitchen door. The handle was turning slowly, tentatively. Then it was released again with a sharp little click. She didn’t know if she imagined the soft padding of retreating feet or not.

  Someone had tried the door handle and gone away again. Daisy Barratt was a clever woman, one accustomed to avoiding discovery. Only one person must have known of her connection with the Birmingham schoolgirl who had died, must have hastily arranged for her to enter a mental hospital for treatment, had moved from the stresses of his job in a large city to a rural post, had spent his evening off searching the convent grounds for any clue that might lead his superior officer to the truth.

  And how, she asked herself silently, could I go to Detective Sergeant Mill with what amounts to nothing more than a few pieces of circumstantial evidence? Whatever solid evidence may exist would have been suppressed by Sergeant Barratt anyway.

  There was no point in sitting here any longer. Daisy had been suspicious of the unlocked door and gone away again. She could wait here all night and nothing would happen. Rising from the stool where she had been crouched she went to the door and gently slid the bolt into its socket. She would go out of the postulancy by way of the front door and return to the main house, drawing her pursuer after her.

  Time for one winged prayer that rose through the gentle moonlight as an urgent reminder that she herself, of her own power could achieve nothing, and then she
had closed the front door behind her and passed through the gate into the sunken tennis court.

  Her shadow ran ahead of her along the ground. A distorted shadow, made more grotesque by the outlines of the poke bonnet she had donned. She wondered if she had been recognized or if Daisy Barratt believed that it was Sister Marie who wandered through the grounds. She had no idea. She knew only that at the extreme rim of her vision another shadow had joined her own and kept silent pace as she walked briskly across the tennis court and up the steps into the enclosed garden.

  In the moonlight the simple white headstones in the little cemetery gleamed like ivory. She glanced at them as she went by the low hedge and saw the swift flicker of movement as someone ducked down behind it.

  She was safely through the garden and walking rapidly towards the main house. She would have more chance here of being heard if it did come to a struggle. It had perhaps been a mistake to go across to the postulancy but it did seem to have lured her pursuer closer to where others might hear and help.

  Lilith whinnied softly from within her stable as Sister Joan went past. The moonlight didn’t pierce so far and there was a cavern of deep shadow in which a darker shadow stood. She longed to turn her head and look directly at this other but it was too risky. The final confrontation had to settle the matter once and for all.

  She opened the back door, allowed herself to draw one long, quivering breath of relief and then was in the warm kitchen again. Outside the soft footfall rang gently against the cobbles and she half turned just as from behind the door a figure reared up.

  Something was round her neck, something that had caught on the brim of her poke bonnet but was inexorably tightening all the same. She hit out wildly with the torch but it spun from her hand and then her hands were at her own throat, last desperate barrier between her flesh and the loop of strong wire that had been thrust over her head.

  The torch struck against the cooker and sent a pan clattering down. She kicked out wildly again, aware of the wire cutting into her fingers, of the wind swinging wide the door, of footsteps running. Running from both directions, she thought, as they converged and someone called out,

  ‘You mustn’t hurt people. That’s a bad thing to do.’

  The light snapped on with brutal clarity and the intolerable cutting pressure on her fingers ceased. Daisy Barratt, the veil of her nun’s habit half torn from her head, was struggling in Luther’s grip and Sister Gabrielle stood by the light switch. For an instant they were tableau’d like a Hogarth print and then Daisy tore herself free and ran.

  She ran, not through the back door but the other way, blundering into the short corridor beyond, her voice rising into a screech as she called, ‘Come out and see me. Come and see me. I am going to find you, Sister Marie.’

  Sister Joan tore the loop from her neck, dislodging her bonnet in the process and stumbled to the inner door. Daisy Barratt had reached the main hall, had her hand on the newel post of the balustrade, one foot lifted to the lowest step.

  From the antechamber leading to the parlour a voice spoke sharply, with the habit of old authority.

  ‘Do exactly as I tell you and stay where you are,’ Sergeant Barratt said.

  ‘But they have to be punished,’ Daisy said, half turning, her face a white and terrible mask within the disordered frame of her veil. ‘They can all have babies but they won’t. They deny life and lock themselves away. And that’s not right. If no babies are born the human race will die out. We cannot allow unnatural behaviour. We cannot allow that, you know.’

  ‘You are to come with us,’ said another voice. Detective Sergeant Mill had emerged and stood, poised and calm.

  There were other policemen in the hall and somewhere among them the small, indomitable figure of Mother Dorothy. Daisy looked at them all blankly and then moved her head slightly to look at the newel post she was gripping so tightly.

  ‘This must be cleaned first,’ she said. ‘We cannot allow smears, you know. I’ll come as soon as I finish polishing.’

  And with the edge of her veil began slowly to rub away the faint imprint of her sweating palm.

  Fourteen

  Mother Dorothy looked round at the semi-circle of attentive faces and folded her hands neatly together. She looked slightly drawn but otherwise showed no sign that she had passed what must have been an almost sleepless night. Neither, thought Sister Joan, did Sister Gabrielle. The old lady looked, if anything, rather brighter than usual as if recent events had stimulated her.

  ‘I have decided,’ Mother Dorothy said, ‘that, in view of the circumstances, Detective Sergeant Mill should be invited to give his account of the events that culminated in last night’s arrest. Usually, thank God, such events don’t concern us, but since last night’s emergency forced us to break the grand silence then we may all benefit from an account. Detective Sergeant?’

  She inclined her head politely to the man seated by her. Sister Joan looked down at her own clasped hands, her mouth twitching despite the solemnity of the occasion. He looked as if he would have preferred to be almost anywhere else.

  ‘Reverend Mother. Sisters.’ He cleared his throat slightly. ‘As you all know already two young women, Valerie Pendon and Tina Davies, were both murdered recently. There were similarities between the two killings that pointed to their both having been killed by the same person and there were similarities between the two victims as well. Both were quiet, respectable girls, practising Catholics without any known lovers. Yet both of them left their homes in the middle of the night and were found wearing white bridal gowns with wreaths of leaves on their heads; both had been strangled by a loop of wire dropped over their heads and pulled tight. Two particularly nasty murders.’

  There was a general nodding of heads.

  ‘Murder,’ said Sister Mary Concepta, ‘is never very nice anyway. I have always disapproved of it most strongly.’

  ‘What I didn’t know,’ Detective Sergeant Mill was continuing, ‘was that two years ago a schoolgirl in Birmingham was found dead, also with a wire loop around her neck. There was no reason why I should have known. At the time there was no suggestion of foul play. The coroner returned a verdict of accidental death and the affair was never widely reported. The level of crime has risen so sharply in recent years that it simply isn’t possible for every incident to be made known to every police force in every county. Sometimes I wonder if a central register of crimes might not be a good idea save it reminds me too much of a police state. However I’m digressing. All that we really had that might be a clue was a note in the diary kept by Tina Davies. The note seemed to suggest that she was having a secret affair.’

  He paused to glance down at the paper in his hand.

  ‘“Is this love? Like hunger eating you up, clean to the backbone? Like a fire burning? Is it? I wish I could ask someone but I can’t break my promise. I have to wait until it’s too late to pull me back”.’

  Sister Marie had blushed a fiery red while Sister Elizabeth looked slightly affronted.

  ‘Sister Joan had seen this diary extract,’ he was continuing, ‘when she visited the Davies household as your representative and Mr Davies had just found the diary. She had the good sense to obtain his permission to bring it to me and I naturally began to look for the man in the case. Then Sister Hilaria was run over just outside the convent gates and pages were found to have been torn out of her private diary. Whatever had been written there could not possibly have referred to a love affair, and I assumed that she had recognized someone and connected it with the murders. Sister Joan, I understand you drew a different conclusion.’

  He was smiling at her encouragingly, inviting her to speak.

  ‘I was in a more favourable position than the detective sergeant,’ she said. ‘I knew that Sister Hilaria would never dream of confiding any suspicions she had to a diary meant solely for spiritual matters, and in any case she takes little interest in mundane affairs. But when she first recovered consciousness she said, “It ought to have been a
donkey”. And I also had the advantage of knowing that Sister Hilaria had recently mentioned having had certain private revelations. It was a matter of reading the extract from Tina diary in a slightly different way. I mean – the words might refer to an imagined religious experience. And then Sister Marie said something about it all starting again just as it had up north. Mother Dorothy kindly allowed me to talk to her further and I learned that a schoolgirl from the district in Birmingham where Sister Marie formerly lived had been found hanging from a tree with a wire loop round her neck. It was too big a coincidence.’

  ‘Sister Joan ought to have gone to the police immediately with what she had learnt,’ Mother Dorothy said severely. ‘However she had my permission to act as she thought fit in her assistance to the police and she decided, rightly or wrongly, to wait a while before informing anybody.’

  ‘Why was that, Sister?’ Detective Sergeant Mill enquired.

  ‘Because Sergeant Barratt had recently transferred from the Birmingham Police,’ Sister Joan said, ‘and it struck me as odd that he wouldn’t have mentioned the supposed accidental death when these two deaths took place. The three were so very similar.’

  ‘I reached the same conclusion by a different route,’ Detective Sergeant Mill said. ‘According to Sergeant Barratt he had requested a transfer in order to obtain a better chance of promotion. During the last couple of days I checked up on his transfer. He had certainly requested one to a rural district but the superintendent whom I telephoned informed me that Barratt was in line for promotion anyway. So he had some other reason for requesting a transfer. I wondered about that.’

  ‘He suspected his wife had had something to do with the first girl’s death?’ It was Sister Gabrielle who enquired, her head held slightly sideways like an intelligent bird.

  ‘It seems as far as we will ever tell that the first death was an accident. If you would like to continue, Sister Joan?’