Vow of Sanctity

by Veronica Black

  ‘Mrs McKensie, we’ve met before of course.’ His voice had the softness of the Orkneys. ‘And this will be Sister Joan?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You found the body, Sister Joan?’ He sat down on one of the dining chairs and a thin, pale constable who had drifted in like a wraith took another one and opened a notebook with an air of complete boredom.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Hadn’t you better be looking for it?’ Dolly said. ‘It’ll be Alasdair – no doubt of it.’

  ‘We’ve a team down at the lochside now,’ Inspector Mackintosh said. ‘A few questions, if you’ll be so kind, Sister? You’re from the Order of the Daughters of Compassion, you say? I’ve heard of Carmelites and Franciscans.’

  ‘Ours is a comparatively small and young order,’ she explained. ‘The mother house is in London but we have convents elsewhere – my own is in Cornwall. The order has a – a retreat up here where Sisters can come to renew their spiritual lives if their superiors think it advisable.’

  ‘And you renew your spirituality by falling into the loch, do you?’ he enquired mildly.

  ‘I had visited the manse,’ Sister Joan said, refusing to recognize the gentle sarcasm. ‘Miss Sinclair was kind enough to offer me the use of the boat so that I could row myself back to this side of the loch. The storm broke without warning – there was a freak tide.’

  ‘Peculiar to this loch if I remember rightly. Go on.’

  ‘I had drifted close to the old trees and the boat jammed against them. The body rose up out of the water, head and shoulders, upright. I assume the feet were weighted, but then it would have been right down on the bottom, surely?’

  ‘It was clothed?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Then it’s likely the clothes caught on that old wood and held the body near the surface,’ he said. ‘You did say “body”, not “skeleton”?’

  ‘Body,’ she said briefly.

  ‘Then it can’t have been in the water long. Excuse me, ladies.’ He rose and went out again, treading ponderously down the stairs. The pale constable remained where he was, looking wistfully at his notebook.

  ‘You think it’s Dad, don’t you?’ Rory said, breaking suddenly into the silence.

  ‘Who else?’ his mother said with a little flutter of belligerence.

  ‘Mum, Dad went off six years back,’ Rory said. ‘He’d be a skeleton by now. And the loch was dragged at the time. They’d have found something then.’

  ‘It has to be Alasdair,’ Dolly said. ‘Who else could it be?’

  ‘Still incorrupt? Mum, that’s for saints,’ Rory said in a disgusted tone. ‘And not all of them either – and Dad was no saint.’

  The Inspector was returning.

  ‘There was a body there,’ he said. ‘Hard to tell exactly who it is – the face is somewhat – disfigured, banged against the fossilized trees and so on. We’ll get it over to the mortuary and have the whole thing cleared up as best we can. There may be a question of identification.’

  ‘I can do that,’ Rory said quickly. ‘No need to trouble my mother.’

  ‘I was his wife,’ Dolly said and gave the inspector a hard look. ‘I’ll do any identifying that has to be done. When do you want me over there? I’ve no car.’

  ‘Later this afternoon. I’ll send a car,’ he assured her. ‘Now, you and I met before, Mrs McKensie, when we undertook the initial investigation into the disappearance of your husband. I take it that you’ve heard nothing further since that might be pertinent.’

  Dolly McKensie frowned slightly as if she were considering and then shook her head. ‘Nothing to speak of,’ she said at last.

  At least she wasn’t going to repeat her belief that her husband had been seeing Catherine Sinclair before running off with someone else, Sister Joan thought.

  ‘In that case I’ll be back with a car in about an hour.’ Inspector Mackintosh glanced at Sister Joan. ‘There was no sign of any boat, by the way.’

  ‘It was probably broken up against the trees and sank. I shall have to explain the matter to Mr Sinclair,’ Sister Joan said.

  ‘How did you manage to get ashore? The undertow’s pretty fierce.’

  ‘I don’t know exactly,’ she admitted. ‘I stayed in the boat for as long as I could. I’d lost one oar but I managed to scull myself along with the other one. Then the tide flowed in again and I landed in the shallows – hence the clothes. My own were soaked through.’

  ‘The body was near the island, very near,’ the inspector said. ‘You didn’t think of going there?’

  ‘I believe they have no telephone, Inspector.’

  Whether or not he considered her answer evasive couldn’t be told from the calm impassivity of his face.

  ‘The rain’s still pretty bad,’ he said after a moment. ‘I can give you a lift back to your – retreat, d’ye call it?’

  ‘Her clothes aren’t ready,’ Dolly said.

  ‘Then I’ll call back in about half an hour, shall I? I’ll go down and take another look at the loch. Be nice when the rain stops. There’ll be a haar later.’

  He put on his shovel hat and went out again. This time the constable went with him.

  ‘Silly buggers.’ Dolly said without heat. ‘Of course it’s Alasdair.’

  ‘I reckon so,’ Rory said, and shook his head slightly.

  ‘I am very sorry.’ Sister Joan spoke quietly.

  ‘Not your fault, Sister. You didn’t put the body in the loch,’ Dolly began, and stopped, frowning. ‘Put in the loch,’ she repeated slowly. ‘Weighted down at the feet? That means he didn’t run off at all, doesn’t it? Means he was killed.’

  ‘Mum, they dragged the loch as far as they could six years back,’ Rory reminded her.

  ‘Then someone kept him somewhere all that time.’ Dolly’s face twisted into a grimace of disgust.

  ‘I don’t think it helps to speculate,’ Sister Joan said gently. ‘Look, I’ll give my clothes a hot pressing myself, if you don’t mind. I’d prefer to have something to do while I’m waiting for the inspector to come back.’

  ‘I’ll show you the kitchen,’ Rory said, with a worried glance at his mother. The kitchen was small but spotless, ironing board set up and her garments hung neatly on a rail. Her underwear was dry, she found with relief; the habit and veil only very slightly damp to the touch.

  ‘Your coat will take a few days to dry out,’ Rory said. ‘If you leave it here I can lend you an oilskin and sou’wester for the time being. Sister, do you have any idea who might have killed him?’

  He had lowered his voice, pushing the door to with the tip of his foot.

  ‘We don’t know for certain who the man is yet,’ Sister Joan said. ‘We don’t know how he died. I think it’s best not to make wild guesses.’

  ‘I daresay you’re right.’ Rory gave her a disappointed look and went out.

  Ten minutes later, clad in her own clothes save for the voluminous oilskin coat and floppy sou’wester that Rory had taken from a cupboard on the landing, Sister Joan hung up the clothes she had briefly borrowed and went back into the living-room.

  Dolly McKensie was still seated in the armchair, her head resting on her hand, but the eyes she raised were hard and determined.

  ‘You can save your sympathy, Sister,’ she said, before the other had time to speak. ‘I’m sure it’s Alasdair, and if it is then it’ll save me a deal of expense and trouble. I’m not going to be a hypocrite and pretend to a grief I don’t feel. The truth is that he was away more often than he was here when he was alive, and any grief I ever felt was over long before he ran out on me.’

  Sister Joan was saved from making any further reply by the ringing of the doorbell. A moment later Inspector Mackintosh’s official tread sounded on the stair.

  ‘Thank you again for your kindness,’ Sister Joan said again, and followed him down the stairs.

  Outside the rain still teemed and she was conscious of a twitched back curtain at the window of a neighbouring house as she got i
nto the police car.

  ‘Clannish place‚’ Inspector Mackintosh said, to nobody in particular. ‘You found much difficulty here?’

  ‘People have been very kind,’ Sister Joan said.

  ‘Old prejudices die hard.’ He sounded disapproving. ‘They’re behind the times at Loch Morag. All this business must be a bit out of your usual experience.’

  It was not a question. She was grateful for that because it saved her from the necessity of having to admit that she had been involved, albeit innocently, in other criminal proceedings.* Fortunately her name had been kept out of it all.

  The car crossed the road and took a by-pass which avoided the footbridge and brought them into the gully. As they reached the shore she could see through the rain figures moving about near the water-line.

  ‘Odd business,’ the inspector said. ‘Where’s this retreat of yours then?’

  ‘Up there. There are steps at the steepest part.’

  ‘You’ll not mind if I come up with you? Pity if you slipped on the wet stone.’

  ‘I’m perfectly capable of negotiating a flight of steps,’ she said crisply.

  ‘Even so.’ He got out of the car, holding the door open for her. ‘Just to relieve my mind. It isn’t against your rules or anything?’

  Sister Joan reflected that the likelihood of a police officer joining a Sister up in the retreat was so remote that it was doubtful any rule had been formulated to deal with it.

  ‘Provided you don’t fall down yourself, Inspector,’ she said sweetly, and began the climb up between the dripping pine trees to where the steps began.

  When they reached the top where the step widened into a narrow platform he let out his breath in a long whistle.

  ‘In training for the Olympics, are you?’ he enquired.

  ‘It isn’t really suitable for elderly members of the order,’ she admitted.

  ‘And in this weather it isn’t suitable for anybody,’ he said. ‘You’d better have a word with that mother superior of yours. Tell her to find somewhere a mite less hazardous.’

  Sister Joan, heroically refraining from pointing out that one didn’t ‘tell’ one’s prioress anything in the sense he obviously meant it, murmured something and stood within the arch of the rock to take off her oilskins. Her sideways glance at her companion’s heavy duty mackintosh was eloquent.

  ‘You’ll not want water dripping all over your cave,’ the latter said, and unfastened it.

  ‘I can hang the wet garments at the very back of the cave,’ she said. ‘I think there’s a sort of trough there.’

  ‘Cold as charity here,’ the inspector observed, moving into the cave and scowling around.

  ‘I can offer you a mug of hot tea. There’s a primus stove.’

  ‘Thanks. All right if I sit here?’ He indicated the flat-topped rock that served as stool.

  ‘You may sit on the bed,’ Sister Joan said, suddenly wanting to giggle. Seldom had she seen a man so far out of his element.

  ‘Very kind of you, Sister.’ Perching on the extreme edge he said, watching her busy herself at the stove, ‘One day you must explain to me why on earth a good-looking woman chooses to go through all this kind of thing. It’s beyond my comprehension.’

  ‘It’s beyond mine sometimes too,’ she admitted. ‘You didn’t climb all the way up here to ask me about the religious life, did you?’

  ‘I wanted to know if you had anything further to tell me,’ he said.

  She was thankful that dealing with teabags and boiling water made it impossible to look him straight in the eye.

  As a lawabiding citizen it was her duty to inform him that she had seen the same body on a previous occasion, that it had then been clad in a monk’s habit, that she was certain she had been watched and followed during her visits to the island. There was also, she reminded herself, a higher duty – a loyalty to those who had shown her hospitality, allowed her to penetrate as far as any woman could into the celibacy of the enclosed monastic order. To focus attention on the community too quickly would be damaging to their reputation in an already hostile area. The majority of the villagers would be only too pleased to learn that the police were swarming all over the island.

  ‘What questions would you like to ask me, Inspector?’ She handed him the mug and sat down herself on the rock, feeling the residual warmth from the stove and the comfortable dryness of her garments.

  ‘You’re here for a – spiritual retreat? For how long?’

  ‘About a month. I can’t remain for longer but if the weather becomes very bad then I can use my judgement and leave earlier.’

  ‘You live in the Cornwall convent?’

  ‘Yes, but I was trained and professed at the London house. That’s my own special mother house. The main mother house, the original foundation, is in Holland since our foundress was Dutch.’

  She broke off to sip her tea, uneasily aware that she was talking too fast and too volubly – sure sign of someone with something to hide.

  ‘If you can just run through what happened earlier today?’ he prompted.

  ‘I decided to take a good long walk round the loch. I got as far as the manse. The minister, Mr Sinclair, was kind enough to entertain me to dinner.’

  ‘Are you going?’

  ‘No, I mean that I’d already been to dinner there with him and his daughter. I called in at the manse and Morag Sinclair kindly gave me brunch. Her father had gone to a meeting in Aberdeen, travelling by train, and she was driving over to meet him and do some shopping before they travelled back together. She was in a bit of a hurry so I didn’t stay too long; anyway she hadn’t time to drive me back but she offered to let me use the Sinclair boat.’

  ‘You can row then?’

  ‘And ride a bicycle and a horse and drive a car. I wasn’t born with a habit and veil on, you know.’

  ‘Of course not.’ He made an apologetic gesture. ‘Weren’t you a bit nervous of the weather?’

  ‘The storm hadn’t even begun,’ she said. ‘It started so rapidly; it was apocalyptic, scaring – I lost one oar, then I heard the sucking sound as the freak tide took all the waters away – the old trees rose up out of the water; I had some idea of reaching them and scrambling on to the island; then I saw the head and shoulders rising up; I only thought of getting to a telephone and I sculled the boat the other way. The water was so shallow that I was scraping bottom and then I fell out, scrambled out – I can’t remember clearly, and then I got on to the shore and made for the village.’

  ‘To the McKensie store?’

  ‘I had that in mind, yes. Mrs McKensie and her son had been very hospitable to me as well. However I met Rory McKensie on his way over to check that I was all right.’

  ‘I’m glad the boy is looking out for you,’ Inspector Mackintosh said.

  ‘He is a nice person when you get past the prickles. Anyway he went with me back to the shop and I phoned the emergency service from there. Then I dried out –’

  ‘And Mrs McKensie insisted the body must be that of her husband?’

  ‘It seemed logical,’ Sister Joan said cautiously.

  ‘I was on the case when Dolly McKensie reported her husband missing six years ago,’ the Inspector said musingly. ‘She came in about a week after he was due home and said she thought something had happened to him. He was a travelling salesman – toiletries and leather goods – so he was often away, and she didn’t start to worry about him for several days – if worry is the right word. She struck me as a woman who’d made her own life – the village store and her son, Rory – and wouldn’t have been heartbroken if her husband had never turned up again. We policemen get an instinct about these sorts of things. Anyway we never turned up very much. He’d given up his current job a couple of weeks before and abandoned his car. They’d had a joint bank account from which each could draw at any time. He’d left plenty in it, but he’d drawn an unspecified amount from his personal savings. The bank was coy about telling us exactly how much. We could’ve obtaine
d a warrant but since there was no question of fraud or foul play then we didn’t pursue the matter. The file was kept open in a theoretical sense, but it was fairly clear that he’d done just what his wife suspected and decamped with one of his lady friends.’

  ‘More than one?’

  ‘Nobody came forward to help with enquiries, but we reckoned he’d probably had several – er fleeting relationships and finally gone off with someone who really took his fancy. A bit cowardly of him not to put his wife’s mind at ease, but from everything we could gather he never showed her much affection, and she’s a bit of a tartar from all accounts. Possessive about the boy.’

  ‘Human nature is often difficult to fathom.’

  ‘Meaning that it is against the rules to gossip?’ Inspector Mackintosh gave her an amused glance.

  ‘Meaning I think it’s a bit unwise to speculate too wildly without any proof,’ Sister Joan said.

  ‘That’s generally true, but you’d be surprised how often a bit of intelligent speculation eventually turns out to be true,’ he said, acknowledging the implied rebuke with a faint smile. ‘However it looks as if we were wrong here. If that body turns out to be Alasdair McKensie then he obviously didn’t run off with a lady friend. It was murder – whoever the corpse turns out to be.’

  ‘Another speculation?’ she asked.

  ‘Your original idea was correct,’ he said. ‘His sweater had caught on some projections of the fossilized trees, but his feet were weighted with pieces of iron. They held him upright. And he hadn’t been in the water very long. The wool of the sweater would have rotted pretty fast and he’d have sunk to the bottom, even if the body hadn’t been in a remarkable state of preservation. The face was damaged, banged against the tree by the force of the wind and waves – but you don’t want to hear the gory details.’

  ‘No I don’t,’ Sister Joan said firmly.

  ‘Once we get a line on what actually caused his death then we can start looking for the person responsible,’ he said.

  ‘And the identification.’

  ‘We’ll have to ask Dolly McKensie to co-operate there. I’m sending a car up for her later this evening. She’ll be relieved to qualify for her widow’s pension if it proves to be Alasdair McKensie.’