‘I thought it was Bosnia that was under siege,’ Sister Mary Concepta said, puzzled.
Sister Joan choked back a giggle and went down the stairs and across the hall to the wide antechamber beyond which the prioress had her parlour. Mother Dorothy usually joined them for only part of the recreation, choosing to use the free time to catch up with her own work, generally the adding up and painful balancing of the monies on which the convent supported itself.
Sister Joan’s tap on the door elicited a brisk invitation to enter. Doing so, kneeling for the customary ritual greeting, she was struck as she always was by the contrast between the opulent panelling on the walls and the gilding on the cornices of what had once been a gracious drawing-room and the small, trim, purple-habited figure of the prioress. Purple was worn during the five-year-term of office. After that the erstwhile head of the community returned to the light-grey habit with the addition of a narrow purple band on the sleeve to remind her of her previous status.
‘We seem to be holding our own financially so far this year,’ Mother Dorothy said, putting down her pen, ‘but there’s very little security these days! If we have the hot summer the experts are predicting that won’t help the harvest, so we must bear that in mind. What can I do for you, Sister?’
‘Brother Cuthbert gave me the key of the schoolhouse for you, Mother Prioress, and I forgot all about it,’ Sister Joan said.
‘Thank you, Sister.’ Mother Dorothy looked musingly at the key. ‘It will seem odd now that Brother Cuthbert isn’t there. Happily I’ve every expectation of his coming back in about a month. Meanwhile we have an empty property on our hands.’
‘Perhaps we could rent it out for a few weeks?’ Sister Joan suggested.
Mother Dorothy gave one of her rare chuckles.
‘The last time we left it to you to find temporary lodgers,’ she said dryly, ‘the results were – somewhat unfortunate!’1
‘I only thought—’
‘Actually it isn’t a bad idea,’ Mother Dorothy said. ‘There may be a birdwatcher who requires somewhere cheap and quiet. Sister, I’ll leave the key with you. Don’t rush about trying to find someone, but if the Lord provides a temporary lodger then I leave it to your good judgement. You had better go over there tomorrow with cleaning material and fresh bedding. When you want something to happen it’s always as well to give the Lord a little nudge by behaving as if what is desired was already settled.’
‘Like thanking God for something before the prayer is granted.’
‘Ah, St Paul was a sound psychologist in so many ways,’ the prioress said. ‘It’s a pity that he has fallen out of fashion in some quarters. Mind you, the mind boggles to imagine his reaction to the notion of female priests.’
‘We may well get there eventually,’ Sister Joan ventured.
‘Not in my lifetime,’ Mother Dorothy said firmly. ‘Adam was created first and we push ourselves forward at our peril. Men do not respect domineering women.’
‘No, Mother Prioress,’ Sister Joan said meekly, longing to remark that Father Malone lived in such great respect of the prioress that he hardly took a step without seeking her approval.
‘That will be all, Sister.’
‘Thank you, Mother Dorothy. Oh, I offered to get the chapel ready for service. Have I your permission?’
‘Of course. Sister David seldom gets a break. Dominus vobiscum.’
‘Et cum spiritu sancto.’
Sister Joan knelt, put the key back in her capacious pocket and went out across the hall to the chapel wing.
Darkness had almost fallen and only the red sanctuary lamp glowed at the side of the altar. Sister Joan went down the side aisle and up the three steps to light the white candles at each side of the veiled Host. Lighting candles was, she thought, one of the more pleasant tasks in the convent. As each flame sprang into life she felt a small, corresponding glow within herself.
At the side of the altar a shadow flitted silently away. She swung round with a stifled exclamation, in time to see the door into the outer passage open and close. Quick footsteps sounded and the outside door opened and closed with a decided thump.
‘To interrupt the preparation of the chapel save for the most urgent reasons is to disturb the rhythmic tranquillity one is trying to create.’
Why did she have to remember Mother Dorothy’s sayings at the most inconvenient moment? She lit the last candle, knelt, replaced the taper, went into the tiny sacristy where the priest, when he came, robed himself, checked on the holy water for the asperges and, still congratulating herself on her lack of curiosity, knelt swiftly and made for the outer door.
The rough ground that shaded into open moorland was dark, with the occasional dazzle of the rising moon as it drifted through the sable clouds to mitigate the gloom. It would’ve been useless to follow since she had no torch with her and, in any case, the chapel was open for anyone who cared to come. Perhaps it had been Luther who came now and then to gaze adoringly at the statue of the Holy Virgin on her side altar.
‘She looks just like my mam when she were young,’ he had said once earnestly.
No, not Luther. Luther would’ve greeted and offered to help. They had been a woman’s footsteps anyway.
Sister Joan came back into the chapel, her eye caught by a gleam of white near the altar. She went over and bent to pick it up, her fingers touching the fine lawn of a lace-edged handkerchief, the sort of handkerchief that never knows the indignity of having a nose blown into it. Smoothing it out, moving closer to the lighted candles, she traced the initial C in black silk embroidered with a flourish across one corner. C for Crystal? In that case what was it doing here?
1 See Vow of Fidelity
FOUR
The van bumped gently over the tussocks of grass and came to rest at the side of the old schoolhouse. Sister Joan opened the door and allowed Alice, sitting alertly at her side, to bound out, barking joyfully. If there was anything Alice enjoyed more than a run it was a ride in a vehicle – any vehicle! She was growing into a fine dog, her coat glossy, her nature sweet – too sweet for a guard dog, Sister Joan considered, hauling out her cleaning materials. Instead of raising the alarm when strangers approached Alice greeted them with wagging tail and begged for titbits.
‘If we had any money,’ Sister Gabrielle had pronounced gloomily, ‘that dog would lead the burglar to the safe and bark out the combination!’
Sister Joan took out the key and opened the door, feeling as usual a sharp nostalgia that overcame her whenever she entered here. The sturdily constructed stone building which had once been part of the Tarquin estate and had passed into the ownership of the community when the property was sold to the Order had been used as a school for local children who couldn’t get down into town to the state schools. Her first task at the Cornwall House had been to teach there. It hadn’t been an easy job, she recalled, and there had been incidents connected with this building that had challenged her courage, but she had felt affection for the children, some from the Romany camp, others the children of local farmers, and she had relished the sense of independence the work had given her. Now a school bus collected the children and bore them down into town every morning and disgorged them at various collecting points at teatime.
‘Our main function is to adore God constantly through prayer, meditation, and deeds of charity,’ Mother Dorothy was fond of saying. ‘Everything in our lives must centre upon that.’
Perhaps it was for the best that the school had closed down, thus confining her more within the convent, but she missed the bright faces, the elaborate excuses that the smarter pupils had concocted to explain away work left undone, the pleasure of being alone when the children had gone home and she sat at her desk for a few minutes to relish the peace and quiet.
‘Not much adoring there, girl!’ she admonished herself, stepping into the short passage that separated the cloakroom and two toilets from the large classroom.
Since Brother Cuthbert had arrived the cloakroom with its
row of empty pegs had served him as a washroom while in the larger room he had slept on a camp bed, cooked his two meals a day on a tabletop cooker and filled the cupboard with the books he borrowed from the convent library. Some of them were still here. It was a hopeful sign that he intended to return. She ran her eye along the titles, smiling. Brother Cuthbert had no liking for theological works, preferring to derive his spiritual nourishment from the church and the moors. Instead he favoured thrillers and love stories that ended happily with everybody reconciled and a pretty wedding.
Outside Alice barked on the high, excited note that heralded a friend – which meant absolutely nothing since to Alice anything on two legs was a friend!
Sister Joan went out to the front and looked round. The dog was begging coyly, head on one side, eyes pleading, though the figure shrinking against the side of the van didn’t seem to be applauding the trick.
‘Alice, down! Down, girl!’ Sister Joan went forward, reaching to grasp Alice’s collar. ‘She won’t hurt you. There’s no need to be scared.’
The young woman had straightened up slightly, pulling her coat about her slim frame, a slight smile quivering on her unpainted mouth. Her dark hair was pulled to the back of her head in a ponytail and her eyes, a soft hazel brown, lifted to scan Sister Joan’s face with a mixture of apprehension and curiosity.
‘I wasn’t doing any harm,’ she said defensively.
‘I’m sure you weren’t,’ Sister Joan said heartily.
‘You’re Sister Joan from the convent, aren’t you?’ the stranger said.
‘Yes, I am. How did you know?’
‘I read something about you in the newspaper,’ the other said. ‘It said that you solved crimes.’
‘Oh Lord!’ Sister Joan grimaced.
Publicity was the one thing she had always eschewed, being in complete agreement with her prioress on that matter.
‘Helping the police with their enquiries is the duty of a good citizen,’ Mother Dorothy had lectured, ‘but personal publicity is highly undesirable. We are not in the religious life to gain notoriety in the outside world.’
‘That article,’ she said now, ‘was grossly exaggerated. However my photograph didn’t appear in it so how—?’
‘I was walking past the convent grounds,’ the young woman said. ‘There were two nuns working there. One of them called to Sister Joan, and I had a glimpse of you as I came to a low part of the wall.’
‘Were you in the chapel last night?’ Sister Joan asked.
‘And a couple of evenings ago.’ The other blinked nervously, hands still clutching her brown coat. ‘I wanted to speak to you but I funked it.’
‘Look, why don’t you come into the schoolhouse and I’ll make us both a cup of tea?’ Sister Joan suggested. ‘You look as if you could do with one.’
‘I could do with a bit of a wash,’ the other said. ‘I slept in that old car last night.’ She nodded towards the broken-down vehicle in the depths of which Brother Cuthbert loved to fiddle.
‘Come inside,’ Sister Joan said promptly.
The stranger looked as if she couldn’t endure much more stress. Noting the pallor of her skin, the dark shadows under her eyes, Sister Joan decided that practical help was required.
‘There’s no hot water but I can boil up a kettle and then, while you’re washing, I’ll put it on again for a cup of tea,’ she said. ‘Brother Cuthbert left tea and sugar behind, but there’s no milk, I’m afraid. However I’ll see if I can rustle up a biscuit.’
‘Is Brother Cuthbert the teacher?’ the young woman enquired, following her indoors, with Alice, ears pricked at the idea of a biscuit, bringing up the rear.
‘No, this hasn’t been a school for ages,’ Sister Joan said. ‘Brother Cuthbert is a monk who lives here now as a kind of semi-hermit. He’s away at present, staying with his community up in the Highlands. I’ll get the kettle on.’
Leaving the young woman to make her toilet she took the boiling water into the cloakroom, poured it into the tall jug there, called cheerfully to the locked door of the lavatory that the water was ready, and went back into the larger room to make the tea and lay out the half packet of digestive biscuits and the apple she unearthed in the cupboard.
‘I feel better now.’
The young woman had come in, her brown coat over her arm. Her face had a touch of colour now and her hair had been tidied but the brown skirt and sweater she wore did nothing to flatter her colouring.
‘Have some tea and biscuits,’ Sister Joan said, indicating a chair. ‘Now, suppose we start at the beginning. Is this your handkerchief?’
She fluttered the lace-edged piece of lawn with its boldly embroidered initial.
‘Yes.’ The other folded her hands round the mug of hot, milkless tea. ‘I left it in the chapel. I hoped that you might find it and come to find me. I couldn’t have talked to you in the church. Someone might’ve come in and seen me.’
‘Is your name Crystal?’ Sister Joan asked.
‘Caroline.’ The other drew in her breath sharply. ‘Why did you say Crystal? Do you know her?’
‘I’ve heard of her. You’re Caroline who?’
‘Hayes. Caroline Hayes.’ The young woman drank her tea shiveringly. ‘Crystal’s my younger sister.’
‘You’re on tour in France!’
‘France?’ The other looked puzzled. ‘I’ve never been to France. What’s this about touring France?’
‘At Easter Crystal went to France with her family,’ Sister Joan said.
‘That’s what Michael Peter told you?’
‘Mrs Rufus actually.’
‘She’s the housekeeper, isn’t she?’
‘You’ve not met her?’
Caroline shook her head. ‘This is the first time I’ve been down into Cornwall,’ she said. ‘We weren’t invited to the wedding.’
‘Your sister’s wedding to Michael Peter?’
Caroline nodded again. ‘There’s only a year between Crystal and me,’ she said. ‘She’s twenty-two. When we were children people used to remark on how pretty she was and then they’d look at me and say, “Oh, that one’s sure to be clever”! And I’m not! I did a course of shorthand and typing and I do temporary work, but I’m not clever.’
‘Is Crystal clever?’
‘I don’t know.’ Caroline drank more tea, put down the mug, and frowned. ‘She’s only pretty, I think. She’s very amusing and she sits with a rapt, listening look on her face when other people are talking but half the time I doubt if she’s following what they’re saying. She’s probably trying to decide whether to wear pink or coral lipstick, or if she ought to shorten her skirt or something. She’s very sweet but a bit naive.’
‘She met Michael Peter at a trade fair?’
‘Last year,’ Caroline nodded. ‘She used to get jobs as a receptionist at business conferences and that kind of thing. She was very decorative and the clients liked her.’
‘She didn’t live at home?’
‘No, she had a room somewhere in London.’ A dull red stained Caroline’s pale cheeks. ‘To be honest I think that now and then she worked for an – an escort agency and – well, she never would say exactly where she was living. It used to worry Dad terribly, but after Mum died he began to recognize that he couldn’t go on protecting her all her life and—’
‘Your mother’s dead?’
‘Two years ago,’ Caroline said. ‘That’s partly why I went on living at home. Dad isn’t too well at the moment and he really needs someone to keep an eye on him.’
‘So you lived at home and Crystal didn’t?’
‘She visited us quite often,’ Caroline said quickly. ‘She used to bring little presents for us. She was always good at choosing presents for people. A bottle of cologne, this handkerchief, that kind of thing. She really is a nice person.’
‘But she didn’t ask you to the wedding?’
‘It was a very quiet one,’ Caroline said excusingly. ‘Dad was having a long spell of tests in hospi
tal and I was trying to decide whether or not it’d be a good idea to sell our flat. It’s on the fourth floor and the lift doesn’t even work, and we hadn’t seen Crystal for several weeks. Then she rang up out of the blue and said she was married and living in Cornwall!’
‘You didn’t think of coming down to visit her?’
‘I didn’t want to push myself. Crystal liked her privacy. We all like that, don’t we? I rang her once but there was an answerphone on and I put the receiver down. I can never think what to say to a machine. I wrote to her though and Dad and I got a nice number of letters back, telling us that she had a beautiful home and that her husband absolutely adored her. We rather hoped she’d come over at Christmas but she sent a hamper of exotic fruits and a side of smoked salmon instead. Oh, and cards signed by both of them. I wrote back but there wasn’t very much to say. After Dad got out of hospital we were busy arranging for the sale of the flat and he has to go into hospital for a week now and then for treatment.’
‘Miss Hayes—’
‘Caroline, please.’
‘Caroline, why are you here? Why did you want to see me?’
‘We haven’t had a letter from Crystal for over two months,’ Caroline said.
‘Didn’t you telephone?’
‘Dad did – twice. He rang up and Michael Peter, Crystal’s husband, picked up the phone and said that Crystal was away visiting a friend but she’d get in touch when she returned. The second time Dad just got the answerphone and though he left a message nobody rang back. Since he had to go into hospital last week I decided to come into Cornwall and find out what was going on.’
‘You went to the house.’
‘No – no, I meant to go but I lost my nerve.’ Caroline flushed dully again.
‘Why? Surely it’ve been the natural thing to call and ask if your sister was there?’
‘I went to the local police,’ Caroline said.
‘Before going to the house? That’s a bit drastic!’
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