Lethal Factor

by Gabrielle Lord

  I looked around. Most of them were elderly, a couple middle-aged. There was one very young one with pink cheeks and slightly protruding teeth, reminding me of a pretty black rabbit in her dark robes. There was the softest murmur and veiled black heads moved. I waited a little longer and it became clear that nothing was going to be offered just now.

  I took out the sketch I’d made earlier of the markings carved into the dead woman’s ankle and copied it good and large on the blackboard behind me. I turned round and faced the watching nuns. ‘Does anyone here know anything about that symbol?’ My question was answered with only the softest of murmurs and shaken black heads. I waited but it was clear that the sign I’d drawn on the board was as much a puzzle to them as to me.

  ‘I think it’s French,’ said one of the sisters, frowning.

  ‘Sister Marie-Claire, you’re thinking of the cross of Lorraine,’ said another. ‘It doesn’t look like that.’

  I waited a little longer but nothing more came out of the low murmurings.

  ‘If anyone of you does happen to remember something—about this symbol, about anything out of the ordinary, will they please let me know?’ I looked over to Mother Anacletus. ‘The Mother Superior has my details.’ I paused, looking around at the pale faces in their wimples.

  ‘Sister Felicitas?’ I asked. ‘May I have a word with you?’

  Anacletus swept out of the room, indicating I should follow, and behind me came Sister Felicitas. In silence, the three of us hurried through the corridors around the quadrangle until we came to the parlour. When I turned to Felicitas, there was a fighting light in her eyes that I remembered from about forty years ago. Sister Celestine of Kindergarten at the Springbrook diocesan school had just such an expression before the cane descended painfully on hands or legs.

  Sister Felicitas closed the door after me and stood, her back to it, facing me. She looked wary and the lime-green vision net curtains moved slightly. ‘I don’t know why you keep questioning me,’ she said. ‘I’ve already been interviewed by Homicide detectives. And written out a witness statement. So why are you questioning me again like this?’

  ‘Sister,’ I began as gently as possible. ‘It’s imperative that I get as accurate a picture of what happened here the other night as is possible.’

  I paused, but she just stood there, hands neatly folded under her scapular, reminding me of an old black pussy cat, paws neatly undertucked. ‘You see my problem, Sister, is that I have a very strong impression that someone had interfered with the crime scene.’

  ‘What crime scene? You mean Gertrude’s room?’

  ‘I believe something had been changed.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Exactly what I say.’ Was she fudging with these questions, giving herself time to come up with something plausible? Or did they indicate a mind that liked accuracy? I continued. ‘I’ve just come from examining the clothes Sister Gertrude was wearing when she was killed and I found fragments of painted plaster scattered on the fabric. There were also many more fragments collected from the floor. In fact, some of the particles had lodged themselves in the weave of the cloth. Considerable force—a high impact blow—drove them,’ I said. ‘And yet there was nothing in that room to account for these fragments.’

  She looked away behind the reflecting square glasses and I could sense her unease. I used my usual non-leading question. ‘What can you tell me?’

  Sister Felicitas avoided my eyes and walked, head bowed, to the other side of the room, her lips moving as if in silent prayer. Then she turned round and stared me straight in the eyes. ‘Something terrible had happened,’ she finally said. ‘Someone had done something terrible.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ I said, because I didn’t. ‘Are you saying something else, worse than the murder of a defenceless woman occurred in your late friend’s room?’ My imagination was running wild. Felicitas shot me a look of pure dislike. So far, I hadn’t warmed to the old woman, but now I was really beginning to go off her. ‘You’re going to have to tell me exactly what happened,’ I warned. ‘I could charge you with hindering a police investigation.’

  The gloves were off and I waited through another long silence while my adversary weighed things up. I knew there was little I could actually do. Threatening her with a possible future contempt of court charge was not even logical at the moment.

  ‘There had been an act of sacrilege,’ she said eventually. ‘An act of desecration. And that is a very dreadful thing.’

  I pulled out my notebook. At least she was talking and my mind was doing cartwheels trying to race ahead with various scenarios. Looking at the old face in front of me, and the magnified eyes behind the rimless, square-framed glass lenses, I reminded myself it had been forty years since I was a frightened pupil. I remembered the pious attachment of the Irish nuns to various objects, statues, images and formulas, far more important to them, it seemed, than the children in their care. It seemed time to put a bit more pressure on her.

  ‘I have an idea of what may have happened,’ I said.

  Her jaw lifted a little as if she were preparing to take me on.

  ‘Something was smashed, wasn’t it?’ I said. ‘A statue.’

  She shook her head. ‘Not just a statue. Worse than that.’

  I remembered the way she’d swung a glance at the crucifix on the wall the first time we spoke and things fell into place. I had a sudden insight.

  ‘A crucifix had been smashed,’ I said. ‘It upset you to see that. And so you removed it.’

  She remained coldly gazing at me and I was pleased I’d got it right. ‘Now,’ I said, ‘this time please tell me exactly what happened when you went into Sister Gertrude’s room. Take your time. I’m not in a hurry. Everything.’

  Sister Felicitas clicked her beads under the scapular. I guessed she was praying for inspiration. ‘I ran into the room,’ she said. ‘And poor dear Gertrude was lying there in her blood. Her lips were moving. Half-lying across her was the crucifix that was over her pre-Dieu. The figure of Our Lord on the crucifix—’ she stopped, gathered herself and continued, ‘had been smashed.’

  I had the bizarre feeling that Felicitas might have found this more shocking than the violent death of her colleague. ‘I wonder why you didn’t tell me that in the first place,’ I said.

  ‘It is a very precious, holy crucifix,’ she said. ‘I didn’t think it was important. Not to the murder investigation.’

  ‘I find that hard to believe,’ I said. ‘Everything about how a murder takes place is important. By handling the object, removing it, you may have destroyed valuable evidence. Even in this place, you must know that.’

  Felicitas’s eyes blinked behind her glasses. ‘We are not versed in murder,’ she snapped. ‘This is a house of peace.’

  I was about to say something smart, because I remembered too much from forty years ago, but I desisted. Keep your mind on the job, I told myself. You’re not here to settle old scores.

  ‘You said her lips were moving as you ran in,’ I continued. ‘Do you want to add anything to that?’

  The looming eyes were wary now.

  ‘Did she say anything to you?’ I asked.

  I saw her give me a hard look then she shook her head. I know that people can use deceitful strategies when questioned, strategies that maintain their own delusion about their personal honesty. They do this by answering the question to the letter, but not the spirit. So perhaps the dying woman didn’t have anything to say to Felicitas, but had still uttered some words. I rephrased my question so as not to leave her any way out. ‘Did Sister Gertrude speak any words at all that you are aware of about anything to anyone?’

  That caught her.

  ‘She whispered something before she died.’

  My heartbeat quickened. This was more like it. Now we were getting somewhere. I
waited. Interrogating this nun was like dragging rocks uphill.

  ‘Please tell me what Sister Gertrude whispered.’

  But Felicitas very deliberately shook her head. ‘I can’t tell you that,’ she said.

  I could feel anger moving up my spine. I wanted to shake the obdurate creature and the idea of a good whack with a telephone book was suddenly very appealing. ‘I’ve warned you,’ I said.

  ‘But you don’t understand,’ she said. ‘Priests have been shot rather than reveal what was said to them in the confessional.’

  Her dramatic statement irritated me. ‘No one’s going to shoot you, Sister,’ I said. ‘But you will be held in contempt of court at a later date if you don’t answer this question.’

  ‘If it gets to trial,’ she said.

  I looked more closely at this woman, who until now had been using convent naivete as a defence.

  ‘What do you mean “if”?’ I challenged.

  ‘You might never find the person responsible for Sister Gertrude’s death,’ she said.

  I couldn’t help myself from releasing the remark that jumped out of my mouth. ‘The way you’re behaving makes that eventuality more and more likely!’ My voice rang through the room and out into the corridor, harsh in this place of nunnish silence. I collected myself. ‘What did Sister Gertrude whisper in those last seconds?’

  ‘It was very, very private. To me, it felt similar to a confession. I am not at liberty to divulge it.’

  I could tell from her voice and her attitude that Felicitas had drawn her line in the sand. Very well, I was thinking. I’d have to come up with a way to wipe it out.

  My mobile rang and I took the call, turning away and gazing past the lime-green curtaining, irritation enhanced by this interruption. But within seconds it had vanished . . . It was Digby and his words were barely coherent.

  ‘Livvy’s dead, Jack. And they’re going to open her up,’ Digby wailed. ‘I begged them not to. You know what it is, I told them. Why do you have to do that?’ He made a choking sort of noise.

  ‘Digby’ I asked. ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Who did this?’ he asked, ignoring my question. ‘Who?’

  ‘Digby,’ I said, aware of Felicitas’s curiosity, ‘I promise you I’ll do my best to find out.’ At that moment, I would have promised him anything. I didn’t know what else to say to him except that I’d do my job—once his job—as well as I could. ‘You’re not thinking straight.’

  Digby’s breathing was all I could hear, and I was aware of Sister Felicitas staring at me, her weirdly magnified eyes unflinching as I quickly glanced up at her.

  ‘Where are you?’ I asked again.

  ‘I’m at a friend’s place,’ he said. ‘But I’m going out to Seven Oaks shortly. How could this happen?’ His voice boomed through the phone.

  ‘You shouldn’t be alone at a time like this,’ I said. The script from the old days of death messages came unbidden to my lips. ‘Is there someone who can go with you?’

  ‘I don’t want anyone with me. I’d rather be alone.’

  ‘I’m at the Convent of the Assumption,’ I said. ‘I’ll drop in on the way back to town.’

  ‘You’ve got to find out where she got it. How she got it. Jack, you must.’

  ‘I will,’ I promised. ‘If it’s the last thing I do.’

  Nine

  I rehooked my mobile on my belt and turned back to my hostile witness. The interview had run its course and I was ready to go.

  ‘When I come back,’ I told Felicitas. ‘I expect your full cooperation, Sister.’

  She looked relieved that I was going and stood back while I left the parlour. But I wasn’t quite finished with her. ‘I want to see that crucifix,’ I said in a stern voice. ‘Now.’

  She headed off down the long corridor without a word and I followed, passing ancient photographs of ancient nuns in rows grouped around the entrance to this and other convents, frowning in strong sunlight. We mounted a flight of stairs and continued along the long leg of the L-shaped block until we came to what looked like an art room. Tables here were flecked with ancient paint and several bad pieces of pottery sagged in corners beside other glazed objects. A pair of mustard-coloured vases would have made perfect companions to the lime-green curtains of the parlour.

  On the furthest table a large white cloth was laid out, like a small shroud, and Felicitas lifted it off to show me the crucifix, resting on another piece of fabric. It was nothing like the pre-Raphaelite figures I’d grown up with, their eyes piously rolled heavenwards, the sentimental, neatly bearded features, the standard wound in the chest, and the modest loincloth. This was a unique piece of work, the cross itself carved out of some dark wood and painted with eastern European flowers inserted in sections along the cross bars. The crucified figure, even though realised in plaster, was beautifully formed. The colours seemed to have been painted onto the damp plaster, like a fresco. I could quite plainly see the patches where small pieces were missing, to end up, as I already knew, on the floor or in the clothing of the unfortunate Sister Gertrude. Four snap pegs closed over each ankle and wrist of the crucified Jesus.

  ‘Our Sister Michael Mary is repairing Him,’ said Felicitas, breathing the pronoun with great reverence, folding the white cloth that had covered the figure. ‘The pegs are to secure the joins where she’s glued the limbs together.’

  ‘Tell me exactly how you found Him,’ I said, echoing her usage. She lay the folded cloth in a neat square on the paint-spattered table.

  ‘Lying across Gertrude, with his hands and feet severed. The only reason they’d stayed in place was because of the nails of His crucifixion.’

  Very deliberate, I thought. Very savage. The person who did this was very angry. I wondered what Bob would make of it—where this might fit into his sense of the killer’s ‘cold rage’.

  ‘Who would do such a thing?’ breathed Felicitas.

  I was going to answer something like ‘Anyone of about ten billion people, Sister,’ but I forbore.

  ‘You see,’ she said, in the same stricken voice, ‘this is not just any crucifix. This is a very sacred and holy thing.’

  I waited, trying not to let my irritation show. ‘Why is this a very sacred and holy thing?’ I asked eventually, repeating her words in an effort to build a rapport I could not feel.

  ‘It is a miraculous crucifix,’ said Felicitas. ‘From one of the oldest churches in Eastern Europe. From the chapel of St Wardga of Bristica.’ She lowered her voice. ‘You are a worldly man,’ she said. ‘But perhaps you believe in miracles?’

  She might have been surprised at my answer, but I doubt if we were talking about the same thing so I simply waited.

  ‘On the holiest day of the year, Good Friday,’ she said, almost whispering with reverence, ‘this crucifix bleeds.’

  It took an effort to keep my expression neutral. If there’s one thing more than another that I really dislike about pious beliefs, it’s that preoccupation with bleeding icons rather than the endless and very real bleeding of the world. Bleeding crucifixes, weeping statues, Madonnas that dripped oil or milk. Even if they were genuine, what on earth could such phenomena be taken to signify? But I stood in silence, determined to listen with as much detachment as I could muster.

  ‘It was on loan to Sister Gertrude,’ Felicitas was saying in the same reverential tones, ‘from Father Oswald. Usually, it hangs in his chapel at Rockwell,’ she said. ‘That’s what made it especially terrible, that something so precious should be defaced.’

  I didn’t trust myself to say anything so I became business-like. ‘I’ll need to take this,’ I said, picking up the undersheet on which it lay, wrapping up the object. Even with the handling and removing, it might still have traces of the intruder on it. I thought she was going to protest loudly, but there was little she could do as I wrapp
ed the other piece of cloth around it and tucked it under my arm, careful not to dislodge Sister Michael’s pegs.

  ‘But it doesn’t belong to me,’ she said. ‘I can’t release it.’

  ‘Sister, I don’t think you understand. This crucifix has been illegally removed from a crime scene. You could be charged with perverting the course of justice.’

  She looked shocked. I think it was the word ‘perverting’ that hit her hardest.

  ‘Please be very careful,’ she begged, as I was leaving.

  We walked down the corridor in silence until I reached the long corridor that led to the front door. ‘My car’s around the back,’ I said. ‘Is there a back way out of here?’

  Felicitas duly showed me and I followed her. ‘I hope you come to see, Sister,’ I said in a stern voice as she unlocked the back door of the convent for me, ‘you must tell the police or me everything that occurred in that room while you were there. It is essential that we know everything. How else can we get whoever did this to your sister? When I come back,’ I added, ‘I expect a complete statement from you.’

  She didn’t say anything, just stared at me with those olives-in-the-jar eyes.

  ‘You do want this offender caught?’ I asked.

  This time she nodded vehemently. ‘Of course I do,’ she said.

  ‘Then you must help us. Even if it goes against your religious sensitivities.’ I paused. ‘Sister,’ I said, laying it on a bit, ‘the truth is bigger than any religion.’

  It wasn’t a helpful thing to say and I regretted it the minute it was out. I had to remind myself that I didn’t need to compensate for the humiliations of forty years ago. She was just a pious old woman who’d had a very rough couple of days.

  I put the wrapped bundle in the back seat and walked round the back to the kitchen garden area. Crosses and crucifixes, I thought, were a feature in this investigation. Although, given the surroundings, that was hardly remarkable.