A VOW OF PENANCE an utterly gripping crime mystery

by Black, Veronica

  There was a short pause and then the front door opened and Mrs Fairly, a scarf over her greying hair, a neat print overall covering her dress, appeared, a carefully judged smile of welcome on her face.

  ‘It’ll be Father Timothy? I’m delighted you got here safely, Father. Did you catch Father Malone at the station? I would have been there myself but Father Stephens went rushing out without a decent breakfast this morning so I decided to do a mixed grill. It’s Sister Joan from the convent, isn’t it? Did you see Father off all right?’

  ‘And met Father Timothy at the station,’ Sister Joan said. ‘I’m afraid he missed meeting Father Malone.’

  ‘Well, Father Stephens will be along soon,’ Mrs Fairly said. ‘Come along in. You’ll be wanting a cup of tea, Sister. You didn’t walk down?’

  ‘No, I drove. I should have offered you a lift, Father. I just didn’t think of it.’

  ‘Please don’t blame yourself, Sister.’ Father Timothy said, giving her a pat on the shoulder evidently intended to be consoling. ‘The ladies are not always expected to be practical.’

  ‘I’ll show you your room, Father. Sister, will you brew the tea?’ Mrs Fairly bore her charge away.

  Sister Joan went through into the kitchen, vaguely aware that the housekeeper’s request had been a sop to her ego after the priest’s patronizing remark. Mrs Fairly would never in a thousand years have declared herself the equal of men: had she ever thought of the matter she would probably have regarded herself as their superior.

  She had just poured the boiling water into the pot when Mrs Fairly reappeared.

  ‘I’ve left Father Timothy to have a wash and brush up,’ she said. ‘He’s not as young as I expected. Probably had a late vocation.’

  ‘Like me,’ Sister Joan said.

  ‘Well, I’ve always felt it was a good idea to see a bit of life first before you made up your mind about anything,’ Mrs Fairly said, setting out cups and saucers. ‘Father get off all right, did he?’

  ‘With his fan club present,’ Sister Joan said with a grin.

  ‘Well, he’ll be missed,’ Mrs Fairly said. ‘Not that a holiday won’t do him good. It will give Father Stephens a chance to find out how he can cope too.’

  It was the nearest she would allow herself to come in expressing an opinion about the handsome young curate who was, everybody agreed, all set for a bishopric one day.

  ‘We have a new lay sister ourselves,’ Sister Joan said, remembering. ‘Sister Jerome from our London house.’

  ‘Jerome. Jerome.’ Mrs Fairly frowned slightly. ‘Now where have I—? Never mind, it’ll come to me, I daresay. Bring your tea into the dining-room Sister. I’ll just check on the oven and add a few more mushrooms for Father Timothy and then join you.’

  The dining-room at the other side of the hall with the parlour leading out of it was lined with bookshelves. Glancing at the crowded, much-thumbed volumes, Sister Joan wondered where Father Timothy was going to fit in the books he’d brought with him.

  ‘Here you are, Sister!’ The object of her musings came in, looking round with the interest of a newcomer.

  ‘There’s a cup of tea for you, Father.’ Sister Joan handed it to him. ‘Do you take milk and sugar?’

  ‘Not in Lent, Sister.’ The sandy brows drew together in disapproval.

  ‘Oh. Yes, of course, Father.’ Sister Joan looked rather guiltily into her own cup.

  ‘Mrs Fairly mentioned a mixed grill.’ Father Timothy had lowered his voice. ‘Not meat during Lent?’

  ‘It’ll be grilled herrings with mushrooms, tomatoes and sauté potatoes,’ Sister Joan said. ‘Mrs Fairly knows the rules so well that Father Malone says she could probably advise His Holiness on doctrine.’

  The jest had made everybody smile in the convent. Father Timothy merely looked uncomfortable.

  ‘Father Stephens will be along any time now,’ Mrs Fairly said, bustling in. ‘Shall I unpack for you, Father?’

  ‘Thank you, but I prefer to do it myself,’ he said stiffly.

  ‘I have to get back.’ Sister Joan put down her cup and saucer. ‘It was nice to meet you, Father Timothy.’

  ‘Thank you, Sister Joan. No doubt I will be visiting the convent in due course.’ His handshake was brief and limp.

  ‘I’ll see you out, Sister.’ Mrs Fairly went ahead to open the door. ‘You’ll give my regards to Mother Dorothy? I suppose you’ll be assigned other duties now the new lay sister has come?’

  ‘Not yet,’ Sister Joan said. ‘At the moment I’m supposed to be making myself generally useful.’

  ‘Sister Jerome.’ Mrs Fairly screwed up her eyes and peered into the middle distance over Sister Joan’s shoulder. ‘I’ll recall where I heard that name if I don’t consciously think about it. Good morning, Sister. Drive carefully.’

  She undoubtedly sent Father Malone off every morning with the same injunction, Sister Joan thought, as she went down the path and turned back towards the station.

  In Father’s case there was good reason for such a warning since the mild little man laboured under the delusion that he was an undiscovered racing driver and flung his ageing vehicle about with the beatific smile of one who believes he’s an expert.

  Unlocking the door of the convent car, sliding her small, trim person behind the wheel, Sister Joan hoped her own standards of driving were somewhat higher. Still it was nice to know that somebody cared. Mrs Fairly, whom she scarcely knew at all, was a pleasant woman. She wondered how she’d get on with the fresh out of the seminary Father Timothy. And how on earth would Father Timothy react to the urbane Father Stephens who wore his cassock as if it were a silk robe and filled his sermons with obscure quotations?

  ‘It’s nothing to do with me anyway,’ Sister Joan informed her reflection in the driving mirror, turning off on to the moorland road that wound its wide, dusty ribbon between the high banks of winter bleached heather and gorse.

  She would have liked the excuse to drive over to the Romany camp and ask after her former pupils but she had no valid reason for going there, so put the desire to the back of her mind, and concentrated on the faults she’d be confessing soon at the Sacrament of Penance. After seven years as a religious the list of her faults seemed to get longer, she thought wryly. Not that there were any serious infringements of the rule to regret. Instead there were a multitude of small omissions, tiny deviations from the practice of charity and obedience, like pebbles in a wall which would be washed away from the solid base and cause the wall itself to tumble if she didn’t take care.

  A tall figure shambled across the track, causing her to brake sharply.

  ‘Luther, take care!’ She slowed further, putting her head out of the window to shout a warning.

  The figure paused, took a few steps towards her, said in a high complaining tone, ‘Wasn’t me did it, Sister! Wasn’t me. Honest! Wasn’t me!’

  Sister Joan lowered her voice slightly, using the soothing accents that one needed to employ with the overgrown man whose mind sometimes worked perfectly well but at other times either flew off at a tangent or fixed itself obsessively upon some object beyond his reach. Luther had spent time in psychiatric care but now lived with his Romany relatives who had the sense to accept him as harmless if a trifle eccentric.

  ‘I’m sure you haven’t done anything, Luther,’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t worry about it if I were you.’

  ‘They’ll say it was me done it,’ Luther persisted.

  ‘Nobody says you’ve done anything wrong, Luther. You go on back home now,’ Sister Joan said.

  ‘You don’t come no more to the camp,’ he complained.

  ‘It’s Lent. Remember I told you that in Lent we don’t go visiting unless it’s absolutely necessary. I’ll come at Easter. I promise.’

  ‘That’s a while away,’ he said plaintively.

  ‘It will come the way it always comes. Go home, Luther.’

  Leaving him to lope off, the recent anxiety already half erased from his mind by the prospect of the
coloured eggs that signified Easter for him, she drove on. Luther was fine as long as he was kept occupied with small jobs around the convent grounds or was permitted to accompany his cousins when they went to sell scrap iron but when time hung heavy on his hands he was apt to start imagining things. She would ask Sister Martha if there were any tasks he could undertake before the spring sowing proper began.

  ‘You’re late,’ Sister Perpetua observed when she had garaged the car and made her way to the kitchen.

  ‘I showed Father Timothy the way to the presbytery and Mrs Fairly asked me to stay for a cup of tea. Did you want me for anything, Sister?’

  ‘A bit of cheerful conversation if it wasn’t Lent.’ Sister Perpetua tugged her veil into place over the two-inch span of reddish hair allowed by the rule to be revealed, and gave a rueful grin. ‘I don’t know why but I’ve been at sixes and sevens this morning. Sister Gabrielle’s knee is troubling her again. It must be pretty bad because she actually admitted as much and I hadn’t enough of the linament left so I asked Sister Jerome to boil up some comfrey and she said she was lay sister and not infirmarian and had some penance to do anyway — left over from her last confession I suppose, since she hasn’t made any confession since she got here, and Sister Teresa went off to help Sister Martha and Sister Katherine, and then Luther came bothering round — it has been a morning and a half, Sister!’

  ‘What did Luther want?’

  ‘Went on and on about not having done something or other. I’m afraid I was a little short with the poor creature. Temper always was my problem.’

  ‘I’m sure you had cause,’ Sister Joan said. ‘Now that I am here what do you need doing?’

  ‘All done; I boiled up the linament myself, but it was a relief to have a bit of a grumble,’ Sister Perpetua said. ‘Did you see Father Malone off all right?’

  ‘Me and three-quarters of his congregation,’ Sister Joan said.

  ‘He’s bound to have a wonderful time. What’s the new priest like? Rosy-cheeked and hearty, I daresay. Priests keep getting younger.’

  ‘Early forties, I’d say. Serious; very conscious of being a religious.’

  ‘He’ll get over that,’ Sister Perpetua said. ‘Don’t take your cloak off. I want you to run over to the postulancy for me. Sister Hilaria was supposed to take over a tin of coffee but she left it on the table and if someone doesn’t take it they won’t have a decent breakfast tomorrow.’

  ‘I’ll take it at once.’ Sister Joan picked up the tin, not bothering to comment on Sister Hilaria’s absentmindedness. To do that would be like remarking that the sun rose in the east.

  The novice mistress and her charges had their breakfast over in the postulancy where a small kitchen enabled them to make toast and hot drinks and helped to keep them as separate from the professed nuns as possible. Sister Jerome could easily have taken it across or boiled up the comfrey leaves. Her having to do penance sounded like a feeble excuse.

  ‘Judge not that ye be not judged,’ she muttered, going out into the cold yard again.

  A fine one she was to think ill of others when her own list of faults was growing longer by the minute!

  Alice came bounding up from the shrubbery where she had been investigating an abandoned nest, circling Sister Joan’s ankles with shrill little barks of triumph to point out she didn’t have her lead on.

  ‘Heel! Good girl,’ Sister Joan said hopefully, and Alice promptly bounded off again.

  She’d be needing firmer handling soon if she were to earn her place as guard dog, Sister Joan thought, clutching the heavy tin and walking faster.

  That was when she saw the branches half lopped through and hanging limply in the still grey air. The great oak tree which had stood for more than a century at the side of the steps leading down into the tennis court was deeply scarred, white bark showing where the outer husk of wood had been slashed and cut. Nearby a holly bush with all its branches mangled stood forlorn, its berries trembling like droplets of blood on its desecrated stems.

  Four

  ‘I suppose we can take it that Luther wasn’t responsible?’ Mother Dorothy said.

  ‘I’m sure he wouldn’t do such a thing,’ Sister Joan said earnestly. ‘He loves being out on the moor or among the trees. And he’s no history of violence.’

  ‘And there’s no way of telling when it was done. After the grand silence last night and before Sister Hilaria brought the postulants across for lunch this morning.’

  Mother Dorothy rested her chin on her hand and frowned at the surface of her desk. Seated on the stool before her Sister Joan waited.

  ‘Vandalism is becoming a national disease,’ the Prioress said after a moment. ‘Even here there must be those who take pleasure in slashing and destroying. Such a senseless thing to do!’

  ‘Sister Hilaria says that she heard nothing unusual last night or this morning and neither did the postulants,’ Sister Perpetua said. ‘Of course with the weather being so chilly the windows were closed. I agree that it couldn’t have been Luther. He’d never hurt anyone or anything.’

  ‘But someone did.’ Mother Dorothy frowned again. ‘Of course the gates are open and anyone can climb over the wall at the back. I think that we must all of us keep a sharp eye out during the next few weeks in case there is a recurrence.’

  ‘Are we going to inform the police?’ Sister Perpetua enquired.

  ‘One ought to report it of course,’ Mother Dorothy said, ‘but quite honestly I fail to see what action the police could take. They are already overstretched and under-manned as it is. No, for the moment we shall merely record it and keep our eyes open. Mindless violence is always so puzzling. If a hungry person steals food one can understand the motive without, of course, condoning the action.’

  She raised her hand in a brief blessing. Filing out with the others Sister Joan’s mind flew to the newspaper cutting up in the storeroom. She had hesitated to draw a parallel between events twenty years apart but when she had a few minutes to spare she would go up and read the item again. For the moment, however, there was the soup to be served and drunk.

  In the kitchen Sister Jerome was stirring the heavy tureen, her face set in the grim lines that seemed to be habitual to it. She glanced up briefly but asked no question. Sister Joan, on impulse, said, ‘I’m sorry I wasn’t here to help you, Sister, but someone has vandalized one of the big oaks near the old tennis courts and Mother Dorothy wished to discuss the matter with Sister Perpetua and myself. You didn’t hear anything unusual late last night or this morning I suppose?’

  ‘Nothing, Sister.’ Sister Jerome answered curtly, gave the soup a final stir, and waited.

  ‘Then we’d better take lunch upstairs,’ Sister Joan said, a trifle put out by the other’s complete lack of curiosity. ‘Shall I help you with the tureen?’

  ‘I can manage.’ Sister Jerome grasped the handles of the large earthenware tureen, lifted it as easily as if it had been filled with feathers, and went out of the kitchen.

  ‘Sister Samson,’ Sister Joan said, and surprised Sister Teresa, who was just coming in from the yard, into a giggle.

  ‘I’m sorry, Sister. It’s just that you’re so amusing,’ Sister Teresa said hastily composing her face.

  ‘I hope not,’ Sister Joan said wryly. ‘What a thing to be remembered for! “She was always amusing” is hardly the kind of obituary one wishes to see read out round the other convents after one’s demise.’

  ‘By then one probably wouldn’t care,’ Sister Teresa said. ‘I went out to check up on Lilith.’

  ‘Oh?’ Counting soup bowls Sister Joan raised a questioning eyebrow.

  ‘Sister Gabrielle says that one of the trees has been damaged, slashed, so I went out to make sure that Lilith hadn’t been injured. Some people go round slashing horses, you know.’

  ‘But that’s dreadful! How do you know?’

  ‘Sister Gabrielle mentioned it,’ Sister Teresa said demurely and carried the bowls out into the passage.

  Despite th
e lack of newspapers or television Sister Gabrielle gleaned information of events in the outer world as a bee gathers pollen. She was, thought Sister Joan, following with the napkins, a grapevine unto herself.

  Standing at her place in the dining-room Sister Joan murmured her ‘Amen’ to the Grace and drank the soup in her bowl. Drank — spluttered slightly — and saw that the other Sisters were having equal difficulty in getting it down. Mother Dorothy was sipping hers in brief experimental bursts, Sister Perpetua openly grimacing. Only Sister Hilaria who never noticed what she ate and Sister Jerome were consuming it without any change of expression.

  ‘Sister, Lenten fare is bleak enough already,’ Mother Dorothy said at last, ‘without your mistaking the sugar shaker for the salt cellar.’

  ‘But I—’ Sister Joan bit her lip.

  ‘I put sugar in, Mother Prioress,’ Sister Jerome said. ‘In our London house I was accustomed to flavour food with salt instead of sugar, sugar instead of salt, as a penance during Lent. I assumed it would be the same here.’

  ‘It is not,’ Mother Dorothy said frigidly, adding fairly, ‘Sister Joan, I was over-quick to accuse you of carelessness. My apologies. Perhaps you would take the time to explain to Sister Jerome that we don’t add to Lenten austerities here by spoiling nourishing food whatever they may do in London.’

  They were filing out, returning to their duties. Sister Jerome, looking as calm as if she had just been praised instead of mildly reprimanded, was gathering up the empty bowls. Sister Jerome had also lied, Sister Joan reflected, as she hurried down to the infirmary to relieve the two old ladies of their unpalatable drink. Not in a thousand years would Mother Agnes have inflicted such a grotesque penance on her community at Lent or at any other time. Mother Agnes had been novice mistress during her own postulancy and novitiate and been elected as prioress for the customary five years just after her final profession. Tall, slim, with a Gothic profile and a voice which still bore traces of the concert singer she had once been, Mother Agnes had been a wise and shrewd prioress who disliked excess in any form.