Sister Joan stayed where she was, uneasily aware that if she took any action she would burst into a flood of hysterical tears.
‘Are you all right, Sister?’ Detective Sergeant Mill had emerged from the confessional at the back of the church and walked up the side aisle to where she crouched.
‘Yes. Yes, I think so.’ She dragged her gaze from the figure being frogmarched towards the main doors. ‘Yes, I’ll be fine. Just don’t talk to me for a few moments.’
‘When you’re ready, Sister,’ he said, ‘I think we could both do with a strong cup of tea, don’t you?’
‘Yes. Yes, of course.’ She pulled herself up, smoothing down her habit, grateful for his brisk, impersonal tone that had defused her growing hysteria. ‘I’ll see to it right away.’
And not forgetting to genuflect, albeit shakily, to the altar, she went back via the sacristy into the house.
Sixteen
‘One would like to know the exact sequence of events,’ Mother Dorothy said. She was seated on the hardest chair she could find in the presbytery parlour. Father Stephens and Detective Sergeant Mill occupied the sofa and Sister Joan sat, after an approving nod from her superior, in the armchair, her foot on a hassock. Sister Perpetua, who had just diagnosed a sprain and bandaged it, sat on the arm of the second armchair. Outside the pale February sun shone on the few brave bulbs struggling up into the despoiled border.
‘John Moore was an orphan, a difficult child, moved from one foster home to the next,’ Detective Sergeant Mill said. ‘By the time he was in his late teens he had already been placed on probation for petty theft and disturbing the peace. He had also begun to develop religious mania though nobody realized it at that stage. Mrs Fairly used to go up to the Tarquin house to help out with the cooking there and saw him hanging around just about the time the trees were vandalized. So she was able to identify him and was always rather proud of helping the police. I reckon that was why she kept the cutting. Anyway, twenty years passed. Moore had moved north, had tried several times to enter holy orders but without success, and was in the right place as far as he was concerned when a request was sent to the seminary for someone to replace Father Malone during his sabbatical. Father Timothy had been a late vocation, nearing thirty, a diabetic and a man of great compassion. He befriended Moore, which meant that he was quite unsuspicious when the latter waved to him and beckoned him into the railway siding.’
‘Where he was killed,’ Sister Perpetua said.
‘With one blow of the axe. Moore wore nothing under his raincoat so he quickly stripped the body, put on the priest’s clothes, on which I’ve no doubt we’ll find a blood spot or two, rolled up the raincoat and put it with the axe in his own suitcase. He’d done his best to render the body unidentifiable before then, but you don’t want those details. He then boarded the next train, carrying both suitcases, made his way here, left the cases down at the station and walked up to the convent with the axe under his coat. He damaged the trees — partly to get rid of his manic energy, I think. Destruction and damage gave him the kind of thrill another man might get from sexual intercourse, if you’ll excuse me, ladies?’
‘We have heard about sex in the convent,’ Mother Dorothy said crisply.
‘Yes, of course. Anyway he returned to the station and sat in the waiting-room until he’d seen Father Malone’s train depart. He’d heard that Father Malone was an experienced pastor and a very shrewd judge of people so he decided not to risk meeting him. Instead he gave you, Sister, the impression he’d just arrived and you took him along to the presbytery.’
‘But surely she might have recognized him?’ Sister Joan interjected.
‘It was certainly a risk but even if she had, so what? She’d identified a teenage tearaway. In twenty years people can change.’
‘St Francis of Assisi is an example of that,’ Sister Perpetua said.
‘Whether she recognized him or not we’ll never know,’ Detective Sergeant Mill said. ‘The fact she dug out that old cutting suggests that she was perhaps puzzled by some feeling of familiarity. Evidently she was interrupted while looking at it because she slipped it into the pages of the Account book. She telephoned you, Sister, asking for a meeting. Moore had slipped back to get his coat having set out on a brisk stroll with Father Stephens. He says now that he believed she had recognized him, but since he had used his own stock of Valium to crush up already my own view is that he intended to kill her all along. Her being on the telephone simply gave him the chance to slip into the kitchen and mix the tablets with the sugar.’
‘Then he gave her time to drink some of the tea, went in and injected her with the insulin from Father Timothy’s suitcase, emptied out all but the dregs of the tea and — did she keep her Valium by the bed?’ Sister Joan looked at him.
‘He merely emptied out the tablets and flushed them down the toilet. He took her handbag, intending to search it later for anything she’d kept concerning that earlier affair, but he could hear Father Stephens moving about in his room so he wrapped the bag in brown paper and early the next morning pushed it into the bin.’
‘Meaning to take it out later and have a closer look,’ Father Stephens said.
‘It was his bad luck that Sister Joan was sent here to fill in as housekeeper. Sister Joan insisted that Mrs Fairly would never have committed suicide and that made us look more closely at everything.’
‘Sister Joan,’ said Mother Dorothy, ‘has her uses.’
‘That wasn’t the end of it for Moore,’ he continued. ‘There was the possibility that Mrs Fairly had been speaking to her niece over the telephone and so Sylvia Potter had to be removed. He cut short his confirmation class, hitched a lift to the next station — we’re enquiring into that now — picked her out on the train and entered the compartment. He had the Devil’s own luck, begging your pardon, Mother Dorothy.’
‘We’ve heard of the Devil at the convent too,’ Mother Dorothy assured him.
‘Sylvia Potter was in one of the old-style closed carriages and alone, so he hit her over the head, pushed her out, alighted himself at the station and resumed his apparent waiting for her.’
‘He was pacing the platform,’ Sister Joan said.
‘Having just alighted from the previous train. And then came word that Miss Potter’s friend was on her way. By that time I don’t believe he thought of it as a risk but as an opportunity to kill again. He’d moved past trees and plants, you see. So he phoned up Miss Hugh and asked her to come by the early train, met her at the station, and suggested they take the short cut through the walkway that leads to the car park. He meant to kill her there but then he noticed Sister Jerome walking away from the convent car so he made an excuse to Miss Hugh and she went unsuspectingly to the boot, expecting to find jars of jam there, poor girl! One blow and she was inside the boot and he walked calmly away, merely a priest going about his business.’
‘And I came down to the station later to meet Miss Hugh,’ Sister Joan said.
‘And ran into Petrie who got the message regarding the body in the car boot. John Moore must have started to fancy himself safe, safe enough to leave the axe in the convent chapel and bury the syringe there. The bloodstained raincoat wasn’t far off by the way. We were closing in on him.’
‘And he’d found the empty box I’d put in the refuse bin in place of the handbag,’ Sister Joan reflected.
‘A somewhat unwise course of action,’ he said.
‘If you’re looking for wisdom,’ Sister Perpetua advised, ‘don’t apply to Sister Joan. Other qualities she has in plenty.’
‘When you came round last evening you said all that about the police finding the handbag to throw him off my scent, didn’t you?’ Sister Joan said.
‘I was waiting for back-up before I arrested him on suspicion of murder,’ he nodded. ‘I couldn’t be sure what other weapons he might have on him and I felt it more prudent to wait until he was out of the presbytery. Anyway the back-up arrived and since he’d mentioned that he’d b
e praying in the church we waited in there. I was a trifle alarmed when Sister Joan trotted in. There was no time to warn her to leave at once because Moore came in. After that I played it literally by ear. And Sister Joan goaded him into telling her the whole story.’
‘I’d already guessed bits of it,’ Sister Joan explained.
‘What alerted you in the first place?’ Mother Dorothy looked at her attentively.
‘Nothing until near the end, Mother Dorothy. Then someone, Father Stephens it was, mentioned that Father Timothy probably had an unfortunate manner because he was all alone in the world with no friends or relatives.’
‘He had mentioned the fact to me,’ Father Stephens said.
‘But Father Malone told me when he was leaving that Father Timothy had relatives in Falmouth and would probably stay the night there before continuing on down here. I’d forgotten all about that. I suppose they mentioned it when Father Malone heard from the seminary they were sending a replacement for him.’
‘He didn’t mention that to me. He did make all the arrangements for his successor though, wishing to spare me any extra trouble. And, of course, I’d no reason to phone the seminary myself. Father — I mean John Moore, said he was going to ring them.’
‘But never did.’ Detective Sergeant Mill uncoiled his long legs and stood up. ‘I reckon he’ll be diagnosed as unfit to plead. He seems to have gone completely over the top now. You were very fortunate to escape injury, Sister Joan.’
‘Yes, I know.’ She spoke thoughtfully.
‘So that seems to be that. I wanted to put you fully in the picture. Now I’ve a report to write. I’ll see myself out, Father. Sisters.’
He went out, closing the door gently. The sound of the front door closing was like the end of a chapter.
‘And we must be returning to the convent too,’ Mother Dorothy said. ‘Father, you have not yet acquired a new housekeeper?’
‘I’m afraid not, Reverend Mother.’
‘Our new lay sister is not settling as happily as I could wish,’ Mother Dorothy said. ‘I asked her if she would be willing to work as housekeeper here at the presbytery if you weren’t yet suited and she intimated that she would. Sister Jerome is very competent and an excellent cook and will enjoy the work, I’m sure. Will it suit you if I send Sister Perpetua down with her later?’
‘That’s most kind of you, Mother Dorothy,’ he said fervently. ‘With no relief cleric I am going to be pretty busy these next months, far too busy to break in a laywoman to the routine of a priest. I shall welcome Sister Jerome with open arms.’
‘Metaphorically speaking, I hope,’ Mother Dorothy said dryly. ‘Sister Joan, have you packed your things?’
‘Yes, Mother Dorothy.’
‘Sister Perpetua will get your suitcase. We came in a taxi this morning since the police have not yet released our own car so we shall return in a taxi. I hope the circumstances justify the extravagance, though I must point out to you, Sister Joan, that if you hadn’t exposed yourself to such danger you would not now be nursing a badly sprained ankle and we could all have had a nice, brisk walk back over the moor.’
‘Yes, Mother.’ Sister Joan pulled herself to her feet and tested her weight on her foot gingerly. ‘Mother, about Sister Jerome, Mrs Fairly thought she had remembered something about her. That was why she telephoned me to ask for a meeting.’
‘She probably remembered that Sister Jerome spent three years in gaol for what is termed a mercy killing but is no less murder before a suicide note left by her mother was found. Sister Jerome had concealed it rather than have the shame of self-slaughter attached to her mother’s memory. She was already a professed nun when the affair occurred and there was some publicity at the time. I daresay Mrs Fairly recalled the name and that led to her phoning you.’
‘Sister Jerome went to prison?’ Sister Joan stared at her superior.
‘For a crime she didn’t commit,’ Mother Dorothy said. ‘She had been given leave of absence from her convent to care for her mother who was terminally ill. She nobly and foolishly took the blame when her mother was found dead from an overdose. When the truth came out she was released immediately, of course. She could have returned to her old order but she craved anonymity and applied to our London House, where she was accepted.’
‘You knew this when she came to us?’ Sister Joan asked.
‘You think I ought to have informed the entire community? Our past lives are past when we enter the religious life, Sister. What happened to Sister Jerome was nobody else’s business. I am telling you now so that you may understand a little more fully why her insistence on penance does have a cause. She blames herself for her mother’s suicide. It was Sister Jerome who went through the clippings you are collecting up in the storeroom. Sister David mentioned it to me and I asked Sister Jerome if she knew anything about it. She had been fearful lest some item about her might have been preserved, though it happened up north.’
‘Then how did Mrs Fairly remember it?’
‘Mrs Fairly was involved with a group fighting against legalized euthanasia some years ago. Naturally they followed news of such cases with interest and Sister Jerome’s name did appear in the papers.’
‘Poor Sister Jerome,’ Sister Perpetua said. ‘A very difficult character.’
‘She will make an excellent housekeeper,’ Mother Dorothy said firmly. ‘She will keep Father Stephens anchored within the realms of reality and Father Malone, when he returns, will advise her about the quite unnecessary guilt she still feels.’
‘Father Stephens,’ said Sister Joan, limping out to the taxi which had just drawn up outside, ‘is a nice young man.’
In the background Father Stephens gave a slight cough, remarking wryly, ‘It does us all good to be talked about as if we were not here.’
‘In your case,’ said Mother Dorothy, eyes twinkling behind her spectacles, ‘quite a lot of good, Father! You were most helpful to Sister Joan when she was here, I’m sure. You will be equally helpful to Sister Jerome. Try to show her there is still some joy in life and that constantly punishing ourselves can become an indulgence.’
‘Regarding which—’ His face had flushed with sudden anxiety. ‘Since John Moore was no priest the Masses he offered, the confessions he heard, were invalid. I will have to inform the congregation of the facts as soon as possible. He knew the liturgy backwards.’
‘So does the Devil,’ Sister Perpetua said. ‘It’s knowing it right way up that counts. I’ll drive down straight after lunch with Sister Jerome.’
In the taxi Sister Joan sat with her foot stuck out in front of her. Her ankle hurt and she felt a sudden gloom descend upon her spirits.
‘Looking forward to going home, Sister?’ Mother Dorothy glanced at her.
‘Yes, Mother,’ she said obediently.
But do I? Inexorably her mind questioned. When I was at the presbytery there was a sense of freedom, of being my own mistress again, of being involved in the world. Yet I missed the convent, the quiet routine, the rest of the community. Am I turning into one of those dreadful people who are only happy in the place where they are not?
‘We shall pay off the taxi and walk the rest of the way‚’ Mother Dorothy said as the convent gates hove into view. ‘Can you manage, Sister?’
‘Yes, I think so.’
Under the gaze of the taxi driver she struggled out of the vehicle and set her foot on the ground. It throbbed but was less painful than before.
‘I can manage fine, Mother Dorothy,’ she assured her. ‘I’ll look on it as an extra bit of penance.’
‘One moment!’ Mother Dorothy held up her hand. ‘Driver, take Sister Joan all the way to the back door, will you? In you get again, Sister! I’ll speak to you later. Come along, Sister Perpetua!’
Sister Joan sat in solitary state as the taxi proceeded up the drive. She knew only too well what Mother Dorothy would be saying to her later.
‘Penance isn’t a label we wear to trumpet forth our sanctity, Sister. Eve
n less do we announce our penitential practices in front of other people.’
‘This do you, Sister?’ The driver turned his head to enquire as they reached the yard.
‘Thank you, yes. This is fine.’
‘Bit of a tartar, isn’t she?’ He jerked his head back.
‘A lot of a tartar,’ Sister Joan said, and found herself laughing as the taxi backed away, and Sister Gabrielle, cloak over her shoulders, came to the kitchen door with Alice gambolling at her heels.
‘So you’re home again, girl,’ she observed. ‘No doubt the quality of the cooking will drop into the nether regions, but since it’s Lent we may as well put up with it. You’d better come in. Tell us what you’ve been up to. Nothing to your credit, I’ll be bound!’
‘Not much to my credit,’ Sister Joan said ruefully. ‘But I’ll tell you something, Sister Gabrielle, suddenly it feels wonderful to be home!’
THE END
ALSO BY VERONICA BLACK
SISTER JOAN MYSTERY SERIES
Book 1: A Vow of Silence
Book 2: A Vow of Chastity
Book 3: A Vow of Sanctity
Book 4: A Vow of Obedience
Book 5: A Vow of Penance
Book 6: A Vow of Devotion
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A VOW OF PENANCE an utterly gripping crime mystery Page 19