‘Sister Joan?’
‘Speaking.’
‘Alan Mill here. You were right, Sister. There’s a body of a teenage boy, apparently strangled, in the chapel of rest in the old cemetery. I’m waiting for the squad car.’
‘Do you need me?’ she asked.
‘Not yet. I may have to ask you to confirm it’s the boy you spoke to in Nightingale Court but that can wait until tomorrow. I can send up a car for you after breakfast.’
‘I’ll get permission to drive in. Detective Sergeant, are there any footprints?’
‘Just a series of scrapes in the dust, presumably where the body was dragged in. Mind, I only have my torch. I’m signing off now. The squad car’s here.’
She heard the little snap as he switched off his mobile phone. For an instant she allowed herself to lean against the wall. There was no feeling of satisfaction in her for having been proved right. A youngster had died violently. She didn’t like to think of the perky teenager being dragged into that cold vault.
‘Is anything wrong, Sister?’
Hanging up the telephone she turned to Mother Dorothy. ‘A young boy has been found dead, Mother. I met him once and unless some family for him can be traced I may have to go down and identify him. May I have your permission to take the van into town tomorrow morning?’
‘Yes, of course. I am sorry to hear the news. You must try to set it aside during recreation.’
Recreation had never seemed more trivial. It was wrong to think that, she reminded herself. The great saint Teresa had considered laughter and enjoyment part of the holiest life. She sat with her knitting, grateful that there was no need to talk since Sister Katherine was singing folk songs to Sister Marie’s guitar accompaniment.
Two people were dead. A pleasant, ordinary young girl and a tearaway lad. Both killed in the same manner but was it for the same reason? She stabbed the needle thoughtfully through the pale blue wool which was intended to turn into a sweater for her mother as a Christmas gift, and tried to fix her mind on the sweet sounds emanating from Sister Katherine.
Recreation ended having lasted in her estimation twice as long as usual, and they filed down into chapel for the final blessing of the day. She murmured the prayers of the rosary, forcing herself to concentrate on the words.
‘I have no objection to your helping the police when it’s absolutely necessary,’ Mother Dorothy had warned her more than once, ‘but you must never allow worldly matters to interfere with your spiritual life. Our first duty is to enrich our spiritual lives until they overflow and bring blessings beyond the community. A nun who only pays lip service to her vocation is spiritually impoverished and affects the whole order.’
The day was winding down. Mother Dorothy sprinkled the holy water and the sisters filed out silently. Until morning, save in emergency, there would be silence now.
Sister Joan went through to the kitchen to begin the regular task of checking locks and bolting doors. Alice wagged her tail hopefully and stood up, obviously wanting a walk.
Sister Joan patted her, opened the back door and went out to check on Lilith. It was odd how readily animals accepted routine. During the day both Lilith and Alice displayed pique if they weren’t spoken to but after the grand silence had fallen they seemed dimly to understand that for a space the time of talking was done.
It was still misty, though a slight breeze was blowing away the long strands of white that clung to the walls of the buildings and cobwebbed the dark bushes that marked the start of the shrubbery. Alice yelped suddenly and darted off through the archway.
Sister Joan hastily locked the kitchen door, stuck the key in her pocket and set off in pursuit.
The moon was struggling through the clouds to illuminate the rough path that led past the walls of the enclosure garden towards the tennis court at the other side of which stood the postulancy. Four figures, guided by Sister Hilaria’s torch, were almost across the tennis court and stopped, half turning, as Alice bounded joyfully after them. There was suppressed laughter as Sister Teresa bent, grabbed Alice’s collar, and threaded some string through it. Sister Teresa was the sort of person who carried in her pocket a variety of objects that could be used for almost any purpose!
She reached the little group, looped the end of the string about her wrist, and nodded her thanks as the others turned and continued their way.
Sister Joan tugged Alice to heel, privately deciding to have a serious word with her when she was free to speak again. Alice was young but she’d been bought as a guard dog and it was time she started guarding!
With that in mind she changed course and began to skirt the walls of the garden and take the path that led between high hedges of shrubbery towards the front of the house.
If she brought Alice on a tour round the convent last thing at night the silly dog might get the idea that she was supposed to patrol the property.
The mist was thinner here, the moon’s rays growing brighter so that each blade of grass stood out, whole and perfect. Beyond the open gates the moor rose and fell in billows of light and shade. Someone moved from behind a thorn tree and then stood, alerted by Alice’s sudden sharp bark. A tall figure, partly obscured by the shadowing branches.
Turning, the hair at the back of her head bristling, she walked back swiftly to the stableyard, her hand shaking as she turned the key in the lock, and let herself into the still warm, brightly lit kitchen. Shooting the bolt into place, drawing the blinds down, untying the makeshift lead, she silently scolded herself for arrant cowardice. The figure on the moor could’ve been anyone — Luther taking a late stroll or someone from the Romany camp indulging in a spot of poaching. She was going to be no help at all if she allowed her imagination to get the better of her.
The outside door leading to the chapel was unlocked as usual. She went swiftly down the corridor and across the hall. Mother Dorothy had given instructions that the outer door should be left open for any stray worshipper. On the other hand Mother Dorothy didn’t know about the footprints up in the storerooms.
The chapel was deserted, the candles snuffed, the sanctuary light glowing redly. She stepped out to bolt the outer door, hoping that she was using her initiative in an approved fashion, and walked down the aisle to the Lady Altar. The iron staircase twisted up into darkness. There hadn’t been time, surely, for anyone to enter the chapel. On the other hand—
She went softly up the stairs, switching on the lights as she reached the landing, holding her breath for an instant as she waited for some betraying sound. There was nothing, but she went resolutely into the storerooms, switching on more lights as she paced between the piles of boxes and broken furniture. Only her own shadow paced alongside. The upper storey was empty of intruders.
She had promised Sister David she would get a bolt fixed on the cupboard where the rarer books were kept. That had been when she’d had pocket money, she thought wryly. Now she’d have to root around in the garden shed for something suitable.
She turned off the lights and came down into the chapel again.
Going into the hall and bolting the door she had a comfortable sensation of security. They would be safe in the postulancy too, Sister Teresa being a great one for bolting and barring things.
She completed her checking of windows and doors, gave Alice a consoling stroke for having her walk cut short, and looked in at the infirmary door, to be greeted by the sound of two old ladies snoring in unison. Going up the wide staircase she was aware of an aching back. No doubt her broken sleep the previous night had taken its toll, together with the stress of the recent events. She would learn to pace herself better, she resolved.
The booklet that Sister David had found in the library lay on the shelf. Sister Joan closed her cell door, hesitated, then lit her lamp. Something about that booklet had attracted her glancing attention as she laid it down but she couldn’t recall what it was. A thought, half-formed, had dissipated. Lighting one’s lamp was not absolutely prohibited but it was actively discouraged. M
oney was too scarce for electricity to be wasted.
The booklet was an amateurish production, only the cover printed and the few sheets inside being partly printed by hand and partly typed. The cover informed the reader that they were about to look at the Family Tree with Notes on the Tarquin Family. The ‘N’ was fainter than the rest. As the half-formed thought nudged her again she scrabbled in her pocket for the crumpled circular. Yes, there was the same fainter ‘N’. She must have noticed that without realizing that she had noticed it. Both the circular and the pamphlet had been printed on the same machine.
Seating herself on the floor, with her skirt tucked under her to imitate a cushion in the approved manner, she opened the pamphlet.
Her first feeling was one of disappointment. There were no grisly family secrets here for the inquisitive outsider to read, only a long list of names and dates of birth and marriage and death, with fairly long gaps where the genealogical trail had gone cold. Someone in the Tarquin family had been interested enough in the past to attempt to trace his ancestors but the tree ended abruptly, a typewritten note saying,
There is a hiatus from the beginning of the sixteenth century to the end of it. Presumably the direct descendants of Sir Richard Tarquine kept a low profile during the religious and political troubles of that century. Sir Richard himself had a most distinguished career, serving the Earl of Warwick during the Hundred Years’ War, and building a manor house on his return from the campaign which would later provide the foundations of the larger house built in the early eighteenth century. I fear that more modern members of the family have not always lived up to those high ideals of chivalry.
A man disappointed in his own offspring from the sound of it. She guessed that it had been Sir Robert Tarquin who had sold his estate to the Order of Daughters of Compassion, and left his only son only sufficient to build a house and probably live modestly.
There was nothing more to justify her keeping her lamp on any longer. She turned it off and groped to the small window to adjust the blind.
Moonlight pooled the yard. She could see it whitening the cobbles. The stable was in blacker shadow with no sound from Lilith. From the kitchen Alice gave a sudden loud bark, and a figure moved from the lee of the stable and stood for a moment as if deliberating his next move.
Had the Day of Judgement been announced she couldn’t have stirred in that long moment as Grant Tarquin raised his moon-whitened face, made whiter by the black hair and glinting black eyes, and looked up at her, his sensual lips parting in a smile before with infinitely chilling courtesy he bowed, then spun around and was part of the darkness again.
Nine
Driving across the moor the next morning, rain blurring the windscreen of the van, she tried not to think of that white-faced figure, standing beneath her window, some kind of black garment wrapped around him. Grant Tarquin had enjoyed a flair for the dramatic, she recalled. And it had been Grant Tarquin she had seen.
Brother Cuthbert waved and mouthed something at her as she drove past and she waved back, not stopping since the clock on the dashboard informed her it was already half past nine. When a crime had been committed time was important.
Detective Sergeant Mill was on the steps of the police station. As she pulled into the yard the thought crossed her mind that he wasn’t unlike Grant Tarquin in outward aspect, but happily lacked that darkness of spirit that had laid such a corruption over the masculine beauty of the other.
‘Leave the van here, Sister.’ He came to the door. ‘We can go to the morgue in my car.’
‘Nobody’s come forward then to identify him?’ Changing vehicles, she glanced at him.
‘Oh, there are plenty of youngsters who could identify him,’ he said, getting behind the wheel, ‘but I need to know if he was the lad who guarded your van when you went for petrol. That would put him in the vicinity of the office in Nightingale Court a couple of days before Jane Sinclair was killed. It’s possible he saw something that might have made him a threat.’
She was silent, considering. It was possible that Jeb had seen someone hanging about and taken the extremely unwise course of trying to obtain a few pounds hush money. If he had then he couldn’t have realized he was dealing with a very ruthless individual.
Morgues didn’t frighten her but they did depress her. The cold, impersonal atmosphere made her spirits sink, though her common sense told her that it was foolish to allow emotion to cloud professional judgement. She compressed her lips as the sheet was drawn back, took a moment to look at the young, dead face, crossed herself and said, ‘Yes, that’s the boy I saw in Nightingale Court.’
‘Thank you, Sister. Shall we sit in the car?’
In the cool, damp air again she drew several deep breaths before getting back into the car.
‘Will you require Sister Gabrielle to identify him as the boy who broke into the chapel?’ she asked.
‘If it has nothing to do with his death, then there’s no point in bringing her into it,’ Detective Sergeant Mill said. ‘I wouldn’t want the good Sisters to get the reputation of being cane-wielding thugs! It was only a glancing blow according to the doctor, caused a superficial cut and a bit of a black eye. His death was due to strangulation, manual strangulation.’
‘You said you know who he was — Jeb, I mean.’
‘Jeb Jones, seventeen years old, brought up in a children’s home, school dropout, left London about six months ago and drifted to Cornwall. No criminal record, though I daresay he wasn’t too scrupulous about the ways in which he earned a few pounds. He was one of those kids who drop through the social security net. A bit of a victim.’
‘Poor Jeb!’ Sister Joan grimaced slightly, not liking the picture of the life he had sketched for her. ‘Hadn’t he friends?’
‘He didn’t stay long enough in any one place to form strong relationships. He’s been squatting in the Tarquin house for about a month as far as we can gather. Of course the local council are supposed to check up on these places but apparently he was quiet and made no trouble so nobody bothered.’
‘Grant Tarquin must’ve known he was there,’ Sister Joan said.
There was a pause. Detective Sergeant Mill stared at her, then said brusquely, ‘Would you tell me what the devil you mean?’
‘Jane Sinclair telephoned me and spoke of Grant Tarquin and resurrection,’ Sister Joan said. ‘She’d been looking at an album of old Tarquin photographs with Anne Dalton. I borrowed the album myself and there are photographs in it of Grant Tarquin’s grandfather — there’s a very strong family resemblance running through the generations. I think she saw Grant Tarquin and recognized him from the photographs. It must’ve worried her because she knew he was dead. She liked to walk in the old cemetery and she must’ve seen his grave. I think that was what she wanted to talk to me about but she was phoning from her lodgings where the telephone’s kept in the hall and she may have felt awkward about saying too much with Anne Dalton around.’
‘And then?’
‘On the morning she was due to meet me for coffee she had a phone call,’ Sister Joan reminded him. ‘Anne Dalton said it was a gentleman. Now he might have told her he was a police officer and her office had been broken into so Jane Sinclair would have gone there early and he was waiting.’
‘He being?’
‘Last night,’ she said steadily, ‘I was looking through my window. It looks down into the stableyard. It was past eleven — the rest of the community were in bed but it’s my job to go round and switch off lights and lock up last thing. Earlier, when I was bringing Alice in, I saw a man standing beyond the front gates. It was too misty to identify him but I got stupidly nervous and hurried indoors. Then, when I looked out of my cell window, I saw someone move out of the shadow of the stable into the yard. The moonlight was very bright and I saw him clearly when he raised his face. It was Grant Tarquin. I recognized him. He’s a striking-looking man.’
‘Was a striking-looking man. He died more than a year ago.’
�
�He looked up at me and then he bowed.’ She shivered slightly.
‘Are you absolutely certain about all this?’ he demanded.
‘Absolutely certain,’ she said calmly. ‘Grant Tarquin is still alive, Alan. I saw him last night. If you open the grave in the old cemetery it’s my guess that you’ll find a pile of stones.’
‘My good girl, I can’t go round digging up the dead!’ he said impatiently. ‘I’d have to obtain an exhumation order from the Home Office, and I’m afraid they wouldn’t issue one on the grounds I’ve got.’
‘You’ll make enquiries into the circumstances of Grant Tarquin’s death though?’
‘Yes, of course. If I can find any more substantial reason for applying for an exhumation order then I’ll do so immediately. Meanwhile you’ll oblige me by not wandering about by yourself, particularly after dark. I already told you that!’
‘You can’t tell me to do anything,’ Sister Joan said, stung by his tone. ‘I’m not one of your officers! You can advise me and naturally I always try to follow your advice but my first obedience has to be to the rule. You know that!’
‘I could always speak to Mother Dorothy.’
‘Mother Dorothy is worried about our financial situation so don’t give her anything else to trouble her,’ she said sharply. ‘Look, I will take the greatest care in future, I promise! Now can we go and do something practical instead of arguing?’
‘What were you thinking of doing?’
‘I’d like to return the album of photographs to Anne Dalton and have a quick look round the cemetery. Have you time? The album’s in the van.’
‘Right!’ He leaned forward to turn the ignition key. ‘Would you mind if I had a look at it myself first? I can give it back to Anne Dalton on your behalf when I go round there to meet the Sinclairs. They’re arriving shortly to identify their daughter and arrange the funeral.’
‘Yes, of course. Thank you.’
They reached the police station and she climbed into the van and took out the album.
A VOW OF POVERTY an utterly gripping crime mystery Page 12