‘Look, if you’re busy I can take a look round the old cemetery myself,’ she began.
‘I’ll come with you,’ he said firmly. ‘We’ll use my car. I don’t trust my life and limb in that monstrosity you drive.’
‘It’s better than the old car we used to have,’ she protested. ‘Brother Cuthbert loves tinkering with that old engine, but I doubt if he’ll ever get it to go.’
The irritation between them had gone. It wasn’t anybody’s fault, she reasoned, as they turned into Cemetery Road. He thought like a policeman and had little sympathy with the different rules by which she had to organize her life.
‘I take it the place has been searched?’ She glanced enquiringly at him as they entered the cemetery.
‘It’s still being searched.’ He nodded towards two policemen who were walking, slow and stooped, across the overgrown paths. ‘Unfortunately it’s rained fairly heavily again since last night but if the person who brought Jeb here left any traces we’ll find them.’
‘How was he brought here?’ she asked.
‘My guess is that the killer was already in the house when you arrived. You said you didn’t search any of the rooms thoroughly — in any case the house has a cellar, so he might’ve nipped down there. Then, as soon as you left, he went upstairs, wrapped the body in a rug and walked to the old cemetery.’
‘Have you found the rug?’
‘That’s only my theory. It’ll have been a rug or a thick blanket, something a strong man could carry over his shoulder without attracting too much attention. Also it was a damp, misty Sunday afternoon. There weren’t many people around. If he was seen then someone will come forward. There are house-to-house enquiries going on.’
‘And Jeb was in the old chapel? May we go there?’
‘It’s off limits to members of the public,’ he reminded her, ‘but you’re not exactly an idle sightseer. Come on.’
There was a policeman on duty outside the low stone edifice. Sister Joan, going past him with Detective Sergeant Mill at her heels, reflected that some extra men must have been drafted in from other stations. Inside the stone walls seemed to press in around her and she repressed a shudder.
‘You all right?’ He glanced at her as they went up the aisle.
‘Fine. Can we turn on those lamps?’ She pointed to an array of them clearly set up by the investigating team.
‘If you like.’
He crossed to switch them on and the gloom was banished by a white glare. There was nothing mellow about this light, she thought, blinking. It was a cold, pitiless light that searched out the truth.
‘There were no footprints?’
‘Long scraping marks. It’s my belief that when he’d dumped the body — over there between the two tombs — he dragged the rug or whatever it was over any footprints he’d left. When we find the rug we’ll have more to go on.’
Nothing appeared to have been altered since her previous visit. She bit her lip as she looked at the jumble of broken chairs, the two tombs with their recumbent figures.
‘Both Tarquins,’ Detective Sergeant Mill said. ‘The older one seems to have been quite a distinguished fellow. Fought in the Hundred Years’ War.’
‘And served the Earl of Warwick who bought Jeanne d’Arc from the Burgundians,’ Sister Joan said disapprovingly. ‘It was Warwick and his men who insisted on the death sentence being carried out. I’d not want to be ennobled by such a man!’
‘Surely he was only acting on behalf of the English Council.’
‘He probably enjoyed it,’ she said testily. ‘To tell you the truth apart from a few honourable exceptions I don’t think the Tarquins were very pleasant people.’
‘But very rich.’
‘There are advantages in poverty.’
‘One wouldn’t think so the way you and your sisters are always fretting about money,’ he observed.
‘Poverty doesn’t have to mean starving to death. We take a vow of poverty, which means that we share anything we earn for the welfare of the community. If we can’t earn our bread we don’t trot down and sign on at the local labour exchange. But we’re lucky all the same. At least we have a roof over our heads and a garden where we can grow food, and no need to wheel and deal and squat in empty houses. Thank you for letting me come in here.’
‘What were you hoping to find?’ he asked.
‘I haven’t the faintest idea,’ she said. ‘I suppose I had some stupid notion that I’d spot something you missed, but of course I didn’t. Sorry if I’ve wasted your time.’
‘You haven’t.’ He stood aside to let her go through the door. ‘Your ideas are never dull, Sister, and sometimes you manage to hit the nail on the head. Oh, I do have a piece of information for you. There was a small printing press down in the cellar at the Tarquin house. The N is faint on it. Looks as if the press came originally from the estate. Perhaps Grant Tarquin had some notion of setting up a small business.’
‘In scrap metal and silverware?’ She raised a disbelieving eyebrow. ‘He probably had some notion of sending anonymous letters or distributing pornography.’
‘Now you’re speaking ill of the dead.’
‘He’s not dead!’ she said. ‘I saw him last night. He was alive then.’
‘Sister, if the family was as immoral as you say there might be descendants on the wrong side of the blanket all over Cornwall,’ he said patiently.
‘I’d already considered that,’ she retorted. ‘It won’t do, Alan. There’s a difference between seeing someone who bears a strong resemblance to somebody else and seeing the actual person.’
‘You only met Grant Tarquin a couple of times.’
‘It was enough,’ she said tensely. ‘There was an — an aura about him — something to be felt rather than seen, something extremely beguiling and evil.’
‘You’re not going mystical on me, are you?’ His smile was slightly down-curving.
‘No, of course not! I’m trying to explain my instinct about all this. You use your own instinct, don’t you? Otherwise why do you keep referring to the killer as him, when you don’t know whether it is.’
‘Strangling isn’t usually a woman’s method,’ he said. ‘Especially manual strangulation. It requires terrific strength in the thumbs and wrists. Also, whoever moved Jeb’s body must have been pretty strong. I may be wrong, and a six-foot female who practises weightlifting will turn up, but I don’t think so. Yes?’
He turned from her abruptly as one of the two men they had seen searching the paths came up.
‘We’ve found something, sir,’ the policeman said. ‘You might like to take a look.’
‘Come along, Sister.’ He motioned the policeman ahead of them down the path as it curved away from the grass verge.
The other man was standing by the grave of Grant Tarquin, his eyes on the pile of wet brushwood that covered its weed-encrusted surface.
‘There’s something under there,’ he said.
‘Let’s take a look.’ Detective Sergeant Mill went down on one knee and gently lifted a few pieces of the brushwood.
The corner of a grimy blanket protruded.
‘We’d better get the photographer back before we move it,’
Detective Sergeant Mill said, rising, dusting the knee of his trouser leg. ‘Sister Joan, was all this brushwood here when you visited the grave?’
‘No,’ Sister Joan said.
‘Right, we’d better get on with things. I’ll run you back to the station so you can pick up the van. Back in ten minutes.’
He nodded to the guarding men and hurried Sister Joan to the opening in the wall.
‘You’re needed here,’ she said. ‘It’s only a short walk to the station. I could’ve gone by myself to the cemetery too, it was already crawling with police!’
‘Perhaps I enjoy your company,’ he said.
‘In that case I’ll certainly walk back alone!’ she said, with a flash of laughter.
‘If you’re sure?’
�
�Quite sure.’
She was walking away when he called after her, ‘One more thing, Sister!’
‘Yes?’
‘I intend to make some enquiries about Grant Tarquin’s death,’ he said.
‘Thank you.’ She smiled and walked swiftly down the road.
Cutting up the alley she passed the Tarquin house. A small gaggle of reporters was hanging round the broken gates, and two policemen now stood on guard. The slowly emerging sunlight was mocked by the dense coat of ivy infesting the walls and the tall, mist-soaked grass in the neglected garden.
For once she would be in time for lunch, she thought, as she drove back along the main street and turned off on to the moorland track. She would finish the organization of the various excerpts from the books about Jeanne d’Arc and later on get back to clearing the storerooms. The work there was going slowly. Perhaps the boy Jeb had been paid to break in and steal the photograph with its sinister boast. No, the photograph had been of Grant Tarquin’s grandfather or even great grandfather. He’d never been so sensitive about the reputation of his family. Who would care if someone long dead had amused himself with a little devil worship?
Brother Cuthbert was bent over the old car, head buried in its innards as she drove by. Odd that a young man who had embraced an ascetic medieval discipline should be so crazy about a heap of rusting machinery — almost as odd, she thought with a grin as a nun who got involved with murder.
The convent presented its usual air of quiet, well-organized activity. Sister Teresa was peeling potatoes, Sister Marie mucking out the stable while Alice yapped with delight round her ankles. In the main hall Sister David met her, a pile of letters in her hand.
‘I typed out the excerpts you marked and put them on the desk in the library in chronological order,’ she said. ‘You only have the linking bits to write now.’
‘Thank you very much, Sister — and I haven’t forgotten about putting a bolt on the cupboard,’ Sister Joan said.
‘I’m rather looking forward to the readings this week,’ Sister David said. ‘It would be nice if we each of us researched our patron saints and read their stories when our turn in the rota came round, don’t you think? Perhaps I’ll suggest it to Mother Dorothy.’
‘Nothing to do except chatter, Sister David?’ Mother Dorothy had emerged from the antechamber. ‘It isn’t like you to — ah! you’re with Sister Joan. That explains it!’
‘We were discussing the suppertime readings, Mother Prioress,’ Sister David hastened to explain. ‘I began the conversation.’
‘If you’ve finished the letters you’d better put them on the hall table,’ Mother Dorothy instructed. ‘Sister Joan will post them the next time she has to drive into town. Have you a moment, Sister?’
‘Yes, Mother Prioress.’
Following her superior she wondered if the day would ever dawn when Mother Dorothy informed her she was an exemplary nun, a shining credit to the order.
‘Dominus vobiscum.’ Mother Dorothy signalled her to close the parlour door.
‘Et cum spiritu tuo.’
‘Sit down, Sister. Did your errand in town go well?’
‘It was productive, Mother Dorothy,’ Sister Joan said cautiously.
‘Padraic Lee came by this morning, full of gossip as usual,’ Mother Dorothy said. ‘A young woman strangled and now a teenage boy. I assume you’re mixed up in it all.’
‘Only indirectly,’ Sister Joan said. ‘I met Jane Sinclair the one time and I met the boy Jeb Jones when the petrol was siphoned out of the van.’
‘You must, of course, give whatever help you can in these civil matters,’ Mother Dorothy said, ‘but I must warn you again not to neglect your spiritual duties. I am sure you never mean to but balancing the mundane and the spiritual is always a great struggle. At the moment I know only too well how difficult it is. I seem to spend all my time wrestling with the bills and trying to make economies when I yearn to concentrate on making this convent a channel of prayer. So I’m not unsympathetic to your situation. Now you’d better get on with your work, Sister. I hope you are going to give us Jeanne the woman and not Jeanne the icon from the history books. It is far more of an encouragement to us all if we can realize that even the greatest saints were fallible human beings. Dominus vobiscum.’
‘Thank you, Mother Prioress. Dominus vobiscum.’
Sister Joan knelt, rose and went out, glancing back at the door to see her superior already turning the pages of a threatening-looking red ledger.
Sister David’s neatly typed notes were ranged on the library desk. She sat down and began to read through them carefully, making the linking notes as she went along.
She had kept the history of the various battles to a minimum and scarcely mentioned the various miracles attributed to the French saint. They might have been absolutely genuine but it had all been a very long time ago, before science could have provided any explanation. Uneasily aware that her thoughts were tending in a decidedly heretical direction, she crossed out the word ‘telepathy’ and penned in the word ‘visionary’ instead. No sense in upsetting the more traditionally minded among the community!
At least she had made her subject sound like a living, breathing human being, not one of those pious waxwork figures one couldn’t feel any sympathy with. Her Jeanne was a tough, illiterate, humorous, highly intelligent young peasant with a sharp tongue and a limitless fund of compassion. She would certainly have cared about the deaths of Jane Sinclair and Jeb Jones. She had wept when her page was killed by a stray arrow, wept when her two rings and her sword were stolen from her, wept when it was time to face the fire.
‘Sister Joan?’
She jumped violently, her hand to her mouth, as a figure loomed in the doorway.
‘I’m sorry, child. I didn’t mean to frighten you,’ Sister Gabrielle said. ‘I thought that the tapping of my stick could be heard half a mile off.’
‘I was deep in thought, Sister. I’m sorry. You should’ve called out so I could’ve helped you up the stairs.’
‘I’m nearly eighty-seven, not nearly a hundred and eighty-seven,’ Sister Gabrielle said in her peppery way. ‘I’m still capable of climbing a few steps. Sister, ought I to go to the police? Mother Dorothy, as you know, gets a newspaper once a week, and she often tells me little pieces of news she doesn’t tell the rest, and a young boy has been killed. I couldn’t help wondering — in view of the fact that you’ve begun popping down into town constantly — would it be the same lad who — my conscience is bothering me.’
‘It was the same lad,’ Sister Joan said frankly, ‘but your hitting him on the nose had nothing to do with anything that happened to him later. I told Detective Sergeant Mill about the incident and he said there was no need for you to be brought into it at all.’
‘Well, you’ve relieved my mind a little,’ Sister Gabrielle said. ‘Do they know who killed him yet?’
Sister Joan shook her head.
‘Well, I shall pray for his soul.’ The old lady nodded once or twice, then tapped her way across the room. ‘It’s a long time since I’ve been up here. Mary Concepta will be jealous when I let her know. We seem to have acquired a lot of new books. Of course we were in possession of quite a considerable little library when we moved here but there are many more volumes now. Love stories and sex manuals I wouldn’t be surprised! The rules aren’t as strict as they used to be.’
‘They seem quite strict enough to me,’ Sister Joan said, amused.
‘You young ones don’t know you’re born,’ Sister Gabrielle said. ‘Well, why should you? We’ve abolished evil and put social problems in its place.’
‘You must’ve been in the order when a convent was founded here,’ Sister Joan said.
‘Of course I was. We had a house further north but it was small and in very bad repair and we were looking round for something bigger and more convenient. I remember old Sir Robert Tarquin coming to offer us this estate at a very reasonable price. Actually he wasn’t so old, early fifties
, I think, but he had a certain presence and great dignity. He seemed careworn, disappointed in his son, I daresay. Grant Tarquin wasn’t a very nice person, my dear.’
‘Do you think he could’ve been a devil worshipper?’ Sister Joan asked bluntly.
‘A devil—! My dear child, what put that into your head?’ Sister Gabrielle stared at her. ‘No, of course not. Mind you, there was a rumour that Sir Robert’s father had been rather more familiar with Old Nick than was healthy. I fancy he used to enjoy terrifying the servants with mysterious hints — that kind of thing. No, real devil worshippers are thin on the ground, thank God! Some of these old families were a bit inbred, I expect. Not quite one hundred percent in the head. Are you coming down to lunch?’
‘Very soon, Sister, unless you’d like me to—’
‘I can get down steps a lot more easily than I can climb up ’em,’ Sister Gabrielle assured her. ‘I’m glad my blow didn’t do much damage, though I was only defending myself. We’re to have Jeanne d’Arc at supper then?’
‘Yes.’
‘I hope you’re not going to dwell on all that burning business,’ the old lady said briskly. ‘It does put one off one’s food. I won’t forget Sister Perpetua reading about some saint who had his insides dragged out of him. We were having spaghetti with tomato sauce at the time, and I’ve not felt the same about it since.’
Sister Joan choked back laughter and said, ‘No details of the burning I promise. Oh, Sister David was suggesting earlier that it might be a nice idea if each of us concentrated on her patron as her turn came round to read. St Gabriel would be an interesting subject.’
‘The Archangel.’ Sister Gabrielle looked doubtful. ‘Well, he didn’t die a stomach-churning death but then he was never actually born, was he? To tell you the truth, my dear, I’ve never been particularly struck on the Archangel Gabriel. Always flying around giving people messages and blowing that trumpet of his! And when I found out he’s the archangel of water — well, I can’t help it, but every time I try to picture him I see him wringing out his wings with Wellington boots on his feet.’
It was no good trying to concentrate on the last few notes after that. Sister Joan shook with silent mirth as the old lady tapped her way back down into the chapel, then wiped her eyes and rose.
A VOW OF POVERTY an utterly gripping crime mystery Page 13