Quiet as a Nun (19 page)

'Harsh words, Jemima. But like you, I don't believe in the devil. All the same, the devil and all his pomps is a good phrase. Certain pomps are quite devilish, aren't they? Places like this. Wasting money, parasites on society.'

He was playing with me. There was no point in joining in the sport. I rattled the grille.

'Mr Skarbek, are you going to let me out of here?'

'But of course, Jemima. If only because I want to come much closer to you.' With a courtly gesture towards the grille. 'Perhaps you will like me better if we are closer to each other. Or is it the habit which troubles you? That can easily be arranged. At least part of it.' Rapidly, as if born of long practice - which I suppose it was - Skarbek removed the black veil, fixed by its tiny black pins, then the stiff white wimple and white cap beneath. He placed them on the
prie-dieu.
Beneath it all his hair was unexpectedly long. Instead of a nun he looked now like a young priest, standing there in black soutane. Then he swung back the grille.

I stepped out. It was a relief to be free, free at least from the coffins.

'I'll have your torch if you don't mind.' He took it. I made no resistance. I did not want him to know about the knife. Till I was ready. Then he offered me one of his cigarettes from the blue packet. I had not smoked since I was fifteen, when I puffed out of bravado with Rosa. But I took one and lit it clumsily and drew on it as I had watched others do, as I had watched Tom do, so many times. It was an odd feeling having Skarbek's face so close to mine, now free of its habit, as he held the match. Odd. Intimate. Distasteful. 'Mr Skarbek—'

'Alex, please. You don't mind if I call you Jemima. After all I was on your programme. We're friends.' A roll of the 'R'. I wondered if he was putting the accent on. What new friendships television brought me to be sure - Pia recalling me with delight, who had hardly known me at school, Tessa and Mandy Justin who both thought of me as their ally for no better reason than because they had seen me on the box, and now Alexander Skarbek. ‘I know you especially well because I saw you again last night on the programme, our programme. I thought how pretty you were all over again.'

It was sickening to think of this kind of compliment actually winning the hearts of Rosa and Beatrice O'Dowd. For myself, I had always lived in the world, and was scarcely susceptible.

'You know, Jemima,' went on Skarbek, ‘I thought last night that you would make a good nun. I don't mean all that—' he gestured to the veil and wimple with his cigarette. He looked so masculine to me now that I wondered even the children had been deceived. 'But your spirit. There is something nun-like about you, something pure, withdrawn, dedicated to service.'

'The nuns you have known may have started pure and dedicated to service,' I retorted with an angry puff of my cigarette, 'but they soon became dedicated to something quite different.'

'Nun, what nun?' he said sharply. 'Put that thing out. You have no idea how to smoke it.' He took the cigarette from my fingers and threw it on the floor to join the others, crushing it with his boot.

'Rosabelle Powerstock, Sister Miriam, and Beatrice O'Dowd, Sister John, when you first knew her.'

'Ah yes. Those most sincere ladies. I certainly changed the direction of their dedication, that is true. Or rather we changed it between us, did we not? Our programme, as I call it. From the service of God in heaven to the service of the poor on earth. Not a bad swap, I would say.'

I said nothing. I was wondering, now that he was more relaxed, whether I could make a dash for the door. I put my hand casually into my pocket and closed it on the knife.

Immediately Skarbek threw down his own cigarette, grabbed my wrist and pulled it out of my pocket, knife and all. He continued to hold it up, gazing at the blade. Then he laughed and with a twist made me turn the blade towards myself.

'Don't be frightened, Jemima. A dagger to your heart? No, no, too crude. I don't work like that. Everything is natural that happens here. Natural - if unfortunate. A key breaks off in a lock. A sick nun starves to death as a result. It's all a mistake. Who is to question that?'

'So - Sister Edward too?' I said bitterly. 'Her medicines out of reach. Struggling for breath. Natural if unfortunate.'

'I did not kill Veronica O'Dowd,' replied Skarbek. 'I can assure you of that. That was - how shall I put it - purely unfortunate. She would not have lived long in any case. Asthma had weakened her heart. Her family knew that. For you, perhaps, another unfortunate incident in the tower. Jemima Shore, Investigator, is the victim of her own adventurous spirit. She investigates the passage, a door slams, too late. She can't get out. Like her friend Sister Miriam, she dies in the Tower of the Blessed Eleanor.'

'Who told you about the passage? You can satisfy my curiosity about that.'

'Ah, the passage. That was a bit of luck, wasn't it? The reminiscences, which would otherwise have been intolerably dreary, of a bad-tempered but historically-minded old nun.'

I had no difficulty in recognising the description ... Sister Hippolytus. I wondered when he had met her: how he had fooled her. It would not be so easy to pull the wool over Sister Hippolytus's eyes.

He opened my fist and the knife clattered to the floor. Then he put his hands in my pockets and brought out the rope, the candles and the matches.

'How very thoughtful of you Jemima, to bring your own rope. I was wondering what I was going to use to tie you up. Perhaps you might be wearing an exciting belt under that thick and rather unexciting coat? Or perhaps my rosary? Quite thrilling that.'

'What are you going to do?' I could not stop the apprehension from creeping into my voice.

'I'm going to tie you up. To this convenient grille I think. Inside it or outside it? Shall it be inside with the coffins? Or outside with the statue of the Blessed Eleanor? Boring woman. I've looked at copies of her Treasury once or twice, searching for the will. Incredibly tedious, don't you think? I do hope her ghost doesn't come to call on you. For your sake. She might bore you to death. Forgive me, I didn't mean to make quite such a bad taste joke—'

'Not inside. Please. Not with the coffins.

'Surely you don't seriously believe in ghosts? They're all dead, you know. Bones and nothing else in those coffins.' 'What are you going to do?' I said again.

'Just tie you up for a little while. That's all. Not forever. There's someone I have to go and see. And I don't want you to get away.' He busied himself with the rope, tying me deftly, quickly, to the outside of the grille. At least I was thankful for that. Perhaps this small mercy was some kind of good omen that he did not after all intend to deal too harshly with me. It was better to hope.

'You might try saying a few prayers if you're lonely,' he said. 'You're not a Catholic, I know. Then I could teach you a few. A Hail Mary or two works wonders for the nerves.'

'Are you a Catholic?' I asked incredulously.

'My parents were. I was brought up as such. Until I saw the error of their ways - very early indeed in my existence, I can assure you. The country where I was born is one of those where ignorance and superstition is so deeply rooted in the hearts of the stupid peasants that nothing, not even communism, can get rid of it. Poland.'

'Poland. I didn't realise you were Polish.'

'I came here as a refugee when I was very young, ironically from the new state after the war. Because I was officially a Catholic, the do-gooders here even sent me to a convent school at first - until I ran away.' It explained many things.

'So you see I know what I'm talking about when I say that you would have made a charming nun. By the way, what a pretty colour your hair is.' He put out his hand and touched it. I flinched. 'And your face. There is still something child-like, untouched, about your face. In spite of that incredibly severe expression you are trying to assume.'

He held my chin and looked at me. I turned my head away. The light, almost yellow eyes were like those of an animal. A hunting animal. Not an animal in the zoo. Of the two of us, I was the captive animal. I saw him glancing at the veil.

'I wonder how it would be—' he said suddenly. 'Do you fancy dressing up as a nun?' And he bent his head and pressed his lips hard to mine. I struggled and tried in vain to press myself further back into the grille. I was profoundly horrified.

'No,' I cried, when at last he released me.

'Blasphemy? Sacrilege? You can't believe that,' he said, smiling.

'But
you
do.'

'I must remind you that there is no God. Hence no blasphemy. All the same, it might have been interesting. For us both. I assure you, Jemima, I'm not interested in unwilling victims. No-one was unwilling.'

'Pathetic sex-starved women,' I said. 'What splendid conquests!'

'Oh, quite. Conquests weren't the point. Surely you understand that.' He lit another cigarette. 'That was all purely for the good of the cause. It meant nothing to me whatsoever. Beatrice O'Dowd is a nice woman but an awful fool, not at all my type. In any case it was not necessary to seduce her, she simply exchanged one love or passion for another, in both cases strictly platonic. As for those girls, that fat little blonde with the absurd name, Dodo, and Blanche and Imogen.' He mimicked their enthusiastic upper-class voices. "Working for the poor in the holidays from their smart fee-paying school. Writing us eager letters, imagining they have actually joined us on the other side of the barrier. Hero-worship was what they wanted, not sex.' 'And their leader, Margaret?'

'She's different. At least she knows how to keep her mouth shut. An interesting girl. She's more like you.' 'And Rosabelle?' I had to ask.

'Ah, your friend. The heiress. A strange woman. Even for a nun. So many different impulses: no wonder she had a nervous breakdown.'

'Beatrice O'Dowd thought all that happened because Mother Ancilla got her away. They were of course great friends.' Even now I refused to use the term 'particular friends'.

'Nonsense. Rosabelle had many secrets from Beatrice, I can tell you. Including where she hid her will. Beatrice always exaggerates her importance in every situation. It makes her hell to work with at times at the Project. The others complain. It was Rosabelle Powerstock who first contacted us, I can assure you. Afterwards—' He seemed to have nothing more to say on that subject. I did not know whether to be glad or sorry. Just as I did not altogether know whether to be glad or sorry at the unexciting truth about the relationship between Rosa and Beatrice. Glad that it had been innocent. Sorry that Rosa had not even been granted the comfort of one real confidante in her last months.

'The brides of Christ indeed!' he went on angrily. 'Most of them would be a great deal better off as proper brides, bourgeois white finery, veils, orange blossom and all. At least they would perform one useful function in society; wife followed rapidly by mother. I prefer the intelligent,' he repeated. 'That's why it's a pity that you're not more accommodating. Tom Amyas is your chap, isn't he? Oh, don't worry. We make it our business to know that sort of thing about MPs who don't exactly love us. Just in case the information comes in useful. An awful ass, isn't he, always grinding on about his conscience. Does he bleat about it in bed as well?'

I did not deign to answer. Skarbek fished something out of his pocket.

'Which reminds me. We can't have this hanging about, alas. That would never do.'

It was my note to Tom. Skarbek lit a match and put the flame to the corner. The black fragments floated down to the floor to join the cigarette stubs.

I was no longer so hopeful that nothing terrible was going to happen to me. Skarbek was robing himself in the wimple and veil again. Then he took up my two candles.

'Your candles I'll leave you,' he said. 'Out of reach. But alight. No funny stuff burning the ropes. You will be like a saint, Jemima, with two candles burning to you. Your own particular shrine.'

So saying, he moved the
prie-dieu
across the crypt until it faced me. He placed one candle on either side. Then he switched off the crypt light.

'Very charming.' An elaborate roll of the 'R' again. I was certain he was putting it on. 'Saint Jemima of the coffins.' To me the whole crypt, now lit only by the flicker of two small candles, looked less charming than horrifyingly eerie.

And roped to the grille, in my own particular shrine as he called it, I no longer believed Skarbek in his protestations about blasphemy. In some corner of his being, however remote, he still believed in the possibility.

'I promise I won't be long,' he said, 'we have so many interesting things to talk about. Later. But there's someone I just have to see. Another intelligent female, as a matter of fact. I really do have a taste for them. And I must deal once and for all with that wretched child. Something natural, what was it I said, something natural but unfortunate.'

Tessa! In my fear and confusion I had forgotten all about Tessa Justin. And what on earth had happened to my old but stout-hearted sentinel, Sister Boniface, last seen departing to pray in the chapel? Why had Sister Bonnie not raised the alarm? Tessa Justin, in her filthy and hysterical state was surely sight enough to promote a dozen search parties.

'Tessa will have woken the whole convent by now,' I answered. 'I doubt if you will find it quite so easy to deal with her.' My words were bold. But I was worried by the lack of extraordinary sounds from above. In fact, no sound at all. 'Sister Boniface was there and—'

'Oh, she's been dealt with already.'

Not Bonnie—

'Nothing sinister in this case. Purely natural, dear Jemima. Not even unfortunate. Lured away from the chapel. A story that Mother Ancilla needs her. After that she will be given an assurance that you are safe. That Tessa is safe too. That you both returned through the chapel while she was absent. She won't interfere with our plans.'