Vow of Obedience (3 page)

‘One of the hardest things you will ever have to do is cultivate detachment,’ her novice mistress had warned. ‘Detachment from all save the things of the spirit. Detachment does not mean coldness or not caring, but it does mean the ability to set oneself apart from all yearnings for transient things, all possessiveness, even in the end from the very prayers and devotions so dear to our hearts. These are only the finger pointing at the moon. Don’t spend all your time looking at your finger.’

She had forgotten to bring the key to the school. Sister Joan wondered if that could be attributed to detachment but decided wryly that it was more likely to be absent-mindedness.

Leaving the placid Lilith to graze at her ease she approached the door and gave it an experimental push. Sister David had evidently been remiss since it swung open with a
protesting creak. Within, the cloakroom on the left and the classroom on the right were shadowed and shuttered. There was no electricity in the school. She had brewed tea for herself and hot soup on chilly days for the children on a primus stove. She went into the classroom and opened the shutters, letting the last of the late afternoon sun illumine the desks and blackboard and the shelves where the children had kept their projects.

Sitting at her desk, surveying the room, peopling it with remembered children, she permitted herself her moment of nostalgia.

‘So, goodbye and God bless, my dear pupils.’

She spoke the words aloud into the sighing silence. No sense in lingering here. Later on, when it had been decided to what use the building could be put, she would ask if she might take a few of the books. There were other books in the cupboard behind her. She glanced round and frowned slightly. The shelves from the cupboard had been lifted out and leaned against the blackboard. Sister David had evidently started clearing out ahead of time.

‘And as my deputy she has a perfect right,’ Sister Joan told herself firmly, rising and pulling open the door.

The girl wedged awkwardly into the shadowy corner wore a white dress and had a garland of fading leaves on her head. She looked as if she were asleep but, of course, she wasn’t.

Sister Joan had seen dead bodies before. Death itself held no terrors for her, but the manner of dying did. As she knelt to lift the drooping head she saw the thin, purple line cutting into the neck like the rehearsal for a beheading.

She had seen the face already that day. Valerie Pendon, missing from home in the middle of the night, now bundled into a cupboard, the wreath on her head and the long white dress with its inserts of cheap lace a terrible mockery of a bridal costume. Bitten nails on the fingers added the final touch of unbearable pathos.

It had been an elopement then. A girl of sixteen stealing away in the middle of the night to meet a boy-friend of whom her parents had either been unaware or of whom they would have disapproved. Killed here? Brought here later? It was impossible to tell.

Moving with the calmness of shock, she rose and shut the cupboard door, her hand automatically sketching a blessing. There was no help for it but on her first day back she would have to miss chapel.

Remounting Lilith she urged her down the track towards the town. Fortunately the pony was in a mood to go fast but it would be dark by the time she reached the police station, even though in Cornwall the day died slowly.

Street lights cast a hard blue light over nun and horse as she rode down the street and dismounted in the parking space at the side of the police station, tying Lilith’s rein loosely to the fire hydrant.

When she walked into the station the desk sergeant glanced up, then snapped to attention in the way some people did when a nun appeared.

‘Good evening, Sister. Anything I can do for you?’ He
sounded brisk and businesslike.

‘Is …’ She searched for the one name she knew. ‘Is Detective Sergeant Mill on the premises?’

‘Someone using my name in vain? Oh, hello, Sister Joan.’ Detective Sergeant Mill had just emerged from the inner office.

‘I hoped you’d be working late,’ she said.

‘Catching up on paperwork.’ His voice sharpened slightly as he took a second look at her. ‘Is anything wrong?’

‘I’m afraid there is, Detective Sergeant Mill. May I use your telephone to let the convent know I’ll be late?’

‘Certainly. You look as if you need a stiff shot of brandy too. See about it, will you?’

He threw the order over his shoulder at the desk sergeant as he held open the door for Sister Joan.

She accepted a chair gratefully and dialled the convent with fingers that felt suddenly clumsy and chilly.

‘Sister Perpetua? Sister Joan here. Please ask Mother Dorothy to excuse me but I’m forced to be absent from chapel and possibly for supper too.’

‘What’s happened?’ At the other end of the line Sister Perpetua sounded more resigned than panicky.

‘I’ll explain what has happened when I get back. I’m ringing from the police station but I’m perfectly all right, so there’s no need for anyone to worry. Goodbye.’

She hung up quickly to find Detective Sergeant Mill’s eyes fixed on her.

‘What has happened, Sister?’ he asked quietly.

‘I went over to the Moor school – you know it’s been closed? I wanted to have a last look at it – not literally, of course, but in a rather sentimental way. I also had some idea of picking up anything that I thought I might need. I’d forgotten the key but the front door was unlocked, so I went in.’ She paused to moisten her lips, clasping her hands tightly together. ‘Someone had taken the shelves out of the cupboard behind my desk. I opened the cupboard door and the girl – the one who was reported missing – was there. She was – someone strangled her, I think, and she’s wearing a bridal gown with a wreath of leaves on her head.’

To her extreme embarrassment her voice choked and tears came into her eyes.

‘Drink this.’ Detective Sergeant Mill handed her the brandy the desk sergeant had just brought in. ‘You heard that, Stephens?’

‘I did.’ The desk sergeant looked marginally less stolid.

‘Lay on a car and get hold of Barratt, will you? He may as well be flung in at the deep end.’

‘Doctor, sir?’

‘And the photographer. A couple of men to rope off the area – you know the drill. Oh, and better get hold of the priest – Father Malone. Don’t contact the Pendons yet. Bad news will keep, if it is their daughter. Did you know the girl, Sister?’

Sister Joan, her throat burning from the brandy, her self-possession restored, shook her head.

‘I saw the posters earlier,’ she said. ‘The photograph was a good likeness.’

‘I’ll have to ask you to accompany me, Sister. I can run you back to the convent afterwards.’

‘What about Lilith?’

‘I’ll have someone ride her back. Get things moving, Stephens.’

Outside he slid behind the wheel and gave her a keen glance as she strapped herself into the passenger seat.

‘Feeling better now?’ His tone had the solicitousness of an old friend.

‘In myself yes. About that girl’s death no. It seemed so – blasphemous somehow. The white dress and the fading leaves.’

She bit her lip.

‘Nobody gets used to it.’ His voice had changed, becoming rough with what she guessed was suppressed anger.

‘The desk sergeant seems fairly unshockable,’ Sister Joan said. ‘I don’t suppose he’s any relation to the curate, is he? Same name.’

‘Don’t think so. Is the curate the stolid, unflappable type?’

She thought fleetingly of Father Stephens with his involved sermons and beautifully polished shoes, and answered
discreetly
, ‘Oh, he’s a very worthy young man. A great help to Father Malone.’

But not the man to break the news of a horrible death to worried parents. His mellifluous phrases would have no comfort set beside Father Malone’s simpler vocabulary.

The desk sergeant had been efficient. Two other police cars snaked behind them on the moorland track, their headlamps raking dark peat and bracken that made strange shapes against the wind-swept sky.

The schoolhouse was a darker square against the dark. Detective Sergeant Mill drew to a halt and gave her another glance.

‘You don’t mind coming in with me, going over what you did when you arrived? Sergeant Barratt, over here. Sister Joan, this is Sergeant David Mark Barratt, our latest acquisition from Birmingham.’

There was a faintly ironic edge to his voice as he rolled out the full name. An ambitious police officer who had arrived with the intention of patronizing the rural constabulary, Sister Joan summed up at first glance, shaking hands with the tall, smartly manicured and brushed officer.

‘I met your wife, Daisy, this afternoon,’ she said. ‘She was kind enough to give me a lift to the convent.’

‘I’d only just reached home when the call came in so she hadn’t had the chance to tell me about it yet,’ Sergeant Barratt said. ‘What happened here?’

‘Looks as if Valerie Pendon’s turned up,’ Detective Sergeant Mill said. His face and voice were carefully neutral; the process of hiding his feelings under a mask of officialdom had already begun. ‘Now, Sister, take us through it. You rode here …?’

‘I dismounted and left Lilith to graze. She’s very good and never wanders. Then I realized that I didn’t have the key to the school, but I tried the door and it was unlocked.’

‘Not forced?’

‘Not as far as I can recall noticing, but then the door is occasionally unlocked. I’ve been guilty of forgetting it myself. It’s so remote here and there’s nothing of monetary value inside. Anyway I pushed it open and went in.’

Repeating her action, poised on the threshold she paused, then said, ‘There’s no electric light here. We have a primus stove to provide heat in the cold weather and brew soup for the children.’

‘We can rig arc lights,’ Detective Sergeant Mill began.

‘I took the liberty of ordering that done, sir.’ Sergeant Barratt nodded towards a small group of policemen occupied with trailing cables.

‘Did you now?’ His superior officer spoke somewhat dryly. ‘I’m glad to see you aren’t afraid of using your own initiative, Barratt. Right, get the lights on and in here. Sister Joan, would you like to lead the way? I have a fairly powerful torch.’

She didn’t want to lead the way anywhere save straight back to the convent. She didn’t want to be the one who opened the cupboard again.

‘Of course, Detective Sergeant Mill.’ She walked into the narrow passage, the beam of the torch lighting the way ahead.

‘You turned straight into the classroom?’ he said behind her.

‘Yes, I did.’

‘Do exactly what you did before then,’ he encouraged.

She walked steadily into the classroom and seated herself behind the large desk from which she had been wont to survey her pupils.

‘You just sat there?’ Sergeant Barratt’s tone was puzzled.

‘Regretting the fact that the school is now closed,’ she explained. ‘Then I noticed the shelves from the cupboard were propped up against the blackboard. I got up and opened the cupboard.’

Her hand was on the knob and her stomach was churning.

‘What was usually kept in the cupboard?’ Sergeant Barratt asked.

‘Exercise books, rolls of sketching paper, pencils – general supplies.’

‘Open the cupboard, if you please, Sister.’ Detective Sergeant Mill was polite but firm.

She opened it, compressing her brows as she looked down at the huddled figure. In the light of the arc lamps which were abruptly illuminated it had a ghastly, theatrical quality. Juliet in the tomb, the Mistletoe bride.

‘Did you touch her?’ Detective Sergeant Mill asked.

‘I went down on one knee and lifted her head. That was when I saw the red line round it. Must I …?’

‘No need to do it again,’ he said.

‘Surely you knew you ought not to have touched a dead body?’ Sergeant Barratt said. He made it sound as if she had committed some social gaffe.

‘I acted instinctively.’ She drew herself to her full height which wasn’t very tall and gave him the look designed to quell
‘bold’ children. ‘I didn’t know she was dead. Not consciously, that is. If I was thinking anything at all it was that she might have been hiding in the cupboard and been taken ill or something. I didn’t touch anything else. I closed the cupboard door and then I remounted Lilith and rode straight into town.’

‘The convent is nearer,’ Sergeant Barratt said.

‘You mean why didn’t I telephone from there? By the time I’d explained things to Mother Prioress and received permission to use the telephone more time would have been lost. You sound,’ she added acidly, ‘as if you think I might have killed the poor girl and put her in the cupboard myself!’

‘I wasn’t implying anything, Sister.’ He sounded offended.

‘And Sister Joan has a perfect alibi,’ Detective Sergeant Mill said in a voice intended to diffuse hostility. ‘You had just arrived from six weeks in Scotland when I saw you this afternoon, hadn’t you?’

‘Sorry, I’m still upset, I’m afraid. Can we go outside?’ She kept her eyes turned resolutely from the cupboard.

‘Yes, of course, Sister.’ He took her arm in a soothing fashion. ‘Ah, here’s the doctor – and Father Malone. We shall need your fingerprints but perhaps you can come down to the station tomorrow morning? It’ll only be for purposes of elimination. Didn’t one of the other sisters assist you sometimes?’

‘Sister David would faint with horror at the thought of being summoned to provide her fingerprints,’ Sister Joan said, with a twinge of humour, ‘but of course she’ll come. Will you want a list of the pupils too?’

‘Can I get them from the register?’

‘I don’t know if it’s still in the desk or whether it was taken back to the convent or not.’

The purely practical snatch of conversation had steadied her nerves.

‘I’ll see about it,’ he said, releasing her arm and giving it a little pat. ‘I’ll be grateful if you’ll wait around for a few minutes. Sergeant, can you see the lights are correctly angled for the photographer?’

His impersonal, courteous tone told her that he wasn’t overkeen on his new colleague.

‘Sergeant Mill, is it?’ Father Malone, an immense muffler
around his neck, trotted over to where they stood. ‘Sister Joan, good evening. Is it true that you found the poor child? This is a terrible thing if it’s so.’

‘We shall need formal identification, Father Malone,’ Detective Sergeant Mill told him, shaking hands briefly. ‘That will have to come from one of the parents, but if you can confirm – she was a Catholic.’

‘And a very sweet girl,’ the priest said, nodding his grey head vigorously. ‘The Pendons are regular churchgoers which is more than can be said for many these days, more’s the pity. She’ll be requiring prayers for her soul.’

‘When the doctor and photographer have finished.’

‘Will you require me, Father?’ Sister Joan asked.

‘No absolute need. This must be a sad homecoming for you, Sister.’

‘Yes,’ she said simply.

‘The poor, poor child.’

Valerie Pendon had been sixteen, Sister Joan reflected. At sixteen most modern girls knew more about life than Father Malone himself. On the other hand the girl must have been naïve to steal away in the middle of the night in the belief she was going to be married. Presumably she had stolen away. Nothing had been said about any signs of struggle in that empty bedroom.

‘A terrible thing,’ Father Malone said helplessly, coming out of the schoolhouse again. In the lights from the arcs and the headlamps of the surrounding cars he looked small and impotent. ‘How could anyone do such a thing to a young girl? I shall have to break the news to the parents as quickly as possible. First we must get you back to the convent as swiftly as possible, Sister.’

He made it sound rather as if she’d escaped from the place, Sister Joan thought. It would have been interesting to drive back with Detective Sergeant Mill who might have something more to tell her, but he was obviously needed here, if only to combat his junior’s officious manner.

‘That’s very kind of you, Father,’ she responded gratefully. ‘Mother Dorothy gave me leave to ride Lilith over and take a last look at my old classroom before the building is used for some other purpose. When I found – well, I rode down at once to report it.’

‘You informed Mother Prioress?’