by Muriel Spark
‘Shit,’ said Sister Marrow.
Sister Lorne and Miss Jones came tripping down the stairs to join the bewildered crew and Margaret in the refectory. Sister Marrow, tall and skinny, followed behind. ‘She hasn’t been here three weeks and she fucking well runs the convent,’ was Sister Marrow’s comment on young Sister Murchie. But she seemed pleased that Margaret was about to draw attention to her mural.
It was so far only a sketch, stretching along one side of the refectory wall. It depicted a long, huge, antiquated monster, blowing clouds of smoke. ‘Is that a dragon?’ said Miss Jones, avid for symbolism.
‘No it’s the sketch of a train. A steam train,’ said Sister Lorne loud and clear.
‘Oh, a train,’ said Miss Jones. ‘Would that be Freudian?’
‘Freudian my arse,’ said Sister Marrow in a booming voice from the doorway.
‘Are those saints?’ said one of the camera crew, a slight and sensitive-looking youth.
‘Saints? What do you mean?’ said Sister Lorne. The vaguely painted-in figures standing beside the train did indeed have some sort of halo or bushy cloud around their heads. One particular figure seemed to have descended from the train, his halo bigger and bushier than the rest, with one arm raised, his finger pointing upwards.
‘As I am given to understand it,’ said Margaret in a quiet civilized tone of voice that implied a lack of civilized perception in all the others present, ‘this mural painting is a depiction of the scene at the railway station in St Petersburg on 16 April 1917, when Vladimir Ilich Ulyanov known as Lenin arrived from Switzerland to be met by a great crowd of comrades.’
‘You give them haloes, then?’ said Miss Jones.
‘Those are fur hats, you silly cow,’ muttered Sister Marrow.
‘I don’t quite get the religious significance,’ said Miss Jones. ‘— Oh, well, yes. I do. I think I do. That half-naked figure with the beard and the loincloth lying along the cloud of steam and leaning his torso over the cloud to touch Lenin must be God.’ The figure she referred to was up near the refectory’s ceiling. Lenin was looking up at it with his raised arm, so that his finger touched the pointing finger of the bearded man.
‘Not God. Karl Marx,’ said Sister Lorne, wheezing heavily. ‘You must get your points of reference right.’ She looked hard at a member of the BBC who had reflectively lit a cigarette. ‘No smoking,’ she said.
One of the cameramen moved to set up his tripod in the doorway where Sister Marrow was standing. She blocked his way. ‘Watch your balls, Sister,’ he said.
‘You like pushing women around, don’t you?’ said Sister Marrow.
‘Yes, I do.’
Five days of filming and interviewing ensued, including a round of visits to the hospitals where many of the staff and patients put up a resistance to the intrusion. Margaret, being extremely photogenic, was induced to be photographed administering to the more grateful of the patients; she arranged their pillows and the flowers on the ward tables. But it was inside the convent that the team got their supreme moments. Rita Jones was delighted. The eventual public were divided into two parts as they always are when religious questions arise, and this ensured the success of the programme. It was repeated two weeks after its first showing, in spite of the protests of the protesting half of the public. Only Sister Marrow’s speeches were modified, although not quite. Sister Rooke, a round-faced girl with warts and a cheery smile, large but compact, wearing her veil but with a plumber’s overalls, explained in her television-worthy North Country accent how she had come to be a master plumber; and she described the various ecclesiastical places whose complicated drainage systems she had to plumb. In reply to Miss Jones’s questions she recounted her experiences at the installation of washing machines, dishwashers, central-heating arrangements, bathrooms and showers. About Sister Rooke, at least, the total television audience was unanimous. Everyone loved Sister Rooke and also the plumber’s mate, a certain Sister Rose, very young, equally veiled and overalled.
Sister Lorne’s statement in the course of an interview was perhaps the most impressive to one part of the public and offensive to the outraged other: ‘The march of Marxist philosophy and politics etcetera will not stop at the borders. Our young will pour into the Eastern European countries pleading asylum from the capitalist-consumer system. We will live to see the day.’ The outraged part of the public were not in the least concerned with the probability or otherwise of Sister Lorne’s prophecy coming true; they were indignant only that a nun of the Church of England had said it.
The convent had returned to its routine after the incursion of the television crew. Sister Marrow applied herself to her refectory mural. After the programme was released, she seethed with aggrieved rage against the Observer television critic who had understood her mural to depict ‘Anna Karenina at the railway station’. She was somewhat placated by an apology and a corrected description of her masterpiece, which the newspaper printed in a spare corner.
In the course of the five-day filming of the programme the ailing Mother Superior rallied and was able to be brought down to her winged armchair in the recreation room. She declared herself to feel perfectly all right except that she couldn’t endure to be left alone and she couldn’t sleep with the light off. So long as she had some company, she assured Miss Jones, who interviewed her, and so long as she didn’t have to sleep in the dark she could be counted as an active vigorous Nun of Good Hope. ‘The others thought I was going to die. They look at me as if I was a ghost, or my face a skull and my body a skeleton under my habit.’
‘Surely not,’ said Miss Jones.
‘Surely yes,’ said the aged woman, sitting upright enough in her wing chair. ‘Especially Sister Lorne: who milked the cow with the crumpled horn. Do you know who the cow is? — Everything is symbolic. I’ll tell you who the cow is. Sister Lorne’s husband. She married a farm-boy with clammy hands and huge big round eyes. He looks at you like a cow. Sister Lorne is the maiden all forlorn who milked — or maybe it’s tossed — the cow with the crumpled horn.’
Miss Jones registered all this but later edited it out, so that it never appeared in the programme. In fact, none of the Mother Superior’s speeches was reproduced, and she looked absolutely sublime sitting there with her visible charm to grace the programme. However, Rita Jones, the clever girl, thought she might as well ask Sister Lorne if it was true she had once been married. ‘I am married,’ said Sister Lorne.
‘Married? Isn’t that against your vows?’
‘Yes,’ said Sister Lorne. ‘But he worked on a farm. Ecology comes before vows.’
‘Oh yes, but I don’t quite follow,’ said Miss Jones. ‘Your Mother Superior was quoting from “The House that Jack Built”.’
‘Really? What did she say?’
‘That you were married to a young farmer, Sister Lorne.’
‘The farmer sowing his corn, who married the maiden all forlorn … Is that what she said?’
‘Something like that. Of course I’m not going to use it in the programme. Your Mother Superior obviously wanders in her mind. But I just —’
‘You’re right, you’re not going to use it in the programme. She thinks I want to step into her shoes.’
‘I just wondered if your husband ever comes to the convent?’
‘Now and again.’
‘May I say just that?’
‘No, no. As a matter of fact it would be impossible to prove. The other nuns wouldn’t like it. He comes dressed as a curate,’ she confided. Sister Lorne smiled, breathing heavily.
Miss Jones had already got plenty of unusual material, so she thought it wise to drop this alarming and rather cloudy subject.
But Margaret, whose job it had become to keep the old nun company, and who occupied another bed in the same bedroom, had plenty of opportunity to hear variations on the theme of Sister Lorne and her imputed spouse. Margaret kept an eye open for a curate with large round eyes.
Two months after the successful transmission of t
he BBC programme Sister Rose, the much-loved and admirable young plumber’s assistant, was found dead in the little convent courtyard. She had been strangled but not raped or sexually assaulted in any way. The girl was large and strong; she had been strangled by a pair of large hands. It was not established whether her killer was a man or a woman.
Big and manly as were some of the nuns of Good Hope, it happened that not one of them possessed excessively large hands. This did not entirely exclude some nun in a raptus of homicidal strength from having committed the crime, but it weakened the possibility. The male frequenters of the convent, two priests and the agricultural husband of Sister Lorne, were also excluded, the priests because one was in Fulham at the time of the murder and the other was on a plane to Glasgow. Sister Lorne’s spouse was at the time in a boarding-house at Cirencester where she had sent him to study agriculture at the college there, and make a man of him.
The nuns were now being questioned closely, interrogated one by one. So far, nobody knew, had seen, heard or suspected anything. It had not even reached Margaret’s turn when the Mother Superior wove her way into the refectory where a man from Scotland Yard was taking notes from Sister Rooke; the old lady leaned against the much-adorned wall and confessed to the murder.
This was unlikely though not impossible. Her confession was taken note of in the greatest detail and put aside by the police, as it were for a rainy day. The interrogations of the nuns continued while the Mother Superior was ushered up to bed. There she suffered cardiac arrest, rallied, confirmed her confession, asked for and received the Last Sacrament, and died. According to her statement the Reverend Mother was indignant about a remark Sister Rose had made in the course of the late television programme. She had told her interviewer that she wasn’t quite content in the convent. ‘What about the life of the spirit?’ she said. ‘Why don’t we have a spiritual life?’ She had gone on to complain that the nunnery was virtually nothing but an entity in the National Health Service and that the Mother Superior was the top culprit in this situation.
Most of the nuns had a firm alibi for the hour of the crime, and those who had not had no motive. Margaret, who was interrogated with the others, had been on a visit to her sister Eunice in Dulwich that night, ‘to see her new nephew’.
The Mother Superior’s hands had not keen noticeably large. A re-run of the discarded sequences of the television programme, which had cut out her speeches, was made for the benefit of the police. They studied the whole film with predatory attention. The Mother Superior’s confession did seem to alter radically her image as she sat lording it in the wing chair. So long as she didn’t have to sleep in the dark, she had told Miss Jones, she was to be counted on as an active and vigorous member of the community. Her voice seemed to linger on, and emphasize, the words ‘active’ and ‘vigorous’. Even the toughest of the detective inspectors felt a slight shiver as she went on: ‘The others thought I was going to die (slight accent on ‘I’). They look at me as if I was a ghost, or my face a skull and my body a skeleton under my habit.’
‘It’s her, all right,’ said one of the policemen. By the time they came to the interview with the murdered girl (‘… this convent is nothing more than an entity in the National Health Service. Where is the spiritual side of life? …‘) they were all disposed to fall back on the evident solution: the Mother Superior’s confession. It was too late to interrogate her further.
The trouble was, none of the investigators sincerely believed she had committed the murder, even though by a stretch of logic she could have done it. They were looking at least for an accomplice. In her room was found a handbook on karate, which all the other members of the community professed to have never seen before.
The television news re-ran portions of the original programme, accompanied by Sister Lorne’s comments. ‘This is the end of the community of Good Hope,’ she said. ‘Most of the younger nuns have left. We can’t help feeling the hand of the supernatural in this tragic event. The house is to be taken over by a firm of lawyers.’
Margaret wrote:
Dear Dad,
I’ll be home again on Saturday. For good.
It is terrible to be within touching distance of a murder so soon after the last. Fortunately as you heard the Mother Superior’s confession relaxed the atmosphere. The police here were extremely polite to us all, and in my case there was no repetition of all that grilling I underwent on poor Granny’s death. Nobody can understand how the Mother Superior could have been physically, let alone morally, capable of such an action. There is something mysterious. It seems the Mother Superior was practising karate. How could she do that in her condition?
I can’t help feeling it all has to do with that television programme. One of the crew left a letter on my pillow asking for a date. Of course that proves nothing. Just his cheek.
I got a letter from Uncle Magnus. He knows I was with Eunice at the time. But he hints, he throws his suspicions on me without any evidence at all. Do you know he even quoted Schopenhauer at me anent my alibi — ‘Chronology is not causality.’ Poor old fellow. I could sue him for that.
This place has been sold. Nearly everyone’s left. There are three nuns still doing their hydrotherapy (washing-up) in the kitchen and Sister Lorne acting general manager. Sister Marrow is going to be an art teacher at a girls’ school and Sister Rooke is going to continue with her plumbing when her nerves permit. Very few think of les autres.
Love to Mum.
Margaret
SHORTLY after the wedding of Margaret and William Damien, Hilda Damien telephoned twice from Australia to Chris Donovan. The second time she asked Chris if she or Hurley would supervise and keep a check on a purchase she had arranged through a sale at Sotheby’s of a painting by Monet.
Hurley had come in from his studio, his day’s work over, when he heard of this request. He was more than willing to be involved in this interesting deal; he was positively excited. Hilda, so Chris told him, had instructed her lawyer in London to give Hurley Reed free access to the deal and to decide about the safekeeping of the picture.
Charterhouse passed a tray with Chris’s dry martini, the latter with the glass expertly iced. He was always ready with the drinks at this hour. He busied himself with Hurley’s whisky and soda with ice.
‘What Monet is it?’ said Hurley.
‘She didn’t say. You know what Hilda’s like. She just buys “a Monet”.’
Hurley gave a smile between tolerance and scorn. But he said, ‘I’ll soon find out. Does she intend to take it to Australia?’
‘No. Do you know what? In spite of all she said, she’s weakened and decided to give it to the young couple as an additional wedding present. But it’s to be a secret. She’s going to take it in to their flat in Hampstead and give them a surprise.’
‘I thought she’d given them the actual flat?’
‘Yes, well now they’re getting the Monet as well.’
‘What did she pay for it?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Chris. She sipped her welcome dry martini.
‘I’ll find out. I expect it was a lot. Too much.’
Charterhouse had left the room.
Luke in the public phone box said:
‘I just dialogued with the butler.’
‘And?’
‘It’s confirmed for October 18th.’
‘And?’
‘People called Suzy, a titled man and a titled woman.’
‘We’ve done the Suzys. A waste of time.’
‘Untzingers. They’re friends of mine, though. Not rich, I mean like the rich are rich.’
‘What name?’
‘Untzinger. I’d be obliged if —’
‘I’d be obliged if you’d continue.’
‘Damien.’
‘Damien!’
‘Yes, Damien. Mother and son he seemed to think are expected. She’s been doing up a flat in Hampstead. A picture on the wall by that artist named Monet, that French —’
‘You said Monet
?’
‘Just bought it, just the other day.’
It was ten days before Chris Donovan’s dinner party.
There was ‘flu in the air and Roland Sykes had caught it. He sat up in a chair in the sitting-room of his flat. Annabel had come round to look after him. ‘You should go to bed,’ she said.
He was fiddling with a bundle of press cuttings. ‘That person Murchie who is going to be at Chris Donovan’s dinner,’ he said. ‘I’ve remembered. I worked on some archives for the solicitor who represented two of her aunts. They were contesting a will. It was settled out of court. But look at the background — I knew there was something sensational. The grandmother of the Margaret Murchie who married the Damien boy was murdered.’
He sipped his hot whisky and water while Annabel read the press cutting with avid attention.
‘It doesn’t do your ‘flu any good but it makes you feel better,’ Roland said, meaning his drink.
‘My God! I’ve seen that face before,’ Annabel suddenly said. She had a newspaper article with a large picture of Margaret, sub-titled ‘Margaret Murchie — questioned by the police’.
‘It was all over the papers at the time,’ Roland said.
‘No, but I’ve seen it since. Somewhere on the television. Within the past year. Nothing to do with the Murchie murder. It was some kind of popular programme, cultural programme … I don’t know. I’d have to think, find out.’
‘I wonder’, said Roland ‘if Hurley and Chris know about the Murchie murder story.’
‘Why? Do you think of drawing their attention to it?’
‘Well, it might be interesting.’
‘If I were in your place,’ she said, ‘I would keep it to myself. It would only make you out to be bitchy. You don’t want the name of being bitchy, do you?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Roland, drawing his woollen dressing-gown tight round his neck. ‘Whisky can’t be a remedy, you know. It only makes you feel better.’
