by John Gardner
‘The man was kind of sandwiched between the two novices then?’
‘In a manner of speaking, guv’nor, yes.’
Wickedly, Suzie thought they really would make a gleesome threesome – then immediately regretted it. Suzie’s conscience was easily pricked when it came to religion, the product of being at St Helen’s, taught and kept to a rigid discipline by nuns. Even nuns of the Anglican persuasion could hold a special dread and an awesome respect.
They stood outside the main mortuary viewing room in a quiet and nice area for relatives or witnesses to wait until a body was ready for them to have a look-see. There was a table with flowers in a vase, and several chairs, a crucifix on the wall: too bad if you weren’t a Christian, but this was a Christian country, right?
‘No,’ Tommy repeated. ‘No, you make sure the crime scene is secure, Magnus.’
‘Very good, sir,’ obviously relieved. Then a long pause as though he was plucking up courage, standing there opening and closing his mouth like a fish. ‘There was one other thing, sir.’
‘Well?’ preparing to leave, giving Suzie the look that said ‘we’re off’. Glancing at Emma and nodding.
‘Delicate matter, sir. Marjorie brought it up.’
‘Marjorie?’
‘One of the assistants here, sir. Knew something funny had gone on. It’s probably nothing but…’
‘But what?’
‘Nuns’ underclothing, sir.’
‘What about it?’
‘Wondered if you knew anything about nuns’ underwear, sir.’
‘Do I look like somebody who knows about…? Maybe WDI Mountford…’
‘What’s the problem?’ Suzie asked.
‘Probably not a problem, but Marjorie disrobed the ladies and … well, a bit colourful. She thought it a bit colourful for nuns.’
‘Thought what in particular was a bit colourful?’
‘The … er … the drawers.’
‘The drawers are a bit colourful?’ Tommy almost exploding, looking pop-eyed. Pink. Uncomfortable.
‘Well, Directoire, naturally. That’s to be expected. Also, both the ladies were wearing them…’
‘Directoire?’ Tommy queried, definitely discomfited now.
‘ETBs,’ Suzie said with a grin. Don’t see why he’s embarrassed. Never embarrassed when he’s happily removing my drawers.
‘ETBs?’ Tommy quite out of his depth.
‘Elastic-Top-and-Bottom,’ Suzie smirked. ‘In training we used to call them passion killers; blackouts; the issue ones, woollen in winter, drawers cellular lightweight for the summer. Look, where’s this going, Pip?’
‘They’re made of a silky material. Bright scarlet. Marjorie thought the colour and texture a shade racy for nuns.’
‘Not at all. The nuns at my school wore vivid electric blue. Silk. Saucy really…’
‘How the hell did you know?’ Tommy seemed startled. ‘I mean, it’s not easy to look up a nun’s skirt.’
‘There was a little walled garden next to the laundry. Our classroom almost overlooked it and on Mondays we’d see the nuns’ knickers out on the line like a waving bunch of pennants. Electric blue.’
‘You said. Silk.’ Tommy fussed about with a cigarette, then headed for the door. Outside he lit up and, as though seeing her for the first time, again nodded to Emma. ‘Couldn’t miss the excitement, eh, Emma?’
Emma Penticost had a particularly destructive smile which she used now. Sickening, Suzie thought. Could twist Tommy round her thingamy.
‘You know why I’m here, Chief,’ Emma’s smile blasting golden sunshine right into Tommy’s eyes.
‘Not just for the thrill of it all?’
‘No, Chief. Part of my brief, isn’t it?’
Tommy grunted, unconvinced.
‘Part of my brief is to stick by you, Chief, unless you tell me to get lost. In that case I suppose I have to make my own decision.’
Tommy gave a half-hearted nod and asked Emma to walk with him, indicating Silverhurst Road, back in the direction of St Catherine’s Convent main entrance where Brian sat, silent, in the Wolseley. Suzie tucked herself in behind them and they walked slowly back, seemingly in deep conversation.
Emma was what Tommy – using the 1930s gangland description – liked to call the Reserve Squad’s ‘Muscle’. It was a tradition that had started with Molly Abelard who’d been drafted into the Reserve following a threat on Tommy’s life just before the war. Tommy was newsworthy, got written up in the Fleet Street newspapers a lot. They called him Dandy Tom on account of his sharp suits and impeccable turnout. The fact that he was the Honourable Tommy Livermore was also a help and Tom believed that tittle-tattle in the press always boosted his standing among the villainous classes. Dandy Tom, Gentleman Detective. ‘Detective, yes,’ he would say, ‘but I’m not so sure about the Gentleman.’
Molly Abelard had been a splendidly suitable young woman, not simply firearms-trained but also an expert in the field of what came to be called unarmed combat and silent killing, together with more exotic forms of self-defence. She was an all-round human dynamo whom Suzie had disliked on first meeting but had grown to care about in later years. After Molly’s death, Suzie was the only one who knew of the serious affair in which Molly had been involved with Tommy’s driver, Brian. She had told nobody and thereby formed a special bond with Brian who was the one man, apart from Billy Mulligan, whom Tommy Livermore trusted with his deepest secrets. Lean, bronzed Brian was, for the best part of three years, the only person in the squad who knew of the attachment between Suzie and Tommy.
After Molly, a suitably trained WDC – Cathy Wimereux – had been posted to the Reserve Squad but she had lasted only a few weeks having, Suzie discovered later, made an overt pass at the chief and turned out to be, in Shirley Cox’s words, ‘Leaky as a buggered alibi.’ Shirley was blessed with a colourful turn of phrase mainly from consorting with auxiliary firemen and members of His Majesty’s Armed Forces.
They all called Tommy ‘chief’ but it was Molly who had so christened him and things were still done by Molly’s rules, as Emma had quickly determined. As they sauntered back to the convent entrance Suzie listened to Emma laying out her proposals for keeping the chief safe.
‘You could still delegate more,’ she told him, mentally wagging her finger. ‘Your best work’s been done when you’ve used your team as a proper company, marshalling their individual skills, sending them out to cover all the bases.’
Tommy replied with a grunt, knowing that was exactly how he worked anyway, but humouring the girl. ‘You really think so,’ glancing back over his shoulder and leering at Suzie. ‘Then I suppose I should put someone else in charge of this. Someone who knows more about nuns.’ Raising his voice, ‘Ought to put you in charge, Suzie, eh? I mean you’re the one who knows about nuns, aren’t you?’
‘Schooled by them, yes, Chief.’
‘Schooled by them and saw their drawers floating in the breeze, eh, heart?’
‘They taught me a great deal, Chief.’
‘They teach you fear, heart?’
‘Taught me to be God-fearing, yes.’
‘I didn’t quite mean that.’ They had reached the main door and Tommy walked carefully up the three wide and curved steps, placing his hand on the ornate metal ring that was the bell-pull. ‘What I mean is that nuns have always been a sign of sheer terror to me, heart. I don’t know how they strike you, but they scare the draggies off me.’ His slight Scottish accent becoming for a moment more pronounced and, as though providing an exclamation mark at the end of his sentence, Tommy yanked at the pull. From far away they heard the sonorous deep clang of a bell. Even on this hot Sunday afternoon there was eeriness about the sound, a faraway echo from deep within what Tommy viewed as a secret place.
Soon there were other noises from behind the door: first the scrape of a Judas-squint sliding back and the sight of a sharp eye gazing down at them, shining and steady like the eye of a bird. The eye apparently had a voice. �
�What can I do for you?’
Tommy’s head moved a fraction as he lifted his warrant card so that the eye could take it in. He then recited his rank and name, followed by Suzie’s and Emma’s credentials. ‘We’ve come to talk with the Reverend Mother,’ he said, his voice dry and gritty.
The voice of the eye did not reply, but bolts started to be scraped back. Suzie expected the hoarse barking of dogs, but almost silently the door swung open to reveal a tall, thin nun managing to smile gravely, which was quite a trick.
By this time, Shirley Cox had returned, red in the face and rather puffed. Sister Monica was under sedation and she hadn’t been able to talk to her. ‘The nurse said we’d be lucky to get anything out of her for some time,’ she told Tommy. ‘In shock.’
‘You’d better talk to her tomorrow, or later in the week,’ he told Suzie, who made a note in her pocketbook. Shirley was sent to join Ron in digging around the crime scene.
The habit of the Sisters of St Catherine of Siena was heavy and grey, tied around the waist with a thick rope girdle the end of which hung down the right side, secured with five large knots, representing the five wounds of Christ as they later discovered. A simple black crucifix hung on a grey cord around the sister’s neck, her head was encased in a white wimple running just below the neck and covered with a grey veil – the novices, they already knew, wore white veils. They’d seen them down the mortuary.
‘Welcome to our Mother House,’ the nun said in a young, musical voice, dropping a little curtsey to Tommy which quite threw him. Then she curtsied to Suzie and Emma as they crossed the threshold and entered the cool interior of the convent, into a hall with red tiles underfoot and three great Norman stone arches at the far end.
‘Reverend Mother is expecting you.’ The nun made a small gesture indicating they were to follow her through the right-hand archway and as they moved Suzie felt the depth of the silence, and caught the sweet smell of polish and incense. The odour of sanctity, she thought.
CHAPTER FOUR
Magnus’s assessment of Mother Ursula seemed to be spot on. At first sight she appeared to be shrinking into nothingness, very old, and, if not totally decrepit, at least in the middle stages of physical ruin. Later they discovered that she was in fact almost ninety-seven, having been born in the August of 1847.
She sat on a high, leather-buttoned armchair that made her seem even smaller than she was in reality: an almost doll-like figure swallowed by the height of the chair back and arms.
A young nun, solemn but spry, told the Reverend Mother that the police had come to see her.
‘A detective and two women detectives,’ Tommy said, introducing himself, shaking her hand.
‘Ah.’ The old lady had a cultured voice, verging at times on a cackle. ‘Another community, the police. Lady officers are not unlike nuns.’
Suzie stepped forward. Mother Ursula’s hand felt like a dry leaf and she did not dare put any pressure into the grip. The old hand might crumble away, while the face looked like the face of an aged cat, scored with a criss-cross of lines, the eyes large and slow-blinking, milky, her nose near flattened into her face and below it the mouth thin and small, opening to show tiny, sharp teeth, all her own.
‘Thank you for coming to see me,’ the old lady said. ‘I get few visitors from the world these days.’
Hold hard, thought Suzie, you’re the Mother Superior: you should get lots of visitors. ‘We have to talk with you, Mother Ursula,’ she told her.
‘Well, that’s nice. That’s nice. What are we to talk about?’
She’s clueless, Suzie considered. Aged in faith, and with that age comes a broken mental cog, a slip in the brain mechanism. Shouldn’t really be in command of even a bunch of nuns.
Tommy said it was about the poor novices who had been killed. ‘The flying bomb,’ he explained.
‘The flying bomb, yes. What a terrible weapon,’ shaking her head. ‘Sometimes I think this man Hitler is the devil incarnate. We should smite him, hip and thigh as Samson smote the Philistines. But we are, aren’t we? In France now, at this moment, young men are dying. In Normandy. Let us reflect on that for a moment and say a prayer for those gallant soldiers.’ She clasped her mottled, bony hands together, bowed her head and closed her eyes.
They had no option but to at least go through the motions of prayer, though Suzie did say a silent Our Father and a Hail Mary for the men fighting in and over Normandy.
A minute later, without warning Mother Ursula began speaking again. ‘I was so alarmed when that flying bomb fell today, so close. When my dear mother was frightened she used to say, “I nearly jumped out of my skin.” Well, I know the feeling for I almost jumped out of mine, what’s left of it, when that thing went off. The angelus had just finished and I knew at once it was one of these newfangled bombs; it’s not the same as the Blitz which was bad enough, this is different and worse. You hear that little engine and nobody knows when it will stop and send its dreadful cargo down to wipe out people in what appears to be a random way. It’s a little like a game we used to play as children: you stood in a circle and put a bottle in the middle and you’d spin it. When it stopped the neck would be pointing to someone who was deemed “out”. You follow? But I was most concerned because the bomb was so close. You see there are more of us here at the moment…’
‘Really?’ Tommy was about to continue but Mother Ursula went steaming on.
‘… It’s holiday time, the summer, so sisters who spend term times at work in schools all over the country come back to this, the Mother House, for the summer. By the middle of August we’re quite full up with few spaces left for visitors. We are a teaching order you see, Mr…?’
‘Livermore,’ Tommy started again, ‘and I…’
‘Mr Livermore.’ Mother Ursula did not hesitate for a second. ‘Dear Canon Brooking who founded our Community of St Catherine of Siena in 1871 saw it as a way of fulfilling two requirements: first to make provision for a religious order for women who also had a vocation to teach; second, to provide a phalanx of devoted Christian teachers in a profession that was gradually being filled by men and women with no formal religious beliefs or inclinations. Oh, we were very much part of the Church Militant when we first marched forth to do battle in the schools.’
‘Yes, Reverend Mother, I…’ But Tommy didn’t stand a chance. Mother Ursula was giving them a little lecture and she wasn’t about to curtail it.
‘We have sisters serving in schools all over the country, you know. All over. Some become helpers in small parishes and so assist, part time, in local schools, others are resident in schools, and of course we have our own school, St Catherine’s, Winsley, near Bath. Fully staffed by members of the community, with its own chaplain. Everything. And, of course, there is also our Mission in Africa – sixty sisters doing three years duty there all the time.’
At last she paused to take a breath and Tommy stepped in. ‘Mother Ursula, the novices who were killed?’
‘Yes?’ vague, as though only dimly recalled.
‘You saw the bodies, I understand. And you identified two of them.’
There was a long silence which, Suzie thought, you could hear it was so tangible, and somehow she didn’t see the conflict between silence and sound. She was conscious of the room, the crucifix on the wall, the small bookcase with its rows of religious works. Above the books hung the sentimental Holman Hunt Victorian print The Light of the World that always jogged Suzie into thinking of the King’s broadcast at the first Christmas of the war, when he had quoted the words of the poet Minnie Haskins:
And I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year: ‘Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.’
And he replied:
‘Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the hand of God. That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way.’
Like so many people at that time, in the closing days of 1939, standing above the abyss of war, the words had given Suzie hope and a li
ttle courage.
The young nun stood behind Mother Ursula’s chair and looked about to speak, lips parted. She had a lovely open face and Suzie wondered if sometimes being a nun was simply a retreat from the hardship of the world. She knew this wasn’t always so, and a wise old priest had once explained to her the drive and devotion that was needed in a woman who put herself under discipline to a religious order, the firm grip of a life lived in prayer and to the glory of God. There was certainly no escape from reality in that.
‘I saw the bodies, yes. And I recognised two of them, yes,’ Mother Ursula finally said.
‘Then could you name them for us, Mother?’
Again a silence stretching into the next world.
‘No, my good man. No, I couldn’t. I recognised them. Two of them, but I could not tell you their names. They were novices. I really don’t keep the names of all my sisters in my head. Sister Eunice, the Novice Mistress, will tell you who they are. I simply recognised them as novices preparing to enter the Community of St Catherine.’
Tommy seemed taken aback. ‘But you are the Mother Superior.’ He sounded lost and in need of help.
‘No,’ she smiled. ‘No, I am the Mother Superior General which is something completely different.’
At last the younger sister spoke. ‘In our order,’ she began, ‘the Mother Superior General is a titular position, usually given when a Mother Superior retires or becomes too old to carry the burden of leadership. The Reverend Mother Superior, Mother Rachel, is visiting our sister house in Farnborough today, with Sister Eunice. They should be back soon and they’ll certainly do as you require. Make a formal identification.’
‘And give us some details, Sister…?’ Suzie began.
‘My name is Sister Eve. Details of what?’
‘Of who these dead sisters are; their background; their families.’
‘As far as they are able, yes. Mother Superior’ll provide all that.’
‘I didn’t recognise one of them,’ Mother Ursula piped up. ‘She seemed a tall girl, big boned, but I don’t recall seeing her before.’
