A VOW OF FIDELITY an utterly gripping crime mystery

by Veronica Black

  A VOW OF FIDELITY

  An utterly gripping crime mystery

  VERONICA BLACK

  Sister Joan Murder Mystery Book 7

  Revised edition 2021

  Joffe Books, London

  www.joffebooks.com

  First published by Robert Hale in Great Britain in 1995

  © Veronica Black 1995, 2021

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organisations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental. The spelling used is British English except where fidelity to the author’s rendering of accent or dialect supersedes this. The right of Veronica Black to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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  ISBN: 978-1-78931-764-0

  CONTENTS

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

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  One

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  Sister Joan of the Order of the Daughters of Compassion sat demurely on the only hardbacked chair in the studio, sipping a bitter lemon, watching others gyrate in the centre of the room, legs flashing, arms windmilling. Faces blurred into the music and one of the dancers, hand outstretched, approached her, laughing into her face with open invitation in the narrow dark eyes. She set her glass down on a side table and rose, the ample skirts of her grey habit flapping above her ankles, her short white veil whipping across her face as she was whirled into the music and the colour.

  ‘I ought not to be here,’ she muttered, and pulled away, leaning back, becoming the fulcrum round which the dancers swirled and dipped and bobbed.

  Then someone hurled a pot of scarlet paint against the walls and the liquid ran down, staining the whiteness, forming pools on the bare boards, dyeing the feet of the dancers. The music had changed, becoming a loud clacking noise, a voice proclaiming, ‘Christ is risen!’

  ‘Thanks be to God!’ Sister Joan answered hastily, tumbling from the narrow bed to her knees on the floor with the ease of long practice.

  That, she thought, had been a dream and a half! After eight years in the religious life her subconscious mind still threw up the occasional nightmare to pierce her sleep with foreboding. They came less and less often but they still came, unbidden and disturbing.

  Five o’clock on a chilly September morning. She rose from her knees, poured cold water from the ewer into the basin, washed face and hands, cleaned her teeth, slipped off her nightdress and cap and drew on the regulation bra, knickers and tights without looking at her small, trim body. Two long slips, one of white cotton, one of grey flannel were covered by the grey habit with its high neck and wide sleeves. She laced up her low-heeled black shoes, tied the white cord girdle about her slim waist, clipped the crucifix and rosary into place at her side, brushed her short, curly black hair and adjusted the short white veil with her fingers moving expertly without the aid of a mirror, and stood up, music and dancing and splashing red paint gone from her brain.

  Opening her cell door she joined the line of sisters making their way to the chapel. Hands folded at waist level, blue eyes lowered, she descended the wide polished staircase up which beautifully dressed ladies had once mounted with their escorts to the ballroom above. That ballroom was now divided into refectory and recreation room, but the moulded ceilings with their faint tracery of gold leaves, the slightly curved balustrade with its carved newel post remained. The last of the Tarquin family had gone and high on the Cornish moors a convent stood, holding the memories of more gracious times deep in its stone.

  Across the wide hall with its polished parquet floor, turn left into the corridor which bypassed the two tiny parlours with their dividing grille where visitors were welcomed, past the row of narrow, arched windows that ran along the outer wall and into the chapel proper with the sacristy leading off it and a flight of spiral stairs leading from the side of the Lady Altar to the library and storerooms above.

  Genuflecting to the High Altar she stepped into her usual place, blessing herself and beginning her silent, private prayers. All about her the others were immersed in their own worship, each head bowed, looking to anyone who might be clinging to the ceiling like two rows of peas in grey pods, except that each one of these women with whom she had lived since coming to the convent three years before was a definite and separate individual, from Sister Perpetua, the infirmarian, with her quiff of grey-ginger hair and blunt manner to delicate Sister Martha who kept the enclosure gardens fruitful, almost singlehanded, and had the energy to lug bags of potatoes and manure around without working up more than the mildest of sweats.

  Mother Dorothy rose at the appointed hour to give out the subject for meditation.

  ‘The parable of the buried talents,’ she said in her cool, crisp voice, the light from the sanctuary lamp glinting on her steel-framed spectacles.

  Sister Joan repressed a grimace. Sometimes she felt a pang of guilt at the thought of all the pictures unpainted, the exhibitions unheld, the money unearned, the fame that might well have become hers, though most of the time she was forced to admit that her talent was a slight one, fame something that happened to other people, and the only way in which she could have earned a living was probably by designing greetings cards.

  At 7.30 precisely Father Stephens emerged from the sacristy to offer Mass. This was a low Mass, in contrast to the Sunday service. Father Stephens always offered the Mass as if he thought the Pope might be watching and marking him down for rapid promotion, Sister Joan thought, and felt her lips twitching into the beginnings of a stifled chuckle. Father Stephens was young, blond and handsome, rather less confident than he appeared to be but with a very proper sense of his own dignity. She preferred Father Malone who was elderly and absentminded and bought his old mother a new hat every Easter, carrying it home to Galway with a loving heart.

  The final blessing pronounced and the Angel of the Presence dismissed, Father Stephens withdrew. Mother Dorothy rose.

  ‘There will be a meeting of all the community in the parlour at ten o’clock,’ she announced. ‘It’s of some importance in the life of the community so please be on time.’

  Sister Joan filed out again, up the staircase into the refectory. A long oak table with benches down both sides and chairs at head and foot, a reading lectern, a side table from which food was served comprised the only furniture. Slices of dry brown bread, a large bowl of red apples and mugs of coffee were ranged along the table. The sisters ate standing up, permitted to talk and move around if they wished. Father Malone called it ‘gossip time’, but the gossip was mild. Padraic Lee had been fined for poaching again.

  ‘Which seems very unfair since we had the benefit of the fish,’ Sister Teresa said ruefully.

  She had been fully professed after Easter and was now lay sister, the Martha of the
community. With her rosy cheeks and infectious laugh she looked as if she had been born for the role of Martha, Sister Joan thought. She was also an excellent cook.

  ‘We shall of course offer to reimburse Mr Lee for the money he has lost,’ Mother Dorothy said.

  Sister Joan wondered how she proposed to do that. Each house of the order was supposed to be self-supporting, only the partly enclosed sisters being permitted to work, with the proviso that the employment didn’t interfere with their spiritual duties. At the moment money was even tighter than usual. Sister Martha sold some of the produce from the garden in the local market and Sister Katherine sold her exquisite lace, mainly to brides and mothers of babies about to be baptised, and little Sister David worked as a translator when she wasn’t cataloguing the books in the library, writing her series of children’s booklets on the saints (which hadn’t yet found a publisher), and taking care of the chapel, but that was all. I could sell some paintings, Sister Joan mused, and frowned, uneasily aware that she was more interested in expressing herself than in earning money for the convent.

  At ten o’clock she entered the shallow antechamber at the left of the front door, tapped on the inner door and entered the Prioress’s parlour. This was a beautiful room, huge windows looking out over the grass that stretched to the wall dividing the convent grounds from the track that meandered across the moor, past the Romany camp and the old schoolhouse towards the town. The brocade-covered sofas and spindle-legged chairs had long gone, replaced by filing cabinets and a flat-topped desk and a row of stools, but there were still silk panels on the walls and gilt roses at the cornices.

  ‘If you please, Mother, do you require my attendance?’ Sister Hilaria, novice mistress, had popped her large face round the door.

  ‘The entire community, Sister,’ Mother Dorothy said firmly, ‘including your postulant.’

  ‘Come along, Bernadette.’ Sister Hilaria fussed her charge forward, looking like a large rabbit with only one of its litter surviving.

  Sister Joan glanced towards the pink-smocked figure, the large white bonnet covering the shaven head effectively cutting off the girl’s vision at each side. Bernadette was new, the only postulant they had since Sister Marie had moved on into the novitiate proper. It must be lonely for Bernadette, forbidden to receive visitors, allowed to speak only to the Prioress, the novice mistress and the priests, and she had almost a full year to go before she could grow her hair one inch and wear the grey habit and black veil of the novice. It was impossible to tell. The lowered head and eyes and folded hands gave nothing away.

  ‘Are we all here?’ Mother Dorothy looked round.

  ‘Just one moment, Mother.’ Sister Perpetua was settling Sister Mary Concepta who had struggled up from the infirmary where she and Sister Gabrielle spent their nights and most of their days. ‘There! Now we’re all comfortable again!’

  ‘Speak for yourself, Sister!’ Sister Gabrielle said sharply. ‘At eighty-six I reserve the right to be uncomfortable! Good morning, Mother. Has the meeting begun?’

  ‘By your leave, Sister.’ Mother Dorothy allowed a faint reproof to enter her tone. Oblivious to it, Sister Gabrielle said cheerfully, ‘Right then! Let’s begin!’

  ‘It is a question of money,’ Mother Dorothy said, seating herself at her desk. ‘We all know that jobs are very hard to come by and that we are, in any case, limited in the work we can do. Since the local school closed our income has been whittled away month by month, and unfortunately the building needs upkeep. We are not in the least extravagant but a certain amount of expenditure is necessary for survival. I have been thinking about the problem for some time and I have reached a conclusion.’

  ‘Euthanasia,’ Sister Gabrielle said darkly.

  ‘I beg your pardon, Sister?’ Mother Dorothy stared at her.

  ‘The modern way of dealing with the aged,’ Sister Gabrielle elaborated. ‘Depend upon it, Mary Concepta, one of these days soon we’ll taste a bitterness in our cocoa and then it’ll be requiem and two less mouths to feed. Don’t look so shattered! I’m joking!’

  ‘Rather tastelessly, Sister dear,’ Sister Mary Concepta said.

  ‘May we get on?’ Mother Dorothy to whom Sister Gabrielle was sometimes a thorn in the flesh rapped her pencil on the desk. ‘As I was saying I have thought deeply about the problem. Apart from Sister Hilaria and myself we are eight sisters, one novice and one postulant — twelve in all. We must become — not prosperous but able to maintain the community without begging or getting into debt. I have been thinking that one way in which we could earn money would be by holding weekend and week-long retreats — quiet holidays for people who need to recharge their batteries so to speak.’

  ‘In the convent?’ Sister David sounded uncertain.

  ‘I was thinking of the postulancy,’ the Prioress said.

  Eleven minds promptly switched to the old dower-house at the back of the abandoned tennis court where novice mistress and postulants lived, largely separate from the main community.

  ‘But where would Sister Hilaria and Sister Bernadette go?’ Sister Marie asked.

  ‘I have been thinking of the storerooms next to the library,’ Mother Dorothy said. ‘We could clear one and adapt it as two cells and a lecture room. There is already a toilet up there and meditations could be done down here in the chapel. Of course the rule must be kept but I see no reason why the new arrangements wouldn’t work. However this is such a novel idea that I require your opinions. Sister Hilaria?’

  The novice mistress blinked her slightly protruding eyes and said, ‘Yes, I approve. Bernadette and I will manage very well up there. It is quite separate from the library and far enough away from the noise of the main house not to be a distraction.’

  ‘We’re not exactly noisy over here,’ Sister Perpetua objected. ‘You make it sound as if we played pop music all day.’

  ‘I meant thoughts,’ Sister Hilaria said. ‘Thoughts can be very loud.’

  ‘Bernadette?’ Mother Dorothy looked at her.

  ‘I think the community needs to make money and this is a good way,’ Sister Bernadette said in her decided Yorkshire accent.

  ‘As you two are the ones most seriously affected by any change, your approval does encourage me to go ahead with a lighter heart,’ Mother Dorothy said, her brow clearing. ‘Has anyone any rooted objection on principle?’

  ‘It does seem rather a pity,’ Sister David hesitated, ‘to lose the postulancy.’

  ‘We won’t be losing anything,’ Sister Perpetua said. ‘At the moment we have two people rattling about in a building designed for seven. That’s waste which is against the rule anyway. We could try the lay retreat scheme for a year and then if it turns out to be a failure there’s nothing lost because the postulancy is still there.’

  ‘And by next year we may have more postulants,’ Sister Hilaria said hopefully.

  ‘Girls don’t want to be nuns these days,’ Sister Gabrielle said. ‘If we put in a television set and let them smoke and entertain their boyfriends we’d find more of them wanting to take the veil!’

  ‘Vocations are scarce everywhere,’ Mother Dorothy said. ‘At least we can comfort ourselves with the thought that quality is better than quantity.’ She nodded, smiling, towards Sister Bernadette.

  ‘Won’t the alterations take some money?’ Sister Katherine enquired.

  ‘I’ve taken that into consideration,’ Mother Dorothy informed them. ‘The storerooms can be cleared and temporarily partitioned.’

  ‘Those storerooms are crammed with stuff,’ Sister Joan said. ‘Some of it might be valuable.’

  ‘I doubt that very much,’ Mother Dorothy objected. ‘From what I’ve seen of it most of the boxes are filled with junk. No, I don’t propose getting rid of it. I suggest we merely move it all into the smallest of the storerooms and adapt the rest into two cells and a lecture room for Sister Hilaria and Sister Bernadette. Of course if nobody books for a retreat then they will move back into the postulancy proper and we shall have to
think of some other money-making scheme.’

  ‘What kind of retreat were you proposing to offer?’ Sister Perpetua asked.

  ‘A few quiet days in beautiful rural surroundings with good plain vegetarian food, the opportunity to relax and attend services and unwind. I was also thinking that we might give a few talks on various aspects of the cloistered life.’

  ‘It sounds an excellent idea,’ Sister Mary Concepta approved. ‘I’m sure many people will be happy to come here, Reverend Mother.’

  ‘Not without advertising they won’t,’ Sister Joan said.

  ‘Isn’t advertising a little vulgar?’ Sister David pushed her spectacles higher on her upturned nose.

  ‘If nobody hears about us then nobody will come,’ Sister Perpetua said, allying herself with Sister Joan. ‘Advertisements in the Catholic papers? In the secular Press?’

  ‘Brochures sent out to as many parishes as we can cover,’ Sister Katherine said.

  ‘That’s an excellent notion, Sisters. I have discussed this with Father Malone and he has undertaken to give it all as much publicity as possible. Am I to take it there is a general agreement then?’

  ‘With reservations.’ Sister David, who could be obstinate despite her tiny frame and rabbit features, had flushed.

  ‘Good, then we’ll set things in motion as fast as possible.’ Mother Dorothy lifted a restraining hand as the sisters rose. ‘Sister Joan, will you remain behind?’

  ‘Yes, of course, Reverend Mother.’ Sister Joan seated herself again. The door closed behind Sister Perpetua, the last of the line.

  ‘Sister Joan, since you gave up duties as temporary lay sister, you must find time hangs heavily upon your hands,’ the Prioress said.

  ‘At least the cooking is better,’ Sister Joan said.

  ‘That’s true,’ Mother Dorothy said, looking amused. ‘Your talents don’t lie in the culinary field, I’m afraid. Sister Marie, on the other hand, does very well as does Sister Teresa. I did tell you some time ago that I hoped to make you assistant novice mistress. Unfortunately one postulant doesn’t justify my raising you to that position. Someone, however, is required to conduct the retreats we plan. I have considered the choice very carefully and have reached the conclusion that you are the person best fitted to do so.’