A Dark and Sinful Death

by Alison Joseph

  ‘Nothing in themselves, of course, but — I’d got used to having privacy.’

  ‘Perhaps that’s why they moved you.’

  ‘It’s as if I’m not trusted to conduct my spiritual life without them supervising it the whole time. I feel like a child again.’

  ‘Is that such a bad thing?’

  ‘You didn’t know me as a child. And the girls, Julius, they all stand up when I come into a room. They’re so polite, and restrained, and — and so bloody English and repressed and — ’

  ‘And you’d rather have our crazy hostel residents?’

  ‘At least I’m useful there, I’m really needed. This lot are so privileged — ’

  ‘And immune from suffering? Surely not.’

  ‘It’s all so well mannered here.’

  ‘I imagine you were the same at their age.’

  ‘Perhaps that’s just the problem. Hang on a minute ... ’ She turned the heat down and added some fusilli to the water. ‘You were saying?’

  ‘Nothing really.’

  ‘Do you miss me?’

  ‘It’s part of my spiritual training not to.’

  ‘Perhaps one day you’ll tell me how it’s done.’

  ‘There was one thing, actually. Someone’s been trying to get hold of you. James Lombard.’

  ‘James — good grief.’

  ‘Is he the one who was the friend of your father?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Who was like an ally when you were a child, you said.’

  ‘Fancy you remembering that.’

  ‘And you were really fond of him, but he moved to the States.’

  ‘Julius, you know everything.’

  ‘He wanted your address. He’s going to write.’

  ‘To me? How odd.’

  ‘Did I do the wrong thing?’

  ‘No. No, I’d love to see him again. But — I can’t think why he’d want to see me.’

  ‘He said he had memories of your family.’

  ‘Yes — but they’re not the sort of memories one would want to re-live.’

  *

  Later she heard the sixth formers returning to their rooms, and went to look for Charlotte.

  Charlotte was sitting at her desk in her pyjamas. She looked up as Agnes came into the room. Agnes noticed the teddy bears arranged under huge posters of Keanu Reeves and Brad Pitt. She looked tired, Agnes thought. ‘I — er — took a phone call for you. During supper.’ Charlotte gave nothing away. ‘From Mark,’ Agnes went on, ‘Mark Snaith.’ Charlotte’s eyes widened. ‘He said, can you phone him. Something about not being able to do — to do something. He didn’t say what. I said I’d tell you.’ Agnes turned, calmly, to go.

  ‘Was that all?’ The girl’s voice was barely a whisper.

  Agnes turned back to her. ‘I imagine,’ she said, ‘that he didn’t want to give anything away to a stranger. If you had a secret arrangement for this week that he’s now having to cancel, he’d hardly have told me, would he?’ She smiled. Charlotte looked bewildered. Agnes said gently, ‘If you need to talk about anything, you know where I am.’

  ‘But you — ’ Charlotte began.

  ‘No,’ Agnes said. ‘Not me. I’m not going to judge you. If you want to talk, I’ll listen. Goodnight.’ She closed the door softly behind her.

  *

  ‘Gaping bloody hole in the timetable,’ Agnes heard Philomena saying as she walked into the staff room next morning. ‘Counting on you. You’ll cover, won’t you?’ Iona Gish, the head of art, nodded. ‘And go easy on the tropical animals,’ Philomena added. Iona looked at her blankly. ‘Ah, Sister Agnes,’ Philomena said. ‘Nash?’

  ‘You mean Pamela Nash?’

  ‘Funny turn last week.’

  ‘Yes, I know, she had a fit or something.’

  ‘Talked to the quack, he says, tell the parents. Write them a letter, you know the form. Nothing to worry about, fell into a dead faint, won’t happen again, keep an eye out, that sort of thing, all right?’ Philomena nodded benignly at Agnes and then left the room.

  ‘It’s a bit much for you,’ someone was saying to Iona, ‘that you have to cover for Joanna.’

  ‘I suppose no one knows whether she’s coming back.’

  ‘Was she ill?’

  ‘She seemed fine to me. Quiet, as usual, but nothing odd.’

  *

  ‘And Miss Baines was terribly poor,’ Clemmie Macintosh was whispering to a group of fellow fourth years who had gathered around her in the classroom. ‘And she had no garden and that’s why she was so fond of our gardens, and why she looked after the roses every day, because roses are for romance and she had no one to love her — ’

  ‘Clemmie, that’s enough thank you,’ Agnes said. ‘Perhaps, mesdemoiselles, we can begin our French conversation now.’

  ‘Maybe she was thwarted in love,’ Agnes heard someone whisper.

  ‘Bon, aujourd’hui, nous allons faire une dictée ... ’

  ‘Perhaps he jilted her. And now she’s gone and — ’

  ‘Killed herself?’ The whispering shrank to an awed hush.

  Agnes spoke. ‘Frankly, girls, I’m amazed that you could find the disappearance of one of your teachers to be more fascinating than French dictation.’

  *

  ‘They can’t stop talking about it,’ Agnes said, back in the staff room.

  ‘The Maths Fives reckoned it was unrequited love.’

  ‘Oh, the French Threes were for elopement.’

  ‘And suicide.’

  ‘Yes, we had suicide. I blame the English department.’

  ‘Why us?’ asked Jean Pagnell, a tall woman in a tweed suit.

  ‘Too many nineteenth-century novels. It gives them melodramatic ideas.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ Jean said. ‘Although, come to think of it, my group of fourth years couldn’t decide between nervous exhaustion and what they called a decline. Oh dear, I’d better stick to T S Eliot and Maya Angelou from now on.’ The bell rang for afternoon classes. There was a chaos of books and bags and departing staff, and then quiet descended. Agnes got another cup of coffee, and flicked through the local paper.

  ‘Allbright’s Mill facing redundancies,’ she read. ‘William Baines to retire.’ She read on. ‘William Baines, owner of Allbright’s Mill, has announced that he is to hand over control of the business to his daughter, Patricia, and her husband, Anthony Turnbull. “We aim to keep Allbright’s as a main player in the twenty-first century yam industry,” said Turnbull.’

  ‘Baines,’ Agnes said.

  ‘Sorry, Sister?’ The school secretary, Mary Watson, was making a cup of coffee.

  ‘Baines. William Baines.’

  ‘Oh, Allbright’s. My sister-in-law used to work there.’

  ‘But it’s the same as Joanna Baines.’

  ‘Joanna ... ?’ Mary thought for a moment, then shook her head. ‘I can’t see there’d be a connection. Joanna’s never mentioned it. And it’s a very common name round here. You see, the Allbright Baineses are a different lot altogether. You know it if you’ve met an Allbright Baines.’

  *

  That evening Teresa knocked urgently at Agnes’s door.

  ‘Leonora,’ she gasped as Agnes let her in. ‘There, look!’

  Agnes looked out of her window and saw a small figure with a suitcase striding purposefully down the drive in the yellow lamplight.

  Agnes sighed. ‘This must be her fourth attempt this year. Thanks, Teresa.’ Agnes pulled on her coat and ran down the stairs, out of the hallway, up the drive.

  At the gates, the girl turned her head and smiled. ‘Hello, Sister.’

  ‘Leonora — ’

  ‘How nice of you to come and say goodbye.’

  ‘Leonora, you can’t keep running away.’

  ‘Oh, but I can.’

  Agnes paused to catch her breath, leaning against the heavy wrought iron of the gates. ‘Is it so bad?’

  The girl’s exquisite manners never faltered. ‘Oh, Sister, you mustn’t t
ake it personally. You’ve all been very kind, but you see, I belong at home. They need me.’

  ‘And how were you going to get there at this time of night?’

  ‘I appreciate your concern, Sister, but really I can manage.’

  Agnes stepped in front of her, and took her arm, glad that she was still taller than the child. She began to propel her back towards the school.

  Leonora was chewing her lip. Her eyes were quite dry. She swallowed, then said, ‘It’s really a terrible waste of your time, Sister, I’ll only do it again.’

  ‘I’m sure you will, Leonora. But I have my job to do, you must understand that.’

  Leonora nodded, but her face was white with anger. She said nothing more all the way back into the school, all the way to her tiny room. Agnes waited while she changed into her pyjamas and brushed out her long blonde hair. A wisp of hair floated against her cheek, and Agnes saw there were tears in her eyes. She bent and kissed the top of her head. Leonora turned her face away and got into bed.

  We need an armed guard on this door, Agnes thought, closing it behind her. So much unhappiness, she thought, remembering what Julius had said, wondering why Julius was always right. She walked back along the darkened corridors to the main building, thinking she should tell Sister Philomena. She could hear voices at the main doorway, and the porch windows seemed to be lit with an odd blue light. As she approached, she realised she could see a police car through the open doorway. Philomena was talking to a policeman. Colin Furse was standing in the doorway.

  ‘What’s happened?’ Agnes asked Colin.

  ‘They’ve found a body,’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘No one we know. In the little stream that runs across the top of the moor up there, by the crag. They had to let us know because we’re the nearest dwelling. And because he was murdered. Stabbed. They’ll be up there all night, apparently. Sister offered my services to the police, being a man and all that.’

  ‘And did they jump at the chance?’

  ‘Strangely, they declined.’ His smile seemed to take some effort. ‘Perhaps they can afford enough torches of their own.’

  *

  On Friday morning, Agnes glanced out of her window while brewing coffee and making toast, and saw Leonora wandering aimlessly across the lawn. She left her half-made breakfast and hurried downstairs to the garden. Leonora looked up from the bare rose bushes and smiled.

  ‘It’s all right, Sister, I’m still here.’

  ‘I’m glad you are, Leonora.’ Agnes breathed in the wintry February morning, wondering if the girls had picked up the events of last night on their super-sensitive communications network. ‘I was thinking we should have a chat,’ she said to Leonora. ‘I know you don’t think it’ll do any good. But I’m afraid I insist anyway.’

  Leonora shrugged. ‘If you must.’

  ‘How about next week? Wednesday tea-time. In my room.’

  Leonora brightened slightly. Agnes’s room had acquired a mythology amongst the girls, as if they sensed that each new consumer durable installed there represented a triumph, that somehow the toaster and kettle and phone were on their side in the endless quiet rebellion which made up their school days.

  ‘OK, then.’

  ‘Four o’clock?’

  ‘OK. Thank you, Sister,’ she remembered to add, as the bell rang for the first lesson.

  Agnes lingered in the gardens. ‘These were all hers,’ a voice said. She looked up to see Elias approaching.

  ‘All whose?’ she asked.

  ‘Joanna’s.’ He gestured to the neat circles of rose bushes that now shivered in the breeze. ‘She would, you see,’ he said. His voice was low. Agnes could hardly hear what he was saying. ‘All this, all neat and pruned. It’s like her, to have everything ready.’ Elias looked up with sudden intensity, and she noticed the lines of pain around his eyes. She realised that he must have sought her out.

  ‘You were in the art room,’ he said at last. ‘The other night ... When she — ’

  ‘Joanna, you mean? Yes.Teresa heard a noise and called me.’

  ‘Would you mind — might I ... ?’ He shifted on his feet, staring at the dull black leather of his shoes on the bare winter grass. He raised his eyes to her again. ‘Do you have a moment — now? There’ll be no one up there.’

  Agnes followed him back into the school and up the narrow staircase to the art room. He pushed open the door. All was neat and clean, washed with thin sunlight. ‘You wouldn’t know anything had happened,’ she said.

  ‘What did she do?’

  How do you know, Agnes wanted to ask him. She went over to the window. ‘This was all covered in paint, black paint. You can see traces by the frame. She’d torn the paintings off the wall and covered them in black paint. See the table leg, all black? That’s where it was.’ Elias ran his fingertips across the workbench. ‘Oh, and she’d arranged some objects, like a still life.’

  Elias looked up. ‘A still life?’ His voice was unsteady.

  ‘Y-yes.’

  ‘What objects?’

  ‘There was fruit, and flowers — ’

  ‘These?’ Elias moved swiftly about the art room, gathering the vase from a corner shelf, the bowl, now empty of apples. ‘These flowers?’ He arranged the dry roses carefully in the vase.

  ‘And a skull.’

  ‘A skull?’ He smiled then, as at some private joke. He looked suddenly younger.

  ‘A sheep’s skull, I mean, not a human one. Why is it funny?’

  He shook his head. ‘It’s not. Not really ... A skull,’ he said, and his lips twitched with amusement as he looked for it.

  ‘There it is.’ Agnes brought it down from the paint shelf and handed it to him.

  He held it in his hands. ‘She would,’ he murmured.

  ‘She said something, when we found her.’

  ‘What did she say?’

  ‘Something about there being nothing. Nothing for her. “First him, now me,” she said.’ Elias’s gaze met her own. Agnes went on, ‘I — I know no more than that. I’m just telling you what I heard her say.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Is — is she in trouble?’

  Elias turned the skull over in his hands.

  ‘I mean, I know it’s not my business,’ Agnes went on.

  ‘No, it’s not.’ Elias began to dismantle his arrangement, putting the objects back in their places. He took a last look at the skull, then replaced it carefully on the shelf. He opened the door for her, and they walked back down the staircase in silence. They came out into the gardens, and wandered towards Joanna’s roses.

  ‘Will she come back soon?’ Agnes asked him.

  He shook his head. ‘I doubt it. Although — ’

  ‘What?’

  ‘This man they found on the moors last night ... ’

  ‘The — the dead one?’

  ‘Yes. Snaith.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Mark Snaith.’

  Agnes felt herself losing her balance. ‘Mark — Snaith?’ She put out her hand, grasping at thin air.

  ‘The murdered man. He was Baines’s gardener. He was only twenty-two,’ Elias was saying.

  ‘How do you — ?’

  ‘And the worst thing, somehow ... ’ Elias stopped and ran his fingers along the bare thorns of a rose bush. ‘The worst thing was, that his eyes had been put out.’

  Chapter Two

  ‘Hello, yes, I’m enquiring about the Snaith murder — on Morton’s Crag, last night ... All right, then the incident room ... in Bradford? Can I have the number then?’ Agnes tucked the phone under her chin and waved one hand madly over the toaster which was puffing blue smoke into her room. She reached across to grab a pen and paper, and wrote down a phone number. ‘Thank you. Goodbye.’

  She opened the window, pulled two charred pieces of bread from the toaster and dialled the number.

  ‘Hello, yes, I’m enquiring about the Snaith murder — Mark, yes, that’s right. I’m Sister Agnes, I wor
k at St Catherine’s School, yes, that’s right. The thing is — one of our girls was seeing this man ... Yes, I think so ... Charlotte Linnell, sixth former ... And she doesn’t know what’s happened, and I’m not supposed to know about her relationship, and ... yes, I thought you’d say that. Yes, OK. Thank you, officer.’

  It was four o’clock. Agnes went across to the main school and knocked on Sister Philomena’s door.

  ‘Sister — ’ she began.

  ‘Agnes?’ Sister Philomena gestured to a seat.

  ‘It’s all rather tricky.’

  ‘Well?’ Sister Philomena’s smile was friendly.

  ‘The police phoned just now,’ Agnes lied. She saw Philomena frown, and carried on, ‘um, in the office. I happened to answer it ... ’ Philomena picked up a Biro and turned it over in her stubby fingers. Agnes took a deep breath and said, ‘The murdered man, on the moors — you see, they found someone’s name and phone number on him.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Charlotte Linnell.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘She has no idea he’s dead. And they’d like to see her,’ Agnes said. ‘The police, I mean. I said I’d check with you, but that after supper would be OK. I’ve arranged, with your permission, to take Charlotte to the police station. I thought it would be fairer on her to have the discussion away from the school. With your permission of course.’

  Philomena studied the Biro in her hands.

  She knows I’m lying, Agnes thought.

  Philomena looked up and Agnes was aware of being appraised by the small, beady eyes with their heavy brows. ‘Permission granted,’ Philomena said, her gaze still fixed on Agnes. The words were like a move in a game. Her chair scraped back as she stood up. ‘Nash?’ she barked.

  The two women’s eyes met. Agnes thought she saw the glimmer of a smile.

  ‘Um, just about to do it, Sister.’

  *

  Agnes went to Mary Watson’s office, which was empty. She opened a filing cabinet and picked out a folder, flicking through the names until she found ‘Nash, Pamela. Date of birth, 22 July, 1982’. She turned to the section marked medical history. Under ‘Fits, Fainting, Epilepsy’, the parents had written ‘None’. There was an address in Cyprus, and Agnes noted it down. She put the folder away, composing in her head the letter she would write, both informative and reassuring at the same time. ‘Dear Fit Lt and Mrs Nash ... I am writing to let you know ... there is no cause for concern ... ’