by Maeve Binchy
Sister Alice realised that the religious community’s reaction to the theft of the Caravaggio perfectly illustrated the value of the life she had chosen. And yet … and yet Sister Alice’s deeply founded and ever-present sense of justice twitched ever more strongly as the days went by. Communing with God was fine, most of the time, but even He had lost His rag once or twice when He had been outraged by events. He had whipped the money-lenders from the Temple, for example. He was no pushover, Our Lord, and if He was here now, Sister Alice was convinced, He would want the Caravaggio found and returned.
Sprinting flat out, pushing herself to the limit of endurance and praying for inner peace, Sister Alice rounded a bend and came face to face with a large man.
A number of things happened very fast. The big man drew back his fist. Reflexively, Sister Alice pivoted, sprang in the air and swung at him with her extended right leg, the heel of her boot whistling in a deadly parabola. In the fraction of a second in which she was airborne, Alice realised that this attack might not be necessary, and adjusted the plane of her body so that she simply landed on two feet, cat-like and crouched opposite the man, her flattened hands out before her.
The man stared and slowly lowered his fist. He was overweight and middle-aged, with close-together small eyes and hair that grew on his head in ginger tufts.
‘Just out for a little jog, Sister?’ he blustered, recovering.
Alice looked at him coolly before turning her back and returning to the convent. The next day, during her instruction with Sister Columba, she recounted that she had found someone trespassing on convent ground and learned, after she described him, that the trespasser was Cyril O’Meara, the man who owned the adjoining farm and who claimed that the Fitz-Johns, the former owners of Doon Abbey, had robbed his family of its land.
13 June, 10 PM
She leaned forward to her vanity mirror, angled the tweezers and snipped the silky but wayward eyelash. She stepped back and appraised herself. She smiled at what she saw. Her eyes flashed. She looked not just good – she looked great. You look great! she whispered to her image. You are one sexy and amazing-looking woman!
Sitting on the bed, she eased on her tights: long, right leg first, sculpted toe, pointed like a ballerina’s; left leg with its lovely smooth and rounded calf. For the last thirty minutes she had applied her battery-powered Epilady to both legs. The tights glided languidly up her succulent thighs. She loved this moment, this sensual and timeless affirmation of womanhood.
‘You’re so big!’ Mama had always said, with a mixture of guilt and despair, as if she, a small woman, was unaccountably to blame for having had such a large child.
She had always felt miserable when Mama commented on her size. She had hated herself. Her height, her big shoulders, her square hips. She had felt trapped in someone else’s body. And the thing Mama had said! The word she had used … So cruel to say it even once to a little girl, let alone every day. So brutal! In bed, dreaming of the person she wanted to be, she had cried herself to sleep.
She applied the mascara that matched the green hills and valleys of her childhood. She had been sixteen years old, staying with her cousins who lived down the country over the fashion boutique her aunt ran. One evening, when they had all gone to the cinema, she found herself downstairs in the boutique. In the back office stood a steel wardrobe and a mirror. She opened the wardrobe and stood back, hands to her mouth. A rack of the most stunning dresses she had ever seen was hanging there.
First their scent: the beautiful world of the feminine enveloped her in its mystifying fragrance. And then their colours: no prism could have captured the variety and register of what that riotously joyful wardrobe contained.
Over the next two hours, she discovered how size was no barrier to beauty. She stripped to her underwear, then tried on one dress after another. The gorgeous fabrics, mainly silks, made her almost swoon. She collected them in her fists and buried her face in them. In a daring three-quarter-length orange dress with a plunging neckline, she no longer looked big and awkward; she looked positively feline! A dark green dress with a halter neck made her look ten years older and gave her an air of mystery.
Upstairs, in her aunt’s bedroom, she found nail polish. With great care she painted each fingernail and toenail. A little foundation for her face and neck, a little powder. Green mascara: she had never known such a thing existed! She felt attractive; she felt astonishing.
Now, decades later, she zipped up her black voile dress, chose a pair of shoes with platform heels for the work ahead – the bigger the better, she thought – and made last-minute adjustments to the hair that fell in rich Titian tresses to her shoulders. She took a moment to review her image in the restored, gilt-framed looking glass that she had surrounded with a gay arrangement of fresh-cut roses, irises, sunflowers and hollyhocks. She smiled. From her wardrobe, she took a dark green gabardine coat, picked up her handbag, slipped on her dark glasses and made for the door.
Outside it was dark. She loved the dark, like the name she had given herself: Dark Heart. It was after eleven when she parked in an anonymous twenty-four-hour multi-storey in central Dublin. The streets were empty. She left the carpark, walked for half a mile, then got on a late night feeder bus going to the north side. Sometimes men looked at her and she gave them a little smile. Alighting from the bus, she walked for another ten minutes. Her streets. She hailed a taxi.
‘Not a bad evening, ma’am,’ the taxi driver said as she sat in.
‘Liffey Valley,’ Dark Heart said.
Doon Abbey
14 June, 11 AM
Despite the avalanche of prayer in which she was immersed, Alice could not help her mind leaping ever more feverishly to the theft of the Caravaggio. The silence, other than prayer spoken out loud, or psalms, or hymns, was driving her to distraction. That morning in the kitchen, when only she and Sister Mary Magdalene stood side by side, beating flour and water, Alice whispered, ‘Do you know what’s going on here?’
Sister Mary Magdalene, uniquely and by special permission of Sister Mercy Superior, roved the ether in search of holy texts and sacred music on the laptop computer her family had donated to the convent. But now her kind and giving eyes blinked in shock at Alice’s unexpected intrusion into her silent world. In consternation, she returned to her task at the mixing bowl.
Alice began to see Bruno Scanlon Senior in the evening shadows and even beyond the grille of the chapel, into which a trickle of Mass-goers had begun to return every morning. She also, worryingly, was having vivid dreams about Ned, in which her former boyfriend was attempting to flog the Caravaggio in Amsterdam.
She tried to restrain her mind by memorising the regulation of the Psalms; she could not concentrate. The numbers of the Psalms reminded her of the numbers of Dublin buses, and with the numbers of the buses came their origins and destinations – all of which served only to remind her of cases against criminals that she had pursued in those areas of Dublin. She was going to burst.
Then at half past six that evening, as she was leaving the refectory, she felt her sleeve tugged. She looked around and saw Sister Mary Magdalene standing there, eyes bulging. Motioning with her head from right to left in the universal gesture which said ‘Follow me’, Sister Mary Magdalene set out at a brisk pace across the cloister towards the old banqueting hall in the disused south wing.
It was a misty evening, with the sun still up there somewhere, doing its best to come through, just like Our Lord. Sister Alice felt sure that Sister Mary Magdalene was going to remonstrate with her for her sinful attempt at conversation the day before. But Sister Mary Magdalene, whose voice Alice in three months had only ever heard in choir, closed the door, turned to Sister Alice and said, ‘I know this is not right, but, no more than you, can I keep it bottled up, because I have eyes in my head, and what I’m seeing fills me with dread that my chosen life here in Doon Abbey is in real danger of coming to an end. Yesterday, I was confronted with a sudden revelation that without the income from the
Caravaggio, we are doomed. Like other communities I’m sure you’ve read about, we will most likely end up in a housing estate in Castledermot or the like, which is not why I became a nun. I have also seen things recently that have filled me with terror, but about which I am reluctant to speak, even to you. Although I am obedient and have given my life to God, as you have too, dearest Alice, I cannot stand by and watch everything I love be sold off. Since I think that too is your position, I am taking this huge risk this evening of asking you: what should we do?’
Sister Alice looked at Sister Mary Magdalene’s honest but fearful expression and felt a surge of vindication.
‘Tomorrow morning,’ Alice said, ‘we must go and talk to Sister Mercy Superior.’
Doon Abbey
15 June, 4 AM
Sister Alice lay awake, her thoughts of Sister Mercy Superior in free-flow.
Doon Abbey’s head nun was a bulky woman, standing well over six feet tall, with powerful hands, iron-grey hair and thick black eyebrows above deep brown, almost black, eyes. That Sister Mercy Superior was pious and even serene in prayer, Sister Alice did not doubt. But if a sister in the kitchen baking altar breads scalded her hand and cried out in pain, a dark look from Sister Superior was enough to ensure that there would not be a second yelp. Doon Abbey’s commanding head nun ran a tight ship, in which the ministry of the Aurelians – eternal prayerfulness in the name of Our Lord – was ever maintained.
And yet, Sister Alice had come to realise, Sister Mercy Superior had been elected to her current position only the month before Alice’s arrival, replacing Sister Winifred Superior. Sister Winifred was no longer in the convent and, as Sister Alice had observed, none of the tidy headstones in the convent’s cemetery bore her name.
But there was something else. Alice tried to blame her observation on her police training, which was striving to assert itself – but it was no use. She lay in her cell and she was certain. Guilt had taken over Sister Mercy Superior’s features; there was no other name for it. Sister Mercy Superior was hiding something.
Doon Abbey
15 June, 11 AM
A procedure was laid down for requesting a meeting with Sister Mercy Superior which involved Sister Alice and Sister Mary Magdalene applying through Sister Columba. At first the novice mistress, whose eyes became enlarged with curiosity, wanted to know the agenda, and became resentful when Alice insisted that she would reveal what she had to say only to Sister Mercy Superior.
‘She is very busy,’ Sister Columba said, puffing herself up like a tiny lizard.
‘Listen, Sister,’ Alice said gently, ‘this is important.’
‘I’ll see how her diary looks for the next couple of weeks, but I cannot promise anything,’ said Sister Columba stiffly.
Sister Mary Magdalene sighed deeply and turned away, defeated. But Sister Alice then said, ‘I’m sorry, Sister. I don’t think you understand. Either you set it up now, today, or we’re just going up there.’
Sister Columba became even shorter of breath and her face grew red with fury. But ten minutes later she was hauling her way up the marble staircase with some agility as Alice and Mary Magdalene trailed a respectful distance behind. On the landing, Sister Columba paused to regain her composure, then continued on down the oak-panelled corridor, past occasional crucifixes, pictures of assorted saints and, mounted in recesses, various adaptations of the indefatigable Infant of Prague. She reached the oak door and rapped on it.
‘Benedicamus Domino,’ she intoned.
‘Benedicamus Domino,’ came the muffled reply. The three women went in.
The room was brightly illuminated by morning light. Sister Mercy Superior sat at a square, plastic-topped table on an upright chair. Even seated, it was obvious how big she was. She glared at her visitors. Sister Columba spread her arms and hunched her shoulders in the gesture traditional to asserting innocence.
As Alice approached the table, she could see that Sister Mary Magdalene was shaking with fear. Alice wondered if she had now crossed a line that would result in her ejection from the convent. One part of her, the part that still thought of Ned every day, wished this would indeed be the case; but, simultaneously, the side of her which had decided to become a nun sank at the prospect of such a failure.
She took a deep breath and said, ‘Sister Mary Magdalene and I have been talking.’
As the head nun and the novice mistress exchanged scandalised glances, Alice realised that she had not opened with the most judicious remark. Nonetheless, she continued, ‘Mary Magdalene and I love this place and we are giving our lives to it in the service of Our Lord, but that doesn’t mean we should stand by and see our dreams destroyed. Please tell us what is going on.’
Sister Mercy Superior stared fiercely at her young novice.
‘I beg your pardon, Sister Alice.’
Alice took a deep breath and continued: ‘Look, there’s a problem, isn’t there? We’re all intelligent women, and we’re all in this together. Mary Magdalene and I want to help. We’re young, smart and energetic. Include us, please. We can help you.’
‘How dare you!’ Sister Mercy Superior cried, quivering at the indignity. ‘You imply that I am somehow responsible for seeing, as you put it, your “dreams destroyed”? We take you in here and allow you to share our home, and this is what we get in return? And as for you, Mary Magdalene, I am so disappointed in you. Your treachery will not go unpunished, believe me.’
Sister Mary Magdalene let out a high-pitched cry and then slowly sank down into her brown habit as if her unseen legs had turned to jelly.
‘And weak too,’ Sister Mercy Superior rasped. ‘Take her out of my sight.’
Sister Columba moved to gather up Sister Mary Magdalene – a difficult task, given their respective sizes.
‘No! Wait!’
Sister Alice was standing between Sister Columba and the convent’s prostrate librarian.
‘I know this may be the last opportunity I have to say something, but I’ll say it anyway,’ Alice began. ‘You two know what my job was before I joined the Aurelians, but Sister Mary Magdalene doesn’t. I was a garda detective sergeant, Mary Magdalene, and a very good one at that.’
Sister Mary Magdalene’s eyes were wide as she picked herself up from the floor.
‘So I have a shrewd idea when there’s a problem – and there’s a problem here,’ Alice continued. She planted her hands on the desk and leaned forward so that Sister Mercy Superior could feel the impact of every word. ‘I’m guessing that the theft of the Caravaggio has left Doon Abbey very short of income. I’m guessing that the convent is shortly going to have to sell up because we’re not in a financial position to remain here. But why has this come about? Why can the convent not just claim from the insurance company for the painting and put the money in the bank?’
Sister Alice stared into the older woman’s unyielding face with its forward-thrusting jaw. Suddenly, the ancient telephone on the desk in the corner erupted. Both women remained locked in eye contact, as if to acknowledge that answering the call would mean defeat. The telephone rang and rang.
‘Answer the telephone, Columba,’ said Sister Mercy Superior through gritted teeth.
The novice mistress made her way warily to the desk and picked up the phone.
‘Doon Abbey,’ she said, in her grating voice. She listened. ‘Sister Columba,’ she said.
Alice straightened up, but Sister Mercy Superior continued to eyeball her fiercely.
Sister Columba staggered backwards. She flung the phone away from her as if it were a thrashing lobster. She began to wail.
‘Columba!’ Sister Mercy Superior shouted. ‘Shut up! What on earth …?’
‘That was Davy Rainbow, the journalist with the Doonlish Enquirer,’ Columba howled. ‘Mr Meadowfield is dead!’
Doon Abbey
15 June, 11.30 AM
Sister Mercy Superior sat back, as if winded. Two large tears slid down her cheeks.
‘What happened?’ she asked weakly
.
‘Rainbow doesn’t know,’ Sister Columba said, trembling. ‘Apparently Mr Meadowfield was found in a hotel bedroom in Liffey Valley, near Dublin. The guards tipped off Rainbow.’
‘And he’s definitely dead?’
‘As mutton,’ Sister Columba said. ‘He was murdered. Someone broke his neck.’
‘Oh dear Lord, protect us and have mercy on his soul,’ said Sister Mercy Superior, and made a sign of the cross. ‘Sisters, a few moments of silent prayer for a dear friend to Doon Abbey, now sadly departed.’
Alice bowed her head, as did the others, but now her blood was racing at the old speed as she tried to work out what this latest news meant. Found murdered in a hotel bedroom? Could that hunk with the clear blue eyes have been harbouring unspeakable vices?
‘Sister Alice, you are due an explanation.’
Alice looked up. Sister Mercy Superior, on her feet, strode five paces to her floor-to-ceiling windows and stared out at the fire escape. Blowing her nose noisily, she composed herself.
‘Last year, I asked Mr Meadowfield to have a look at our books. He was a good Catholic, as you may have observed, and was always eager to help us in whatever way he could.’
Did Sister Mercy Superior’s stern features relax into a softer countenance as she spoke Mr Meadowfield’s name, Alice wondered? If only for a moment?
‘He did the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela,’ Sister Columba whispered.
Sister Mercy Superior’s face hardened at this possible challenge to her exclusive relationship with the convent’s handsome, young and now deceased accountant, and she strafed the novice mistress with a withering look.
‘He took all our ledgers away for a week,’ she resumed. ‘I had entrusted our savings to be invested by our local bank manager. When Mr Meadowfield came back, he could almost not look me in the eye, he was so upset by what he had discovered. It was all gone, Sister Alice. Fifty years of toil by our predecessors, God be merciful to them, working their knuckles to the bone. Thirty years of milk sold to the co-op and heifers reared for market. Years of receipts from tourists. All gone. Gone.’
