Sister Caravaggio

by Maeve Binchy

  ‘Yes I do,’ Sebastian replied, sounding puzzled. ‘What has this got to …?’

  ‘Just forward them to me. Now.’

  ‘Yes ma’am.’ Sebastian sounded miffed by her curt tone.

  She ended the call and sat there, waiting, going through all the facts with clinical precision. Two minutes later, her iPhone squeaked. She opened the file, scrolled down, found the detail she was looking for, enlarged it and zoomed in until she could be absolutely sure.

  There was no doubt.

  She called Sebastian back. ‘Hi. Listen, I’m sorry I was so short with you just now, OK? But I’ve finally worked it …’

  The iPhone died.

  Alice found a turning place and in sudden rain started out on the road back to Dublin as fast as the little van could go. The noise of the rain all but drowned out her thoughts. She was just going to take the next step, and then the step after that, and then keep going until she had settled the whole thing. No deviation. No hesitation. Back on the beat. She got on to the motorway and drove in the wake of big lorries that threw up bow waves like ships at sea. The lights of a filling station loomed through the downpour. She pulled in and, under the bright lights, removed the toolkit that she had earlier taken from her Renault 4. She found what she wanted, wrapped in an oil cloth, then drove on.

  There was no time to lose, she now knew – not if she was to save the Caravaggio.

  Dublin Southside

  18 June, 8.30 PM

  As she neared Aylesmere, Alice realised that her hands were balled into fists, locked onto the steering wheel in a white-knuckle grip. Relax, she told herself. Lighten up. In retrospect, all crimes seem so simple. Why had she not seen it before?

  The rain cleared for a moment, and in the moonlight she could make out the shape of the Jesuit house. It looked almost derelict now. No lights were showing. She parked beside the steps leading up to the front door. Had Brother Harkin returned, she wondered? A flash of lightning lit the paintwork of the van. The grounds were dark, apart from a dim light in a distant glasshouse on the far side of the rolling front lawn. That must have been where the sunflowers and hollyhocks had come from.

  She decided to go around the back, walking on the balls of her feet. Another door at the top of steps – in this case a narrower door than the one to which Brother Harkin normally attended. Alice climbed the steps and pushed. The door fell open before her.

  She waited for a moment, then ventured into the hallway. There were no carpets, and the floor seemed to be missing several boards. After a moment, her eyes got used to the darkness, and she could make out a skylight towards the back of the house, and a stairway leading up to it.

  ‘Brother Harkin?’ she called. ‘Are you here?’

  Step by step, feeling her way, she began to climb, following the curve of the staircase and climbing a second flight until she was on the landing of the upper floor. Another sudden flash of lightning gave her a momentary vision of a large empty room, devoid of carpets and furniture. There was a crash of thunder. Then all was plunged into darkness once more.

  And silence.

  The scent of candles, drifting through the darkness, led her forward. At the side of the landing was a small door, standing ajar. As she approached, she sensed the flickering glow, and then made out the profile of a man with a large nose, kneeling on a prie-dieu amid two banks of small candles. In his right hand he held a cutthroat razor. Before him was an easel, on which stood Judas Iscariot as painted by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio.

  ‘Good evening, Father Rector,’ Alice said.

  Slowly, he turned to face her, rising to his feet. ‘Sister Alice. I was not expecting you back so soon.’

  ‘Nor was I. But then I realised that it was you.’

  By the light of the candles, she could see now that he had changed his clothing. Instead of the casual attire he had worn during her earlier visit, he was clad in full canonicals: a cope embroidered in cloth of gold, a purple stole, a white alb over a black cassock, shiny black patent leather shoes; only the purple socks remained unchanged.

  ‘Ah,’ he said with sudden interest. ‘How?’

  ‘Your socks,’ she said. ‘I saw them earlier, just as I was leaving. They’re also visible above your ankle boots in the CCTV coverage in Liffey Valley.’

  He was moving around the room in a wide arc.

  ‘So I am guilty, Alice. A sinner, in need of grace. Vanitas vanitatum, omnia vanitas. I purchased them three years ago, in Rome, in Barbiconi’s, the ecclesiastical outfitters behind the Pantheon. As a sentimental gesture, I have taken to wearing them in private. Today was to have been a private day,’ he concluded reproachfully.

  Alice felt that in different circumstances there might have been something pathetic, even endearing, about a priest being embarrassed about wearing purple socks.

  ‘Father Rector Rynne,’ Alice said evenly, ‘I am arresting you for the murder of Jeremy Meadowfield, and for handling stolen property, contrary to the provisions of the Criminal Justice Act 2001. There may also be other charges.’

  ‘You people never learn,’ the Rector said sadly. ‘That picture tells us everything about the need for betrayal, the need for crime and sin and loss. Without Judas, the story of the Crucifixion could never have occurred, and mankind would have remained unsaved. That is the power of art, the power of Judas, the power of Caravaggio. That is why Meadowfield had to die. I was only a poor foot-soldier carrying out my part in the universal scheme.’

  ‘Drop the razor, Father Rector. Now.’

  ‘You see, after your earlier visit,’ he went on, ignoring her, ‘I concluded that your pretty little nose had more than likely winkled out my secret. Therefore, the only sure way to avoid further complications is to destroy this sublime painting. It will melt into nothing by the flame of these holy candles, just as you will melt into nothingness very shortly, my dear.’

  ‘Why are you telling me this?’ Alice asked.

  ‘Because nobody should go to her death without understanding,’ the Rector said. ‘We are human beings, not beasts.’

  ‘What about the others you killed?’

  ‘I always tried to explain first,’ said the Rector indignantly. ‘I always did my duty. Even your former boyfriend would have understood why he had to die, if his ridiculous girlfriend had not intervened.’

  ‘I think I understand,’ Alice said, as the Rector cast off the heavy cope and moved towards her.

  He had slipped on a pair of black gloves and was swinging the blade of his cutthroat razor in the general direction of her neck with long, painterly strokes.

  ‘Why the letter “M”?’ Alice asked. ‘What does it stand for?’

  He sucked in his breath, as if she had struck him. ‘Mama …’ he began.

  ‘The “M” you carved on Brice’s back is for Mama?’ Alice asked, watching him circle her.

  The Rector let out a cry of anguish. ‘She shouldn’t have called me that!’ he cried. ‘She made me what I am.’

  He wiped his eyes and took a step towards her, his knife probing.

  ‘Called you what?’ Alice asked. ‘What did your Mama call you, Jonathan?’

  The big man was blubbering, his teeth grinding.

  ‘This may be your last chance to tell,’ Alice said.

  He made a feint and Alice skipped to one side.

  ‘She …’ He was fighting for his breath. ‘She … called me monster!’ he screamed, and plunged for her heart.

  Alice turned and ran. She stumbled down the great staircase, illuminated by lightning flashes, and twisted the handle of the door. It would not move. The Rector was swishing along behind her. She ran across the hallway in the darkness, and tripped and fell and tumbled down a flight of narrower wooden stairs.

  Down here, strangely, the electricity was working. A series of dim bulbs set in the wall guided her as she ran along a curving tunnel for what seemed like fifty or a hundred yards. She imagined the Rector closing on her with every stride, but he had vanished.
>
  She stopped, and listened. Silence. She walked on and found herself at the foot of a short flight of stairs, and went up, and through a door, and into a garden pavilion, with glass walls and shrubbery all around. She appeared to be somewhere between the main Jesuit house and the glasshouse she had seen earlier.

  In the pavilion were comfortable chairs, low coffee tables of an oriental design, seemingly made of teak, Turkish rugs, bookshelves with paperback novels, a large glass-fronted drinks cabinet. She reached for the glass-panelled door of the pavilion, found it locked, looked for the key, and recoiled as the Rector himself came towards her across the well mown grass. He was now outside the house and approaching her from the gardens, moving faster and with sharper movements than she remembered. He unlocked the door and stepped inside. Big drops of rain discoloured the shoulders of his alb. He was advancing with solemn deliberation, as though he was about to embrace her, or ask her to dance, then at the last moment he made a lasso of his purple stole and tried to sling it over Alice’s head. As she evaded his move, he closed in again, this time with gloved hands grappling for her throat. Alice dropped to the floor, rolled on to her back, braced on her elbows and kicked upwards as the Rector turned to crash his weight on top of her. Again she was too quick for him, catching him in the stomach with her up-kick as he started to fall. As he collapsed forward, she wedged her other foot firmly under his chest and swung him back over her head and into the glass cabinet. Sherry bottles, Madeira decanters, glassware of all sorts, together with a great array of Waterford crystal drinking glasses, crashed out. Alice had a confused sense of these shattered, glittering items as the Rector picked himself off the floor, wiped blood from his face and throat, and seized the ice pick which lay beside an ice bucket on the highly polished wooden floor.

  He advanced again, a glint of respect in his eyes, mingled with cold hatred and an energy she had not seen before. He swung the pick at Alice’s head, and when she raised her left elbow to block his blow, he countered with a high kick. Alice’s reactions were not as fast as they should have been; the sole of his polished black shoe grazed her ribs. She took a half-step backward, caught the shoe on its way down, grasped his well-turned ankle and gave it a sharp jerk. The Rector fell back sharply, striking his head off a broken vodka bottle. He was on his feet again, and bleeding heavily from his forehead. He sprang into a judo pose, and started to circle her with slow deliberation. The blood seeping down his face added an extra element of horror to his mask of hatred.

  ‘Come, my dear,’ he whispered. ‘Come to mother.’

  When it came, his attack was furious. A flurry of chopping fists, and she was thrown against a bookcase. He lunged at her with bleeding hands outstretched, grabbed at her throat but caught her mouth instead. She bit into a finger, which seemed to break, or perhaps she had only dislocated it.

  He clasped Alice’s throat in his good hand. He was laughing now as he dripped blood over her blouse. He tightened his grip on her throat. She was losing consciousness. For a split-second she thought this might be the end. He was going to have his way with her.

  And still she hoped to take him alive.

  Desperately, she jabbed her right knee into his groin. The Rector gave a shriek, followed by a howl. As he raised his left fist to club her again, she realised that this man would never give up. She dodged his blow, which went through the glass of the pavilion window. He pulled back, spurting blood, and looked in dismay at his bloody fist. Then he reached into the folds of his cassock and extracted a long stiletto, the handle fine-wrought gold.

  ‘This is the end then,’ he remarked conversationally, ‘the Toledo dagger, made of the very finest steel, you know.’ He kissed the hilt of his weapon as he waded towards her across Turkish rugs, holding the long knife on the heel of his fist. When he raised it high above his shoulder to strike down into her chest, Alice shot him once, a clean shot through the fabric of her denim jeans.

  The Rector stood still, swayed, looked down, spread his fingers across the wound in his chest. Puzzled, he opened his mouth to speak, but eloquence deserted him and he sank to the floor like a soufflé exposed to sudden cold.

  Alice looked into his face, but all she could see was the ghost of Bruno Scanlon Junior, peaceful, all done, falling asleep at last.

  Epilogue

  As autumn began, and the nights came in ever earlier, Sister Alice often lay half-awake, half-dreaming. The centuries sighed from the turrets and the elaborate finials that surmounted Doon Abbey’s Gothic windows. Moonbeams bathed the moss-covered buttresses and conjured intricate shapes from the ancient escarpments. Sister Alice knew that later she would hear the passage of mice in the corridor going about their nocturnal business, as they had done for generations, safe from the attention of Panda, the convent’s muscular tomcat, who slept with Sister Mary Magdalene Superior two cells to the east.

  It had been a good summer season, in the end, Alice reflected dreamily. The return of the Caravaggio to Doonlish, and its reinstallation in the convent chapel, had been reported on national television, and the resulting response from tourists had been phenomenal. The nuns had put up the viewing fee to fifteen euro a head and the resulting revenues had already had an impact in reducing the convent’s loan with the bank. Sister Mercy Superior had spent far too much on renovating the cottage in County Kerry and on the purchase of a car for Sister Winifred. But now, at last, financial equilibrium was in sight.

  A special Mass was said in the convent chapel to celebrate God’s goodness in overseeing the return of the painting to its owners. The celebrant was the recently ordained Father Rector Harkin. Even Sister Columba and Sister Mercy put aside their misgivings and sang in choir as if their lives depended on it alongside Alice, Maggie and Sister Diana. Incense curled heavenwards from the thurible as it gently swung from the strong hands of young Joe Foley, Sister Diana’s nephew, who still milked the cows on the farm. In the front row of the congregation pews, beside the Misses Hogans, little baby Aurelia Rainbow gurgled happily on her mother Winnie’s lap. A tear came to Alice’s eye as she saw how proud Davy Rainbow was with his family. No drink for three months, and a new job as a crime reporter with the Leinster Leader. What could be better? And Winnie had been promised a position as an auxiliary teacher in the local primary school, when she was finished breast-feeding.

  Alice’s gaze drifted to the window of her cell, and to the vivid stars in the night sky. When it was all over, Maggie and she had kept their promise and gone back to the Shelbourne for a drink. Sitting on stools at the Horseshoe Bar, a bottle of Pinot Grigio in an ice bucket between them, they raised their glasses.

  ‘We did it,’ Alice said.

  ‘You did it,’ Maggie replied. ‘I just tagged along.’

  A couple of men with big smiles on their faces were approaching.

  ‘Ladies …’ the first one began.

  ‘Get lost,’ Alice said.

  ‘Vamoose,’ Maggie snapped, as one of them tried to draw in a stool near her.

  As the men withdrew, the two nuns could scarcely stop giggling.

  ‘It’s over, isn’t it?’ Maggie said. ‘I mean, it was awful, but it was also kind of fantastic. There were times, I have to admit, when I wondered if my vocation was slipping away. But then I tried to imagine myself as Mrs Sebastian Hayes, and all I could think of was the Crucifixion.’

  Alice laughed. ‘He’s nice,’ she said. ‘He needs a good woman to straighten him out.’

  ‘But not this woman,’ Maggie said. ‘How about you?’

  Alice drank some wine and speared a stuffed olive with a little stick.

  ‘I think Ned’s found his comfort zone,’ she said. ‘He wants a conventional woman, someone who doesn’t question … a mother for his children. I’m too much of a maverick for Ned. Too much of a rebel.’

  ‘You mean, a bit like Caravaggio,’ Maggie said.

  ‘You and I would have got on with him, I think,’ Alice said. ‘We would have understood Caravaggio.’

  ‘I’
ll drink to that,’ Maggie said.

  *

  What had annoyed Alice more than anything was the absence of a single prosecution. It was the Irish way, she knew, but still: so many corpses, and not a single arrest warrant issued. Sebastian had driven to the convent to explain.

  ‘The word has come down from on high,’ he said. He added, ‘I mean from our on-high as opposed to your on-high.’

  ‘I understand,’ Alice said.

  ‘To make a fuss of this would offend so many separate interest groups that the powers-that-be have as good as stood down any further action. They could withstand pressure from the religiously minded population, or the transvestite community, or the feminist community, or the Society of Jesus, or organisations supporting nuns, or people who hate Caravaggio, or people who love Caravaggio – but not from all of them.’

  Nonetheless, Alice’s promise to Bruno Scanlon had been kept by the gardaí. Bruno and Natalie were living in an undisclosed location until such a time as his evidence could be used.

  Alice even felt sorry for poor Cyril O’Meara, the farmer who had tried to warn them, but had gone about it the wrong way. His widow revealed that Cyril had had a dream in which he saw Alice being burned at the stake as a witch. He felt that if anything happened to her, he would be blamed. When he learned that she had left the convent to find the Caravaggio, he had set out in pursuit, God rest his soul.

  The only person left to prosecute over the Caravaggio affair was Kazakhstan-born Mafia boss Matthias Taboroski, aka Metro, who lived in County Kildare. But Bruno had never had direct contact with him, so no criminal case could be taken against Metro, who, it was thought, was spending less time in Ireland. Sebastian did tell Alice, however, that since the summer, Bruno Scanlon had lost three stone in weight and had become a daily communicant.

  *

  The Rector, it seemed, was not expecting Jeremy Meadowfield to materialise in Aylesmere that night. But Meadowfield did materialise, and what he brought in with him was an exquisite small canvas, beautifully painted. His car had broken down, he explained. He told the Rector to hide the painting on his behalf, until such time as the heat died down, or he would expose Sister Winifred’s pregnancy to the world.