Death of a Novice

by Cora Harrison

  And then she stopped, chin propped between thumb and first finger, thinking hard.

  ‘Miss Mary MacSwiney has never been involved in any violence, not that I know of, Reverend Mother,’ she said eventually. ‘A great talker. Words are her weapons. So far as I know,’ Eileen ended on a slightly unsure note. Her grey eyes were troubled as she looked across at the older woman. ‘But I’ve learned to know that for some people the end will always justify the means,’ she said after a long moment. ‘She’s a funny woman. She has a way of talking, of staring into your eyes. She forces people to do things, she makes them feel that they are selfish, lazy, cowardly and without principles; I’ve seen her at it and she has great influence over people.’

  The Reverend Mother nodded. ‘I understand. Now, Eileen, I won’t detain you any longer. It was very good of you to come in the middle of your working day. I hope that it did not put you out in any way.’

  ‘No, I was delivering some leaflets to Beamish & Crawford Brewery. It’s only a few minutes on my bike from there to here.’ Eileen’s tone was lighter now, but there was something slightly hesitant about her expression. She picked up her leather helmet and tucked her long hair neatly inside, put on a pair of sheepskin gauntlets, checked her appearance in the mirror, but still she hesitated slightly, turning around when she reached the door.

  ‘You will take care, Reverend Mother, won’t you,’ she said. ‘Some of these Sinn Féiners can be very funny people. You want to be on your guard with them.’

  The Reverend Mother bowed her head and tucked her hands into her sleeves.

  ‘I will take the greatest care, Eileen, and thank you for your concern.’

  A half an hour after Eileen had left the convent, the Reverend Mother was sitting in a taxi and on her way to Wellington Road. The words, Scoil Ide, were enough for the man and he drove up the steep incline of St Patrick’s Hill and swept along Wellington Road without hesitation until he reached Belgrave Place with its terrace of houses set back from the road and within iron railings. The school was held in a three-storey terraced house set in the middle of a row of eight houses. ‘Belgrave Place,’ said the taxi driver and the Reverend Mother looked out of the window as the taxi went through the gate. There was a lawn in front of the houses, and a gravelled path around the outside of it, skirting overgrown bushes that grew unchecked between wall and road and curving around the plot of some badly-cared-for grass in the centre. The taxi swept up to number five and then slowed to a stop.

  ‘I won’t be long,’ said the Reverend Mother, accepting the hand to help her out, but refusing the offer to ring the bell. She would like to be the first to see Miss MacSwiney’s face, once she realized the identity of her visitor. She went to the door, pressed the bell while the taxi driver went back to his seat and almost immediately it was opened to her.

  ‘And what can I do for you, Mother Aquinas?’

  The words were abrupt, unwelcoming, unnecessarily so, thought the Reverend Mother. It would not hurt the woman to greet her politely, to ask her to come in from the heavy fog that cast a pall over everything and, in a ghostly way, seemed to cut off the tops of the terraced houses and the crowns of the bushes that dotted the communal garden behind her. She waited on the doorstep, and said nothing for the moment. A girl dressed in the St Ita’s brown gymslip and carrying a heavy bag of books was coming down the hallway. The Reverend Mother waited until she murmured a farewell in Gaelic and slipped past them, with a quick smile for her headmistress. Even after she had gone on her way, though, there was a silence between the two women. Eventually the Reverend Mother broke it.

  ‘May I come in, Miss MacSwiney? I don’t think that this is a matter to discuss on the doorstep, do you?’ The Reverend Mother was pleased to hear how firm her voice sounded. After all, she said to herself, age has its privileges. She was a good thirty years older than the woman in front of her.

  Strange-looking woman, Mary MacSwiney. Dressed all in black. Had done so ever since the death of her brother four years ago. A terrible death. Terence MacSwiney had starved himself to death in a British prison, had spent seventy-four days voluntarily denying himself of food and the enormity of those seventy-four days of agony was something that could barely be contemplated, even by someone who had never known the man. For his devoted sister, who had supported him in his iron-hard resolution, it had become the central part of her life and had filled her with a terrible bitterness and an overwhelming desire to create the Ireland for which her brother had died.

  But not by using my novices as tools, thought the Reverend Mother as, still uninvited, she stepped into the narrow hallway and closed the door behind her. A narrow strip of drugget led towards an uncarpeted wooden staircase and on the right hand side there were two closed doors, painted white, painted a long time ago, judging by the scuff marks. As the Reverend Mother hesitated, still waiting for an invitation, the first door opened and a woman came out. Annie, she thought. The younger sister. Very much in Mary’s shadow. Copied her in every way. Dressed in the same funereal black. She gave a brief, slightly hunted glance at the Reverend Mother, inclined her head and then hurried down the back passageway, towards the kitchen, probably.

  ‘Shall we go in here?’ enquired the Reverend Mother. The door had been left ajar and she could see that a small fire burned in the narrow grate. This must be the sitting room for the two sisters and, perhaps, for the teachers in the school. The table by the window was weighed down by copy books, essays for marking, no doubt. A good school, she reminded herself. Parents spoke highly of the MacSwiney sisters, of how they made learning interesting, inculcated a love of poetry, of Shakespeare, an appreciation of art and of music. The girl who had been leaving had been respectful, but not subservient in any way, had smiled almost affectionately at her headmistress. And by all accounts the pupils were happy in the school.

  Nevertheless … She said the word silently in her mind and waited for the reluctant invitation to take a seat by the fire.

  ‘You hold the Gaelic League classes here, or upstairs?’ The stony face opposite to hers did not encourage genial conversation, but the Reverend Mother was determined to get to the bottom of the matter. Mary MacSwiney knows all about it. The words came to her mind and she knew them to be true. There was a defensiveness about the woman that was revealing.

  ‘Not that it matters,’ she went on smoothly when an answer did not seem to be forthcoming. ‘What bothers me is that two of my novices were recruited to act a lie, to bring collecting boxes to houses when they were not authorized to do so.’

  ‘No money changed hands.’ The lined face opposite to hers wore a flush of anger.

  ‘So what was the purpose of equipping Sister Joan and Sister Brigid with those very authentic-looking boxes with Foreign Missions written on them?’

  There was no answer to this and she did not expect one.

  ‘Do you deny that my novices were used to deliver letters for the purpose of organizing a crime? And that you talked Sister Joan into acting a lie by carrying those collecting boxes for the Foreign Missions. You agree that you organized that, don’t you?’ She did not really expect an answer and did not wait long for one. ‘Qui tacet consentit,’ she said sharply. If the sentence was good enough for Sir Thomas More to assume that he who is silent gives consent, it was good enough for the Cambridge educated woman sitting opposite to her, but Mary MacSwiney still preserved her silence. The Reverend Mother felt a rising tide of anger well up within her and decided not to control it.

  ‘By Heaven, if I don’t get an answer to my questions, Miss MacSwiney, I shall go straight to the bishop himself,’ she said angrily. ‘You are used to defying the civil authorities, but I don’t think that you will defy the bishop. This was an abominable thing to do and you know it. You involved two very young girls, two young novices, in nefarious doings where they could have been shot or imprisoned. You did not consult me or ask my permission, did you?’

  ‘Younger than they have been involved in the struggle to free Ireland
from Britain.’ The woman had broken her silence at last and there was a contemptuous note in her voice. She shrugged the thin shoulders beneath the black silk shawl that she wore over her black dress. Black upon black, black from shoulders to feet, just as though she were newly widowed. A virgin widow, mourning for a brother, living off his memory, using the sacrifice of his life as a means to extract money from America and devotion and service from the young of her own country. What had been said to those two silly girls that had made them consent to that lie? ‘She has a way of talking, of staring into your eyes,’ had said Eileen. ‘She forces people to do things, she makes them feel that they are selfish, lazy, cowardly and without principles; I’ve seen her at it and she has great influence over people.’

  Well, thought the Reverend Mother, you can stare into my eyes as much as you like, but I’m too old a bird to be influenced by a narrow zealot such as you, Miss MacSwiney. She made no answer to the comment from the woman, just waited quietly.

  ‘If you want to, you may withdraw them from the classes,’ said the woman, angrily. ‘I suppose that you have supreme authority over them. You can take Sister Gertrude, too, if you wish. She has neither interest nor aptitude.’

  ‘Sister Gertrude is dead,’ said the Reverend Mother. And then she said no more. She watched the woman narrowly. That last comment had been a surprise; the woman had started; one involuntary movement, perhaps, but perhaps not. Was it a subterfuge? Was she as ignorant as she pretended or had she known of the death of the young nun? Had she heard the news? Possibly. In any case, after the first movement, there was no reaction to her words. The straight mouth had not opened, and the stony grey eyes were still expressionless. The woman sat very still for a few moments, sat as though turning over the matter in her mind.

  ‘You sound almost as though you are blaming me for that death, Reverend Mother,’ she said eventually. ‘I am, naturally, very sorry to hear it but it can have nothing to with the classes which Sister Gertrude attended here.’

  ‘That, of course, will be a matter for the police to decide,’ said the Reverend Mother. It was interesting, she thought, that Miss MacSwiney had not enquired into the reason for the death, had not exclaimed in horror or in surprise, but had immediately switched into defensive mode. ‘She fell ill shortly after her return from your premises.’ Not even that assertion caused any change to come over the immobile face opposite to her.

  ‘I cannot see that can have anything to do with our classes. We do not make a habit of providing refreshments. She ate nothing here. I really cannot see, Mother Aquinas, why you have come to me.’

  ‘I came to find out what had happened. You managed, neatly, to separate the two younger girls from the older one on whom I relied. You kept Sister Gertrude back, kept her here in your sitting room. You made sure that the younger girls were released well before Sister Gertrude could chaperone them on their way back to the convent, sent them on their way with collecting boxes for the Foreign Missions and, of course, letters to be delivered to certain houses. You subverted my novices, involved them in a dangerous game.’ The Reverend Mother leaned back into her chair and allowed her four sentences to hang in the air. She had delivered them as shots from the barrel of a gun, she thought with satisfaction.

  And then she thought of the woman’s words. We do not make a habit of providing refreshments. She ate nothing here. This would be the truth. Mary MacSwiney would not lie over a matter so easily disproved by a simple enquiry … but the word that she had used was ate. She ate nothing. Refreshments. Eating and drinking.

  The Reverend Mother’s eye went to the heavy old-fashioned sideboard placed against a side wall. On top of it was an unlocked tantalus and snugly arranged on it were three decanters, labelled in ornate copperplate lettering. Raspberry Cordial, Cherry Cordial and the third was Elderberry Cordial. The decanters matched exactly, except that the red liquid in the raspberry cordial and the cherry cordial reached right up as far as the stopper, but the purple syrup in the third decanter was barely at the shoulder of the glass container. It looked as though a drink or two had been poured out from the elderberry cordial. Yes, she was sure that no lie had been told, that Sister Gertrude had not eaten while she was here at St Ita’s school.

  But had she taken something to drink?

  ‘A sweet flavour,’ had said Dr Scher. An alcohol used in factories to thin liquids, used in window cleaning products and other polishes, used in various fluids, almost caused the death of a young boy, poor child, who had relished the sweet taste and who had to have the deadly liquid pumped from his stomach. The sweet flavour would disguise the poison, would be easily hidden if introduced to something similarly sweet. Sister Bernadette made elderberry cordial for a Christmas treat, sending her young helpers out into the nearby lane to pick the fruits in early September. The Reverend Mother did not care for it much, but took a ritual few drops every Christmas morning. Yes, it had always been intensely sweet. There was no doubt in her mind that elderberry cordial, innocuous though the non-alcoholic liquid would seem, could conceal any other similarly sweet liquid. How easy it would be to offer a glass to Sister Gertrude, a girl who loved anything sweet and had confessed that the hardest thing she found about life in the convent was the deprivation of her previous daily indulgence in sweets and chocolates. She would be unable to resist it.

  The Reverend Mother removed her gaze from the sideboard. She would say nothing, ask no further questions. The enquiry into Sister Gertrude’s death would, by now, be in the hands of Inspector Patrick Cashman. It was not for her to meddle and to risk the destroying of evidence. She got to her feet decisively.

  ‘I think, Miss MacSwiney, that you will not be surprised to hear that I am about to withdraw permission for any of my novices to attend the Gaelic League classes here. If they need to study Irish, then they will have to make do with books for the moment, until they attend their regulation teacher training classes. I make the strongest possible complaint to you about the use of these young girls to carry out nefarious and illicit activities, but will say no more now until the police enquiry is completed. And now I wish you good day. Those Foreign Missionary boxes will be burned. And I hope that never again will you make use of young and innocent girls, or boys, in order to carry out errands which might place them or others in danger of death.’

  ELEVEN

  St Thomas Aquinas

  Ad tertium dicendum quod omnia studia humanarum actionum, si ordinentur ad necessitatem praesentis vitae secundum rationem rectam, pertinent ad vitam activam, quae per ordinatas actiones consulit necessitati vitae praesentis.

  (All the occupations of human actions, if directed to the requirements of the present life in accord with right reason, belong to the active life which provides for the necessities of the present life by means of well-ordered activity.)

  ‘Goodness, gracious, Reverend Mother, nobody would ever think that you are a holy nun. You forever have your head stuck in columns of figures or sheets of bank statements. You should be praying and leaving all that sort of thing to God, shouldn’t she, Sister Bernadette?’ scolded Lucy as she came in, looking her usual well-groomed, well-dressed self, carrying an elegantly tied cake box in one hand and an expensive handbag in the other.

  ‘What’s the cake for?’ asked the Reverend Mother, ignoring the criticism, hoping that Sister Bernadette would not be offended if Lucy took to bringing her own cake when she arrived for tea. The lay sister had looked somewhat flustered as she hesitated at the doorway before proffering the usual refreshments and had hovered, looking rather uncertain. But that may have been just because she was embarrassed at the very idea that she should comment on how the Reverend Mother should spend her time.

  ‘Emergency provisions,’ said Lucy. ‘I’m not staying. My granddaughters are giving me a surprise party. They’re doing all the cooking themselves; apparently it’s going to be all the things that I used to make for them when they were little girls. Oh, Sister Bernadette. Such fun! A surprise party for my wedding anniversary.
I’ve come to persuade your Reverend Mother to come with me. Do tell her that she must come.’

  ‘How do you know about this party if it’s supposed to be a surprise?’ The Reverend Mother cast a look at her bank statements. It would, she thought, be tempting to abandon them for a few hours. Sister Bernadette was now happily beaming encouragement, but stopped short of telling her superior what to do. The decision had to be hers. The figures wouldn’t silently steal away just because she abandoned them, but perhaps a fresh mind would make matters seem more possible.

  ‘Because my daughter Anne is sensible enough to know that surprise parties are something that should be inflicted only on one’s greatest enemies,’ said Lucy tartly. ‘Now do come. They are expecting you, too. Anne told them that I would be collecting you for an afternoon visit so at this very moment, they will all be flying around, setting the table and getting everything ready. If things are too bad then we have this to eat afterwards.’ She dangled the cake daintily from one fingertip.

  ‘Well, if I can’t make ends meet, I shall refer the bishop to you,’ said the Reverend Mother, putting back her pen on its stand and rising to her feet. She did want to talk with Lucy about that unsuitable suitor for her granddaughter’s hand. No doubt, once justice was done to the girls’ efforts, then they would be able to have a private conversation.

  The prosperous suburb of Montenotte, where the wealthy of Cork built their mansions, was placed on a hill high above the city and on this day, as on many others, the fog thinned as the chauffeur drove up the steep road. When they reached Lucy and Rupert’s home the sun shone on its stone walls and its well-groomed garden and the Reverend Mother sighed with pleasure as she accepted the chauffeur’s supporting arm to lever herself out of the car.