Death of a Novice

by Cora Harrison

  However, the woman had right on her side. The Reverend Mother instantly got to her feet.

  ‘Come with me up to the novices’ dormitory,’ she said forcing herself to sound cordial. ‘This would be a good time to go through the clothes as all of the novices will be busy around the school. We should,’ she said, dragging her watch from her pocket and consulting its round face, ‘be well finished and out of the way when the end of the school morning comes and the novices come up to their dormitories to get ready for dinner.’

  She would be reluctant to intrude upon their ten minutes or so of liberty. It was, she thought, a valuable time for novices who were so watched and supervised through the normal routines of the day that it was important that they were allowed some such small breaks to chatter together even if the ostensible reason was to give them time to wash before their meals. She would, she thought, make sure that they were out of the way before then.

  In silence, she led the way up the stairs and into the novices’ dormitory. Why on earth should Betty want her sister Patsy’s underclothes? They were of such a totally different shape and size that it was impossible to think that they would be of any use to such a smartly turned-out and well-dressed young lady. And the nun’s clothing would be useless.

  Sister Gertrude’s section of the long clothes press which spanned one side of the room was in perfect order. Three items of outside clothing and five of underwear was the rule for families to provide for novices entering the convent. A spare full-length black dress, and a black winter-weight cloak hung from hangers. Pegged to another hanger were the spare wimple and veil, each carefully folded. Underwear and petticoats filled the shelves at the side, two pairs of well-polished shoes stood on the bottom floor and beside them two laundered and neatly folded towels. Betty efficiently dragged the trunk from under that section of the press and put it onto the bed. It still bore the label, Sister Gertrude, and the Reverend Mother found it very poignant to see the square, firm handwriting once again.

  She tucked her hands into her sleeves and stood immobile while ideas went through her head. What had killed that girl? An accident. Impossible, she thought. There was no way that she could have eaten or drunk this alcohol or ethylene glycol by accident. Suicide, she decided, was so unlikely as to be almost impossible. Sister Gertrude had enjoyed life, had found the work in the convent to be stimulating, interesting and challenging. And she was a sensible, mature individual who knew, quite certainly, that the door was always open for anyone who wished to leave.

  No, her death had to be murder. Who had administered the poison and how had it been disguised? The Reverend Mother pondered the matter as she watched the removal of Sister Gertrude’s belongings. What on earth use would this well-dressed young mother find for wimple, veil, nun’s full-length dress and black cloak? Some poor woman in the slums, though, would have been delighted with a gift of that cloak. Old-fashioned, but made from the best quality wool and certain to last a good twenty years. And yet the sister of the dead woman went through everything with the greatest care, searching every shelf, removing each drawer and searching behind it.

  The Reverend Mother watched impatiently as Betty packed everything into the trunk: shoes, underwear and then the folded towels. She frowned a little at these, took each one out, shook it slightly and then refolded it.

  ‘Funny,’ she said. ‘I thought that there were three large towels. I remember her buying them. Ever such expensive towels they were. She got them in Dowden’s.’

  ‘That would be correct,’ said the Reverend Mother. ‘There should be three.’ There was something rather shocking about this insistence on removing all of her dead sister’s belongings. Not a poor woman, either. The Reverend Mother remembered the solicitor’s words. A very tidy fortune and all of it left to one of the man’s two daughters.

  ‘There will be other goods, purchased originally by Sister Gertrude, missing, also, Mrs Kelly,’ she said in measured tones. ‘The clothes that she wore at the moment of her death, the dress, the veil, the wimple would all be at the mortuary. I’m sure that you will be able to collect them from there, but there should, indeed, be three towels here in the dormitory and I will make enquiries. Just a moment,’ she added. There was a quick, light step on the stairs outside and the humming of a tune. It would be Sister Imelda, returning from feeding an early dinner to the invalids on the top floor of the convent. She went to the door and waited.

  ‘Oh, Reverend Mother.’ Sister Imelda was taken aback and she stopped in the middle of her tune. The Reverend Mother smiled at her. ‘Come in, sister,’ she said, noting that Betty, making a thorough search, had not only pulled out the drawer and opened the door of the small locker by the bed, but was now checking the waste-paper basket. She turned her attention back to Sister Imelda. The song had already died from the girl’s lips, but the smile also faded when she saw the dead nun’s belongings strewn across the bed or already packed into the trunk. She stood very still and looked from one to the other. There was a shocked look on her young face.

  ‘I wondered whether Sister Bernadette may have Sister Gertrude’s third towel still in the laundry,’ explained the Reverend Mother. She had noticed that there were piles of recently washed and ironed clothes on each of the other beds, but nothing on Sister Gertrude’s. Sister Imelda, herself, had probably put the articles belonging to the dead novice away in the clothes press.

  ‘Yes, she has …’ Sister Imelda hesitated, her eyes going diffidently from the Reverend Mother’s to the woman standing with an armful of snowy towels. ‘There was a problem … there was a brown stain on it. It didn’t come out in the wash. Sister Bernadette was going to have another try at it.’

  The towel should perhaps have been given to Dr Scher. The Reverend Mother thought of that immediately, wondering whether the dead girl had used it to wipe away traces of vomit. Too late now, though.

  ‘Tell her not to bother,’ said Betty impatiently. ‘Just bring it up to me. I won’t want the trouble of coming again and of getting someone to mind the baby. My husband has got some stuff for getting paint off; it sort of dissolves it,’ she explained to the Reverend Mother. ‘If that doesn’t work, then it can do for rough stuff. Good quality, these towels.’

  When Sister Imelda came back with the towel, it was slightly steaming, probably from a red-hot iron from the top of the range. It was carefully folded so that the stain did not show and the young lay sister took care to keep it tightly wrapped up as she handed it over to the dead novice’s sister. Betty, however, was made of sterner stuff. She opened the bundle and displayed the brown stain, right in the middle of the towel. She appeared, thought the Reverend Mother, to have shed her diffident and sorrow-filled demeanour and now showed herself to be a tough housewife, staring speculatively at the stain and then scratching at it with a fingernail. The Reverend Mother looked also. Despite her inner shrinking from it she needed to know what had stained the towel like that. She would, she thought, ask Sister Bernadette. She would not like to upset Sister Imelda, who, despite her nun’s regalia, was still, after all, not much more than a child. The chances were, she thought, fairly sure that the dead girl had vomited in it, before moving to the window in order to empty her stomach of the poison that she had eaten.

  Sister Imelda, though, seemed relieved that the sister of the dead girl was taking the matter in such a pragmatic manner. ‘Sister Bernadette soaked it in cold water first,’ she said eagerly. ‘It wasn’t much of a stain, just like you see it there. It wasn’t blood or anything, we didn’t think, Sister Bernadette and me,’ she said reassuringly. ‘Sister Bernadette thought it might be chocolate, but there was no chocolate pudding or anything like that served up, not since Sister Philomena’s feast day when her niece brought that lovely chocolate cake for everyone to have as a dessert.’

  Possibly treacle, thought the Reverend Mother as Betty efficiently refolded the towel and placed it into the trunk. She went back to the press and took out a pair of slippers that had been neatly tucked into the s
pace beneath the dressing gown hanger in the clothes press and made room for them alongside the spare pair of shoes. Brown slippers, noticed the Reverend Mother. Neat brown leather slippers, not soft fluffy ones like most of the novices wore. And when the tins of polish were taken from the toiletries shelf there was amongst the black, one tin of dark tan-coloured polish. A stain from that, rubbed on a towel, might possibly be taken for chocolate. Or perhaps the stain was treacle mixed with tan polish. The combination of those two different materials might have been something that defeated Sister Bernadette’s stain-removing capabilities. It was, thought the Reverend Mother, a possibility and visualized Sister Gertrude hastily rubbing the treacle from her lips, probably meaning afterwards to clean her towel but then feeling too ill to tackle it. She had been sick during the night. Had vomited out of the window. Had still struggled to her feet for morning prayers, then gone to feed the hens and collapsed.

  As the Reverend Mother escorted Betty Kelly downstairs, mechanically absorbing the promise that Denis would call for the trunk either tomorrow, or at the latest on the day after tomorrow, her mind turned over the possibilities. Once she had left the visitor in Sister Bernadette’s hands, she walked briskly to the telephone in the back hallway and gave Dr Scher’s number to the telephone exchange lady. He would probably be at his lunch, she feared, but she would not keep him long. And he did always say that he ate too much and should try skipping his midday meal so that he could eat his evening one with a free conscience.

  ‘Oh, Dr Scher, you asked me to report on Sister Frances,’ she said as soon as he came to the phone. ‘Well, you were right. The medicine seems to have worked very well. The fever has gone and she is sitting up in bed and enquiring about her dinner.’ When she reached the end of the last sentence she heard a click from the exchange phone. The telephonist had found nothing interesting about this conversation. No juicy piece of gossip to pass on to the other telephonist and to whisper about in the tea shops of the city. Nevertheless, she framed the next sentence to him with care, relying on his quickness and his knowledge, like her own, of how telephone ladies listened into conversations. ‘Sorry not to have phoned you earlier,’ she said, ‘but Sister Bernadette waylaid me with a problem of a towel stained with a mixture of treacle and shoe polish. Would you believe that?’

  She heard a startled exclamation, bitten off before the word was completely finished. And then a silence. When he spoke again, his voice had changed. ‘Oh, yes. Yes, indeed. Quite a possibility,’ he said in interested tones and then smoothly went on, ‘now Reverend Mother, don’t worry. You let Sister Frances have her dinner and if she feels like it she can get up for a few hours. It will do her good. Tell her to stay indoors, though. That’s a very nasty fog out there. I’ll pop in and see her some time tomorrow. Would that suit you?’

  ‘That will be perfect,’ she said and rang off before Miss Clayton in the telephone exchange decided that the Reverend Mother had been a long time on the phone to Dr Scher and that something interesting might have come up for discussion.

  SIXTEEN

  Conradh na Gaeilge (the Gaelic League) was founded in 1893 by Douglas Hyde, Fr. Eugene Ó Growney and other Gaelic scholars.

  The aim of the Gaelic League was:

  1) The preservation of Irish as the national language of Ireland and the extension of its use as a spoken language.

  2) The study and publication of existing Gaelic literature, and the cultivation of a modern literature in Irish.

  Patrick made sure that he arrived at Wellington Road a little earlier than six o’clock in the evening. He did not drive the police car right up to the MacSwiney sisters’ school, but parked it at some distance from Belgrave Place and then strolled along the pavement, surveying the tall houses on Wellington Road, most of which seemed occupied by doctors, until he reached the enclosed terrace of houses at Belgrave Place. No trace of any school children around, but small groups of young men and young women were making their way to number five, chattering animatedly in the Irish language. He allowed them to go ahead, but scrutinized faces as they passed him. He recognized none, and, even more significant, had a feeling that none of them recognized him. In any case, no one bestowed a second glance at him. Unlikely, therefore, that these young people were members of any banned organization.

  The evening Angelus bell was sounding when he knocked at the front door. Although the others ahead of him had simply turned the handle and gone in, he thought he would not do this. He was here on official business and he was determined that this would be no informal visit. And so he gave a sharp, authoritative rap on the door knocker and it was almost immediately opened to him.

  Mary MacSwiney, herself. He recognized her instantly. No demonstration, no protest meeting in the city was complete without the grim face, the scraped-back grey hair and the funereal blackness of the clothing.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, taking in his uniform, the badge on the cap which he had removed. Her eyes travelled from the top of his head to the toes of his well-polished boots and her expression said that she did not think much of him. He produced a card from his pocket and handed it to her. ‘Inspector Patrick Cashman, Miss MacSwiney,’ he said.

  ‘So I see,’ she replied. ‘I do not, however, recognize the present so-called government so I cannot acquiesce to any request that a lackey of that illegal organization might make to me.’ She stared contemptuously at him and did not move from the exact centre of the doorway. Patrick did not move either, but alternatives were spinning through his head. If she had been the owner of a disorderly public house, he would have put her aside, gently but firmly, and mounted the stairs to where he could hear voices speaking loudly in Gaelic. If it had been a woman spouting obscenities and threatening violence he would have dealt with her without hesitation or anxiety, but faced with the refined English accent his courage deserted him and he felt that he should try gentlemanly methods first.

  ‘Can I come in, Miss MacSwiney,’ he said, after a long moment.

  ‘You may,’ she said with a strong emphasis on the correct form. She looked him up and down in a disdainful fashion, pursed her lips and then moved back into the dim light of the hallway.

  He stepped over the threshold, resolving in a shamefaced way never to make that grammatical mistake again. Oh, forget it, remember you are an inspector! Ignore the rudeness. Ignore the anti-government speeches, he told himself. When it came down to it, she was just a little elderly lady. Can’t send for the police to throw me out: he made the internal comment and it restored his confidence and his sense of humour. He followed her into the hallway and looked around. Shabby and in need of a coat of paint. Didn’t make too much out of the school. Or else she just didn’t care. Polite but firm, he reminded himself as he stood courteously awaiting her as she carefully closed the front door. He remembered the Reverend Mother’s account of her visit to this place. That’s the front room, he thought, the place where the Reverend Mother had seen the three decanters, whatever a decanter was. And he hoped desperately that he would recognize a decanter when he saw one, but reckoned that it must be some sort of container made of glass.

  Yes. His eyes had become accustomed to the very dim light. Not a big house. School upstairs, on the first floor, bedrooms on the second floor, just two rooms downstairs, each leading off from the right-hand side of the narrow hall. Drawing room and dining room, they would be, and a kitchen in the basement below. First things first, he told himself.

  ‘I’m just going to go upstairs to talk to the students,’ he told her firmly as he walked past her and mounted the stairs. Let her follow if she wished. He laid a silent bet with himself that she would and so she did, treading heavily on the steps behind him. He did not stand back for her, though. Instinctively he sensed that he had seized the upper hand by his abrupt action and he was determined to hold it now. There were two flights of stairs, as is usual in these terraced houses, where bathroom and cloakrooms and closets were built on to the back of the house when indoor sanitary arrangements became c
ommon. He did not hesitate when he came to the end of the first flight, but turned the corner and proceeded up to the next landing.

  The door to the room at the top of these stairs was closed, but the alien sounds of a rapidly spoken Irish language came to him and he opened the door firmly and strode in, allowing it to stand open so that Miss Mary MacSwiney could follow him if she wished.

  ‘I am sorry to interrupt the work, but I have a few questions to ask,’ he said to the man standing in front of the class. He heard his own voice with pleasure. Even six months ago, he would have cleared his throat first; a nervous habit, which he had cured himself of by constant practice on a solitary walk on an empty road through farmland. He had astonished the sheep who had congregated to the fence to listen as he recited a poem he had learned in school. Silly, he had thought afterwards, in rather a shamefaced way, but it had been a very useful practice and had given him confidence. He looked over the class now, and mentally designated them as sheep. He took his badge from his pocket, angled it so that the instructor who stood facing the class could see it plainly and then replaced it. The man said something to him, something that he did not understand, but he ignored it. He had never learned Irish and he was not going to make any excuses or apologies. If they wanted to communicate with him, then they could certainly do it in English. He moved to the front of the class and stood with his back to the window and addressed them. By now he was used to this and had learned to be steady, unemotional and matter-of-fact, and not to try to make any efforts to conceal or alter the accent of the streets where he had been born, though he did make efforts to pronounce his ‘th’ sounds correctly, rather than using the flat ‘t’ of his boyhood. He introduced himself briefly, once more producing his badge and allowing the students in the front row of the class to peruse it for a minute and then proceeded with a bald statement of the facts.