Vow of Obedience

by Veronica Black

  ‘That’s very – sad for you,’ she said inadequately. ‘I believe there is help available these days – psychosexual counselling, that sort of thing.’

  ‘We accept it as God’s will,’ Daisy said, looking unhappy. ‘And Mark is – men have their proper pride.’

  Which denied the crown of fatherhood might well be sublimated into excessive interest in all the ramifications of one’s work or into a mania for tidiness.

  ‘We don’t talk about it, especially to other people,’ Daisy said suddenly. ‘I know you won’t …?’

  ‘No, of course not,’ Sister Joan said, feeling colour surge up into her neck and face. ‘This is very good coffee.’

  ‘I always use water that isn’t quite boiling,’ Daisy said, turning with some alacrity to a less sensitive subject. ‘It makes all the difference.’

  ‘I only wish I had more leisure in which to enjoy it‚’ Sister Joan said, ‘but I have another errand before I return to the convent. You know, if you’re looking to make friends, then the public library has a very full list of societies. Or if you attend church regularly then there are …’

  ‘The Mothers’ Union,’ Daisy said, her smile no more than the lifting of her lips. ‘I’d feel a bit out of place there. Anyway Mark likes me to be here when he gets home, and the hours of a police officer are dreadfully irregular, especially when there’s a murder enquiry.’

  And you have a husband who’s a chauvinistic pig, ran Sister Joan’s thoughts.

  ‘I’ll try and call in again if I’m over this way,’ she said, rising.

  ‘That’s very kind of you, Sister. Believe me but it’s appreciated.’ She spoke in a slightly distracted manner, her eyes riveted on a few drops of coffee that had escaped the cup and trickled into the saucer.

  ‘I’ll see myself out then. Goodbye, Mrs Barratt.’

  ‘Daisy, please. Was that a car?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Mark did say he might look in for a bite of lunch if he wasn’t held up down at the station. I must get on.’

  She had also risen, picking up the tray, her head bent. She was poised for flight through the archway into the kitchen where she could wash away the coffee stain and dispose of the uneaten half of ginger snap.

  ‘Goodbye then.’ Sister Joan tore her own fascinated gaze from the tray and went into the hall. She would have relished a peep into the front room but she had already nursed her curiosity long enough and to no positive purpose. Instead she opened the front door, went through and closed it behind her gently.

  Outside the autumn sun had reached its height, splashing gold over the new gardens and the treeless road that ran straight to the turning. It would be wrong to say that the housing estate had been transformed but the place shimmered with light and colour. A Van Gogh might have done justice to it in long, sweeping brushstrokes. Jacob would have found the place stimulating to his art.

  Odd but it was ages since she had even thought of Jacob. His face, the lithe hardness of his body, his dark stubbornness had once filled her entire world. All emotions were softened by the passing of the years. Today Jacob would probably be comfortably married.

  Getting into the car and starting it up she looked back towards the house. No face or waving hand appeared at door or window. Daisy Barratt would be scrubbing the tray and polishing the coffee cups, probably dusting the chairs and setting them at right angles again. And listening anxiously for the sound of her husband’s car. It was better to confine oneself to the convent, Sister Joan decided, driving towards the ring road. The world was less intrusive there, less charged with the sad and secret problems of everybody else.

  Six

  Detective Sergeant Mill was talking to the desk sergeant when she walked into the station. For an instant, before he straightened up and turned, she had a sensation of déjà vu. Somewhere before she had seen that self-same turn of a well-groomed dark head, the set of the shoulders – it had been a dance to which she had dragged an unwilling Jacob. He had submitted to having his unruly hair tamed, to wearing a tie, had teased her gently for her bourgeois notions. But this wasn’t Jacob who was part of her past; this was Detective Sergeant Alan Mill who wasn’t part of her life at all.

  ‘Good morning, Sister Joan. Did you want to see me?’

  ‘If you can spare me a few minutes?’

  ‘Any time.’ He motioned towards the open door of his office.

  ‘I visited the Davies house this morning,’ she said without preamble, taking a seat. ‘I took flowers from the convent. Her father gave me a diary he’d found. He didn’t want to upset his wife needlessly by telling her about it, so he asked me to bring it to you.’

  ‘Mrs Davies cut up rough when we wanted to search her daughter’s room.’ He closed the door and took the diary from her. ‘One can understand the way the poor woman felt. Rifling through the belongings of a dead person is like violation. Where did he find this?’

  ‘In her bag, he said. No, her writing case. He said it was on the floor by her bed and he moved it out of the way and then opened it on impulse. He said that he thought it proved she must have had a current boy-friend nobody knew about.’

  He was turning over the pages, pausing briefly here and there, reaching the end papers, reading the pertinent paragraph aloud.

  ‘“Is this love? Like hunger eating you up, clean to the backbone? Like a fire burning? Is it? I wish I could ask someone but I can’t break my promise. I have to wait until it’s too late to pull me back”.’ He looked at her questioningly.

  ‘She was a romantic young woman,’ Sister Joan said.

  ‘And still a virgin. A virgin in a white dress with a wreath of leaves on her head. You know what some of the more sensational papers are saying?’

  ‘We don’t read newspapers in the convent. Mother Prioress has The Times delivered and reads out those parts she thinks we ought to know.’

  ‘You probably don’t miss much. They’re saying these murders have some link with Satanism.’

  ‘Nonsense!’

  ‘You seem very sure of your ground.’

  ‘Most so-called Satanists are sad, sick people looking for a cheap and nasty thrill. Genuine Satanists, thank God, are thin on the ground. The essence of their power lies in secrecy. The last thing they’d risk is a police investigation.’

  ‘You seem to know a lot about it.’

  ‘You can’t engage your enemy unless you have some idea of his tactics.’

  ‘It seems to be a case of cherchez l’homme,’ the detective said.

  ‘Only one man? I mean, it isn’t possible that someone copied the first murder?’

  ‘Details of it weren’t published. We can’t hold off the media any longer though. What I’m worried about is that this may be a serial killer.’

  ‘Not here in Cornwall!’

  ‘You sound like Lady Macbeth – “What? In our house?” Murder can become a habit, you know. Someone commits one and is stimulated by the excitement to commit another one along the same lines. In the end the original reason, no matter how crazy, for killing someone is submerged in the excitement of doing it again and again, outwitting the forces of law and order – like a drug addict who needs stronger and stronger doses.’

  ‘That’s horrific,’ she said in a low voice.

  ‘Devilish,’ he said sombrely. ‘I want to prevent another murder, Sister. There will be another one. There always is.’

  ‘If there’s any way I can help – Mother Dorothy has given me permission if it becomes absolutely necessary. Not that I could do very much but sometimes people talk more freely to a nun than to some official figure.’

  ‘I’ve made a table of comparisons between the victims. Both young Catholic women, virgin, respectable, one never having had a boy-friend, the other never having had a serious relationship. Both left their homes during the night, clad apparently in their nightclothes. Both were found with wreaths of leaves on their heads and white dresses trimmed with lace. Both were strangled with a wire of so
me kind when they were completely unsuspecting. One was left in the school cupboard, the other in a shed on the edge of the Romany camp. My own guess is that they were killed elsewhere very soon after they disappeared and in Valerie Pendon’s case kept somewhere until she was taken, almost certainly by car, to the Moor School. The other was taken immediately to the shed. This fine weather hasn’t helped much. No telltale mud on a fender, no clear tyre tracks – the world and his wife use the moors as a short cut these days. This diary entry certainly points to a clandestine affair. Someone her parents would have deemed unsuitable? A married man, a non-Catholic?’

  ‘That’s hardly an insurmountable barrier these days,’ she objected. ‘The non-Catholic partner must receive a short course of instruction in the faith and promise to bring up any children of the marriage as Catholics. They don’t have to convert themselves.’

  ‘As if it mattered provided they want to make a good marriage,’ he observed.

  She was silent, remembering. There had been a time when she had thought the same way herself, when Jacob had thought the same way. In the end their divided traditions, the feelings they had to admit, had defeated them.

  ‘It matters,’ she said briefly. ‘What about shoes?’

  ‘The shoes they were wearing, you mean? White plastic sandals – thousands of pairs of similar shoes were sold during the summer at every shoe shop in the country. All we can say about these particular shoes worn by the victims is that they were brand new, unworn. The dresses were of the same design, cheap silk and lace with no labels. Handstitched, very neatly. Wedding gowns for weddings that never were. Oh, and not a strange fingerprint anywhere so far.’

  ‘What happens now?’ she asked.

  ‘We slog round the district, asking people if they noticed anything, if they can account for their whereabouts on the nights in question. You’d be surprised how many perfectly innocent people can’t. And we’ll be talking to the families again.’

  ‘Nice, ordinary, respectable, loving parents, deeply distressed by their loss.’

  ‘You would be astonished how many nice, ordinary, respectable, loving parents do away with their children,’ he said dryly, ‘but in these cases we’re looking for only one killer. I assume the girls were known to each other since they attended the same church?’

  ‘Probably by sight,’ she agreed, ‘but they weren’t likely to be close friends since they weren’t in the same age group. Incidentally our novice, Sister Teresa, knew Tina Davies well, but Sister’s been in the convent for two years and hasn’t had any contact with her since she entered.’

  ‘No visits?’ He looked surprised.

  ‘No visits at all during the two years one spends in the postulancy, not even any contact with the professed members of the community. During the third year the novice joins us in the main house, but during the final two years she enters a period of almost total seclusion and silence save when she’s in chapel.’

  ‘I’m astonished you come out sane at the other end,’ he said bluntly.

  ‘Oh, getting in touch with one’s spiritual self isn’t so bad,’ she assured him.

  ‘So I could talk to Sister Teresa?’

  ‘If it became absolutely vital, but honestly, I doubt if she’d be able to tell you anything of value.’

  ‘So it’s back to the man.’ He frowned, tapping the diary with well-tended fingers. ‘The kind of man who inspires the emotion shown in these words – a man with a charismatic personality, would you say?’

  ‘For Tina Davies, certainly. Detective Sergeant Mill, one thing puzzles me.’

  ‘Only one thing? You’re fortunate, Sister.’

  ‘One particular thing puzzles me,’ she amended. ‘Why now? I mean why does a man suddenly commit two murders within the same week? Something must have triggered him.’

  ‘It’s a good point, Sister, but I’m not qualified to answer it. For that you’d need a psychiatrist.’

  ‘Some traumatic event perhaps?’ she hazarded.

  ‘Who knows? First we have to catch him. What happens afterwards isn’t my job.’

  ‘And I must leave you to get on with it.’ She rose, holding out her hand.

  ‘I stole an hour back here,’ he confessed. ‘There’s always the papers to be written up. Sergeant Barratt has energy enough for both of us.’

  ‘He’ll probably go home for lunch,’ Sister Joan informed him.

  ‘You’ve seen him this morning?’

  ‘I gave his wife, Daisy, a lift from the local shops and she asked me in for a coffee. She seems very lonely.’

  ‘Being married to a police officer as keen as Barratt must be rather like living alone. Mind you, it’s a complaint most police wives have, in common with Members of Parliament, doctors and the like. You wouldn’t know about that.’

  ‘Indeed I wouldn’t.’ Her eyes were dancing. ‘My Bridegroom is always available, always ready to listen. Good morning to you, Detective Sergeant Mill. If you need any more help please let me know.’

  ‘Off to make soup, Sister?’ He shook hands warmly.

  ‘Soup and a salad sandwich today,’ she informed him. ‘I’m quite a little rebel in my way.’

  She heard him chuckling as she went out.

  On the steps a young police constable stopped to greet her. ‘It’s Sister Joan, isn’t it? The nun with the pony?’

  ‘How odd to be remembered thus!’ It was her turn to chuckle. ‘You’re the officer who kindly rode her back for me. I hope Sister Perpetua gave you a cup of tea.’

  ‘Afraid not, Sister. She was in the yard at the back when I walked the pony round and she just took the reins and marched off. Not to worry. It must have been the grand silence or something.’

  ‘Not at that hour – and Sister Perpetua dispenses tea like manna during the exile. I’m sure she didn’t mean to be discourteous.’

  ‘Oh, I wasn’t complaining, Sister,’ he said hastily. ‘I just wanted to be sure you got her back all right. She’s a nice old girl.’

  ‘I’m very fond of her,’ she confessed. ‘Of course the car is faster but one cannot feel affection for a pile of machinery.’

  ‘Oh, I wouldn’t say that, Sister. A lot of people fuss over their cars like they were babies. Take Sergeant Barratt now. He drives his own car most of the time and every spare minute he’s polishing it and vacuuming it and the Lord knows what else. Proper puffed up about it he seems to be.’

  ‘Well, we all have our little ways. Thank you again for bringing Lilith home.’ Nodding at him she went on into the parking space where the convent car stood. Perhaps she ought to give it a name, get better acquainted. At the moment she couldn’t think of one suitable.

  She drove back briskly, taking the more direct route that led past the Moor School. There were still tapes marking off a fairly wide area all around and two constables were pacing slowly back and forth. She drove on and turned in at the convent gates in time to swerve aside as Sister Perpetua came down the drive.

  ‘Missed!’ The older nun beamed as she uttered the exclamation.

  ‘Sister, I’m sorry. I’m not late, am I?’ Sister Joan stuck her head out of the window and shook her head at her own foolishness. ‘Were you coming to look for me?’

  ‘Sister, this may astonish you but I do have other duties apart from looking for you which isn’t one of my duties at all,’ Sister Perpetua said with heavy irony. ‘As a matter of fact I’m looking for Sister Hilaria. You haven’t seen her?’

  ‘No, Sister. Surely she’s in the postulancy.’

  ‘I went there first off,’ Sister Perpetua said, turning and keeping pace with the slow crawl of the car. ‘Mother Dorothy wanted to see the novices for a little talk. They’ve heard garbled rumours about these dreadful murders and she wanted to put the whole thing in perspective. When Sister Hilaria didn’t come over at the appointed time she sent me to look for her. The novices were there, writing up their spiritual diaries, dear souls, so I shepherded them across to the parlour and then set off again. Not that I
expected her to be outside the grounds. But she has become very much vaguer of late. Never quite with us, if you know what I mean?’

  ‘I do indeed, Sister.’ Sister Joan spoke feelingly, recalling several occasions when she had been the one deputed to get Sister Hilaria where she was supposed to be.

  ‘Sister Teresa has made soup and a salad sandwich,’ Sister Perpetua said, changing the subject and panting slightly.

  ‘I decided we needed both,’ Sister Joan said.

  ‘Well, I don’t suppose that Mother Dorothy will object,’ the other said. ‘You must be worn out, dashing about all over the place.’

  ‘And I must find some time in which to exercise Lilith.’ Driving into the yard, she pulled up and switched off the engine. ‘One of the police constables rode her back for me the other evening.’

  ‘Did he? I didn’t see him,’ Sister Perpetua said, looking round the yard as if she expected Sister Hilaria to pop up from under a stone.

  ‘But …’ Sister Joan broke off, frowning. Obviously one of the other members of the community had been in the yard and sent the constable away tealess.

  ‘She might be up in the library,’ Sister Perpetua said with an air of inspiration. ‘I’ll go and take a look at once. It’s almost lunchtime, Sister.’

  She bustled off, while Sister Joan alighted from the car and went into the kitchen where Sister Teresa was piling sandwiches on to a tray.

  ‘I’ll help you carry them up, Sister.’ Seizing the nearest tray she hurried out into the passage and up the stairs.

  Luncheon, like breakfast, was eaten in the refectory. Up to now it hadn’t been a meal that Sister Joan had attended regularly. When teaching at the school she’d usually made do with an apple and a scone or brewed up hot Bovril or soup on the primus stove for herself and her pupils. She set down the trays and started laying out the spoons. Someone had already put out the bowls and a platter of apples. Sister Teresa, she decided, was going to be an asset to the community with her calm efficiency.