Crime in the Convent

by Catherine Moloney

  Markham had raised no objection to Olivia’s visits to the nuns, however, even deriving a certain wry amusement from her accounts of convent politics. He could see too that she was slowly recovering from the trauma of recent years and liberating herself from the terrors which, even now, had the power to wake her screaming in the middle of the night. From that point of view, Sister Felicity was a godsend. He sensed something else had recently begun to trouble Olivia, something from her past that – woundingly – she had concealed. It was a question of waiting until she was ready to tell him. After all, he had his own secrets. As Mother Bernadette chatted away about progress on the new library annexe, a few other nuns wandered in, one wheeling a tea urn with cups and saucers. After a short interval, Sister Felicity appeared with tall glasses of lemonade and settled down on the other side of Olivia.

  ‘We’re expecting Father Calvert along shortly,’ confided Mother Bernadette sotto voce. ‘He wanted to speak to us separately about Father Thomas … didn’t want to do it in front of the parishioners or…’ She didn’t add the words ‘common herd’, though Olivia mentally supplied them, seeing her own merriment reflected in Sister Felicity’s dancing eyes.

  That was what she cherished so much about her friend, she thought. Not just the wise counsel, but a sense of humour as keen and ironic as it was irrepressible. She guessed Father Thomas had relished it too, having come across the two rocking with laughter on more than one occasion.

  ‘I’m sure dear Father Hassett will be so relieved to know that the monastery’s future is now safe thanks to Father Thomas.’ Mother Bernadette had found her second wind.

  There was a restless movement from Sister Felicity. She looked as though she was about to say something, but then thought better of it.

  ‘Is it a large bequest then?’ Olivia enquired politely.

  ‘Well, naturally we are remote from money matters here in the convent,’ Mother Bernadette said piously. ‘“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but rather store up treasures in heaven,”’ she quoted sententiously.

  ‘Oh, of course,’ was Olivia’s polite murmur.

  Having duly edified the visitor, Mother Bernadette became confidential.

  ‘Father Hassett mentioned at the last joint chapter meeting that he dreamed of establishing a foundation abroad one day … in Zimbabwe, perhaps, or India.’ Her eyes were dreamy. ‘Just think of that! Maybe we could send sisters to join them.’

  ‘Vocations are in decline, Mother.’ Sister Felicity’s tone was regretful. ‘We face a struggle to maintain our numbers here, let alone expand further afield.’

  Mother Bernadette drew herself up. ‘We must have faith, my dear Sister,’ she admonished. ‘Besides, Father Hassett said he plans to launch a recruitment drive, with a full-time coordinator.’

  The nun looked sharply at Sister Felicity, but the other’s eyes were downcast.

  Satisfied that her reproof had found its mark, Mother Bernadette’s voice softened. ‘There could be a new display centre for the shrine’s heirlooms too.’

  ‘Are those the valuables in the vault?’ Olivia asked eagerly.

  ‘Yes, my dear.’ Mother Bernadette’s voice resonated with a decidedly unmonastic pride. ‘They were hidden during the Reformation after the order’s property was sequestered. The famous Bromgrove ciborium and chalice are down there, and there’s a fourteenth century monstrance too – beaten silver covered with gems.’

  ‘Don’t forget the vestments, Mother,’ Sister Felicity prompted, half-reluctantly.

  ‘No, indeed.’ The other pressed her hands together in a transport of enthusiasm. ‘So many beautiful objects. Embroidered copes, chasubles and frontals in all the colours of the rainbow … so precious they had to be locked away in special shelves and drawers …’

  Treasures on earth or treasures in heaven, Olivia wondered.

  ‘The glories of the monastery could do much to foster a proper devotional spirit.’ It was almost as if Mother Bernadette had read Olivia’s thoughts. Her eyes were glowing. ‘Just think of it – a Counter-Reformation … the conversion of England!’

  Olivia endeavoured to look appropriately deferential.

  ‘Relax, Olivia.’ Sister Felicity had noticed her discomfiture. ‘You don’t have to worry about conscription just yet!’

  Somehow, this punctured the tension and they all laughed.

  ‘One shouldn’t perhaps build too much on Father Thomas,’ Sister Felicity spoke hesitantly. ‘Who knows how circumstances may have changed, or funds diminished for that matter …’

  ‘Oh, my dear Sister.’ Mother Bernadette’s tone was incredulous. ‘I imagine the Egerton fortune is safe. Farrer’s will have taken good care with investments, you can count upon it.’

  At that moment, there was a little commotion at the door of the common room.

  Mother Ursula the superior appeared – a plump but nevertheless commanding presence – accompanied by Father Calvert.

  There was a little ripple of interest, swiftly subdued.

  ‘I should go,’ whispered Olivia in some embarrassment.

  ‘Not at all,’ Sister Felicity whispered back. ‘This isn’t private convent business, else we’d be in the chapter house,’ she added, referring to the large meeting room at the rear of the building.

  Reassured by this, and by Mother Ursula’s kindly look in her direction, Olivia stayed where she was.

  Father Calvert appeared wiped out, the puffy flesh around his eyes looking as if it was bruised. Of course, thought Olivia, with the death of Father Thomas, it was the passing of an era.

  ‘Good afternoon, dear friends.’ His voice too was attenuated. ‘Our beloved Father Thomas is now enjoying Paradise, the renewal of all that is best at its best.’ It was a conventional enough formula, but the feeling behind it was clearly heartfelt.

  There was an approving murmur from his audience.

  ‘My heart is at present too full to say more,’ Father Calvert’s voice seemed to die in the air, but he gathered himself and continued. ‘However, mindful that the convent has an interest in Father’s testamentary dispositions, the rector wanted to let you know that there were no surprises at the reading of the will and Father Thomas’s wishes remained unchanged.’ He licked dry lips. ‘Save for some minor bequests, the Egerton estate passes to the Order absolutely.’

  Olivia heard a choking sound and suddenly became aware that Sister Felicity’s seat was empty.

  Anxiously, she watched the nun groping her out way of the common room.

  Half-rising, she was about to go after her when Mother Bernadette laid a restraining hand on her arm. ‘She’s overcome, poor dear.’ At the concern in Olivia’s face she added peremptorily, ‘Don’t worry, she’ll be all right. Sister Isabella will see to her.’

  Olivia subsided back into her chair, her mind full of misgivings.

  Sister Felicity had appeared curiously ill at ease this afternoon. What was it? What was troubling her?

  Olivia felt a headache beginning somewhere behind her right temple. Father Calvert was now talking about funeral arrangements. Through the windows, she saw dragonflies skimming in circles on hot air currents like lilies on a lake.

  She gestured to her watch, miming to Mother Bernadette that it was time for her to go.

  Unobtrusively, she made her way to the door.

  In the corridor, no-one was about. She felt reluctant to leave, but could find no excuse to linger.

  Stumbling into the neat gravel forecourt at the front of the house, Olivia unsteadily screened her eyes from the sun. She looked round at the flower borders.

  Sweet rose … Thy root is ever in its grave, And thou must die.

  Heavens, what was the matter with her? Next thing, she’d be seeing the horned goat lurking in the convent shrubbery!

  Slowly, she made her way towards the gate and the noisy hubbub beyond.

  3

  No Quiet Night

  SUMME
R MORNINGS IN BROMGROVE had a sort of dance-of-the-seven-veils allure, reflected DI Gilbert Markham, watching the early morning mist as it slowly lifted from the town’s buildings and landmarks. Directly in front of him was the soot-streaked Victorian gothic Town Hall. Behind it rose the terraced cemetery of St Chad’s on one side, with the gauzy undulations of Hollingrove Park on the other.

  It was like stage magic, a dew-spangled backdrop hinting at infinite possibilities before the day became stale and bad-tempered, its treacly air spreading and seeping everywhere like a blowsy woman who had let herself go.

  Reluctantly, Markham took one last look before heading towards the station foyer and the lift that would take him up to CID.

  DS George Noakes’s attitude to summer was, predictably, less poetic than that of his boss. As Markham walked into the openplan CID area, his subordinate was muttering imprecations at a rattling desk fan while angrily poking and prodding its entrails like an overweight Rumpelstiltskin.

  ‘Why the hell did some daft git put paper streamers on a perfectly good fan? Buggered it up good and proper they have.’

  Markham contemplated Noakes’s summer tailoring with a feeling akin to despair.

  The DS’s crumpled seaside-striped shirt – complete with spreading half-moons of sweat under the armpits – clashed horribly with a virulent dark green and black polka-dot tie. Biscuit-coloured trousers vainly attempted to contain his overflowing paunch, while clumpy brothel creepers gave him the look of a superannuated hippie. A scuffed safari jacket was flung over the nearest desk along with wonky looking sunglasses held together by sellotape. If Noakes was aiming for a look that suggested Bromgrove’s answer to Our Man in Havana, then he had missed by several miles.

  Markham could only imagine DCI’s Sidney’s reaction to this eye-popping ensemble. Itching to have Noakes put out to grass, ‘Slimy Sid’ regularly dropped heavy hints about the DS’s chronic unsuitability as wingman to an upwardly mobile inspector.

  ‘You can’t teach an old dog new tricks, Markham.’ It was the voice of sweet reason. ‘There’s no room in a modern police force for the likes of Noakes. I mean, the man’s beyond the pale … no filter … puts his foot in it all the time. And he looks like some sort of hobo … a very poor advertisement for the force.’

  Sidney undeniably had a point. Part of the problem was the DS’s rapidly increasing girth. Noakes had put on almost two stone in the last few years, though any hints about extra poundage were invariably swatted aside with references to being ‘big boned’ or ‘burly’. Markham wondered whether his sergeant’s increasingly outlandish dress sense (if that wasn’t a contradiction in terms) was a cunning strategy to distract attention from his overflowing gut. In which case, the tactic was a lamentable failure.

  Markham had hoped that Muriel Noakes might be a useful ally in matters sartorial, only to encounter a rare admission of that formidable lady’s impotence. ‘I wash my hands of him, Gilbert,’ she said in a tone which suggested Noakes’s working wardrobe held the top spot in her tally of conjugal grievances. ‘He’s very touchy about his weight. I’ve told him he should take a leaf out of your book and smarten up.’ I bet that went down like a cold cup of sick, the DI thought wryly. ‘I only ask that he doesn’t disgrace me socially. I have a certain standing in the community, after all.’ Markham was surprised to experience a twinge of fellow-feeling. Clearly, like him, Noakes’s ‘missus’ had learned to pick her battles.

  If the DCI beheld today’s rig-out, there’d be hell to pay. And Markham wouldn’t get away with spinning Sidney a line about it being ‘dress-down Saturday’ or any such malarkey. Wryly, he offered up a silent prayer that something would come up to take his DS out of the office before any of the gold braid mob swung by.

  Whatever Noakes’s shortcomings, he was one of Markham’s non-negotiables. The DI could no more imagine life without his sidekick than he could imagine a career outside CID. For all that his DS exhibited the social finesse of a mastodon, the virtues of loyalty, humanity and honesty ran through him like stripes through a stick of rock. The relationship between the two men was not marked by garrulity nor by any trademark rituals of police canteen culture, yet somehow they understood each other deep down where it mattered.

  As for Markham’s girlfriend, no troubadour from a medieval romance could have been truer to his lady than Noakes to Olivia Mullen. Despite his much-vaunted scorn for book-learning and ladi-dah airs and graces, the DS invariably behaved towards her with a respectful delicacy that bordered on the reverential. ‘You’ve put a spell on him,’ Markham teased, unwittingly echoing Muriel Noakes’s acid verdict on Olivia’s charms. And it was true that, with her pre-Raphaelite colouring and dreamy ethereality, Olivia did indeed seem to hold Noakes in thrall. Whenever he looked at her, he was reminded of a painting he had seen in one of those art galleries they’d dragged him round at school – a sorceress, fairy queen, ‘or summat like that’, with a waterfall of hair enveloping her like a cloak and the look of another world in her eyes. When she spoke, in her musical lilting contralto, of things beyond his ken, he listened in tongue-tied awe, with a feeling upon him that was almost biblical, as though the heavens might open and a celestial choir appear. Although he took good care not to share these impressions with Mrs Noakes, she had somehow divined his susceptibility, consoling herself in private with unvoiced but deadly sarcasms on the score of red-headed snippets.

  With one last vicious jab, Noakes gave up on the refractory fan. Spotting Markham, he grunted, ‘Air con’s gone off again, Guv. All we’ve got is this poxy little fan an’ it doesn’t even work.’ His hangdog, pouchy face had never looked more like a paper bag in need of ironing, while great beads of sweat rolled down from the swept-back shock of salt and pepper hair over tomato-red cheeks. Altogether, he could have been one of those illustrations from retro seaside postcards – the henpecked British male, baffled and impotent under a blazing sun.

  Suppressing a sigh, Markham said, ‘Never mind that, Noakes. Hopefully we can get out of the office before long. See if you can rustle up a couple of Cokes.’

  His glassed-in corner office overlooking the car park already felt like an oven, neither the privacy blinds which screened his domain from the rest of CID nor the half-open louvered window providing much in the way of cool or shade. Everywhere was drowsily quiet, save for a slight breeze stirring the bank of leylandii between the station and Bromgrove High Street.

  Noakes arrived, huffing and puffing, with two cans of tepid Coke. ‘Machine’s on the blink, but I cadged these from the canteen.’ Markham looked at his with distaste before wearily snapping back the tab. At least Noakes had spared him the olfactory ordeal of the breakfast burger. Perhaps even he baulked at a grease-fest with the thermometer nudging the mid-eighties. Markham’s stomach pitched and rolled queasily at the mere thought.

  ‘Right, Noakes,’ he said as his DS plonked himself down on one of the two poorly-sprung leather armchairs in front of Markham’s desk. ‘We need to get a handle on these activists down at the university.’

  Noakes looked up mid-slurp.

  ‘The rent-a-mob lot? Thought they were they just long-haired lefties with too much time on their hands.’

  ‘I’m not so sure about that.’ Markham’s keen grey eyes were thoughtful. He gestured to a folder on his desk. ‘There’s been some ugly vandalism at various churches, along with reports of threatening behaviour towards a couple of nuns at the Student Services Centre.’

  ‘Nuns?’ Noakes wiped a sleeve across his mouth before looking round furtively.

  ‘Yes, nuns.’ Markham’s voice was dry. ‘Presumably you’ve come across them from time to time.’

  ‘Not to talk to, not really.’ Noakes looked warily at his boss. ‘One of my mates was an RC and got taught by ’em. Told me they were allus yakking on about God being love before clipping kids round the lughole.’ He rubbed the side of his head as though in sympathy.

  ‘Ah, I can see that might not have been the best introduction to the breed
.’ Markham was doing his best not to laugh. ‘But I assure you, Noakes, the Sisters of St Cecilia are a very different class of nun.’ Cunningly, he added, ‘Olivia thinks the world of them.’

  Noakes capitulated hook, line, and sinker.

  ‘Oh well, if your Olivia says they’re kosher …’

  The DS cleared his throat, shuffled his feet bashfully and stared at his shoes, looking for all the world like a teenager in the throes of his first crush.

  Markham smiled to himself.

  ‘She’s been seeing one of the sisters for counselling sessions and sometimes goes to Mass at St Cecilia’s church.’

  ‘Oh yeah.’ Noakes was on surer ground now. ‘The one with the monastery next door.’

  He puffed out his chest in a touching show of pride. ‘My Muriel knows some of those folks through the Women’s Guild. Hob nobs with a few of the priests an’ all. Doesn’t mind letting ’em know what’s what.’

  Markham suppressed a grin at the thought of Muriel Noakes putting suave Father Charles Hassett through his catechetical paces.

  ‘Maybe she’ll be able to help us with some background on the place, then. It’s difficult to bring Olivia down to earth sometimes, but I’m sure Mrs Noakes has a keen eye for detail. She’s always struck me as the observant kind.’ Not half.

  The DS looked immensely gratified. Fancy the guvnor saying that about Muriel.

  Markham had never been able to fathom how his slobbish DS (‘so laid back he’s practically horizontal’, DCI Sidney had snapped during one memorable tongue-lashing) had ended up with overbearing, socially insecure Muriel whose basilisk eye invariably brought Olivia out in hives. But ‘the missus’ was Noakes’s Achilles’ heel, and he was as watchful for pin pricks to her amour propre as he was careless of slights to his own.