Crime in the Convent

by Catherine Moloney

  She knew that in her he sought the purity and innocence that he had lost on his travels, unrealistic and deluded though this was. She knew that he needed to think of her as wholly his – untainted by anything that came before. She even suspected it had become somehow necessary to his sanity.

  ‘You are doing him an injustice,’ Sister Felicity had counselled. ‘He would never blame you. Given that you love him so much, I think he is man enough to understand.’ When Olivia remained unconvinced, the nun insisted, ‘You’ve never betrayed him. This happened years ago, long before you ever knew him. He will feel only sadness for what you suffered.’

  Remembering her friend’s reassurance, Olivia’s heart leaped with a kind of hope. Perhaps it would be all right. She couldn’t give Gil children. Too much damage. But they still had that beautiful world which was theirs alone….

  Olivia had retreated so far into herself, that at first she didn’t hear the stealthy swishing. But something had disturbed her reverie.

  The skirts of a religious habit.

  Softly, she eased open the door of the confessional a crack and peered out.

  The tall figure of a priest, his back to her, was standing in front of St Cecilia’s shrine. Strange the way he had appeared from nowhere. Or maybe he’d been in the church all along.

  She squinted into the gloom uncertainly, then relaxed. It was only the rector standing motionless like some mysterious sorcerer, hands folded into his cassock.

  Safe in her concealed vantage-point, Olivia watched him curiously.

  Some private ceremony must be imminent, she thought. Perhaps a prayer service for Father Calvert. Yes, that would be it. Something just for the community. That must be why the church was closed to the public. Or perhaps the SOCOs had more work to do.

  She yawned sleepily. Presumably the police were now keepers of the church keys, monitoring all comings and goings. She grinned. Brother Malachy wouldn’t like that one little bit.

  *

  In any event, it looked as though the rector too wanted to be alone and had ended up locked in with her.

  Olivia felt a twinge of embarrassment, as if she was a creepy voyeur or stalker spying on poor Father Hassett. But it would be too awkward to spring out now like some sort of jack-in-the-box. She would just have to stay as quiet as possible and sit it out.

  And still he stood there, head bowed and massive quarterback’s shoulders tense as though he was praying for inspiration.

  Without knowing who he was, you could almost imagine it was an actor playing a priest. In some religious drama. Murder in the Cathedral or something like that.

  Who will rid me of this meddlesome priest?

  God, what was the matter with her? Why had those words suddenly come to her?

  Father Calvert. The dead priest who knew too much and paid the price.

  Almost as though he sensed he was being watched, the rector turned around, the high wide cheekbones giving him the look of some great eagle, dark eyes – dangerously omniscient – glittering across the expanse of pews.

  Olivia shrank back in alarm, kicking the kneeler in her awkward haste.

  The handsome head swung round towards the confessionals.

  Damn and triple damn. He was moving in her direction!

  In the monastery, priests and brothers were gathered in the Community Parlour on the first floor at the back of the house. ‘Like an undertakers’ convention,’ Noakes snorted, surveying the sea of black.

  The room was another repository for ancient furnishings of decidedly frayed and moth-eaten vintage. Gloomy green wallpaper, of indeterminate pattern and colour, sporting dark rectangles which hinted at long-departed pictures that had once adorned the walls, gave the parlour the incomparably dreary air of a care home lounge. Three floor-to-ceiling windows thickly curtained in dingy brown velvet seemed to kill the sunlight stone dead, while two rows of sagging, mismatched easy chairs were interspersed with occasional tables of stunning hideousness.

  The DI felt a surge of pity for these men struggling with the harsh realities of church politics in which the crucial necessity was to remain in play and not be dealt out. If décor was anything to go by, the order of St Cecilia’s was losing ground fast.

  But he repressed the impulse. Now that he’d seen the diary, there was no time to lose.

  He turned to DC Doyle. ‘Is the church secured?’

  ‘Recce’d it before, sir. No-one there. I locked the front door and PC Hoskyns took care of the sacristy.’

  ‘Good. You’ve got all the keys? And everyone’s accounted for?’

  The young detective consulted his clipboard (at which Noakes was casting derisive glances), a model of executive efficiency.

  ‘Everyone’s here, sir.’ He pointed out the humped, wizened figure in a wheelchair. ‘Even Father McCabe.’ Another look at his tick-list. ‘And I took in all the keys at the roll-call after Father Calvert … er … went missing. They’ve all got name tags.’

  With a quick, jerking frown, Markham took in the group.

  ‘Where’s Father Hassett?’ Then more urgently, ‘The rector, Doyle, where is he?’

  The other looked surprised. Blinking owlishly, he replied, ‘He was here earlier, sir. Standing with Father Reynolds.’

  ‘Well, he’s not with him now,’ Markham hissed in a fierce undertone.

  Desperately, the DI quelled the cyclone of anxiety mounting inside him. Doyle wasn’t to blame. He hadn’t given the lad any reason to believe the diary was of immediate significance, instructing him instead to secure the premises and assemble the community without alluding to what had been found. Unlike himself and Noakes, the DC wasn’t privy to its contents.

  No, the fault lay with him.

  ‘I’m sorry, sir.’ Doyle’s voice held a note of incredulity. ‘Has the killer got Father Hassett? Oh my God!’

  ‘It’s all right, Detective. Take a moment.’

  Markham looked across the room.

  Father Reynolds’s eyes, veiled by very long, feminine lashes, were hooded to hide their thoughts.

  The DI walked across to the young priest, standing practically in his face, forcing him to look up.

  ‘You knew, didn’t you, Father? You knew.’

  Between clenched teeth, Cyril Reynolds said, ‘After Father Calvert … I wondered, yes…. But,’ the exquisitely moulded lips twitched, ‘I knew nothing for certain, d’you hear. Nothing.’

  Olivia cringed.

  She should have called out, instead of being caught out lurking in the confessional like St Cecilia’s very own Peeping Tom.

  The door to the priest’s side of the confessional box opened and closed. There was a creaking as the rector sat down on the chair next to the grille.

  Then silence.

  Olivia leaned forward timidly, looking at the averted profile.

  And froze.

  Father Hassett had vanished, and all she saw was a succession of whirling images.

  Cloven hooves, twisted horns, bat-like wings.

  She opened her mouth but no words came.

  For one awful moment, Olivia thought she would lose consciousness, but she closed her eyes and the dizziness ebbed.

  At that moment, her senses tripped and she heard Sister Felicity’s voice.

  One of them is a devil.

  She looked again at the shadowy profile on the other side of the grille. The priest waiting, all-powerful, in that dark box to hear secrets and mete out punishment.

  Gazing across the confessional, it seemed that the narrow crepuscular space became suffused with a sulphurous miasma, as though something unspeakably rank and unwholesome was seeping through the woodwork.

  In an instant of blinding revelation, Olivia realized that the source of the contagion was the figure opposite.

  One of them is a devil.

  The devil was no longer just a figment of her fevered imagination. He had become incarnate, sitting there on the other side of the mesh grille, hiding behind a human mask.

  Father C
harles Hassett.

  ‘You,’ she whispered. ‘You.’

  There was a world of meaning in her words.

  ‘Yes, dear child. Me.’

  Father Hassett’s tone was gently ironical.

  He turned to face her full-on.

  The skin on the back of her neck crawled. Automatically, she put up a hand to touch it.

  Hypnotically compelling, coal-black eyes gleamed through the grille.

  ‘You look as though you’d like to sprinkle the confessional with holy water.’

  It was the accustomed suave wit, turned to something malign and diabolical.

  Olivia found her voice, though it sounded reedy and insubstantial to her own ears.

  ‘How can you sit there, Father?’ Her voice broke. ‘After what you did to Sister Felicity.’

  The teasing tones vanished, eclipsed by a savage vindictiveness. It was terrifying. As though there were different people speaking out of his mouth.

  ‘Do you have any idea what the Order means to me? How I’ve suffered, slaved, sweated blood for it.’ The proud face twisted with self-loathing. ‘“Everyone who leaves houses, brethren and family for my sake shall receive a hundredfold.” Isn’t that the promise?’ Unseen by Olivia, the long, delicate hands clenched and unclenched as though railing against a cruel fate. ‘Well, it never came good. Not for me. Not for St Cecilia’s.’

  Olivia scarcely dared breathe, sweat on her forehead running down the back of her neck from her hair.

  ‘We were on the verge of extinction. No funds, no resources, no new vocations, nothing.’

  A deep sigh shook the walls of the confessional, then the words came tumbling out in a torrent.

  ‘Father Thomas’s will would have set us straight. With sufficient capital, St Cecilia’s stood a chance.’ The words were tenderly wistful. ‘A chance to take its place alongside the great Orders: St Colomba’s, the Sons of Charity, the Sacred Heart Missionaries. We could have recruited … evangelized … established missions …’

  ‘The Egerton Trust—’

  ‘Yes, the Egerton Trust.’

  ‘But I don’t understand,’ Olivia stuttered. ‘Didn’t Father Thomas leave his inheritance to the Order?’

  Peals of bitter, derisive laughter greeted her question. More frightening than anything that had gone before.

  Brutally, succinctly, the priest told her Father Thomas’s secret and how its sequel had poisoned all his own hopes. Olivia’s mind whirled. A secret son!

  ‘And Sister Felicity?’ Her eyes were full of tears.

  ‘Couldn’t see the bigger picture.’ There was no compassion in his voice, just a cold implacability. ‘She would have brought it all crashing down.’ The note of menace was palpable as he added, ‘I couldn’t allow that.’

  ‘Nicholas Saddington …’

  ‘That posturing no-mark! I’d warned him not to cross me … hinted that if the dead could talk….’

  Olivia’s blood ran cold. Were there other victims no-one knew about?

  ‘What did he do?’ For all her fear, she needed to hear the whole story.

  ‘That interfering nun,’ Olivia flinched, ‘must’ve said something to make him wonder about the will.’ He waved his hand as though swatting an importunate fly. ‘Saddington thought he’d hit the jackpot … demanded money in return for his silence, the fool.’

  ‘What happened to Father Calvert?’

  The dark eyes blazed with an unholy light.

  ‘Austin was always there, at my right hand. He shared the vision.’

  There was a groan, like the sound of a soul passing between the gates of hell.

  ‘Then, after all we’d been through together, he abandoned me like a coward. Wanted to turn himself in.’

  ‘So, you killed him as well.’

  ‘I struck him down. It was an act of mercy, believe me. His mind was going … the signs had been there for a while. He had Parkinson’s, but it wasn’t widely known.’ A long pause. ‘After he was dead, I put a rosary in his palm and laid a funeral pyre so his soul could fly free.’

  Olivia shuddered, knowing that Father Calvert had been placed in the flames while unconscious. She dared not utter the truth. To do so might tip the priest over the edge.

  ‘What are you going to do now?’ She was hardly able to force the words through parched lips.

  ‘Well, I can’t let you live, can I?’ The note of mild regret was chilling. ‘Not after I’ve unburdened myself like this. Not now you know I’ve three murders to my credit.’

  A high rippling snicker made Olivia’s heart falter in her chest.

  ‘Did I say three? Make that four counting the curate.’

  ‘The curate?’

  ‘Yes, Edward Lightwood. He’s Father Thomas’s by-blow. Didn’t I mention that?’

  Flopping against the back of the chair like a rag doll, Olivia felt all the strength drain from her body.

  Oh God, not that bright, witty young man, she thought. Not him too!

  ‘How?’ she croaked.

  ‘He’s in the canal.’ Again, the horrible mirthless snicker. ‘Rather apt isn’t it, a “fisher of men” sleeping with the fishes.’

  There was no trace of the humane, compassionate clergyman whose charisma she now realized was a smoke-screen for the hollowness within. The hollowness of a man consumed by raging ambition and pride. Now she knew of whom Austin Calvert had spoken when he preached that retreat on fallen angels.

  ‘And what about you, Olivia?’

  The sibilant whisper shocked her out of her trance.

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Well, I’m guessing you have a secret too. Something that drew you into our fold of saints and sinners. Something you shared with your busybody nun, that paragon of pro-lifers. What could it be, I wonder.’ His basilisk stare held her transfixed. ‘A child perhaps? A child you cast off … destroyed in contravention of God’s law.’

  Olivia was beyond speech.

  ‘Ah, I see that I was right. I’d lay odds you haven’t told that extraordinarily attractive policeman of yours.’

  She had a sudden searing awareness of exceptional intuitive powers horribly perverted. Looking across the confessional, her mind moving at the speed of light, she scrutinized every incident that she could remember – every past gesture, every movement that might provide a clue to his wickedness….

  ‘I think suicide might be appropriate,’ he interrupted her thoughts. ‘There’s that little staircase from the organ loft to the belfry.’

  Her insides turned to ice and she began to shake.

  ‘Sad but understandable…. Unstable woman in the grip of religious neurosis, guilt-stricken about past … mistakes … struggling to keep up with the thrusting young wunderkind of Bromgrove CID … not up to his weight, really…. All terribly sad.’

  He was composing her epitaph.

  Olivia suddenly felt a powerful urge to write an alternative ending. She reached for her mobile.

  ‘Don’t even think about it.’ The command came like the lash of a whip. She withdrew her hand.

  So, this was it, she thought. A forced march to the top of the bell-tower followed by oblivion. A last sacrifice on the altar of Charles Hassett’s insane ambition.

  With no chance to tell Gil how much she loved him.

  Suddenly, he was ushering her out of the confessional box, in a terrible parody of courtliness which recalled the priest she had so admired.

  Olivia felt as though she was walking down a long tunnel, further and further from life, towards a tiny pinprick of light.

  ‘You’ll never get away with it, you know.’

  ‘I rather think I will, my dear.’ His stare was empty, unwavering, as if he hardly saw her at all. ‘When the cavalry arrives, your inspector will find me in the crypt beneath the shrine … lost in prayer … oblivious to the tragedy.’

  ‘He’ll piece it together.’

  ‘How?’ the rector mocked. ‘There’re no forensics to implicate me. I took good care of that – left nothi
ng to chance.’ With a wry smile, he added, ‘And Holy Mother Church will mobilize to protect its own…, particularly one who netted the Egerton fortune.’ His lips curled with cynical distaste. ‘If there’s one thing that eunuch McGettrick is good for, it’s PR. Any threat to the diocesan reputation and he’ll see the investigation closed down.’

  ‘They’ll find something,’ she choked.

  ‘And if they do, I will be able to explain it away.’ His expression was almost pitying. ‘A venerable clergyman and missionary, well-loved by his parishioners, with an exemplary track record … a most unlikely suspect, as I’m sure you will agree.’

  Her stomach rolled at the confidence in his voice. And then her arm was taken in an iron grasp. ‘Let’s get going. Time’s a-wasting.’

  There was nothing left but to pray the end would come swiftly.

  She thought of Edward Lightwood couched in the river’s sediment.

  The Spinner of the Years had come for them both.

  Markham moved smartly away from Cyril Reynolds lest he succumb to the temptation to smash his fist into the priest’s face.

  How could Reynolds stay silent? How could he protect a triple murderer? How the fuck could he square that with his conscience?

  Through the windows, the DI saw vast slate clouds swallowing the sun whole. A distant rumble of thunder sounded in the distance like the ominous tread of an advancing army. Or the wrath of God, he thought grimly.

  Noakes moved over to stand beside him. Doyle, feeling that he was in disgrace, hovered wretchedly at the far end of the room.

  ‘Where would Hassett have gone, Guv?’

  ‘Most likely the church.’

  ‘But Doyle checked it before he and Hoskyns locked up.’

  ‘The rector could have another set of keys. Or there’ll be some way in through the vaults under the shrine.’ Markham’s voice was controlled but his mind was racing. ‘He knows St Cecilia’s like the back of his hand. All its nooks and crannies.’

  ‘He doesn’t know we’ve found Father Calvert’s diary, boss.’ Noakes was puzzled. ‘Why didn’t he just sit tight with the rest of ’em ’stead of making it look like he’s got summat to hide?’

  ‘I think he’s looking for the diary, Sergeant.’

  ‘What, in the church?’