Crime in the Convent

by Catherine Moloney

  ‘If he knows it exists, then he’ll want to get his hands on it.’

  ‘Oh, right.’ Noakes was catching on.

  ‘He didn’t find it in Father Calvert’s room, so the church is a pretty good bet.’

  ‘Father C must’ve seen him coming, though, Guv. What with hiding it in the sideboard whatnot.’

  ‘Yes.’ Markham rubbed a palm across his chiselled jaw. ‘His distrust of Hassett was growing…Who can tell what the poor man was thinking? Perhaps at the end, the infirmary was the only place that felt safe.’

  At that moment, Noakes’s mobile rang. He moved across to the windows to take the call, leaving Markham to pray that it wasn’t a two-pronged attack by DCI Sidney and Bishop McGettrick.

  The DS was back within a few minutes, consternation writ large across his grizzled features.

  ‘What now?’ Markham groaned.

  ‘Well, that was Mother Ursula from the convent, Guv. She jus’ wanted to check that your Olivia was all right … y’know after seeing Sister Felicity this morning. Mother Bernadette thought she seemed a bit troubled, like.’ Noakes shuffled his feet, a sure sign of agitation. ‘But she hasn’t been able to get through. Says Olivia’s mobile’s been switched off for a while.’

  The DS’s bushy brows drew together.

  ‘You don’t think she’d have done owt … silly?’

  Markham turned white, looking as though he was about to keel over.

  ‘Oh God,’ he muttered. ‘I know where she is.’

  Noakes placed a steadying hand on his arm.

  ‘Easy does it, Guv,’ he said.

  ‘She’s in the church.’

  ‘What! With Hassett? Fuck!’

  The two men looked at each other in dismay. Aware that something was wrong, Doyle joined their huddle.

  ‘The ’spector’s lass, we think she’s in the church,’ Noakes told him.

  Their stricken expressions said it all.

  ‘With the killer?’ Doyle said slowly, comprehension dawning at last. ‘Father Hassett?’ With an uneasy glance at the community silently watching, he murmured, ‘Does that mean she’s in danger, then?’

  Markham felt a clawing in the pit of his stomach as if something was trying to rip its way out.

  ‘I think if Hassett came upon her suddenly, she might put it together … not all of it perhaps but enough to make her realize it was the rector Father Calvert feared.’ The DI met Noakes’s eyes, recalling that conversation in the convent garden earlier. ‘That stuff about pride and fallen angels was niggling at her. She may even have had started to suspect the rector deep down somewhere in her subconscious. Remember what she said about Father Calvert. It was “almost like he was having a go at one of the priests”. Being in church would bring it all to the surface.’

  Markham’s heart dropped like lead to the shabby beige carpet. Sweat pooling damply at the base of his spine, he felt faint with the effort of remaining in control.

  ‘Liv’s no good at dissembling,’ he said miserably. ‘Never has been. If she makes the connection, Hassett will see it.’

  The thunder was getting nearer, clouds on the horizon ribbed with slivers of fire, like a viper’s flicking tongue.

  ‘I should have told her we were on to Hassett,’ the DI raged impotently. ‘I should have told her about the will and the secret child. All of it.’

  ‘You were trying to protect your lady, Guv. Doin’ your best to keep her out of it.’ Noakes offered his clumsy comfort. ‘We’d all have done the same.’ Doyle assented so vigorously as to resemble a nodding dog.

  Touched, Markham looked at his subordinates.

  The three musketeers.

  He turned to them with a new light in his eyes.

  ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Let’s get over to the church. Just the three of us. Everything softly-softly, no heroics. Top priority is to get my – to get Liv out of there.’

  Father Reynolds had been following this exchange closely and now approached Markham, his face very pale.

  ‘Let me come with you, Inspector.’

  Markham gave him a withering look.

  ‘Why should I trust you?’

  ‘Logically, you shouldn’t,’ Reynolds said simply. ‘But I’m the nearest thing Charles has to a son. Seeing me may pull him back from … from whichever dark place he’s gone.’

  The DI gave a curt nod. ‘Stay back unless I give the word,’ he said.

  *

  It was breezy up on the little mansard roof of the bell tower, halfway between heaven and earth, the verdigris-crusted weather vane whirling round merrily as though drunk.

  Olivia felt oddly detached, as though looking down at herself from above. She sensed the storm about to break, unleashing all the rage of a disintegrating world. Perhaps they’d be struck by lightning, she thought, with a wild bound of the heart.

  The rector’s grip, strong on her arm, propelled her forward to the waist-high wall which overlooked the church’s forecourt.

  All was quiet below.

  They stood for a moment side by side, almost like lovers enjoying the view.

  ‘Go on,’ he breathed seductively in her ear. ‘Deep down you want to. You’ve wanted to ever since they took that baby out of you.’

  The ground swam beneath her.

  ‘Just one little step and then … perfect peace.’

  He sounded almost envious. She felt her body go limp.

  ‘Get away from her!’

  Suddenly, Gil was there, his eyes locking onto hers with blazing intensity, like a beacon. At his shoulder, the bear-like figure of Noakes. You couldn’t have got a fag paper between them, she thought, giddy with the enormity of relief.

  ‘Move towards Noakes, Liv.’ The DI spoke gently, soothingly.

  The rector made no attempt to stop her.

  Unsteadily, she stumbled across into Noakes’s waiting embrace, nestling close, her head on his shoulder as if it was the most natural thing in the world. Watching the DS’s besotted expression, Doyle had a rare glimpse into the bond between Markham and his lumbering sergeant before Noakes bashfully disentangled himself and handed Olivia over.

  ‘Get ’er out of it,’ he said gruffly, and the young detective hastened to obey.

  Father Charles Hassett stood tall and commanding, hair blowing back from the handsome, strong-boned face that belied his advancing years.

  ‘I was trying to persuade your young lady that life was worth living,’ he said coolly. ‘I found her up here preparing to end it all.’

  ‘Liar.’

  Markham clamped his lips together so tightly that the skin turned white round the edges of his mouth, his rage so great that he barely trusted himself to speak.

  Noakes took over.

  ‘We’ve got the diary,’ he said.

  Something shifted behind the dark eyes.

  ‘A sick man’s ramblings,’ he said dismissively, but the hands that hung at his sides were shaking. ‘You can’t make anything stick.’

  ‘Charles, for God’s sake, it’s over.’

  Cyril Reynolds stood at the doorway of the staircase which led back down to the church. The expression of naked yearning on his handsome face was startling.

  Ignoring Markham’s peremptory gesture to stay back, he extended his hand.

  ‘You were the perfect priest, Charles. The reason I joined the Order.’ He spoke with a desperate energy, as the thunder’s rallentando came ever closer.

  ‘There’s nothing done that can’t be forgiven.’

  It sounded like an absolution to Markham’s disbelieving ears.

  The rector’s spine stiffened. His head went back and he looked at Reynolds with something very much like love. Then, as though waging some internal battle with himself, he gazed across at the distant hills, white and remote against the lurid sky.

  There was a tremendous crack of lightning. It seemed to Markham that a streaming meteor lit up the priest in shades of glaring blue and purple. A wave of intense weariness washed across his face.
/>   ‘“Come, the bright day is done, And we are for the dark.”’

  ‘No!’

  Bending gracefully from the waist, as though bowing before the altar at the start of mass, Father Charles Hassett disappeared from sight.

  Moving as one, the policemen sprang to the parapet.

  Reynolds sank to his knees.

  ‘De profundis clamavi ad te, Domine,’ he cried. ‘Domine exaudi vocem meam.’

  Out of the depths I have cried to thee, O Lord. Lord, hear my voice.

  His words were carried away on the wind.

  Epilogue

  TWO WEEKS AFTER THE dramatic conclusion to the St Cecilia investigation, the late summer heat was cracking the flags in the minuscule courtyard at the back of The Grapes where Markham, Noakes and Doyle had gathered for a quiet drink after attending the interment of Father Austin Calvert’s ashes.

  Mrs Noakes, fearsomely arrayed in the kind of hat one would hate to sit behind in a theatre, had been immensely gratified by the DI’s request that she should represent him at the wake in the parish centre. It just went to show, she thought, how Gilbert Markham appreciated the savoir-faire she could bring to such occasions where poor, dear Olivia would be hopelessly out of her depth. In the glow of gratified vanity, Muriel managed to overlook George’s regrettable tendency to make cow’s eyes at the inspector’s girlfriend, contenting herself with the reflection that it was a shame some women were so obvious. Thank heaven she had other resources….

  Markham had indeed been very interested to hear from Muriel about Father Hassett’s rumoured approaches to various local antiquarians. The Fraud Squad was now looking into illicit sales of church treasures going back several years, though it was unlikely many artefacts would be recovered.

  Of greater concern was that enigmatic declaration to Olivia when Hassett talked about Nicholas Saddington. ‘I’d warned him not to cross me … hinted that if the dead could talk …’

  Was it possible that Charles Hassett’s killing spree had begun earlier than anyone imagined?

  The church cleaner, Eve Griffiths, had come forward with a strange tale about some barney she had overheard between Saddington and an invisible figure up in the organ loft.

  ‘It was something about St Cecilia’s having many secret places where a dead body could be concealed and nobody any the wiser,’ she said. ‘P’raps I should’ve spoke out sooner, Inspector,’ she added apologetically, ‘but I thought it might be my fancy. It was such a hot day you see, and on your own in the church…. Well, it’s easy to imagine all sorts if you know what I mean.’ Markham assured her that he did. Visibly relieved, Eve concluded, ‘And, of course, if it was the rector … he had an odd sense of humour … might just have said it to get a rise out of Mr Saddington.’ Markham agreed that it was a plausible scenario.

  The file would remain open, and Markham would discreetly review the records relating to deaths at the monastery. But he suspected that they would never know for certain.

  He looked across the trestle table at Olivia who was twitting Noakes about his aspirations as a ‘fashion icon’.

  ‘Where did this come from, George?’ Laughingly, she tweaked the navy braces revealed beneath a cream summer jacket. ‘And this?’ Pointing to what looked suspiciously like a Hermes tie.

  ‘Mu –, er the missus … got me some new clobber … after we won in the regionals,’ the DS mumbled, turning an unbecoming puce.

  ‘Very spiffy.’

  Noakes looked as if he could have died and gone to heaven on the spot.

  Sancho Panza and his Dulcinea.

  Daft old git, thought Doyle.

  *

  Later, after the others had left, Markham and Olivia lingered hand in hand.

  ‘How’s your friend Mr Lightwood these days?’ Markham asked lazily.

  ‘Oh, he’s been round to the monastery … spending quite a lot of time with Father Reynolds.’

  Her mind flew back to that heart-stopping moment when she believed the young curate to be dead – his bloated corpse floating face down in Bromgrove Canal.

  Guessing the direction of her thoughts, Markham gently pressed his lover’s hand.

  ‘They won’t prosecute Father Reynolds, will they … for perverting the course of justice or something like that?’

  ‘I doubt it,’ he replied. At least, not if that slimy bishop had anything to do with it. Predictably, he and DCI Sidney – virtuosos in damage limitation – had already instituted Operation Cover-up.

  ‘He worshipped Father Hassett, you know.’

  Olivia’s voice quavered.

  ‘“Angels are bright still, though the brightest fell.” Isn’t that what you always say?’ He squeezed her hand again. ‘Don’t let this destroy your faith in man’s essential goodness, darling Liv. And remember that even Lucifer was pardoned … forgiven in the very moment of his rebellion.’ She nodded tremulously. ‘Let’s leave the rector to God.’

  The setting sun gilded the little yard with its jaunty planters and window boxes.

  But autumn was coming.

  Markham stole a sideways glance at Olivia. He knew there was something left untold.

  He could wait.

  Whatever the truth, they would face it together.

  THE END

  The D.I. Gilbert Markham Series

  Book 1: CRIME IN THE CHOIR

  Book 2: CRIME IN THE SCHOOL

  Book 3: CRIME IN THE CONVENT

  Book 4: CRIME IN THE HOSPITAL

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