A VOW OF POVERTY an utterly gripping crime mystery

by Veronica Black

  The girl had been strangled about twenty years before. A young girl in a rosebud printed shortie nightie. A girl who might have been reported missing. Sister Joan’s last thought as she fell asleep was to wonder where the Tarquins, father and son, had been twenty odd years before.

  * * *

  ‘Sister, your veil!’

  Mother Dorothy stopped her as she came down to chapel in the morning.

  ‘Must we?’

  The practice of wearing stifling black veils had largely died out throughout the order.

  ‘The Press are already here,’ Mother Dorothy said in a gloomy tone and pulled down her own veil.

  Sister Joan went back to get her veil, irritated by the necessity of having to wear it. The opaque folds of material shadowed the morning and tickled her nose.

  Father Malone, looking harassed, arrived and vanished into the sacristy to robe for Mass, followed by Sister David. Odd, Sister Joan thought, eyeing the rest of the community, how veils flattened features, slightly distorted outlines, made even little Sister David look mysterious, not quite of the earth.

  At breakfast, veils were lifted but the mood was sombre. Father Malone, drinking his coffee, said, ‘This is a sad day. Detective Sergeant Mill was kind enough to call in and tell us what had happened. Poor child! I hope they will find out who she is and then her funeral can be arranged though there are no Catholics gone missing these past years as far as I can recall.’

  His tone suggested that going missing was more likely to be a Protestant habit.

  ‘You were parish priest here at that time, weren’t you, Father?’ Sister Martha asked.

  ‘I was indeed.’ He nodded. ‘It’s over thirty years since I was assigned to this parish you know. Of course I was younger then, a bit of a rebel, so I daresay that the bishop, God rest his soul! considered I’d be better off in a small backwater where they could keep an eye on me.’

  ‘Did you know the Tarquins?’ Sister Katherine asked the question that Sister Joan would have put had she not been temporarily diverted by the notion of Father Malone as a rebel.

  ‘Only to pass the time of day with,’ Father Malone said. ‘They were an old Catholic family long ago but they slid away from the Faith, God help them! and went along with the fashions of the time. Sir Robert was a pleasant enough gentleman, always sent me a very generous contribution for the children’s home and the hospital at Christmas. But he travelled a lot. Business, I think. Jewellery and fabrics — various investments. It’s my belief that he intended to leave it all to his son, but young Grant was never a credit to him. When he came home which wasn’t often he filled the house with his smart friends, and I don’t know what else, so Sir Robert used to take off and leave them to it. Maybe he trusted the lad would settle down, but in the end he left nearly everything to charity.’

  ‘And sold the estate very cheaply to our order,’ Sister Joan said.

  ‘Every cloud has a silver lining,’ Father Malone said with an air of having just discovered the fact. ‘Mind you, as far as I know Grant never broke the law — I mean the law of the land for he broke God’s laws many a time, God forgive him! And Sir Robert wasn’t a great churchgoer himself at the best of times, but there! he left his son just sufficient to build himself a house and lead a modestly comfortable life and that was all.’

  Sister Joan excused herself and went downstairs. In the chapel passage she paused to pull the veil over her face an instant before there was the flash from a long lens camera through one of the windows.

  She had thought of it before but it was curious that Sir Robert Tarquin had left his heir so very little. Holding wild parties hardly seemed sufficient reason for someone to be practically disinherited.

  The police team was already at work. She stood still in some dismay watching as sacks and boxes were carried down the twisting stairs by men in protective clothing with plastic gloves.

  ‘Good morning, Sister.’

  Constable Petrie came down to greet her as she genuflected to the altar.

  ‘Good morning, Constable Petrie. Going off duty?’

  ‘Yes, Sister. Mind you, I dozed off once or twice during the night. All was quiet. I’m afraid the upper storey’s out of bounds until the forensics team have finished.’

  ‘There are stacks of old newspapers and documents,’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t want them thrown out with the rubbish.’

  ‘I expect once they’ve checked and sorted you’ll be able to reclaim whatever you want,’ he reassured her. ‘However I’ll have a word.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  If she couldn’t have a look through everything herself she would have to trust that nothing important went missing. Dissatisfied, she went back into the main house.

  ‘Sister, what shall I do about the menus?’ Sister Teresa buttonholed her as she entered the kitchen.

  ‘What menus?’ Sister Joan enquired.

  ‘Oh, Sister David found a pile of old menus up in the library — dinner-party menus with lists of house guests from when the Tarquins lived here,’ Sister Teresa said. ‘She gave them to me when I made my final profession in case I needed any ideas about what to cook for the community, but it was a little joke actually because some of the dinners ran to nine or ten courses.’

  ‘You might as well—’ Sister Joan hesitated. ‘May I have them, Sister?’

  ‘Yes of course. I just rooted them out of the back of the drawer.’ Sister Teresa handed them over.

  ‘Thank you, Sister.’

  Sister Joan wandered back into the hall, turning over the handwritten sheets of thin white cardboard with interest. Their whiteness was blurred by ash stains, finger marks, and the occasional cigarette burn, but the handwriting changing down the years from copperplate to a hurried scrawl was only slightly faded and blotted. The menus were dated, and obviously there must have been many more, carefully prepared for the advent of guests, and sometimes kept, she realized, turning a few over at random to read the notes scribbled on the back. ‘Lady Sylvia prefers grouse’ was one such note. Another informed her that Miss Cecily Blunt took her morning coffee with honey instead of sugar.

  Obviously the servants of the day, anxious to be tipped at the end of a country house weekend, had taken care to remember the foibles of individual guests. And the menus! Cream of chicken soup, roast duck with orange sauce and braised celery, poached salmon in aspic with a mustard vinaigrette and fresh strawberries dipped in chocolate with Cornish cream. Her mouth watered. Suddenly a slice of dry bread, a piece of fruit and one cup of coffee seemed a most inadequate breakfast.

  ‘Sister, keeping your eyes lowered doesn’t mean you are entitled to walk into walls,’ Mother Dorothy said.

  Sister Joan was brought up short a few inches away from the front door and muttered a hasty apology.

  ‘You’re the one who would have been hurt,’ Mother Dorothy said. ‘What have you there, Sister?’

  ‘Some old menus and guest lists from the library, Mother Prioress,’ Sister Joan said. ‘Sister David gave them to Sister Teresa some time ago and Sister Teresa thought she ought to give them to someone.’

  ‘In case the guest lists contain any names useful to the police enquiries? Yes, you had better drive into town, Sister. I imagine Detective Sergeant Mill will be glad to have them,’ Mother Dorothy said. ‘Oh, here is something for petrol in case you need to fill up the van. We will see you at lunchtime then.’

  ‘Thank you, Mother Dorothy.’

  ‘There is probably sufficient there for you to treat yourself to a cup of coffee as well,’ Mother Dorothy said.

  ‘Thank you, Mother Dorothy.’ Sister Joan gave her superior a grateful and surprised smile.

  ‘Drive carefully, Sister.’ Mother Dorothy gestured to her to pull her veil down properly and went back into the parlour.

  It was fortunate that Sister Perpetua and Sister Teresa disliked driving, she thought, since that gave her the opportunity to travel into town more frequently than would otherwise have been the case. She wryly ack
nowledged it as a fault in herself that from time to time she needed some outside stimulus.

  There was no sign of Brother Cuthbert as she passed the former school building. The young monk was probably off meditating somewhere. She wondered if he’d been approached by the media yet, if he even knew that a murder enquiry was in progress. She had driven past a gaggle of reporters with her veil down and her foot hard on the accelerator; now she eased off the speed and put back the veil, relieved to be able to see the world without a dark shadow covering it.

  It wasn’t strictly according to instructions but she parked the van near the station and, clutching the menus, walked along to the café where she ordered the permitted cup of coffee and began to read through them more carefully.

  The early ones dated from the years between the wars when the house had been filled with bright young things who must have played on the tennis court and danced the black bottom and the Charleston in what was now the recreation room. Time was too short to indulge in nostalgic imaginings! She leafed through the pile rapidly, finding several dated during the seventies. The courses were fewer here and only an occasional note on the backs or in the margins gave any clue as to the people who had spent weekends as guests of the Tarquins.

  Her eyes fastened suddenly on a note scrawled on the back of a menu dated in the mid-1970s: Get Mandy a fix. Silly bitch!

  ‘Skiving off your duties, Sister?’ Detective Sergeant Mill had come in and was pulling out a chair.

  ‘How on earth did you know I was here?’ she demanded.

  ‘I rang the convent to keep Mother Dorothy up to date on progress and she told me you were coming to see me. I guessed you’d probably be drinking a coffee first while you decided how far to admit me into your investigations,’ he said, with an amused tilt of the eyebrow.

  ‘I didn’t want to waste your time with the irrelevant,’ Sister Joan said with dignity. ‘These are some old menus and guest lists from the years when the Tarquins owned Cornwall House. They were in the back of the kitchen drawer and Sister Teresa thought they might be needed since they came originally from the library. I was looking through them and there’s one here I feel you ought to look at.’

  She handed over the menu she had just been studying and took the opportunity while his attention was engaged of ordering a coffee for him.

  ‘Thank you, Sister.’ He stirred the coffee absently. ‘I assume you’ve got some kind of theory.’

  ‘This looks as if it was a New Year party,’ she said eagerly. ‘Look, they were going to have salmon and duck and turkey rissoles with braised sprouts. That would be to use up the leftovers from Christmas. I guess the cook was economical. And next to the Toast someone pencilled in “Auld Lang Syne”, which is sung at New Year. I think there was a house party for the new year of nineteen seventy-five, with guests coming from all over. Sir Robert Tarquin died later that year, didn’t he? Probably he was already in poor health and so Grant Tarquin took over most of the preparations and invited some of his own cronies. One was called Mandy and she “needed a fix”. That means drugs, doesn’t it? Probably there was drugtaking and a quarrel and Grant Tarquin strangled Mandy and stuck her in the old chest. He thought he was going to inherit the estate so he’d dispose of the body later but his father sold it instead, and then even though he visited the house afterwards he never got the chance to move the body, so it stayed where it was all these years.’

  ‘It’s a splendid theory,’ he said, ‘but there’s not a shred of proof to support it.’

  ‘There was the body. If you find out who was working at the house when that party was held — oh, it all fits in.’

  ‘There’s no proof that Grant Tarquin killed the girl or that her name was Mandy.’

  ‘You have to look for the proof,’ she said impatiently. ‘Surely if someone called Mandy was reported missing in nineteen seventy-five—’

  ‘From where? There’s no central register of missing persons, you know.’

  ‘I would guess London,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘If she’d been from round here then there would’ve been more of a fuss about it. Grant Tarquin brought someone from London.’

  ‘Who may or may not have been reported missing.’

  ‘But you’ll make enquiries?’

  ‘Yes, Sister. I’ll make enquiries at once,’ he said. ‘No, the coffee’s on me. Don’t argue. It’s not often I get the chance to treat a pretty woman to a cup of coffee. May I have the menus? By the way we have permission to exhume the body of Grant Tarquin. Don’t ask me how many strings I had to pull to get that!’

  ‘Will you tell me the results as soon as you know?’

  ‘Of course I’ll tell you the results. I have the oddest feeling my life wouldn’t be worth living if I didn’t,’ he said dryly, escorting her into the street. ‘Where’s your van?’

  ‘In the station yard.’

  ‘I’ll walk along with you. You know, Sister, it’s going to be the devil of a job trying to find out who did strangle our Jane Doe after all this time. If it was Grant Tarquin—’

  ‘Then he killed Jane Sinclair and Jeb Jones!’

  ‘Twenty years later? Assuming he’s still alive, of course.’

  ‘He’s alive,’ she said tersely. ‘I saw him. He’s been abroad, Alan; right up to eighteen months ago he hardly ever came back to this country. He couldn’t get at the body and he didn’t want anyone else to find it either.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So he heard that the storerooms were going to be cleared out and he had to — no, he couldn’t have found out about that until he heard Luther chatting about it in the pub or wherever — he’d already registered with the Falcon Agency.’

  ‘As Mr Monam, I assume?’

  ‘And got his estimate into the filing cabinet in the office at Nightingale Court probably while poor Miss Sinclair had popped out for a minute. You said the lock on the door was very easy to pick.’

  ‘So that she wouldn’t meet him face to face? Go on.’

  ‘I can’t,’ she said ruefully. ‘Something made him fear the body was going to be found, and if it wasn’t learning about my starting to clear out the storerooms then I don’t know what it was.’

  ‘I’ll keep in touch, Sister.’ He held open the van door for her as she swung herself behind the wheel.

  ‘I’d appreciate that. God bless, Alan.’

  ‘You too,’ he said unexpectedly, as she switched on the ignition and drove away.

  ‘Petrol!’ She remembered in time just before she turned off on to the moorland track, and pulled into the garage, watching the gauge creep up.

  Usually the monthly consumption of petrol was low, since except for the heaviest shopping she rode Lilith into town. Physical life was circumscribed by the rule. It was months since she’d been given permission to spend a day in London to attend an old college reunion.

  And that was when we decided to try to raise money by having retreats for the general public, her mind ran on, as she paid the bill and drove onto the track. We put an advertisement in some of the newspapers, and someone must have read it and assumed that extra space would be required for the guests so there was every chance the trunk would be opened and that poor girl discovered. It must have been a tremendous relief to him when the one retreat didn’t lead to any discoveries and proved to be the last, but he must’ve decided to play safe and get the body out anyway.

  He had laid his plans and she had played right into his hands by chatting about clearing out the storerooms. No doubt he’d planned to hire someone — Jeb? — to come and do the actual work. He hadn’t reckoned on being checked up on.

  Her spirits had leapt up and she speeded past the tall figure of Brother Cuthbert just entering the old schoolhouse without remembering to wave.

  Twelve

  New Year, 1975, weekend party at the Tarquin house. Girl named Mandy staying here. Drugs? Was Sir Robert at home at this period? Who were the other guests? Did they know Mandy had been killed? Probably not.

  Grant Ta
rquin — travelled abroad a great deal following his disinheritance. No chance to remove and dispose of body. Did he decide to fake his death so that he could return and make more mischief? He ‘died’ eighteen months ago before we’d decided on holding weekend retreats. What else was in his mind to do? He kept out of sight when he registered with the Falcon Agency, but Jane Sinclair’d seen him, and linked him with the photographs in the old album that Anne Dalton lent her. Yet when he stood in the yard and looked up at me he didn’t try to hide his face. Why? Why did he leave those half prints up in the storerooms? Why was that photograph of — his grandfather? — put inside a roll of old brocade? Was he trying to frighten me? Make me look like a fool when I tried to tell people I’d seen him? Was it to stop me clearing out the storerooms? But if I was stopped someone else in the community would have taken over the job.

  Sister Joan stopped writing, read it over, slipped the piece of paper into the back of her diary and rubbed her aching wrist absently. She had already filled up two pages of her spiritual record with an account of her weaknesses and now there was no time left before benediction to work out her theories about Grant Tarquin.

  The forensic teams had been up in the storerooms all day, but hadn’t interfered with the normal routine of the chapel, since once the bags and smaller boxes had been carried down they had opened, in some cases removed, the upper windows and winched down the larger items. The Press had been banished to the gates where they clustered like pecking hens, cameras and microphones at the ready.

  ‘How I can possibly get the last of the leaves swept and the new compost dug in with people yelling questions at me over the wall I do not know!’ Sister Martha said crossly, coming in from the garden as Sister Joan arrived in the hall. ‘I was strongly tempted to turn the hosepipe on them if it hadn’t seemed too aggressive!’

  ‘They’re only doing their job,’ Sister Joan said.