‘Yes, Mother Prioress. There is one other thing—’ Sister Joan hesitated, wondering how best to phrase it.
‘Yes?’
‘I just wondered if you knew what medication your godmother was on.’
‘As a matter of fact I do,’ Mother Dorothy said. ‘She was on something called digoxin, a milligram per day, but her doctor had begun to gradually decrease the dose since he thought her condition was improving. I wrote to inform him of my godmother’s death and he wrote back in a most helpful manner.’
‘Was he surprised to learn she’d died of a heart attack?’ Sister Joan asked.
‘He said he would not have expected it, but that one can never tell with individual patients.’
‘Thank you, Mother.’ Sister Joan hesitated again, then said, ‘You were concerned about Mrs Cummings’s sudden death. May I go on trying to find out what happened?’
‘You think there’s cause? If you do then surely the police—’
‘Suspicion isn’t proof,’ Sister Joan said. ‘I’ve nothing definite to take to the police. When I have then, of course, I’ll approach them.’
‘Then be careful, Sister.’ The Prioress frowned slightly as she turned away.
Careful not to break the law or careful not to fall a victim? Sister Joan gave one last longing thought to the cup of tea she hadn’t had and went through to the chapel to catch up on a little praying.
The talk at recreation was all of Padraic’s loss.
‘For whatever her faults,’ Sister Perpetua said, ‘she never forfeited his affection. It must be a great blessing to retain the love of a decent man.’
‘Surely we have God’s love whatever our sins?’ Sister David said.
‘But Divinity pours out affection without our having to do anything to earn it,’ Sister Katherine demurred. ‘Men are more fickle.’
She spoke as if somewhere in her past something unspoken lay buried.
‘We must send a nice wreath,’ Sister Martha said. ‘The dahlias are looking nice.’
‘I’ll find out tomorrow what the funeral arrangements are when I’ve driven Sister Marie over to the hospital,’ Sister Joan promised.
‘Sister Marie is being very brave,’ Sister David remarked. ‘Her cheek is very badly swollen yet she declares it doesn’t hurt much at all.’
‘That’s not bravery!’ Sister Gabrielle said with a snort of amusement. ‘She’s scared of having the tooth out, that’s all. Sister Marie’s no martyr!’
‘If you’ll excuse me, Sisters, I’d better slip down and tell her to be ready at eight thirty tomorrow morning and not to eat or drink anything after midnight tonight.’
Sister Joan folded up the stocking she was mending and went out, stifling a chuckle as she heard Sister Gabrielle’s tart, ‘And before you start praising Sister Joan for giving up part of recreation, Sister David, just think on that she can’t stand darning anyway!’
The two lay sisters were in the kitchen, enjoying their own mild recreation, with Sister Teresa knitting and Sister Marie reading. They looked up as she came in.
‘How’s the tooth?’ Sister Joan enquired.
‘Not as painful as it was,’ Sister Marie said valiantly.
‘It’ll feel even better when it isn’t there any longer,’ Sister Joan said. ‘Don’t eat or drink anything after midnight and be ready at eight for me to drive you over to St Keyne’s. I daresay you’ll be home by tomorrow evening.’
Sister Marie smiled wanly.
Alice who had been lying on her beanbag pretending she was the most well-trained dog in the world stood up and looked, tail hopefully wagging, towards the door.
‘It’s my turn to take her,’ Sister Marie began.
‘I’ll take her. I won’t be long.’
Sister Joan opened the back door and stepped out into the yard. It was already quite dark but a moon lit the archway beneath which one passed to the side of the great house. From her stall Lilith whinnied a greeting.
‘Day after tomorrow, girl! I’ll take you for a nice brisk canter then.’ Sister Joan took the main path that led between high shrubberies to the front drive.
The main gates stood open as usual and against the stone pillars a tall figure was leaning. Alice yelped and bounded to meet Luther who stood respectfully straight as he recognized Sister Joan.
‘Good evening, Luther. It’s late for you to be about, isn’t it?’ She paused, nodding at him amiably.
‘There’s weeping in the camp,’ Luther said. ‘There’s the smell of dying and black clothes in the camp.’
‘For poor Madge Lee. You know your cousin’s wife has died?’
‘Old Hagar told me. I’m feared of the dying smell.’
‘There’s nothing to fear about dying,’ Sister Joan said gently. ‘It comes to us all, Luther. We simply step out of our bodies when the time comes. Then we move on into the light.’
‘How do you know when you’ve not been there?’ Luther asked.
And how the hell do I know? Sister Joan thought. Am I saying all this out of compassion for a man who’s lacking in his wits but without really believing it? Or do I believe it deep in my guts where all the most valid feelings have their seat?
‘Do you remember being born, Luther?’ she asked.
‘No, Sister. Reckon I was too young,’ he said apologetically.
‘Well, before you were born, when you were in Heaven waiting for a body, you were probably just as scared about leaving there and coming here,’ she said, throwing Darwin to the winds. ‘Dying is the same kind of thing.’
‘And we all get born at the right time, Sister?’
‘Right!’
‘But we don’t all get dead at the right time,’ Luther said.
‘Probably not.’ She frowned, recalling those who had died violently before they had fully begun to live, those who might have died before their due time with only vague suspicions and no real proof to speed the wheels of justice.
‘Children ought to live a very long time,’ Luther said. ‘Nuns too!’
‘Thank you, Luther. I’m sure we do our best,’ she said kindly.
‘I heard tell one of the sisters is going to the hospital,’ Luther said. ‘She isn’t going there to die, is she?’
‘No, of course not!’ She was startled by her own vehemence. ‘Sister Marie has a bad tooth that needs to come out.’
‘Tie a long thread round it and slam the door,’ Luther said helpfully.
‘It’ll take a bit more than that, but it’s nothing to worry about, honestly,’ Sister Joan said. ‘She’ll be home again by tomorrow night. You can come with me to pick her up if you like.’
‘I don’t like hospitals,’ Luther said darkly. ‘They locked me up in one once just for looking at pretty ladies.’
‘We know you were only looking,’ Sister Joan said patiently. ‘The pretty ladies got scared when you used to follow them. You’re not doing that again, are you?’
‘No, Sister! It’s not right to scare ladies,’ Luther said. ‘Anyway ladies are nice to me sometimes too. There was one gave me a sweet last night. I didn’t eat it. I saved it for Sister Martha. It’s wrapped up in silver paper.’
He took it out of the pocket of his threadbare jacket and carefully pulled off the foil.
‘A lady gave you this?’
Sister Joan stared down at the tablet, whitened by the cresting moon.
‘Outside the pub,’ Luther said. ‘She gave one to Madge Lee too.’
‘Did you know the lady?’ Sister Joan asked.
Luther shook his head and began wrapping up the tablet again.
‘Tell you what!’ She kept her voice light and casual. ‘Why not let me give Sister Martha the sweet? I’ll tell her it’s from you.’
‘I might lose it before tomorrow,’ Luther said.
‘Yes, you might.’ Sister Joan held out her hand.
‘Tell Sister Martha I’ll come and help with the apple-picking tomorrow,’ Luther said, shambling off.
‘Would you
like to come to the chapel for a few minutes?’ she invited. ‘You know the door’s always open and nobody’s there right now.’
‘God is,’ Luther said. ‘Best keep out of His way when there’s the smell of death about.’ He patted Alice clumsily on the head and went off across the moor.
Sister Joan called Alice to heel, promising her a longer walk very soon, and went back to the convent. It was easy enough to extract a treacle toffee from the small tin of toffees in the pantry and take it up to the recreation room for Sister Martha with Luther’s compliments, but not until she was in her own cell after the grand silence had begun was she able to unwrap the original tablet and examine it more closely by the light of her candle.
There was no doubt about it. Sister Joan hadn’t spent three years in art college without coming across LSD. She’d never tried it herself though she had smoked the occasional joint, feeling warm and sleepy with Jacob’s arm around her. Some of the other students had had bad trips, trying to walk out of second-floor windows, becoming angry when those with cooler heads tried to stop them from playing chicken on the motorway. She had the idea that LSD was a bit old hat by now. Crack cocaine and Ecstasy were the drugs one read about in the papers. Madge Lee had been unusually belligerent outside the pub. If she’d taken the ‘sweet’ then her behaviour was explained. But who would stand outside a pub giving away tablets of LSD or anything else? She wrapped it up again and put it in the corner of her locker before she began the nightly ritual of removing her habit, splashing her face with cold water, cleaning her teeth, pulling on white nightgown and nightcap and blowing out her candle.
There were no helpful messages emerging from the subconscious to explode into vivid dreaming. There was only sleep with an uneasiness pervading it, a feeling in the brief seconds of wakefulness as she changed position that something was very wrong, very wrong indeed.
The sound of the clapper at five o’clock, mingled with Sister Teresa’s strong young voice, calling, ‘Christ is risen!’, jolted her awake.
She left the bed and was on her knees with the ease of long practice, her own voice answering as the announcement was made at her door, ‘Thanks be to God!’
It was not yet light but she washed and dressed without lighting her candle, each separate action performed now almost without any conscious thought, and finally lit her candle and cast a rueful glance at her bed as she left her cell.
‘Sisters must try to compose themselves to sleep in the position in which they will be laid in their shroud,’ her novice mistress had impressed upon her. ‘Then if death comes while you sleep you will be prepared.’
If death had come for me last night, Sister Joan thought wryly, I’d have had to be disentangled from the bedclothes.
She picked up her candle and joined the silent procession of sisters as they padded along the corridor, down the main staircase and towards the chapel for the two-hour silent worship that preceded the daily Mass.
Louisa Cummings had been taking diminishing doses of digoxin prescribed by her regular doctor when she had been transferred to St Keyne’s for her hip-replacement operation. There had been a muddle in the computer and her operation had been delayed, cause for irritation but not surely for a fatal heart attack. That same night Ward Sister Meecham and the student nurse, Ceri Williams, had found her dead in bed, bedcovers smooth under her clenched hand. Sister Collet, the duty nurse, had been in the toilet and had heard nothing. Sister Merryl had told her that thirty grams of digoxin had been taken from the drugs cupboard and signed for later by a flustered Sister Collet. Then Madge Lee, having been offered and probably taken an LSD tablet, had turned violent and been taken off to the hospital where the next morning she’d managed to drink most of the contents of an opened bottle of brandy, have a convulsion and die at the precise time when Sister Collet had gone over to the children’s unit on account of a message nobody admitted sending and Ceri Williams was brewing tea for a patient.
Ward Sister Sophie Meecham liked to relieve stress by an occasional tipple up in the office. She didn’t welcome questions. Sister Tracy Collet was scatter-brained, never in the right place at the right time, sentimental enough to weep bitterly over a cheap heirloom ring. Sister Ceri Williams was inexperienced, apt to regard the senior staff with awe, while Sister Merryl, being of the old school, despised them all equally. Dr Geeson was virtually in charge since Dr Meredith was elderly and Dr Geeson liked his corpses neatly tidied away, no questions asked.
There was no motive for killing Louisa Cummings, no motive for killing Madge Lee, or to be more accurate, Sister Joan corrected herself, only Mother Dorothy and Padraic had even the shadows of motives and nobody could seriously suspect them for a moment. Was she, as Sophie Meecham had accused, simply looking for mysteries where none existed because she craved a little extra excitement in her life?
‘Amen,’ said Sister Joan, belatedly joining in the closing prayer and realizing with a start that Father Stephens had emerged from the sacristy.
She concentrated on the Mass with painful intensity, blocking out all extraneous thought, and went up to breakfast feeling marginally more spiritually refreshed.
Unlike Father Malone who enjoyed a bit of a gossip over the fruit, bread and coffee Father Stephens drank his coffee and ate his apple in silence, with only a few polite commonplaces exchanged with Mother Dorothy or Sister Hilaria. Sister Joan munched her own bread and fruit, denied herself coffee in favour of a mug of hot water — and serve me right for not worshipping with my whole heart and soul — and went up to tidy her cell and transfer the tablet in its silver wrapping into the depths of her pocket.
The brisk morning routine continued. By 8.30 she had brought the van round to the front, sternly discouraging the ebullient Alice from jumping in it, and was ready to receive Sister Marie who emerged from the kitchen with a scarf wrapped around her face and a distinctly nervous glint in her eyes.
‘Right, Sister, let’s get this show on the road!’
And if anybody said that to me when I was going to have a nasty extraction I’d punch them, she thought. Sister Marie nodded and crinkled the corners of her eyes in an effort to show that under the scarf she was smiling. Sister Marie was a sweetie and nothing had better happen to her while she was in St Keyne’s, Sister Joan thought, and clashed the gears noisily as they drove off.
‘I have to drive over to the Romany camp but I’ll ring the hospital later and find out if you’re ready to come home,’ she said cheerfully.
‘Would you, Sister?’ Sister Marie still sounded timorous.
‘No, I’ll do better than that!’ Sister Joan made up her mind on the instant. ‘I’ll wait until you’ve had the tooth out and make sure you’re comfortable before I go over to the camp.’
If there was any possibility of another ‘accident’ then the presence of a nun seated watchfully outside the operating theatre might prove a necessary check to evil intentions.
I must be getting paranoid about all this, she thought, waving to Brother Cuthbert who had just emerged from his hermitage.
Perhaps it was a slack morning or a new efficiency was abroad but when they reached St Keyne’s they had barely five minutes to wait before they were being ushered along to the operating theatre, where Sister Joan was secretly and intensely relieved to see that the dentist was there, flanked by Sister Warren and the elderly Dr Meredith.
‘I decided to come along myself to check everything out,’ Mr Tregarron said, shaking hands briskly. ‘I don’t like to leave my patients in the lurch so to speak! Feeling rather fragile, I shouldn’t wonder, Sister!’
Sister Marie murmured something indistinguishable and cast a pleading look towards Sister Joan.
‘I’ll be right outside,’ Sister Joan said encouragingly.
‘There’s a small viewing section for students who turn up from time to time,’ Dr Meredith said. ‘You can watch everything from there if you like.’
‘Thank you, Doctor,’ Sister Joan said, with as much enthusiasm as she could must
er. ‘I think that’s very nice of you.’
She gave Sister Marie another encouraging smile and a thumbs-up sign and went into the glassed-in box which afforded a bird’s eye view of the theatre below. There was a long bench here and a pair of opera glasses, presumably for the use of any student who wanted a close-up view. Sister Joan decided not to take advantage of their presence and sat down, cheering herself up with the thought that if the scene became too gory she could always tell her beads with tightly shut eyes.
To her relief the entire procedure took less time than she had imagined and, as Mr Tregarron continually blocked her view she was able to sit placidly enough until the white-gowned figure on the long chair was sitting up and spitting into a basin.
‘Everything went well?’ She left the booth and buttonholed the dentist.
‘Beautiful little job!’ Mr Tregarron sounded as pleased as if he’d just seen a great work of art. ‘Came out clean as a whistle! There’s still a nasty little pocket of infection there but antibiotics will take care of that.’
‘When can Sister Marie come home?’
‘Give her a couple of hours to check the bleeding’s stopped and then she can drive back with you,’ Dr Meredith said.
‘Meanwhile she’ll be—?’
‘In the recovery room in the main building,’ Sister Warren said. ‘I’m on duty there.’
‘See you in a couple of hours then.’ Sister Joan hesitated, then said, ‘You will be staying with her yourself?’
‘Yes. We’ve not got too much on this morning. I’ll take good care of her, Sister.’
So there was no need to worry. Sister Joan went out to the van and drove back on to the moorland track with the inward decision that she was going to stop seeing mysteries round every corner.
An unusual quiet hung over the Romany camp. The children were, of course, at school but the dogs refrained from barking as she drew up and the few women gossiping by the river bank spoke softly instead of laughing and teasing one another. The windows of the Lee caravan were shuttered and Padraic himself sat on the steps, black crêpe round his arm, his expression downcast.
A VOW OF COMPASSION an utterly gripping crime mystery Page 10
