Quiet as a Nun Read online

  I tried once more a feeble protest.

  'Don't you think the infirmary - Tessa—'

  'No.'

  We went in silence up the stairs. Sister Agnes opened the door of my room. She settled me in my chair, taking my coat, dusting the skirt of it again, and finally placing it on the bed. It look dishevelled, and as I felt, forlorn as a result of its experiences in the passage.

  'Listen to me, Miss Shore. I have to leave you here for a while. There is something I have to do. Someone I have to see. Please stay here.' She paused and placed one hand on mine. It was a clasp whose warmth and firmness reminded me not so much of Rosabelle as of Mother Ancilla.

  'Promise me that whatever you do, you won't leave this room until I return. Is there a key? Good. Then lock your door. And don't let anyone in.'

  I was only too delighted at the idea of locking my door. I had absolutely no wish to admit any of the sinister nocturnal ramblers at Blessed Eleanor's. Above all, not the Black Nun. Still roaming somewhere loose in the corridors, the rooms, the passages. Maybe even in the empty guest room next to mine. I shivered. I would lock my door all right.

  'Trust me, Miss Shore,' concluded Sister Agnes solemnly. 'It won't be for very long. I shall come back. Later. We have so much to talk about.' She was the second person that evening to use those same words.

  I ought to warn her—

  'The Black Nun—' I began desperately.

  'Later. Lock your door.' Sister Agnes departed. I was abandoned to the three holy pictures on the walls, where the Botticelli Virgin still looked at me with her expression of detached pity, the Titian Madonna still offered cherries to her child, and an Angel was, as ever, arrested in mid act of announcing impending pregnancy to the maiden Mary. Then there was the Treasury of the Blessed Eleanor, described by Alex Skarbek as intolerably dull. I could do with a little dullness, I decided. I picked it up. No white marker this time to mark my place. I turned a few pages, was guiltily inclined to agree with Skarbek, then went to the brief life at the back of the book.

  'Of all the holy women under her care, Dame Ghislaine le Tourel was the one for whom our foundress had the most tender love,' I read. 'Blessed Eleanor loved in Dame Ghislaine le Tourel the blessed reflection of Our Saviour Jesus Christ, which she loved in duty bound wheresoever she found it, and most of all she found it in Dame Ghislaine le Tourel.'

  The reflection of Christ - who was I to say that was not the truth of their relationship? It was, as we all agreed, a very long time ago. The anonymous author of this charitable nineteenth-century life was just as likely to be right as a later historian. A non-believer. And a man. His insights into the mentality of mediaeval nuns were as likely to be limited as mine were. The relationship of Rosabelle and Beatrice O'Dowd had turned out to be an innocent one. Why not then give the benefit of the doubt to Blessed Eleanor and Dame Ghislaine?

  I read on.

  Then I saw the handle of my door turning. It turned and did not give. There was a little rattle. My visitor seemed to be disconcerted to find the door was locked.

  I heard a voice, very low but not whispering, outside the door: 'Miss Shore, Miss Shore, are you there?'

  'Yes, I'm here. Who is it?'

  'Oh thank God you're all right. Thanks be to God. I've been so worried. I didn't know where you were. I didn't know what to do. Tessa Justin came rushing to the infirmary in the most ghastly state—'

  It was Sister Lucy.

  With a great sigh of relief, I jumped up and unlocked the door. Sister Lucy was outside, panting. She came in, and recovered her breath.

  'You're safe. Thank Heaven. I haven't known what to think. You see Tessa Justin reappeared a while ago, running to me with some extraordinary story about Black Nuns and secret passages and the tower, and kept saying "Save her, save her" meaning you—'

  Admirable little Tessa Justin.

  'We were all upside down from seeing to Mother Ancilla. And then Sister Boniface came along from visiting Mother Ancilla's cell and said that it really seemed too much to have Tessa Justin calling attention to herself with a pack of lies when Reverend Mother might be dying—'

  'Sister Boniface said that—' I was bewildered.

  'Yes. And of course I knew what Tessa was saying must be nonsense. Tessa is really a most emotionally unstable child.' Sister Lucy was recovering something of her normally competent manner. 'Just the sort of story she would tell - the concept of the tower for example and the passage - full of psychological significance. I agreed with Sister Boniface to that extent, that she had made the whole thing up. At least we were as one about that. Then Sister Boniface suggested corporal punishment, a good hiding was her exact phrase. As you can imagine, I didn't go along with that. Tessa was simply mixed up in herself. So I gave her a nice soothing sedative, something strong but appropriate to a child. And she went down like a baby. Sleeping the whole thing off now.'

  'But Sister Boniface knew—' I began. I stopped.

  'Yes, please do explain,' said Sister Lucy. 'What is going on? Where on earth have you been, Miss Shore? I looked in here a while ago and the room was empty. Sister Agnes is missing too; her cubicle is empty.'

  I hardly knew where to begin. But Sister Lucy was a nurse and must have heard some strange tales in her time, tales of humanity twisted between good and evil. Nurses, even nurses who have become nuns, knew all about the dark side of human nature.

  'Oh, Sister Lucy. I've had the most terrible time.' The strain of it all was beginning to tell on me.

  'Sit down again, Miss Shore. Yes, you do look - well, exhausted is hardly a strong enough word. I'll get you something. A good tranquilliser is what you need. In fact I think I've got something right here in my pocket. I was going to ask the doctor if any of these would help Mother Ancilla.'

  She dug in her capacious black skirts with her healing hands, and produced a small pink box.

  Sister Lucy held it out towards me with a happy smile at having solved my problem.

  ‘I’ll get you a glass of water.'

  I did not take the pink box.

  My eye had followed Sister Lucy's gesture automatically downwards as her arm went towards the pocket of her habit. And stopped there.

  Sister Lucy's skirts, the whole length of the hem, very deep, eight or nine inches of it, were covered in tell-tale white dust.

  The crumbly particles of the secret passage showed up particularly strongly in contrast to the black of a nun's habit. More strongly, for example, than they had shown up on my brown coat, now lying on my bed, or on Tessa Justin's maroon uniform.

  After a moment Sister Lucy followed the direction of my eyes. It was too late to avert them.

  But Sister Lucy did not stop smiling. Nor did she withdraw the small round pink box.

  'Why don't you take one all the same, Miss Shore?' she said pleasantly. 'It'll save trouble in the end.'

  'Actually she suspected Mother Ancilla,' I pointed out. Sister Lucy did not seem noticeably regretful about the mistake.

  'She was dangerous, I tell you. Sister Edward was in the infirmary when Sister Hippolytus confided to me about the secret passage and where the entrance was to be found. And I passed it on to Alexander - with everything else that happened to me in the convent. Nightly,' she said proudly. Almost with pity, I remembered Alexander Skarbek's disdain - the intolerable reminiscences of an old nun, he had termed Sister Hippo's historical revelations. And after all, he had not received them first hand. I was glad that Sister Hippo at least had not been taken in by the Black Nun. Her reputation for sharpness of character, matching that of her tongue, survived.

  Then Sister Lucy added: 'If Sister Edward hadn't been such a ninny, she could have gone and found the passage for herself. As it was, she might have passed on the story at any moment. To her sister Beatrice for example.'

  'You hate Beatrice O'Dowd, don't you? Why? When you both work for the same cause. The same man.'

  'The same man! Beatrice O'Dowd doesn't even know the Alexander Skarbek that I know. Any more
than those stupid Sixth Form girls knew him. Margaret and Dodo and Blanche and Imogen - he used them all. How exciting they found it: a man dressed up as a nun roaming the convent ... so perfect for their adolescent fantasies wasn't it?' And how was it for yours, Sister Lucy, I wanted to ask, but she was continuing in the same vein: 'Playing up the legend of the Black Nun for all they were worth. Believing they were in on the secret. But they never knew the truth about him. They weren't in the real secret at all. Any more than Beatrice O'Dowd was. Beatrice O'Dowd is a foolish spinster who wants to do good in the world.' She made it sound the most ridiculous objective. 'What could she know of the delights, the visions, the travels of the mind and spirit which we two have experienced?'

  I thought: Alexander Skarbek. He had succeeded in corrupting Sister Lucy. But the innocent he had tried to corrupt and failed. In their own way Beatrice O'Dowd and Rosabelle Powerstock had held him off by innocence. Margaret and Dodo were still innocent because they were young: long might that innocence last and protect them. Particularly Margaret. But Margaret was clever. After all, her reserve did not conceal a lack of balance. 'More interesting,' Skarbek had said. 'More like you.' All that meant was Margaret would probably end up working for someone like Tom: her resemblance to the dedicated Emily Crispin still tantalised me. I was glad that I too had held him off, although in my case it was knowledge not innocence which had protected me from corruption.

  Sister Lucy was visibly controlling herself after her outburst. The surgeon's knife had begun to shake. The knife stopped shaking. Finally she succeeded in presenting to me once again that pleasing visage which, in spite of everything, I still associated with her.

  She rattled the pill box gently.

  'So now, Miss Shore, why don't you take one of these?'

  She stood between me and the door. I was sitting down. Even a maniac armed with a knife could not, I fancied, force me to swallow a pill. At which moment Sister Lucy bent forward, grabbed my throat in a grip of extraordinary strength, and pushed me viciously backwards. She had dropped the knife. As I flailed about feeling for the knife, I felt the pill being placed roughly on my tongue. She fastened my jaw with one hand. At the same moment my nostrils were grasped and pinched so that I could not breathe. The temptation to swallow was ghastly—

  The loud noise of the bell startled us both. A nun's bell quite close. One loud clamour. Then silence. Then another toll.

  'My bell,' said Sister Lucy automatically. Two bells for the infirmarian. The slight release in pressure gave me my chance. I spat the pill out into my hand, and then threw it to the floor. Whatever it was, I wanted it to be no nearer to me than I could help.

  'Mother Ancilla! Sister Boniface must be looking for me.'

  'On the contrary it is I who am looking for you, Sister Lucy,' said a gentle voice. 'That's why I sounded your bell.' We both turned round. It was Sister Agnes who stood there, in the doorway, eyes level and steady as ever. She had a large bell in one hand. And a small pistol in the other. She really was making a habit of rescuing me. One of these days I should really have to do something for her.

  'Do be careful, Miss Shore.' Sister Agnes was as ever polite. 'This pistol is bound to be loaded. I have just persuaded Mr Skarbek to hand it over to me. And I don't think he is the sort of gentleman to carry an unloaded gun around with him, do you?'

  'Where is he?' asked Sister Lucy hoarsely. 'Where is Alexander?'

  'He's in the car, under the trees, Sister. In the Mini-Traveller. He's waiting for you. Don't you think you should join him?'

  'My car!'

  'The car you brought with you when you joined the community,' Sister Agnes corrected her. 'The community's car.'

  Sister Lucy looked uncertain. But she did not look nearly so uncertain as I felt. I could not believe my ears. Unless Sister Agnes was also in the plot, it made no sense to allow Skarbek and Sister Lucy to make their escape like this. In their different ways, they were two dangerous people: too dangerous to be set at liberty as if nothing had happened.

  Sister Agnes still had her mesmeric effect on me. And she hypnotised Sister Lucy too, or else it was the gun. The infirmarian walked towards her as in a dream, and still in the same state turned towards the visitors' staircase. The outside door was unlocked. She walked through it. The last we saw of Sister Lucy was her black habit in the light thrown from the porch, passing towards the drive.

  We could not see her face. She might have been anyone. Any nun, that is.

  'Why, why, Sister Agnes?' I burst out. 'Why let them go? You're as crazy as they are.'

  'He's changed back into his own clothes.' Sister Agnes did not answer my question. 'I'm glad of that. I found them in the sacristy, hidden under the priests' robes for tomorrow's mass. The insolence of it: his jersey and anorak beneath the vestments embroidered by Sister Perpetua to celebrate her twenty-five years in religion.' Sister Agnes, I noticed, was too delicate even to mention the subject of his trousers in the same breath as a priest's vestments.

  Then she put her hand on my arm.

  'What could I do, Miss Shore? Think about it. The convent in uproar, our work all undone. Mother Ancilla is dying. We don't want her to die like this, do we, with the good name of the Blessed Eleanor dragged through the newspapers? We went through it once with Sister Miriam, and Mother Ancilla suffered so much. What would our foundress have thought?'

  Oh these nuns! Their unworldliness. The good name of the convent; had she no sense of reality at all?

  'He had a gun! I know you took it away. But he's still dangerous.'

  'Oh this,' said Sister Agnes, looking down at the pistol in her hand. Casually she gave it a little click. Nothing happened. 'No, this wasn't Mr Skarbek's. He didn't as far as I know carry a gun. Not the type. Preferring his own methods.' She wrinkled her nose and did not enlarge on the subject. 'No, this comes from the children's acting cupboard. We did Murder on the Nile last term: Agatha Christie. Really delightful - you would have enjoyed it. We needed a gun for that. I didn't think Sister Lucy would notice the difference, with the state she was in. All those pills she was always taking.'

  'You're quite an actress,' was all I could think of saying.

  'I was an actress once: I told you,' replied Sister Agnes with a smile. 'Not a very good one. Then I became a nun.'

  'You're quite a nun, then.'

  'Thank you, Miss Shore. Now that is a compliment I really value. Even though I know myself to be unworthy of it.'

  Sister Agnes cast down her eyes with a modesty wholly worthy of the Murillo I had once fancied she resembled. It had been a foolish notion. Or rather Sister Agnes' appearance might be that of a Murillo, but her spirit was made of sterner stuff. Another Spanish painter, Goya, would have made a better job of Sister Agnes.

  Sister Agnes bent down and picked up the knife which Sister Lucy had abandoned. 'I must give that back to Sister Clare first thing in the morning,' she said. It was evident that her sense of order was outraged by the presence of the knife so far outside its natural habitat of the cafeteria.

  She was indeed quite a nun. If not so quiet as the poet Wordsworth and her own demeanour would have one believe.

  The suspicions of Sister Agnes had, ironically enough, first been aroused by the prevalent nightmares of Tessa Justin. I did not know what the future might hold for that young lady: but on the form of her first ten years, I could hardly believe she would lead a trouble-free life. The attitude of Sister Lucy to these nightmares had struck Sister Agnes as strange. Sister Agnes herself was the object of Tessa's childish adoration. Like Sister Boniface, she considered Tessa to be an exhibitionist—

  'But Our Lord teaches us to be especially loving to such children, does He not? The little children in the Bible who crowded round Him, whom He suffered to come unto Him, were they not exhibitionists in their own way? Asking for His love?'

  As usual, Sister Agnes was probably right.

  But she did not think of Tessa as being a liar. Meanwhile the evidence of her own senses began to tell Sist
er Agnes that someone unlawful was prowling about the convent at night. The whisk of a black skirt round a corner where skirt there should be none. The sight of a nun, seen from the back, vanishing in the top corridor. The noise of someone apparently inhabiting the empty guest rooms. A bathroom strangely occupied and then empty. Above all, a sense of a mysterious presence in and around the chapel. She began to watch.

  'Your novena then - that first night in the chapel? That was a cover-up, a pretence?'

  'Certainly not, Miss Shore.' Sister Agnes sounded quite shocked. 'I would never pretend to make a novena. Our Lord would never forgive me. Besides, I had a great deal to pray about, didn't I?'

  It was Sister Agnes's growing awareness that a member of the community was involved in the mystery which had led her to try and warn me off on the occasion of our interview. Sister Agnes was as ever discreet in her mode of expression, but she made me understand that the presence of Jemima Shore, Investigator, within Blessed Eleanor's had constituted yet another problem - to put it at its mildest. She murmured something about the standards of television not being entirely those of the convent. I quite understood the point she was trying to make.

  As for Sister Lucy - so many little suspicious things, from her movements and unaccountable absences at night, to the fact that Tessa's running-away note had been clearly typed on the dispensary typewriter used by Sister Lucy to write up her medical notes.

  'She was not with us very long,' said Sister Agnes, compressing her lips in a manner once more reminiscent of Mother Ancilla. 'And Sister Boniface was never satisfied about the nature of Sister Lucy's vocation. Sister Boniface may be old, but here at Blessed Eleanor's we pay a great deal of attention to the views of the older members of the community. There will be changes here of course when Mother Ancilla dies.' Again that matter-of-factness about the inevitability of death. 'But in all these changes I can assure you that the wishes of those who understand our traditions will be consulted. And respected. Changes must be in accordance with the will of God. And some of our older members are very close to Him now after a lifetime of prayer and devotion.'