Vow of Evil Page 5

  It was hardly the time for planting anything, she thought. The earth had been smoothed over but one could easily see its ruffled edges. Frowning slightly, she knelt and began lifting out the impacted earth with her hands. As the sod came up with a slight sucking sound she looked down at the tiny bloodied corpses of two fledgings lying at the bottom of their blood-stained grave.

  Suddenly she felt sick and dizzy, but before the feeling had passed she was hastily filling in the hole again.

  FOUR

  ‘Sister Joan! Sister Joan!’

  Checking Lilith in her canter Sister Joan waved to the two schoolgirls who were walking up the track towards her.

  ‘Tabitha, Edith, how are you both?’

  At fifteen Tabitha Lee was developing the contours of a young woman; her twelve-year-old sister was as skinny and dark as usual.

  ‘We’ve both gone up a year,’ Tabitha said.

  ‘I’ve got Miss Montgomery,’ Edith intoned mournfully. ‘She’s ever so strict.’

  ‘It won’t do you any harm,’ Tabitha said, in a motherly way. She had been mother to Edith since the death of Mrs Lee two years before. On the other hand, Sister Joan reminded herself, their father had for most of their lives acted in both parental capacities since the late Mrs Lee had been partial to a drop or two.

  ‘You haven’t been to the camp for weeks and weeks,’ Edith said on a complaining note.

  ‘I’ve been very busy,’ Sister Joan excused herself. ‘Tell your dad that I’ll be over soon. Is he well?’

  ‘There’s been a bit of bother,’ Tabitha confided.

  ‘What kind of bother?’

  If Padraic had been caught poaching then she and the other sisters were guilty by association since most of the salmon he filched ended up in the convent kitchen.

  ‘One of our lurchers was poisoned,’ Edith broke in. ‘Arsenic or summat. Dad was proper upset about that. He said if we saw you we were to ask after Alice. Is she better?’

  ‘She came home more than a week ago,’ Sister Joan said. ‘Inspector Mill was kind enough to bring her.’

  ‘Sergeant Petrie told Dad that someone tied her up down on the old quay,’ Tabitha put in.

  ‘Happily she wasn’t badly hurt,’ Sister Joan said. ‘I’m sorry about your dog though.’

  ‘He was pretty old,’ Edith said. ‘Not too quick at the rabbiting.’

  ‘Which doesn’t give anyone the right to poison him,’ Sister Joan said.

  ‘We’d best get on!’ Tabitha tugged at her sibling’s sleeve. ‘Dad gets fussed if we hang about after we get off the school bus.’

  ‘That’s because he doesn’t want you running off with the lads!’ Edith said cheekily, wriggling free and dashing off across the moor.

  Sister Joan waved to them again and turned Lilith’s head for home. She would ride over to the camp the next opportunity that arose and commiserate with Padraic over the loss of his dog. Meanwhile she missed the cheerful presence of Alice bounding along at the pony’s side. The dog was quite recovered from her slight injury but the vet had decreed a rest for a couple of weeks, so Alice now reclined in a basket in the kitchen and sucked up shamelessly to Sister Marie, purveyor of titbits.

  There had been little opportunity for her to talk with Alan Mill when he had brought Alice back. Not that she was in the habit of seeking his company she reminded herself. Special friendships, especially with members of the laity, were largely discouraged. But she would have liked to ask him if Mrs Pearson had reported any further sightings of a demonic figure, or if anything else untoward had occurred in the town.

  Half an hour before religious studies! Time galloped faster than Lilith!

  She was just stabling the pony, giving her the customary rubdown, when Mother David came out into the yard, shivering as the autumn wind caught her habit and blew her skirts sideways.

  ‘Sister Joan, have you time to go over to the postulancy?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes, of course, Mother. Is anything wrong?’

  ‘Nothing at all as far as I know,’ Mother David said. ‘With our tenants moving in after the weekend I want to check that everything is correct – locks and bolts, furniture in place etcetera. Sister Marie and Sister Katherine will be hanging up the curtains tomorrow. Sister Katherine has chosen a particularly pleasant shade of blue to go with the rugs. And see if you can spot Luther anywhere.’

  ‘Doesn’t Sister Martha—?’

  ‘Sister Martha has a nasty cold so Sister Perpetua has ordered her to remain indoors by the infirmary fire for a few days. The main work in the garden is drawing to a close anyway though there are still berries to be picked. Luther hasn’t been around much this past week or more. Of course, he’s completely unpaid for the help he gives but that can’t be the reason. Sister Martha says he has seemed out of sorts for some time.’

  ‘Yes,’ Sister Joan said thoughtfully.

  ‘Well, off you go then!’ Mother David gave an impatient little jerk of her head and made for the kitchen door again.

  Though it was still full daylight there were streaks of an early twilight in the sky and the wind was increasing, winding itself in gusts through the shrubbery. The garden had a melancholy air, dahlias shedding dead petals on to the soil and windfalls from the apple trees littering the grass. She wished suddenly that she had Alice with her as she traversed the shrubbery and went down the steps and across the old tennis court.

  The keys! She’d forgotten to ask for the new keys that now rendered the postulancy secure. Reaching the front door, newly painted a gleaming white, she bit her lip in exasperation.

  The front door opened and Brother Cuthbert emerged, so exactly in the same manner as he had done on the previous occasion that she had seen him here that she had the sensation of time slipping backward.

  ‘You’ve come for the keys, I daresay, Sister,’ he said in his amiable fashion. ‘I came over earlier to pick up the books for Sister Hilaria and she gave me the keys.’

  ‘Books?’ Sister Joan said stupidly.

  ‘There were some books in the library. She forgot to take them when she picked up her things. I was on my way over to ask after Alice when I saw her so I offered to run down for her but they seem to have gone.’

  Carted away with the rest of the rubbish and incinerated. Sister Joan said aloud, ‘I think they must have been mislaid, Brother Cuthbert. They weren’t of any particular value, were they?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t imagine so. Not in monetary terms anyway. I was just thinking how strange it will be to have tenants here and not see Sister Hilaria with her charges coming to and fro from the convent.’

  ‘Brother Cuthbert, there aren’t any postulants or novices left for the time being,’ she said. ‘Vocations are very scarce these days. We couldn’t leave Sister Hilaria to rattle round here all by herself! And the Order needs the money.’

  ‘Yes, I had heard.’ His blue eyes were slightly bewildered as he fixed them on her. ‘I don’t pretend to understand it at all you know! The religious life is so thrilling! I tell you I sometimes feel quite guilty when I wake up in the morning. I mean this is supposed to be a life of sacrifice and the truth is there’s no sacrifice to speak of at all!’

  ‘You don’t think so?’ she queried.

  ‘You know I once thought that I’d like to be a priest,’ he was continuing. ‘Now don’t laugh but I used to quite fancy the idea of being before the altar or in the pulpit! Fortunately my tutor at the seminary set me straight. “You are a natural reclusive,” he told me. A nice way of letting me know that I was too absent-minded to run a parish! Not to mention all those church laws and indulgences and ex cathedra statements to bear in mind. And he was right, bless him! I pray for him every day. That’s one thing I never forget!’

  ‘I have to check the locks,’ Sister Joan remembered.

  ‘Then I won’t keep you. God bless you and all who come to live here!’

  He strode off, whistling, his habit and cowl flapping in the wind.

  Going inside, Sister Jo
an had a moment of confusion. The local workmen had more than come up to scratch. The whitewashed walls gleamed, the polished wooden floors were laid with blue rugs, and the unblocked fireplaces in the downstairs rooms were laid with wood and coal ready for the cold weather. The connecting doors between the two lecture rooms had been removed to create a curtained arch, the curtains so far not hung, which resulted in a large sitting-room. There were a couch and four armchairs, a bookcase and a couple of coffee tables there now instead of the blackboards and wooden seats.

  At the other side of the narrow passageway the tiny kitchen had been similarly extended into the old library to provide a kitchen cum dining-room with a wood-burning stove in the old fireplace, a table and four dining-chairs and a spanking new oven, refrigerator and washing-machine set against one wall and the former bookshelves filled with cheap but cheerful pieces of crockery.

  She tested that the windows were locked and the back door and set her foot on the lowest rung of the staircase.

  Over her head sounded a sharp crack as if someone had stepped on a loose floorboard.

  For a moment she felt a chill of apprehension. Then her usual common sense took over and she called up the stairs.

  ‘Hello! Is anyone there?’

  A moment’s aching silence and then footsteps.

  ‘Is he gone then?’ a voice enquired.

  ‘Luther? What the devil are you doing here?’ she exclaimed. ‘You frightened me out of my wits!’

  She was already running up the stairs, the jeans she wore under her habit when she exercised Lilith, rendering her ascent more modest than it otherwise might have been.

  ‘I never done nothing!’ Luther said, emerging from one of the former cells. ‘I never done nothing to Sister Martha.’

  ‘No, of course you haven’t.’ Sister Joan stared at the unkempt figure before her. ‘Why should anybody think you’d done anything to Sister Martha?’

  ‘I heard Sister Marie say as how she was in the infirmary,’ he gabbled.

  ‘Sister Martha has a cold and is merely sitting by the fire in the infirmary,’ Sister Joan said. ‘Why are you here anyway? Mother David told me that you hadn’t been yourself this last week.’

  ‘And I never killed them baby birds neither,’ Luther said. ‘I couldn’t never do summat so bad as that, Sister! They were special, late hatching long after others had flown. I was tending them gentle like for the parent birds had flown or been killed I reckon.’

  ‘You found them dead and buried them. That’s it, isn’t it?’

  She stepped into the nearest cell, now a small but attractive bedroom with a single bed, chest of drawers and narrow wardrobe and stared at him.

  ‘All broken and bloody,’ he said mournfully.

  ‘But why didn’t you—? You didn’t want Sister Martha to see them? That’s it, isn’t it?’

  ‘Sister Martha be that tender with living things, plant or bird,’ Luther said.

  ‘And it troubled you greatly. Luther, you ought to have told someone what had happened. Nobody would think of blaming you!’

  ‘One of the Roms told me that Cousin Lee’s dog were poisoned,’ he said. ‘And someone took Alice. Best to lie low when bad things happen.’

  ‘Padraic’s lurcher may have picked up something accidentallly and Alice probably decided to wander off,’ Sister Joan said, not believing it herself. ‘Whatever happened there’s no sense in hiding away! Anyway our new tenants will be here after the weekend. You can’t stay here.’

  ‘I never slept on them beds,’ he assured her.

  ‘No, of course you didn’t. Now let me check the locks up here and then we can walk back together.’

  She went past him into the bathroom and looked at the window there with its close mesh. No mirror of course. The tenants would certainly expect a mirror.

  The two cells next to the bathroom had also been restored into one large room containing now a wardrobe and double bed. She wondered vaguely how the men had got it up the stairs and checked the neat pile of sheets and duvets – duvets for heaven’s sake! Now who had thought of those?

  On the other side next to the small bedroom the two remaining cells had also been knocked into one. There was a single bed here and a put-you-up settee. Almost everything was in readiness.

  When she went downstairs again there was no sign of Luther. He had, she reckoned, probably scooted off to the camp. She hoped her own reassurances had relieved his mind, but with Luther one never knew.

  She put her hand in her pocket for the keys and grimaced. Brother Cuthbert had walked off with them! Between Luther and Brother Cuthbert, she thought crossly, there sometimes were many resemblances!

  She was already late for religious study. In for a penny! Closing the front door behind her she set off at a run towards the convent, arriving panting in the parlour just as Sister Perpetua was extolling the virtues of moderation in eating and drinking.

  ‘Dominus vobiscum,’ Mother David said wearily.

  ‘Et cum spiritu, Mother David – and I went without the keys,’ Sister Joan said.

  ‘You didn’t get them from Sister Hilaria?’

  ‘No, Mother.’

  ‘But of course you didn’t know she had them!’ Mother David said, twitching her snub nose irritably. ‘I ought to have remembered myself so I am just as much at fault as you!’

  ‘I gave them to Brother Cuthbert,’ Sister Hilaria said, her tone faintly surprised. ‘I cannot recall why – something to do with books.’

  ‘There is a second set here in the drawer.’ Mother David slid it open and brought them out. ‘Not that we shall have the right to use them once the tenants are here. I ought to have given them to you in the first place! You had best go over and lock up securely at once. It would be too unfortunate if there were to be trespassers in the postulancy now that nearly everything is ready. You are excused religious studies for today. Dominus vobiscum.’

  ‘Et cum spiritu tuo.’ Sister Joan went out more slowly than she had entered.

  It was growing perceptibly darker, the wind rising to toss the bushes this way and that as if some force strove to uproot them, and overhead incoming clouds scraped the darkening sky with claws of murky purple and rust.

  She would have liked to take Alice but Alice was still limping slightly, purely to gain sympathy Sister Joan guessed, but the early evening was dwindling too rapidly towards night for her to leave the warm kitchen.

  Instead she took her cloak from its peg in the antechamber and let herself through the front door, the keys firmly clutched in her hand.

  There had been a time before she had joined the Order when the sisters had worn grey habits to their ankles and tight white linen caps under their coifs. The sixties had introduced modernization, with habits rising to mid calf, caps abandoned and short grey veils edged with white.

  ‘Making us,’ Sister Gabrielle had snorted, ‘look like district nurses!’

  In a cold, blustery wind it would have been cosier to have been more closely covered, she thought, hugging her cloak about herself as she hurried along the side of the shrubbery towards the postulancy.

  The last fragile rays of day illumined the uncurtained windows of the building as she went across the tennis court.

  No, not daylight but candlelight! She stopped short, squinting against the eddies of dust blown up from the concrete and stared at the little flickering lights.

  She could turn and run back to ask for a companion. Or she could stop behaving like a fool and find out what was going on. The electricity and the water were both operational so if anyone had arrived ahead of time there was no need for candles.

  She opened the front door and went in, deliberately shutting it behind her with a bang. Nothing stirred but a candle placed on the floor in a tin sconce waved wildly before the flame sank to a splutter.

  She bent and picked it up, blowing on it softly until it flamed up again and went into the newly adapted sitting-room where the lecture rooms had been. There were candles set in sconces h
ere, two on the window sills at each end of the apartment, others on the mantelshelf. When she stepped across the passage into the kitchen-diner she saw more candles, all freshly lit and scarcely burnt down at all.

  There had been a large box of candles in the cupboard under the sink. She bent to open the door, half dreading what she might see, but the box still in its neatly sealed plastic jacket was still there. In any case, she reminded herself, these had been plain white candles, whereas the ones illuminating the rooms were coloured. Black and dark green, she noted, and thickset with ridges curling around them.

  She hesitated, silently accusing herself of cowardice before marching firmly, candle in hand, up the uncarpeted stairs.

  Here was darkness. No candle save the one she held burned. She glanced briefly in each room, then went downstairs again.

  And why was she pottering about with a candle when the electricity was on? Her hand moved to a switch and hovered uncertainly.

  Electric lights blazing forth would certainly signal her presence. Instead she went into the lower rooms, extinguished the candles and having provided herself with a bucket from the kitchen stuck the smoking columns of coloured wax into the two inches of water at the bottom. They sizzled, giving off a pungent smell that made her feel slightly giddy as sometimes happened when Father Stephen swung the censor too energetically before High Mass.

  But these were not church candles. They were clumsily made, home-made perhaps. There was no point in speculating. Instead she locked the back door, locked the front door, the last remaining candle in her hand blown out by the wind as she did so, and with the bucket on her arm began her trudge back to the convent.

  She would stick the candles in one of the refuse bins, she decided, put the bucket in the stable and return it when she had an opportunity.

  If she didn’t make haste she would be late for chapel and for benediction too. Then she could wave goodbye to any recreation for several days.

  Stumbling over a root she bent down wincingly as the swinging bucket caught her on the ankle.