A VOW OF FIDELITY an utterly gripping crime mystery Read online

  ‘I’ve never run anything in my life!’ Sister Joan said in alarm.

  ‘Yours was a mature vocation,’ Mother Dorothy pointed out. ‘You are well acquainted with the world, Sister. You have self-confidence and plenty of good sense and you’re not so spiritual as to frighten away perfectly ordinary people who come merely for a rest and don’t wish to be drawn into the mystical.’

  ‘There isn’t a bit of mysticism about me,’ Sister Joan agreed.

  ‘Then you must take a look over the postulancy and see what extra furnishings will be required to make the accommodation a little more comfortable, and draw up a programme of activities and talks designed to appeal to the thoughtful lay visitor. You are, of course, at liberty to refuse the task.’

  ‘No, of course not, Mother,’ Sister Joan said, wondering what would happen if anyone ever actually refused point blank to do something the Prioress wanted. ‘I will certainly do my best.’

  ‘Good.’ Mother Dorothy didn’t give the usual signal for departure but rested her chin on her cupped hands and gazed steadily at her junior.

  ‘Was there something else, Reverend Mother?’

  ‘Some post came for you yesterday,’ Mother Dorothy said.

  Sister Joan kept careful custody of her eyes. Even after eight years in the religious life she still felt a tremor of indignation at the thought that all correspondence in and out of the convent must be scrutinized by the Prioress. Anything considered unsuitable was either withheld or censored by having the words ‘apple pie’ written in thick black ink over the offending portion.

  ‘A photograph,’ Mother Dorothy said. ‘No accompanying letter at all. Can you think of anybody who would send you a photograph?’

  ‘Not without a letter,’ Sister Joan said.

  ‘Well, after some consideration I have decided to give it to you, Sister.’ Mother Dorothy drew a square envelope from beneath her blotter and handed it over the desk. ‘I must admit I am curious.’

  ‘Thank you, Mother.’ Sister Joan sat down again, wishing that she could open the envelope when she was alone and not have to school her reaction under Mother Dorothy’s sharp eyes, and drew out the glossy photograph.

  There were ten of them there, frozen in an instant of time, the girls muffled in long scarves and thick jackets, the young men behind them and the wall of the art college quadrangle behind. Six girls and four young men, snapped twenty years before when the future hadn’t been revealed and anything was possible.

  ‘Sister?’ Mother Dorothy’s voice had an enquiring note.

  ‘It’s my class at art college,’ Sister Joan said. ‘There were ten of us entered as first-year students that year and we had this photograph taken sometime during the first few weeks. I haven’t seen this for — I don’t know how long!’

  ‘Friends of yours. I see.’

  ‘Classmates,’ Sister Joan said. ‘Oh, a few became friends but after we left college we didn’t really keep up with one another. At least I didn’t. We ran into one another from time to time but that’s all.’

  Those had been the years with Jacob who had graduated and begun earning his living while she was still struggling with life classes. Those had been the years when she had taken a variety of jobs so that she could go on sketching, learning, travelling with Jacob to the endless vistas of the Dutch horizon, to the Midi where the sky was ink-blue, to the burnt siennas of Rome.

  ‘One day we’ll go to Israel and you will see the colours there,’ Jacob had said. They had never gone. By the time the idea had become feasible they knew they were unable to compromise on a mixed marriage and that parting was inevitable.

  ‘Sister Joan?’

  ‘I beg your pardon, Mother.’ She wrenched her attention back to her superior. ‘I was thinking about the past, that’s all. Photographs can be powerful reminders. I’d forgotten I was ever so young!’

  ‘At thirty-eight you’re hardly in the sere and yellow,’ Mother Dorothy said dryly.

  ‘And at eighteen I was greener than anybody you ever knew!’ Sister Joan said, laughing. ‘We all were, I suppose. Out to conquer the world with a paintbrush and canvas. Oh!’

  ‘Sister?’ Mother Dorothy raised her eyebrows slightly.

  ‘I beg your pardon, Mother,’ Sister Joan said hastily. ‘It’s only that I dreamed last night that I was in a studio. Music was playing and someone was throwing paint at the walls. Perhaps I’m developing psychic abilities?’

  ‘Do you really think so?’ Mother Dorothy asked.

  ‘No.’ Sister Joan laughed again. ‘This photograph was taken twenty years ago. I thought I’d forgotten all about it, but I do recall that we all agreed to meet twenty years later when we’d all be famous and terribly rich. That stayed in my subconscious, that’s all.’

  ‘Twenty years isn’t such a long time. So you all planned to meet?’

  ‘In Westminster Abbey by the tomb of Elizabeth the First.’

  ‘I would have thought the National Gallery would have been a more appropriate venue.’

  ‘We chose the abbey because we were all dragged there to measure the tombs and give our opinions on the styles of sculpture. Twenty years. Well, it’s nice to have it. May I keep it, Mother?’

  ‘Why was it sent to you, do you imagine?’ the Prioress asked.

  ‘To remind me that we’d all agreed to meet, I suppose. Not that anyone will bother to turn up! People never do.’

  ‘Did you keep in touch with any of them?’

  ‘Not really,’ Sister Joan admitted. ‘Dodie Jones — that’s the little one at the end of the front row — she sent Christmas cards for a few years and I ran into Serge Roskoff a couple of years before I entered the religious life. He was doing quite well at the time and we had a drink together. Oh, and Paul Vance does commercial work, posters, magazine covers and so on. I’ve seen his name occasionally. But it was all such a long time ago. I feel as if I’m talking about a different person when I look back on myself in those days.’

  ‘Did you inform your old friends when you entered the religious life?’ Mother Dorothy enquired.

  ‘I don’t think — yes, I met Fiona — she’s the pretty one in the photograph — in town somewhere. We chatted for a few minutes and I told her. She was rather shocked,’ Sister Joan said, her lips twitching. ‘Going into a convent was equivalent in Fiona’s mind to throwing oneself on to a bonfire like a Hindu widow.’

  ‘It strikes many otherwise sensible people like that,’ Mother Dorothy agreed.

  ‘I suppose Fiona might have told some of the others,’ Sister Joan volunteered. ‘She was always a great chatterbox. Nobody took her very seriously as an artist I’m afraid. She was so lovely that people wanted to paint her all the time. Actually she was quite talented but her looks got in the way.’

  ‘So someone took the trouble to find out where you are and remind you of the reunion.’

  ‘It looks like it,’ Sister Joan agreed. ‘I wish they’d enclosed a note then I could have written back and made my excuses.’

  ‘You’ve decided not to attend?’ Mother Dorothy gave her a quizzical look.

  ‘Mother, I’m a professed nun!’ Sister Joan exclaimed. ‘I can’t go gadding off to college reunions.’

  ‘Not without permission,’ Mother Dorothy said.

  ‘You’d give permission?’ Sister Joan’s blue eyes were incredulous.

  ‘In normal circumstances, no,’ Mother Dorothy said frankly. ‘However in view of the present situation in which we are placed it might be very useful for you to meet your old friends and tell them that if they require a quiet period of rest, a recharging of their artistic batteries so to speak, then we can provide it at very moderate cost.’

  ‘I see.’ Sister Joan longed to ask if her superior had studied under Machiavelli, but contented herself with repeating, ‘I see.’

  ‘You said in Westminster Abbey. Did you decide the date and time?’

  ‘I’m trying to remember. The photograph was taken on the fifteenth of September in the aftern
oon sometime — I remember it was a dull day and we weren’t sure if the light was good enough and then the sun suddenly came from behind a cloud — about two on the afternoon of the fifteenth September — I think that we did joke about meeting on the same day twenty years ahead. Nobody took it too seriously.’

  ‘Somebody did.’ Mother Dorothy nodded towards the photograph.

  ‘Evidently.’ Sister Joan frowned at the young bright faces.

  ‘So do I take it that you’ve requested permission to go?’ Mother Dorothy asked.

  ‘Yes, of course, Mother. I’ve an awful feeling that I’ll probably be the only one there. And I’ll certainly tell them about the retreat opportunities if anyone does turn up.’

  ‘Good.’ Mother Dorothy smiled. ‘I shall see that you are provided with sufficient funds to pay for your train journey and your share of any meal. You will be returning by the late train.’

  Leaving everybody else to get on with the orgy, Sister Joan thought with an inward grin as she knelt and received the blessing. Nevertheless the prospect of a day in London was an attractive one, and if she could interest a few people in the retreat scheme then that would benefit the community. Sister Joan, who frequently feared that she didn’t benefit the community very much at all, went through to the kitchen with a light step to collect Alice, the Alsatian puppy acquired as a potential guard dog some time before.

  Sister Teresa was scalding the dishcloths and turned a rosy, smiling face towards her. She and Sister Marie looked almost like blood sisters, each one dark-haired and pleasant-faced, already looking as if they had been brought up in convents though Sister Teresa had only just been professed and Sister Marie was in the first year of her novitiate. The latter was in the yard, mucking out Lilith’s stable, and humming a hymn with as much relish as if it were a pop song.

  ‘Alice set off without you, Sister,’ Sister Teresa said. ‘I put her lead on and she gave one enormous tug and was off.’

  ‘Was she indeed?’ Sister Joan tried to look stern and, failing, grinned. ‘She’s going to have to learn discipline or Mother Dorothy’ll say she doesn’t justify her keep and will have to go.’

  ‘Over my dead body!’ Sister Teresa said disrespectfully. ‘Honestly, she’s going to be a super dog with a bit of patience.’

  ‘A lot,’ Sister Joan corrected. ‘I’d better go and find her. Thank you, Sister.’

  She went out into the yard, waved to Sister Marie and turned beneath the archway towards the enclosure garden where Sister Martha was picking apples, using a long pole with a bag on the top that was about twice her own size.

  It was a good harvest this year, Sister Joan mused, skirting the low wall, and reminding herself to help Sister Martha as soon as she’d found Alice. The fruit was ripe and unblighted, the currant and gooseberry bushes groaning, the vegetables bigger and crisper than ever, and the patch of corn waved golden tips in the breeze, waiting to be scythed.

  She passed the cemetery where previous members of the community lay — peacefully, she hoped, though not all of them had left the world that way. At least they had had a quiet summer at the convent with nothing to disturb the tranquillity except the ever gnawing worry about money. The retreat might well bring some profit. People these days liked the idea of leaving the bustle of the world behind for a few days and finding again that central core of themselves which was so often pressed out of existence by the demands and stresses of everyday living.

  It will do me good too, Sister Joan reflected as she walked across the patch of wasteland towards the steps that led down into the old tennis court. I’ve been like a spare part round here recently.

  The trouble was that she had no specific task to occupy her. Mother Dorothy had told her to make herself useful everywhere she could but apart from driving into town to do any necessary shopping she really didn’t feel she was making life easier for anyone.

  The photograph was still in her pocket. Ignoring the chill wind that lifted the ends of her veil she sat down on the top step and took it out again, looking now with an unguarded face at the six girls and four youths who crouched and stood in a double line, smiling into the camera.

  There was Dodie Jones, so small and prim that you knew instinctively her paintings would be as delicate and gently coloured as herself. A very private person Dodie had been, going off at the end of each term with a neat filing case full of sketches she intended to work on in the vacations. Behind her in the photograph a dark young man loomed menacingly. Derek Smith! Sister Joan bit back a smile, as she recalled the name. Derek had had the looks of an eighteenth-century pirate and the self-confidence not to change his name to anything more exotic. Paul Vance was next to him, grinning broadly as if he already knew he’d make a comfortable living in the commercial field. Paul, she remembered, had always been cheerful, a quality not always welcome on a cold morning when breakfast had been rushed and the model on the dais didn’t look a bit like the figure emerging on your canvas.

  Fiona crouched next to Dodie, long fair hair spilling over her shoulders, smile joyous. She’d been greatly in demand as a model when there wasn’t a professional one available. Next to her was — Susan? no, Serena. Serena Clark. Plump Serena with her untidy, eye-straining fringe and a complete inability to understand the principles of perspective. Privately the others had wondered how she’d managed to get into art college until someone mentioned her father was the Samuel Clark of the wafer biscuit business and had given a large donation to the college just prior to his daughter being accepted there.

  Behind Serena Serge Roskoff stood, one hand on her shoulder, his spiky fair hair looking like a wig. Serge was Russian — no, Polish or Bulgarian or something. He had been fair and quiet with nervous hands and his drawings had possessed a subtle enchantment as if Hans Christian Andersen had taken up painting instead of writing.

  Bryan Grimes stood next to Serge, head thrust forward like a boxer, hands at his side. Bryan had spoken in a flat Lincolnshire accent, the expression on his stolid face never changing, and then in class at his easel had seized his brushes and made magic on a blank canvas. She’d often wondered why he hadn’t made an international name for himself but perhaps he’d given up art or the muse of art had abandoned him.

  Just in front of him was her own younger image, dark curly head and blue eyes that looked black in the snapshot. She had been very conscious of her slight northern accent, she remembered, and started that first day to lengthen her vowels with all the pathetic snobbishness of the young and uncertain. Next to her, almost out of the frame, was Sally Mount. She had wanted to be called Sara without the ‘h’, but she couldn’t ever have been anyone but Sally, good-humoured even when she was being teased and probably the hardest working of them all though the results seldom justified her efforts.

  Sister Joan frowned down at the picture, suddenly knowing that she didn’t want to go to the stupid reunion. They had worked together in class, shared out of class coffees and wine and flirtations, that was all. They’d made no lasting friendships. No, she had made no lasting friendships. For all she knew there might have been closer unions formed without her being aware of them. In those days she had been eaten up with the desire to draw and paint, seeing the world and everybody in it as subjects to be captured on a rectangle of canvas or in the pages of a notebook.

  And then had come Jacob, older than the others, dark and Semitic and impatient with her suburban skills.

  ‘Don’t draw the flower. Draw the essence of the flower!’

  ‘How?’ she had asked.

  ‘By feeling it, letting it overwhelm you! Good Lord, girl, Van Gogh didn’t just paint a chair. He painted the chairness of all chairs.’

  She hadn’t really understood what he was telling her but she knew it was true, and she hadn’t really allowed herself to sum him up, point by point, feature by feature, because it was enough to know that she loved him, would love him to the end of their lives — or at least until she had heard the sweet toned bell of the cloister and known that his
faith, much as she respected it, could never be hers, and his children would have to find a different mother.

  From the other side of the tennis court a rapturous Alice barked joyfully and bounded towards her. Sister Joan thrust the photograph deep in her pocket and stood up, banishing the past.

  ‘Alice! Come on, girl! Here, girl!’ Alice came, trailing her lead with a shameless air. ‘You are a wretch,’ Sister Joan said, slipping her hand through the loop. ‘Come on! Let’s go and check out the postulancy. You don’t know it yet but we may be greeting visitors quite soon.’

  Two

  On the rare occasions Sister Joan was obliged to visit London she was always torn between excitement at the bustle all round her and nervousness as the crowds swirled past, each person seeming to know exactly where he or she was going and how to get there. Living in a convent, even one that was not entirely enclosed, was rather like living in some long-term institution, she thought wryly, keeping a close eye on the names of the stations as the Tube train screamed through tunnels and doors opened and closed, engorging and disgorging passengers. The train itself was fairly full but not uncomfortably so. She had noticed with a feeling of mingled amusement and hurt that the space next to her had remained unoccupied. People still hesitated before sitting next to a nun.

  ‘I don’t believe it!’ A slim, dark woman, her hair drawn back into a French pleat, her beautifully cut suit of dark-green velvet complementing her colouring had stopped and was staring down at Sister Joan, a smile curving her lightly painted mouth.

  Sister Joan stared back blankly, the beginnings of embarrassment tinting her throat as she racked her memory for a name to put to the face. It was always dreadful to run into someone you couldn’t recall, insulting to them somehow.