A VOW OF FIDELITY an utterly gripping crime mystery Page 6

  ‘Would that kill somebody?’

  ‘Fast when it’s mixed up with LSD and other stuff. It was a — a lethal cocktail, the coroner said.’

  ‘You went to the inquest?’

  ‘I sat at the back. Never let on that I knew him. The old girl downstairs came up to cadge some money for the gas meter and found him. Took her all of a shiver she said. Silly old bat!’

  ‘What was the verdict?’ Sister Joan asked numbly.

  ‘Suicide,’ Patricia said, beginning to stack the food on a shelf. ‘He was an artist and his work wasn’t selling well — hell, it wasn’t selling at all! So it was natural he’d top himself, wasn’t it? — they said.’

  ‘Is that what you think?’ Sister Joan asked.

  ‘Doesn’t matter what I think,’ Patricia said viciously. ‘I didn’t even live here then. Moved in a couple of weeks ago. He’d paid up front three months in advance, same as he always did and the lock was broken so I moved in.’

  ‘The landlord didn’t mind?’

  ‘Nobody minds about anybody round here,’ Patricia said.

  ‘But Serge did?’

  ‘Serge did. About me anyway. He asked me in for a meal one evening. I was sitting on the doorstep and he was just coming in. He asked me to come up and share his meal. And afterwards he didn’t want paying — if you know what I mean.’

  ‘Yes,’ Sister Joan said. ‘Yes, I do know.’

  ‘It was all voluntary,’ the girl said, her voice tinged with pride. ‘He was a lovely man, like a dancer but he painted. All swirls and colours going in and out and light sparkling behind the picture. It was ever so good. He was a lovely man.’

  ‘Yes. Yes he was.’

  ‘Are you sure I haven’t seen you—?’ The green eyes were narrowed and then widened again. ‘Yes you are! In the photo! He had a photo sent here a few days before he died. It’s still here somewhere. I sold most of his clothes and things, but I stuck the photo — in the cupboard! I knew it was somewhere safe.’

  She tugged open a corner cupboard, rummaged through a pile of newspapers and brought out a square envelope.

  ‘That’s you, isn’t it?’ She pulled out the photograph. ‘You when you were young.’

  ‘Younger,’ Sister Joan said wryly, taking the snapshot. ‘Yes, we’re all here. Did he tell you about it?’

  ‘Said you were all in college together and that you planned to meet up. I didn’t mean that you’re old,’ Patricia said earnestly, ‘and you do look young anyway. It must be very peaceful being a nun.’

  ‘Not always.’ Sister Joan nodded towards the envelope. ‘Was that posted in London?’

  ‘From W.1. Serge said, “Someone went up in the world! I wonder which one.” I laughed and told him you didn’t have to live somewhere upmarket in order to post a letter from there! And he said he supposed not.’

  ‘And this came before he died?’ Sister Joan handed the photograph back.

  ‘A few days before. He was looking forward to the reunion. Even said he’d take me along but I told him not to be so silly. I don’t know anything about painting.’

  ‘What happened to his paintings?’

  ‘There weren’t many here,’ Patricia said, quickly and defensively. ‘He told me that when he was an old, old man he was going to leave everything to me anyway because his family was all in Russia and he’d never gone back even when the Cold War ended. I sold three or four of them down Portobello Road. They were ones that he got ready for an exhibition but he was let down by the gallery at the last moment. I think he got let down a lot. Too trusting!’

  It was not something of which the girl standing opposite her could be accused, Sister Joan thought. The sharp little face was streetwise, the eyes no longer innocent.

  ‘Did he leave a letter?’ she asked aloud. ‘A suicide note?’

  ‘Not unless the old girl downstairs found one and didn’t hand it in,’ Patricia said. ‘Anyway I don’t think he did do it himself. I think someone put the stuff in his drink as a joke or something.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Don’t know. I wasn’t here all the time,’ Patricia said. ‘Only now and then when I felt like it. He didn’t only ask me up here. Dropouts Delight this place was.’

  ‘But you were special?’

  ‘Yes.’ An indefinable sweetness had come into the hard little face. ‘Yes, I was special to him. That’s why he was going to leave me everything. He really meant that!’

  ‘I’m sure he did,’ Sister Joan said. ‘Look, I have a train to catch. If you think of anything else here’s my address and phone number. Or if you need help.’

  ‘I’d not be likely to be coming to a convent for it,’ Patricia said.

  ‘No, of course not, but if anything did crop up — do you know what happened about the funeral?’

  ‘He was cremated,’ Patricia said. ‘I think he had some insurance or something that paid for it. Anyway I didn’t go.’

  ‘And he was looking forward to the reunion?’

  ‘Yes. At least—’ Patricia hesitated. ‘He said he was but he did go a bit quiet from time to time after he had the photo. Kept taking out the old newspapers and looking through them.’

  ‘Newspapers?’

  ‘This lot here.’ Patricia went back to the cupboard and pulled out the pile. ‘I was going to toss them out when I got round to it. He was quite neat really, clean, but he kept the papers.’

  ‘May I have them — that’s if you don’t want them, of course?’

  ‘Help yourself.’ The girl’s voice was indifferent again.

  ‘Have you read them?’ Sister Joan slid them carefully into one of the newly emptied carrier bags.

  ‘I’m not one for reading,’ Patricia said.

  ‘Thank you. You will get in touch if you remember anything else? Serge was a friend of mine.’

  ‘Serge was everybody’s friend,’ she said bitterly. ‘I reckon he died of that! Now if you don’t mind I’ve my own life to lead.’

  She was moving towards the little kitchen, eyes hard, lips tight. In a moment she was likely to burst into tears and anyone who witnessed that would never be forgiven.

  ‘God bless,’ Sister Joan said, and went out and down the stairs rapidly. At the end of the street was an unvandalized phone booth. She checked the directory at the side and rang the restaurant at the National, waiting for several minutes until Barbara’s voice sounded at the other end.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘It’s Sister Joan. I haven’t many coins left. Serge died a month ago.’

  ‘What! Another one!’ Barbara’s voice had risen.

  ‘An overdose apparently. I have to go now. Ring me?’

  ‘Yes, of—’

  The line went dead. Sister Joan replaced the receiver and picked up the carrier bag.

  Serge was dead. The phrase kept pace with her as she walked towards the station. Serge had been life-loving, full of life. It seemed wrong, out of true, like a picture drawn out of perspective to imagine him dead by his own hand.

  ‘Life,’ Serge had said, ‘is a gift, my friends!’

  From his lips it hadn’t sounded like a cliche.

  She wondered suddenly as she walked what the odds were against three members of one particular group all dying violently before they were forty.

  Four

  ‘So what did you have to eat?’ Sister Gabrielle asked, hitching herself higher in her chair.

  ‘Smoked salmon sandwiches, a glass of white wine and coffee,’ Sister Joan said.

  ‘With cream I hope? No sense in spoiling yourself if you don’t do it thoroughly!’

  ‘Black coffee,’ Sister Joan said, smiling faintly. ‘Giddy young things like me must set limits you know!’

  ‘I had smoked salmon once,’ Sister Mary Concepta said wistfully from her own chair in the infirmary. ‘It was delicious.’

  ‘And London was still London, I suppose?’ Sister Gabrielle was looking at her enquiringly.

  ‘Most crowded,’ Sister Joan said.

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sp; ‘And you saw your old friends. That must’ve been lovely,’ Sister Mary Concepta said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I could do with some exercise.’ Sister Gabrielle heaved herself to her feet. ‘Have you time to take a turn in the garden?’

  ‘Yes, of course, Sister. Shall I get your cloak?’ Sister Joan hastened to help.

  ‘Don’t fuss, girl. The day’s warm enough. Come along!’

  ‘Sister Mary Concepta—?’ Sister Joan looked over at the other old lady and saw she had fallen into a doze.

  ‘Mary Concepta can’t keep awake for longer than a couple of hours these days,’ Sister Gabrielle disapproved. ‘You’d never think she was only eighty-one, would you? Why, I can give her five years and still stay conscious for most of the day.’

  ‘You’re a marvel, Sister,’ Sister Joan assured her.

  ‘I hope so.’ Sister Gabrielle had reached the back door and thrust it open with her stick. ‘Better let me have your arm here. These cobbles are very picturesque but tricky for ageing feet.’

  With the old lady leaning on her arm Sister Joan traversed the yard, passed beneath the arch into the walled gardens of the cloister.

  ‘We’ll sit under the mulberry tree for a few minutes,’ Sister Gabrielle said.

  ‘Yes, of course, Sister.’

  Seated on the stone bench, Sister Gabrielle reached up to pat the gnarled trunk of the heavily laden tree.

  ‘This tree was a mere stripling when I was a postulant,’ she said. ‘I was nineteen then. Not in this order, of course. Mary Concepta and I came over from the Sisters of Charity so that the new order could have a core of trained religious when it was first approved. But we had a mulberry tree in my own old mother house and when I saw this one I felt at home.’

  ‘I never thought of that before,’ Sister Joan said. ‘Of many of the older nuns transferring from other orders.’

  ‘Oh, it was quite voluntary,’ Sister Gabrielle said. ‘Not nearly as difficult a transition as coming in from the outside world must have been. What’s troubling you, Sister? You’ve had a shadow in your eyes since you got back yesterday. You’re not regretting coming into the religious life, are you? After meeting your friends again?’

  ‘No, of course not!’ Sister Joan exclaimed. ‘Rather the contrary in fact. I was glad to get back here.’

  ‘Then what’s the trouble?’ Sister Gabrielle demanded.

  Sister Joan suppressed a grin. No ladylike hinting for Sister Gabrielle. She came straight to the point.

  ‘You know I went to a reunion with my old classmates from the college of art?’ she began.

  ‘Mother Dorothy told us. A neat way of drumming up business for the retreats and having a day off yourself. What went wrong?’

  ‘There were ten of us due to meet in Westminster Abbey,’ Sister Joan said. ‘Seven of us were there.’

  ‘A fairly good proportion I would have thought. People are always planning reunions and then forgetting all about them when the allotted day arrives.’

  ‘The other three didn’t turn up because they were dead.’

  ‘All about your own age?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Well, people still die young unfortunately,’ the older nun remarked. ‘We like to pretend it doesn’t happen.’

  ‘Two accidents and a supposed suicide?’

  ‘Supposed?’ Sister Gabrielle patted the bench beside her. ‘Sit down and tell me about it, girl.’

  ‘Sally Mount married Derek Smith, one of our class too,’ Sister Joan said slowly. ‘I hadn’t heard they were married. Derek is fairly successful as an artist but I got the impression his sales have been falling off recently. Maybe people just aren’t investing in paintings these days. Apparently they’d been married for fourteen years very happily and then two years ago Sally fell out of the top storey of a multistorey car-park in the city. You know the kind of place I mean?’

  ‘By description only I’m glad to say,’ Sister Gabrielle said. ‘I’ve never been in a multistorey monstrosity in my life! Were there children?’

  ‘No. Derek said not.’

  ‘He was there yesterday?’

  ‘Yes. He was genuinely upset about Sally. That was obvious. Not still grieving beyond reason, of course, but sad about what had happened. Sally had largely given up her own work in order to deal with Derek’s affairs and I gained the impression that she’d been invaluable.’

  ‘Can someone accidentally fall out of a car-park, or was that the suicide?’

  ‘Apparently the multistorey block was badly designed and there’d already been some complaints. Anyway she stepped round a guard board and leaned out and fell.’

  ‘And the others?’

  ‘Bryan Grimes — he illustrated children’s books — he came from Lincolnshire and had gone back there to live. He was killed by a hit-and-run driver last year. Serena had seen it in a newspaper or something — or perhaps it was Dodie. I can’t recall.’

  ‘Serena and Dodie.’ Sister Gabrielle repeated. ‘What peculiar names some parents choose for their offspring!’

  ‘Serena is the daughter of the Clark biscuits people, terribly rich and plump and always marrying the wrong man and rather sweet underneath it all,’ Sister Joan said. ‘Dodie illustrates Christmas cards when she’s not being a wife and mother. She’s small and respectable and rather smug. Then there was Barbara Ford there. She’s been living in New Zealand for years and she gave up art years ago and went into public relations. She was always terribly quiet and dull but she’s blossomed out, smartened up — it was difficult to recognize her. Fiona and Paul were there too out of the original bunch.’

  ‘A married couple?’

  ‘Hardly!’ Sister Joan’s lips quirked. ‘Paul’s affections don’t tend that way. He designs things for television and is terribly flip and camp.’

  ‘Sister, please speak English!’ Sister Gabrielle chided.

  ‘Sorry, Sister. He’s rather shallow and effeminate in a very obvious way. Fiona is very beautiful, still very beautiful I mean. She was always stunning. She never married which surprised us all, I think, and she teaches art these days.’

  ‘And the supposed suicide?’

  ‘Serge Roskoff.’ Sister Joan’s voice had softened perceptibly. ‘He was Russian, rather beautiful in a brooding Slavic way, and very talented. Everybody liked Serge. He was a kind person, truly kind. Anyway he wasn’t there and as I had to leave early I went round to his flat to remind him about the reunion.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘He was found dead of a drug overdose last month,’ Sister Joan said. ‘I met a — girl, a friend of his who’d moved into his flat after he died. She said he never took drugs.’

  ‘Then wouldn’t he be more likely to use them as a means of suicide?’ Sister Gabrielle said.

  ‘He wasn’t the sort to commit suicide, Sister. He cared too much about other people’s feelings, loved life too much. He hadn’t even left a note. It was out of character.’

  ‘You hadn’t seen him for nearly twenty years. He might have changed.’

  ‘From what the girl, Patricia, told me he hadn’t changed at all. Anyway that’s what bothers me.’

  ‘Mother Dorothy mentioned a photograph.’

  ‘We were all sent a copy of a group snapshot we had taken during our first term. That was when we arranged our reunion in twenty years’ time. I’d almost forgotten all about it. I certainly haven’t got the original photo any longer.’

  ‘Who’d sent the photo?’ Sister Gabrielle enquired.

  ‘Nobody who was at the reunion yesterday and Sally and Bryan have both been dead for more than a year. I thought it might have been Serge but Patricia showed me a copy of the photograph that he’d received. All posted in London.’

  ‘There’s probably a reasonable explanation for all of it,’ Sister Gabrielle said. ‘Coincidences do happen, you know. So why not put it out of your mind and concentrate on something more worthwhile?’

  ‘You’re probably right.’ Sister Joan ro
se. ‘I have to get on with the preparations for our first retreat. I’ve got to persuade Mother Dorothy that we’d better lay out a little capital on new mattresses. Visitors won’t appreciate ours.’

  ‘Excellent for the spine,’ Sister Gabrielle said, allowing herself to be hauled to her feet. ‘Have we any bookings yet?’

  ‘Not yet. I did mention it to the others at the reunion,’ Sister Joan said, ‘but that was before I heard about — anyway, I’m beginning to wish I’d kept quiet. I know we need visitors but the truth is that they’re all part of my past but I moved on years ago.’

  ‘Friends become acquaintances again?’

  ‘They were never really close friends,’ she said. ‘Barbara left during our second term to nurse her sick father and never came back. The rest of us didn’t really keep in touch at all. I ran into Dodie once years ago and Paul says he tried to contact Serge about six months ago with a view to getting him some publicity on television for an exhibition he was holding but he never got any reply and Patricia said there hadn’t been an exhibition after all. We weren’t bound by any tie of loyalty or fidelity or even mutual liking.’

  ‘They probably won’t come down anyway,’ Sister Gabrielle said, giving the mulberry tree a final pat. ‘I’d better let you get on with your work, Sister. I shall go and say a prayer in chapel for the souls of the faithful departed. For you too.’

  ‘Thank you, Sister.’

  ‘Oh, praying is about all the good I can do these days,’ Sister Gabrielle said cheerfully. ‘Well, that’s why we’re all here!’

  They walked at Sister Gabrielle’s pace round to the front of the main building. The rough grass stretched before it to the open gates and beyond the gates the moor had an autumnal glow. The old lady paused to look at the view.

  ‘I always liked spring best,’ she observed. ‘That’s something we can start to look forward to as soon as Christmas is over!’

  It was her way of saying that life went on, Sister Joan supposed, turning to mount the shallow steps to the front door which stood hospitably open. Alice lay in a patch of sunlight, pretending to be a trained guard dog.