Symposium (12 page)

The convent had returned to
its routine after the incursion of the television crew. Sister Marrow applied
herself to her refectory mural. After the programme was released, she seethed
with aggrieved rage against the
Observer
television critic who had
understood her mural to depict ‘Anna Karenina at the railway station’. She was
somewhat placated by an apology and a corrected description of her
masterpiece, which the newspaper printed in a spare corner.

In the
course of the five-day filming of the programme the ailing Mother Superior
rallied and was able to be brought down to her winged armchair in the
recreation room. She declared herself to feel perfectly all right except that
she couldn’t endure to be left alone and she couldn’t sleep with the light off.
So long as she had some company, she assured Miss Jones, who interviewed her,
and so long as she didn’t have to sleep in the dark she could be counted as an
active vigorous Nun of Good Hope. ‘The others thought I was going to die. They
look at me as if I was a ghost, or my face a skull and my body a skeleton under
my habit.’

‘Surely
not,’ said Miss Jones.

‘Surely
yes,’ said the aged woman, sitting upright enough in her wing chair.
‘Especially Sister Lorne: who milked the cow with the crumpled horn. Do you
know who the cow is? — Everything is symbolic. I’ll tell you who the cow is. Sister
Lorne’s husband. She married a farm-boy with clammy hands and huge big round
eyes. He looks at you like a cow. Sister Lorne is the maiden all forlorn who
milked — or maybe it’s tossed — the cow with the crumpled horn.’

Miss
Jones registered all this but later edited it out, so that it never appeared in
the programme. In fact, none of the Mother Superior’s speeches was reproduced,
and she looked absolutely sublime sitting there with her visible charm to
grace the programme. However, Rita Jones, the clever girl, thought she might as
well ask Sister Lorne if it was true she had once been married. ‘I am married,’
said Sister Lorne.

‘Married?
Isn’t that against your vows?’

‘Yes,’
said Sister Lorne. ‘But he worked on a farm. Ecology comes before vows.’

‘Oh
yes, but I don’t quite follow,’ said Miss Jones. ‘Your Mother Superior was
quoting from “The House that Jack Built”.’

‘Really?
What did she say?’

‘That
you were married to a young farmer, Sister Lorne.’

‘The
farmer sowing his corn, who married the maiden all forlorn … Is that what she
said?’

‘Something
like that. Of course I’m not going to use it in the programme. Your Mother
Superior obviously wanders in her mind. But I just —’

‘You’re
right, you’re not going to use it in the programme. She thinks I want to step
into her shoes.’

‘I just
wondered if your husband ever comes to the convent?’

‘Now
and again.’

‘May I
say just that?’

‘No,
no. As a matter of fact it would be impossible to prove. The other nuns
wouldn’t like it. He comes dressed as a curate,’ she confided. Sister Lorne
smiled, breathing heavily.

Miss
Jones had already got plenty of unusual material, so she thought it wise to
drop this alarming and rather cloudy subject.

But
Margaret, whose job it had become to keep the old nun company, and who occupied
another bed in the same bedroom, had plenty of opportunity to hear variations
on the theme of Sister Lorne and her imputed spouse. Margaret kept an eye open
for a curate with large round eyes.

Two
months after the successful transmission of the BBC programme Sister Rose, the
much-loved and admirable young plumber’s assistant, was found dead in the
little convent courtyard. She had been strangled but not raped or sexually
assaulted in any way. The girl was large and strong; she had been strangled by
a pair of large hands. It was not established whether her killer was a man or a
woman.

Big and
manly as were some of the nuns of Good Hope, it happened that not one of them
possessed excessively large hands. This did not entirely exclude some nun in a
raptus
of homicidal strength from having committed the crime, but it weakened the
possibility. The male frequenters of the convent, two priests and the
agricultural husband of Sister Lorne, were also excluded, the priests because
one was in Fulham at the time of the murder and the other was on a plane to
Glasgow. Sister Lorne’s spouse was at the time in a boarding-house at
Cirencester where she had sent him to study agriculture at the college there,
and make a man of him.

The
nuns were now being questioned closely, interrogated one by one. So far, nobody
knew, had seen, heard or suspected anything. It had not even reached Margaret’s
turn when the Mother Superior wove her way into the refectory where a man from
Scotland Yard was taking notes from Sister Rooke; the old lady leaned against
the much-adorned wall and confessed to the murder.

This
was unlikely though not impossible. Her confession was taken note of in the
greatest detail and put aside by the police, as it were for a rainy day. The
interrogations of the nuns continued while the Mother Superior was ushered up
to bed. There she suffered cardiac arrest, rallied, confirmed her confession,
asked for and received the Last Sacrament, and died. According to her statement
the Reverend Mother was indignant about a remark Sister Rose had made in the
course of the late television programme. She had told her interviewer that she
wasn’t quite content in the convent. ‘What about the life of the spirit?’ she
said. ‘Why don’t we have a spiritual life?’ She had gone on to complain that
the nunnery was virtually nothing but an entity in the National Health Service
and that the Mother Superior was the top culprit in this situation.

Most of
the nuns had a firm alibi for the hour of the crime, and those who had not had no
motive. Margaret, who was interrogated with the others, had been on a visit to
her sister Eunice in Dulwich that night, ‘to see her new nephew’.

The
Mother Superior’s hands had not keen noticeably large. A re-run of the
discarded sequences of the television programme, which had cut out her
speeches, was made for the benefit of the police. They studied the whole film
with predatory attention. The Mother Superior’s confession did seem to alter
radically her image as she sat lording it in the wing chair. So long as she
didn’t have to sleep in the dark, she had told Miss Jones, she was to be
counted on as an active and vigorous member of the community. Her voice seemed
to linger on, and emphasize, the words ‘active’ and ‘vigorous’. Even the
toughest of the detective inspectors felt a slight shiver as she went on: ‘The
others thought I was going to die (slight accent on ‘I’). They look at me as if
I was a ghost, or my face a skull and my body a skeleton under my habit.’

‘It’s
her, all right,’ said one of the policemen. By the time they came to the
interview with the murdered girl (‘… this convent is nothing more than an
entity in the National Health Service. Where is the spiritual side of life? …‘)
they were all disposed to fall back on the evident solution: the Mother
Superior’s confession. It was too late to interrogate her further.

The
trouble was, none of the investigators sincerely believed she had committed
the murder, even though by a stretch of logic she could have done it. They were
looking at least for an accomplice. In her room was found a handbook on karate,
which all the other members of the community professed to have never seen
before.

The
television news re-ran portions of the original programme, accompanied by
Sister Lorne’s comments. ‘This is the end of the community of Good Hope,’ she
said. ‘Most of the younger nuns have left. We can’t help feeling the hand of
the supernatural in this tragic event. The house is to be taken over by a firm
of lawyers.’

Margaret
wrote:

Dear Dad,

I’ll be home again on Saturday. For good.

It is terrible to be within touching distance of a
murder so soon after the last. Fortunately as you heard the Mother Superior’s
confession relaxed the atmosphere. The police here were extremely polite to us
all, and in my case there was no repetition of all that grilling I underwent on
poor Granny’s death. Nobody can understand how the Mother Superior could have
been physically, let alone morally, capable of such an action. There is
something mysterious. It seems the Mother Superior was practising karate. How
could she do that in her condition?

I can’t help feeling it all has to do with that
television programme. One of the crew left a letter on my pillow asking for a
date. Of course that proves nothing. Just his cheek.

I got a letter from Uncle Magnus. He knows I was with
Eunice at the time. But he hints, he throws his suspicions on me without any
evidence at all. Do you know he even quoted Schopenhauer at me anent my alibi —
‘Chronology is not causality.’ Poor old fellow. I could sue him for that.

This place has been sold. Nearly everyone’s left.
There are three nuns still doing their hydrotherapy (washing-up) in the kitchen
and Sister Lorne acting general manager. Sister Marrow is going to be an art
teacher at a girls’ school and Sister Rooke is going to continue with her
plumbing when her nerves permit. Very few think of les autres.

Love to Mum.

Margaret

SHORTLY
after the wedding of Margaret and William Damien, Hilda Damien
telephoned twice from Australia to Chris Donovan. The second time she asked
Chris if she or Hurley would supervise and keep a check on a purchase she had
arranged through a sale at Sotheby’s of a painting by Monet.

Hurley
had come in from his studio, his day’s work over, when he heard of this
request. He was more than willing to be involved in this interesting deal; he
was positively excited. Hilda, so Chris told him, had instructed her lawyer in
London to give Hurley Reed free access to the deal and to decide about the
safekeeping of the picture.

Charterhouse
passed a tray with Chris’s dry martini, the latter with the glass expertly
iced. He was always ready with the drinks at this hour. He busied himself with
Hurley’s whisky and soda with ice.

‘What
Monet is it?’ said Hurley.

‘She
didn’t say. You know what Hilda’s like. She just buys “a Monet”.’

Hurley
gave a smile between tolerance and scorn. But he said, ‘I’ll soon find out.
Does she intend to take it to Australia?’

‘No. Do
you know what? In spite of all she said, she’s weakened and decided to give it
to the young couple as an additional wedding present. But it’s to be a secret.
She’s going to take it in to their flat in Hampstead and give them a surprise.’

‘I
thought she’d given them the actual flat?’

‘Yes,
well now they’re getting the Monet as well.’

‘What
did she pay for it?’

‘I
don’t know,’ said Chris. She sipped her welcome dry martini.

‘I’ll
find out. I expect it was a lot. Too much.’

Charterhouse
had left the room.

Luke in the public phone
box said:

‘I just
dialogued with the butler.’

‘And?’

‘It’s
confirmed for October 18th.’

‘And?’

‘People
called Suzy, a titled man and a titled woman.’

‘We’ve
done the Suzys. A waste of time.’

‘Untzingers.
They’re friends of mine, though. Not rich, I mean like the rich are rich.’

‘What
name?’

‘Untzinger.
I’d be obliged if —’

‘I’d be
obliged if you’d continue.’

‘Damien.’

‘Damien!’

‘Yes,
Damien. Mother and son he seemed to think are expected. She’s been doing up a
flat in Hampstead. A picture on the wall by that artist named Monet, that
French —’

‘You
said Monet?’

‘Just
bought it, just the other day.’