No Human Enemy (Suzie Mountford Mysteries) (6 page)

‘My words fly up, my thoughts remain below: Words without thoughts never to heaven go.’

‘You know your Shakespeare, Reverend Mother.’

‘I know why Hamlet didn’t kill Claudius when he was at his prayers.’

‘Why?’

She laughed, gruff and throaty. ‘Because Shakespeare was a good playwright and killing Claudius would’ve cost him the rest of the play. Ended it all too soon.’

Tommy asked Mother Rachel if it was usual for the novices to be in their cells at that time of day. ‘Noon, couple of minutes either way when the V-1 struck?’

Suzie remembered looking at her watch. Three minutes past twelve noon exactly. This must have been the one they heard in Upper St Martin’s Lane.

‘Absolutely normal. All the sisters return to their cells at noon when they’re here in the convent. They say the Angelus and then spend half an hour in quiet prayer and contemplation, before going to the refectory for what you would call lunch at half past twelve. We have a strict routine of work and prayer: the singing of the daily office, which I’ve told you is a set of punctuation marks in our days. In the morning sisters usually work on their special subjects. Those who teach must also learn. It is part of our duty. In the afternoon we carry out set tasks, helping Mr Cobbs and his team in the gardens, cleaning individual cells, keeping the passages and corridors clean, tidy and polished. Four sisters are detailed each week as sacristans, and of course there is much to do in the way of mending, keeping the vestments in good order. And naturally there is cooking. We have many good cooks here. It is sometimes difficult to avoid the sin of gluttony. Even now, with the rationing.’ She laughed. ‘You and your people must eat with us sometime, some evening perhaps,’ she said, and Tommy Livermore blanched at the thought of the Reserve Squad sitting down to eat with platoons of nuns.

After about an hour’s conversation a bell began to toll deep within the building.

‘A call to prayer?’ Tommy asked.

‘Rather a call to the inner woman,’ Mother Rachel smiled. ‘That is the call to the refectory. We have our evening meal at seven.’

‘Then you must go, Reverend Mother, and we’ll wait until you’ve eaten, then go with you to identify the bodies.’

‘Speak for yourself,’ Suzie thought, ‘I’m bloody famished,’ and was immediately aware of a twinge of guilt at having thought a swear word, so ingrained was her school training. In the presence of nuns, Suzie was returned to near child-like innocence and discipline.

‘I shall do without my evening meal,’ Mother Rachel said. ‘It is a good punishment for my earlier unbridled loss of temper. Sister Eunice must follow her conscience, for…’

‘I ate a hearty midday meal at our Farnborough house, Mother,’ the Novice Mistress muttered, and Suzie recalled the passing-out parade at Hendon when the day’s visiting bigwig had told her unit to stand easy and carry on smoking. From the rear Sergeant Mullet, their course sergeant, had murmured, ‘That doesn’t apply to you.’

‘Then, shall we now go down and you can identify the bodies?’ Tommy got to his feet again and gave the nod to Emma who opened the door to reveal Ron Worrall and Shirley Cox waiting outside.

Mother Rachel said something about her convent crawling with police officers and Tommy introduced Ron and Shirley.

Ron carried a thick cellophane bag containing a knife: blood smearing the inside of the bag. ‘Success?’ Tommy raised his eyebrows.

‘It was in the cell where the body was found,’ Ron Worrall told him.

It was a sharp, nine-inch, straight blade with a bone handle. ‘Possibly a kitchen implement,’ Tommy said and asked if the kitchens could be checked for a missing knife.

Mother Rachel assured him that it would be a priority, then together they left for the hospital.

CHAPTER SIX

Suzie and Tommy did not get back to Upper St Martin’s Lane until after eleven that night. Brian drove the two nuns to the hospital, together with Suzie and Emma, leaving Ron and Shirley to talk to a pair of frightened-looking novices in the kitchen, and rake through the knives. Tommy stood watching, not taking part, legs astride and hands clasped behind his back: an invigilator. Nothing was missing and Tommy said they would have to check with ironmongers and places where knives were sold locally.

The nuns were restrained and calm when they viewed the bodies. Suzie was impressed by their total faith in the two novices now being at peace with God. She had even asked them about their conception of the afterlife. ‘Just “being”,’ Sister Eunice said. ‘Just being in a sea of warmth and love, surrounded by those you have known and loved during your time here.’

Mother Rachel was more vivid. ‘Oh, I think it will be an eternal funfair,’ she grinned. ‘Without the vulgarity, of course.’ Then she went solemn and said, ‘I shall have to speak to the sisters tonight. Possibly later, before Compline. They’ll need to be told. That’s only fair.’

‘Won’t they know already?’ Suzie asked.

‘You mean from the other novices who were in their cells when the flying bomb came down?’

‘Yes.’

‘Possibly. They do chatter so. Yes, it’ll be round the convent like wildfire.’

‘Or holy fire,’ Tommy, almost smirking. Then, ‘But they won’t know about the male? The murdered male.’

‘The male in sheep’s clothing? No. No, of course they won’t know. Unless one of them did it and makes a deliberate mistake. That Inspector Hornleigh in
Monday Night at Eight
seems to think they
all
make mistakes.’

For a moment they were again surprised by Mother Rachel’s knowledge of BBC wireless entertainment programmes.
Inspector Hornleigh Investigates
was a regular feature in the
Monday Night at Eight
programme in which the fictional detective challenged listeners to spot the error made by the criminal.

‘Ah,’ the Reverend Mother explained, ‘we sometimes listen to
Monday Night at Eight
during our weekly period of general association and leisure which usually falls on a Monday evening.’

Tommy nodded and she added, ‘Between eight and nine. You must consider us very worldly but some of the sisters, out in the world, teaching in schools, have to listen to that dreadful Tommy Handley.’

‘Have to?’

‘They wouldn’t know what the children are talking about if they didn’t. Tommy Handley is pretty much obligatory.’

Back in the Reverend Mother’s office, Sister Eunice came in with two slim files. ‘Here we are. Novice Bridget Mary and Novice Mary Theresa. Both would have taken their vows – be Professed, as we say – in a couple of weeks. Good, intelligent women. I had high hopes for them. They both came to us in 1940, that dreadful summer. They’ve only just come here from our house of the Holy Family, in Farnborough. In fact Mother Rachel and I were there to see them leave, this morning.’

Man knoweth not the day, nor the hour,
or something like that, Suzie thought. It all seemed most poignant.

‘Their families?’ Tommy asked.

‘Bridget Mary is easy. Her father’s vicar of St Martin’s near Bedford Park. Her name in the world was Joan May Harding. Father Harding was a true friend of our community, came over every couple of years or so to take a Lent retreat for the sisters who were here in the convent for Lent and Easter.’

Eunice took a deep breath, as if to prepare herself. ‘Novice Theresa is a different matter. More difficult. She came from the village of Churchbridge, on the Severn River, six miles or so from Gloucester, out towards Tewksbury. In the world her name was Winifred Audrey Lees-Duncan. Only daughter of John Lees-Duncan, landowner, so-called gentleman farmer, though he spends more time in big country houses and gambling in his London club, I’m told – or was when I last heard. Held an honorary rank of colonel with some half-baked military outfit during the ’14–’18 show.’ She stopped with a guilty look over her spectacles and cleared her throat.

‘Home is The Manor, Churchbridge, Gloucestershire. Her mother is Maude Lees-Duncan whose occupation appears to be riding and doing good works locally. Winnie – Novice Theresa – had two brothers, one of whom lives abroad, somewhere. In Mexico I think, Michael Lees-Duncan. The other – Gerald – last heard of somewhere in Scotland. That’s how things stood in 1940 anyway.’

‘Ages?’ Tommy asked.

‘The brothers?’

He nodded.

‘Both in their mid- to late twenties.’

‘Not serving King and country, then?’

‘Not when I last heard, but that was four years ago.’ Sister Eunice’s tone turned cold, distant. ‘Novice Theresa came to us against the wishes of her parents. In a very real sense she has been cut off from her family who are against all forms of organised religion. Proselytising atheists, I believe. Very difficult people. When Theresa came to us she brought a legal letter of instruction forbidding us or her to be in touch with them ever again.’ She flourished the letter, handing it over to Tommy who quickly read it and asked if he could hang on to it. ‘Don’t worry.’ He gave them his terrible smile. ‘WDI Mountford has a broad back. She’ll take care of matters in Gloucestershire. We’re the police so this bit of legal shenanigans doesn’t apply to us.’

Suzie’s heart sank.

They went through the question of the man who had been dressed as a novice, but neither of the nuns could add anything.

‘Never seen him before.’ The Novice Mistress shook her head. ‘And I think I would have remembered that face if he had come into the convent disguised as a novice. It’s true that we had three new novices who only arrived here today, but both Mother Rachel and I have known them for a long time as postulants at Farnborough: at our House of the Holy Family. In fact, they only came here, to the Mother House, yesterday. We saw them leave our Farnborough House after breakfast this very morning.’

‘So you can’t possibly say how he got into the convent, this man?’

They shook their heads, sadly it seemed, and Tommy said that this meant they, the police, would have to spend a lot of time here in Silverhurst Road. ‘We’re going to be forced to question every lady who was here this morning. Every sister and every novice, plus whatever other staff were around – your gardening people for instance.’

‘They’re seldom here on a Sunday,’ Mother Rachel told them. ‘But we’ll ask, of course. Is there anything else we should do?’

Tommy said they should try to stay within the bounds of the convent for a few days. ‘We’ll probably be back on Tuesday or Wednesday. You’ll also want the bodies for burial, so we’ll let you know when they are released from the coroner.’

They tied up some loose ends and Mother Rachel said it was time for her to be in chapel. ‘Compline,’ she explained, ‘during which I shall make these tragic events known to my sisters.’

Tommy told her they’d rather she didn’t mention the male novice, and she said there were bound to be questions.

‘Then you must be like the three wise monkeys,’ Tommy said.

Mother Rachel moved her hands over her ears, then her eyes and finally her mouth, ending by giving him a beatific smile.

‘Perky lot, those nuns,’ Tommy said as they drove back into central London.

Suzie grunted. In her schooldays she’d had a lot of truck with nuns. ‘Personally,’ she told him, ‘I think they’re very tough birds. Tough, sneaky and willing to mislead the police if it’s a question of defending their community against scandal.’

‘And who can blame them.’ Tommy once more smiled his terrible smile.

*   *   *

Since D-Day and the invasion of Europe, railway travel had become a little easier. A huge amount of materiel and thousands of men had moved from England onto the Continent and, while there were still large numbers of troops stationed in the south and around the major airfields occupied by the RAF and US 8
th
Army Air Force, the major railway companies were not under the stress that had weighed on them earlier in the war.

Suzie travelled towards Gloucester from Paddington, sitting back in a first-class carriage that was her right as an officer. Two WAAF officers and a male civilian shared the carriage and Suzie, who felt depressed and nervous at the job she was called to do, stared blankly at the passing scenery.

The sun shone and the countryside looked its summer best as they whistled and chugged on their way, stopping at Reading and Kemble, Stroud and Stonehouse, heading towards Gloucester. The views were so peaceful that it was hard to imagine the hell going on across the Channel as the military pushed their way inland from Normandy.

She watched a group of children clustered round the gate of a field giving V-signs at the train, the wrong way, enjoying every minute of the vulgarity. Tommy had once told her that when the Prime Minister first used his trademark sign they’d had to explain to him that he would have to make sure his palm faced outwards. Apparently he’d laughed his head off when the crudity of the two-fingered movement became clear to him.

Suzie remembered what a naval officer had told her about sailing through the Suez Canal: about the groups of little Egyptian boys who clustered around exposing themselves to the ships. ‘Flashing us like cheerio, both front and rear,’ he had said. ‘Didn’t know whether you liked bananas or peaches by the time they’d finished.’ Suzie had been revolted by the thought. And by the young officer. ‘You’re a bit of a prude,’ he had said, so she went silent on him, thinking, yes, she probably was a bit prudish and what was wrong with that?

At Gloucester there was a police car with a sergeant driver waiting for her, arranged by Tommy, and she was whisked out of the city along pleasant roads, through cathedral arches of trees in full leaf and a countryside that seemed unbelievably placid.

The driver was a detective sergeant who introduced himself in a less than jovial manner. ‘Mills,’ he told her in a flat mournful voice. ‘DS Mills.’ Yes, Suzie thought, Dark Satanic Mills, then was worried, wondering if she had said it out loud.

Three times she tried to engage DS Mills in conversation, but he remained silent, knew nothing of the Lees-Duncans or the village of Churchbridge. ‘I came from Berkshire originally,’ he said in a sudden shower of words. ‘Ask me about Berkshire and I can tell you anything.’ But he clammed up once more when Suzie greeted this information with delight, saying that she came from Berkshire also. Newbury.