Crime in the Convent Read online

  CRIME IN

  THE CONVENT

  (DETECTIVE MARKHAM BOOK 3)

  CATHERINE MOLONEY

  Revised edition 2019

  Joffe Books, London

  www.joffebooks.com

  © Catherine Moloney

  First published as “Night’s Black Agents.”

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organisations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental. The spelling used is British English except where fidelity to the author’s rendering of accent or dialect supersedes this. The right of Catherine Moloney to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  We hate typos too but sometimes they slip through. Please send any errors you find to [email protected]

  We’ll get them fixed ASAP. We’re very grateful to eagle-eyed readers who take the time to contact us.

  Contents

  Dedication

  Prologue

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  Epilogue

  THE END

  The D.I. Gilbert Markham Series

  A Selection of Books You May Enjoy

  Glossary of English Slang for US readers

  Dedication

  For My Darling Pa

  Prologue

  EVE GRIFFITHS LOOKED AROUND guiltily before propping her mop and pail against one of two wooden confessional boxes situated at the back of St Cecilia’s Church in Bromgrove.

  Straightening up, she let out an involuntary yelp. The lumbago was as bad as ever. None of those pills she took did any good, and all that brass work was murder on her back.

  She just needed to sit down. At least Mrs Bossy Boots Purvis, the parish administrator, wasn’t around to accuse her of shirking, so she could take a minute.

  Sinking gingerly into the nearest oak pew, Eve gave a sigh of relief, wiping sweating palms on her chequered tabard and pushing a straggling lock of grey hair behind her ear. For all the polishing and scrubbing, it felt good to be inside the church and out of the sun on a hot Saturday afternoon in August.

  As the throbbing in her spine gradually subsided, she surveyed her handiwork proudly. Everything sparkled, right down to the fiddly silver gilt hanging lamps flanking the little side chapel which formed St Cecilia’s Shrine.

  As always, Eve’s eyes were irresistibly drawn to the three lancet windows above the high altar. The one on the right showed St Cecilia holding some sort of harmonium in one hand and a palm in the other, the martyr’s draperies glowing ruby red and her crown a golden sunburst in the light which flooded the east side of the church. The other two windows depicted the Madonna and St Joseph looking heavenward, but it was the youthful saint who fascinated Eve, gazing out from heavy lowered eyelids, under delicately arched brows, which gave a brooding, almost sensual look to her face. Long tapering fingers trailed across her floating gown, seeming to point across the transept to her shrine and the vaults beneath.

  Eve much preferred the stained glass picture to the white marble sculpture of St Cecilia in its reliquary just in front of the shrine’s altar rails. Downright creepy, for all that it was supposed to be a famous copy of some statue in Rome. When dusting the glass case, she always gave its contents quick glances before looking away, oddly disturbed by the outstretched figure of a woman in a long dress with her hair covered by some sort of turban and body awkwardly twisted, the neck turned away so that the face was hidden. No matter how many times Father Hassett told the story of how St Cecilia had been the victim of a botched beheading, her body found centuries later in the exact same position as when she had died, Eve could never reconcile herself to the sight. ‘Makes me feel like a murderer,’ she mumbled uncomfortably when the other cleaners twitted her for being superstitious.

  Still, the flower arrangements took away something of the gloom, Eve thought with a glow of satisfaction. She always took especial trouble over the displays in the shrine – vases brim-full with delphiniums, roses and hydrangeas and an array of marble plaques on the wall listing early priests of St Cecilia’s community buried beneath. She liked to run her fingers over the engraved names, as though this somehow put her in mysterious contact with the holy men who had long mouldered into dust, but only enacted this ritual when she was sure of being unobserved.

  Oh, it was so peaceful in the church, the roar of the traffic on the Bromgrove Underpass subdued to the sound of a gentle hum. Eve felt as though a load had fallen from her shoulders. As though she was floating weightless under water.

  She sighed deeply and got to her feet, smoothing down her tabard and ramming her spectacles firmly onto her nose. Better do a quick check to see she hadn’t missed anything. Else Old Mother Purvis would be on the warpath.

  Slowly, she moved down the south aisle, past stained glass windows representing various patron saints of the church – stern, bearded figures who she felt watched her shuffling progress with some disapproval – towards a stone altar and frieze representing the Raising of Lazarus. In the silence of the church, Eve felt a moment of atavistic apprehension. As though the bandaged figure just visible in its rock-tomb was about to elude Christ and the Apostles and come towards her.

  She gave herself a brisk shake. That was quite enough of that! Bobbing awkwardly as she crossed the nave in front of the high altar, she checked the green and black checkerboard paving and wrought iron votive candle stands. All spotless!

  At St Cecilia’s shrine, Eve skirted the reliquary with its unsettling recumbent figure and checked the two prie-dieux upholstered in red velvet. Not a speck, she noted with pleasure.

  Unlike the splendour of the high altar, with its imposing rose-coloured marble reredos and copper-gilt tabernacle inlaid with jewels, the shrine featured a simple canvas above its modest granite stone table. As with the figure of St Cecilia slumbering in its glass case, the picture’s impact was unsettling. It showed a stone doorway in a rock, opening inwards, with a prominent keyhole and knocker. An old man leaning on a crutch hobbled through the door, while on top of the rock sat a young nude man looking upwards encircled in a nimbus of light. Beneath the canvas, running its full length, was a gilt brass plaque with an inscription. Eve leaned forward and whispered the words to herself like an incantation.

  When the dread trumpet sounds, the long committed dust shall wake;

  And every joint possess its proper place inviolate.

  She felt lightheaded, dizzy. As though she saw those dead priests under her feet, so bent and worn, rise out of their narrow cement cells, called back to life like Lazarus. Father Hassett said at the end of time each soul would have its own body, all perfect and glorious, but Eve blinked at the thought of God putting all the crumbled skeletons back together even better than before. It was too much to take in. She preferred to think of those good old men enjoying their long sleep in peace without being disturbed by trumpets sounding and the like.

  Slowly, with one last lingering look at the shrine, Eve moved towards the north aisle. As she did so, she thought she saw a shadow pass behind the net-curtained window of the little oratory directly above the south transept. No doubt the community was keeping vigil for Father Thomas whose death was expected at any time. Eve crossed herself and said a quick prayer, thinking with affection of the gentle, unassuming priest whom she had often encountered at his devotions in the church befor
e increasing frailty confined him largely to the monastery. Rumour had it Father Thomas came from a very rich family, but he had no airs and graces. There was always a smile and a kind word for Eve.

  One of the stained glass windows overlooking the north aisle featured St George – very appropriate, in Eve’s opinion – while the other two showed obscure Anglo-Saxon queens whose names she could never recall. At the far end was a stone altar with a pietà in an arched reredos. Motes floated in the sunshine admitted by two small leaded windows above the altar, a shaft of light slanting onto a Book of Remembrance commemorating St Cecilia’s deceased parishioners. Gently, Eve drew a duster across the heavy gold tooling.

  At that moment, she heard voices directly overhead in the curtained organ loft. Self-consciously, the cleaner’s hands fluttered up to pat her grey perm. She hadn’t realized anyone was up there, hadn’t even heard them come in. Squinting into the velvety darkness, she wondered if she should cough or call out. Just so they knew she was there.

  It sounded like a heated exchange. One of the voices was well known to her. The pompous braying tones of St Cecilia’s organist Nicholas Saddington were unmistakeable, but the voice of the other speaker sounded ghostly and disembodied in the echoey space above.

  Frozen with embarrassment, Eve shrank into a pool of shadow. Then, quite distinctly, she heard something very strange. So strange, that she wondered later if she hadn’t come down with a touch of heatstroke and imagined the whole thing.

  Footsteps thudded down the spiral stone staircase from the organ loft. The church door latch clicked, then all was silent once more.

  Time to go.

  Eve waited a few minutes, then crossed the glassed-in vestibule to collect her cleaning equipment from outside the confessional box before letting herself out of the church. She tried to turn the iron handle of the heavy oak door quietly, but in the cavernous silence the sound of the latch echoed like cannon shot. She’d have copped it if Elsie Purvis had heard her. ‘Remember, you are in the house of God,’ she was wont to hiss at the slightest clumsiness. I might as well carry a sandwich board over my shoulder and be done with it, Eve thought glumly on such occasions.

  Outside, the sunshine was dazzling, so that she was momentarily blinded and the four rows of little white crosses in the pocket-handkerchief community cemetery seemed to dance before her eyes.

  She leaned against the church door. No need to worry about locking it. That was the responsibility of Brother Malachy who would be along shortly. In any event, St Cecilia’s greatest treasures were safely stored in a vault adjacent to the priests’ burial chamber and only brought out on special occasions.

  Eve gazed thoughtfully across the forecourt. What on earth was that ding-dong she had overheard going on in the organ loft? It must have been one of the community up there with Mr Saddington. But what could one of the priests mean by saying there were many secret places in St Cecilia’s where a dead body could be concealed with nobody any the wiser?

  She shook her head in bewilderment. Best not think of it. It must have been some sort of joke. Or maybe it was a priestly thing, something that the likes of lay folk wouldn’t understand.

  Anyway, Mr Saddington was always blowing up at someone or other, and this hot weather made everyone a bit short-tempered. Most likely, it was just a storm in a teacup.

  Feeling relieved now that she had reasoned things through, Eve looked around fondly at the red sandstone building, its Gothic buttresses glowing warm and vibrant in the sunshine. Next to the church was the monastery, a three storeyed nine-windowed Georgian house basking tranquilly in the summer heat. She knew the infirmary was at the front on the first floor. Perhaps the scent of the roses would reach Father Thomas’s bedside …

  Quietly, as though she feared to disturb the dying man, Eve packed up her car and drove out of the church car park.

  A few minutes later, from inside the church, came the sound of a key turning in the lock and bolts being shot.

  Then peace descended on St Cecilia’s once more.

  1

  Faithful Servant

  FATHER CHARLES HASSETT, RECTOR of St Cecilia’s, felt a curious torpor steal over him as he sat at his desk in the monastery. Overlooking neatly clipped lawns at the rear of the building, not a breath of air stirred in his second-floor office despite the bay window being cranked open to its maximum extent. Only the alley of chestnut trees at the far end of the garden offered any prospect of shade. Thickly clustering buds formed a canopy above Father McCabe’s wheelchair, parked where it was coolest, and the good old man’s breviary lay unheeded on his lap as he drowsed the afternoon away.

  Air conditioning, Father Hassett thought savagely, flexing the beautifully-shaped hands whose expressive elegance served him well in the pulpit, that’s what this benighted place needs. Along with 101 other improvements required to drag it into the twenty-first century.

  Impatiently, he pushed his chair back from the desk and strode across the room to a table covered with brightly-coloured pamphlets and leaflets. With a curious gesture, at once covetous and possessive, he trailed his fingers across the array of booklets clamouring for his attention.

  St Columba’s Missionaries. Society for the Divine Word. Congregation for the Evangelization of Africa. Fraternity of India. Sons of Charity in Poland. Mission to the Poor. Brothers of the Countryside.

  God, there were so many. So many religious communities making disciples of all the nations.

  And where was the Order of St Cecilia in all of this? Where were the recruits and resources for his community to set the world alight?

  He knew what the Provincial Superior in Birmingham would intone.

  The Harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Pray that the Lord sends more workers into His fields.

  Dear unworldly man. Hopelessly unsuited to the challenges of the modern world. God helps those that help themselves, thought Father Hassett grimly.

  Sometimes, he was startled by the strength of his feeling for the community. Now aged seventy, from the age of seventeen when his parents were killed in a car crash, it was all the family he had. Love of St Cecilia’s was equalled only by his religious fervour. While so many lived mired in the darkness of unbelief, he declared, it was his sacred duty to raise them up, strike off their fetters, show them daylight and liberty. The younger priests had teasingly christened him ‘Torquemada’, but they quickly succumbed to his missionary zeal.

  Tall, rangy and with the wiry physique of an athlete, Father Hassett cut an impressive figure, even now when he had flung off cassock and collar and was pacing up and down in his shirtsleeves. High cheekbones, thick black hair streaked with silver and a weathered complexion lent him somewhat the air of a North American woodsman, while his dark glowing eyes were at once merry and shrewd, although they could turn frosty at any infraction against the order’s Rule. A fine baritone, he could often be heard singing along to opera on Radio Three, much to his confrères’ amusement.

  But not today.

  Wearily slumping back at his desk, Father Hassett sighed gustily as he looked at the sheaves of papers and correspondence.

  Estimates for building repairs. Invoices. Medical expenses.

  Bills and more bills. A bottomless pit.

  As if that wasn’t depressing enough, there was the report from Bromgrove’s Police and Church Partnership Committee about a spate of hostile attacks on church buildings – some opportunistic, others fomented by the League of Atheists, a newly formed group of revolutionary activists based at Bromgrove University whose manifesto apparently embraced the ‘eradication of religious colonialism in all its guises’.

  Father Hassett’s careworn features relaxed momentarily into a grin as he recalled Detective Inspector Gilbert Markham’s disdainful reaction to these self-styled anarchists. The boy wonder of Bromgrove CID had not been at all what he expected, cutting through the waffle of his fellow committee members with a decisiveness which galvanized the gathering and made the stuffed shirts sit up. />
  Wonder if I could persuade Markham to take charge of one of our joint chapter meetings with the convent, he smiled to himself.

  Then his face darkened.

  The Sisters of St Cecilia, their affiliated religious community, were potentially under threat from these hooligans. That meant a visit to Mother Ursula whose relentlessly sunny optimism (‘We must put our trust in the Lord’) and maddening habit of quoting scripture against him (‘Knock and the door will be opened’) were almost as much of a trial to him as the Provincial Superior’s.

  Well, no way was he going to omit practical measures. So far it had just been petty vandalism and graffiti, but that might be just a prelude to something more personal. Security would have to be beefed up and the money found from somewhere.

  It all came back to money.

  He glanced ruefully at the threadbare carpet beneath his feet, its once vivid colours worn and faded. Serviceable but dreary damask curtains, whose vermilion hue was uncomfortably reminiscent of boiled lobster, hung lopsidedly on their rickety rail. The impression of aesthetic incongruity was heightened by two undistinguished sporting prints with stiffly bucking huntsmen circa 1800, glooming down from flock wallpaper whose swirling mauve and blue looked like the illustration from a pathophysiology textbook.

  Hardly fitting accommodation for the head of St Cecilia’s who, when all was said and done, represented Christ in the community, the central sun around whom the rest revolved.

  How he had writhed under the penny-pinching economies of recent years. But at least thanks to dear Father Thomas, the worst times were almost behind them.

  Father Hassett’s craggy face softened at the thought of Father Thomas Egerton whose life was moving peacefully towards its close in the infirmary below, so peacefully that it seemed a sin to mar the beauty of it with any selfish regrets.

  And yet, he would miss Father Thomas’s wise counsel and modest, diffident ways. The casual observer would never have detected that the humble priest was heir to a substantial inheritance, but so it was. The Egerton fortune came from silk and devolved to Father Thomas through interlocking family trusts which prevented any alienation to a third party except under the terms of his will. It being tacitly understood that St Cecilia’s would be the ultimate beneficiary, none of Father Thomas’s superiors had ever attempted to interfere with the status quo, and the priest’s own personal integrity made him immune from any officious inquiry.