Crime in the Convent Read online

  One hour later, Markham and Noakes sat in the waiting room of Farrer’s Solicitors. Situated at the heart of a rather ugly modern complex in the town centre, the office’s undistinguished exterior belied the comforts inside. It was like an old-fashioned gentlemen’s club with all that dark polished wood, thought Markham, looking around appreciatively at the button-backed maroon leather armchairs, Wilton carpet and tasteful water colours. Noakes was considerably less enamoured, though the air conditioning, tea and Bath Olivers had gone some way to mollifying him.

  ‘Lucky for us they do Saturday opening, Guv.’ The DS spoke in the kind of sepulchral whisper he thought appropriate to such gilded surroundings. ‘What’re you hoping to find out?’

  Markham sighed. ‘I wish I knew, Sergeant.’ He loosened his tie, the informality in no way detracting from the air of distinction which turned heads even in this legal holy of holies with its rarefied atmosphere of wealth and old money. The silly bint on reception had been so dazzled, she almost forgot to ask for identification, recalled Noakes sourly.

  ‘All I know is that all roads lead to St Cecilia’s,’ Markham mused, long fingers tapping his arm rest. ‘Our three victims ended up there. And then there’s this talk about money troubles … the sense of something underhand going on behind the scenes.’

  ‘The rector ain’t exactly Raffles,’ offered Noakes glumly.

  ‘No but something’s amiss. I thought it might be time to “follow the money”. Farrer’s handled the Egerton bequest, so Mr Roberts might be able shed some light on St Cecilia’s finances.’ The DI sighed again. ‘Feels like a long shot, but I don’t want to go in mobhanded at the monastery … not without leverage.’

  ‘Whatcha reckon to the curate?’

  ‘Sincere. Credible.’ Markham sat up straighter. ‘That story about the tramp rang true… Something about Lightwood’s visit spooked the rector and Father Calvert. Spooked them badly. And next thing you know, Father Calvert’s body turns up.’ His voice hardened. ‘I don’t like coincidences.’

  At that moment, a pink-cheeked young sprig bustled forward.

  ‘Inspector, Sergeant. A thousand apologies for keeping you waiting. Pressure of business.’

  Difficult to imagine this Pigling Bland lookalike as the firm’s star earner, but Markham understood it to be so. A corner office certainly reflected his status, with a vast mahogany desk, glass floor to ceiling windows at which the blinds were drawn, and recessed oak bookshelves. There were no files or documents to be seen on the desk, the DI noticed. Just a telephone and rolodex plus silver-framed photographs of brightly scrubbed offspring and wholesome looking blonde. The paper-free office par excellence. An arrangement of anemones – purple, crimson and scarlet – stood on the cherrywood filing cabinet, drooping gracefully from the dark curves of a striking quartz vase. Cool, dim and peaceful, the room felt like the interior of an expensive aquarium….

  The sprig was talking. ‘How can I assist, Inspector?’ His subtext: Time is money.

  Markham explained, as succinctly as possible. He could see his concision was appreciated by young Mr Roberts.

  ‘I’m afraid there’s not much I can tell you, Inspector,’ the solicitor said after Markham’s recital. ‘The monastery finances were certainly parlous.’ Noakes’s mouth hanging open, he amended hastily, ‘That is to say, precarious.’

  ‘Presumably Father Thomas Egerton’s bequest changed all that.’

  ‘Indeed.’ The other looked wary. ‘Obviously, probate remains to be completed, and then we can hope to place St Cecilia’s affairs on a more secure footing.’

  Some inner compulsion prompted Markham to ask, ‘Was there anything unusual or irregular about the bequest?’

  The solicitor’s expression gave nothing away. ‘Such as?’

  ‘Oh, any difficulties, administrative hiccoughs, that kind of thing.’

  ‘None,’ came the smooth reply. Then, almost as an afterthought, ‘Other than the business about the codicil.’

  The DI’s senses quickened. ‘Codicil?’

  ‘Oh, at one point Father Egerton telephoned. He was fussing about making a codicil … or a second will. But,’ with a condescending smile, ‘this was when he was ill … faculties seriously impaired, y’know. In the end, it petered out and he didn’t ask us to draw up any further testamentary disposition.’

  ‘Is it possible he made one that you didn’t know about?’

  ‘Oh, my dear inspector, that kind of thing only happens in books.’ Mr Roberts smugly revolved the signet ring on his pinkie, a mannerism he no doubt fondly imagined heightened his resemblance to the Prince of Wales.

  Markham waited implacably.

  ‘I really can’t imagine Father Egerton doing such a thing.’ The solicitor’s tone was reproachful. ‘He had implicit faith in Farrer’s going way back. The Egerton family trusts and all that.’

  ‘But it’s not impossible … say he made two wills because he was undecided what to do and wanted to have the power of changing his mind.’

  ‘In which case why not consult us?’ Mr Roberts looked affronted at the bare idea of a client taking matters into his own hands.

  ‘He might have wanted to stop anyone finding out … wanted to keep it a secret for some reason.’

  ‘Well, of course you know how old people are with their whims and fancies. Any such document, duly signed and witnessed would be perfectly legal.’ Mr Roberts flashed a humourless smile. ‘But nothing of the kind was found in his papers.’ The solicitor looked pointedly at his Rolex, clearly keen to end the interview and attend to more profitable visitors. ‘Father Egerton left everything to St Cecilia’s in the end. Quite right and proper, I’m sure,’ he concluded piously.

  Given that Farrer’s would continue to administer the estate, Markham thought, the thrusting young solicitor had no intention of haring off on the trail of a secret will.

  But Markham was beginning to suspect that here at last was the key to three murders.

  ‘Where to now, Guv?’ the DS asked when they found themselves once more uncomfortably ensconced in the scorching upholstery of Markham’s vehicle.

  ‘I’ll drop you back at the monastery so you can collect your car. I want a word with Dimples, then I’ll check in at St Cecilia’s and see you back at base.’

  It was the voice of a hunter on the scent of his quarry.

  13

  Fallen Angel

  LATER THAT SAME DAY, Markham, Noakes and Olivia stood together in the garden of the Convent of Bon Secours, having paid their respects to Sister Felicity whose simple wicker coffin rested in the nuns’ tiny chapel. Markham was glad for his girlfriend’s sake that the coffin had been closed so she could remember her friend as she had been in life, rather than being confronted by some waxwork travesty courtesy of the morticians at Sweet Dreams.

  ‘Let’s sit down for a moment,’ Olivia said, gesturing to a bench next to a trellis at the far end of the garden. ‘Don’t slope off, George,’ she added with a shyly beguiling smile when Noakes made as if to leave them. ‘We’re like the Three Musketeers, you know.’

  Beefy face aglow with pleasure at the use of his first name, the DS joined their conference, though he bashfully declined the offer of a seat, instead hovering respectfully on the strip of gravel in front of their arbour. Like a courtier in attendance upon his queen, thought Markham in amusement, aware as he was of Noakes’s tongue-tied crush on Olivia.

  It was very peaceful. Markham stretched out his long legs, savouring the warmth and the stillness, though the reeking fug of the monastery bonfire still seemed to cling to his clothes. Olivia had received the news of Father Calvert’s death with a numb, pinched hopelessness in her face that struck him to the heart. Looking at the milky opaque skin which seemed more translucent by the day, he had the feeling she was bent on concealing some deeper, secret misery that was mysteriously bound up with the nun lying in the convent chapel. Helpless to comfort her, he wondered what it was.

  ‘Sister Felicity liked Father Calvert,�
�� Olivia said unexpectedly. ‘Though she thought he was a tormented soul. There was a strange retreat …’

  ‘Strange?’

  ‘Oh, it was around the time Father Thomas died. Do you remember that bit in the Gospel where Satan takes Christ up a mountain and tempts him with the whole world? Apparently, Father Calvert gave a sermon about the devil corrupting people with the promise of earthly wealth. He said souls like that ended up in a hell hotter than anything God could manufacture.’

  The primrose path to the everlasting bonfire.

  And now this same priest’s carbonized remains lay in a mortuary drawer, as though his charred and twisted bones had been a lightning conductor for God’s wrath.

  Suddenly, despite the sunshine, Olivia shivered. ‘From what Sister Felicity said, it was all pretty creepy … he went on and on about selling your soul for mammon.’

  ‘An odd subject to choose for a group of nuns vowed to poverty,’ Markham observed wryly.

  ‘It wasn’t what they were expecting. And then there was a load of stuff about fallen angels and pride being one of the seven deadly sins. He quoted Paradise Lost at one point. You know, “Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven!” Almost like he was having a go at one of the priests. It was so over the top, Mother Ursula thought he might be having a nervous breakdown.’

  The premonitory shutter clicked in Markham’s mind.

  Mammon. Selling your soul for money. A pact with the devil.

  The DI remembered something.

  Mother Ursula said Sister Felicity had a turn when Father Calvert was telling the nuns about Father Thomas’s bequest to the order. They’d put it down to heartburn, indigestion, grief. But what if it hadn’t been any of these? What if Father Thomas had after all made that second will whose existence Mr Roberts of Farrer’s had pooh-poohed? What if Sister Felicity knew about it? What if her shock arose from the fact that she realized the second document had been deliberately suppressed or destroyed?

  Then, as though in a chain reaction, Markham saw in his mind’s eye the missal that had been found in the confessional with Sister Felicity’s murdered corpse. A section of text was bookmarked. Effortlessly, as though the words had been lying dormant in his subconscious until that moment, he remembered the stern injunction: “No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.” Just before she died, Sister Felicity had been meditating upon greed. Was that because she knew a great wrong had been committed out of a desire to lay hands on Father Thomas’s fortune? Did she confront the wrongdoer and in doing so sign her own death warrant?

  Looking at the guvnor’s face, Noakes could see he was making deductions at the speed of light. A warning shaft from the keen dark eyes alerted the DS that Markham did not propose to share his insights with Olivia who knew nothing about a second will. Safer to keep her in ignorance for the time being.

  ‘D’you know, I’ve realized why that curate from St Peter and St Paul looked familiar.’ Olivia idly plucked a mint leaf from the bush next to their bench, rolling it sensuously between her fingers to release the musky fragrance.

  Markham looked at her expectantly.

  ‘He’s the dead spit of Father Thomas. They could almost be father and son.’

  She smiled roguishly at Noakes whose infatuated expression fully justified Mrs Noakes’s jaundiced suspicions.

  ‘Don’t be scandalized, George.’ Olivia jokingly speared two fingers at the blushing DS’s eyes. ‘I can almost see the cogs turning!’ Laughing at his confusion, she continued, ‘Of course, I don’t think there are any dark secrets in Father T’s past. No broken vows, mistresses, or anything like that. Just one of those funny coincidences.’

  Crossing his legs casually, Markham gave no hint that the world had suddenly tilted on its axis. Not by the flicker of a muscle did he betray his sudden excitement.

  That was it! At last, the connection!

  The curate had told them Father Calvert was looking at the wall above his head when he turned faint.

  A wall covered with photographs, including one of Father Egerton as a young priest.

  “Staring like he’d seen a ghost.” Those were Lightwood’s words.

  In a blinding moment of revelation, Austin Calvert had seen the resemblance and understood that Edward Lightwood was Father Thomas Egerton’s son.

  Markham suspected he had died because of that knowledge.

  Behind his expressionless profile, the DI feverishly weighed the possibilities.

  If Father Thomas had indeed lapsed from grace and produced a son, then it explained his eleventh hour wish to make a second will, the ties of flesh proving stronger than any supernatural claims. Sister Felicity had been Father Thomas’s spiritual counsellor. What if she knew about his love child? What if she knew about his wish to make amends to the boy? By all accounts, the nun was a wise and intuitive advisor. Strong and forthright too. Father Thomas must have felt safe entrusting his secret to her, confident she would speak up should the need arise. Sister Felicity’s mouth was stopped before she could perform that last service for her old friend.

  But where did Nicholas Saddington come into the picture?

  Markham thought back to the interviews in St Cecilia’s parish centre.

  Saddington had been the last person to see Sister Felicity, around one o’clock on the day before her body was discovered. According to him, she had been praying quietly at the shrine.

  Was it possible she had let something slip to the organist? Something which put him on the track of whoever suppressed Father Thomas’s second will – something which he tried to use for blackmail only to discover he had fatally misjudged his prey.

  It fitted. It all fitted.

  As though receiving a message transmitted from beyond the grave, Markham recalled Sister Felicity’s modest bedroom. Her King James Bible open at the denunciation of a corrupt king who had to be cut down like a rotten branch.

  Greed. Money. Corruption. A canker that had to be destroyed.

  Markham became aware that Noakes was watching him speculatively, his eyes anxious as they moved from the DI to Olivia’s unsuspecting face.

  Don’t worry, Noakesy, he telegraphed in silent semaphore. We’re getting somewhere, but I want Olivia kept out of it.

  At that moment, diminutive Sister Martha approached.

  ‘Hello, Olivia,’ she panted. ‘Glad I caught you. Mother Bernadette’s looking out that book you wanted. Between you and me, I think Mother’d be glad of some help with the library cataloguing. She’d kill me for saying it, but her sciatica’s playing up something chronic.’ The nun’s voice held a plea.

  ‘Don’t worry, I’m on it, Sister.’ Olivia’s tone was affectionate. Whatever her private sorrow, Markham reflected, the Convent of Bon Secours – true to its name – had enabled his girlfriend to find peace of a sort. For that he was truly grateful. He’d asked her to keep the news about Father Calvert to herself for the time being. The nuns would hear soon enough, Bromgrove’s ‘bush telegraph’ being what it was. With Sister Felicity’s murdered corpse lying in the chapel, the last thing they needed right now was another hammer blow.

  ‘Off you go, Liv,’ he encouraged. ‘Noakesy and I’ll work on our tans.’ Or enpurplement in the DS’s case.

  And with that, the two women were away, skimming lightly down the path like hummingbirds.

  Noakes watched them go, mesmerized by Olivia’s graceful form, the sunshine striking sparks out of her red-gold hair. The guvnor’s girlfriend always had that effect on him, he thought bemusedly, as though she scattered fairy dust in her wake.

  Sighing, he lurched across to the bench and sat down.

  The DS cut to the chase. ‘You think Father Calvert got up to some funny business with that will, don’t you, Guv? Cos of the way he banged on about that mammon stuff.’ Before Markham could reply, Noakes continued with the relish of a latter-day Elmer Gantry. ‘Guilt, that’s wha
t it was. Guilt. Like them folk in ancient times worshipping the golden cow an’ God ... smiting ’em.’ Looking upwards as though the deity might be expected to display his proficiency in the smiting department with a thunderbolt or two, Noakes came to a startled halt.

  Markham suppressed a smile. That Sunday school had left its mark on small George Noakes all right.

  ‘Yes, Sergeant. We don’t know the extent of Father Calvert’s involvement or why he had to die, but I believe he knew about the second will.’

  ‘What about the curate? Is he Father Thomas’s son then?’ Noakes scratched his stubbly chin with an air of profound bewilderment. ‘Jus’ can’t imagine it … a holy old priest like that getting together with some lass on the sly.’

  ‘I would have thought your Cromwellian bigotry could easily accommodate the idea of Father Thomas violating his vow of celibacy, Noakes.’ The DI’s voice was tart. ‘I had the impression you thought Catholic priests got up to all sorts.’

  Noakes looked hurt.

  ‘I’m not a bigot, boss,’ he protested, jowls shaking with the strength of his denial. ‘It’s jus’, well … you hear all sorts,’ he tailed off lamely. ‘An’ anyway,’ there was a touch of defiance in his tone, ‘it’s not zackly a nat’ral life for blokes.’

  ‘Perhaps that’s why Father Thomas sought female companionship,’ Markham said quietly.

  ‘S’pose it could’ve been worse. At least it wasn’t choirboys,’ Noakes conceded dourly.

  A dry chuckle escaped the DI.

  ‘“The quality of mercy is not strained”. At least not unless you’re a sergeant in Bromgrove CID.’

  Seeing that Noakes was beginning to look indignant again, Markham returned to the subject in hand.

  ‘We’re getting side-tracked,’ he said briskly. ‘To answer your question about the curate, yes, I believe Edward Lightwood is Father Thomas’s son. If he was adopted by an Anglican family, that explains him going into the Church of England ministry. Obviously, Lightwood himself has no idea of his origins, but Father Calvert must have made the connection.’