“But why does she lie?” asked Roz in sudden exasperation.
“What good does it do her?”
“If we knew that, we’d have the answer to everything. She lied as a child to shore up the image she wanted to project and to shield herself and Amber from her mother’s angry disappointment. She was afraid of rejection. It’s why most of us lie, after all. Perhaps she keeps on with it for the same reasons.
“But her mother and Amber are dead,” Roz pointed out, ‘and isn’t her image diminished by denying she had a lover?”
Sister Bridget sipped her wine. She didn’t respond directly.
“She may, of course, have done it to get her own back. I suppose you’ve considered that. I can’t help feeling she’s adopted you as a surrogate Amber or a surrogate Gwen.”
“And look what happened to them.” Roz winced.
“Getting her own back for what, anyway?”
“For missing a visit. You said that upset her.”
“I had good reason.”
“I’m sure you did.” The kind eyes rested on the bruises.
“That’s not to say Olive believed you or, if she did, that a week of resentment could be cast off so easily. She may, quite simply, have wanted to spite you in the only way she could, by hurting you. And she’s succeeded. You are hurt.”
“Yes,” Roz admitted, “I am. I believed in her. But I’m the one who’s feeling rejected, not Olive.”
“Of course. Which is exactly what she wanted to achieve.”
“Even if it means I walk away and abandon her for good?”
“Spite is rarely sensible, Roz.” She shook her head.
“Poor Olive. She must be quite desperate at the moment if she’s resorting to clay dolls and outbursts of anger. I wonder what’s brought it on. She’s been very tetchy with me, too, these last few months.”
“Her father’s death,” said Roz.
“There’s nothing else.”
Sister Bridget sighed.
“What a tragic life his was. One does wonder what he did to deserve it.” She fell silent.
“I am disin dined to believe,” she went on after a moment, ‘that this man who sent the letters was Amber’s lover. I think I told you that I bumped into Olive shortly before the murders. I was surprised to see how nice she looked. She was still very big, of course, but she had taken such trouble with her appearance that she looked quite pretty. A different girl entirely from the one who’d been at St. Angela’s. Such transformations never come about in a vacuum. There’s always a reason for them and, in my experience, the reason is usually a man. Then, you know, there is Amber’s character to consider. She was never as bright as her sister and she lacked Olive’s independence and maturity. I would be very surprised if, at the age of twenty-one, she had been able to sustain an affair with anybody for as long as six months.”
“But you said yourself, men can bring about amazing transformations.
Perhaps she changed under his influence.”
“I can’t deny that, but if he was Amber’s lover, then I can point to a very definite lie that Olive has told you. She would know exactly what was in the letters, either because Amber would have told her or because she would have found a way to open them. She always pried into things that weren’t her concern. It sounds so churlish to say it now, but we all had to be very careful of our personal possessions while Olive was at St. Angela’s. Address books and diaries, in particular, drew her like magnets.”
“Mamie at Wells-Fargo thought Gary O’Brien had a yen for Olive. Perhaps he was the man she was dressing up for.”
“Perhaps.” They sat in silence for some time watching twilight fall.
Sister Bridget’s cat, a threadbare tabby of advanced years, had curled in a ball on Roz’s lap, and she stroked it mechanically in time to its purrs with the same careless affection that she bestowed on Mrs.
Antrobus.
“I wish,” she murmured, ‘there was some independent way of finding out whether or not she had the abortion, but I’d never be allowed within spitting distance of her medical records. Not without her permission, and probably not even then.”
“And supposing it turns out that she didn’t have an abortion?
Would that tell you anything? It doesn’t mean she didn’t have a man in her life.”
“No,” agreed Roz, ‘but by the same token if she did have an abortion then there can be no doubt there was a man. I’d be so much more confident about pressing ahead if I knew a lover existed.”
Sister Bridget’s perceptive eyes remained on her too long for comfort.
“And so much more confident about dropping the whole thing if you can be convinced he didn’t. I think, my dear, you should have more faith in your ability to judge people.
Instinct is as good a guide as written evidence.”
“But my instinct at the moment tells me she’s guilty as hell.”
