‘How strange it seems,’ Sister Hilaria murmured, ‘not to hear Sister Margaret saying those words. Always so cheerful. Striding across to the postulants’ quarters as if the world had been new created. Such a pretty singing voice.’
‘I didn’t know that Sister Margaret could sing.’
‘Who? Oh, no, Sister, I meant my postulant, Sister Marie. She has a very pretty voice and sings out her responses like a little bird. Not that she makes a very good cook. I was teasing her a little about not even being able to read a recipe — though the lentils were very tasty. But Sister Margaret seemed quite struck by my remark.’
Sister Joan opened her mouth but never found out what she had intended to say. Sister Hilaria was lost in her devotions again, lost in the only world where she felt at ease, the only world where her mind didn’t wander vaguely from subject to subject but could centre itself firmly on the source.
Rising, she went swiftly to the side door, passed through to the outer door, unlocked it and went out into the morning. The feeling that something was rising to a climax was very strong in her. Every instinct told her against all reason to hurry.
There was no time to ask permission to use the car. On the other hand she could ride Lilith at any time. Neither would she be breaking her promise to Detective Sergeant Mill by breaking into anywhere new. She had already broken into the Olive residence.
Lilith whickered a welcome as she hurried into the stable. The old horse had missed her customary exercise. It was a pity, she thought, that she hadn’t had time to slip on her new jeans, but if she had gone upstairs she would have been caught up in the normal Sunday morning routine.
Mounting, she tapped Lilith smartly across her broad back and set off at a gallop down the drive. Since she had been foolish enough to leave the evidence behind then she had a clear duty to go and collect it again before the Olives took fright and disposed of it, and she wanted to think as she rode, of Sister Hilaria’s vague, disconnected thought patterns. She wanted very badly to think about that.
Thirteen
Lilith submitted placidly to being tethered to a tree in the hollow below the greenway. As she made her way up the slopes towards the house Sister Joan felt the beauty of the early morning unfold about her. Long streaks of fine white mist wreathed about the bushes and were glinted with silver by the first light. To think of child murder, child pornography on such a morning seemed like a small blasphemy. Both smeared dirt over the chastity of a new spring day.
The house was silent, curtains drawn. Going round to the back yard she felt a definite relief that the Olives didn’t keep a dog.
The door that led down into the cellar was still not properly bolted. Presumably in such an isolated spot they had no fear of intruders. She recalled the way in which she had been neatly deflected from being shown over the house with the bland statement that the cellars were unsafe. No, the Olives felt quite secure in leaving their obscene collection down below.
The faint light that filtered down the steps into the cellar had about it a greenish, sickly quality as if something down there altered its essence. She took a deep breath, telling herself not to be an imaginative idiot and went down, trusting that her guardian angel hadn’t slept in late.
The inner door at the foot of the stairs leading up to the main part of the house was locked. She stared at its smooth varnished surface with dismay. Well, locks meant keys. Keys were generally kept — where? Perhaps on a key ring in the kitchen or in the study — if there was a study. She hoped that nobody in the Olive household got up early on a Sunday morning.
The ground floor passage was dim and chilly. Standing in the angle between staircase and wall she strained her ears for some sound but there was nothing. At least the place seemed to have fitted carpets everywhere which muffled her light step. It would also have muffled the sound of Sister Margaret’s rosary as it broke from its mooring at her belt and slid down to the carpet. She was certain that this was where Sister Margaret had lost her rosary, had been subconsciously aware of its slipping down to the floor. In the kitchen with Sister Hilaria and the two postulants, teasing them about their inability to follow a recipe, her mind must surely have jumped to the one house they had visited that evening where no food had been consumed, no recipes talked about or given. At least her enforced silence because prayers were about to begin hadn’t cost her her life. She had been killed for some other reason.
She went into the big drawing-room and looked round without much hope. It was very unlikely that any keys were kept here. The room behind was smaller, lined with shelves on which gaudily covered paperbacks resided. There was a flat-topped desk near the door. She risked switching on the table lamp on the desk and cautiously tried the first drawer. It was unlocked, almost filled with neat bundles of cheque stubs. There was no sign, she thought cynically, of anyone engaged in the writing of a book. Neither were there any keys.
She turned off the light and went out into the hall again. Around the edges of the curtains the light was strengthening. There was need for haste. A dining-room and the cavernous, green painted kitchen yielded nothing to the casual gaze. Everything was faintly shabby and dusty, though certainly not as grime encrusted as Sister Margaret had mentioned. But then Sister Margaret had
