‘Perhaps the end did justify the means?’ Sister Joan ventured.
‘An excellent maxim for a Jesuit. You are not a Jesuit so spare me your clever comments.’
‘Yes, Reverend Mother.’
‘As to penance — your notion of rushing off to spend a period in retreat is simply a desire to escape. Who is going to run the school when you are gone? Sister David has quite sufficient to do already and I certainly cannot spare any of the others. What effect will it have upon your pupils with whom you had planned to do this project? They will already have lost two of their fellows and your sudden leaving will make them even more insecure.’
‘I hadn’t thought of that, Reverend Mother.’
‘The trouble with you, Sister, is that you seldom do think. You rush into things. That is a sign of spiritual immaturity. This desire for retreat is an example of that. Selfish indulgence were you to undertake it at the present time. On the other hand you certainly need a period of self-examination. During the summer vacation might be arranged. At our retreat up in Scotland — for a period not exceeding one month.’
‘Thank you, Reverend Mother.’ Sister Joan beamed at her.
‘As for a more immediate penance — since a retreat cannot ever be considered such — you will not leave these premises save to go to the school until the end of the summer term. Is that absolutely clear? I put you on your honour.’
‘Yes, Reverend Mother.’
‘Then God bless you and give you more sense of what is fitting for a Daughter of our order. Now go and let the detective sergeant in for he has just driven up beyond the window. Oh, and Sister—’
‘Reverend Mother?’
‘You are dealing with that particular temptation in a praiseworthy manner — so far. Remember that we do not lock ourselves away from human affection. We seek to transcend it. Show the detective sergeant in and then you may stay. Since you are involved you had better hear what he has to say.’
‘I hoped to get away sooner,’ he apologized as Sister Joan opened the door. ‘This has been a fair old day, Sister.’
‘Indeed it has, Sergeant. Please, come into the parlour. Reverend Mother is waiting.’
He looked weary but satisfied.
‘Detective Sergeant Mill, good afternoon.’ Mother Dorothy inclined her head slightly. ‘Sister Joan has told me part of what has happened. I find it unutterably shocking.’
‘Child abuse always is, Mother Dorothy,’ he said grimly.
‘Was the child, Samantha—?’ She paused, deep distaste on her face.
‘Not physically. Thank you.’ He took the chair she indicated. ‘She was the bait as far as we have been able to ascertain. Julia Olive is singing like a canary — says her husband forced everything on her. She seems to have consoled herself with a string of young men and to have enjoyed the creature comforts his trade brought her while closing her eyes to what was going on. We’re waiting for an interpreter so we can question the Heinz lad, but I’m personally convinced that he hadn’t much to do with anything. He’s far too recent on the scene and this appears to have been going on for years. They lived out in India after their marriage; then a couple of years back they moved to London where he built up a very lucrative little porno business until the Vice Squad starting nosing round and he came down here.’
‘To taint the landscape,’ Mother Dorothy said.
‘Well put, ma’am.’ He nodded approval. ‘Now round here we have poaching, the odd break-in, senior schoolkids getting hold of some grass — marijuana or sniffing glue, an occasional domestic killing — but on the whole we’re a law-abiding community. I was transferred here nearly a year ago from Taunton and the situation’s much the same there. Straight crime and not too much of that.’
‘Have the Olives been charged?’
‘With offences against the Public Decency Act. That’ll hold them for the moment. We have to make enquiries in detail further afield before we can throw the book at them. Oh, I’ve entered in my report that we searched the house after “information received”.’ That means that Sister Joan won’t be required to give evidence. It’ll be tacitly assumed that we got a tip off from the underworld.’
‘Sister Joan would certainly not wish for any publicity,’ Mother Dorothy agreed. ‘The child—?’
‘Paranoid, though I’ve no doubt the psychiatrists will have some fancy new term for it.’ He grimaced briefly. ‘She’s chatting away about what she did to anyone who’ll listen. Her parents let her wander about all over the place, no supervision. She insists that her father had nothing to do with Petroc Lee’s death. She rigged it up, gave the boy the wine, sugared and doctored, and killed him by mistake. Clive Olive hasn’t admitted any involvement as yet but it seems fairly clear that he found the body and drove over to the convent with it. Left it in your lap, so to speak. Macabre.’
‘Very.’ She snapped off the word like a thread of cotton.
‘She — Samantha Olive, I mean — had put the rosary she found in the boy’s pocket, but later on I think she started to worry in case Sister Margaret remembered where she’d dropped it. She came back to the chapel — she says to pray, but the door was locked. She made a statement about that.’ He reached into his pocket and took out a typed paper. ‘Here it is. We’ve only just got this since we had to have a lawyer over before we could take it officially. The lawyer advised her not to say anything, but nobody could’ve stopped that little — lady from boasting of her exploits. Now, where is it? — yes, here we are — I couldn’t get in and I started rattling the handle. Then Sister Margaret opened the door.
