The Quick and the Dead (A Sister Agnes Mystery) (21 page)

Agnes’s mind was racing. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘another day. I’m sure it’s best,’ she went on, collecting her thoughts, ‘if you don’t exclude your mother. Even if she seems hostile. Sometimes people take a while —’

‘For the Lord to work with their hearts. I know. I pray for her every day, you know.’

*

Driving back to London that evening, Agnes was aware of uneasy thoughts eddying around her. But one idea emerged with clarity. She must phone Elizabeth before Monday; and she must make sure to catch her on her own.

*

On Sunday Agnes stayed at home. She got up late, hearing the chimes from St Simeon’s calling the faithful to Mass, and resolutely ignoring them. She made coffee, and for a while sat at her desk in front of her notebook, staring at the scribbles she had made in it. Jerry, she thought. It didn’t make sense.

At lunchtime she heard the phone ring, heard Julius leave a message.

‘Agnes, I will soon be forced to conclude that you’ve left us altogether and have gone with the Raggle-Taggle Gypsies. I will therefore have no choice but to emigrate in despair. If you’d like to stop me, you only have to give me a ring.’ Agnes smiled at the phone but did not pick it up.

Sitting in her flat as the day passed, as she opened windows against the heat and watched her curtains sway from time to time in the occasional breeze, she could hear church bells marking time. Julius’s own, and then, more distantly, Southwark Cathedral; and across the river, the peals from the City, echoing through the hot afternoon, reminding her of what she’d given up. She wondered how long all this would last. This is my choice, she thought. If only I could convince myself that it’s the right one.

At seven o’clock she phoned Sheila.

‘How’s Lily?’ she asked her. ‘Not married off yet?’

‘No, thank goodness. Came back from her meeting high as a kite. If I could feel that good just from bashing a tambourine for hours, think of the money I could save on booze. She was a bit vague about how many attended, it was probably the same old crowd. But no, nothing untoward.’

‘Good. I’ll keep in touch.’

At five past eight Athena opened the door with a broad grin. Agnes could smell garlic and oregano wafting along the corridor.

‘How do you do it?’ she said, as Athena led her into the front room.

‘How do I do what?’ Athena picked up a corkscrew and began to do battle with the Muscadet that Agnes had brought. Agnes looked at her friend. The grey roots were shiny black again, and she wore a crisp silk shirt and leggings. 

‘I meant, how do you find these men who can rustle up exquisite three-course dinners without being TV chefs at the same time?’

Athena giggled. ‘It’s only some pasta thing. But, yeah, it’s nice. If only I could eat some of it.’

‘How is all that?’ Agnes asked, taking the wine bottle from Athena and pulling out the cork with one swift wrist action.

‘Oh, you know. Still sick. But only in the mornings now. It’s OK.’ Athena lowered her eyes.

Agnes saw the tension in her face. ‘Athena —’

‘No, really sweetie, it’s fine. We’re really happy. Come on, let’s go and join Nic in the kitchen. It’s all ready.’

Nic greeted Agnes warmly and they settled down to fusilli with smoked ham and a spinach salad. Nic handed Athena a bowl of plain pasta.

‘Won’t you have some sauce?’ he asked.

‘I’ll only regret it later,’ Athena sighed. ‘Have we got any pickled cucumbers?’

Nic brought a large jar to the table, and Athena helped herself to several. ‘Poor love.’ She smiled at Nic. ‘Last week it was taramasalata, and Nic had just bought a large pot when I went right off it. He had to eat the lot, didn’t you, sweetie. Poor baby, you’ll be living off these next week.’

‘Never mind,’ Nic said. ‘In a few more weeks you’ll have stopped feeling sick, and then you’ll be all radiant and we can start to look forward to having a baby.’

‘That’ll be nice,’ Athena said, staring at her plate. Agnes glanced at her. She was twisting a large spiral of pasta on her fork, round and round. 

‘Cheers,’ Nic said, raising his glass to Agnes.

‘Cheers,’ said Agnes. Athena did not look up.

At the end of the evening, Athena took Agnes downstairs. Agnes hesitated by the big glass doors that led out to the street.

‘Athena — are you OK?’

Athena’s eyes filled with tears. She shrugged. ‘S’pose so.’

‘What are you going to do?’

‘What can I do? There’s only one other course of action open to me. We’ve been through all that.’ She shook her head. ‘No, I’m on my own in this.’

‘But Nic —’

‘Oh Nic, I can’t — you see, he’s so into it. His son Ben’s at college now, and so for Nic it’s the chance to do it properly, to have another go. When it’s Ben’s birthday we’re all going to go out to dinner, apparently, with his ex-wife and her partner, vegan or macrobiotic or something equally dull — and there’s all this “Won’t it be lovely for Ben to have a half-brother or -sister …?’

‘Is Nic the problem, then?’

Athena shook her head. ‘No, not Nic. He’s sweet. And he really seems to care. About me. Amazing, really. Maybe when our child’s left home we’ll find out that we get on really well. Only I’ll be about ninety-three by then.’ Her eyes filled with tears. ‘No, Nic’s not the problem.’ Her hand went to her abdomen, still firm and flat, still betraying no outward sign of the life within it. She shook her head. ‘Oh, I shouldn’t be talking like this. I expect all mums-to-be feel like this sometimes.’ She tried to smile. ‘Me, a mum-to-be, eh? Just fancy.’

Agnes gave her a hug. It’ll be all right, she wanted to say, but no words came.

*

Back home that night Agnes’s hand hesitated over the phone. She flicked through her notebook and found the Murphys’ number. Then she checked her watch. It was too late to try now. And anyway, she thought, it would be much better to try in the morning, when there’d be more chance of catching Elizabeth alone.

Chapter Seventeen

‘Hello, it’s Sister Agnes,’ Agnes said to Elizabeth Murphy on the phone next morning.

‘Oh. What can I do for you?’

Agnes took a deep breath. ‘This — this might sound strange, but I was praying yesterday, and the image of Shirley Stanton was sent to me by the Lord.’ Agnes was aware that she had broken at least two of the Ten Commandments in one short sentence. ‘And I felt that her suffering was great, and I felt the Lord tell me that I could help her. And this morning, I decided I had to phone you.’

There was a silence from Elizabeth. Her voice when she spoke was almost a whisper. ‘Her suffering is terrible. She didn’t see the body, you see, because Morris said … anyway, she’s in the grip of terrible imaginings of her daughter’s last hours, it’s really awful, you can’t begin to know — really, she’s half-mad with it, and that little boy, their son, I do worry so for him.’ Elizabeth took a breath, then said, ‘This morning we were going to drive her to Chelmsford, only Steven was going to come with us in his friend’s car, and now that’s fallen through. And it’s got to be today because Morris simply mustn’t find out.’ 

‘It’s just as well I phoned,’ Agnes said. ‘I know someone at the police station. And we could go in my car.’

‘I think you have been truly moved by the Lord. Can you meet us at the clock tower by the Victoria Shopping Centre? Do you know it, it’s an ugly modem thing, all the numbers are crooked. Just next to Debenhams. We’ll be there at twelve.’

Agnes said goodbye and hung up. Moved by the Lord, she wondered — but then, who was she to question His ways? She dialled the police station and got put through to Charlie.

‘It’s Sister Agnes,’ she said. Thank God you’re there. Listen, you know the Stanton murder? The mother has decided to see the body after all.’

‘Blimey. It’s not always such a good idea.’

‘I think in her case it’s better than not seeing it at all.’

‘No, well, maybe.’

‘I was just checking that if we turned up this lunchtime, there wouldn’t be a problem?’

‘I’ll put you through to the Coroner’s Officer, he can help you. By the way, I’ve sorted out a copy of the post-mortem report on the Hadley boy. Fluorescein. Like you said.’

‘What now?’

‘What now, is that you’ve got some work to do if you don’t want your tree-dwelling mates being hauled off their perches.’

‘I’ll see what I can do, Charlie.’

*

Agnes had only a couple of minutes to admire the clock tower, which she found witty and appealing with its spindly numerals against a faded copper-green background, before Elizabeth and Shirley appeared, Elizabeth pink-faced from hurrying, Shirley pale with tired, sad eyes. They allowed Agnes to lead them to her car, and got into the back where they sat in silence. Once Agnes thought she heard Shirley mutter, ‘Am I really going to see her?’

Agnes told the officer at the security gate that they were expected, and soon they were in the clean, bright mortuary building. An officer appeared and greeted Shirley, and Agnes concluded from her response that she already knew him; perhaps this was the PC Baxter they’d mentioned before. He spoke to her in a low voice, then was joined by another man in civilian dress. Shirley was looking towards Elizabeth, and then nodding.

‘Agnes.’

She looked up to see Charlie. He gestured towards the two women. ‘They OK?’

‘No, not really. The one with the brown hair is the mother. Her husband wouldn’t let her see the body at first. This is a secret visit.’

‘We had him in, didn’t we?’

‘Yes, I think so.’

The two women were standing up now. Agnes went over to them. She hesitated, then said to Elizabeth, ‘Look after her.’ The door was opened for them by one of the police officers. Agnes watched them go, leaving the mother to her awful, private grief.

Charlie reappeared with two cups of coffee and a sheaf of papers. ‘Here you are,’ he said. ‘Seems to me you know more ’n you’re letting on.’ 

Agnes saw the name Colin Hadley. ‘What makes you say that?’

‘There it is, look. Yellow dye under his fingernails, traces of it on his jacket. Fluorescein.’

Agnes felt a rush of excitement.

‘And there’s our Sheila trying to tell me —’

‘Charlie, please believe me. Col was involved in something separate from the anti-road protest.’

Charlie looked at Agnes. ‘If you know so much,’ he began, but was interrupted by a weird sound coming from the mortuary, a high keening. The door opened and Shirley and Elizabeth came out. Shirley was sobbing hysterically, almost screaming, and Elizabeth was pulling helplessly at her sleeve. Agnes jumped up and went to her, holding her by the shoulders, feeling the shaking sobs wrenching at the woman so that it took all Agnes’s strength to support her. Agnes led her gently to the door and out into the air, Elizabeth following.

Charlie murmured to Agnes, ‘There’s a patch of green out the back, nothing special.’

Agnes led Shirley to a bench in the little garden and sat her down, still holding her firmly. Shirley had her hands clasped across her mouth, her fingers gouging her cheeks, still engulfed by sobbing.

Elizabeth said, barely audibly, ‘She is at rest now.’

Shirley turned staring eyes to her. Her voice was almost a shout. ‘Satan has triumphed.’

‘No, no,’ Elizabeth murmured, ‘you mustn’t think that.’

‘Satan has taken her at last.’ The sobbing had given way to fury.

Agnes said gently, ‘When they find who did it —’ 

They haven’t far to look,’ Shirley cried.

‘What do you mean?’ Agnes began.

A police car started up its siren and Shirley twitched at the noise as it streaked across the compound and then out of the gates. Shirley stared after it and murmured, ‘He killed her, my Becky, Becky, Becky … I knew he’d do it in the end. The Devil himself, his own daughter …’ The hand clamped itself across her mouth again.

Elizabeth looked at Agnes, then at Shirley, then at Agnes again. Her eyes blinked in her pink, bewildered face.

‘Perhaps we’d better take her home,’ she said.

Agnes drove them back, following Elizabeth’s occasional directions. Shirley was murmuring to herself, but Agnes couldn’t catch anything coherent. Her mind was racing. What did Shirley say? The Devil himself. Does she mean her own husband?

‘First left after the lights,’ Elizabeth said.

On the other hand, perhaps she really does mean that Satan killed her, Agnes thought. Becky who loved women — the Devil’s own daughter. In which case, we’re no further on.

‘He had it,’ Shirley was murmuring, ‘her crucifix, he had it in his hands …’

‘Turn right here,’ Elizabeth said, and Agnes recognised the Stantons’ street. She parked outside Shirley’s house and followed the two women in. Elizabeth put on a kettle. Shirley hesitated in her own hallway, staring around her. Then she tentatively began to go upstairs, darting glances from side to side as if frightened of being seen. Agnes followed her at a distance. 

Shirley went along the landing and into the last bedroom. She left the door open, and Agnes, approaching, saw it was Becky’s room. Shirley was kneeling in front of the mantelpiece, on which stood several photos of Becky, two candles and a tiny bowl of flowers. The rest of the room was plain and ordinary, a pile of schoolbooks on the desk, a cross hanging on the wall above the yellow candle wick bedspread.

‘My baby,’ Shirley was murmuring. ‘My own baby … I won’t let him do it, I promise, I won’t, he can kill me first …’ Her words dissolved into choking sobs. One of the photos was of a chubby baby in a flowered bonnet. A crucifix was draped over the comer of the frame.

‘My baby,’ Shirley sobbed. ‘They’ve closed your eyes …’

Becky’s crucifix — but hadn’t the police said — wasn’t Becky strangled with a — weren’t the police looking for — a chain. ‘Like jewellery,’ they’d said. ‘That sort of chain …’ Agnes took a deep breath. She remembered the gouged red marks on Becky’s neck. She stared at the silver cross in front of Shirley. The chain would have broken with the force of it, the police had said. Behind the photo frame the silver chain hung in two short lengths.

Becky would have had more than one crucifix. Of course she would. It’s just coincidence — coincidence that this one, too, was broken.

Shirley stirred. Agnes said softly, ‘Shirley, it’s all right, it’s only me.’ She went to her and helped her up, and Shirley leaned against her, a dead weight of anguish and exhaustion, as Agnes helped her down the stairs.

Elizabeth had poured three cups of tea. Agnes helped Shirley to a chair, then crept back up to Becky’s room. She went to the crucifix, touched it, half expecting to see blood encrusted in the tiny links. It was clean. Near the break, several links of the chain were stretched and bent.

Agnes’s hand went to her neck and touched the crucifix that hung there. She unfastened it and held it in her hand. It was very similar, a simple cross, a thin silver chain. A present from Julius years ago when she’d joined her first order here in England. It had replaced another, the one she’d worn as a child. She remembered a birthday party in Provence, a gaggle of tall aunts clucking, a frilled dress. And her father placing around the neck of his daughter a silver crucifix, and everyone nodding and smiling and clapping, and the child Agnes curtsying, pulling at the lace of her new white dress until her fingers ached.

Agnes reached out and carefully took the broken silver crucifix from the photo frame, then replaced it with her own. She studied it a moment, then took it again and wrenched it hard in an attempt to break it in two. She was surprised at how it refused to break, however hard she pulled at it. She heard Elizabeth calling her from the hallway, starting up the stairs. She quickly draped her own chain over the photo, arranging the cross hanging down just as Becky’s had, put Becky’s in her pocket and went downstairs.

Elizabeth was hovering nervously on the staircase. ‘Agnes, the thing is,’ she said, descending with her, ‘he’ll be back soon. You must go. If he finds you here —’

‘Yes, of course,’ Agnes said.

Shirley was sitting at the kitchen table, staring into space, a cup of tea untouched beside her. At the front door Elizabeth said, ‘Do you think we did the right thing?’ 

Agnes sighed. ‘I hope so. Yes, I think we did.’

Elizabeth hesitated, then lowered her voice. ‘He beats her. He used to beat Becky. He beats poor David. We pray for him.’ Agnes nodded. Elizabeth said, whispering, ‘We heard what she said. You and me. We heard.’ Agnes waited. ‘What will you do?’ Elizabeth asked, her eyes pleading.

Agnes felt a sudden terrible pity for her. ‘What about you?’

Elizabeth stared down at the front steps, her hands wringing her apron. ‘There is nothing I can do,’ she said at last. ‘Roger says we owe it to Ross …’ Her face trembled with conflicting thoughts, of her husband, of Ross; of young David still living in this house.

‘For the moment,’ Agnes said, ‘I’ll do nothing.’

‘The police —’

‘The police have already questioned Morris. It’s up to them,’ Agnes said and saw relief pass across Elizabeth’s face. ‘As for the rest —’

‘We must pray,’ Elizabeth said. ‘That’s all we can do.’

Agnes nodded and held out her hand. Elizabeth was fighting tears. She blinked, took Agnes’s hand and held it tightly in her fingers for a moment. As Agnes descended the steps she heard the front door shut softly behind her, enclosing the house once more in misery.

*

‘I’m afraid you won’t get into the fiche room for half an hour,’ the helpful young woman at the library desk said.

‘I’ll come back,’ Agnes said.

At a quarter to four, one smoked salmon sandwich later, Agnes settled down to the census of 1881, the fullest record of the county that she could find. James Quislan had been just a boy when his mother had blocked in the well. Perhaps he’d moved away — although, Agnes reflected, she’d been buried locally, if the rumour about Harton’s field was based on truth. So maybe he hadn’t gone far.

Agnes trawled through the parishes, Ongar, Epping, Greensted, Brentwood, Harlow … in 1881 James would have been in his forties. He might have gone to London. He might have emigrated, joined the army, settled in India … The parishes of Harlow, Loughton, Saffron Walden —
Quislan
. The name seemed to jump off the screen at her. ‘James Quislan.’ Then in brackets it said ‘Hillier’. Then it said ‘And wife, Anne. One adult daughter, unmarried, Jessica.’ So James Quislan did become someone else.

Agnes ran to ask for the previous years’ census, and waited by her screen for them to be brought to her. 1871 arrived, and she turned to Saffron Walden, scanning the screen for Quislan. There it was again, the same address. A settled person, this James Quislan-Hillier. Wife Anne, two daughters, Jessica and Charlotte. Agnes stared at the screen. So, Charlotte Quislan, she thought, looking at the name staring back at her, it is you. You have the answer.

She left the library and walked to her car, picking up a local evening newspaper on the way. Why did James Quislan change his name at the age of nine? Perhaps Emily remarried, she thought. That would be the obvious answer. But then, why would she block in the well? And why was her land removed from her?