I decided to greet Margaret. But on reaching her, I was sucked into Polly Justin's orbit.
'I can't understand it,' she was saying with great indignation. 'Where is Tessa? I mean where is she? Why isn't she here? Why didn't she come for my speech?' It was tempting to suggest that Tessa Justin might have heard her mother speak before, and decided to keep clear. I resisted the temptation. But as the other parents melted thankfully away, a great deal of agitation was revealed among the remaining nuns. Mother Ancilla, like Lars Porsena, was sending her messengers forth, east and west and south and north, to summon Tessa Justin.
Mandy Justin was hopping to and fro at her mother's skirt sucking one finger.
Jasper Justin continued to yawn, while eyeing Dodo Sheehy. Master Justin, evidently a precocious youth, eyed a Fourth Former.
'I told you the girl wasn't here,' said Sir Charles Justin, fixing me with a belligerent and slightly bulbous eye. 'The trouble with Polly is that she's like a bitch in a thunderstorm when trying to make a speech. No sense at all.' It was the solitary remark I heard him make.
For all Mother Ancilla's enquiries, for all Lady Polly's fluttery demands, by the time the last parent had vanished, the last girl had returned to the children's wing, the Justins' silver Daimler still sat empty at the front door. By itself it seemed to constitute a great gleaming reproach to the institution which had so carelessly mislaid a member of its precious cargo.
Tessa Justin, the fact had to be faced, had utterly disappeared.
An hour later it transpired that she had not after all disappeared without trace. It was Mandy, weeping, who finally disgorged a typed note from her pocket.
'From Tessa,' she said, between sobs.
'Dear Mama and Papa,' it read, 'If you really want to know where I am, I have gone to stay with Aunt Claudia. Because I am unhappy here and she won't make me come back. I have got plenty of money. So don't worry. Your loving Tessa.' It was all typed, including the signature. Lady Polly continued her hysterics.
'Oh isn't that just typical of Tessa? Claudia Justin isn't even on the telephone. She's Charles's mad sister. Yes, Charles, don't contradict me. She is mad. Living in the Lake District and thinking dogs and cats can speak. You know the sort of thing.' But Sir Charles showed no signs of interrupting. He just looked more furious than ever.
'Why did she do this to me?' ranted on Lady Polly. 'We'll have to drive up there. No, we can't. It's much too far. And we've got the Spanish Ambassador coming to stay. Oh it's too bad of Tessa - Charles, what shall we do?'
Sir Charles Justin said nothing. He strode forward and got to the wheel of his Daimler. It seemed as good an answer as any.
It was Jasper Justin who was left saying placatingly: 'Come along, Mama, we'll send a telegram. Mother Ancilla will iron it all out. I'm sure Tessa's perfectly all right. She always is.'
As I watched the departing Daimler, into which the remaining Justins had piled like the family of Louis XIV going to Varenne, I wished I shared Jasper's confidence. I myself was much less sure that Tessa Justin was perfectly all right. For one thing, I had recognised the typing of the note. And its style. I was positive that the same unknown source had provided all four typed notes; they had certainly been done on the same machine; three to me, one now to the Justins. Unless a ten-year-old had deposited two of the notes on my desk and secreted the third one in my overcoat pocket (which did not seem conceivable), then Tessa's note was a fake.
In which case, where was Tessa Justin? Kidnapping, I reflected with a sinking feeling, was one of the few experiences which really did justify that overworked phrase, a fate worse than death. Unless it turned out to end in death itself.
With a heavy heart, I took myself back to that room, the guest room, which I was now beginning to consider as my own personal cell. I tried, as calmly as I could, to consider the possibilities.
I was interrupted by a knock on my door.
There were few people I wanted to see at that particular moment. Certainly not Mother Ancilla, nor Margaret and Dodo for that matter. I desperately needed peace for thought before I talked to any of them.
I went to the door.
It was Sister Boniface. Her expression was almost as troubled as my own. And she was wheezing hard as she came in: she must have just climbed the visitors' stairs.
'Jemima, I'm worried,' she began without preamble, sinking down in a chair, a sign of exhaustion. Nuns rarely just sit down like that. 'I've been praying about it in the chapel. Taking my troubles to Our Lady, who lost the Infant Jesus when He went to the temple. And she's told me to come and talk to you.' More hard breathing.
'That child. Disappearing like that. Leaving a note. I don't like it one bit. She can't type for one thing. They don't learn typing till the Sixth Form. That note was beautifully typed. Sister John couldn't have done better herself, Beatrice O'Dowd I mean, when she was here she taught them typing. She was a trained secretary.'
The old nun drew breath.
'Besides, it's not like Tessa Justin. She's a show-off, you know. If Tessa was unhappy, we'd all know about it. She'd paint it on the chapel roof if she could. Not disappear. No fun, that, not seeing all the fuss for herself.
'Sister Lucy won't listen to me. Talks about a situation of sibling rivalry, I think that's what she calls it, all to do with Mandy presenting the bouquet. Hence Tessa's choice of her father's sister as a refuge. I told her that was all rubbish. But she won't listen. So I prayed to Our Blessed Lady, and she told me to come to you.'
'What about Mother Ancilla?' I had to ask that.
'I see you haven't heard yet. Poor Mother Ancilla. The strain of it all, the bazaar, the child vanishing. She's had one of her attacks. A bad one. She's lying in her cell now. They don't even want to move her to the infirmary.'
So potent was the aura of Mother Ancilla that for a moment, at the prospect of its removal, I felt quite helpless.
'I'm acting Reverend Mother. As the oldest member of the community.' Sister Boniface at least did not feel completely helpless. That at least encouraged me.
'And then - she wanted to tell you something, didn't she? Urgently. A private interview, she said. And I stopped you, Jemima, I'm sorry about that. And now I'm a frightened old woman.'
Not so strong after all. Another frightened old woman. As Mother Ancilla had been in our first discussion. No, merely that Mother Ancilla had collapsed and the burden had fallen on Sister Boniface's even more ancient shoulders.
I took a deep breath. It was time to take someone into my confidence. It looked as if my confidante, directed by the Virgin Mary or otherwise, was destined to be Sister Boniface.
As briefly and unemotionally as possible, I told her of Mother Ancilla's request to me, to uncover whatever might be evil or discordant at the heart of the convent. I did not burden her with the murkier ramifications of the whole affair. And I did not go further into the mystery of the Black Nun and my own terrifying encounter in the tower, beyond saying that there were forces of evil at work in the convent, and forces of good, in which some use was being made of the legend of the Black Nun, and I was not quite sure as yet which was which. God willing (oh fortunate phrase, that came to my tongue) I intended to find out.
But there was one vital question I had to ask her.
'Sister Bonnie,' I said, 'you know this place. You've been here, how long? Since you were a small child at the school - seventy years! Then you know everything there is to know about it. Is there any way known to you in which the tower, the old tower, Blessed Eleanor's retreat, could be linked to the chapel?'
An extraordinary look crossed the old nun's face. It was neither fear nor astonishment. It was a kind of illumination. For one instant she even looked young again. I had seen a glimpse of the young nun she had once been, not the gnarled old creature who confronted me.
'So many years ago,' she murmured. 'So many years have passed. That you should ask me that now.'
'Please, a life may depend on it.'
Sister Boniface gave me a more straightforward look, a return to her old self.
'When I was a novice,' she began gruffly, 'we knew that a secret passage joined the tower to the mediaeval chapel. That the chapel, our modern chapel, had been built over its foundations, so that the passage came up somewhere lower, into the level of the old chapel, into our crypt as a matter of fact. The idea was that the Blessed Eleanor making one of her retreats, used to come by night from her tower to pray privately in the chapel. But no-one ever talks about that now.'
'Why not? You must tell me.'
Another straightforward look.
'Because many years ago, when I was young, still a novice in short, a historian came here and talked a lot of nonsense about the Blessed Eleanor. He had been researching in some mediaeval sources he said. And he had come to the conclusion, or so he told Reverend Mother, right to her face, can you imagine it, well, you didn't know Reverend Mother Felix, but anyway he told her right to her face that the secret passage hadn't been for that at all. That it had been for Dame Ghislaine de Tourel to visit Blessed Eleanor at night, and for no good reason .. . And then, he asked if he could see the entrance to the secret passage!'
After all these years, indignation still burned.
'He wasn't a Catholic of course,' she added. 'Hardly. He was a
heathen,
in my mind. And I'll tell you what Reverend Mother Felix did. Straightaway she summoned us all and she told us that henceforth the secret passage did not exist. That we were never ever any of us to speak about it again, according to our holy vow of obedience. That we must protect the reputation of our Foundress from the attacks of the ungodly. And he went away defeated. And we never did speak about it again. And the others who knew about it then are all dead, years ago. Why, I believe I'm the only person alive who knows how to find the entrance.'
'Sister Boniface,' I said slowly. 'I'm afraid you're wrong. There is someone else still alive who knows how to find that entrance to the secret passage. Will you show me too? To the greater glory of God.' I don't know what made me add that last phrase. Convention. The convention of the situation in which I found myself.
13
Come to dust
It was nine o'clock. Looking out of the window I saw nothing but darkness. No moon tonight. It might have been the small hours. I was waiting for my rendezvous with Sister Boniface. She was adamant that she had to complete the ordained ritual of night prayers before joining me. I did not look forward to what we - I - had to do. I felt not so much fear, or the false exhilaration of my previous expedition. More a great sadness.
Whatever I discovered, whomsoever I might rescue, the status quo of the convent could not be saved entirely. But perhaps that was destined for disruption in any case. Mother Ancilla was still lying in her cell, too ill to be moved to the infirmary. She had suffered another heart attack, I learnt from Sister Lucy. The convent doctor had been and gone. That too cast a pall of sadness over us all.
I wrote a note to Tom.
I had decided to do that in case anything happened to me. It would be brief, and for once impersonal. The sort of note that he would not destroy. He could even show it to Carrie.
'Dear Tom,
Just in case. Check up on Alexander Skarbek in London. And ask Sister Boniface where to find the secret passage in the convent. That's all.
J.'
I addressed the envelope: Tom Amyas MP, House of Commons. I left it lying on my desk, right on top of the Treasury of the Blessed Eleanor, where it could not be overlooked.
A soft knock at the door interrupted my preparations. This time I would take two torches - Sister Boniface would provide me with a second - and in honour of Sister, otherwise Saint, Perpetua, two candles. A piece of rope (purloined from a child's trunk in the store room) and a good sharp knife (purloined from the cafeteria where it had vanished from under Sister Clare's eyes. Or so she put it. She was still making ineffectual noises of loss when I discreetly left the refectory).
Another soft knock. Clearly not Sister Boniface. It was Sister Agnes.
'Miss Shore, please excuse me.' How polite she always was, deferential. Yet she always gave the impression of trying to put me at my ease, rather than the other way round. 'I know it's late. But I can't get little Mandy Justin to go to sleep. It's hardly surprising with all the upset of her sister running away. But she keeps saying that she has something to tell you, the television person, as she calls you. And she won't tell it to anyone else. I don't like to fetch Sister Lucy. So I wondered if you would perhaps consider coming along to St Aloysius' dormitory—'
I agreed with alacrity. Experience had taught me that it did not do to keep the Justin family waiting when they had news to impart.
Mandy Justin was presented for my inspection in Sister Agnes's own sleeping-quarters: a kind of extra cubicle on the outside of the big dormitory. That gave her freedom of movement to supervise the older children, who slept in double rooms, without disturbing the juniors in the dormitory.
This time Mandy's tears and suffering had, I fancied, been genuine. The first thing she said was:
'I'm not going to tell it to her,' and she pointed to Sister Agnes. 'I'm just going to tell it to
you.
Because you bought my silver toothbrush holder. And I've seen you on telly. Besides, I'm frightened of nuns.'
She started to sob. I touched her rather gingerly. Over her head my eyes met those of Sister Agnes.
'Sister?' It was only tentative.
'I'll go, Miss Shore,' she replied. Her expression was impossible to read. 'There, Mandy, don't cry,' she added kindly. 'You tell your story to Miss Shore, and then you can go to sleep.' She sounded even gentler than usual.