‘It’s Sister Agnes from the convent. Please can you come as quickly as possible? We can’t get into Sister Mary’s room and she isn’t answering anyone. We’ve knocked ever so hard and shouted very loudly. I’m afraid she’s taken ill.’
‘I’m on my way, Agnes.’
She put the heavy receiver down. It really was most unlike Mary to lock her door. As she went back upstairs, Lilith was now seated on the top step picking at her long, deep red painted fingernails.
‘Is there anything you want me to do?’
Leave! screamed a voice inside Agnes’s mind, although she would never say that. She was far too polite and that wouldn’t be a very charitable thing to do. She knew that Father Patrick would be disappointed in her lack of empathy for a fellow human being.
‘No, thank you, I don’t believe there is. Can I ask how long will you be staying here, Lilith? Do you have family or friends you can stop with?’
The words came out before she could stop herself. A loud knock on the front door broke the interaction between the two women. Agnes went downstairs to let a rather red-faced Constable Crosby inside.
‘By heck it’s cold out there, Agnes. I didn’t think the patrol car was going to start. Have you woken Mary up yet?’
‘No we haven’t. There’s no answer. I can’t even hear her snoring and trust me, Crosby, she has on occasion snored so loud that it’s kept me awake all night.’
Crosby chuckled at the thought of a nun snoring. ‘Right then, you better show me which one is her bedroom. I have to say I never thought I’d get to see the day I saw the inside of a nun’s bedroom.’
He winked at Agnes who shook her head. He was a loud, brash and sometimes funny man who was also very good at his job. He was a big help whenever they had cause to ask him for any. She led him upstairs. Lilith was now standing across the hall from Mary’s bedroom with Edith. Her slender arms were crossed and she smiled at Crosby, who looked at her and smiled right back.
‘A new recruit into God’s army, Agnes?’
Lilith began to giggle. ‘I’m afraid not, Constable. I don’t think he would let me join. I’m not a very good girl.’
She winked at him and Agnes noted the faint redness creeping up his neck. She pointed to Mary’s room and he strode across and hammered on the door with his fist. It was so loud it echoed around the hall; in fact it was so loud Agnes was sure it would wake a deaf person.
Constable Crosby stopped to listen at the door. Silence greeted him. Agnes felt the tiny hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. They didn’t need a policeman to tell them something was wrong. He lifted his foot and kicked the door. It moved a little, not much. So he stepped back then barged the door using his shoulder and putting his substantial weight behind it. The door splintered and cracked. He looked over his shoulder at Agnes. They both knew the noise he was making was loud enough to wake the dead, so why hadn’t Mary opened the door?
As he launched himself at the door once more, it gave with a loud splintering sound and he stumbled forwards. He seemed to be trying to take in the sight before him, but his eyes would not or could not register what he was seeing. Agnes motioned with her hand for Edith and Lilith to wait there. She stepped in behind Crosby and, just as he had, she looked around trying to understand what it was she was seeing. The normally white walls were covered in splatters of red. The smell hit them both at the same time, making them gag. Agnes lifted her hand and made the sign of the cross. Crosby uttered one word: ‘Fuck.’
It had taken hours before the police had taken Mary’s body away. Father Patrick had taken them all into the front room where they’d prayed for Mary’s soul. There was no way she had killed herself and it couldn’t be murder either, could it? Constable Crosby had needed to break the door down himself. The windows were shut and locked from the inside.
Agnes’s first thought had been that somehow Lilith’s husband had gained entry into the house, looking for his wife, and killed Mary by mistake. Then she realised it had been her who had unlocked the front door to let the constable inside and all the locks and bolts had still been fastened. It didn’t make any sense and throughout everything Lilith had kept very quiet. She hadn’t suggested it was her husband and she had taken to her room, locking herself inside.
Agnes had spent over an hour with Crosby and Father Patrick, talking them over what had happened since Lilith had knocked on the convent door. Father Patrick had done his best to reassure both women that it wasn’t their fault. Yes it was very strange, but they would find out what had happened. Edith, who hadn’t stopped crying for hours, had started to panic when Father Patrick had told them he was going back to the vicarage and he’d had to promise her he would go home, get a change of clothes and then come back and spend the night.
By this time Lilith had come out of her room and was loitering in the doorway of the front room. She kept smiling at the priest and Agnes didn’t like it one little bit. Agnes had asked Patrick if they could tell the woman to leave when they had been alone in the kitchen, but he’d shaken his head.
‘Agnes, I admit it’s all a very strange and sad coincidence, but that’s all it is. We can’t really tell her to leave when she has nowhere to stay that’s safe. The church has always been a safe place, a haven. How many times have we offered sanctuary for those in desperate need? Over the centuries, it’s been too many to count. Lilith needs our compassion and our help. We will let her stay here until she has somewhere safe she can go to.’
‘Very well, Father. There’s something about her that I can’t put my finger on though. She makes me feel uneasy.’
‘Agnes, if I didn’t help the people who made me uneasy I’d never be able to do my job. It will be fine. The poor woman must be terrified, escaping a violent husband then waking up to this. We must be patient with her and show her more kindness than before.’
‘Very well, Father, whatever you wish.’
Agnes wasn’t happy at the thought of Lilith still being a guest inside the house. Father Patrick had offered to bring someone in from the village to clean up the mess in Mary’s room and Agnes had declined. She thought it was the least she could do and she wanted to see what had happened now that Mary had been taken away to the undertaker’s, the various parts of her body all wrapped up in a sheet.
Crosby had told her before he left that they could clean up the mess if they wanted to either tonight or tomorrow. As tempting as it had been to leave it until tomorrow, Agnes wasn’t a fool and knew that the room smelt horrendous already. To leave it another day before trying to clean up the blood and mess would make it unbearable.
Edith was in the kitchen with Lilith and Father Patrick, so Agnes went to the cupboard under the stairs where they kept the disinfectant and mop buckets. She took a big bottle of bleach, a box of rags and the mop bucket. Locking the door behind her, she went upstairs. Mary’s room was the seventh one along the landing. The door wasn’t shut properly because of Crosby’s attempts to kick it in.
Agnes’s mouth felt dry and her hands were trembling at the thought of going inside it on her own, but she needed to do this. She was in charge of running this convent and the responsibility weighed heavy on her shoulders. Mary’s family would be coming tomorrow and might want to stop here. It was the least they could do and she wouldn’t have them going into their daughter’s room if it was still stained with her blood.
Agnes was only a small woman, but she was strong. The corridor seemed to her as if it had increased in size because Mary’s bedroom door looked so far away from where she was standing at the top of the stairs. As she forced her feet to walk forwards, she began to pray under her breath. She prayed for Mary and for the rest of them because she couldn’t shake the feeling that what had happened to Sister Mary was just the beginning of something terrible.
The smell hit her as she got halfway along the landing and her empty stomach lurched. She crossed herself.