The Family Way (Molly Murphy, #12)

I emptied the bucket down the WC, cleaned the mop, and left them to be taken down in the morning. I’d had my fill of dark, empty hallways and I needed the safety of my sleeping companions. But I could not sleep. I lay still, hands on my belly, hearing an occasional scream in the distance. At least she was still alive, I thought. The night went on, interminably. I heard the convent bell tolling out midnight and then four o’clock. Soon it would be light. Soon I would be able to check out the chapel for a place to hide.

I must have drifted into exhausted sleep because I woke to find sunlight streaming in and birds chirping on the roof. I scrambled to my feet. It must be still early as my companions were still asleep. I could hear no more screams coming from the maternity wing and wondered if Aggie had had her baby and whether they both survived the ordeal. I got out of bed, making no sound, and crept down to the chapel. The door opened and I stepped inside, feeling the cold stone of the floor on my bare feet. I went around to the nuns’ sanctuary and started to look for a hiding place. There were a couple of statues but both were in niches with no place big enough to hide a person. It seemed impossible. I’d just have to come forward to intercept the priest when he finished mass.

Then I came up with a brilliant idea. I’d ask him to hear my confession. No priest could ever refuse that, and no sister could condemn it or even try to stop it. I felt a huge wave of relief flood over me. I could go back to breakfast, act as if nothing was amiss, and bide my time until mass.

As I was about to leave the chapel I noticed something I hadn’t seen in the darkness. A black hole in the floor in the furthest corner. I went over to it and saw a flight of steep narrow steps going down into darkness. Then I remembered what Elaine had said: the nuns were not buried because the ground was all rock. They were laid to rest in big stone coffins in the chapel crypt. I started down the stairs, holding onto the wall on one side to steady myself. And it came to me that Katy hadn’t fallen down the cellar steps at all. These were the steps down which she had tumbled to her death, because she had come to suspect what really happened to Maureen and had gone to find out for herself.

A glimmer of light shone in through a small high window like the one in the cellar. It was not enough light to show clearly what lay below. Instead it hinted at large rectangular shapes lying on the floor, looking almost like giant sleeping animals. I stood, halfway down the stair, as I realized these were the stone coffins in which the nuns were buried, one still standing in the center of the floor with wilted flowers on it. And I knew what Katy had come to check for herself. She had suspected that Maureen had been hidden down here and I thought I knew where. Sister Francine had died at about the time Maureen had vanished. It was all too possible that Maureen was lying in Sister Francine’s coffin, placed in there, covered in a sheet, before the stone lid was put on.

A draft of cold air swirled around me. I didn’t wait a second longer. I needed to get back to the safety of the dormitory. As I came back up the stairs I found the light ahead of me blocked by a great black shape. A nun stood at the top of the steps, staring down at me impassively.





Twenty-nine

“And what were you doing where you’d no business to be?” Sister Jerome asked me.

“I came into chapel to pray.” I tried to keep my voice natural and calm. “I thought I heard a noise. An animal whimpering. So I came to investigate.”

“And did you find an animal whimpering?” she asked.

“I was too scared to go any further,” I said.

“Very wise of you. You never know what you’ll find in old buildings like this,” she said, “and the stairs in poor repair too. You wouldn’t want to slip, in your condition.”

“Certainly not,” I said. I started up the steps toward her. She hadn’t found me out. She was going to let me go. Or she wanted my baby so badly that she was prepared to keep me alive for now.

I reached the top step. She still loomed over me—tall, black, threatening.

“Now would you mind telling me exactly what you are doing here?” she asked. Her voice still sounded calm and pleasant enough. But she was still blocking my path.

“What do you mean? You know why I’m here.”

“It really is true about the Irish and their blarney, isn’t it,” she said. “I never forget a voice. I didn’t get a good look at you through the grille when you came asking about Maureen, but I remembered your voice. You’ve been putting on the Irish accent good and strong with me, but when you were chatting with the other girls you let it slip and there was something about the way you expressed yourself that brought back where I’d seen you before. And Sister Angelique said you were asking the girls questions about Maureen and about Katy. At first I wondered why, and then I realized it wasn’t the first time you’d been here snooping around. So out with it—who sent you here?”

I hesitated, unsure what to say. If I still professed my innocence, that nobody sent me, then she would know that nobody knew where I was. But if I told her that I’d been sent by the police, that they were told to come to my aid this morning if I didn’t appear, would that guarantee my safety?