The Family Way (Molly Murphy, #12)

“Nobody sent me,” I said in such a manner that it could have implied the opposite.

“And what are you trying to find down in our crypt? There are nothing but bodies down there, you know. Bones and bodies.”

“I know what you’ve hidden down there,” I said, staring at her defiantly even though I was still two steps below her.

“How can you know?” she asked scathingly. “You’re not strong enough to shift that coffin lid by yourself.”

“What coffin lid would that be?” I asked.

She glared that I’d caught her out. “Think you’re so clever, do you?”

Emboldened now I went on, “You must have had an accomplice yourself, Sister. If I’m not strong enough to move the lid, then neither are you.”

I saw a scornful smirk twitch at her lips. “It was no problem at all, my dear. The coffin was open from Sister Francine’s viewing. I came down to make everything ready to close the coffin and found that stupid girl, trying to hide down here. She shoved me aside and tried to run up the steps. I caught her pinafore and jerked her back. She fell and hit her head. I finished her off and laid her in the coffin. Francine was only a small person. Plenty of room for two.”

I shuddered at the matter-of-fact way she was telling me this, almost as if it was a good joke she was sharing.

“But someone must have seen when they came to close the lid.”

Again the smirk. “I covered the body and my sisters and I shut the lid together. They rely on me for everything.”

As she talked I had come slowly up the rest of the stairs until I was at her level.

“You made a big mistake in coming here,” she said. “In putting your nose where it’s not wanted. I’m not letting anyone stand in my way.” Without warning she lunged at me, trying to give me an almighty push. I had been expecting something of the kind. As she came at me I threw myself to one side, bracing myself against the rough stone of the wall. She grabbed at my nightgown. For a second I felt myself pulled downward with her. With all my strength I leaned back and sat down heavily on the stone step. Her fingers slipped from the fabric and she plunged down the steps hitting the stone floor with a sickening thud that echoed around the vaulted ceiling of that crypt.

*

For a long moment I stood at the top of the stairs, not moving, not daring to breathe. I could just make out the black shape of her body, sprawled on the floor below. My first instinct was for self-preservation. I told myself I should go back to my bed, as quickly as possible and pretend to be asleep. Then when her body was discovered, I could profess surprise and shock like everyone else. But somehow I couldn’t just leave her there.

I could go down to her and get her keys, a voice now whispered in my head. I could let myself out of the building and nobody would be the wiser, except that I would now be incriminating myself if the police were called in and the other girls described the red-haired Irishwoman who vanished in the night. Also I had left my dress, with my calling cards hidden inside the pocket, in the cubby beside my bed. I peered down at the body again. She hadn’t moved, but there was a chance she could still be alive.

My Catholic heritage came surging to the fore. I knew then that I couldn’t leave her to die without the last rites. Not that I thought she’d be all that ready to confess her sins, but I had to give her a chance to do so. The priest would be here soon. I turned and ran back the way I had come, out of the chapel, along the hallway, and up the stairs. “Come quickly,” I shouted. “Sister Jerome has fallen down the chapel steps.”

Several of the girls were on their feet in an instant, running ahead of me to the chapel. Gerda, always the leader, went down the steps first.

“She must have tried to go down the steps while it was still dark,” she said. I noticed that nobody had asked me what I was doing in the chapel alone at this hour or what I was doing down in the crypt myself. She reached Sister’s body first and knelt down beside it while I loitered at the top of the steps, unwilling to come any closer.

“Is she dead?” I asked. My tongue didn’t want to obey me.

Gerda put her face close to Sister’s. Then she scrambled to her feet again.

“We’ve got to get help. She’s still breathing,” she said. She made her way back up the steps to the rest of us then led us to the nuns’ entrance.

“It’s locked, of course,” she complained. “Somebody get Sister’s keys.”

“Not me,” the skinny Ethel said. “I’m not going down there for all the tea in China.”

“Oh, very well.” Gerda marched over and went down the steps again, coming up with Sister’s bunch of keys in her hand. She tried one key after another in frustration until a voice behind us demanded.

“You girls—where do you think you are going? And in your night attire too.”