Free The Abbess of Crewe by Muriel Spark Page A

the
     good Jesuit fathers Maximilian and Baudouin, has been brought to the Abbey; in company
     with the two Jesuits he has witnessed the voting ceremony, he has proclaimed Alexandra
     Abbess of Crewe before the assembled community. The old Abbot has presented the new
     Abbess with her crozier, has celebrated a solemn Mass, and, helped back into the car,
     has departed deeply asleep in the recesses of the back seat. Throughout the solemn
     election Felicity was in bed with influenza. She received from her friend Bathildis the
     news of Alexandra’s landslide victory; her reaction was immediately to stick the
     thermometer in her mouth; this performance was watched with interest on the
     closed-circuit television by Alexandra, Mildred and Walburga.
    But that is all over now, it is over and past. The leaves are falling and the swallows
     depart. Felicity has long since risen from her sick bed, has packed her suitcases, has
     tenderly swathed her sewing-box in sacking, and with these effects has left the convent.
     She has settled with her Jesuit, Thomas, in London, in a small flat in Earl’s
     Court, and already she has made some extraordinary disclosures.
    ‘If only,’ says Walburga, ‘the police had brought a charge against
     those stupid little seminarians who broke into the convent, then she couldn’t make
     public statements while it was under investigation.’
    ‘The law doesn’t enter into it,’ says the Abbess, now dressed in her
     splendid white. ‘The bothersome people are the press and the bishops. Plainly, the
     police don’t want to interfere in a matter concerning a Catholic establishment; it
     would be an embarrassment.’
    Mildred says, ‘It was like this. The two young Jesuits, who have now been expelled
     from the Order, hearing that there was a nun who —’
    ‘That was Felicity,’ says the Abbess.
    ‘It was Felicity,’ Walburga says.
    ‘Yes. A nun who was practising sexual rites, or let us even say obsequies, in the
     convent grounds and preaching her joyless practices within the convent … Well,
     they hear of this nun, and they break into the convent on the chance that Felicity, and
     maybe one of her friends —’
    ‘Let’s say Bathildis,’ Walburga says, considering well, with her mind
     all ears.
    ‘Yes, of course, Felicity and Bathildis, that they might have a romp with those
     boys.’
    ‘In fact,’ says the Abbess, ‘they do have a romp.’
    ‘And the students take away the thimble —’
    ‘As a keepsake?’ says the Abbess.
    ‘Could it be a sexual symbol?’ ventures Mildred.
    ‘I don’t see that scenario,’ says the Abbess. ‘Why would Felicity
     then make a fuss about the missing thimble the next morning?’
    ‘Well,’ says Walburga, ‘she would want to draw attention to her sordid
     little adventure. They like to boast about these things.’
    ‘And why, if I may think aloud,’ says the Lady Abbess, ‘would she call
     the police the next night when they come again?’
    ‘They could be blackmailing her,’ Walburga says.
    ‘I don’t think that will catch on,’ says the Abbess. ‘I really
     don’t Those boys — what are their dreadful names?’
    ‘Gregory and Ambrose,’ says Mildred.
    ‘I might have known it,’ says the Abbess for no apparent reason. They sit in
     the Abbess’s parlour and she touches the Infant of Prague, so besmeared with rich
     glamour as are its robes.
    ‘According to this week’s story in
The Sunday People
they have now
     named Maximilian, but not yet Baudouin, as having given them the order to move,’
     Walburga says.
    ‘“According to
The Sunday People
” is of no account. What is
     to be the story according to us?’ says the Abbess.
    ‘Try this one for size,’ says Mildred. ‘The boys, Gregory and Ambrose
     —’
    ‘Those names,’ says the Abbess, ‘they’ve put me off this scenario
     already.’
    ‘All right, the two Jesuit novices — they break into the convent the first
     night to find a couple of nuns,