Free Vow of Penance by Veronica Black

ridiculous!’ she said sharply.
    ‘As you say.’ He finished his tea and rose, bringing out a handful of change.
    ‘I was the one ordered the tea,’ she began.
    ‘And I helped you to drink it. I’ll put it on the expense account. How are they up at the convent?’
    ‘Very well, thank you. We have a new lay sister. Sister Jerome.’
    ‘And what job are you doing at the moment?’
    ‘General dogsbody,’ she said lightly. ‘I help out where I’m needed.’
    ‘I’m almost sorry that I won’t be needing your help in this affair,’ he said.
    ‘You make it sound as if I was permanently attached to the local police force.’
    ‘Not at all,’ he said easily. ‘You’re a religious with no criminal expertise at all, but when there’s something to be discovered you do seem to be in the right place at the right time.’
    ‘Mother Dorothy would call it the wrong place at the wrong time.’
    ‘And what would you call it?’ he challenged.
    ‘An interruption to my spiritual progress,’ she said firmly.
    And excitement to lift her spirits when the day-to-day routine became too tedious to endure. The incisive conversation of a man instead of the bland chatter of the daily recreation. The opportunity to re-enter, however obliquely, the world she had renounced.
    ‘It was nice seeing you again,’ she said, denying the thoughts bubbling up in her. ‘I’m very sorry to learn about Mrs Fairly. I will tell Mother Dorothy though I expect Father Stephens will have already telephoned her. Do you know if she had any family?’
    ‘A niece. Father Stephens said he would inform her of her aunt’s death. The body has been taken to the mortuary by the way.’
    ‘For an autopsy? Then you do think—?’
    ‘As a matter of routine. Attempts were made to revive her in the ambulance but she’d been dead for several hours. It was straightforward suicide, Sister. Theinquest will be a routine matter. “Suicide while the balance of the mind was disturbed” probably.’
    ‘Very neat and tidy,’ Sister Joan said. ‘Thank you for the tea, Sergeant.’ She went out ahead of him, turning briefly to smile before she walked swiftly back to her car.
    Detective Sergeant Mill was an irritant in her existence. She liked him, respected his professionalism, had helped him out more than once, but the rigid line she drew between them, though of her own making, only served to remind her that she was not free to respond to any overture of affection no matter how innocent. He had mentioned once that he had two boys and that his marriage was unhappy but she hadn’t invited any further confidences and he had offered none. She hoped he had sorted out his marital difficulties but knew she would never enquire.
    Driving back across the moor, automatically changing gears, swerving to avoid a reckless young rabbit, she found her thoughts occupied with Mrs Fairly. Twenty-four hours before the housekeeper had been a living, breathing, human being and now she was bone and flesh laid on a mortuary slab, the tag of ‘Suicide’ already being applied to her. A middle-aged, respectable, Catholic woman whose small faults had been as nothing set against the wickedness of the world had suddenly and unaccountably become agitated and depressed and killed herself with a huge overdose of Valium crushed into a paste and mixed with tea and whisky. Such things did sometimes happen. But not this time. Not this time! Her every instinct told her that this suicide was too neat, too – convenient for somebody? What was it that Mrs Fairly had said exactly over that crackling telephone line? Something about the new lay–? New lay sister? Sister Jerome? She banged her fist on the rim of the driving wheel as the words that Mrs Fairly had used, not over the telephone, but as she was seeing her out of the presbytery returned to her. Mrs Fairly said she’d readabout Sister Jerome somewhere, but couldn’t recall exactly where. If she didn’t think too hard about it the answer