They pass Bernard’s bench. It looks absurdly empty.
Bernard would have wanted to know what the two of them were doing. Elizabeth and the priest, walking slowly up the hill, faces set in stone. Bernard would have looked up from his newspaper, wished them a good day, and kept them in sight for the rest of the walk. But Bernard has gone, like so many before him. Time’s up, that’s it. No return. An empty bench on a silent hill.
They reach the gates, and Matthew pushes them open. He ushers Elizabeth inside, hand still at her back, and she hears the hinges squeak shut behind them.
Matthew does not walk her all the way to the top right-hand corner of the Garden of Eternal Rest, to where the older graves hold their secrets. Instead, he takes his hand from her back, steps off the path, and walks between two rows of newer headstones, cleaner and whiter. The route he always takes. Elizabeth follows him this time, and they stop in front of a headstone. She looks at the inscription.
SISTERMARGARETANNE
MARGARETFARRELL, 1948–1971
Elizabeth takes Matthew’s hand and interlaces her fingers with his.
“It’s a beautiful place, Elizabeth,” he says.
Elizabeth looks out beyond the wall to the rolling fields, the hills, the trees, the birds. It really is beautiful here. The peace is broken by a commotion farther down the hill, the sound of footsteps running. Elizabeth looks at her watch.
“That’ll be my rescue party,” she says. “I told them if I wasn’t out in two hours, they were to break down the door. Come in shooting.”
“Two hours? Were we really two hours?”
Elizabeth nods. “There was a lot to say, Matthew.”
He nods too.
“You’ll probably have to go through it again when this lot finally get up the hill.”
Elizabeth can see Chris Hudson now, fresh off the plane, she guessed, running as best he can. She gives him a friendly wave and sees the relief on his face—both that she is still alive and that he can now stop running.
100.
There was a schism in the Cryptic Crossword Club. Colin Clemence’s weekly solving challenge had been won by Irene Dougherty for the third week running. Frank Carpenter had made an accusation of impropriety and the accusation gained some momentum. The following day, a profane crossword clue had been pinned to Colin Clemence’s door, and from the moment he solved it, all hell had broken loose.
The upshot of all this was that the Cryptic Crossword Club had been postponed this week to let all parties cool down, and so the Jigsaw Room was unexpectedly free.
The Thursday Murder Club are in their regular seats, and Chris and Donna have brought through a couple of stacking chairs from the lounge.
Matthew Mackie sits in an armchair in the corner. The focus of attention.
“I was not long over from Ireland. I’d only left for adventure, really. In those days they could send you all sorts of places—Africa or Peru, but that’s not for me, converting and what have you. So this place came up, and I sailed over in nineteen sixty-seven, sight unseen. It was what you see now, really. Very beautiful, very quiet, a hundred sisters, but quiet enough you wouldn’t know it. They’d pad about. There was peace here in the convent, but it was also a place of work, and the hospital was always busy. So I’d stroll about the place. I’d give sermons, and take confessions. I’d smile when people were happy, and I’d cry with them when they were sad, and that was my job. Twenty-five years old, without a thought in my head, and without a bone of wisdom in my body. But I was a man, and that seemed to be the only thing that counted.”
“And you lived here?” Chris asks the question. Elizabeth had suggestedthat Chris and Donna take charge of any questioning, as she was aware she would probably need a few Brownie points by the time today was done.
“There was a gatehouse back then, and I had rooms there. Nice enough, certainly nicer than the sisters’ rooms. No visitors, of course. That was the rule, at least.”
“A rule you followed?” asks Donna.
“At first, of course. I was eager to do well, eager to please, didn’t want to be sent home. All of that.”
“But... things change?” asks Chris.
“Things change, yes. Things do change. I’d met Maggie very early on; she would clean the chapel. There were four of them cleaning.”
“But only one Maggie?” says Donna.
“Only one Maggie,” says Matthew with a smile. “You know when you look into someone’s eyes for the first time and the whole world breaks apart? And you just think, ‘Of course, of course, this is what I’ve been waiting for all this time’? That was Maggie, all right. And at first it would be, ‘Good morning, Sister Margaret,’ and ‘Good morning, Father,’ and so on, and she’d get on with her work, and I’d get on with mine. Such as it was. But I would smile, and she would smile, and sooner or later it would be, ‘A fine morning, Sister Margaret, we’re blessed with this sunshine,’ and ‘You’re right, Father, how blessed we are,’ and then it would be ‘What’s that you’re using on the floor, Sister Margaret?’ and ‘It’s floor polish, Father.’ This wasn’t immediate; this would be a few weeks in.”
Ron leans forward to say something, but Elizabeth shoots him a look and he doesn’t.
