‘You’ve received another letter from Mrs Glendinning,’ the Prior repeated.
Anselm had just finished his breakfast when he was called to the phone. The envelope was marked ‘PRIVATE and URGENT’, which prompted Sylvester – in a rare burst of competence – to summon the Prior, who’d recognised Elizabeth’s handwriting.
‘But who posted it?’ asked Anselm.
‘Another friend, I suppose,’ said the Prior. ‘Shall I read it out?’
Anselm glanced nervously at his watch. An adult life determined in its first half by court engagements and its second by bells had made Anselm (like many barristers and monks) slightly neurotic about time. ‘No thanks,’ he said. ‘Will you fax it through? I’ve got an appointment in Camberwell.’
The community superior led Anselm through baffling corridors that only an architect could have devised, past various photographs of the congregation’s personnel. Anselm noticed the alteration in headdress over the years, from a spectacular construct of starched linen to a simple veil. Entering a walled garden, Sister Barbara pointed towards a path flanked by chestnut trees. At its end, in a wheelchair, sat an elderly woman who wore a woollen hat remarkably similar to a cushion.
Like any sensible interrogator, Anselm had researched his witness in advance. From his initial telephone enquiry, with supplemental details from the superior, Anselm had learned a great deal. Sixty years ago, upon the outset of her religious life, Sister Dorothy had run a London hostel before being installed as matron at a private school in Carlisle. She had been very happy but her life was to typify the precedence of service over personal inclination. Following a short stint as a prison chaplain in Liverpool, she’d been sent to work as a nurse in Afghanistan. Seventeen years later she’d come home to have her wisdom teeth removed. She never went back to her mountain dispensary. Her one souvenir was an Afghan pakol, the hat that became her trademark.
Anselm approached her, his feet crunching the gravel.
As soon as he was within earshot, Sister Dorothy said, ‘I didn’t know she’d died until you called.’ Her voice was clear but slightly laboured. As Anselm sat on a bench, she added, ‘So you’re an old friend?’
‘Yes. We were in chambers together.’
‘Tell me, was she happy?’ She spoke with the aching concern of an old teacher.
‘Very much so.’
‘Successful?’
‘Oh yes.’
The nun smiled and sighed. Threads of shadow thrown by branches swung across her face. ‘Well, well, well,’ she sang quietly. Her skin had the transparent whiteness of old age, with a multitude of deep lines. A dint in the profile of her nose revealed a badly healed fracture, sustained (he’d been told) during a prison visit.
Anselm spoke of Elizabeth’s professional reputation, of her marriage and her son, while Sister Dorothy listened eagerly not wanting to miss a single detail. In due course, and adroitly Anselm observed, ‘And yet, after all those years together, I knew very little about her past.’
He waited, hoping. In fact, he prayed.
‘Did she ever show you the photograph?’ She spoke distantly one hand raised, as if she were pointing to a wall.
Anselm leaned forward, elbows on his knees. ‘I don’t think so.
‘The photograph of the family?’ continued Sister Dorothy surprised that her visitor was unsure of her meaning.
‘No,’ replied Anselm, trying not to sound too interested.
‘Well, well, well,’ sang Sister Dorothy to herself. She studied Anselm, like one about to break a confidence. ‘The photograph tells you everything… It’s all there in black and white… a happy family on a Sunday afternoon some time in the 1940s.’
The part of Anselm’s character that trusted in the dispensations of Providence made an exclamation of gratitude. He waited, though he was impatient to learn the history that Elizabeth had kept to herself.
‘On the right is her father,’ said Sister Dorothy Wrinkles crowded her eyes as she called up the portrait. A tall, thin man with a waxed moustache and shiny black hair. He wore wing collars every day of his adult life. A man fifty years out of his time.’ She threw Anselm a glance. ‘Did she tell you about him?’
‘Not in any detail,’ replied Anselm. In fact, Elizabeth had never mentioned him.
‘He was an unhappy insurance salesman based in Manchester. After he’d sold his quota of premiums he locked himself in the attic trying to invent an electronic smoke detector. Several times he nearly burnt the house down. He never gave up. He thought if he could only pull it off, the industry would name a policy after him.’
‘He didn’t succeed?’
‘No, he did not.’ She paused, looking towards a high wall covered in ivy. ‘But he made a fortune.’
Anselm pictured a man with the shade of Elizabeth’s face.
‘To the left is her mother,’ continued Sister Dorothy like a museum guide. A seamstress from Chorley She’s wearing a polka dot dress with enormous buttons. Hair like Maggie Thatcher. A happy house-proud woman whose only joke was that she’d like to invent a fire extinguisher.’
And Elizabeth?’ asked Anselm.
‘She is in the middle. A late and only child. A beaming girl of ten in ribbons and bows. It was an age, she once said, that seemed perfect in every way She was young enough to appreciate that she was a child, and old enough to consciously enjoy it.’ Sister Dorothy swung Anselm a glance. ‘That is the photograph of the Glendinning family.’
‘How did the inventor make his fortune?’ asked Anselm roguishly.
‘By dying,’ she replied.
Elizabeth was born when her mother was nearly fifty, explained Sister Dorothy Her father was already in his early sixties. It was a late match, and a contented one. They had found companionship after having long accepted that loneliness would take the greater portion of their days. Elizabeth’s coming was a boon and, like many booms, unforeseen. But the unforeseen was to lay its heaviest hand upon the child. The year after the portrait was taken, her father came down from the attic grumbling about a trip switch. He turned on a wireless, sipped a glass of milk, closed his eyes and promptly died – as if he’d blown the fuse box. The doctor said he’d reached a fine old age. The fellow might not have had a policy named after him, but he did take one out on his life: his nearest and dearest were amply provided for. A year later Elizabeth’s mother died from septicaemia arising from a trivial leg injury Her father, however, had taken out another, even larger, policy and Elizabeth, at fourteen, found herself without either parent but the beneficiary of a very healthy trusted income.
‘People are odd, aren’t they?’ observed Sister Dorothy shaking her head. ‘Elizabeth’s father had filled in all these forms, but he hadn’t made out a will. She had no legal guardian. And there were no relatives chomping at the bit. So the court had to get involved. In the end, it was a judge who sent Elizabeth in our direction.’
The congregation ran a boarding school in Carlisle. (Where, deduced Anselm, you were matron.) So Elizabeth became a pupil, but not without a period of considerable adjustment. The first years after the death of her parents were marked by rebelliousness and grief. She started coming to the dispensary when there was little if anything wrong with her. Headaches. Stomach aches. Splinters. But Elizabeth began talking to this young nun whose veil kept crashing into cabinets and doors -Sister Dorothy would never get used to the contraption.
‘But she did very well, in the end,’ she said proudly ‘When she went to university, I gave her The Following of Christ.’
In a curious way Anselm felt stumped. He couldn’t tell her -as he’d intended – that Elizabeth had cut a hole in its pages. At a stroke, everything to do with the trial had been closed down. He did not feel capable of revealing that the book, her gift, had been permanently damaged. A question left his mouth before he could admire its excellence. ‘When did you last see her?’
‘Forty years ago.’ Sister Dorothy spoke vaguely as if she were drifting towards sleep. She’d closed her eyes. Anselm watched for several minutes. Then he tiptoed away altogether sure that the nun in the brown pakol had had enough.
It was only when Anselm was trotting down the stairs to the Underground that he felt the entire interview had been incongruous – but he couldn’t reduce the insight to any particulars.
When he got back to Hoxton he found two sheets of paper outside his bedroom door. The first was the fax from Larkwood. The second was a message asking him to call Inspector Cartwright.
Anselm read the letter from Elizabeth by the light of a window.
Dear Anselm,
I would be very grateful if you would visit the following lady:
Mrs Irene Dixon
Flat 269
Percival Court
Shoreditch
Mrs Dixon may not know that I am dead, so please explain, if needs be. Thereafter, listen rather than speak. I suggest you arrive unannounced.
Farewell, Anselm. You have helped me more than you can know.
Warm regards,
Elizabeth
Anselm let his hand drop. This was the final letter, he was sure. He thought of Elizabeth the rich orphan who hadn’t quite gone, who wouldn’t let go, even in death. Subdued, he rang Inspector Cartwright.
‘You won’t believe this,’ she said, ‘but I’ve received a letter from Mrs Glendinning.’
They arranged to meet in half an hour. Feeling more and more like an ass in a bridle, Anselm set off on this next unforeseen errand. Perhaps it was the act of retracing his steps to the Underground that brought home another veiled truth: the old biddy in the woolly hat had taken him to the cleaners – but he didn’t know how, and he couldn’t guess why.