“Shan’t.”
“We’ll miss matins.”
♦
“I could kill Harry,” brooded Rose as they made up their beds. “My knees are already sore with praying.”
I could run away, thought Daisy. I kept a bit of the earl’s money back. Matthew will have assumed it was money we’d already spent. If Rose won’t go, I’ll go myself.
Another bell rang, summoning them to breakfast. The banisters outside the chapel were festooned with white aprons, the nuns having taken them off before going into chapel.
The sisters filed in, followed by Rose and Daisy. Each stood behind her seat until the reverend mother had said grace. Breakfast consisted of two thick slices of bread and butter each. Cups in front of each plate were already filled with steaming coffee.
“Where’s the sugar?” demanded Daisy.
“Silence!” ordered Sister Agnes. “No sugar and no talking.”
The silence was only broken by a nun reading from the Bible in a low voice.
After breakfast, the sisters went about their duties. Sister Agnes said to Rose and Daisy, “You will both meet me in the hall after the service of terce dressed to go out.”
♦
The walk to the home for fallen women that Sister Agnes had selected for them to visit was just outside the convent walls.
It was a plain Georgian building, which, Rose guessed, had at one time been a private house. The windows, she noticed, were all barred.
Sister Agnes knocked. A curtain at a narrow window twitched and then they could hear the sound of bolts being drawn back and a key turned in the lock.
They entered a stone-flagged hall. Four women were down on their knees scrubbing the floor. Despite the cold, they were wearing plain blue cotton gowns and aprons and their hair was bound up in blue scarves.
They did not look up and Sister Agnes led Rose and Daisy round them and up the stairs. “We have selected three women for you to counsel. You will impress on them the sin they have brought upon themselves.”
She pushed open a door. The women sat on chairs, their heads bowed.
“I will return for you later,” said Sister Agnes.
“Thank God, the penguin’s gone,” said Daisy. “Let’s get the introductions over with. I’m Daisy, this here is Rose. Who are you?”
They shyly volunteered their names – Freda, Cissy and Louise. They were in various stages of pregnancy.
“You first, Louise,” said Daisy. “What happened?”
“Daisy,” said Rose urgently, “we’re supposed to be giving them spiritual advice.”
“Pooh! Go on, Louise.”
She clasped and unclasped her swollen red hands in her lap. Too much scrubbing, thought Rose.
“I was working for a very harsh mistress. She used to beat me. I was a kitchen maid. Then one day, madam said she was going to visit her sister. The master gave the other servants – there were only five of us – the day off but said I had to stay. When they had all gone, he… he forced me to pleasure him. It didn’t happen again but when I began to show the mistress called me a slut and dragged me round here.”
The other two had similar stories. Rose listened in horror.
“But did not the nuns confront the fathers of your children?”
“That’s not their way,” said Cissy. “The women always get the blame. They work us like slaves and then, after the babies are taken away from us for adoption, the nuns find us places as servants. We either put up with it or we’re out on the street.”
Their sad stories had taken up most of the rest of the morning. Just before Sister Agnes appeared, Daisy said, “I’m going to give those nuns a piece of my mind.”
“Don’t,” said Rose. “They’ll punish you.”
“What? That bunch o’ crows?”
♦
On the road back, Rose listened with growing apprehension as Daisy sounded off to Sister Agnes about the state of the unmarried mothers.
In the convent, Sister Agnes turned to Rose, “Go to your cell. You, Daisy, come with me.”
She marched Daisy up to a wide landing. The community room was on one side and the bakery on the other, and on the wall was a great black crucifix.
“Kneel down and kiss the floor,” commanded Sister Agnes.
“No, I won’t.”
Sister Agnes opened the bakery door. “Sister Monica! Come here.”
A large burly nun emerged. “Daisy is in disgrace and refuses to kiss the ground. She must take her penance.”
Daisy found herself grabbed by strong arms and her face was thrust down towards the floor. She fought and kicked and struggled but her face was pressed down on the wooden landing.
“Hold her there for an hour,” said Sister Agnes calmly.
Daisy wriggled and fought but Sister Monica appeared to be as strong as a stevedore. At last all the fight went out of Daisy and she lay on the floor sobbing. After an hour, she was marched down to the chapel and ordered to pray.
When she was finally allowed to go back to her cell, she found Rose darning socks. Rose listened in horror as Daisy described her punishment.
The usually cocky Daisy looked broken. “Let’s try to get out of here,” she said.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea at the moment,” said Rose. “They will be watching our every move. I think we should behave like model ladies until their fears are laid to rest. Then, when they feel secure, we shall find a way to leave here.”
Daisy began to cry. “Hush,” said Rose, hugging her. “We’ll find a way.”
♦
As the end of March approached, Harry’s relief at having Rose somewhere he knew she was safe began to ebb. His brief infatuation for Dolores seemed like a bad dream. He felt guilty at having paraded her at the opera. He had employed a new secretary with impeccable credentials. Her name was Miss Fleming. She was in her forties and worked like a machine. He called on Kerridge periodically, but the man who had followed Rose to Thurby-on-Sea appeared to have disappeared into thin air.
Kerridge said he had contacted the French police but they had been of no help whatsoever. Dolores Duval’s lovers had been very powerful men. But they did volunteer the information that Dolores Duval had left a will, leaving everything to a certain Madame de Peurey.
He wondered more and more how Rose was getting on. He thought she must be furious with him because he had neither received a letter nor a telephone call.
Harry had successfully and profitably wound up several cases. To stop himself from brooding about Rose, he decided to travel to Paris and interrogate this Madame de Peurey.
“Excuse me, sir, are we leaving without seeing Lady Rose? Anglican convents allow visitors,” said Becket. “Good idea,” said Harry. “We’ll go there tomorrow.”
♦
Rose and Daisy had entered into the work routine of the convent. There were to be no more visits to fallen women for them. They worked in the bakery, in the garden and scrubbed and hung out the sheets on washing day.
Conversation was allowed in the bakery, and Rose enjoyed the chatter and the warmth as they helped bake batches of loaves and parcelled them up, as the loaves were destined for various schools owned by the convent, along with the homes for fallen women. Rose was worried about Daisy. She was too quiet and subdued.
The hard work and the routine soothed them and yet they waited for what they thought would be the right time to escape. They both had keys to the earl’s town house and planned to slip in and collect Rose’s jewels, which she had not been able to take with her.
Daisy had suggested they should go out of London to sell them to some jeweller who would not ask questions, even if it meant they would not get a very good price.
They were working in the garden, hanging out sheets, when they heard the sound of a motor car’s engine. The sound stopped and then they heard the clang on the entry bell.