“Then we’re back to my previous question. Does that mean ugly people are very often not nice?”
“It doesn’t follow, you know, any more than saying poor people are invariably wicked. It just means the tests are harder.” She cocked her head on one side.
“Take Olive and Amber as a case in point. After all, that’s why you’ve really come to see me. Amber led a charmed life. She was quite the loveliest child I’ve ever seen and with a nature to match. Everyone adored her. Olive, on the other hand, was universally unpopular. She had few redeeming features. She was greedy, deceitful, and often cruel. I found her very hard to like.”
Roz made no attempt to deny her interest. The conversation had, in any case, been about them from the beginning.
“Then you were being tested as much as she was. Did you fail? Was it impossible to like her?”
“It was very difficult until Amber joined the school.
Olive’s best quality was that she loved her sister, without reserve and quite unselfishly. It was really rather touching. She fussed over Amber like a mother hen, often ignoring her own interests to promote Amber’s. I’ve never seen such affection between sisters.”
“So why did she kill her?”
“Why indeed? It’s time that question was asked.”
The older woman drummed her fingers impatiently on the desk.
“I visit her when I can. She won’t tell me, and the only explanation I can offer is that her love, which was obsession ai turned to a hate that was equally obsessional. Have you met Olive?”
Roz nodded.
“What did you make of her?”
“She’s bright.”
“Yes, she is. She could have gone to university if only the then headmistress had managed to persuade her mother of the advantages. I was a lowly teacher in those days.” She sighed.
“But Mrs. Martin was a decided woman, and Olive very much under her thumb. There was nothing we, as a school, could do to make her change her mind. The two girls left together, Olive with three good A-levels and Amber with four rather indifferent 0-levels.” She sighed again.
“Poor Olive. She went to work as a cashier in a supermarket while Amber, I believe, tried her hand at hairdressing.”
“Which supermarket was it?”
“Pettit’s in the High Street. But the place went out of business years ago. It’s an off-licence now.”
“She was working at the local DHSS, wasn’t she, at the time of the murders?”
“Yes and doing very well, I believe. Her mother pushed her into it, of course.” Sister Bridget reflected for a moment.
“Funnily enough, I bumped into Olive quite by chance just a week or so before the murders. I was pleased to see her. She looked’ she paused ‘happy. Yes, I think happy is exactly the word for it.”
Roz let the silence drift while she busied herself with her own thoughts. There was so much about this story that didn’t make sense.
“Did she get on with her mother?” she asked at last. “I don’t know. I always had the impression she preferred her father. It was Mrs. Martin who wore the trousers, of course. If there were choices to be made, it was invariably she who made them. She was very domineenng, but I don’t recall Olive voicing any antagonism towards her. She was a difficult woman to talk to. Very correct, always. She appeared to watch every word she said in case she gave herself away.” She shook her head.
“But I never did find out what it was that needed hiding.”
There was a knock on the connecting door and a woman popped her head inside.
“Mr. and Mrs. Barker are waiting, Sister. Are you ready for them?”
“Two minutes, Betty.” She smiled at Roz.
“I’m sorry. I’m not sure I’ve been very helpful. Olive had one friend while she was here, not a friend as you or I would know it, but a girl with whom she talked rather more than she did with any of the others.
Her married name is Wright Geraldine Wright and she lives in a village called Wooling about ten miles north of here. If she’s willing to talk to you then I’m sure she can tell you more than I have. The name of her house is Oaktrees.
Roz jotted down the details in her diary.
“Why do I have the feeling you were expecting me?”
“Olive showed me your letter the last time I saw her.”
Roz stood up, gathering her briefcase and handbag together. She regarded the other woman thoughtfully.
“It may be that the only book I can write is a cruel one.”
“I don’t think so.”
“No, I don’t think so either.” She paused by the door.
“I’ve enjoyed meeting you.”
“Come and see me again,” said Sister Bridget.
“I’d like to know how you get on.”
Roz nodded.
“I suppose there’s no doubt that she did it?”
“I really don’t know,” said the other woman slowly.
“I’ve wondered, of course. The whole thing is so shocking that it is hard to accept.” She seemed to come to a conclusion.
“Be very careful, my dear.
The only certainty about Olive is that she lies about almost everything.”
Roz jotted down the name of the arresting officer from the press clippings and called in at the police station on her way back to London.
“I’m looking for a DS Hawksley,” she told the young constable behind the front desk.
“He was with this division in nineteen eighty-seven. Is he still here?”
He shook his head.
“Jacked it in, twelve eighteen months ago.” He leaned his elbows on the counter and eyed her over with an approving glance.
“Will I do instead?”
Her lips curved involuntarily.
“Perhaps you can tell me where he went?”
“Sure. He opened a restaurant in Wenceslas Street. Lives in the flat above it.”
“And how do I find Wenceslas Street?”
“Well, now’ he rubbed his jaw thoughtfully ‘by far the easiest way is to hang around for half an hour till the end of my shift. I’ll take you.”
She laughed.
“And what would your girlfriend say to that?”
“A ruddy mouthful. She’s got a tongue like a chain-saw.” He winked.
“I won’t tell her if you won’t.”
“Sorry, sunshine. I’m shackled to a husband who hates policemen only marginally less than he hates toy-boys.” Lies were always easier.
He grinned.
“Turn left out of the station and Wenceslas Street is about a mile down on the left. There’s an empty shop on the corner. The Sergeant’s restaurant is bang next door to it. It’s called the Poacher.” He tapped his pencil on the desk.
“Are you planning to eat there?”
“No,” she said, ‘it’s purely business. I don’t intend to hang around.”
He nodded approval.
“Wise woman. The Sergeant’s not much of a cook. He’d have done better to stick with policing.”
She had to pass the restaurant to reach the London road. Rather reluctantly she pulled into its abandoned car park and climbed out of the car. She was tired, she hadn’t planned on talking to Hawksley that day, and the young constable’s lighthearted flirtation depressed her because it had left her cold.
The Poacher was an attractive red-brick building, set back from the road with the car park in front. Leaded bay windows curved out on either side of a solid oak door and wist aria heavy with buds, grew in profusion across the whole facade. Like St. Angela’s Convent it was at odds with its surroundings.
The shops on either side, both apparently empty, their windows a repository for advertising stickers, complemented each other in cheap post-war pragmatism but did nothing for the old faded beauty in their midst. Worse, a thoughtless council had allowed a previous owner to erect a two-storey extension behind the red-brick frontage, and it gboomed above the restaurant’s tiled roof in dirty pebble-dashed concrete. An attempt had been made to divert the wist aria across the roof but, starved of sunlight by the jutting property to the right, the probing tendrils showed little enthusiasm for reaching up to veil the dreary elevation.