The Rosary Garden by Nicola White (best books to read now TXT) 📕

a bat of her pale lashes. There was no question that she was a striking woman, even in that get-up and with the veil covering her hair. Red hair, it was; he could see peeks of it at her temples. But she wasn’t freckled at all. She had this amazing pale skin, like a lily, he thought, before catching himself. She’s a nun, jaysus, man. But he kept looking: the violet shadows under her eyes intrigued him. Had they been there on Monday?

Sister Bernadette kept her gaze averted, to all appearances fascinated by the view out the window. He remembered a film he’d seen at the IFT, something arty that Elizabeth had dragged him to. Arty? Debauched more like, with Vanessa Redgrave as a nun and Oliver Reed as a priest – I ask you – and all of them rutting away, rolling their eyes. But that was all made-up stuff, wasn’t it? He once attended a raid on an illegal sauna near the quays, where they found two nuns’ habits among the French-maid and nurse outfits that the girls wore. Irish solutions to Irish problems.

This silence was becoming uncomfortable.

‘We’re grateful you could spare the time for us. Sister O’Dwyer said you usually spend weekends at St Jude’s, was it?’

The hazel eyes flicked to his instantly, then away. He had only been making conversation, but had somehow hit a nerve.

‘What sort of place is that, now?’

‘It’s one of our projects. Community work.’

Her voice was stiff and two pink spots were emerging through the paleness of her cheeks. She had that kind of complexion. Volatile.

‘That’s interesting. What do you do there exactly?’

‘Oh … I do some admin, help with maintenance, boring stuff. We have many different projects around Dublin – we help run a nursery in Sheriff Street, you know.’

He loved this. He wasn’t sure what she was trying to hide, but he was going to have it.

‘I hear a famous writer once lived there – in the Percy Place house.’ She met his eye, offering nothing. ‘This famous writer, do you think he’d be happy about his home being turned into a … a …’ He circled his hand at her lightly, cueing her to supply the missing word.

The door banged open and Barrett appeared with a tray, looking flustered. Swan lifted his hand from the table to signal him to wait, but Barrett barged across the carpet, his tray dripping at one corner. The nun was immediately out of her chair, ushering him over to a side table, helping to mop the spill with a lacy cloth.

Swan kept his seat as the two of them fussed about. When Sister Bernadette finally handed him a cup and saucer, he said ‘Thank you’ with a deliberate evenness to convey that he had lost none of his focus during Barrett’s comedy entrance.

When Barrett sat down, Swan resumed.

‘Sister Bernadette here has been telling me about some of her community work. You have to excuse my ignorance of these things, Sister, but who is it that you’re serving at St Jude’s – is it, like, an old folks’ home?’

‘No’

‘What is it?’

‘It’s … a drop-in centre.’

‘For women?’

She nodded, looked down at her lap. She had a rope of wooden rosary beads attached to her belt, and was spinning one of the beads between forefinger and thumb.

‘Is it for battered women – domestic stuff?’

She raised her head, something firm in the set of her jaw. ‘We try to help all women in need. My focus is on the working women in the area.’

Swan’s mother, who was into any left-wing cause, had told him about radical nuns. He’d seen a few on CND marches, their faces painted white as skulls, but he hadn’t yet come across the ones that she claimed were working with street prostitutes along the canal, giving them food and check-ups and running the risk of the Church’s wrath by – it was rumoured – ensuring they used condoms.

That would account for Sister Bernadette’s discomfort.

‘I think you probably do a great deal of good out there. It’s a dangerous scene now, with the drugs.’

‘Fair play to you, Sister,’ said Barrett.

She received their praise indifferently, running the beads through her hands, then dropping them abruptly.

‘I thought you had further questions about the child,’ she said.

Swan drew out a sheaf of papers from his folder. ‘A few things came up from your statement … Can you confirm that, when you came upon it, the child was naked inside a paper bag?’

‘Is that what I said?’

‘It is.’

‘Well, then …’

‘Not a white cloth?’

‘… I don’t recall one.’ She sounded less certain than her statement.

‘We found a piece of white clothing in the shed, Sister, and one of the other witnesses said the baby was wrapped in white, when she saw it.’

‘Are you asking me to change my statement, for the sake of neatness?’

‘It’s a curious anomaly, that’s all.’

‘I can’t swear I noticed the exact nature of the wrappings; it was the child I was thinking of – the possibility that something could be done.’

If Ali Hogan was telling the truth, someone had removed the white wrapping and tried to hide it in the sling of the deckchair. Both girls said they hadn’t touched the baby, so either Sister Bernadette was that person or someone else was on the scene.

‘You were walking in the grounds for some time – I think you said ten minutes – before the girls found you. Thinking back now, did you see anyone else about during that time? Or anyone in the garden?’

‘You asked me that before.’

Swan was getting irritated with the ice-queen act. ‘Yes or no?’

She gave him a look of forced patience. ‘No. I saw no one in the grounds.’

They went over a few more details, but Sister Bernadette would give them nothing useful or new.

As he waited for Barrett to bring in the next nun, Swan looked out of the parlour window at the mountains rising hazily beyond the empty hockey pitches, beyond the avenue of horse chestnuts that curved up