Blood Sisters by Graham Masterton Read Free Book Online

think of who found her annoying?’
    ‘Like I say, sergeant, in this congregation we all “get along” together. It’s our vocation.’
    ‘That’s not really what I asked you, Mother O’Dwyer. Getting along with people means that you tolerate them and keep your mouth shut even when they give you ire. You had a very closed environment here – twenty-one women of varying ages living in each other’s pockets. If I’m correct, you weren’t allowed out at night, either, in those days – you had all to be back here in the convent by the time it fell dark. Not only that, you also had the stress of taking care of unmarried mothers and their children. You can’t make me believe that you never got on each other’s nerves, ever. You may have been called by God, but you were still human, and more than that, you were women.’
    Mother O’Dwyer replaced her spectacles on her pointy nose and pursed her lips to show that she wasn’t going to comment any further, but that lack of response was enough to suggest to Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán that at least some of the sisters in the convent had found Sister Bridget overbearing – ‘haughty’, as Nevina Cormack had put it.
    ‘You said that there was something unusual about her death,’ said Mother O’Dwyer.
    ‘Yes. She was sexually assaulted.’
    Mother O’Dwyer crossed herself again. ‘She was raped ? Oh, dear Mary Mother of God! After eighty-three years of keeping herself chaste for the Lord!’
    ‘We don’t know for sure yet. We’ll have to wait for the autopsy. But she was sexually assaulted with a religious figurine, and that religious figurine was left inside her.’
    ‘A religious figurine? Of what?’
    ‘The Immaculate Heart of Mary.’ Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán held out her hands about a foot apart. ‘It was approximately this big.’
    ‘Oh dear God, you’re making me feel quite faint,’ said Mother O’Dwyer. ‘The Immaculate Heart of Mary was the figurine that Sister Bridget kept on her window sill in her room and always used for prayer and meditation. She was devoted to the inner life of Our Lady, her virtues and her hidden imperfections, and to Our Lady’s faultless love for her Son Jesus Christ.’
    ‘So this particular figurine was important to her?’
    ‘Important? It was everything. In spite of all the wounds that Our Lady’s poor heart sustained, her love never wavered. It was Our Lady’s inner strength that helped Sister Bridget to understand how she, too, could give her love wholeheartedly to God. That’s if you follow what I’m saying.’
    ‘Of course,’ nodded Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán. She had caught the gist of what Mother O’Dwyer was trying to explain to her, although she had never been very bright when it came to catechism. When she was six years old, her first attempt at answering ‘Who made me?’ had been ‘Mummy and Daddy’. But it wasn’t Sister Bridget’s devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary that interested her. It was the likelihood that her murderer had known her well enough to violate her body with the one figurine that she had held to be most sacred.
    ‘I don’t like to harp on about it,’ she said. ‘But are you totally sure there was nobody at the convent when Sister Bridget was here who actively didn’t like her? Maybe it wasn’t another sister, but a visiting priest, or a member of the public that she was tending to? Or maybe one of the unmarried mothers?’
    Mother O’Dwyer stood up and walked around her desk. She went up to the engraving of the ecstatic woman and the cherub with the cross and said, ‘Do you know who this is, sergeant? This is Saint Margaret of Cortona, in one of her frequent communications with Jesus. She is the patron saint of single mothers and protector of illegitimate children, both born and unborn, and she still shields them from harm, even today. That is because she herself was a single mother and succumbed many times in her early life to the temptations of