Shadows Of The Workhouse: The Drama Of Life In Postwar London

SISTER MONICA JOAN

Sister Monica Joan did not die. She developed severe pneumonia after wandering down the East India Dock Road wearing only her nightie one cold November morning, but she did not die. In fact, the incident seemed to rejuvenate her. Perhaps she enjoyed all the extra pampering and cosseting supplied by her Sisters and Mrs B, the cook. No doubt she enjoyed being the centre of attention. Perhaps penicillin, the new wonder drug, had pumped fire into her old heart. Whatever the reason, Sister Monica Joan, at the age of ninety, enjoyed a new lease of life, and was soon to be seen trotting all over Poplar, to the great rejoicing of everyone who knew her.

The Sisters of St Raymund Nonnatus was an Anglican order of fully professed nuns. The Sisters were all trained nurses and midwives, and their vocation was to work amongst the poorest of the poor. They had maintained a house in the London Docklands since the 1870s, when their work was revolutionary. Poor women in those days had no medical care during pregnancy and childbirth, and the death rate was high.

Midwifery as a profession did not exist. In each community local women, in a tradition passed on from mother to daughter, went around delivering babies. Such a woman was called ‘the handy woman’ and her practice usually consisted of ‘lying-in and laying-out’ (i.e. lying-in after childbirth and laying-out of the dead). Some of these women were good at their trade, and were caring and conscientious, but they were untrained and unregistered.

Against relentless parliamentary ridicule and opposition, many inspired women, including the Sisters of St Raymund Nonnatus, fought to have midwifery recognised as a profession, and for midwives to be trained and registered. Eventually, after a series of bills were defeated in the House, the women won, and the first Midwives Act became law in 1902. The Royal College of Midwives was born, and from that moment maternal and infant deaths began to fall.

The Sisters were true heroines. They had entered slum areas of the London Docks at a time when no one else would go near them, except perhaps the police. They had worked through epidemics of cholera, typhoid, tuberculosis, scarlet fever and smallpox, careless of being infected themselves. They had worked through two world wars and endured the intensive bombing of the Blitz. They were inspired and sustained by their dual vocation: service to God and service to mankind.

But do not imagine for one moment that the Sisters were trapped by their bells and their rosaries, and that life had passed them by. The nuns, collectively and individually, had experienced more of the world and its ways, more of heroism and degradation, of sin and salvation, than most people will experience in a lifetime. No indeed, the nuns were not remote goody-goodies. They were a bunch of feisty women who had seen it all, lived and loved and suffered throughout, and remained true to their vocation.

Nonnatus House was situated just off the East India Dock Road, near Poplar High Street and the Blackwall Tunnel. It was a large Victorian building and sat next to a bomb site. A third of all Dockland dwellings had been destroyed by the Blitz, and most of the derelict buildings and rubble had not been cleared away. Bomb sites became children’s playgrounds during the day and dormitories for meths-drinkers overnight.

Overcrowding had always been chronic in Poplar, and it was said that Poplar housed 50,000 people per square mile. After the Second World War the situation was even worse, because houses and flats had been destroyed and rebuilding had not yet commenced, so people just moved in with each other. It was not unusual to find three or four generations of one family living in a small house, or fifteen people living in two or three small rooms in the tenements – the Canada Buildings or the Peabody Buildings or the notorious Blackwall Tenements. These were Victorian buildings constructed on four sides around a central courtyard, with inward-facing balconies which were the arteries of the tenement. There was no privacy. Everyone knew everyone else’s business, and terrible fights would occur when the tensions of overcrowded family life erupted into violence. The tenements were bug-infested and insanitary. Some of the better ones had an indoor lavatory and running water, but most of the buildings had neither and infections spread like wildfire.

Most of the men worked in the docks. Thousands poured through the gates when they opened each day. Hours were long, the work was heavy, and life was hard, but the Cockney men knew nothing else, and they were tough. The Thames was the backdrop of Poplar, and the boats, the cranes, the sound of the sirens, the whisper of the water all formed part of the tapestry that had been woven into its cloth for generations. The river had been the people’s constant companion, their friend and enemy, their employer, their playground and frequently, for the destitute, their grave.

Cockney life, for all its poverty and deprivation, was rich – rich in humanity and humour, rich in drama and melodrama, rich in pathos and, unhappily, rich in tragedy. The Sisters of St Raymund Nonnatus had served the people of Poplar for several generations. The Cockneys did not forget, and the nuns were loved, respected, even revered by the whole community.

During the time of which I write, an incident occurred that shook the very foundations of Nonnatus House. In fact, it shook the whole of Poplar, because everyone got to hear about it and for a time the local people could talk of little else.

Sister Monica Joan was accused of shoplifting.

My first intimation that something was wrong occurred when I returned from my evening visits, wet and hungry, and wondering why anyone was ever fool enough to be a district midwife. What about a cushy little office job? I thought to myself as I pulled the bag from the carrier of my bike, knowing it would take me an hour to clean and sterilise all my instruments and repack the bag ready for use the following morning. Yes, that’s it, I thought for the umpteenth time, a soft, cosy office job, with regular hours and central heating, sitting behind a nice smooth, desk, tapping at my Olivetti, and thinking about my date that evening; a job in which the maximum responsibility would be to find the minutes of the last meeting, and the biggest disaster a broken fingernail.

I entered the front door of Nonnatus House, and the first thing I saw was a great number of wet dirty footprints all over the fine Victorian tiles of the hallway. Large footprints in a convent? They were certainly very big, far too big to be those of a nun. Could it be that a group of men, had recently entered? It seemed unlikely at seven o’clock in the evening. And if the rector or any of the curates had called they were unlikely to leave dirty footmarks. If any tradesman had called in the morning and left such an unseemly visiting card, the mess would have been cleared up before lunch. But there they were – large dirty footprints all over the hall. It was inexplicable.

Then I heard Sister Julienne’s voice coming from the direction of her office. Sister’s voice was usually quiet and well modulated, but now it had a slight edge to it, either through anxiety or nervousness, it was hard to tell. This was followed by men’s voices. It all seemed very strange, but I didn’t want to linger, knowing that I had my bag to prepare before I could get anything to eat, so I made my way to the clinical room, where I found Cynthia and Trixie and Chummy deep in conversation.

Chummy had opened the door, apparently, to a sergeant and a constable who had asked to see the Sister-in-Charge. Chummy was all of a flutter, because she always went to pieces when any man entered the room, but chiefly because the constable was the policeman she had knocked over when she was had been learning to ride her bicycle. Intense embarrassment at the sight of him had rendered her speechless. The men had entered the hallway, and in her awkward confusion she had banged the front door so hard that it had sounded like a gun shot. Then she had tripped over the doormat and fallen into the arms of the policeman she had injured the year before.

Chummy was still in a state of such nervous distress that it was hard to get a word out of her, but Cynthia, apparently, hearing the bang of the front door and the noise of poor Chummy falling over, had come to see what it was all about. It was she, apparently, who had taken the policemen to the office and called Sister Julienne.

No one knew much more than that, but female speculation can make a great deal out of very little. Whilst we boiled our instruments, cut and folded our gauze swabs and filled our pots and bottles, our imaginations ranged over everything from arson to murder. Chummy was convinced the visit had something to do with her assault on the policeman, but Cynthia gently calmed her down, saying that there was no way a charge would be brought a year after the event, and his coming to Nonnatus House must be a coincidence.

We went to the kitchen for supper, deliberately leaving the door open, of course. We heard the office door open and heavy footsteps. We all pricked up our ears, but heard only a quiet: “Good night, Sister. Thank you for your time, and you will be hearing from us in morning.” The front door closed, and four inquisitive girls were left in a state of unbridled curiosity.

It was only after lunch the following day that Sister Julienne asked us all to remain in our seats as she had something to say. Fred the boiler man and Mrs B the cook were also asked to the dining room, because the matter had to come out into the open, and Sister did not want rumours flying around that would undoubtedly be exaggerated.

Apparently, Sister Julienne told us, Sister Monica Joan had been in Chrisp Street Market and the owner of a jewellery stall had seen her fingering several items. He had heard from other stall-holders that one of the Sisters was “light-fingered” so he watched her, but pretended not to be doing so. He saw her pick up a child’s bracelet, look around her and then deftly tuck it under her scapular. Then she had assumed her usual haughty aspect, head held high, and attempted to walk away. But the stall-holder stopped her. When he asked to see what she was holding beneath her scapular, she was extremely rude to him, telling him not to be so impertinent, and calling him a “boorish fellow”. A crowd, of course, had gathered. The man grew cross, called her a “scraggy old God-botherer” and said she’d better hand it over, or he’d get a peeler. Whereupon Sister Monica Joan had flung the gold bracelet across the stall with a contemptuous gesture, crying: “You can keep your tawdry trinkets, you loutish lump. What do I want with them?” and stalked off with an expression of offended dignity on her fine features.

Mrs B exploded: “I don’t believe a word of it. Not a word. He’s a liar, vat bloke. I knows him, an’ I knows as what he’s a liar, I do. You won’t get me believing a story like vat about Sister Monica Joan, you won’t, love ’er.”

Sister Julienne silenced her. “I’m afraid there is not a shadow of doubt about the truth of the matter. Several people are ready to testify that they saw Sister Monica Joan throw the bangle across the stall before she stalked off. But I’m afraid that is not all. There is worse to come.” She looked around at us, sadly and we held our breath.

The costermonger, probably enraged at having been called a “boorish fellow” and a “loutish lump” went round other stall-holders who had talked about a “light-fingered Sister” and collected eight men and women who claimed that they had strong suspicions about her having stolen from them, or who had positively seen Sister Monica Joan take something small and hide it under her scapular. Collectively they had gone to the police.

Sister Julienne continued, “The police were here yesterday and this morning. I felt bound to confront Sister Monica Joan with their report, but she wouldn’t say a word to me. Not a single word. She just looked out of the window as though she had not even heard me. I told her I was going to look in her chest of drawers, and she just shrugged her shoulders dismissively, and pursed her lips and said, ‘Pooh to you.’ I must say her attitude was extremely annoying, and if she behaved in that way to the coster, it is not surprising that he was so enraged.”

Sister Julienne produced a suitcase from under the table, saying: “This is what I found in Sister Monica’s chest of drawers,” and she withdrew several pairs of silk stockings, three egg cups, a great quantity of coloured ribbons, a lady’s silk blouse, four children’s colouring books, an ornate hairpiece, a corkscrew, several small wooden animals, a tin whistle, a quantity of teaspoons, three ornamental china birds, a bundle of knitting wool all tangled up, a necklace of gaudy beads, about a dozen fine lawn handkerchiefs, a needle case, a shoe horn and a dog collar. All of the items were unused, and some of them still had a label attached.

There was really no need for Sister Julienne to say, “I’m afraid this has been going on for some time.” It was painfully obvious to all of us and Mrs B burst into tears. “Oh, the love, bless ’er, oh the poor lamb, she don’t know what she’s doin’, she don’t. Wha’s going to ’appen to ’er, Sister? Vey wouldn’t lock ’er up, not at ’er age?”

Sister Julienne said she didn’t know. Prison seemed an unlikely outcome, but the costermonger was definitely bringing a charge, and Sister Monica Joan would be prosecuted.

Sister Monica Joan was a very old nun born into an aristocratic family in the 1860s. She had obviously been a strong-willed young woman who had rebelled against the restrictions and narrow self-interest of her social class, because she had broken away from her family (a shocking thing to do) around 1890 in order to train as a nurse. In 1902, when the first Midwives Act was passed, Monica Joan trained as a midwife and, shortly after, joined the Sisters of St Raymund Nonnatus. Her profession to a monastic order was the last straw for her family and they disowned her. But Novice Monica Joan didn’t care a hoot and carried on doing her own thing. When I knew her, she had lived and worked in Poplar for fifty years and was known by virtually everyone.

To say that by the age of ninety she was eccentric would be an understatement. Sister Monica Joan was wildly eccentric to the point of being outrageous. There was no telling what she would say or do next, and she frequently gave offence. Sometimes she could be sweet and gentle but at other times she was gratuitously spiteful. Poor Sister Evangelina, large and heavy, and not gifted with verbal brilliance, suffered most dreadfully from the astringent sarcasm of her Sister-in-God. Sister Monica Joan had a powerful intellect and was poetic and artistic, yet she was quite insensitive to music, as I witnessed on the occasion of her shocking behaviour at a cello recital. She was very clever – cunning, some would say. She manipulated others unscrupulously in order to get her own way. She was haughty and aristocratic in her demeanour, yet she had spent fifty years working in the slums of the London Docklands. How can one account for such contradictions?

Whilst being a professed nun and a devout Christian, in her old age Sister Monica Joan had become fascinated by esoteric spirituality, ranging from astrology and fortune-telling to cosmology and centric forces. She loved to expound on these subjects, but I doubt if she knew what she was talking about.

At the time I knew her, she was verging on senility. The focus of her mind seemed to come and go, to shift and change. Sometimes she was perfectly rational, while at others it was as though she were seeing the world through a mist, trying to grasp, things half-seen. Yet I suspected she knew her mind was going, and occasionally used the fact to get what she wanted. Somehow she had a magnetic quality about her and she fascinated me. I loved her dearly and enjoyed spending time in her company.

When Sister Julienne solemnly told the group in the dining room that Sister Monica Joan would be prosecuted for theft, a wave of shock had rippled around the table. Novice Ruth cried quietly.

Mrs B protested vociferously that she wouldn’t believe it. Trixie said she wasn’t surprised. Sister Evangelina snapped, “Be quiet, we’ll have none of that,” and sat very still, staring down at her plate, but her temples were twitching, and her knuckles went white as she gripped her hands together. Sister Julienne said: “We must all commit Sister Monica Joan to our prayers. We must seek God’s help. But I will also engage a good lawyer.”

I asked if I might visit Sister Monica Joan in her room that afternoon, and permission was readily given.

As I mounted the stairs, my mind was in a turmoil. How would I be received by a lady who had been visited by the police, from whose chest of drawers numerous stolen items had been extracted, and who had been told that she would be facing prosecution?

Sister Monica Joan’s room was not the customary cell of a nun, bare and plain. Hers was an elegant bed-sitting room with all the comforts due to a distinguished old lady. These were probably a great deal more than any other nun might expect, but Sister Monica Joan had a knack of always getting her own way. Since the pneumonia she had spent more time in her room, and I had been a frequent and happy visitor. But on this occasion, my heart was pounding with anxiety.

I knocked, and heard a sharp: “Enter. Come in, don’t just stand there. Come in.”

I entered, and found her at her desk, notebooks and pencils all around her. She was scribbling away furiously and chuckling to herself.

“Ah, it’s you, my dear. Sit down, sit down. Did you know that the astral permanent atom is equivalent to the etheric permanent atom and that they both function within the parallel universe?” She seemed to have no recollection of what had been going on, for which I was profoundly relieved. If she had been in a state of remorse it would have been hard to know what to say.

I grinned and sat down. “No, Sister. I didn’t know about the parallel universe, nor the permanent atoms. Do tell me.”

She started to draw a diagram for my benefit. “See here, child, this is the point within the circle, and these bands are the seven parallels that are the unifying stability within the atoms that are the essence of the parallel universe wherein men and angels and beasts and others . . . I think.”

Her voice trailed away as she scribbled furiously, her mind obviously racing ahead of her pencil. Suddenly she cried out, her voice squeaking with excitement: “I have it. Eureka! All has been revealed. There are eleven parallels. Not seven. Ah, the perfection of eleven. The beauty of eleven. All is revealed in eleven.”

Her voice dropped to a whisper, and she raised her eyes to heaven, her features radiant. I felt again the magnetism of this woman, who could hold me in a spell just by moving her fingers or lifting an eyebrow. Her skin was so fine and white that it seemed barely sufficient to cover the fragile bones and blue veins that meandered up her hands and arms. She sat perfectly still, a pencil poised between two fingertips, the first joint of which she could bend independently of the rest of the finger. With eyes closed, she murmured, “Eleven parallels, eleven stars . . . eleven crowns,” and I was bewitched all over again. I knew that many people could not stand her. They found her arrogant, haughty, supercilious and too clever by half – and, I had to admit, with some justification. Many thought she was an affected poseur, playing some sort of role, but I could not agree with that. I thought she was absolutely sincere in everything she said.

That she was utterly unpredictable was agreed by all, but now, it seemed, she was a shoplifter! I felt quite sure that she had no recollection of what she had been doing, and could not be held accountable for her actions. She was still murmuring, “Eleven stars . . . eleven spheres . . . eleven teaspoons.”

Suddenly she opened her eyes and snapped, “Two policemen were here this morning. Two great big clomping fellows with their boots and their notebooks, going through my drawers, as though I were a common criminal. And Sister Julienne took it all away. All my pretty things. My colouring things, my ribbons, eleven teaspoons. I had been collecting them – eleven – just think, and I needed them, every one.”

Grief seemed to overcome her. She didn’t cry, but she seemed frozen with terror, and murmured: “What is going to happen to me? What will they do to me? Why do elderly, respectable women do this sort of thing? Are we tempted, or is it a sickness? I don’t understand . . . I don’t know myself . . . ”

Her voice faltered, and the pencil dropped from her trembling fingers. She knew all right. Oh yes, she knew.

PHOSSY JAW

Nonnatus House was subdued and saddened as we awaited the prosecution of Sister Monica Joan for shoplifting. Even we young girls, always ready to giggle and joke about almost everything, were more restrained. We somehow felt it unseemly to laugh when the Sisters were suffering. Sister Monica Joan spent more of her time in her room. She did not go out of the house at all, seldom came down to the dining room, and really only left her room for Mass and the five monastic offices of the day. I sometimes saw her entering or leaving the chapel, but she hardly spoke to her Sisters. They treated her with gentleness, but she returned their smiles and kindly glances with a toss of her proud head as she went to her pew to kneel in prayer. We are all complex creatures, but prayer and downright rudeness seemed incompatible.

The only people she consistently spoke to were Mrs B and myself. Dear Mrs B, whose love of Sister Monica Joan was unconditional and unreserved, and who still didn’t believe a word of it, was up and down the stairs all day, pandering to her every wish. Sister Monica Joan treated her more like a personal lady’s maid than she had any right to, but Mrs B seemed perfectly happy with her new role, and nothing seemed to be too much trouble. She was heard muttering to herself in the kitchen one day: “China tea. I though’ as ’ow tea was just tea. But no. She wants China tea. Now where am I goin’ to get vat?” None of the grocers in Poplar seemed to stock China tea, so she went all the way up West to get it. When she proudly presented a cup to Sister Monica Joan, Sister sniffed it and sipped it, then declared that she didn’t like it. Anyone else would have been furious, but Mrs B took no offence: “Not ’a worry, my luvvy. You just ’ave a slice o’ vis honey-cake I made this mornin’, while I run along and make you a nice pot o’ tea, jus’ as ’ow you likes it.”

Sister Monica Joan could out-queen the Queen when she chose. Her attitude was serenely gracious as she inclined her head. “So kind, so kind.” Mrs B glowed with pleasure. Sister broke a piece of honey-cake with her long fingers and delicately raised it to her lips. “Delicious, quite delicious. Another slice, if it’s not too much trouble.” Mrs B, fairly bursting with happiness, ran downstairs for the umpteenth time that day.

Sister Monica Joan fascinated me as she did most people. But she never treated me as a lady’s maid. No doubt her instinct told her that it just would not work. We understood each other as equals and found endless pleasure in each other’s company. During the uncertain weeks of waiting we had many conversations in her pretty room just after lunch, or before Compline. We talked for hours. Her short-term memory was faulty – often she did not know what day or month it was – but her long-term memory was excellent. She could clearly recall facts, incidents and impressions from her Victorian childhood and her working life in the Edwardian era and the First World War. She was highly intelligent and articulate and could express herself vividly, often in beautiful language that seemed to come naturally to her. As I wanted to learn more about old Poplar, I tried questioning her. But this did not work. She was not easy to pin down, and often took no notice of what I had said or asked. She had a habit of making statements unrelated to anything that had been said beforehand, like: “That rapacious old mongrel!” And then no more! The old mongrel had obviously come into her mind unbidden and then slunk away, his tail between his legs.

Sometimes she developed her thoughts and her words flowed easily. She would make a dramatic statement: “Women are the cohesive force in society.” She picked up a pencil and balanced it delicately between her two fingertips, those astonishing fingers that she could bend at the first joint. Would she continue? To say a word might break her thoughts.

“And ‘woman’ in the slums is capable of taking on almost superhuman responsibility, from a very young age, that would crush most of us. Today they live in luxury – look at all the giddy young girls around us – they have no memory of how their mothers and grandmothers lived and died. They have no understanding of what it took to raise a family twenty or thirty years ago.”

She glanced at the pencil and twisted it round with her thumbs. Privately I questioned the “luxury” in the tenements, but said nothing for fear of chasing away her memories. She continued.

“There was no work, no food, no shoes for the children. If the rent was not paid the family would be evicted. Thrown onto the streets by the law of the land.”

She paused, and a memory flashed through my mind of something that I had seen only a few weeks earlier, when I was cycling back from a night delivery.

It had been about three o’clock in the morning, and I saw a group of people, a man and woman and several children, coming towards me, keeping close to the wall. The woman was carrying a baby and a suitcase. The man was carrying a mattress on his head, a rucksack and several bags. Each of the children, none of them over ten, was carrying a bag. They saw the headlights of my bike and turned their faces to the wall. The man said, his voice quite distinct in the darkness: “Don’ chew worry. It’s only a nurse,” and I cycled past, not realising at the time that a dramatic and tragic event was taking place; an event that used to be referred to light-heartedly as a “moonlight flit”. The family were anticipating eviction and fleeing unpaid debts. God only knows where they ended up.

Sister Monica Joan was staring at me, hard, and then she narrowed her eyes. “You remind me of Queenie – turn your head.”

I did so.

“Yes, you look just like her. I was so fond of Queenie. I delivered her three children and I was with her when she died. She was no more than your age, but she died trying to avoid eviction.”

“What happened?” I whispered.

“She went into the Bryant and May factory that made matches. They were a lovely family, and I knew them well. No fights in that family. Her husband was no more than a boy when he was killed in a riverboat accident. What could Queenie do with three little children? The Parish would have taken them from her, but she wouldn’t have it. She went into the match factory because they offered higher pay than anywhere else. Danger money, they called it, and wriggled out of any responsibility by saying the women accepted the danger when they accepted the pay. Wicked it was. Wicked. Death money it should have been called. Queenie worked there for three years and kept a roof over their heads and just enough to eat. We thought she would escape phossy jaw. But it got her, yes, it got her, and she died a terrible death. I was with her at the end. She died in my arms.”

Sister Monica Joan said no more. Could I risk a question?

“What is phossy jaw?”

“There you go. What did I say? Young girls have no idea how women had to live and work. The matches were made from raw phosphorus. The women inhaled the vapour, and the fumes got into the mucous membrane of the mouth and nose. The phosphorus penetrated the bones of the upper and lower jaw. The bones literally sloughed away. In the dark you could see the woman’s jaw glowing with a bluish light. There was nothing that could be done for these women and they died a slow and agonising death. Don’t ask me again what phossy jaw is, you ignorant girl. It’s what Queenie died of, trying to provide for her children, trying to avoid eviction.”

She glanced at me, and clamped her teeth together.

“That’s what we fought for. Girls like Queenie, hard-working, loving, young women full of life, who were driven to their deaths by the system. I was with her when she died. It was ghastly. The bones of her lower face crumbled away, and she suffered weeks of agony. There was nothing we could do. Her children went to the workhouse. There was nowhere else for them.”

The rain fell quietly on the window, and she sat quite still. I could see the pulse beating sluggishly in her long neck, carrying the life-giving blood to her brain. “Draw the curtains, please, dear.” I did so, hoping she would continue, but she only murmured, “It seems like yesterday, no time at all.” And there was no more.

The memories of people like Sister Monica Joan should be cherished. I sat on the edge of her bed, my legs drawn up underneath me, and tried to interpret from her sensitive features what was in her mind. I did not want Queenie to fade from her memory, so I asked about the children going to the workhouse, but she became irritable and snappy.

“Questions. Always questions. You give me no peace, child. Can I not expect a little repose in my old age?”

She threw her head to one side with an affected sigh. At that moment the bell sounded for Compline. “There now. See what you have done. You’ve made me late for my religious duties.”

She swept past me without a further glance and made her way to the chapel.

That evening I attended Compline. The lay staff at Nonnatus House were not bound to do so – we were not professed religious – but we could attend any offices if we wished to. I particularly loved the words of Compline, the last office of the day, and had been very affected by the story of Queenie, so I followed Sister Monica Joan into the chapel. Her behaviour was atrocious! She entered without so much as looking at anyone else, and did not take her usual pew but went straight to the visitors’ seats, took a chair and sat with her back to her Sisters and the altar. Sister Julienne quietly came up to her and gently tried to draw her into the group around the altar, but Sister Monica Joan rudely pushed her aside and even drew her chair further away so that she was looking directly at the wall. Compline proceeded in this fashion.

Sister Julienne was obviously saddened, and the love and pity in her eyes showed that she knew something strange was going on in the mind of the old lady, which she was trying to understand. Perhaps it was advancing senility, or perhaps one of those mental illnesses that make people turn away from, and become aggressive towards, the people who have been closest and most dear to them. Quietly the Sisters left the chapel. The Greater Silence had begun. After that evening Sister Monica Joan always sat with her back to her Sisters, even at Mass.

The following afternoon I went to Sister Monica Joan’s room after lunch, hoping that she would not turn against me as she had against her Sisters. She had enriched my life so much with her friendship, and I knew it would be greatly impoverished if that friendship were suddenly withdrawn.

She was sitting at her desk, alert and busy with her notebooks and pencil. She turned. “Come in, my dear, come in. This will interest you. The hexagon meets the parallel” – she was drawing a diagram again – “and the rays combine here . . . Oh bother!” Her pencil broke. “Fetch me my pencil-sharpener, will you, dear? The second drawer down in my bedside cabinet.” She continued tracing the lines across the paper with her forefinger.

I went across the room to her bedside cabinet, happy that she was not excluding me from her affections. What made me pull open the third drawer down? It was not intentional, but it almost paralysed me, and for several seconds I thought I would choke. The open drawer revealed several gold bangles, two or three rings (one of the stones looked like a sapphire), a small diamond watch, a pearl necklace, a ruby pendant on a gold chain, a gold cigarette case, a couple of gold cigarette holders studded with stones, and several tiny gold or platinum charms. The drawer was only about two inches deep and no more than ten inches wide, but it must have contained a small fortune in jewellery.

Sudden silence can attract immediate attention. She turned round and saw me transfixed, looking into the drawer. At first she did not say anything, and the silence developed an ominous quality that was broken by her hissing: “You wicked girl, prying into my affairs. How dare you? Leave the room immediately. Do you hear? Withdraw, at once.”

It was so shocking, I had to sit down on the edge of the bed. Our eyes met, mine full of grief and hers flashing with anger. Gradually the defiance crumbled away, and her old, old face assumed a tired, almost pathetic quality. She whimpered, “All my pretty things. Don’t take them away. Don’t tell anyone. They will take them all. Then they’ll take me away, like they took Aunt Anne. All my pretty things. No one knows about them. Why shouldn’t I have them? Don’t tell anyone, will you, child?” Her beautiful hooded eyes filled with tears, her lips trembled, and the toll of ninety years descended on her as she crumpled into a sobbing wreck.

It took only a second to cross the room and hold her in my arms. “Of course I won’t tell anyone. No one will ever know. It’s a secret, and we won’t tell anyone, I promise.”

Gradually her tears dried, and she blew her nose and gave me one of her saucy winks. “Those great clod-hopping policemen. They’ll never know, will they?” She raised one eyebrow and chuckled conspiratorially. “I think I will take my tea now. Go, child, and tell Mrs B that I will have some of that delicious China tea.”

“But you didn’t like the China tea.”

“Of course I liked it. Don’t be silly. You are getting muddled up, I fear!”

Laughing, I kissed her goodbye and made my way down to the kitchen to deliver the message to Mrs B.

It was not until later that evening that the awfulness of the dilemma hit me. What on earth was I going to do?

MONOPOLY

A promise is a promise, but theft is a criminal offence, and my pledge to Sister Monica Joan that I would not tell anyone about the stolen jewellery weighed upon me so heavily that I could hardly keep my mind on my work. Purloining a few pairs of silk stockings and handkerchiefs was naughty, but stealing jewels, some of them very valuable, is a serious offence. Normally nothing disturbs my sleep, but this did. If I told Sister Julienne, she would call the police again, and they would search Sister Monica Joan’s room a second time, more thoroughly than before. Perhaps there would be other things hidden away, in a box maybe, or in the bottom drawer of the bedside cabinet. The gravity of the offence might be more than doubled. They might arrest her on the spot, old as she was. I blocked out such a thought. Sister Monica Joan must be protected at all costs. I would not tell anyone.

Antenatal clinic was particularly trying that week. There were too many women, it was too hot, and there were too many small children running around. I felt like screaming. We were clearing up afterwards. Cynthia was cleaning the urine-testing equipment, I was scrubbing the work surfaces.

She said: “What’s up? You’ve not been yourself lately.”

Relief swept over me. Her deep slow voice acted like a balm to my troubled spirits. “How do you know? Is it that obvious?”

“Of course it is. I can read you like a book. Now come on, out with it. What’s up?”

Two of the Sisters were still in the clinic, packing up the antenatal notes and filing them away. I whispered, “I’ll tell you later.”

After Compline, when the Sisters had gone to bed, Cynthia and I sat in her room with an extra helping of pudding left over from lunch. Briefly I told her about the jewellery.

She whistled. “Phew! No wonder you have been quiet recently. What are you going to do?”

“I’m not going to tell anyone in authority. I’m only telling you because you guessed something was up.”

“But you can’t keep it to yourself. You’ve got to tell Sister Julienne.”

“If I do, she’ll tell the police and they might arrest Sister Monica.”

“You’re not being rational. They won’t arrest her. She’s too old.”

“How do you know? This is big stuff, I tell you. It’s not just pinching a few crayoning books.”

Cynthia was quiet for a while. “Well, I don’t think they will arrest her.”

“There you are, you don’t know. You only think, and you might be wrong. If they arrested her it would kill her.”

There was a bang on the door. “I say, you chaps, how about a game of Monopoly, what? No one in labour. All the babies tucked up in bed. What say you, eh?”

“Come in, Chummy.”

Camilla Fortescue-Cholmeley-Browne. Descended from generations of High Commissioners of India, educated at Roedean and polished by a Swiss finishing school, Chummy represented the upper crust in our small circle. She had a voice that sounded like something straight out of a comedy and she was excessively tall, which caused her to suffer much ragging. But she took it all with sweet good nature.

Chummy tried the handle. “But the door’s locked, old bean. What’s going on? Something rummy’s afoot, or I’m a brass monkey.”

Cynthia laughed and opened the door. “We’ve got some pudding in here. If you want some go and get a dish, and while you’re about it, tell Trixie.”

When she had gone, Cynthia said to me, “I think we had better tell the girls. Neither of them is in authority so the police won’t be called, and they might help. Chummy’s father was a District Commissioner or something in India and Trixie’s cousin is a solicitor, so they might know something about the law.”

I agreed. It was a relief to be sharing the responsibility after all my silent anguish.

Both girls came in with a dish and a spoon, Chummy bearing the Monopoly board. We shared out the pudding. Cynthia sat on the only chair and three of us sat on the bed. The Monopoly board was laid out on the bed, supported by books to stop it sagging. I had been against playing Monopoly, but Cynthia said it would help relieve the tension, and she was right.

We sorted out our money and tucked it in piles under our knees while Cynthia told them the story.

Trixie burst out laughing. “What a scream! So the old girl’s been pinching things left, right and centre. Tucking them under her scapular and no one would ever suspect. The cunning old vixen.” She roared with laughter.

“You cat. Don’t you call Sister Monica Joan names or I’ll—”

Cynthia intervened. “I won’t have you two squabbling in my room. If you want to start a row you can go elsewhere.”

“Sorry,” I muttered reluctantly.

“I’ll be good,” added Trixie; “I won’t even call her a female fox. But you must admit it’s a scream. I can just see the headlines: ‘The Secret Life of a Naughty Nun’.”

Trixie threw the dice. “Two sixes. I start.”

“That’s just the sort of thing I’m not going to allow to happen,” I snarled. “The police are not going to be told.” I moved my piece. “Liverpool Street. I’ll buy that.” I laid down my money with determination and took the card.

Chummy threw her dice. “This is a Council of War, and I’m with you, old horse. The important thing is to protect Sister Monica Joan from the machinations of the Constabulary, what? Mum’s the word, I say. What ho! Not a syllable. Lips sealed.”

Cynthia shook the cup slowly and thoughtfully, and rattled the dice. “Well, someone’s going to find out, even if we don’t say anything. The police will search her room again; they are not fools, you know.”

“I’ve thought of that,” I said. “Perhaps we could take the jewels out of her room and hide them.”

“Don’t be a fool.” Trixie was always too sharp for my liking. “Then you’d be an accessory.”

“What’s that? I thought accessories were things like gloves and handbags.”

“Accessories are the law. You can be an accessory before the fact, or an accessory after the fact. It doesn’t matter if it’s before or after; either way you’d be in for it.” Trixie pushed the dice to her neighbour as she spoke.

Chummy shook the dice. “I’d say she’s got to the root of the matter. If the jewels were in your possession, the Robert Peelers would say you’d egged the old lady on. Bally awkward situation, and you’d be as sore as a gumboil. No. We’ve got to prove that she didn’t know what she was doing.” Chummy moved her piece, but decided not to buy.

Trixie jumped on it in a flash. “I’ll buy that. Come off it. That old girl’s as sharp as a razor. She’s got it all weighed up. No one suspects a nun, so she’s in the clear – that’s what she thinks.”

“I’m not so sure.” Cynthia moved her piece. “The Angel Islington. I’ll buy that. I like the blue properties. I think her mind is definitely disturbed.”

“Don’t give me that one,” Trixie snapped. “She’s as crafty as they come. Look how she manipulates everyone to get her own way. She knows exactly what she’s doing. Another visit from the police would do her good. I’ll put a house on each of my properties please, Bank.”

Chummy was Bank and sorted out the high finance. “Well, I can’t agree, old sport. I think another visit from the police would give her a stroke.”

“Of course it would.” I threw the dice so hard they overshot the board and landed on the floor. “The police will never know. I’ll see to that.”

Cynthia, who, as the room-owner, had the right to sit on the only chair, retrieved the dice. “I have a feeling it’s not as easy as that. You have to tell ‘the whole truth and nothing but the truth’.”

“That’s only in court,” I said, “and we’re not in court . . . yet. Park Lane – I’ll buy that.”

“You’re not thinking straight, idiot, I’ve already got Mayfair. It won’t do you any good. Anyway, if you end up in court giving evidence, you’ll have to tell the whole truth.”

I decided not to buy Park Lane and Trixie gleefully snapped it up.

“If you don’t, it’s called ‘obstructing the course of justice’. I’ve heard my cousin talk about that.”

It was Chummy’s throw. “I’ve heard of that one, too. It’s the same sort of thing as ‘withholding evidence’, which is a serious offence. I say, this pudding’s no end good. Is there any more, madam hostess?”

“No, but I’ve got some biscuits here in my wardrobe. Just let me move the chair and I’ll get them. How about a coffee?”

Trixie shook her head. “I’ve got a much better idea. My brother bought me a couple of bottles of sherry for Christmas; he thought I needed cheering up, stuck in a dreary hole like a convent. We’ll have them now. It will help the discussion. We’ve got to come to a sensible decision about this. Get your tooth mugs, girls.”

Trixie slid off the bed and Chummy remembered some chocolates and crystallised ginger left over from a previous occasion. I ran down the passage to get my tooth mug and some figs and dates, to which I was partial.

We settled down again around the Monopoly board, which had wobbled with all the movement on and off the bed. After some argument about whose piece was where, and which houses were on whose properties, we poured the sherry, took handfuls of food, and continued the game.

Trixie was clearly winning. She had houses on Park Lane and Mayfair, and the dice fell in her favour. Everyone seemed to stop there and had to pay rent. Groans all round. The sherry slid down nicely, assisted by all the sweet food. Chummy made a general point that had been in all of our minds.

“Where do you think, the old lady got all those sparklers from? I say, this sherry’s going down a treat. I always say sherry tastes so much better out of a tooth mug than one of those bally little glasses, what? Perhaps the dregs of toothpaste in the bottom of the mug give it that special flavour. I did a cordon bleu course, you know, but the teacher never mentioned that. If I ever go back there, I’ll recommend it. Hell’s bells! Go back five places – that puts me in jail!”

Trixie giggled. “We’ll get Sister Monica Joan in jail before the night’s out. Sorry! Sorry! Don’t take on so. Just stirring it up. Have another sherry!”

Cynthia filled my mug. “Yes, where did she get it from? There’s nowhere in Poplar that sells expensive jewellery.”

Trixie had the answer – inevitably. “I reckon she’s been going to Hatton Garden. It’s not far from here, only a short bus ride. A pious-looking old nun going around the shops and warehouses. Easy. No one would think to suspect her, the wicked old thing.”

“She’s not wicked,” I shouted. “Don’t you dare. She’s—”

“Now, now, you two. My turn and I collect £200 for passing Go. Come on, Bank. Wake up. I want my money.”

Chummy jerked herself upright. “I’m beginning to think the police have to be told because of this business of withholding the course.”

“The what?”

“The course of evidence, of course.”

“You’re not making sense.”

“Yes I am. You’re not listening.”

Cynthia was carefully tucking her £200 down her bra. “I think you mean the course of justice.”

“That’s what I said.”

“No you didn’t. You said the course of evidence.”

“Well, same thing, and it’s an offence.”

“What is?”

“Holding the evidence, old bean. And it’s not allowed.”

“You mean withholding the evidence.”

“That’s what I said.”

“No you didn’t. You said holding it.”

“Look here, this is going round in circles. Anyway it’s my turn.” Trixie picked up a card from the pack. “So you reckon we’ve got to get the police in again?”

“Yes, because of obstructing, old thing.”

“No you don’t. You want to get the police in again because you fancy that policeman.”

“I don’t. Don’t you dare.” Chummy gulped down her sherry and went bright red.

“Yes you do. You’re sweet on him. I’ve seen you go all coy and giggly when he comes to the house.”

“You’re a regular shower. You’ve no right to come out with whoppers like that, you gumboil, you.”

Poor Chummy looked as if she were on the verge of tears, so Cynthia came to her rescue.

“You’re just stirring it up again, Trixie. You haven’t looked at your card yet. Turn it over.”

Trixie did so, and gave a howl of anguish. “I’m ruined. I’m bankrupt. This isn’t fair. Make repairs on all your houses. I shall have to sell. Give me another drink. I’ve got to think about this one.” She took another mug of sherry and another chocolate.

“I’ll take Mayfair and Park Lane off you at half-price,” I said magnanimously.

“No you won’t. I’m not selling at half-price.”

“You’ve no option.”

“That’s what it is – obtion.” Chummy was obviously thinking deeply, as she gazed into her mug. “Obtion – the course of justice. And it’s an obtion, and you mustn’t do it.”

“There’s no such thing as an obtion.”

“Yes there is, and you mustn’t obtion the justice of the course. I know it. My father told me. Someone he knew obtioned the justice course, and I can’t remember what happened, but it happened.”

“Well thanks for nothing. A lot of help, I’m sure. Look, I’m going to auction these. Does anyone want these priceless properties? I’ll take eighty per cent. You won’t get a better chance. All right then, seventy per cent, I’m not going to sink to half price, I’ll have to do something else.”

At that moment Chummy’s legs got the cramp. They were too long to be kept in a confined space, and with a groan she stretched out, knocking the board for six.

“Well, that’s that,” said Trixie with satisfaction. “I’m the clear winner.”

“No you’re not. You haven’t made repairs to your houses.”

“I don’t have to.”

“Yes you do.”

“Now don’t you two start that again. Help me to clear up the board and the pieces. Chummy doesn’t look as if she’s going to be much help. There’s a drop left in the bottom of this second bottle. Do you want to share it between you? I’ve had enough.”

We did. Cynthia was shaking Chummy.

“Look, this is my bed. You go to your own bed.”

Suddenly Trixie grabbed Cynthia’s arm. “Oh my God! I’ve just had a dreadful thought.”

“What?” we said in chorus.

“Chummy’s on first call tonight.”

“Never! Oh no! What’s to be done?”

The three of us gazed at Chummy stretched full length, smiling sweetly and fast asleep on Cynthia’s bed. We looked at each other, and looked again at the sleeping form.

Cynthia spoke. “I’ll take first call tonight. There’s nothing else for it. Trixie was out last night, so I’ll take it if a call comes in. I’ve had less than you two anyway. We might as well leave Chummy here, and I’ll sleep in her room. We must throw away these bottles and open the windows to let in some fresh air, in case one of the Sisters comes up here tomorrow. Go and open the windows on the landing, at both ends, and in the bathroom. We’ve got to get a good draught blowing through.”

Thankful for Cynthia’s common sense I went to open the windows. The cold air hit me like a pain, and my head began to reel. The window flew out of my grasp and struck the brickwork. Cynthia came up and secured it.

“I’m going to wash these mugs and wash out the bottles too, to get rid of the smell. You had better go to bed. You’ll be on duty at 8 a.m. Don’t listen for the telephone. I’ll take any calls.”

She went to Chummy’s room and I to mine. For several nights I had lain awake, but that night I slept like a baby.

AUNT ANNE

As I entered Sister Monica Joan’s room she glared at me. “I’ll murder that fellow one of these days. You see if I don’t. The dirty old goat!”

Strong language for a reverend Sister. It was intriguing, but I knew from experience that straight questions seldom got straight answers. However, if I entered Sister Monica Joan’s world and, as far as possible, relived it with her, she would often recall whole scenes from long ago. So I said, “He’s always up to something. What is it this time?”

“You’ve seen him at it?”

I nodded, and waited.

“He’s always there. Lah-di-dahing around the factory gates in all his finery – silk shirt, bow tie and gold watch chain. I’ll give him a silk shirt – I’ll strangle him with his silk shirt, the old rascal.”

This was going to be rich. She needed no prompting to continue. “Those poor girls in the shirt-making factories. They are the lowest paid of all the workers, and they work the longest hours, too. There’s a grass bank outside the factory gate – you know the one I mean?” I nodded. “Well, he stands there in all his finery, twirling his moustache, and as the girls come out of the gate he throws coins, mostly copper, some silver, up the bank towards the wall, shouting. ‘Scramble, girls, scramble for it.’ And up the grass the girls go, shouting and pushing and laughing. There might even be a fight to get at a silver sixpence. The dirty old man.”

I was beginning to wonder why such a philanthropic act should provoke such vitriol.

Sister Monica continued even more angrily. “It’s degrading them. Those girls wear no knickers, you know. How can they afford such a luxury? That’s what he’s after, the debauched old satyr. And when they are menstruating they have no protection. The blood just runs down their legs. The smell is supposed to be enticing. I don’t know, perhaps it is. But it’s degrading for those poor girls who scramble for a penny that will buy them a bun or a drop of milk. I can’t bear to see women exploited in that way.”

I finally understood what she was on about. “But women have always been exploited for their sexuality.”

“Yes, I suppose so, and always will be, I fear. And no doubt some of them want to be. I dare say half the girls scrambling up the bank and sliding down with their skirts around their necks know what they are doing. But it pains me to see them degraded.”

She did not continue with her thoughts, but asked me to go and see Mrs B about tea, which I did. When I returned to the room, Sister Monica Joan was not there. The jewels had been uppermost in my mind for days, so quietly I looked into the bedside cabinet. The drawer was empty.

As she had made no reference in the past few days to my earlier discovery, I had assumed that she had forgotten all about it. Perhaps I had fondly imagined that she had forgotten about the jewels. But now I knew she had not forgotten a thing and had taken the precaution of hiding them elsewhere. But where? Had she tucked them into her mattress? She was quite capable of cutting a small hole, stuffing them in and sewing it up neatly. No one would ever know.

Trixie’s image of a crafty old vixen came to mind. Perhaps she was. Perhaps she was piling up wealth for some hidden purpose of her own. But at the age of ninety? It was hardly likely.

She swept back into the room in high spirits. No remorse, no shame that she had been caught stealing, no fear of future discoveries. Perhaps she had hidden them in the lavatory cistern or behind the bath.

Her opening comment was, as usual, quite baffling. “Twenty-seven dinner services, each with ninety-six pieces. I ask you, my dear, what sensible family could possibly need twenty-seven dinner services?”

Such a question requires a little thought before it can be answered.

Whilst I hesitated, she continued, “And fourteen sets of silver-plated cutlery. Would you believe it, every single piece, every fish fork or sugar tong, had to be counted and checked before it could be put away. Have you ever heard such nonsense? And they thought I would be content to spend my life counting fish forks.”

I was beginning to understand. One had to get used to following sideways the many strands of Sister Monica Joan’s thoughts. Perhaps the dinner services and the fish forks related to her family and her girlhood in the 1870s and 80s.

Her next statement confirmed this. “My poor mother was a slave to such possessions. For all her finery and ‘Your Ladyship’ she was more of a servant than her own servants. I doubt she knew a day of real freedom in her whole life. Poor woman. I loved her, and pitied her, but we never understood each other.”

Some things never change, I thought, remembering the mutual incomprehension which was about the only thing my mother and I ever shared.

“My father ruled her life. Every move. Do you know, my dear, he had all her hair cut off and her teeth pulled out when she was less than thirty-five?”

I gasped: “How? Why?”

“She was never strong, always ailing. I don’t know what was wrong with her, except perhaps that her corsets were too tight.” Corsets. The accepted instrument of torture for women

“I remember it quite well. I was only a little girl but I remember my mother lying in bed with doctors present. One of them told my father that all her strength was going to her hair and her teeth and that they would have to go. She was never consulted in the matter, she told me many years later. Her head was shaved and all her teeth extracted. I was in the nursery and heard her screaming. It was barbaric, my dear, and ignorant. I was frightened when I saw her later: her face swollen; blood all over her pillow and sheets; a bald head. She was crying, poor woman. I was about twelve years old and something happened to me in that moment. Something revolted inside me and I knew that women suffered through man’s ignorance. As I stood by her bed, I changed from a carefree little girl into a thinking woman. I vowed I would not follow the pattern of my mother, my aunts and their friends. I would not become a wife whose husband could order that her teeth be pulled out, or who could be locked up like poor Aunt Anne. I would not spend my life counting fish forks. I would not be dominated by any man.”

Sister Monica Joan’s face assumed an expression of haughty defiance. The young can be very lovely, but the faces of the old can be truly beautiful. Every line and fold, every contour and wrinkle of Sister Monica Joan’s fine white skin revealed her character, strength, courage, humanity and irrepressible humour.

I said, “Several times you have mentioned that your Aunt Anne was locked up. Why was this?”

“Oh my dear, it was iniquitous. Aunt Anne, my mother’s sister, was put into a lunatic asylum because her husband was fed up with her!”

“What! You are joking,” I retorted

“Don’t you accuse me of joking, you saucy girl. If you are going to be rude to me you can leave the room.” She turned her head and arched her eyebrows, slightly dilating her nostrils, the epitome of offended dignity, although I had a feeling she was putting it on for effect.

“Oh, come off it, Sister. You know that was just an expression. What happened to Aunt Anne? – that’s what’s important.”

She turned to me and giggled like a child caught doing something naughty. But her expression quickly changed.

“Aunt Anne, dear Aunt Anne. She was my favourite aunt. Always pretty, always sweet and gentle with a soft laugh. When she visited the house she always came up to the nursery to spend time with us, to tell stories and play games with us. We all loved her. Then suddenly she came no more. No more.”

Sister Monica Joan sat as still as a statue, gazing out of the window. The sun was shining and she moaned, “It’s too bright, it hurts my eyes. Draw the curtain across, will you, child?”

I did so and when I returned she had her handkerchief to her eyes. “We never saw her again. When we asked our mother she just said, ‘Hush, dears, we don’t talk about Aunt Anne.’ We kept thinking she would come back with her games and her stories; but she never did.”

She sighed deeply and balanced her chin on her long fingers, lost in thought. “Poor woman, poor dear woman. She was defenceless.”

“Did you ever find out what had happened?” I enquired.

“Yes, years later I found out. Her husband tired of her and wanted another woman. So he quite simply spread the story around that she was weak in the head and going mad. Perhaps he ill-treated her; perhaps his repeated insinuations really did unbalance her mind, so that she began to doubt her own sanity. We don’t know, but it is not difficult to drive someone mad. Eventually her husband persuaded two doctors to certify that she was incurably insane. It would not have been difficult in those days. Perhaps the two doctors were cronies of his. Perhaps they were paid to certify. I do not suppose she was ever examined properly by an independent and impartial psychiatrist, as she would be today. It would have been very easy for him to choose his own doctors and the certificate was irreversible. Aunt Anne was taken away, taken from her children, who from then on were motherless. She was locked up in an asylum, where she remained for the rest of her life. She died in 1907.”

“That is one of the most shocking stories I have ever heard,” I said.

“It was not uncommon. It was a very clever way for a rich man to get rid of an unwanted wife. He had to pay for the asylum, of course, but that would not trouble a rich man. After a period of years, I don’t know how many, he could get a divorce with no scandal. Easy!”

“And did the woman have no one to speak for her?”

“Oh yes, her father or a brother could, and probably would. It was not always plain sailing for an unscrupulous husband. But my grandfather, Anne’s father, was dead, and there were no brothers, only four daughters in the family. So poor Anne had no one to protect her.”

“Could her mother or sisters not speak for her?”

“Women had no voice in any matter. It had been the same for centuries. That is what we fought for.” Her eyes flashed and she banged the desk. “Independence for women. Freedom from male dominance.”

“Were you a suffragette?” I asked.

“Bah! Suffragettes. I’ve no time for suffragettes. They made the biggest mistake in history. They went for equality. They should have gone for power!” With a dramatic gesture she swept her arm across the desk, scattering pencils, papers and notebooks to the floor. “But I broke the mould in my family when I announced that I was going to be a nurse. Oh, you should have heard the rumpus. It would have been funny if it had not been so deadly serious. My father locked me in my room and threatened to keep me there indefinitely. Then he tried to insinuate that I was mad and should be confined to an asylum like poor Aunt Anne. But times were changing. Women were beginning to break the chains of their bondage. Florence Nightingale led the way and many others followed. I wrote to Miss Nightingale from my prison in my father’s house. She was quite an old lady by then, but she was very powerful. She spoke to Queen Victoria on my behalf. I don’t know what they said, but the result was that I was released from captivity. My poor docile mother never really recovered from the shock of having a rebel daughter. Nonetheless, I was thirty-two before I could break away from my father’s domination and start nursing. That was when my life began.”

The chapel bell rang for Vespers.

Sister Monica Joan took up her black veil and adjusted it over her white wimple. She turned to me with a naughty wink. “If my father had seen me as a nun, he would have had a stroke. But mercifully he was spared, because he died the same year that the old Queen died. Hand me my prayer book, child.”

It was on the floor, along with the other items that had been pushed from her desk. I retrieved everything that was scattered around, placed them all on the desk and handed her the prayer book.

“Now for it,” she said, her head held high, her eyebrows arched in a slightly supercilious curve. A mischievous grin crinkled the corners of her mouth and eyes. “Now for it,” she said again as she swept out of the room.

There was nothing cringing or pathetic about Sister Monica Joan. She was going to battle it out to the end. If she couldn’t face her Sisters in chapel, she would sit with her back to them, and if they didn’t like it, they could lump it.

After the evening visits we took supper in the kitchen. This was a meal prepared by ourselves, because we all came in at different times. We were looking the worse for wear, particularly Chummy, who couldn’t hold her drink but did not want to admit it, and had been protesting all day that she thought she had a touch of flu. Chummy was, in addition, torn by a feeling of guilt because she was supposed to have been on first call that night and it had been Cynthia who had gone out at the bleakest hour before dawn, 3 a.m. We sat down around the kitchen table, eating our peanut-butter sandwiches.

“They’ve gone,” I whispered, in case any of the Sisters were in the hallway.

“What’s gone?”

“The jewels, they’ve gone. They are not in the drawer.” Trixie eyed me dubiously. “Are you sure they were there in the first place? After all, we’ve only got your word for it. Perhaps you dreamed the whole thing. Sister Evangelina calls you Dolly Daydream, and not without reason.”

“I did not dream it. I tell you, I saw them and now they’ve gone.”

“Well she must have hidden them somewhere else, the cunning old—”

Cynthia stopped her. “Don’t you two start on that again. I’m too tired to put up with you squabbling like a couple of children. Pack it in.”

Chummy groaned and spoke in a weary voice: “I second that motion, Chairman. My poor bally head feels like a suet pudding that’s gone cold and been warmed up again for the servants. Did I hear you say that the jewels have gone?”

“Yes.”

“Well strike me pink.”

Trixie was quick off the mark. “She’s hidden them. It’s as clear as daylight. She knows she’s been rumbled, so she’s hidden them again. You can’t tell me she doesn’t know what she’s doing. Of course she does.” Trixie cut another slice of bread and dug her knife into the jar.

Cynthia was less emphatic. “Well, this does throw rather a different light on things. I still don’t think she knows what she’s doing.”

“Oh, go on with you. She pulls the wool over everyone’s eyes. But she doesn’t fool me for a moment,” said cynical Trixie.

Chummy was licking the peanut butter off the knife.

“Premeditation. That’s what the constabulary will be after. Were her actions premeditated or were they not? If we’re going to protect Sister Monica Joan, Counsel for the Defence, that’s what we’ve got to prove. But at the moment, my poor bally head aches so much I can’t think straight. I’m going to bed. Who’s on first call?”

“You are.”

“Groan, groan and thrice groan. That settles it. I must get in a bit of the old sweet slumber before that accursed bell pitches me out onto the floor. Nighty-night all. Sweet dreams.”

Cynthia stood up. “And I’m going to bed too. Don’t you two start quarrelling as soon as you’re alone.”

Trixie looked at me when they had gone. “I reckon there’s not much more to say. Chummy hit the nail on the head. Was it, or was it not, premeditated? Come on, let’s do the washing up.”

RECREATION HOUR

Recreation in a convent is a time when the nuns can let their hair down – metaphorically, of course. Usually the recreation hour lasts from 2 p.m. to 3 p.m. With the morning work completed, lunch taken and no religious duties to perform until Vespers at 4.30 p.m., the nuns are free. But “free” only within the discipline of the order. At Nonnatus House, during the recreation hour, the nuns withdrew collectively to their sitting room, where they would engage in needlework and polite conversation.

How these reverend ladies found time for it defeats me to this day. Each of the nuns seemed capable of packing forty-eight hours of work into every twenty-four and each of them did it with serenity and grace. Sister Julienne, for example, who was Sister-in-Charge, was not only the senior nurse and midwife with overall responsibility for the practice, but she was also in charge of the smooth running of the house. She was accountable for maintaining the monastic tradition of religious observance, instructing the novices, teaching the student midwives, acting as hostess to numerous house guests, handling convent finances and keeping the accounts. She took her fair share of district visits, including night calls, as well as finding time to engage in needlework and polite conversation during her brief hours of recreation when most people would want to lie horizontal with their feet up.

It was their practice, as I have said, for the nuns to retire to their sitting room after lunch. But occasionally Sister Julienne would say at lunch time, “I think we will take recreation in the nurses’ sitting room today,” whereupon the Sisters would look with a particular benevolence upon us girls, as though they were granting us some special favour. The nuns would then go to their cells (nuns sleep in cells, not bedrooms) to collect their work, and we would rush to our sitting room to clear away dirty plates, mugs, ashtrays, magazines, glasses, empty chocolate boxes, biscuit tins, hairbrushes, medical books (yes, occasionally, we put in a bit of study), and all the paraphernalia essential to the life of the average young girl.

The Sisters entered and we smiled sweetly, as though we hadn’t been frantically clearing things away for the past five minutes. Sister Evangelina, not famous for her tact, glared around her, growling, “Well, Nurse Browne, I believe your mother is coming to visit you at the weekend. You had better tidy the place up before she comes.”

“Oh, but we have just had a thumping good tidy up for you, Sister.” Chummy was not offended, simply puzzled.

Trixie gave a shrill laugh and was about to speak, but Cynthia, the peacemaker, retorted, “We’ll get out the Hoover, the polish and the dusters before the weekend, Sister.”

Sister Evangelina snorted her disapproval and opened her workbox. Everyone did the same except Trixie and me. Neither of us owned a workbox; we did not sew or knit for recreation.

Sister Julienne was concerned. “Oh, my dears, perhaps you could each make a little tea cosy for the Christmas Fayre. Tea cosies always go down well. People buy them for Christmas presents.”

Material, stuffing, scissors, needles and cotton were provided and conversation centred on the desirability of a large number of tea cosies to boost the convent’s finances for the coming year. As well as everything else, the Sisters not only organised and ran a sale each year, but made a large number of the items to be sold. For many decades the finance for supporting the midwifery practice had, to some extent, depended on the monies collected at the Christmas Fayre.

The Sisters were making many small items considered to be useful or necessary in those days, such as handkerchief sachets, glove folders, pincushions, cushion covers, tray cloths, tablecloths, pillowcases and virtually anything else onto which a bird or a daisy-chain could be embroidered. Conversation centred on the saleability of each item for the Christmas Fayre. The need for a large number of chair-back covers puzzled me and, even more, the name by which they were called – ‘antimacassars’ – until I learned that they were intended to protect the back of a chair from the grease on men’s hair. Many men plastered their hair with Brylcreem in those days and the oil used in Victorian times was Macassar.

I looked around me with pleasure. It was all very genteel and sweet; it could have been a scene from any period in history when ladies had almost nothing else to do. Sister Julienne was making rag dolls with great speed and efficiency, creating tiny waistcoats and shoes, fixing button eyes and snipping wool hair. Sister Bernadette was an expert in golliwogs. Children are not allowed to have such toys today, nor even to use the word, but in those days they were all the fashion. Sister Evangelina was hemming handkerchiefs, and Novice Ruth – what on earth was she doing? Novice Ruth had a wooden object rather like a large cotton reel. Four nails, without heads, had been hammered into the top. The Novice was plying heavy linen thread round and round the nails with a small blunt instrument and pulling the thread over the nails at each turn. Through the centre of the wooden reel a woven band emerged. It was already a yard or two long, but still Novice Ruth continued plying the thread and weaving.

What on earth was it? I watched, fascinated. She must have read my mind because she laughed and said, “You wonder what I am doing. This will be my girdle. I am approaching the time of my first profession, when I shall take my first vows. A Sister wears a woven girdle wound three times around her waist and, at the end, we tie three knots. This is a constant reminder of our three vows of poverty, chastity and obedience.”

She had such a beautiful face and such a radiant smile. Her vocation clearly filled her with joy.

Conversation continued about the Christmas Fayre and who should attend the stalls. Mrs B as usual, was in charge of the cake stall, and Fred, the boiler man, always managed a very good stall selling second-hand tools, which attracted men to the Fayre. It was Fred’s proud boast that he could sell anything. Give him a bag of bent, rusty nails and he would sell them for you.

The doorbell rang.

“Now who can that be?” said Sister. “We’re not expecting anyone. Would you answer it, please, Nurse Browne.”

Chummy laid down her expert embroidery and left the room. We continued talking about the Christmas Fayre, speculating if the band from the SPY Club could be asked to provide some entertainment. Should they be paid and, if so, how much? “How about tea and cakes?” someone ventured. “Wouldn’t that be sufficient payment?”

“What on earth has happened to Nurse Browne?” Sister Evangelina grunted. “She’s been gone at least five minutes. It doesn’t take that long to answer the door.”

At that moment Chummy re-entered the room. She was bright red. She took a step forward and kicked a waste-paper basket, which shot into the air, spilling its contents as it flew. It hit Sister Evangelina on the side of the head, knocking her veil and wimple sideways. The shock caused her to prick her finger and blood spurted over the handkerchief she was hemming.

“You clumsy fool,” she shouted. “Look what you have made me do.” She sucked her finger and waved the ruined handkerchief at Chummy.

Sister Julienne took charge. “Never mind, Sister, use the handkerchief to bind the finger or we shall have blood all over the other work. Better to spoil one item than half a dozen? Now, Nurse Browne, what on earth is the matter?”

Chummy opened her mouth and her lips moved but no sound came. She tried again with no success.

The Sisters were seriously concerned. “My poor child, do sit down.”

Chummy sat down and again tried to speak. Her vocal chords finally responded and the words came out in a rush. “Please, Sister, the policeman is at the door and he wants to see you.”

Trixie gave a scream of laughter. “Didn’t I tell you! There, look, Chummy’s sweet on the policeman!”

Cynthia kicked her hard.

Sister Julienne looked troubled. “Oh dear, oh bother. I’ll go at once.”

We all looked at one another. Sister Julienne would only use such an extreme expression as “oh bother” in an extreme situation.

The knowledge that the policeman was at the door again gave me a nasty jolt. I had managed to lay aside the awful dilemma of the jewels found in Sister Monica Joan’s room. I looked anxiously at Cynthia, who was embroidering a cushion cover and who refused to look up. All the Sisters were silently bent over their work. Chummy took up her sewing again but her hands were shaking so much that she could not control the needle.

Only Trixie spoke. “Well, now for it. They’ve come to take her away. There’ll be a right old rumpus.”

Sister Evangelina turned on her. “Hold your tongue, you thoughtless, loud-mouthed girl. Just keep quiet for once.”

“Sorry, I’m sure.” Trixie didn’t look at all sorry.

I managed to catch Cynthia’s eye and we exchanged a look of alarm. Novice Ruth stifled a tear and worked furiously at the girdle she was making. Sister Bernadette was stuffing a golliwog, poking the stuffing down hard into the legs. The clock ticked and no one spoke except for the occasional “Pass the scissors, please”, or “Have you got the light-blue thread over there?”

The soft footsteps of Sister Julienne were heard and we all looked up expectantly, but she passed the door and went upstairs. Glances of real anguish were exchanged between the Sisters.

All the muscles around my chest and stomach seemed to tighten at once and I felt hot all over. “Could we open a window, do you think?” I enquired.

“I was about to suggest the same thing,” said Sister Bernadette, and Cynthia, who was nearest to the window, stood up and opened it. The clock ticked on and we continued sewing. No one spoke.

Again footsteps were heard – descending the stairs this time. We all looked up, each with the same thought in mind. What were they going to do with her?

The door burst open and Sister Julienne stood there, her features filled with joy. “They are dropping all charges and taking no further action! Oh, the relief, I can’t tell you the relief. I have just been up to see Sister Monica Joan to convey the news, although I am not sure that she understood what I was saying because she just looked at me in complete silence.”

“Praise the Lord,” said Sister Evangelina, sniffing hard. She blew her nose loudly into the blood-stained handkerchief and wiped the corner of her eye. “Let us praise the Lord for his mercy.”

We were all overjoyed at the news, but Sister Evangelina displayed more emotion and relief than anyone else in the room. Her reaction brought home to me the genuine goodness and charity of the woman who had suffered so much from Sister Monica Joan’s verbal cruelty. The apparent dislike between the two women was not of her making, and a less loving soul might have been indifferent, if not secretly glad, to see her Sister’s downfall.

Sister Julienne sat down. “This calls for a celebration so I have asked Mrs B to bring up an early tea and we will have jam with our scones today.”

Mrs B came bouncing in with a large tray. “There, din’ I tell yer? As innocen’ as a new-born babe, she is. An’ them police, they wants their bleedin’ ’eads (beggin’ yer pardon, Sisters) bangin’ together, vey do. An’ I’d like to ge’ me ’ands on vat lyin’ coster, I would.”

Sister Julienne burst out laughing. “You’ll do no such thing. We don’t want you had up for assault. Perhaps you would pour the tea, Novice Ruth, and pass the scones.”

Mrs B withdrew. The tea and scones were passed round, not forgetting the jam. Everyone was in festive mood.

Sister Julienne continued her story. “Apparently the legal adviser to the police has suggested that, due to the age of the suspect and the triviality of the items found in her room, the police might find themselves in a position of ridicule if they were to proceed with prosecution. The costers involved have been informed that a charge will not be brought by the Public Prosecutor but they would be within their rights to bring a civil action. Due to the fact that a civil case costs so much money and that they would be unlikely to get compensation, damages or costs, the costers have decided not to proceed.” Sister Julienne gave a huge sigh of relief, caressing her cup as she raised it to her lips.

We four girls could not share the happiness of the Sisters. We knew something of which they were completely unaware. The knowledge of the jewels in Sister Monica Joan’s possession weighed heavily upon us. I was terrified that Trixie would blurt out something ill-considered that would give the game away. Cynthia and I exchanged glances and clearly the same thought was going through her mind also. She was sitting near Trixie so she nudged her and I was grateful to see her mouth the words, “We’ll talk later.” A plan was forming in my mind to remove the jewels from Sister Monica Joan’s room, take them to Hatton Garden and just leave them somewhere. My mind was racing – yes, that would be the answer, or perhaps I could leave them outside a police station a long way away, so no one would suspect. But where would I find them? The beastly things had gone from Sister’s bedside cabinet. Perhaps I could talk to her about it. Would she see reason? It would be good to talk to Cynthia later; she was always so sensible.

Sister Julienne said, “I knew our prayers would be answered. I do so believe in the power of prayer. No need for a lawyer now, eh?” and she giggled, happily. I squirmed – if only she knew – and my resolve to find the wretched jewels and dispose of them grew firmer.

Tea was being cleared away, the sewing brought out again, and we all settled down to work.

The door opened. Sister Monica Joan stood at the threshold. She did not enter the room immediately but stood quite still, one hand resting on the door. She was wearing her full outdoor habit, with the long black veil, perfectly adjusted over the white wimple. She looked magnificent. Everyone stopped talking, laid down their sewing and looked up at her. Yet she did not move, her hand remained motionless on the door handle, her hooded eyes were half-closed, her eyebrows raised, and a slightly supercilious smile played around the corners of her mouth. She had a magnetic quality about her that forbade speech.

Then she moved for the first time; slowly and deliberately she turned her head, beautifully poised on its long neck, and scrutinised each person in the room with a level and unfaltering gaze. She looked each of us straight in the eye for a few seconds, then turned her head very slightly and looked at the next person. No one dared to speak or move. I have never seen a more riveting performance in my life.

It was Sister Monica Joan herself who broke the silence. She tilted her head slightly to one side and raised an eyebrow. A naughty little grin lit her features. “Greetings all. Did I ever tell you about the Thief of Baghdad? They boiled him in oil, don’t you know; or perhaps they drowned him in a butt of Malmsey wine. One or the other, I’m not sure which; but they did him in, I’m sure of that.”

Sister Julienne rose, both arms outstretched. “Oh my dear, say no more about that dreadful business. Not another word. It was all a misunderstanding and we have put it behind us. But come in and join our happy circle. I see you have your knitting bag with you.”

Sister Monica Joan graciously consented to be led into the room. Sister Evangelina rose from her seat. “Have this chair, my dear; it is the most comfortable.” Sister Monica Joan sat down.

The jewels! They flashed and glistened into my mind. They had to be disposed of and now was the perfect time. Sister Monica Joan was knitting quietly and everyone else was sewing and chatting. There might never be such an opportunity again.

I excused myself and left the room. At the bottom of the stairs I removed my shoes, so that no one would hear footsteps. It was the work of a moment to reach Sister Monica Joan’s room. Quietly I entered and wedged a chair under the handle, in case anyone tried to enter. The search started. I scrutinised every inch of that room, every drawer, every shelf, every cupboard; I felt all over the mattress, the pillows, the cushions; the tops and the hems of the curtains. I rummaged through her underwear and her habits – it wasn’t seemly to pry into a nun’s private things, but it had to be done. Nothing! Nowhere! My earlier thought about the lavatory cistern returned, and I raced along the corridor to the bathroom. Still nothing. I began to feel panic grip me; recreation hour must surely be drawing to a close. If one of the Sisters found me on their private landing or in their bathroom, there would be a lot of explaining to do. Running downstairs and replacing my shoes took only a few seconds, and I was back in the sitting room just as the ladies began to fold up their sewing and talk about the evening visits.

I muttered my excuses: “I’m sorry, Sister, I don’t seem to have got on very well with the tea cosy. I don’t think I’m much good at sewing.”

Sister Julienne smiled. “That’s perfectly all right, we can’t all be good at the same things.”

She turned to Sister Monica Joan. “Can I help you, dear? That is a lovely baby’s shawl you are knitting. Can I help you put it away?”

She took the handle of the knitting bag. Sister Monica Joan grabbed the bag back. “Don’t touch it, leave it to me.” She pulled the side nearest to her, but the handle on the other side was caught over Sister Julienne’s wrist. The seam burst and a shower of rings, watches, gold chains and bracelets was flung across the floor.

THE TRIAL

Total silence followed. The two halves of the torn knitting bag were held by Sister Julienne and Sister Monica Joan, who looked at each other for what seemed an eternity.

Sister Monica Joan was the first to speak. “Inanimate objects have a life of their own, independent of the creature, have you not noticed?” She glanced at each of us in turn. “And whenever an atom gets excited it creates magnetic fields.”

“Are you suggesting, Sister, that these inanimate objects were somehow magnetised into your knitting bag, independent of human activity?” Sister Julienne’s voice was sarcastic.

“Most certainly. ‘There are stranger things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in your philosophy, Horatio.’”

“Don’t call me Horatio.”

“Poof, hoity-toity.” Sister Monica Joan was aloof. “The difficulty of comparative study is the incomprehension of lesser minds. But keep the trinkets. Use them well. In the latter days they will be interpreted in a mystery play, a drama, an allegory. Use them well, I say; they have their own life, their own force, their own destiny.” And with that she floated out of the room.

Trixie’s suppressed giggles exploded. She turned to me. “I believe you now. I thought your fevered imagination was working overtime. The cunning old . . . Sorry, Sister.”

Sister Julienne looked at me. “How long have you known about this?”

“About two weeks.” I was feeling very uncomfortable.

“And you said nothing to me?”

I could only mutter a feeble: “I’m sorry, Sister.”

“Come to my office after supper and before Compline. We must gather up these things.” She bent down and started picking up the jewels. We all helped in silence.

It was difficult to concentrate on my evening round, and babies that would not feed seemed perverse and irritating. Part of me was glad that the secret, which had oppressed me for days, was at last out in the open. On the other hand I was furious with myself for not having managed to dispose of the jewels before Sister Julienne found them. The knowledge that she required me in her office later gave me an uneasy feeling, and my legs turned the pedals reluctantly as I cycled back to Nonnatus House.

As soon as I entered the clinical room I knew, from the atmosphere, that the police were in the house. Usually, after a day’s work, a group of young girls would make quite a lot of noise, chattering and giggling as they packed their bags and cleared up; but not on this occasion.

Novice Ruth looked up. Her eyes were red and her voice seemed subdued. “You are to go to Sister Julienne’s office at once,” she said.

A sick feeling grabbed at my stomach. Cynthia said: “I’ll do your bag. Leave it here, and don’t worry.”

I knocked on the office door and entered. The same sergeant and constable who had been assigned to the case earlier were present. The jewels were spread out on the desk.

Sister Julienne spoke. “Here is the nurse who has known of the existence of this -” She hesitated – “this . . . little haul, for more than fortnight.”

My face was burning and I felt like a criminal.

The sergeant spoke to me, the constable taking notes all the while. They required my name, my age, home address, next of kin, father’s occupation and many more details besides.

“When did you first see these jewels?”

“On a Monday afternoon, two weeks ago.”

“Can you identify them?”

“Not really, I did not look closely enough.”

“But are they substantially the same?”

“Yes.”

“Where did you find them?”

“In the third drawer down of the bedside cabinet.”

The constable looked back through his notebook. “We looked in the bedside cabinet, sir, and there was nothing there. They must have been placed there after our search.”

“Just what I was thinking. And what did you do, nurse?”

“Nothing.”

“Were you aware that these jewels are of considerable value?”

“I guessed they might be, but I didn’t know.”

Sister Julienne intervened. “Why did you not tell me?”

“I promised I wouldn’t.”

Sister Julienne was about to speak, but the sergeant silenced her.

“Who did you promise?”

“Sister Monica Joan.”

“So she knew you had seen them?”

“Yes.”

“And she made you promise not to tell?”

“Yes – no. She didn’t make me promise. I just did.”

“Why?”

“Because she was so upset.”

“What was she upset about?”

“The jewels.”

“Upset that you had found them?”

“I suppose so.”

“Upset that she had been found out?”

“I don’t know.”

“Was she upset before you found them?”

“No. She was happy.”

“And she was happy when you left her?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

I didn’t want to answer. But he repeated: “Why?”

“I suppose she was happy because I had promised not to tell.”

The sergeant looked at the constable. “Sister Monica Joan obviously knows what she has been doing. First she moves the jewels around to avoid detection and then when they are found, she is clearly relieved when a promise of secrecy is made.”

He turned to me again. “At the time of finding the jewels, nurse, did you know that the police were investigating a charge of shoplifting brought by local costers?”

“Yes.”

“And did it not occur to you that the jewels might be relevant to police investigations?”

“I don’t know.”

“Nurse, I won’t insult you by suggesting you are stupid!”

“Well, yes, I did think they were relevant.”

“Were you aware that withholding evidence during a police investigation is a criminal offence?”

My mouth went dry and my head began to spin. It is one thing to engage in underhand behaviour, but quite another to be told by a police sergeant that you have been guilty of a criminal offence. My voice was barely audible.

“I didn’t know until a few days ago that it was a criminal offence.”

“And what happened a few days ago?”

“I told the girls.”

Sister Julienne exploded. “You told the girls and you didn’t tell me. This is outrageous!”

“Why did you tell the girls and not the Sister-in-Charge?”

“Because I knew that Sister Julienne would have to tell the police, but the girls wouldn’t.”

“And what did the girls say?”

“I can’t quite remember. We had a couple of bottles of sherry and I’m not sure what we said. It all got a bit confused.”

The constable taking notes gave a chortle, that was quickly smothered when the sergeant stared at him.

Sister Julienne’s blood pressure was rising fast. “This gets worse and worse. You girls had a couple of bottles of sherry when you were on duty! We will talk about this later.”

I groaned in despair. Now I had got my friends into trouble too.

The sergeant interrupted. “Let’s get back to the jewels. You decided to conceal the information from the police, but what did you intend to do?”

“I thought I could take the jewels from Sister Monica Joan’s room and just leave them somewhere, in Hatton Garden, or outside a police station.”

The sergeant and the constable exchanged glances.

“But I couldn’t find them, so I couldn’t do it.”

“She had moved them from the bedside cabinet?”

“Yes.”

“It’s a very good thing for you, nurse, that you could not find the jewels. If you had done as you have suggested and been apprehended with the jewels on your person, you would have been in serious trouble.”

I went cold. Theft, prison. The end of my nursing career. The end of everything.

The sergeant was watching me carefully. Then he spoke. “We are not going to take any further action, nurse. This is a caution, and will be recorded as such. You have been very foolish. I hesitate to call you a silly young girl, but that is what you are, and I hope this will be a lesson to you. You can go now.”

I crept out of Sister’s office numb with shock. To be called a “silly young girl” by a police sergeant when you think you are so mature and responsible is not a pleasant experience.

The girls pressed me for information. We sat round the kitchen table eating cheese-and-pickle sandwiches and home-made cake and I told them all about it. Narrowly missing prison was foremost in my mind.

“Not a chance, old scout. We’d have stood by you,” said Chummy staunchly. Her loyalty reminded me of my own disloyalty – I had let the cat out of the bag about the sherry party. I was contrite in my apologies. Cynthia, as always, was soothing, pointing out that we were all in it together and no harm had come of it. She advised cocoa all round and an early night.

The jewels were taken by the police for identification and Hatton Garden jewellers who had reported losses over several years were asked to examine them. One man, Samuelson by name, positively identified a rope of antique pearls and a diamond ring as having been stolen from his stock a few years previously. He produced record books verifying his statement.

The testimony of costers who had seen Sister Monica Joan take small items from their stalls was also required. With their evidence, combined with that of Mr Samuelson, the police decided that, on a variety of counts, there was now a case against Sister Monica Joan. However, her mental fitness was in doubt, so a medical assessment was required.

The general practitioner who had known Sister Monica Joan for many years and who had attended her through her recent bout of pneumonia was consulted. He said that he was baffled and quite unable to decide whether or not she was senile, and advised obtaining the report of a psychiatrist.

The psychiatrist was a lady, a senior consultant in psychiatry at the London Hospital, who examined Sister Monica Joan twice at Nonnatus House. Her report stated that, in spite of her age, Sister’s mind was remarkably clear. All her responses were swift and accurate; she was astute, observant and cryptic in her conversation; her understanding of past and present events was impressive; and she had a clear understanding of the difference between right and wrong. No evidence of mental deterioration could be found and the psychiatrist considered that Sister Monica Joan could be held responsible for her actions.

Having considered the two medical reports, the police decided to prosecute and they referred the evidence to Old Street Magistrates’ Court for a preliminary hearing.

Three magistrates agreed unanimously that there was a prima facie case of larceny, for which a younger person would undoubtedly have stood trial at the London Quarter Sessions. However, the presiding magistrate was exceedingly doubtful, considering the age of the accused. He had a grandmother of ninety-three who did not know the time of day nor even recognise her own daughter and he was very sympathetic towards extreme old age.

Whilst the charges were being read by the police superintendent, Sister Monica Joan sat between her solicitor and Sister Julienne, who was scarlet with embarrassment and kept her eyes lowered. In contrast, Sister Monica Joan sat upright and looked around her with haughty grandeur, every now and then exclaiming something-like “poof” or “tosh” or “fiddlesticks”.

When the superintendent had finished, the presiding magistrate said, “You have heard the charges?”

“I most certainly have.”

“And do you understand them?”

“Don’t be impertinent, my man. Do you think I am stupid?”

“No, Sister, I don’t. But I must be quite sure that you understand the charges brought against you by the police.”

Sister Monica Joan did not answer. She looked towards the clock on the wall and raised her veined hand towards her chin like an actress posing for a photograph.

“I am not sure that she does, sir,” said Sister Julienne quietly to the solicitor who stood up to speak.

But, before he could do so, Sister Monica Joan turned on them with quiet rage. “Do not presume to speak for me. Speak for yourselves. Bear witness to your own imperfections. We stand, each of us, alone and naked before the Judgement Throne, where none but the silent dead can testify.”

The presiding magistrate was having second thoughts. This was very different from a grandmother whose conversation was confined to: “I’m ninety-three, you know, think of that, ninety-three.” He addressed Sister Monica Joan very seriously. “Have you understood the charges brought against you?”

“I have.”

“Do you plead ‘guilty’ or ‘not guilty’?”

“Guilty! Guilty? Do you imagine, my good fellow, that I accept a charge of guilt from the hoi-polloi I see before me?” She sniffed scornfully and drew out a laced handkerchief from beneath her scapular, which she applied to her nose with an affected gesture, as though an unpleasant smell had assailed her. “Guilty indeed – huh? ‘Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.’ Does your small mind understand the hidden meaning of ‘guilt’? Before you use the word again, it behoves you to find out, if perchance you are capable of such intellectual exercise, which I very much doubt.”

Such rudeness to the presiding magistrate was Sister Monica Joan’s undoing. Had she shown a little more humility, a little more uncertainty or even contrition, it is likely that, in their discretionary powers, the magistrates would have taken the matter no further. As it was, after a brief consultation, the decision was made to accept a plea of not guilty and to refer the case to the London Quarter Sessions for trial by judge and jury.

Sister Julienne was devastated by Sister Monica Joan’s performance in the Magistrates’ Court. She had hoped that the matter would end quietly there, but now the full publicity of the Quarter Sessions would have to be faced. But Sister Julienne was not a woman easily beaten. She prayed about the matter. The inspiration granted to her from a heavenly source was that the defence of mental deterioration should be strengthened. She consulted the solicitor and it was decided to obtain a third medical opinion.

Sir Lorimer Elliott-Bartram had an enviable reputation as a psychologist. He was well known in London, having given medical evidence in several legal cases. Sir Lorimer was getting on in years but not so far on that he could not maintain a thriving practice in Harley Street. In fact, the further on he got, the more patients came flocking to his doors and therefore the more money he made. It was all very satisfactory.

Sir Lorimer had qualified as a surgeon in 1912, and had had a distinguished record as an army doctor in the First World War – distinguished, according to the military commanders, as a first-rate officer and doctor; and distinguished, according to the men in the ranks, as a butcher.

Although Sir Lorimer had never qualified, nor attempted to qualify, as a psychiatrist, he had made a fortune in Harley Street by dabbling in psychotherapy, memory loss, personality change, mental block, hypomania, dypsomania, kleptomania and related subjects. He was a tall, handsome man with a deep, resonant voice that could easily adopt a silky tone. The majority of his patients were women.

There is an old saying in medical circles that if you want to make a study of invective, you should listen to two doctors talking about a third. In psychiatric circles Sir Lorimer, a mere psychologist, was regarded as a pompous old windbag and a chancer, who fuelled the tank of his Rolls-Royce with the blood of rich old ladies.

Oozing opulence, Sir Lorimer entered Nonnatus House and was taken to Sister Monica Joan’s room. He kissed her hand and called her “dear reverend lady”.

She murmured, “What a relief to meet a mature gentleman of experience and understanding.”

He kissed her hand a second time, whispering: “I understand everything, dear lady, everything.”

She sighed and smiled: “I am sure you do, Sir Lorimer, quite sure.”

Later that day, just before Compline, I asked Sister Monica Joan if she liked Sir Lorimer.

She was sitting comfortably by the window knitting. Her face assumed a bright, plastic smile as she cooed, “He is charming, my dear, perfectly charming -” the smile vanished, and a hard edge entered her voice – “and determined to be so.”

Sir Lorimer’s report was very long and technically complex. For the benefit of the lay reader who is unfamiliar with medical terminology, I have attempted to summarise and simplify it. The report stated:

Sister Monica Joan is a lady of the Leptosomatic type with a nervous affinity to the Cyclothymic make-up on the one hand and a tendency to Catatonic excitement on the other. Neologism and Disconnection, though slight, could not be discounted. Whereas elucidation of the former may throw light upon the latter, comprehension of the latter seldom throws light upon the former, from which it may be deduced that individual psychological symptomatology must be sought in personal biography. The Korsakaw Psychosis of Registration, Retention and Recall is important. A link between Retrograde Amnesia is consistent with the facility, richness and rapidity of association. Whilst Depersonalisation is not a factor, Derealisation is and Catatonic symptoms are not evidence of Catatonia, though significant to the trained mind. Kleptomania is consistent in Cyclothymic behaviour, but inconsistent with Leptosomatic tendencies.

Although they could not understand it, Counsel for the Defence and the Sisters were very impressed by this report.

The trial of Sister Monica Joan at the London Quarter Sessions attracted much attention. The public gallery was full. Many costers, and several jewellers from Hatton Garden, were present. Several older women, who remembered the accused as a young midwife and who owed their lives to her, had come out of sympathy. The press gallery was full. A shoplifting nun was good news to a hard-bitten reporter.

Sister Monica Joan sat in the dock. She was knitting quietly and seemed completely unconcerned with what was going on around her. Sister Julienne sat beside her, and attended throughout.

The usher entered.

“Silence in Court,” he shouted. “Be upstanding for His Lordship.”

Everyone rose to their feet – everyone, that is, except Sister Monica Joan, who remained seated. “Stand for His Lordship,” shouted the usher.

There was no movement from Sister Monica Joan. The usher moved towards her, banged the floor with his staff and shouted louder.

Sister Monica Joan gave a surprised little squeak. “Are you addressing me, young man?”

“I am.”

“Then let it be known that I will not be addressed in this rude fashion.”

“Be upstanding for His Lordship,” shouted the usher.

“Did your mother never teach you to say, ‘please’, young man?”

The usher swallowed hard and banged his staff down on the floor a second time. Sister Monica Joan sat immobile, her beautiful eyes half-closed, her lips pursed in disdain.

“Please stand up, madam.” whispered the usher.

“That’s better. That is much better. Courtesy is a virtue and costs nothing. I am sure your mother would be proud of you.” Sister Monica Joan leaned forward, patted him kindly on the shoulder and rose to her feet.

Cheers from the public gallery.

“Be silent for His Lordship,” screamed the usher, striving to restore his authority.

The judge entered, mumbled, “Please be seated,” and everyone sat down, including Sister Monica Joan.

Counsel for the Prosecution addressed the jury. He outlined the facts as they were known and said that he would call as witnesses three jewellers from Hatton Garden who had lost jewellery, and eight costers who had lost sundry items from their stalls. He would also call a psychiatrist, who had examined the accused and considered her to be of sound mind and therefore responsible for her actions.

The three jewellers were all reliable witnesses. The first, a Mr Samuelson, stated that he had inherited the business with its stock from his father. A rope of antique pearls and a diamond ring had disappeared from the stock four years previously. The police had been informed. The stolen jewels had never been recovered until the police had contacted him recently saying that a cache of jewellery had been found, and asking him to examine the jewels. With the help of his record books, Mr Samuelson had been able to identify the pearls and the diamond ring.

The second jeweller stated that Sister Monica Joan had entered his shop three years previously and asked to see a tray of small items of little value, such as charms and trinkets. He had been called away to attend to another customer and left her alone with the tray, confident that, as the lady was a nun, it would be safe to do so. However, an assistant had seen the nun take a small item from the tray and slip it into her pocket. He had warned his employer, and together they had escorted Sister Monica Joan into a back room and challenged her. She had produced a small trinket, valued about two shillings, from the folds of her dress. The jeweller said that he had taken the item back and told Sister that he would not call the police on this occasion, but that she would not be admitted to his shop again.

The assistant was called to the witness box. He verified everything his employer had said and identified Sister Monica Joan as the nun referred to. He said that he had not seen her in the shop since that day but had noticed her wandering around other shops in Hatton Garden. He concluded that she must have remembered that she was barred from entering his employer’s premises and therefore he rejected any suggestion that she was suffering from memory loss or senile dementia.

Sister Monica Joan continued to knit and displayed no interest in what was being said about her. Sister Julienne, on the other hand, seemed to be on the verge of tears.

The costers were called to give evidence. They were a colourful group of seven men and one woman. The first stepped confidently into the witness box to be sworn in, giving his name as Cakey Crumb.

“Could you give your first name please?”

“Well, I’ve allus bin known as Cakey. Wiv a name like Crumb, wha’ would you expec’?”

“With what name were you christened?”

“Cuthbert.”

Shrieks of laughter from the costers, which were silenced by the judge.

Counsel for the Prosecution continued: “Could you please describe your occupation?”

Cakey stuck his thumbs into the armholes of his colourful waistcoat and drummed his fingers on his chest. “I’m a business man. Managin’ director of me own company. Bin a’ i’ since I was four’een, wiv a break for the war, when I was in the merchan’ navy; ’orrible, va’ was, real ’orrible. Never did like wa’er, I never. We was torpedoed an’ ’undreds of men was frown in ve wa’er. ’Alf of ’em drowned. ’Orrible i’ was to ’ear ’em cry for ’elp, poor sods. An’ then another time we was . . . ”

“Yes, Mr Crumb. I am sure the court would like to hear your reminiscences, but we must confine ourselves to the case against Sister Monica Joan. You are a business man, you say?”

“Yerst. Costermonger. I ’as me own cock sparrer, an’ sells in ve park its.”

The judge interrupted. “Did you say you sell cock sparrows in the park its?”

“No, no, m’lud. Cock sparrer is wha’ we calls ve barrer an’ park it is ve market.”

“I see.” The judge made a note. “Please go on.”

“I sells ladies fings, and vis nun, she comes up to me stall an’ afore you can blink an eye, she picks up a couple of bread an’ cheeses, tucks ’em in ’er petticoats, an’ is off round the Jack Horner, dahn ve frog an’ toad, quick as shit off a stick. I couldn’t Adam an’ Eve it, bu’ vats wot she done. When I tells me carvin’ knife wot I seen, she calls me an ’oly friar, an’ says she’ll land me one on me north and south if I calls Sister Monica Joan a tea-leaf. Very fond of Sister, she is. So I never says nuffink to no one, like.”

The judge had laid down his pen long before Cakey had finished giving his evidence. “I think I am going to need an interpreter,” he said.

The usher spoke. “I think I can help you, My Lord. My mother was a cockney and I was brought up with the rhyming slang. Mr Crumb has testified that he saw Sister Monica Joan take a couple of handkerchiefs – bread and cheese is the usual expression for handkerchiefs – off his sparrow, or barrow, and set off round the Jack Horner – corner, My Lord – down the frog and toad – meaning road – as quick as – I need not go on, my Lord, a harmless vulgarity implying no disrespect to Your Lordship – quick, stick – the rhyme is obvious my Lord.”

“‘I am beginning to understand. Ingenious, very. But what was all that about Adam and Eve? We are not talking about the Garden of Eden, you know.”

“‘To Adam and Eve it’ is a very common expression my Lord. It means ‘to believe it’, or the negative. Mr Crumb could not Adam and Eve the evidence of his own eyes.”

“You are very knowledgeable, usher, and I am indebted to you. But that was not all the evidence Mr Crumb gave the court, and it has to be written down for the record.”

The usher was standing up stiff and straight and feeling very important. All eyes were upon him. “Mr Crumb said that he told his wife what had happened. There are several expressions for wife – carving knife, trouble and strife, Duchess of Fife spring readily to mind – and she called him a liar – holy friar, My Lord, and said she would hit him in the north and south – mouth – if he called Sister Monica Joan a thief – tea-leaf was the rhyming slang used by Mr Crumb.”

“I understand now. Thank you, usher.” The judge turned towards Cakey. “Would you say that that interpretation is substantially correct, Mr Crumb?”

“Oh yerst, yers. That’s Isle of White.”

“I suppose I am correct in understanding that it is . . . right?”

The judge looked pleased with himself and smiled at Cakey. He motioned for the Counsel for the Prosecution to continue.

“When did this all occur?”

“Abaht a year ago, I reckons.”

“And you never told no one – ahem, I mean, anyone?”

“Nah, nah. I’m no’ daft. There’d ’ave bin a righ’ ’ole bull and cow if I ’ad. I don’t want me jackdaw broke, do I?”

The judge sighed and looked towards the usher.

“Mr Crumb did not tell anyone, My Lord, because he was anxious to avert a row with his wife, whom he felt was capable of breaking his jaw.”

“Is this correct, Mr Crumb?”

“Gor, not ’alf, an’ all. Got an Oliver Twist like a piston, she ’as. Knock yer ’ampstead ’eafs out soon as look at yer, she would.”

“Mr Crumb, I was referring to the accuracy of the usher’s translation, not to your wife’s skill as a pugilist.”

“Oh, I see. Well yers, ’e’s got ve lingo taped an’ all.”

“Thank you, Mr Crumb. Usher, I should be grateful if you would attend closely to what the witness says and interpret for me, should it be necessary.”

“Certainly, My Lord.”

Counsel for the Prosecution continued. “Having said nothing for a year, why have you come forward now?”

“Because I earwigged some of me mates ’ad seen ve same sort of fing; vis ole blackbird goin’ round ve markets, lookin’ all ’oly like, bu’ pinchin’ fings off stalls and then scarperin’. So we goes to ve grasshoppers, an vey took it to ve garden gate.”

“I understand your evidence as far as the grasshoppers, Mr Crumb,” the judge interrupted. “Usher, perhaps you could enlighten me as to the meaning of the last sentence?”

“Grasshopper, My Lord, is rhyming slang for copper, which Your Lordship may know is a colloquialism for the police. And the police referred the case to the magistrate – the garden gate.”

“I understand.” The Judge turned to Mr Crumb. “If the police are grasshoppers and magistrates are garden gates, what, may I enquire, is a judge?” he asked politely.

“Barnaby Rudge, m’lud.”

“Hmm. Not too bad. Could have been worse, I suppose. We might have gone down in local terminology as a pile of sludge, or something equally unsavoury. All things considered, I think we have been let off quite lightly. Counsel, do you have any further questions?”

“No, My Lord.”

Cakey Crumb stepped down from the witness box, and a costerwoman took his place. She stated that she had seen Sister Monica Joan take three skeins of embroidery silk from her stall and hide them under her scapular. She continued: “I didn’t do nuffink abaht it because ve Sisters are well respected arahnd vese parts, an’ in fact saved my life when I was younger. The silks only cost a shillin’, an’ it just didn’t seem worthwhile to make a fuss. I jus’ thought to meself – poor ole girl, she’s goin’ off ’er rocker – an left it; but when I heard from the other costers that she’d been pinchin’ things left, right and centre, I decided to go in wiv them an’ go to the police. After all, we got a livin’ to earn, an’ thievin’ is thievin’ whoever ’s doin’ it. We can’t afford ’a be sentimental.”

Five other costers told similar stories reporting the thefts of sundry items they had seen Sister Monica Joan take. Lastly, the coster who had instigated the proceedings in the first place was called. He told the court that he had seen Sister Monica Joan take a child’s bangle from his stall and hide it under her scapular. When he had challenged her, she had flung the bangle across the stall and stalked off. Five people were called to the witness box, each one declaring under oath that he or she had witnessed this scene.

Things looked black for Sister Monica Joan, but she appeared completely unconcerned, as though the proceedings had nothing to do with her. She was knitting quietly, occasionally counting her stitches and noting them down on her knitting card. She would smile serenely at Sister Julienne who, in contrast, was in a state of real anguish.

The day’s proceedings ended and the judge adjourned the court until ten o’clock the following morning.

On the second day, Counsel for the Prosecution called the psychiatrist to the witness box. She stated that she had examined Sister Monica Joan and could find nothing suggestive of senility or mental deterioration. On the contrary, she found Sister to be exceedingly quick and accurate in her responses. Her memory was good and she had a clear perception of right and wrong. In conclusion, the psychiatrist stated that, on the balance of medical evidence, Sister Monica Joan knew what she was doing and was responsible for her actions.

The general practitioner was less positive. He agreed with everything that his colleague had said but nevertheless had a feeling that something was amiss. He doubted if Sister Monica Joan could really be held responsible for her actions although he was unable to say exactly why. In conclusion, he said that the court should prefer the evidence of the specialists. He sat down next to the psychiatrist.

Sir Lorimer Elliott-Bartram was called to the witness box. Sister Monica Joan looked up from her knitting, caught his eye and gave him one of her ravishing smiles, then lowered her eyes demurely.

Counsel for the Defence asked the first question. “From your examination of Sister Monica Joan, would you say she is of sound mind?”

Sir Lorimer paused for a long time before speaking. His pause was calculated for maximum effect. The jury was impressed and leaned forward attentively.

“That is an interesting question and one to which I have given much thought over the years. On mature reflection, and after a lifetime of experience, with reference to Smellingworthy and Schmitzelburg on the subject and not forgetting the work of Crakenbaker, Corensky and Kokenbul as published in The Lancet, I have come to the conclusion that the sound mind is a figment of the imagination.”

“What on earth is he on about?” whispered the general practitioner.

“He is making, it up as he goes along,” the psychiatrist murmured.

“Silence in court!” warned the judge. “For the benefit of the jury, Sir Lorimer, please elucidate. A figment of the imagination, you say.”

“Indeed I do. Which of us can contemplate his friend and say: ‘He is of sound mind,’ gentlemen of the jury? Which of us can gaze upon the wife of his bosom and say: ‘Her mind is sound?’”

The jury took notes and shook their heads.

Counsel for the Defence continued. “Perhaps then you would say that the accused suffers from senile dementia?”

“Most certainly not,” said Sir Lorimer indignantly. He was old himself and senility or senile dementia were words that he never used.

“I have heard the evidence of the psychiatrist and would point out that normal sensory perception is far from being an objective picture of reality, but is conditioned and modified by many personal factors both sensory and extrasensory. In my opinion, psychiatrists make the problems that are to be solved.”

“Could you enlarge upon that, Sir Lorimer?”

“Certainly. Psychiatrists need to earn a living like everyone else. A similar syndrome can be observed in the fields of sociology and counselling. Left to themselves, most people will sort out their own problems. If it is suspected that someone else will sort them out, the problems multiply exponentially.”

“The insufferable old hypocrite,” whispered the psychiatrist.

Counsel for the Defence continued. “I have read your most erudite report, Sir Lorimer, and I am impressed by your reference to the Korsakaw Psychosis of Registration, Retention and Recall. Could you please enlighten the jury?”

“Certainly. A prominent feature of Korsakaw’s Psychosis is that Registration may be interposed by Deregistration, preventing the proper interpretation of happenings. Retention for shorter or longer periods may differ markedly, and Recall may be either voluntary or involuntary.”

“That rubbish goes back to 1910,” hissed the lady psychiatrist. “He ought to be struck off. I wonder if the General Medical Council knows about him?”

“Silence in court,” said the judge. “Please continue, Sir Lorimer.”

“Not infrequently psychological experiences are important as regards the origin of psychological symptoms. It is possible to ascribe to the psychological experiences that determine the genesis of the psychological symptoms aetiological importance in the production of the whole.”

“This is an example of the three Bs,” mouthed the lady psychiatrist.

“The three whats?” replied her colleague.

“Three Bs – Bullshit Baffles Brains,” she hissed.

Counsel for the Prosecution stood up. “May I enquire what all this has to do with the theft of valuable jewellery from shops in Hatton Garden?”

“Here, here!” chorused the jewellers in the gallery.

“Silence in court!” said the judge. “Sir Lorimer, with respect to your eminent position in the field of mental health, I was wondering the same thing.”

Sir Lorimer continued. “Sister Monica Joan is a lady of great intelligence and fertile imagination. She was brought up in wealth and luxury. Association with her childhood is strong. If valuable jewellery was found in her possession, I have not the slightest doubt that, by the Korsakaw Psychosis, the lady thought that the jewels belonged to her mother.”

“Her mother!”

“That is what I said.”

“I don’t believe a word of it,” whispered the lady psychiatrist. “She put him up to it. I told you she is as sharp as they come.”

“If it is true, it is a sign of senile dementia,” her colleague muttered.

“Rubbish. The old girl’s up to every trick.”

Counsel for the Prosecution continued. “A remarkable theory, Sir Lorimer. ‘Fanciful’ would perhaps be a better description. But it does not get us any nearer to answering the question about how the jewels came to be in Sister Monica Joan’s possession. Have you any theories, fanciful or otherwise, on that score?”

“No, I have not.”

“No further questions, My Lord.”

Sister Monica Joan had continued knitting placidly all afternoon, occasionally muttering to herself as she made notes on her knitting chart. Sir Lorimer stepped down from the witness box and she smiled at him again. The time had reached 4.30 p.m. and the judge adjourned the court for the day to reassemble at ten o’clock the following morning.

The court was crowded again on the third morning, when Sister Monica Joan was due to appear in the witness box. She was waiting in the dock, calmly knitting as before, and occasionally speaking to Sister Julienne, who was sitting beside her.

The usher entered and, before doing anything else, he went over to the nun and whispered, “When I call: ‘Be upstanding for His Lordship,’ would you be kind enough to stand up, madam, please?”

Sister Monica Joan smiled sweetly. “Of course I will,” she said, and she stood with everyone else.

Counsel for the Prosecution opened the morning’s proceedings. “I wish to call Sister Monica Joan of the Order of St Raymund Nonnatus to the witness box.”

A buzz of excitement ran through the courtroom and the jury leaned forward expectantly.

Sister Monica Joan stood up. She wound up her ball of wool, stuck it on the end of the needles and placed it in her knitting bag, which she handed to Sister Julienne. “Would you make a note, dear. The next row will be row fifty-six. Slip one, knit two together, purl four, slip one, purl three, knit two together, pass slip stitch over, repeat to end.”

“Yes, dear, of course I will.” Sister Julienne marked the knitting card.

“Did I say purl four, slip one, purl three, knit two together, pass the slip stitch over?”

“Yes, you did, dear.”

“That’s wrong; it should be purl three after slipping the slip stitch over, not before.”

“Oh yes, of course, that makes sense.”

The judge leaned forward. “Have you ladies sorted out your knitting?”

“Yes, My Lord.”

“Then perhaps we can start the morning’s proceedings.”

Sister Monica Joan made her way to the witness box. She looked completely composed; in fact she looked beautiful in her full black habit with the halo of white linen around her face. A small smile lightened her features and her eyes sparkled mischievously. Naughty Sister Monica Joan always enjoyed the limelight.

Counsel for the Prosecution opened. “The police report states that certain jewels were found in your knitting bag. Is this a true statement?”

Sister Monica Joan looked towards the jury, then to the visitors’ gallery. She turned towards the judge and raised one eyebrow quizzically. Her composure held everyone captive as they waited for her reply.

Her voice, always clear, had a ringing quality. “Truth. The eternal mystery. ‘What is truth?’ asked Pilate. Mankind has been seeking the answer to that question for thousands of years. What would be your definition of truth, young man?”

“I am here to ask you the questions, Sister – not the other way round.”

“But it is a perfectly fair question. Before we can establish the truth, we must have a definition of it.”

Counsel decided to humour her: “Truth, I would say, is an accurate record of fact. Would you accept that, Sister.”

“You have studied Aristotle?”

“A little,” replied Counsel modestly.

“Truth. Truth is a movement of inexhaustible power, containing within itself divine truth. In the depths of space, matter is forever being formed into the heavenly bodies and transformed into the speed of light and disappears from our ken. Would you say that this is an accurate record of fact when it has disappeared from our ken?”

“I am not a scientist, Sister, but a lawyer, and I am enquiring about jewels found in your possession.”

“Ah, yes, the jewels. The stars are the jewels of heaven. But are they fact? Are they truth or are they a chimera? Do we see the stars? We think we see them, but we do not; we see what they were light years ago. Would you say that the stars are an accurate record of fact, young man?”

“You see, she is confused,” whispered the general practitioner.

“She’s clever. She is deliberately trying to confuse the issue. That’s what she’s doing,” the psychiatrist replied in hushed tones.

The judge interrupted. “Silence in court! Sister, this court is here to consider stolen jewellery. It is not here to discuss metaphysics. Please confine your answers to the matter in hand.”

Sister Monica Joan turned her shapely head towards the judge. “Matter, and what is matter? Einstein says that matter is energy. Are these jewels matter? Are they energy, moving at the speed of light into cosmic forces beyond the limits of our consciousness? Are these jewels living matter, living energy, circling the earth in the full moon of April, or are they mere clods of clay, dull and lifeless, as postulated by the police?”

Although Sister Monica Joan was speaking to the judge, her clear voice rang through the courtroom. An eloquent hand reached towards the jury, who sat spellbound although they did not understand a word she was talking about.

Counsel for the Prosecution continued. “But how did the jewels come to be in your possession, Sister?”

She turned on him angrily. “I do not know, young man. I am not a seer; I am but a humble seeker of eternal truths. These jewels, which seem to excite so much interest, have their own life, their own consciousness and their own energy force. When an atom gets excited it creates magnetic fields independent of human activity. Did they not teach you that at school, young man?”

Counsel, who was close on fifty, was beginning to look out of his depth. “No, madam, I was not taught that at school.”

“Were you not taught that all matter is subject to the laws of gravity?”

Counsel refused to answer. “Sister, I am enquiring into stolen jewellery. Are you trying to say that jewels were magnetised or gravitated from jewellers in Hatton Garden into your knitting bag by their own volition?”

“I do not know. I am not a seer. Only God knows the whole truth. Questions, foolish questions all the time. You wear me out with your questions, young man. Can I not expect a little repose in my old age?”

Sister Monica Joan raised her hand to her face and tottered slightly in the dock. A gasp of anxiety was heard in the courtroom. She murmured: “May I sit down, My Lord?” and the usher ran forward with a chair. She smiled weakly. “So kind, so very kind; my poor heart.” She raised her eyes appealingly to the judge and said softly, “Thank you, My Lord. Are there any more questions?”

“No further questions,” said Counsel for the Prosecution.

Sister Monica Joan had created a good impression in the witness box. Even though most of the jury did not know what she was talking about, her sincerity and conviction were compelling. Her age and frailty were appealing and their sympathy was with her. A verdict of not guilty seemed likely.

The Judge adjourned the court until 2 p.m.

Counsel for the Defence opened the afternoon’s proceedings. “Are you sitting comfortably, Sister?”

“Most comfortably, thank you.”

“I will try not to fatigue you with my questions.”

“You are most kind.”

“The jury has heard you say that you do not know how the jewels came into your possession.”

“I do not.”

“But were they really in your possession?”

“I possess nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“No, nothing. I renounced all worldly possessions with my profession. Poverty is one of the vows of the monastic life.”

“So you do not and cannot possess anything?”

“No.”

“And you have never possessed the jewels in question?”

“Never.”

Counsel for the Prosecution stood up. “Then what were they doing in your knitting bag?”

Counsel for the Defence was furious. “My Lord, I really must protest at this interruption, which is designed to intimidate the witness. I was coming to that point myself later, but without the bullying tactics adopted by my learned friend.”

The judge allowed the protest, but nonetheless he leaned forward and said kindly, “Sister, if as a professed nun you cannot own or possess anything, can you account for the fact that a quantity of jewels were found in your knitting bag?”

“No, I cannot.”

“Did you put them there?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, if you did not put them there, who did?”

Sister Monica Joan looked vague and tired. “I don’t know, My Lord. I suppose I must have.”

“And where did they come from?”

Sister Monica Joan was crumbling fast. The day had been too long. Her sparkle and confidence were fading leaving a tired old lady who did not really know what she was saying. “I suppose they came from Hatton Garden, like everyone says they did.” She leaned her forehead on her hand and sighed deeply. “I don’t know why respectable elderly women do this sort of thing, but they do. Oh, they do, they do. Is it a sickness? Is it a madness? I do not know. I do not know myself.”

A ripple of shocked sympathy spread through the courtroom. To incriminate oneself is sad, but for Sister Monica Joan to have done so was tragic. If a pin had dropped it would have been heard in the silent courtroom. The judge leaned back in his chair and sighed.

“I adjourn the court for today. I will make my summing-up tomorrow. The court will reassemble at ten o’clock.”

The atmosphere in the courtroom was tense the following morning. A verdict of guilty was a foregone conclusion in the minds of the jury. Could it be prison for a lady of such advanced years? Perhaps the judge would order confinement to a mental asylum. A recommendation for clemency was everyone’s hope.

Sister Julienne was seated in court, her face white with shock and sorrow. On the other hand, Sister Monica Joan once more looked completely relaxed and unconcerned, knitting contentedly and smiling at people she recognised. She stood when the usher gave the order.

The judge opened the morning’s proceedings. “Last evening, at seven o’clock, I was informed of new evidence which throws a different light on this case. The witness arrived in London this morning and is at present waiting outside. Call the Reverend Mother Jesu Emanuel, please, usher.”

A murmur of surprise spread through the court. Sister Julienne gave a gasp and stood up when her Superior entered. The latter was a good-looking lady of about fifty with calm grey eyes. She walked purposefully to the witness box to be sworn in.

Counsel for the Defence spoke: “You are the Reverend Mother Jesu Emanuel, the Mother Superior of the Order of the Sisters of St Raymund Nonnatus?”

“I am.”

“And you have been in Africa recently.”

“I have been with our mission in Africa for the past year. I returned yesterday.”

“Would you please tell the court what you have told me.”

“On my return to our mother house in Chichester I learned that Sister Monica Joan had been accused of the theft of jewellery. I knew at once that this was a mistake. The jewels have not been stolen. The jewels belong to Sister Monica Joan.”

Everyone started talking at once.

The judge ordered silence. “Please continue,” he said.

“When a Sister takes her final vows, all her property is given to the order. In some orders this is irrevocable, but not so in ours. We hold the property in trust during the Sister’s lifetime. If the Sister leaves the order, or has need of the property for any reason, the property reverts to her. Sister Monica Joan made her final vows in 1904. She had inherited great wealth from her mother, including a quantity of jewellery, which has been kept in the security vaults of the convent’s financiers ever since. Sister Monica Joan is now a very old lady. It is the policy of our order to give special privileges to our retired Sisters, who have given a lifetime of service to our work. Knowing that Sister Monica Joan likes pretty things and that she would enjoy having her mother’s jewels to play with, I gave them to her the last time I visited Nonnatus House.”

“Have you any confirmation of this?”

“I have the certificate of withdrawal from the bank with me for Your Lordship’s inspection.”

Counsel for the Defence spoke. “The jewels have been checked against the certificate, My Lord, and they can all be accounted for.”

The judge was handed the certificate, which he examined; then he said: “Did you not tell anyone about this, Reverend Mother?”

“No, My Lord, I did not, and in this respect I am entirely culpable. Sister Julienne was away on retreat at the time of my visit to Nonnatus House, or I would probably have mentioned it to her. Immediately after that, preparations were made for my visit to Africa and it slipped my mind. I am devastated that my action should have caused so much trouble. But frankly, it was not something that I regarded as important. I looked upon the jewels not as objects of monetary value but as pretty things that would give innocent happiness to a very old lady, bringing back memories of her childhood and her mother.”

The Judge adjourned the court until two o’clock that afternoon toto allow time for full consultation. The jeweller, Mr Samuelson, who had earlier identified the pearls and the diamond, was called, and he acknowledged that he might have been mistaken. It was agreed by all parties that if Sister Monica Joan had forgotten how she came to be in possession of the jewels, she could not be held responsible for her actions, whatever the psychiatrist might have said, and the charges of petty theft made by the costers was dropped.

After lunch the judge informed the court that the Prosecution had withdrawn all charges. There was wild cheering and hat-throwing in the public gallery.

The judge motioned to the usher to call for silence. Then he addressed the court. “I think I speak for the popular voice of this courtroom when I say how pleasing is the outcome of this case. Much needless strain and anxiety has been caused to the Sisters of St Raymund Nonnatus. However, I say to the Sisters, as I say to the police, the Prosecution, the doctors and everyone involved in this case, including the press and the wider readership beyond these walls: it is folly to jump to conclusions.”