Blood Sisters Read Free Page A

pillow.’
    ‘So, not natural causes?’
    ‘Oh, not a chance. Asphyxiation, no doubt of it.’
    ‘And what about the figurine?’
    ‘It’s the Immaculate Heart of Mary. A good-quality resin and stone statuette, hand-painted, twenty-five point five centimetres high, suitable for use both indoors and out. It has a maker’s mark on the base – Pilgrim Fine Editions – so we may be able to trace where it was purchased. I’d say it easily cost close to three hundred euros, maybe more.’
    ‘Any prints on it?’
    ‘A few smudgy partials, but when we take it back to the lab there’s a good chance that we can enhance them.’
    ‘And when was it inserted?’ asked Katie. ‘Before or after she was suffocated?’
    Bill lifted up Sister Bridget’s ankle-length brushed-cotton nightgown. She was skeletally thin, with patches of dry skin and purple blotches that were consistent with liver disease. Her left breast was smudged with a large crimson bruise, half-moon shaped, as if her assailant had forced her down on to the bed with the heel of a hand. There were even more bruises on her stomach and the insides of her skinny thighs. Her grey-haired vagina was gaping and between her legs her nightgown was stained with a wide brown patch of dried blood.
    The technician who had been collecting particles from the carpet switched off her vacuum cleaner and stood up, so that apart from the crinkly sound of her oversized Tyvek suit, the bedroom was silent. Bill continued to hold up Sister Bridget’s nightgown for a few moments and then carefully and respectfully covered her up again. He didn’t have to say anything. Katie knew that if Sister Bridget had bled when she was assaulted, her heart had still been beating.

3
    They went back down to the vestibule, where Noel Pardoe was waiting with Nevina Cormack. The director of nursing was a short woman with thick-rimmed spectacles and a severe black bob with streaks of grey in it, cut high at the back of her neck. She was wearing a nubbly grey cardigan which looked as if she had knitted it herself, and as she came forward to introduce herself, Katie could smell a strong musky perfume that didn’t seem to sit with her skin type at all.
    ‘I’m sorry to confirm that Sister Bridget was deliberately suffocated,’ said Katie.
    ‘Oh. So she didn’t pass from natural causes?’ asked Nevina. ‘She wasn’t at all well, you know.’
    ‘No, I’m afraid not. She was physically assaulted and then asphyxiated with her pillow.’
    Nevina crossed herself. ‘That’s awful!. I can’t imagine who might have done such a thing! I told your sergeant here that she had no visitors this morning and we saw nobody suspicious at all around the premises.’
    ‘Was Sister Bridget well liked here?’ Katie asked her.
    ‘Oh yes. Absolutely. She had her ways, of course. Most elderly people do. But she wasn’t dis liked, let me say that.’
    ‘Please, she’s gone now,’ said Katie. ‘No matter what you say about her, you can’t hurt her, and if we’re going to find out who killed her, it’s very important that you tell me the truth.’
    Nevina glanced across at Noel. He made a face at her and shrugged, as if to say that she ought to be candid.
    ‘To be honest with you,’ she said, ‘she was inclined to be a little haughty .’
    ‘Haughty?’
    ‘Well, a lot of the time she forgot that she wasn’t running the Bon Sauveur Convent any more, and she seemed to believe that she was in charge of the whole nursing home. Our nurses were very patient with her, but she expected them to wait on her hand and foot, like, and never gave them a single word of thanks. There was one of our gentleman residents, too, and they were always arguing because she kept sitting in his chair in the TV room.’
    ‘We’ll have to have a word this gentleman,’ said Katie. ‘But it doesn’t sound as if anyone here bore enough of a grudge against Sister Bridget to suffocate her.’
    ‘We try to encourage a family