Chapter 100

With the Cryptic Crossword Club postponed after a dispute, the Jigsaw Room is free for the Thursday Murder Club, Chris, Donna, and Matthew Mackie. Elizabeth lets Chris and Donna lead the questioning, while Matthew becomes the focus and begins recounting his time at St Michael’s after arriving from Ireland in 1967 as a young priest.

Matthew explains that he lived in the gatehouse and met Sister Margaret Anne, known as Maggie, while she cleaned the chapel. Their formal greetings slowly became a secret emotional bond, and their meetings in the confessional turned into a doomed love affair. Matthew says he intended to leave the priesthood, find work, and build a life with Maggie, though leaving the convent would have been harder and riskier for Maggie.

Matthew describes how Maggie would secretly visit him at night when he lit a candle in the gatehouse window. One Wednesday, 17 March, Matthew lit the candle and waited, but Maggie never arrived. Worried, Matthew went to the convent, entered the chapel, lit a dim lamp near the altar, and found Maggie hanging from a beam, dead.

Chris asks whether Maggie left a note, and Matthew says there was none. Elizabeth reveals that Maggie was pregnant. Matthew explains that Maggie had confided in another young nun, who told Sister Mary; Sister Mary then ordered Maggie to leave for Ireland the next morning. Instead, Maggie went to the chapel and killed herself, also ending the life of Matthew’s unborn child.

Matthew says he and Sister Mary made a deal: Matthew would leave silently for Ireland, Church records would be altered, scandal would be avoided, and Maggie would be buried in the Garden of Eternal Rest at St Michael’s. When Sister Mary later died, Matthew returned to stay near Maggie. He admits this gave him a motive to oppose Ian Ventham and protect the graves, but denies killing Ian, insisting he acted only in ways Maggie and the child he calls Patrick would have approved.