The Religious Body

“Down here” turned out to be a narrow path running round the perimeter of the Convent grounds. Sloan caught sight of black-habited figures among the bare winter trees. They were clustered round a still form lying awkwardly half in and half out of some bushes.

The Mother Superior turned when she heard him.

“I fear he’s quite dead, Inspector.”

Sloan stepped beside her and looked down. There was no doubt about him being dead. The freckles that Sister Gertrude had described must have been those on his arms. She couldn’t have seen them on his face. It was suffused with blood, a terrible, mottled red and blue. A bloated tongue stuck out between lips parted in the mocking rictus of death.

“Strangulation,” he said briefly.

“Inspector…” It seemed suddenly as if it was a great effort for her to speak. “Could this be William Tewn?”

“What makes you say that, marm? Have you ever seen this boy before?”

“No. No, never. Mr. Ranby came to see me this morning after you had gone. He brought two boys with him to apologise for the guy but he had been going to bring three. He said they couldn’t find William Tewn.” She stared at the supine figure. “He said he would send him over on his own whenever he turned up.”

Looking down at the dead youth, Sloan felt suddenly old and tired. “Yes, marm, this is William Tewn. Now, could you all move away from here without disturbing the ground, please. It’s very important…”

There was quite a gathering of nuns—Sister Gertrude, Sister Lucy, and three or four whom he did not know. He shepherded them gently back to the main path and left Crosby to rope off the area round the body.

“Now, if someone would tell me what happened…”

The story was Sister Ninian’s to begin with. She was a neat, sensible woman of about sixty, and economical of speech. “In winter, when it is fine, we all take some exercise before our midday meal. I do some of the gardening and make a practise of walking in a slightly different route each day. That way I can see things needing doing before they get out of hand. This path, as you can see, Inspector, runs round the entire Convent property. The Agricultural Institute is the other side of that field. Cows have been known to stray, and the branches of trees to fall. That is the sort of thing I keep my eyes open for.”

Sloan nodded. Not, of course, for the bodies of dead man. That was chance.

“I had just turned down this portion of the path when I noticed a shoe sticking out…”

It was surprising, thought Sloan academically, how often it was a shoe that caught the attention. The soles of a pair of shoes were conspicuous in a horticultural setting.

“I approached it and found the body. I came back along this path until I found two other Sisters—Sister Gertrude and Sister Hilda here. They came back with me to the spot, and then Sister Gertrude went back to the Convent to tell Mother.”

“And I,” said the Mother Superior, taking up the tale, “asked Sister Gertrude to send for you while I came out here to see myself.”

“Bringing Sister Lucy with you?” asked Sloan suddenly.

She looked at him curiously. “No, Inspector, as it happened I did not bring Sister Lucy out here with me. I left her waiting in the Parlour to bring you here as soon as you arrived. Sister Gertrude came out here with the news that she had caught you at the Police Station and that you were on your way. We were exceedingly relieved to hear it.”

Sister Lucy, then, had been white and shaking without having seen the body? He cast back in his mind to Thursday morning. She hadn’t reacted like that to the body of Sister Anne.

“Mr. Ranby and the two students could scarcely have got back to the Institute,” said the Mother Superior, “before Sister Gertrude came in.”

Sloan looked at his watch. “Were they with you long?”

“No. The two young men said they were very sorry for their intrusion; Mr. Ranby apologised on behalf of the Institute and then they went. I had had to keep them waiting a few moments because of Mr. Cartwright.”

“He was here, too, this morning?”

“Yes, Inspector, he and Father MacAuley both came to see me after you left.”

Sloan sighed. “I think we had all better go indoors, marm, and Crosby can take this all down. Besides, Dr. Dabbe will be here again in a minute or two.”

“What?” howled Superintendent Leeyes. “I don’t believe it.”

“He’s dead,” said Sloan flatly. “Strangled and dragged off the path and half under some bushes.”

It seemed to Sloan that he had spent most of the last three days standing in the dark, draughty corridor where the Convent kept their telephone.

“Tewn? Tewn?” said the superintendent. “That’s the one of the three that actually went inside the Convent for the habit, isn’t it?”

“That’s right, sir.”

Leeyes used an expression that would have surprised the watch committee.

“Yes, sir.” Sloan endorsed the sentiment, watch committee or no.

“It would have to be him.”

“Yes, sir.” Bitterly. “It would.”

“How far did you get with him last night?”

“Just that it was child’s play to walk in the cellar door and pick up the habit. No trouble they said.”

“He must have seen something,” said Leeyes.

“Yes, sir.”

“No hint of what it could have been when you spoke to him last night?”

“Not a clue, sir. I’m pretty sure that those three arranged with Hobbett—he’s the handyman there—to leave the cellar door unlocked that night and the old habit inside. I don’t see any other possibility—there was no sign of forced entry. And it sounded as if everything went according to plan. Parker kept watch on their return to the Institute, Bullen guarded the cellar door and line of retreat and Tewn went inside.”

“And so he dies.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Nasty, Sloan. I don’t like it. Though tell me this— if he’s going to be killed, why wait until today? It’s Saturday now, it was Wednesday when they went into the Convent…”

Sloan thought quickly. “I didn’t know who he was until after nine o’clock last night. Someone else might not have known either…”

“That’s true. Sitting waiting for him to be identified, and then, when he is, killing him.”

“It would have been dark in that cellar on Wednesday night,” conceded Sloan. “No one could have recognised him.”

“What about today?” asked the superintendent heavily.

“I’ve only seen the Mother Superior so far. And the Sisters who were with the body when I got here. She says that the Principal had arranged for all three students to come across with him to say they were sorry for Wednesday’s escapade but that Tewn just didn’t turn up. Ranby was a bit put out apparently and said he would send Tewn over on his own later.”

“No wonder he didn’t come.”

“Yes, sir. I’m going straight round there as soon as I’ve seen Dr. Dabbe. I’m going to need all the information he can give me…”

It wasn’t a great deal.

Sloan stood beside the pathologist out in the shrubbery.

“Strangulation,” agreed Dabbe. “Not manual. I think it’s a bit of fuse wire but I can’t be sure. The skin’s too engorged. Over your head in a flash, a quick jerk and that’s that.”

“Vicious.”

“Neat and clean,” said Dabbe‘. “And certain. Quiet, too. No time for a shout, you see. Not that there’s anyone to hear out here, is there?”

They looked round the silent grounds.

“Convent, that way,” said Sloan. “The Institute, the other. Neither in earshot.”

“No nuns about at the time?”

“They’re not let out until twelve. For their constitutional. There’s Hobbett, their gardening factotum. He would have been out in the grounds somewhere…”

That wasn’t the pathologist’s concern and he was soon back with the body.

“Killed on this path, would you say, and dragged into the bushes by the armpits? You can still see where the jacket has been pulled up. His heels made a couple of scuff marks, too.”

Sloan peered down at the last pathetic imprints made by one William Tewn, student.

“A good place really,” went on the pathologist. “He only had to be pulled a yard or two and he’s practically invisible in all this growth. And whoever did it remembered to stand on that dead wood. Doubt if you’ll find a footprint there, and the path’s too hard.”

“Crosby’s tried,” said Sloan, “and he couldn’t pick up anything. When did it all happen?”

The pathologist looked at his watch. “Not more than two hours ago—say three at the very outside…”

“After half past nine then…”

“And not less than an hour ago—an hour and a half more likely.”

“It’s not half past twelve yet. That would make the outside limits somewhere between half past nine and half past eleven, only he wasn’t available just after eleven when the Institute party set out, so that makes it earlier than eleven, doesn’t it?”

But abstract speculation wasn’t of interest to the pathologist either. Of all men his work was to do with fact, with demonstrable fact.

“Perhaps I’ll be able to narrow it down for you later,” he said cautiously.

Sloan nodded and asked the question on which everything hung. “Any clue—any clue at all as to who could have done it?”

Dr. Dabbe considered the body. “He’s not very big, is he? Anyone could have dragged him that short distance. As for whipping a length of fuse wire round someone’s neck—that’s not strength so much as strategy. You could only do it at all if it was totally unexpected. If you were to insist on some indication as to the person who could have done it…” Sloan remained silent, which was as good as insisting.

“… then all I could tell you with any certainty,” offered the pathologist, “was that they were probably as tall or taller than Tewn—and you could work that out for yourself. I can’t tell you if it was a man or a woman but I can tell you that it wouldn’t have been impossible for a woman—especially a tallish one. A quick flick of the wrist and it’s all over.”

“And you wouldn’t suspect a woman,” said Sloan slowly, “would you? I mean your defences would be down, you would tend to trust her…”

Dr. Dabbe gave a short, mirthless laugh. “My dear chap, I’ve no doubt you would, but then we do do very different jobs, don’t we?”

The news had gone before Sloan to the Institute. There was that in the urgent way the porter hurried Sloan and Crosby to the Principal’s room, in the curious stares of those students who just happened to be hanging about the entrance hall and in the manner of Marwin Ranby himself that told the policemen that they knew.

The Principal was visibly distressed. “I’ve just been trying to get in touch with the parents, Inspector, but I can’t get a reply. It is Saturday lunch-time when not everyone’s about—I was going away for the weekend myself as it happens—they may have done the same. They’re farmers in the West Country, you know, Mr. and Mrs. Tewn, I mean, which is quite a way for them to come, I fear.”

“A shocking business, sir.”

“Terrible. The last few days have been quite bad enough, but this is a nightmare.”

“Perhaps if you can tell us what happened, sir…”

“That’s just it, Inspector. Nothing happened. I’d arranged to go over this morning to call on the Mother Superior to make the three of them apologise for their incursion into the Convent and for taking away the habit, which may have been old but which was doubtless of great significance to them. Celia—Miss Faine, you know—tells me that these garments are held to be very precious to the Sisters—they’re handed down from one nun to another. I understand quite a number of them actually kiss each article of their habit before they put it on and so forth—and I felt it only right that these young men should say they were sorry in person. It’s no use telling the young that these things don’t matter, because they do.”

Sloan jerked his head in agreement. “I thought eleven-fifteen would do nicely. They only have two study periods on Saturday mornings and they finish at eleven and anyway that seemed to be as good a time as any for calling on the Mother Superior. I told them they were to present themselves here at five minutes past eleven to allow us time to walk over there…”

“One moment, sir. Whom did you tell to come then?”

Ranby frowned. “Bullen, Parker and Tewn, of course.”

“Ah, I didn’t mean quite that. To which one of the three did you give the message about the time?”

“Oh, I see. Bullen, it was. I told him to tell the other two. But only Bullen and Parker turned up. I must say, Inspector, I was more than a little cross at the time. And surprised. I wouldn’t have said Tewn was the sort of man to back out of an interview like that, however unpleasant. It’s horribly clear now, of course, why he didn’t come.”

“You just went off to the Convent without him?”

“Not at all. I sent Parker to his room to see if he was there and Bullen down to the Common Room. They both came back and said they couldn’t find him and we then went off without him.”

“How long did it take, sir?”

“Saying we were sorry? About five minutes. The Mother Superior was very gracious, thanked them for coming and more or less wrote it off as high spirits which—if I remember correctly—Bullen said was ‘jolly decent of her in the circs’.”

“The dead Sister—did she mention her?”

“Not at all.”

“She tells me she had to keep you waiting.”

“That’s right. She was seeing another man. Largish, with grey hair. Town clothes, too. He came out of the Parlour as we went in.”

Parker and Bullen were taking Tewn’s death badly. They were sitting together at one end of the deserted Common Room. In the distance Sloan could hear luncheon being served, but it seemed Bullen and Parker were not hungry.

“I was sitting next to him at breakfast,” said Bullen in a bemused way. “It doesn’t seem possible, does it, that someone went and murdered him since?”

“When did you give him the message about going over to the Convent?”

Bullen stirred slowly. “I’d have to think. You know, I don’t seem able to think straight, not now. Funny, isn’t it?”

Sloan remembered the first sudden death that had come his way as a young constable. For years afterwards he had only had to shut his eyes for it all to come back to him. A road traffic accident that had been.

“You’ll feel better in a day or so,” he said automatically, “but you must try to think because we must know exactly what happened.”

“He thought he told him before the first study period—at least that’s what he told me earlier on.” All the bounce had gone out of Parker, too. He was doing his utmost to be helpful. “He didn’t see Tewn after that.” Sloan looked at Bullen. “That right?”

“Yes, Inspector. He should have been with us for the second study period—we’re…” He stopped and corrected himself. “We were both in the second year, you see. But I didn’t see him at all after we changed classrooms at ten o’clock. And neither did anyone else.”

14

« ^ »

I expect,” observed Sloan to nobody in particular, “that it seemed a good idea to begin with, and the more you thought about it the better you liked it. After all, you’d got the fire all laid on—got to have a fire on Guy Fawkes’ Night—you’d been gated too and there was the Convent practically next door, tempting Providence you might say almost.” He paused. “And an old habit wasn’t much compared with a bus shelter.”

Bullen stirred. “We didn’t think we were doing any harm. We didn’t think it would end like this.”

Parker retained more self-control. “But why should Tewn get killed? After all, we only swiped an old habit—there’s no great crime in that, is there?”

“I think,” said Sloan, “Tewn’s crime was that he saw something.”

“What?” asked Bullen dully.

“I don’t know, but I’m hoping you two might. Listen —all three of you plan to get inside the Convent on Wednesday night to take an old habit. Of the three of you only Tewn actually goes inside. Of the three of you only Tewn gets killed.”

“And that’s not coincidence, you mean?” said the slow-thinking Bullen. He was paying more attention now, but he still looked like someone who has been hit hard.

“The police don’t like coincidence,” said Sloan. “Tewn went inside and Tewn was killed.”

“Tewn and a nun,” Parker reminded him. “We have to go and choose a night when a nun gets killed. There’s a coincidence for you. I see what you’re getting at, though, Inspector. You mean that…”

Sloan wasn’t listening. A new and interesting thought had come to him. What had he just said himself? “The police don’t like coincidences.” There was one coincidence too many in what Parker had said.

“Listen both of you. I want you to go right back to the beginning and tell me where this idea about the habit came to you. And when.”

“I don’t know about where,” said Bullen, “but I know when. Sunday, after supper. The Principal said we were to be gated from four o’clock on Guy Fawkes’ Night because of what happened last year.”

“Up till then what had you meant to do?”

Bullen looked a bit bashful. “Do you know Cherry Tree Cottage? It’s on the corner by the Post Office.”

“No.”

“It’s a funny little place with a rather awful woman in it. I don’t know the word that describes it best but—”

“Twee,” supplied Parker shortly.

“That’s it. Well, she’s got a garden full of those terrible things.”

“What terrible things?” Bullen was hardly articulate.

“Gnomes,” said Parker.

“And fairies,” said Bullen, “and frogs and things. It’s full of them. We thought—that is to say…”

“This year’s good cause?” suggested Sloan.

“That’s it,” said Bullen gratefully.

“I see. And when Mr. Ranby forestalled you?”

“Then we had to think of something else quickly.”

“Whose idea was it to have a nun as a guy?”

Bullen shook his head. “I can’t remember. Not mine.”

“Nor mine,” said Parker quickly. Too quickly.

“Can you remember,” said Sloan sedulously, “whereabouts it was that this idea didn’t come to you?”

“Oh, yes,” said Bullen. “In The Bull. That’s where we…” He stopped.

“That’s where you got on to Hobbett,” Sloan finished for him.

Bullen flushed.

Sloan went on talking. “That’s where you two and Tewn settled that Hobbett was to take the old habit from the garden room to the cellar and to leave the cellar door—the only one to which he had a key— open on Wednesday night. You were to creep in and take it away and you presumably showed your appreciation of Hobbett’s—er—kindness in the usual manner. I’m not concerned just now with the rights and wrongs of all that. What I want to know is: how many people knew you were going to be inside the Convent that night?”

Parker looked up intently. “I get you, Inspector. Quite a few, I should say, one way and another. Some of the men here for a start, the chap in charge of building the fire…”

“Anyone at The Bull?”

He frowned. “I dare say there might have been one or two. Hobbett’s not the sort of man you’d want to sit down and talk to in the ordinary way, is he? He’s quarrelsome and people mostly keep away from him. We sat with him in a corner for a while and led him round to it. It’s pretty crowded in there at weekends— it’s the only place in Cullingoak, and all the Institute men go there for a start. I reckon anyone seeing us could have put two and two together easily enough— we felt it was quite a good joke at the time.”

“I think it’s quite possible,” said Sloan, “that someone else thought so too.”

The day which had begun as routine continued that way, though in a different, more highly-geared groove. Superintendent Leeyes cancelled his regular Saturday afternoon fourball the better to superintend what had quickly become known as the Convent case.

Mr. Marwin Ranby cancelled his weekend away, spent the greater part of the afternoon on the telephone trying to get in touch with a remote farm in the West Country, and finally prevailed upon Miss Celia Faine to come round from the Dower House to the Institute for tea. That, at least, wasn’t difficult.

For the Sisters it was perhaps a little easier. Saturday afternoon was for them a preparation for Sunday, a day without the significance of holiday or sport or relaxation. After Dr. Dabbe had gone and his next mournful job of work had been carried away in a plain black van, the Convent grille was closed and fifty women withdrew into their self-ordained silence. Not for them the endless unhappy speculation such as went round and round the Institute, nor the wild rumour piled upon fantasy that was tossed rapidly round the village. (Of its two institutions, Cullingoak was quite happy to exaggerate what went on at the Convent and to condemn out-of-hand the goings-on at the Institute.)

All in fact that did go on at the Convent was what anywhere else would have been termed a council of war. The Mother Prioress summoned those Sisters concerned in the finding of the dead William Tewn to the Parlour. They filed in silently, distributing themselves in an orderly circle—the neat Sister Ninian, the ebullient Sister Hilda, Sister Gertrude, Sister Lucy, a young Sister who had been with Sister Lucy when Sloan arrived, Sister Polycarp, the keeper of the gate who knew all comings and goings, and three others who had happened upon the scene of the crime. Lacking guidance about the correct religious behaviour in the unusual circumstances the three had stayed and moreover had failed lamentably to practise custody of the eyes. Now they wondered if having seen they should have moved immediately away… truly it was a difficult path they had chosen when they left the world.

The Mother Prioress began as she always did without preamble. “There has been another murder. Not, as you know, a member of the Community, but a student. He was killed in our grounds some time before recreation this morning—at least that is the police view. The alternative is that he was killed somewhere else and brought to the Convent grounds. Those of you who have seen him would agree it is very unlikely. No, I fear our connection with this particular student is closer than that. He is the one who came into the Convent on Wednesday for the old habit which was subsequently rescued by Inspector Sloan from the guy on the Institute bonfire. Do I make myself clear?”

It was an unnecessary question. The Mother Prioress always made herself clear.

“Therefore,” she continued lucidly, “we still have a grave problem very near at hand. Sister Anne was killed here in the Convent. This boy William Tewn— God rest his soul—who was the one to enter the Convent on Wednesday has also been killed. Until both crimes have been solved completely we are none of us in a position to know that no member of the Community is involved.”

She waited for this more oblique point to be appreciated.

“Moreover, we are bound by certain other considerations. Murder is not normally the action of a normal human being, still less that of a religious. But it can be the abnormal action of an abnormal person. That is the fact that we cannot overlook however much we might wish to.”

The cheerful face of Sister Hilda clouded over as the significance of this struck home.

“In the ordinary way,” went on the Mother Prioress, “it would never be necessary for me to ask you to tell me of anything untoward in the behaviour of your Sisters, but we are not in the ordinary way. Far from it. We are somewhere now outside our experience, and there can be no peace of mind until the unhappy soul who has perpetrated these two crimes has been found and relieved of the terrible burden of their guilt.”

It wasn’t how Sloan would have put it, but it came to the same thing.

“You mean, Mother, one of us might have done it?” Sister Hilda looked quite astounded.

“I trust not, but temporary—or permanent—aberration is never impossible.”

Sister Ninian nodded agreement. “Any one of us could have slipped out into the grounds before recreation and just stayed out and come in with the others afterwards…”

“Surely not!” exclaimed Sister Lucy.

Sister Polycarp looked down at her own strong hands. “They say he wasn’t very big.”

Sister Lucy shivered. “But who—which one of us could possibly have wanted…”

“Have needed?”

“… have needed to do a terrible thing like that?”

“Two terrible things,” put in the Mother Prioress quietly.

Sister Ninian frowned. Her hair, if she had had any hair, would have been grey by now, turned by the passing years, as her eyebrows had been, to a pale greyish blur above her blue eyes. “This means, Mother, doesn’t it, that there is a connection between the two deaths?”

“A strong connection,” said the Mother Prioress. “One so strong that the police feel they must interview every Sister today. They are particularly anxious that the details of the second crime of which you are already aware should not be communicated to the rest of the Community. I have undertaken that you will not . discuss it either with them or with anyone else. I do not need to remind you that you are under obedience in this respect.”

There was a series of assorted nods.

“The police,” said the Mother Prioress, “have intimated to me that they consider it essential that these interviews are conducted by them with each Sister alone. It is not a procedure to which in the ordinary way I would have ever given my consent. As I have said before, we are no longer in the ordinary way. I have communicated with the Very Reverend Mother General at our Mother House and with Father MacAuley. Both are of the opinion that this is not an unreasonable request. And Inspector Sloan has sent to Calleford for a—er—lady policewoman.”

“Luston?” barked Superintendent Leeyes. “What the devil do you want to go to Luston for?”

“To see a Miss Eileen Lome, sir.”

“Are you going to tell me why, Sloan, or do I have to ask you?”

“She was a nun, sir, until about three weeks ago when she left the Convent of St. Anselm.”

“Why?”

“I couldn’t rightly say, sir. The Mother Prioress said she asked to be released from her vows and she was.”

Leeyes’s head went up like a bloodhound getting a scent. “Trouble in the camp?”

“Perhaps.”

“We should have been told before.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Luston’s not very far.”

“No, sir. I thought I could go there while I wait for Sergeant Perkins to get over here from Calleford.”

The superintendent gave a wolfish grin. “Sent for Pretty Polly, have you?”

“Yes, sir. I can’t make headway in an interview with the Mother Prioress supervising and a couple of others sitting around for good measure. I want them on their own.”

Leeyes nodded. “What about the Institute?”

“No joy there, sir. Tewn’s fellow conspirators can’t or won’t help much. Can’t—I think. Bullen can’t remember anything Tewn said about the inside of the Convent that might give us any sort of lead. It might come to him, I suppose, though there’s not much between his ears. Except bone. They’re both trying to think hard of everything Tewn said or did since then.”

“Cartwright?”

“Gone into Berebury for the afternoon. Left The Bull as soon as he’d had his lunch.”

“Before you got there?”

“Yes, sir.” Sloan wasn’t going to start apologising at this stage. “He says he’ll be back, and he’s left all his papers and clothes and so on. Besides, I’ve got a man at the London end checking up on Cartwright’s Consolidated Carbons, and this business about their going public on Thursday. He wasn’t all that pleased to be setting about it on a Saturday afternoon either.”

“Duty first,” said the superintendent virtuously. He looked at the clock. His erstwhile golfing cronies would be at the seventh tee about now. Superintendent Leeyes had lost two balls there last Saturday afternoon —driven them straight into the rough. “Cartwright will come back, I suppose? Because if not—”

“Our trouble has been surely that he’s here in the first place,” objected Sloan. “Practically underfoot, he’s been. He’s got motive, all right. But he’s got brains too. Enough brains not to come knocking on the door out of the blue asking for Cousin Josephine if he dotted her on the head the night before.”

“It’s very nice for him that she’s dead,” said Leeyes. “Very nice. Now he can go ahead and turn his private firm into a nice little public company with heaven only knows what benefits to the principal shareholders.”

“Death duty,” said Sloan absently. “From her father’s will, Sister Anne’s share reverts to her uncle on her death without issue, which is fair enough. If they turn it into a public company while she’s alive she can have a say in everything because she’s got a fifty per cent stake in the capital. And you can’t run a chemical company from a convent. If they leave it alone then she and uncle will each have to pay out a walloping proportion of the entire value of the firm in death duties sooner or later.”

“This way?” asked Leeyes silkily.

“This way they go public on Thursday and transfer large blocks of shares round the family—Harold’s children—grandchildren for all I know—some for the trusty members of the Board—that sort of thing.”

“And I suppose you can also tell me why they didn’t sell the whole boiling lot years ago?”

“Yes, sir. Then there wouldn’t have been a job for our Harold Cartwright as Managing Director, and I fancy he enjoys being Managing Director of Cartwright’s Consolidated Carbons. Besides, Sister Anne’s consent would have been necessary but not, I fancy, forthcoming.”

“Well then,” snapped Leeyes, rounding on him, “why haven’t you arrested Cartwright? You’ve got a case.”

“A case for arresting him,” conceded Sloan. “Not much of a case against him.”

“Sloan.”

“Sir?”

“You aren’t hatching a case against one of those nuns, are you? I don’t fancy having the whole Force excommunicated.”

“I’m not hatching a case against anyone, sir. I don’t think we can rule out anyone at all yet. The only apparent motive is Harold Cartwright’s, and it’s a bit too apparent for my liking. Of course, it may not be the only one…”

“Hrrmph,” trumpeted Leeyes. “There’s still nothing to prove that the nuns aren’t involved. One of them’s dead inside their own Convent, killed by a weapon that was left around for another of them to touch—haven’t found that yet, have we, Sloan?”

“No, sir.”

“And then the student who goes inside goes and gets himself killed on eighteen inches of fuse wire—I suppose there’s plenty of that in the Convent?”

“Plenty, sir. A whole reel by the fusebox by the door out of Hobbett’s little lodge…”

“Hobbett… there’s always Hobbett, of course. What about Hobbett? You haven’t missed him, too?”

“Not exactly missed him, sir. He went off into Berebury at lunchtime with his wife like he does every Saturday lunchtime.”

“Before they found Tewn?”

“He’d gone before we got there. I should say he knocks off sharpish.”

“So you don’t know for sure?”

“No, sir. But we’ve got every man in Berebury looking out for him.”

“You’ve got a hope,” said Superintendent Leeyes, “and on a Saturday afternoon, too.”

15

« ^ »

Ironically enough it was Harold Cartwright who turned up first. At the Police Station. Crosby led him into Sloan’s room.

“You’ve had another death,” he said abruptly.

“I fear so.”

“Where is this all going to end, Inspector?”

“I wish I knew, sir.”

“First my cousin Josephine and now this student. It doesn’t make sense.”

“Murder doesn’t always. Not to begin with.”

“This boy—did my cousin know him?”

Usually it was Sloan who asked the questions, other people who answered them. Clearly Harold Cartwright, too, was in the habit of asking the questions that other people answered. Sloan let him go on that way. Questions revealed quite as much as answers; especially the ones that didn’t get asked.

“William Tewn? No, sir, we have no reason to suppose that Sister Anne knew him. Have you?”

“Me, Inspector? I told you I haven’t had sight nor sound of Josephine in twenty years.”

“So you did, sir. I was forgetting.”

Cartwright looked at him suspiciously. “And it’s true.”

“Yes, sir. We know that. Visitors and letters are both rationed in a convent.”

“Like a prison,” said Cartwright mordantly. “Poor Josephine.”

Sloan pushed a blotter away. Not tonight, Josephine. Nor any night, Josephine. Poor Josephine.

“And yet,” went on Cartwright, “Josephine and this young man Tewn have both been killed this week.”

“That is so,” acknowledged Sloan.

“Tewn saw something that gave him a lead on Josephine’s murder?”

“That’s the obvious conclusion, isn’t it, sir? We’re working on that now.” So obvious that even the police couldn’t miss it?

“So someone kills Tewn, too, to stop him talking?”

“Just so,” said Sloan. It could even be that way.

“This is Saturday. How did—er—whoever did it— know that Tewn hadn’t talked about what he saw?”

“There are at least three answers to that, sir, aren’t there?” Sloan was at his most judicial. “One is that he didn’t know if Tewn had talked or not, another is that Tewn saw something all right on Wednesday but that it didn’t register as important until he heard that a nun had died that night…”

“And the third?”

“The third is that whoever killed Tewn might not have known until yesterday the name of the student who went inside the Convent. He might not have known who it was he had to kill, just as we didn’t know ourselves until yesterday evening. Just as you didn’t know who it was either, sir.”

“But I did,” Cartwright said unexpectedly.

“You did? Who told you?” Sloan snapped into life.

“He did himself. At least I take it it was the same lad.”

“When?”

“On Thursday night at the fire. They were all standing round watching—like you do with a bonfire— waiting for the guy to catch alight. It was before you came along and did your brand-snatched-from-the-burning act.”

“Well?”

“I was standing with a bunch of ’em when I realised they’d got a nun up top as a guy. I made some damn silly remark about that being a path not leading to Rome and how had they managed to get the full rig. One of them said he and another chap had done it and it had been dead easy.”

“The vocabulary rings true,” said Sloan, leaning forward. “Now what else did he say? Think very carefully, sir, this may be important.”

Cartwright frowned. “Blessed if I can remember. No, wait a minute. There was something. The other chap with him made some sort of remark… ‘Easy as stealing milk from blind babies.’ That was it, and the first chap—the one who told me he’d got the habit…”

“Tewn.”

“He laughed and said he reckoned it was all a matter of getting the milk warm enough—if you did that everything else was all right.”

“Do you know what he meant?”

“No, Inspector, but the others all laughed at that. It sounded like some sort of Institute joke. Or even an agricultural one.”

Sloan made a quick note. “Now, about the fire, sir. You did tell me how it was you came to be there, didn’t you?”

“I did, Inspector,” he said without rancour, “but I will tell you again if you wish.”

Sloan inclined his head; and then regretted it. The eternal politeness of the nuns was quite infectious. He, a hardened Police Officer, would have to watch it.

“I was sitting in the bar of The Bull,” said Cartwright, “on Thursday evening at something of a loose end. It is very unusual for me to have any free time, you understand. Also, I had only a few hours before been told by you of my cousin’s premature death and I was not quite sure what was to be done about it. I meant to go out for a walk round the village to clear my thoughts a bit in any case, but when I heard some old man in a corner of the bar talking about a big bonfire at the Institute I thought I might walk that way.”

“Substitute ‘dirty’ for ‘old,’ ” said Sloan, “and you could be talking about a man I want to see.”

“Hobbett was the name,” said Cartwright. “I found that out afterwards. Contentious fellow. He was sitting there dropping hints about fun and games at the Institute. Apparently last year on Bonfire Night the students—”

“I know all about that,” said Sloan wearily.

“This man was saying more-or-less that for the price of a drink he could tell a tale, and I decided to take my walk.”

Sloan nodded. You could see why Cartwright was a captain of industry. He didn’t waste words and he stuck to the point. He was giving just the right impression of anxious helpfulness, too, and so far had told Sloan just one thing that he didn’t know already. Sloan eyed his visitor’s figure. Business luncheons hadn’t left too much of a mark there. He was only medium tall but strong enough to swing a weapon (somewhere between a paper-weight and a cannon-ball) down on the head of an unsuspecting woman. Not everyone’s cup of tea, but then not everyone could run one of the largest private companies in the land either. You couldn’t begin to work out where scruple and resolution came in—perhaps not too much of one and plenty of the other for both. He didn’t know. He was only a policeman.

“But it really comes down,” Cartwright was saying, “to asking who could possibly have wanted to kill my cousin Josephine.”

“Just you,” said Sloan pleasantly.

There was no spluttering expostulation. “I didn’t kill her,” said Harold Cartwright.

“Perhaps not,” said Sloan. “But it’s saved you a lot of trouble, hasn’t it?”

The man eyed him thoughtfully. “I’m not sure, yet. That’s why I’ve come to see you. To ask for something.”

“You don’t want,” said Sloan gently, “the chairman of Cartwright’s Consolidated Carbons to be publicly connected with the late Sister Anne of the Convent of St. Anselm at Cullingoak who died in dubious circumstances on Wednesday—which is why you have stayed here in this village holding yourself ready for questioning rather than gone back to London where we should have had to come to see you.”

“Inspector, should you ever leave the police and want a job, come to see me.”

“Thank you, sir, but I feel I’ve earned my pension. And I’m going to enjoy it. This request for no publicity —I take it that you would like it to hold good until after one minute past ten on Thursday morning?”

Cartwright exhaled audibly. “Just until then, Inspector. It’s very important.”

“So,” said Sloan, “is murder.”

Bullen came to the telephone readily enough.

“Warm milk?” he echoed stupidly.

“Something about milk,” said Sloan. “Think, man, think. What exactly did Tewn say about warm milk?”

“Nothing,” said Bullen promptly.

Sloan signed. “A witness has told me that while you were watching the guy burn, Tewn made some remark about warm milk…”

“Oh, that,” said Bullen. “I didn’t know you meant that.”

“I do mean that.”

“I should have to think, Inspector.”

Sloan waited as patiently as he could while Bullen’s thought processes ground their way through his memory.

“There was this man there…”

“What man where?”

“Some town fellow, a stranger, who came to see the fire. He made some sort of crack about the nun’s habit and our getting hold of it. I said it was dead easy.”

“As easy as stealing milk from blind babies?”

“That’s right, Inspector, and Tewn said it was all a matter of getting the milk warm enough.”

“What did he mean?”

“He was being funny, Inspector. We’d been having a study lesson on feeding calves that afternoon. We’d all been having a bash—all the second year that is:—when the Principal came in and said it was all a matter of getting the milk warm enough and then everything else would be all right.”

“Oh, I see,” said Sloan.

“Jolly clever of poor old Tewn, wasn’t it? Made us all laugh at the time. All the second year anyway. Was there anything else, Inspector, that you wanted to know?”

“What? No, no thank you, Bullen. That was all.”

Luston was the biggest town in Calleshire. Calleford had its Minister, its county administration, its history. Luston got on with the work.

Sloan and Crosby found Frederick Street in the decayed, once genteel, now shabby quarter of the town, by-passed alike by the glass self-service stores and the council’s redevelopment schemes. They were there well before four o’clock, having fought their way through the crowded shopping centre into the suburbs. Most of the inhabitants of Luston seemed to be out shopping—but not the occupant of 144 Frederick Street. The lace curtain twitched as the car drew up at the door, but for all that it seemed an age before the door was opened. A woman stood there, ineffectually dressed in clothes off the peg, her hair combed oddly straight.

“Good afternoon?” she said uncertainly.

“Miss Eileen Lome?” It couldn’t be anyone else, thought Sloan, not with that hair.

She nodded.

“I wonder if you could spare us a moment or two? We want to talk to you about the Convent of St. Anselm.”

Her face lit up spontaneously and then darkened. “You’re not from the Press?”

“No, I’m Detective-Inspector Sloan of the Berebury C.I.D. and this is Constable Crosby, my assistant.”

“That’s different. Won’t you come in?” She led the way through to the sitting-room. “I don’t want to talk to the Press. It wouldn’t be right.”

“We quite understand.” Sloan was at his most soothing. “We shan’t keep you long.”

The sitting-room was aggressively tidy. Miss Lome ushered them into easy chairs and chose a wooden one for herself.

“I can’t quite get used to soft chairs yet,” she said.

Sloan stirred uncomfortably in a chair he wouldn’t have had inside his own home let alone sat in. “No, miss.”

“Can I make you some tea?” suggested Miss Lome. “My sister’s not back yet, but I think I know where everything is.”

“No, thank you, miss.. We’d like to talk to you instead.”

She cocked her head a little to one side attentively. Sloan put her at forty-five, perhaps a trifle more. There was a youthful eagerness about her that made guessing difficult.

“When did you leave the Convent?”

“Twenty-four days ago.”

“Why? I’m sorry—it’s such a personal question, I know, but we have to…”

“I began to have doubts as to whether mine was a true vocation.”

“How long were you there?”

“Twenty-five years.”

“Twenty-five years?”

“Time has a different meaning there,” she said tonelessly.

“Nevertheless,” persisted Sloan, not unkindly, “it’s quite a while, isn’t it? One would have thought…”

“It’s different,” she said defensively, “for those who come in later. They seem more—well—sure, somehow. They know that all they want then is to be there, and they’ve proved it to themselves, and in any case they’re older.”

Sloan nodded. The word she was looking for was “mature.” He did not supply it.

“But for the rest of us,” she said, “who think we are sure at seventeen—you can’t help but wonder, you know. And it grows and grows, the feeling that you aren’t a true daughter of the Church.” She shook her head sadly. “It is a terrible thing to lose your vocation.”

Crosby’s face was a study.

“I’m sure it is, miss,” said Sloan hastily. And it was. no use asking a policeman where to find one of them.

They didn’t deal in lost vocations. “So they let you out, miss?”

“It wasn’t quite as simple as that, but that’s what happened in the end.” She brushed a hand across her straggly hair. She made it into a gauche, graceless gesture. “It’s getting a bit less strange now. My sister’s taken me in, you know. She’s being very kind though she doesn’t understand how very different everything is. Every single thing.”

“Yes, miss, it must be.”

The disaffection of the former Sister Bertha, now restored to her old name of Eileen Lome, seemed unlikely to have any bearing on the death of Sister Anne. In that the Mother Superior appeared to be quite right. Sloan sighed. It had seemed such a good lead. Apart from making quite sure…

“I don’t know if you’ve had any news from the Convent lately,” he said.

“You mean about Sister Anne? My sister showed me the newspaper this morning.” She smiled wanly. “She thought it would interest me.”

“You knew her well, of course?”

“Of course, Inspector. We had shared the same Community life for over twenty-five years.”

“Tell me about her,” urged Sloan gently.

Miss Lome needed no persuading. “She was professed about four years before me—the year I became a postulant, I think it was, though it’s rather a long time ago for me to be sure. She had given up a very gay life in London, you know, to become a nun.” Miss Lome glanced round the modest sitting-room, economically furnished, plainly decorated. “Dances, parties, the London Season—that sort of thing. Her family had money, I think…”

Sloan nodded.

“It used to worry Sister Anne a lot,” volunteered Miss Lome.

“What did?”

“All that money.”

Sloan read the look on Crosby’s face as easily as if it had been the printed word. A lot of money wouldn’t have worried him, it said. Just give him the chance and he’d prove it.

“In what way did it worry her?” asked Sloan.

“It was where it had all come from, Inspector, that was what she thought wrong. It was some sort of manufacturing process that was very valuable in making munitions in the First World War. But half the firm was to be hers one day, and then she intended to make restitution.”

Sloan felt a momentary pang of sympathy for Cousin Harold.

“She always took an interest in foreign missions,” continued Miss Lome. “She thought it was a way in which she could atone.”

The look on Crosby’s face, still easily readable, had changed to incredulity.

“She intended to sell out her interest in the firm?”

“That’s right. As soon as it came to her.”

“And this was common knowledge?”

Miss Lome gave a quick jerk of her head. “We knew it was something that worried her.”

“All those years?”

“Time,” said Miss Lome again, ruefully, “has a different meaning in a religious house.”

She might have left the Convent but she had brought with her the training of a lifetime. When not speaking her eyes dropped downwards, and her hands lay folded in her lap. In gawky, unsuitable clothes, face and figure innocent of make-up or artifice, the mannerisms of the nun bordered on the grotesque.

“Nevertheless,” said Sloan pedantically, “you must have been very surprised and shocked to read about the murder…”

Another quick jerk of the head. “I’ve been trying so hard not to think about the past—until today. Now, I can’t think about anything else except poor Sister Anne.” She brightened with an effort. “But one mustn’t dwell on the bad things, must one? There were some very happy times, too.” She stared at him through a mist of tears and said wistfully, “When everything seemed quite perfect.”

“Yes, miss, I’m sure there were. Tell me, have you been tempted to go back at all since you left?”

A curious colour crept over her face, and Crosby looked quite startled. Miss Lome was actually blushing.

“Just to the gate, Inspector. Not inside. There’s a part of the Convent you can see from the road if you know where to look…”

“The newspaper photographer found it.”

“That’s right. I’ve been back as far as there—just to have a look, you understand. Silly and sentimental of me, I suppose.”

“When?”

“Funnily enough, it was this morning.”

16

« ^ »

All right, all right,” challenged Superintendent Leeyes. “You tell me of someone who wasn’t at the Convent this morning for a change. The whole bang shooting match were there if you ask me—Hobbett, Cartwright, MacAuley, Ranby, Bullen, Parker, fifty nuns and now this woman. Anyone could have killed Tewn. Anyone. It’s a wonder he wasn’t trampled to death in the crowd.”

“This woman says she just went as far as the gate, sir.”

“Tewn didn’t go much farther himself, did he? And look what happened to him.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And as for her saying she just went as far as the gate, how do you know that? How do we know she didn’t go farther than the gate on Wednesday? Suppose she’s the answer to it being an inside job or an outside one—a bit of both, in fact? What’s to stop her coming in on Wednesday, slipping into the back of the Chapel for one of their eternal services and then waiting behind afterwards? You tell me the nuns don’t know who comes into their Chapel from outside for services. Then all she has to do is to wait somewhere until just after supper. She knows where to find that old habit. And how to behave in it.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then, after supper she waits in that corridor with a weapon that you’ve proved to me must have come from the Convent though you can’t find it.”

“No, sir.”

“Then she kills Sister Anne, hears someone coming and pushes her into the broom cupboard. Probably goes inside with her. And at half past eight she creeps out for some service or other.”

“Vespers.”

“To stop the hue and cry being raised until the morning. She goes in last, knowing the others are too damn ladylike to look up, pretends she’s got a cold and keeps her face buried in a handkerchief. Probably comes out last, too, then while the others go up to bed she sidles down the corridor and hides somewhere until it’s all quiet.”

“The necessarium?” offered Sloan.

“The what?”

“The smallest room, sir.”

The superintendent turned a dull shade of purple. “Very probably, Sloan, very probably. I was forgetting,” he added savagely, “that they aren’t fairies. Then when all the others are tucked up in their nice warm cells, she comes out of there and pops into the broom cupboard, heaves Sister Anne’s body down the cellar steps, and lets herself out through the cellar door and legs it back to Luston.”

Sloan studied the ceiling. “Leaving the habit in the cellar for Tewn, who comes along ten minutes later and takes it away?”

Leeyes glared.

“Or alternatively,” went on Sloan, switching his gaze to the floor, “she just happens to discard the habit there and Tewn just happens to come along and pick it up?”

“Tewn came there by arrangement, didn’t he?” Leeyes shifted his ground with subtlety.

“With Hobbett, sir. He promised to have the habit there for the students and to leave the outside cellar door open.”

“Someone knew about that little conspiracy, Sloan.”

“Yes, sir, unless…”

“Unless what?”

“It was a totally inside job. Then it wouldn’t have mattered what happened to the outside cellar door or the habit.”

“Who would have been lying?”

“Sister Damien.”

Leeyes shrugged. “I don’t like coincidence. Never have done.”

“Neither do I, sir, but you must allow for it happening.”

The superintendent gave an indeterminate growl. “What next?”

“Back to the Convent with Sergeant Perkins, sir.”

“Have they brought Hobbett in yet?”

“Not yet, sir.”

“There’s always the chance, I suppose,” said Leeyes hopefully, “that he’ll stand on one of them’s toe…” The other three golfers would be coming up the eighteenth fairway by now—without him. “Sloan…”

“Sir?”

“This woman, Eileen Lome—why did she leave the Convent?”

“She lost her vocation,” said Sloan, shutting the door behind him very gently indeed.

Sergeant Perkins was in his room when he got back.

He nodded briskly. “What do you know about Convents, Sergeant?”

“That they’re not allowed to have mirrors there,” she said. She was a good-looking girl herself.

“Poor things,” said Sloan unsympathetically. “Now, about the case…”

She flung a smile at his assistant. “Constable Crosby has been putting me in the picture, Inspector.”

Sloan grunted. “It’s not a pretty one. Two murders in four days. I don’t know about your end of the county, but out of the ordinary run for us.”

“And us, sir. Just husband and wife stuff as a rule.”

Sloan picked up the sheets of paper the Mother Superior had sent him that morning. “They’ve given us a list of every nun in the place, her—er—given name and her religious one, and what she said she was doing after supper on Wednesday. Now I suppose we shall need to know what they said they were doing this morning.”

“Never mind, sir, it’s nearer than Wednesday. They’re not as likely to have forgotten.”

“There is that,” admitted Sloan. He’d obviously got an optimist on his hands, which made a change from the superintendent.

“How many are there of them, sir?”

“Just over fifty.” That should deaden anyone’s enthusiasm for interviewing. “And all falling over themselves backwards not to be too observant, inquisitive or whatever else you like to call it.”

She nodded.

“And,” he added for good measure, “they don’t seem to think it’s right to have normal human feelings about people. Have you ever tried interviewing people without normal human feelings, Sergeant?”

“Often, Inspector. I get most of the teenage work in Calleford.”

He did not laugh. Nobody in the Calleshire Constabulary ever laughed at the word “teenager.”

He turned to Crosby. “Any luck with that list?”

“Yes, sir. There are four nuns who came into the Order late like Miss Lome said. Sister Margaret, Sister Lucy, Sister Agatha and Sister Philomena. Judging by all the other dates and ages the rest came in straight from school.”

“Poor things,” said Sergeant Perkins impulsively.

“And the other four?”

“Late twenties—one, early thirties—two, early forties—one.”

“Which one was that?”

“Sister Agatha. She came here from”—he flipped the sheets over—“the Burrapurindi Mission Hospital.”

“It’s a republic now,” said Sloan briefly. “And the other late entries?”

“Sister Philomena and Sister Margaret seem to have been school-teachers first.”

“The blackboard jungle.”

“And Sister Lucy”—he turned the pages back— “there’s no occupation down for her—just that she came from West Laming House, West Laming. It’s not the best address though, sir.”

“No?”

“No, sir. One of them comes from a castle. Fancy leaving a castle to go and live in a convent.”

“Probably the only one who didn’t notice the cold. Which one was that?”

“Sister Radigund.”

Sloan nodded. “You might think Sister Agatha was the one to be in charge of the sick if she had been a nurse, but I suppose that would be too simple for them.”

“There’s a Lady, too, sir.”

“They’re all ladies, Crosby, that’s their trouble.”

“No, sir. I mean a real one. It says so here. Lady Millicent.”

“And what’s she now?”

“Mother Mary St. Bridget.”

Sergeant Perkins leaned forward. “Some are Mothers, are they then, Inspector?”

“A courtesy title, Sergeant, I assure you. For long service, I believe.”

Crosby made a noise that could have been a hiccup.

Sloan favoured him with a cold stare. “Was there anything else, Crosby?”

“Just the Mother Superior, sir.”

“What about her?”

“Her name was Smith, sir. Mary Smith of Potter’s Bar.”

The three of them stood on the Convent doorstep and rang the bell. It was quite dark now. They could hear the bell echoing through the house, and then the slow footsteps of Sister Polycarp walking towards them.

Sergeant Perkins shivered. “The only other thing I know about nuns is that they used to be walled up alive if they did anything wrong.”

Sloan was not interested. As a police officer he was concerned with crime, not punishment.

“There was the nun who was murdered in Thirteen Fifty-One,” proffered Crosby unexpectedly. “By a crazy younger son.”

“And which was she?” demanded Sloan.

In the reflected light of the outer hall Crosby could be seen to be going a bit red. He gulped and chanted:

“An extremely rowdy nun

Who resented it.

And people who come to call

Meet her in the hall.

“The Police Concert,” he stammered hastily. “We sang it—four of us—it’s Noël Coward’s.”

Sister Polycarp pulled the bolts of the door back. “Sorry to keep you. I was in the kitchen.”

“That’s all right,” said Sloan. “Constable Crosby here has been entertaining us with a refrain of Mr. Noël Coward’s.”

“Coward?” Polycarp sniffed. “Can’t say I’ve heard the name. Ought I to have done?”

Sloan looked at her respectfully. “Oh, Sister, you don’t know what you gave up when you left the world.”

“Oh, yes, I do, young man. Believe you me I do.”

The former Mary Smith of Potter’s Bar, now Mother Superior of the Convent of St. Anselm, was in the Parlour to greet them.

Sloan introduced Sergeant Perkins. “I’m very sorry about this further intrusion, marm, but my superintendent insists…”

“But our Bishop agrees, Inspector, so pray do not worry on that score. We appreciate your difficulties.”

An hour later he wondered if she did.

It was slow, painstaking work, seeing nun after nun, each with eyes demurely cast down, voices at low, unobtrusive pitch, each having to be asked specifically each question.

“What did you do immediately after supper on Wednesday evening, Sister?”

“The washing up, Inspector.”

“The vegetables for the next day, Inspector.”

“Prepared the Chapel, Inspector.”

“Swept the refectory, Inspector.”

“Some lettering on prayer cards, Inspector.”

“A little crochet, Inspector.”

“There was a letter I was permitted to write, Inspector.”

“Studied a book on the life of our Founder, Inspector.”

And to each one: “When did you last see Sister Anne?”

As one woman they replied: “At supper, Inspector.”

Someone had been in her stall at Vespers, they knew that now, but they had no suggestions to make. None had seen anything untoward then or at any other time. Or if they had they weren’t telling Sloan and that good-looking young woman he had with him.

It was not noticeably different when he asked about that morning.

The same pattern of cleaning, cooking, praying emerged.

“Admin stuff,” he observed to Sergeant Perkins in between nuns.

“They don’t look unhappy,” she said.

“I don’t think they are. Once you’ve got used to it, I’m sure it’s a great life.”

She grinned. “Not for me, sir.”

“No,” said Sloan. “I didn’t think it would be. Next please, Crosby.”

There were faces he was beginning to know now. Characteristics were identifying themselves to him in spite of the strenuous efforts of their owners to suppress them.

Sister Hilda, whose lively, dancing eyes and harmonious voice belied her sombre habit. She had seen nothing on Wednesday or Saturday.

“But that’s not surprising, Inspector, is it? That corridor is pretty dim in daylight, let alone in the evening. And we don’t exactly go in for bright lights here, do we? As for this morning—once you’re out of range of the windows practically anything can happen.”

“Could anyone leave the house unobserved?”

“Probably not, but,” she said frankly, “anyone could go out into the grounds without anyone else asking why. It wouldn’t be anything to do with them, you see, so they wouldn’t notice properly if you know what I meant.”

Then there was the thin-lipped Sister Damien, who unbent not one fraction without the restraining presence of the Mother Superior.

“Had I seen anything suspicious I would have told Mother immediately,” she said.

“And this morning?”

“I was dusting the Library. I saw and heard nothing out of the ordinary.”

“You know Miss Eileen Lome, of course?”

She shook her head. “The name means nothing to me, Inspector.”

“Sister Bertha that was…”

“Ah, yes.” Her narrow features assumed a curious expression compounded of regret and disapproval. “The former Sister Bertha.”

“Have you seen her since she left?”

“None of us have seen her, Inspector, since she renounced her vows. It would not have been proper.”

And, nearly the last, Sister Lucy.

She came in and sat down, hands folded serenely in her lap, waiting expectantly for Sloan to speak.

“It’s a little strange, Sister, interviewing you in your own Parlour, but—er—needs must. This is Sergeant Perkins who has come over from Calleford.”

Two women in two very different uniforms regarded each other across the room. It did something for each, decided Sloan, but then uniforms usually did.

“You’ve got your keys back, Sister, I see.”

She patted the huge bunch which hung from her girdle. “Yes, indeed, Inspector, my badge of office. I was lost without them.”

“Sister, this dead boy, William Tewn, did you know him?”

“No, Inspector. I had never heard of him until this morning.”

“Nor seen him before?”

She shook her head. “Never. Nor the two other boys who came over with Mr. Ranby. The students can be seen from the Convent grounds if they are working on their own land, but they’re not usually near enough to identify and I’m sure no Sister would ever…”

“We have to ask any number of questions in our job,” he said placatingly. “And they may seem irrelevant.” But they weren’t, he thought to himself. She had been pale and shaking when she met him at the Convent door this morning after the second murder. He had seen that with his own two eyes, which made it cold, hard evidence.

“Sister, you came later than most to the Convent…”

She bowed her head. “That is so. I’ve been professed for only ten years now.”

It was quite comical to see Woman-Sergeant Perkins doing a quick calculation of Sister Lucy’s age on the material available to her.

“Happy years?” queried Sloan.

“Everything was very strange at first, Inspector, but it gradually becomes a very rewarding way of life.”

“Most of your—er—colleagues came here straight from school—it is permitted then to enter later?”

She nodded. “It is permitted, Inspector. It does not happen very often. I had not intended to become a nun when I left school, you see, but my aunt—I was brought up by an aunt—she was able to get dispensation from the Very Reverend Mother General.”

“I see,” said Sloan. “Thank you, Sister.”

He didn’t see, but Sergeant Perkins did.

“What’s a good-looking woman like that doing in a Convent?” she asked shrewdly, when Sister Lucy had retired. “There’s waste for you. Put her into a decent frock and she’ll still stop the traffic. I’ll bet she’s got good legs, too…”

“We shall never know,” said Sloan. “Shall we?”

“Of course,” went on Sergeant Perkins, “all that shy stuff that they play at—eyebrow fluttering, not looking at you and that sort of thing—that’s all very fetching anyway, but she’s a real good-looker, isn’t she?”

“It’s double murder we’re investigating,” said Sloan dryly. “Not abduction. And it wasn’t the good-looking one that bought it either. It was the one with the fifty per cent holding in Cartwright’s Consolidated Chemicals.”

“And she was plain?”

“Not as bad as some we’ve seen this afternoon,” said Sloan fairly, “but plain enough.”

Sergeant Perkins sighed. “So it wasn’t her Sir Galahad at Vespers, disguised as a nun and come to rescue her?”

“If it was anyone at all,” said Sloan, “it was the murderer.”

“Like the joke says?”

“What joke?”

Sergeant Perkins opened her eyes wide. “Haven’t you heard it, sir?”

“Not yet,” said Sloan grimly, “but I’m going to. Now,” he looked from one to the other, “Crosby, have you heard it?”

“Yes, sir. Often.” He coughed bashfully. “They sing it every time I go into the canteen.”

“Do they indeed? Suppose you sing it to me now…”

“Not sing it, sir. I can’t sing.”

“I want to hear it, Crosby, and fast.”

Crosby cleared his throat and managed a sort of chant:

“You may kiss a nun once,

You may kiss a nun twice,

But you mustn’t get into the habit.”

17

« ^ »

That you, Sloan?”

Sloan held the Convent telephone receiver at a distance suitable for the superintendent’s bellow.

“Leeyes here,” said the voice unnecessarily.

“ ‘Evening, sir.”

“Just to let you know,” trumpeted the superintendent, “that the rest of the Force haven’t been idle while you’ve been sitting around in that Parlour with Sergeant Perkins.”

“And fifty nuns, sir.”

Leeyes chose not to hear this. “We’ve got Hobbett for you.”

“Good,” said Sloan warmly. “I want a few words with him.”

“They picked him up in The Dog and Duck just after opening time.”

“Keep him, sir, I’ll be back.”

“I wasn’t proposing to let him go, Sloan, though he’s invoking everyone you’ve ever heard of. And then some. They tell me he’d hardly had time to sink his first pint and he’s very cross.”

“That suits us nicely, sir. Can you leave him to cool off while I go on from here to the Institute? There’s something I want to ask them there.”

“I don’t mind, Sloan, though I dare say the Station Sergeant might. However, you can make your own peace with him later. Talking of Sergeants, Sloan…”

“Sir…?”

“Sergeant Gelden’s turned up at last. With that bigamist. Silly fool.”

It was only fairly safe to assume he meant the bigamist.

“Do you want him back instead of Crosby?”

Sloan sighed. “No, sir. Not at this stage. I’ll keep Crosby now I’ve got him, but if you can spare Gelden I’d very much like him to go to West Laming for me.”

“Tonight?” They would have finished the nineteenth hole too before the superintendent got to the golf club. “Funny place to send a man on a Saturday night.”

“Yes, sir.” Sloan turned through the pages of his notebook, peering at his own handwriting. The electric light bulbs in this corridor couldn’t be a watt over twenty-five. “I want him to find out all he can about a Miss Felicity Ferling, who left there about ten years ago.”

“I suppose you know what you’re doing, Sloan.”

“Yes, sir.” Someone had once said, “Never apologise, never explain.” Someone with more self-confidence than he had. Disraeli, was it? “And tell him,” added Sloan boldly, “to ring me from there. Not to wait until he gets back.”

“He won’t get back, not tonight anyway. It must be the best part of ninety miles away.”

“Yes, sir, but if he starts now I should hear from him before ten.”

The superintendent came in on another tack. “Getting anywhere with all those women?”

“I’m not sure, sir,” parried Sloan. “They’re a strange crew. Not like ordinary witnesses at all. They don’t wonder about anything because they don’t think it’s right.”

“Theirs not to reason why…” Leeyes didn’t seem to see where the rest of that quotation was going to lead him. “Theirs but to do… and… er… die.”

“Just so, sir,” said Sloan.

Sergeant Perkins went with them to the Institute.

“I may need you,” said Sloan. “I expect Ranby’s fiancée will be there. She’s got good legs and you can at least see ’em.”

“No uniform?”

“I wouldn’t say that. Classic wool twin set, single string of pearls, quiet tweed skirt…”

“One of those,” said Sergeant Perkins feelingly.

“Nice girl all the same, I should say. She won’t have abandoned Ranby at a time like this.”

They found not only Celia Faine with Ranby in the Principal’s room but Father MacAuley too.

“A sad, sad business,” said the priest.

“Terrible,” endorsed Ranby. “A young life like that just cut off. It doesn’t make sense. Do you—may one ask—are you making any headway, Inspector?”

“In some ways,” said Sloan ambiguously.

“His people will be here by midday tomorrow. Not that that’s any help. We know who he is.” The Principal looked older now.

“We don’t know very much about him though,” commented Sloan mildly.

“I can’t say that we do either. One tends to know best those who come up against authority—sad but true—and Tewn wasn’t one of those. He seemed a likeable lad; not an outstanding student, mark you, but a trier.”

“He’d remembered one of the things you’d taught him,” said Sloan.

Ranby twisted his lips wryly. “I’m glad to hear it. What was that?”

“Something about feeding the calves. All a matter of getting the milk warm enough.”

The Principal’s face stiffened. “Getting the milk warm enough?”

“That’s right, sir. When you feed calves by hand, you taught them—on Thursday afternoon, was it?— that getting the calves to take the milk was all a matter of getting the milk warm enough.”

“So I did,” said Ranby warily, “but what’s it got to do with Tewn’s death?”

“I couldn’t say,” murmured Sloan equivocally. “I couldn’t say at all. Now, sir, would you say this lad had any enemies?”

“Just the one,” said Ranby dryly.

“What? Oh, yes, sir, I see what you mean. Very funny.” Sloan sounded quite unamused.

“Poor lad,” said Celia Faine. “At least he couldn’t have known very much about it. Strangling’s very quick, isn’t it?”

“So I’m told, miss.” He looked at her. “Sister Anne wouldn’t have known all that much either, come to that. Just the one heavy blow.”

The girl shivered. “It doesn’t seen possible. Cullingoak’s always been such a peaceful, happy village. And now…” She made a gesture of helplessness. “Two innocent, harmless people are killed.”

“Innocent,” said Sloan sharply, “but not harmless. That’s the trouble, isn’t it?”

Father MacAuley nodded. “The boy was harmless until he got inside the Convent. Sister Anne—we may have thought she was harmless but someone wanted her dead. It wasn’t an accident. It couldn’t have been.”

“Murder,” said Sloan tersely. “Well planned and carried out.” There was a small silence. “However, no doubt we shall find out in due course the person responsible and thence the murderer of this lad Tewn.”

The priest nodded. “In due course, I’m sure you will. I’ve just left the Convent—they’re not altogether happy about being left alone tonight without any male protector but they tell me you can’t spare a man.”

Sloan shook his head. “Sorry. Not on a Saturday evening. Any chance of your going back there, Father, for a while?”

“Me? Certainly, Inspector. I quite understand how they feel. Their experiences of the past four days are enough to make anyone feel apprehensive.”

Ranby nodded. “I don’t blame them either. I’ll come across with you, Father, and see if we can’t arrange something for tonight. What about their gardener fellow?”

“Hobbett? No,” said Sloan regretfully. “You can’t have him. We’re keeping him at the station this evening for questioning. I shouldn’t care to have the responsibility of leaving him as protector.”

“Ranby and I will go across when they’ve had supper and Vespers then,” said the priest, “and fix things so that they feel safer.”

“So that they are safer,” said the Principal.

“Thank you.” Sloan rose to go. “There was just one thing I wanted to ask Miss Faine…”

Celia Faine lifted her eyebrows enquiringly.

“You know the house better than anyone, miss?”

“Perhaps I do,” she agreed. “I was a child there and children do explore.”

“Tell me—it’s an old house, I know—is there any place there that someone could hide? A priest’s hole or anything like that?”

She smiled. “Not that I know of, Inspector. Nothing so romantic. Or exciting.” She frowned. “It’s large, I know, as houses go, but straightforward—the hall, the Chapel, the dining-room—that’s the refectory now, of course—one or two smaller rooms—the drawing-room was upstairs. I expect it’s a dormitory now, and then the Long Gallery. I can’t think what they’ll have used that for. Nothing else. No mysteries.” She smiled again. “The only thing I ever discovered as a child was the newel post at the bottom of the great staircase. My cousin and I were playing one day and we found the orb at the top lifted out. It’s on a sort of stalk and it slides on and out quite easily. We used to play with that a lot.”

“Round and smooth and heavy and staring you in the face,” snapped Superintendent Leeyes. “Well, is there blood on it?”

“Dr. Dabbe’s examining it now,” said Sloan. “But it’s been cleaned three times since Wednesday night, and when these nuns say clean they mean clean.”

“Did that Sister with the blood on her hand…”

“Peter.”

“Did she touch it that morning?”

“She thinks she did. She won’t swear to it, but she thinks she sometimes touches it.”

“She thinks she sometimes touches it,” .mimicked the superintendent. “What a crowd! And did she sometimes touch it on Thursday morning?”

“She can’t remember for certain. She might have done.”

“When was it cleaned?”

“First thing after breakfast. Before Terce and Sext.”

“What are… ?”

“Their Office, sir.”

“Before they’d realised it was blood on that book?”

“The Gradual? Yes, sir. They didn’t examine the book until afterwards. The staircase, landings and hall are always cleaned immediately after breakfast each day.”

Leeyes drummed his fingers on the desk. “So it could still be anyone, Sloan.”

“Anyone, sir, who knew that part of the newel post came out and would constitute a nice heavy weapon, ideal for murder.”

Hobbett was easy meat really.

“You can’t keep me here, Inspector. I haven’t done nothing wrong and I can prove it. I wasn’t running away neither. I allus come into Berebury Sat’day afternoons.”

“What you did wrong, Hobbett, was agreeing to let those young gentlemen into the Convent. I know an old habit isn’t worth much, but look at the trouble you’ve caused. And now you’re involved in a double murder case whether you like it or not, aren’t you?”

“I didn’t ’ave nothing to do with no murder. I just fergot to lock up Wednesday night, that’s all. Clean went out of my mind.”

“You arranged—for a small consideration,” said Sloan in a steely voice, “to leave the old habit in your wood store in the cellar and to forget to lock up. And three students named Parker, Bullen and Tewn were to creep in and collect it. Tewn did the creeping and Tewn’s dead.”

“It weren’t nothing to do with me,” protested Hobbett. “I only did like you said. Moving an old piece of cloth from one place to another and forgetting to lock up—that’s not a crime, is it? What’s that got to do with murder?”

“Everything,” said Sloan sadly. “It provided the opportunity.”

The telephone was ringing as Sloan got back to his room.

Crosby handed over the receiver. “For you, sir. London.”

“Inspector Sloan? Good. About our friends the Cartwrights and their Consolidated Chemicals…”

“Yes?”

“Something I think will interest you, Inspector.”

“Yes?”

“Harold—the principal subject of our enquiry— highly respected, highly respectable business man. Hard but straight.”

“Well?”

“His father—Joe—not such a good business man but quite a fellow with the chemicals in his day. Past it now, of course.”

“Of course. He must be about eighty-five.”

“That’s just it. He is. And he had a stroke on Tuesday night. He’s still alive but not expected to recover.”

Sloan whistled. “So that’s what upset the applecart!”

“At a guess—yes.”

“Thank you,” said Sloan. “Thank you very much.”

“I’m glad it was useful information,” said the voice plaintively, “because I should have been at Twickenham this afternoon.”

Sloan pushed the telephone away from him.

“So, Crosby, if Sister Anne died before Uncle Joe all was well. If she consented to the firm going public all was not well but better than it might have been. If she neither died nor consented, Cousin Harold inherited his father’s half minus death duties leaving Sister Anne with her half intact and a strong leaning to the Mission field and making restitution.”

“Tricky,” said Crosby.

“Tricky? Cousin Harold must have been in a cold sweat in case his father died before he got to Cullingoak and Sister Anne.”

“Sir, what about that awful old woman we saw in London, Sister Anne’s mother—doesn’t she come into this?”

Sloan shook his head. “No. She’s only got a life interest that reverts to either her daughter, brother-in-law or nephew according to the order in which they survive. We can leave her out of this. Give me that telephone back, will you? I’m going to ask Cousin Harold to go up to the Convent.”

“Tonight?”

“Tonight, Crosby. After the good Sisters have had supper and Vespers.”

Crosby started to thumb through the telephone directory.

“Crosby, where’s Sergeant Perkins?”

“In the canteen, sir.”

“Get them to save me something, and then tell her I want to see her. I’m going back to see the superintendent when I’ve spoken to Cousin Harold.”

“It was blood then, Sloan.”

“Yes, sir. Dr. Dabbe’s just sent along his report. Minute traces, dried now and mixed with polish, but indubitably blood.”

“Group?”

“The same as Sister Anne’s, the same as on the Gradual.”

“And as a possible weapon?”

“Ideal.” Sloan tapped the pathologist’s report. “He won’t swear to it being the exact one…”

“Of course not,” said Leeyes sarcastically. “They never will.”

“But it fits in every particular.”

“Good enough for the jury, but not the lawyers?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And what do you propose to do now?”

Sloan told him.

18

« ^ »

Neither the Mother Superior nor Sister Lucy were present at Vespers that Saturday evening. If any member of the Community so far forgot herself as to notice the fact, they took good care not to look a second time at the two empty stalls. The welfare of the Convent of St. Anselm sometimes necessitated their presence in the Parlour with visitors. So it was this evening.

There were three of them, and a grumbling Sister Polycarp had let them in and taken them to the Parlour. The Convent of St. Anselm did not usually have visitors at the late hour of eight-thirty in the evening and she resented the interruption of her routine. She would have resented still further—had she known about it—two other visitors who had come privily to another door a little earlier. They had tapped quietly on the garden room door that Sister Polycarp had so carefully locked and bolted only an hour before that. But it was mysteriously opened for them and they stepped inside, a man and a woman, locking it as carefully behind them as Sister Polycarp had done so that should she chance to check again there was nothing to show that it had been opened and closed again in the meantime.

The Mother Superior greeted those who had come by the front door, keeping Sister Polycarp by her side.

“Father, how kind of you to come back, and Mr. Ranby too.”

“We don’t like to think of you alone here all night with a murderer at large.”

She bowed. “It is indeed difficult to sleep with that thought. We have been more than a little perplexed.” She lowered her voice, “You see we cannot exclude the possibility that the—er—perpetrator of these outrages is within our own house.”

Both men nodded.

“Especially,” went on the Mother Superior, “now that the police have discovered the murder weapon was here all the time.”

“They have?” said Ranby.

“The orb on the top of the newel post. Inspector Sloan has taken it away.”

“Now, about tonight…” said the priest.

“Mr. Cartwright has come up from the village, too,” said the Mother Superior. “He is just looking through the cellars for us now. We felt a little uneasy about the cellars.”

“Yes, indeed,” said Father MacAuley soothingly. “I think it would be as well if Cartwright, Ranby and I worked out some scheme for patrolling the building, cellars and all.”

“We had already decided to do that ourselves,” said the Mother Superior, “but if you would be so kind as to augment our—rather feminine efforts it would be a great kindness.”

“An hour each on,” suggested Ranby, “and two off. That is if Cartwright agrees?”

“Right,” said MacAuley.

“With one Sister…”

“With two Sisters,” said the Mother Superior firmly.

“With two Sisters in the gallery at the top of the stairs.”

“Thank you, gentlemen. That should keep us safe through the night. I will detail the Sisters immediately. They are quite used to night vigils, you know. In Lent we keep them between the Offices of Compline and Lauds.”

Sergeant Gelden rang Sloan at Berebury Police Station at a quarter to ten.

“That you. Inspector? About a Miss Felicity Ferling of West Laming House.”

“I’m listening, Sergeant.”

“It’s like this, sir…”

Sloan listened and he wrote, and he thanked Sergeant Gelden. Then he drove out to Cullingoak. He parked his car at The Bull and walked to the Convent from there, timing the walk. Then he, too, went round to the garden door and tapped very quietly. He was admitted by no less a personage than the Mother Superior herself.

She produced a list for him. “From ten to eleven, Father MacAuley and Sisters Ninian and Fidelia; from eleven to twelve Mr. Cartwright and Sisters Damien and Perpetua, and from twelve to one Mr. Ranby and Sisters Lucy and Gertrude.”

“And so on through the night?”

“Yes, Inspector, unless anything untoward happens. Sister Cellarer has sent a supply of hot coffee and sandwiches to the Parlour for those not actually watching.”

“Any difficulties?”

“None. All three gentlemen were quite agreeable to my suggestions.”

“Let’s hope they’ve swallowed everything. And the rest of the Community?”

“Gone to bed, Inspector, as usual.”

“Good. And the arrangements for changing over the watch so to speak?”

“The retiring Sisters will knock on their successors’ doors ten minutes before the hour.”

“Excellent. Is Sister Lucy in bed?”

“Sister Lucy has perforce been in bed for some time now, Inspector.”

He gave her a quick smile. “We’re nearly there, marm.”

“Pray God that you are,” she said soberly.

Sloan made himself as comfortable as he could in the flower room and settled down to wait. And to wonder.

If he opened the door the minutest fraction he could see the hall and its sentinel. First it was Father MacAuley who paced up and down the hall and then did a methodical round of doors and windows. Sloan had to retreat behind a curtain for that. And then Harold Cartwright, noisier than the priest, conscientiously poking about along the corridor and talking quietly up the stairs to Sister Damien and Sister Perpetua.

He heard them at about quarter past twelve and again at a quarter to one.

“Everything all right up there with you?”

“Yes, thank you, Mr. Cartwright. It’s all quiet, thank God.” Sister Damien’s thin whisper came floating down the stairs in reply. “We’re just going along to wake the others. We’ll see you at two o’clock again.”

“Right you are.”

Sloan heard him do one last quick round and then nip back towards the Parlour. Then the Parlour door opened and Ranby came out. He came straight to the garden room, and Sloan was hard put to it to get behind his curtain in time. Ranby pulled back the bolts and left the door slightly ajar and then went back to the hall.

Sloan came out from behind his curtain and held the door open. Ranby was standing at the foot of the stairs, calling softly upwards.

“Are you there, Sister Lucy?”

Sister Gertrude came to the balustrade and leaned over. “We’re both here, Mr. Ranby. Is there something wrong?”

“No. I just wanted a word with Sister Lucy about Tewn. It’s something she said earlier this morning. It’s just occurred to me it might be important.”

Sister Gertrude withdrew and Sister Lucy appeared in her stead on the landing and began walking slowly down the polished treads, her head bent well down, her massive bunch of keys swinging from her girdle.

Ranby retreated a little as she descended, backing away from the small well of light in the hall, away from the gaze of Sister Gertrude. He came, as Sloan thought he would, towards the dark corridor where Sister Anne had died, the corridor where Sloan stood waiting and watching.

“Felicity,” Ranby whispered urgently to her, “come this way. I must talk to you.”

The nun turned obediently in his direction and walked exactly where he said.

“This way,” he urged. “So that the others don’t hear us.”

She was almost level with him now, his eyes watching her every movement, not seeing at all the dim shadowy figure that was following her down the stairs, pressed against the furthest wall.

As she drew abreast of him he put up an arm as if to embrace her. It quickly changed to a savage grasp, his other hand coming up in front of her neck searching for soft, vulnerable cartilage and vital windpipe.

The eager questing fingers were destined to be disappointed in their prey.

The nun did a quick shrug and twist and Ranby let out a yelp of pain. The arm fell back, but he came in with the other. That did him no good at all. The nun caught it and flung herself forward against it. Ranby fell heavily, her weight on top of him.

And then Sloan was there and the dark shadow on the wall was translated into Detective-Constable Crosby with handcuffs at the ready. Along the corridor the Parlour door opened and Father MacAuley and Harold Cartwright came hurrying out.

The nun clambered off Ranby, hitching up her habit in an un-nun-like way. “These blasted skirts,” she said, “certainly hamper a girl.” She struggled out of the headdress and shook her hair loose. “But this is worse. Fancy having to live in one of these.”

“That’s not Sister Lucy,” gasped Ranby.

“No,” agreed Sloan. “That’s Police-Sergeant Perkins in Sister Lucy’s habit.”

19

« ^

I didn’t think it would come off a second time,” said Sloan modestly.

The superintendent grunted. He didn’t usually reckon to come in to the station on a Sunday morning, but then his Criminal Investigation Department didn’t arrest a double murderer every day of the week. Sloan, Perkins, Gelden and Crosby were all present—and looking regrettably pleased with themselves.

“No snags at all?” asked Leeyes.

“Worked like a charm,” said Sloan cheerfully. “He was quite taken in by Sergeant Perkins. So was I, sir. Anyone would have been.”

“Would they indeed?” said Leeyes. “Sergeant Perkins makes a good nun, does she?”

Sergeant Perkins flushed. “That headdress thing…”

“Coif,” supplied Sloan, now the expert.

“Coif is about the most uncomfortable thing I’ve ever worn.”

“You didn’t wear her hair shirt then,” said Leeyes acidly.

“No, sir. On the other hand, sir, you can’t blame Ranby for making a mistake that first time. You can’t see a nun’s face unless you get a straightforward front view, you know, and I don’t suppose he wanted to do that anyway.”

“Don’t forget either, sir,” put in Sloan, “that nuns don’t age as quickly as we do. I don’t know why. But Sister Anne looked the sort of age he expected Sister Lucy to look by now.”

“And,” went on Sergeant Perkins, “it’s about the darkest corridor I’ve ever been in.”

“That’s their subconscious harking back to candle-power,” said Sloan sotto voce.

Leeyes ignored this. “So Ranby killed Sister Anne on Wednesday in error?”

“Pure and simple case of mistaken identity, sir. It all fits. He was out to kill Sister Lucy, the Bursar and Procuratrix, who always wears that great big heavy bunch of keys hanging from her girdle. Always.”

“Except on Wednesday evenings?”

“No, just this one Wednesday so that Sister Anne could look out some gifts to send to the Missions in time for Christmas. I gather in the ordinary way she would have come with her, but she was busy on Wednesday evening.”

“What’s she got to be busy about?”

Sloan didn’t know. He didn’t think he would ever know what made them busy in a Convent. “Anyway, sir, she handed over her badge of office—a very conspicuous one—to Sister Anne, and so Ranby thinks it’s her. He picks up the orb on the newel post…”

“He knew all about that, did he?”

“Oh, yes, sir, from Celia Faine. He hits Sister Anne very hard indeed on the back of the head and puts it back. Not even bothering to wipe it very clean. If it’s found it’s a pointer to an inside job, isn’t it?”

“It wasn’t found,” pointed out the superintendent unkindly. “Not until someone laid it out on a plate for you.”

“No, sir,” said Sloan. “On the other hand it didn’t mislead us about its being an inside job either, did it? And then, sir,” he went on hurriedly, not liking the superintendent’s expression, “he bundles the body into the broom cupboard and takes the glasses off. It’s quite dark in there too and so he still doesn’t know he’s nobbled the wrong horse.”

“And then what?”

“He goes back to the Institute for supper.”

“He does what?”

“Goes back to the Institute for supper.”

“Who threw her down the stairs then?”

“He did.”

“When?”

“After supper.”

“Why?”

“Delay her being found, upset the timing, make us think she’d fallen—that sort of thing. Implicating Tewn, too, if necessary. It wouldn’t have been any bother to drag her along the corridor and shove her down the steps as he was there anyway.”

“How do you mean he was there anyway?”

“He came back after his own supper at the Institute,” said Sloan, “to attend Vespers. He didn’t want her found before the boys got to the Convent. He hadn’t an alibi for a quarter to seven or thereabouts when he killed her, but if she was thought to be alive at nine when they went off to bed it would throw a spanner in the calculations.”

“Are you trying to tell me, Sloan—not very clearly if I may say so—that Ranby came twice to the Convent on Wednesday night?”

“Yes, sir, I am. He came to the service that they have just before their supper as an ordinary worshipper—Benediction I think it’s called—and probably waited behind, afterwards. The nuns all go into the refectory at a quarter past six for their supper and he goes along the corridor, opens the cellar door, nips down for the habit, puts it on and comes back up into that corridor. Then comes the tricky bit. He has to wait for Sister Lucy to come along. He takes the orb down.”

“Didn’t anyone notice it had gone?”

“I doubt if they’d have missed anything, not even the kitchen stove, until the time came to use it. No, I think he just stood inside the broom cupboard until he saw her come along.”

“She’d have to be alone,” objected Leeyes doubtfully-

“Yes, she would, but don’t forget that after supper they have their recreation. They’re allowed to potter about a little at will. It was the only chance he took really—her not happening to come his way. But if she didn’t he could always go looking for her.”

“In the Convent?”

“It’s not difficult to pass as a nun if you’re in the habit. He’s fair-skinned anyway, they can’t see his hair, he’s got his own black shoes and socks on, trousers wouldn’t show and believe you me, sir, nuns are the least observant crowd of witnesses it has been my unfortunate lot to encounter. They seem to think it’s a sin to notice anything. And the light’s so bad you never get a really clear view of anything after daylight. Ranby never saw Sister Anne’s face sufficiently well at any time to know it wasn’t Sister Lucy. There’s no light to speak of in the corridor itself, and he wouldn’t dare shine a torch. That would be asking for trouble.”

“So he kills Sister Anne, goes back to the Institute for supper…”

“That’s right, sir. They would notice if he weren’t there anyway, but particularly at the Institute supper.”

“Why?”

“There are fourteen resident staff all told, including Ranby, so if one is missing there are—”

“I can do simple arithmetic, Sloan.”

“Yes, sir.” Sloan coughed. “As soon as the supper at the Institute was finished I reckon he came back, put on the habit and Sister Anne’s glasses. He only had to be last in to the Chapel to know which was her stall.” He took a breath. “And he was—Sister Damien said so. Then he waits until the nuns have gone to bed, drags the body to the top of the cellar steps, throws it down, leaves the habit ready for Tewn, puts the glasses in his pocket, and goes back to his quarters in the Institute. I expect he rang for the maid to take away his coffee cup or sent for one of the staff or students— something like that to imply that he’d been there all the time. Nobody’s likely to ask him any questions though, because he thought there was nothing to connect him with the Convent at all.”

“But there was?”

“There must have been something or he wouldn’t have had to kill Tewn.”

“Ah, Tewn. I was forgetting Tewn.” The superintendent never forgot anything.

“I think Tewn had to die because he saw something which connected Ranby with the Convent.”

“What?”

Sloan tapped his notebook. “I’m not absolutely certain but I think I can guess.”

“Well?”

“Ranby stepped out of that habit somewhere around nine-fifteen or nine-twenty after being inside it for nearly an hour. Tewn picked it up at nine-thirty.”

“Well?”

“It would still be warm, sir. I think Tewn noticed.”

“That crack about warm milk,” burst out Crosby involuntarily.

Sloan nodded. “Ranby must have had good reason for thinking Tewn knew or guessed something. It would be easy enough for him to catch Tewn in between the study periods yesterday morning and tell him they were walking over to the Convent without the others.” He shrugged his shoulders. “We’ll never know what it was Tewn knew. Unless Ranby tells us. Mind you, sir, I don’t think he will. The only thing he’s said so far is ‘Get me my solicitor.’ ”

“Much good that’ll do him,” said the superintendent. “You’ve got him cold, I hope.”

“I hope so,” echoed Sloan piously, “but it’s a long story.”

The superintendent sighed audibly. “Suppose you go back to the beginning…”

“There are really two beginnings, sir.”

“One will do very nicely, Sloan. Let’s have the earliest first.”

“That was twelve years ago, sir, in West Laming. Where Sergeant Gelden went last night.”

Sergeant Gelden nodded corroboratively.

“It concerns two people,” said Sloan, “Mr. Marwin Ranby, then Deputy Headmaster of West Laming School, and a Miss Felicity Ferling, niece of Miss Dora Ferling of West Laming House. It was their both having come from West Laming that put me on to Ranby. This pair became very friendly indeed—Miss Ferling was a very charming, good-looking girl, greatly loved by her aunt who had brought her up. She became engaged to be married to this promising young schoolmaster and everything was arranged for the wedding. Two weeks before it Miss Dora Ferling had a visitor—Mr. Ranby’s wife. He was already married. The wedding was abandoned, and Miss Felicity Ferling broken-hearted.”

“So she took her broken heart to the Convent?”

“Not at first. They don’t like women there for that reason, but apparently she’d always been very devout and interested in the life.”

“He seems to like ’em that way,” observed the superintendent. “Some men do. And the second beginning?”

“Ten days ago. At a public enquiry into the planning application to develop the land in between the Convent property and the Institute. Both sent representatives to it. The Institute sent Mr. Ranby and someone from the County Education Department. The Convent sent the Mother Superior and—”

“Don’t tell me,” said the superintendent. “I can guess.”

“Sister Lucy—their Bursar. Just the worst possible time for her to turn up from Ranby’s point of view. He’s engaged again—this time to Miss Celia Faine, who stands a good chance of being wealthy if this development is allowed.”

“Nasty shock for him—seeing his old flame sitting there.”

“Very. And in nun’s veiling too. Pretty impregnable places, convents.”

“Ahah, I see where you’re getting, Sloan.”

“Exactly, sir. Ranby goes home to brood on ways and means.”

“And his own students provide the answer?”

“That’s right, sir. Plot Night in more ways than one. I think we shall find that Ranby either overheard or got to hear of the arrangement with Hobbett and seized his chance that night. The only other thing he needed to know was how to identify Sister Lucy without looking each nun in the face. A little judicious pumping of Hobbett would give him the answer to that, too—she always wore a great big bunch of keys. You’ll have spotted the other misleading fact yourself, I’m sure, sir.”

Leeyes growled non-committally.

“Hobbett,” went on Sloan, “doesn’t know Sister Lucy doesn’t wear glasses all the time. Any more than Ranby does. She would have been wearing them at the enquiry and when she paid Hobbett.”

“You make it sound very simple,” complained the superintendent.

“It was, sir. Motive, means and opportunity, the lot. He can’t risk failure of a second attempt to marry a well-to-do unprotected girl—so there’s the motive. The means are at hand—even down to the weapon—and his own students presented him with opportunity.”

“Are you trying to tell me, Sloan, that Ranby can have gone to that Chapel with his future intended and those nuns not have known him from Adam?”

“Yes, sir. The Sisters sit in front of a grille, and the congregation would only ever see their backs. And,” he added under his breath, “they none of them know Adam.”

“What’s that, Sloan?”

“Nothing, sir.”

“I don’t want any of your case based on false premise.”

“No, sir.” That was the course on Logic rearing its head again.

Leeyes turned to Crosby. “None of this ‘when did you stop beating your wife’ stuff, eh, constable?”

Crosby looked pained. “I’m not married, sir.”

Harold Cartwright was still at The Bull.

“Fine woman, the Mother Superior. Makes me realise some of my ideas were a bit Maria Monk—you know, the Awful Disclosures thereof.”

Sloan did not know, and said instead, “Any news of your father, sir?”

Cartwright shot him a sharp glance, “You knew, didn’t you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“He’s much the same, Inspector, thank you. I’m going back home today but I’m coming back… Inspector Sloan?”

“Sir?”

“It was Ranby who sent for the police on Bonfire Night, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, sir. I think he wanted us to see the habit and glasses just in case he had to pin something on someone else. After all, it wasn’t very likely one nun would kill another really.”

“And safer than throwing the glasses away.”

“He was a bit too anxious to implicate the students. He suggested they might have got out of the Biology Laboratory window long before he was supposed to know what time they had gone to the Convent.”

Cartwright gave his quick smile. “That job’s still open for you, Inspector.”

“No, thank you, sir, but there is one—what you might call—lost soul in need of one rather badly. A defector from St. Anselm’s. I doubt if she’s really employable myself.”

“I could see,” offered Cartwright.

“The name is Lome, Miss Eileen Lome. I’ll give you her address.”

“And I’ll give you my London one;”

Sloan coughed. “I have it, sir, thank you.”

Cartwright nodded gravely. “I was forgetting. But I’ll be coming back to The Bull. Funny thing you know, The Bull doesn’t mean the animal at all.”

“No, sir?”

“No. It means the Papal Bull. Isn’t that odd? The Mother Superior told me.”

Sloan went back to the car and tapped Crosby on the shoulder. “Get thee to a nunnery.”

Sister Gertrude set off in the direction of the Parlour. There must be visitors there again. Usually Sister Lucy was sent for but today Sister Lucy was being kept very busy by the Mother Superior on the question of the cost of a cloister. And this time they knew where the money was coming from. Mr. Harold Cartwright. Usually, when the Convent of St. Anselm spent some money they had no idea from whence the wherewithal would appear. It always came, of course, but that was not easy to explain to a builder.

She hurried down the great staircase and wondered how long it would be before she could look at the newel post without a shudder. There was a portrait at the bottom of the stairs, framed and glass-covered. If you stood in a certain way you could catch sight of your own reflection. Sister Gertrude paused, squinted up at herself and pulled her coif quite straight. Very wrong of her, of course. She would try not to do it again. But it was a temptation.

She joined the Mother Superior and went into the Parlour.

“So it was Mr. Ranby all the time,” said the Mother Superior directly.

“Yes, marm,” said Sloan. “He swallowed the bait— Sergeant Perkins—hook, line and sinker. If I may say so, Father MacAuley has a real talent for dissembling. Ranby never guessed the idea of the night watch was all a put-up job.”

“Inspector, there is no doubt is there?”

“No, marm, we’ve found out other things too. He shaved twice that day and so on.”

“Poor soul,” she said compassionately, “to be so concerned with the passing things of this world.”

“Yes, marm.” He coughed. “Miss Faine… how…”

“Father MacAuley went to see her this morning after Mass. We must pray for her.”

Sloan shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “Of course.”

“The two boys from the Institute?” she enquired.

Sloan brightened. “They’re taking it very well. It’s quite taken their minds off Tewn.”

“Inspector, when did you first suspect… ?”

“Sister Lucy was white and shaking when I got here yesterday after you’d found Tewn’s body. It wasn’t that that had upset her because she hadn’t seen it. What she had seen, of course, was Ranby. And Ranby had seen her and realised he’d killed the wrong Sister.”

“He must have been a desperate man by last night.”

“He was, marm. He tried to kill Sergeant Perkins. There was no doubt about that.”

The Mother Superior inclined her head. “Sergeant Perkins is a courageous woman.”

“In the course of duty, marm,” he said hastily. It was a different discipline, a different dedication from that of the Sisters, but for all that it was still an equally dedicated way. “About Hobbett…”

“In future,” she said dryly, “he can ring for Sister Polycarp.”

A bell suddenly echoed through the Convent. Both nuns rose, Sister Gertrude with a perceptible start. She had been wondering who it would be among the Community who would be bidden to move into the cell that had been Sister Anne’s, the cell next to Sister St. Hilda the snorer. Was it wrong to pray God it wouldn’t be her?

Sister Polycarp stumped to the door with the two policemen. “Good day, gentlemen…”

Was it Sloan’s imagination or did she slam the grille behind them?

Crosby looked back at the Convent. “You wouldn’t have thought, sir, would you, that after all that, it would turn out to be a crime passionnel?” He pronounced it “cream.” “Not here.”

“No,” said Sloan shortly, “you wouldn’t.”

“That motto on the door, Inspector…”

“Well?”

“Do we really know what it means?”

Sloan turned on his heel and stared at the writing. “Pax Intrantibus, Salus Exeuntibus. Didn’t you look it up, Crosby? You should have done. Very enlightening.”

“Please sir…”

“Peace to those who enter,” translated Sloan. “Salvation to those who leave.”

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Catherine Aird had never tried her hand at writing suspense stories before publishing The Religious Body— a novel which immediately established her as one of the genre’s most talented writers. A Late Phoenix, The Stately Home Murder, His Burial Too, Some Die Eloquent, Henrietta Who? and A Most Contagious Game have subsequently enhanced her reputation. Her ancestry is Scottish, but she now lives in a village in East Kent, near Canterbury, where she serves as an aid to her father, a doctor, and takes an interest in local affairs.

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