The Religious Body iscm-1 Read online

  “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 voca
tion.”

  “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.”