The Religious Body iscm-1 Read online

  Sister Peter burst into tears. “That’s just it, Mother,” she wailed. “Sister Jerome says…” She became quite incoherent in a fresh paroxysm of tears.

  “What does Sister Jerome say?” asked the Reverend Mother mildly.

  Sister Jerome cleared her throat. “That mark, Mother. I think it’s blood.”

  Sister Gertrude’s knees felt quite wobbly. She gulped, “And we can’t find Sister Anne anywhere.”

  2

  « ^ »

  Inspector C. D. Sloan had never been inside a Convent before.

  He had, he reckoned, been inside most places of female confinement in his working life—hospitals, prisons, orphanages, offices, and even—once—a girls’ boarding school. (That had been in pursuit of a Ward in Chancery whom a great many other people had been pursuing at the same time. Sloan had got there first, though it had been a near thing.)

  But never so much as a monastery, let alone a Convent.

  The call came into Berebury Police Station just before ten in the morning. The Criminal Investigation Department of the Berebury Division of the Calleshire Constabulary was not large, and as his sergeant was checking up on the overactivities of a bigamist, he had no choice at all about whom he took with him to the Convent: Crosby, Detective-Constable, William. Raw, perky, and consciously representing the younger generation in the force, he was one of those who provoked Superintendent Leeyes into observing (at least once every day) that these young constables weren’t what they were.

  “You’ll do, I suppose,” said Sloan resignedly. “Let’s go.” He stepped into the police car and Crosby drove the five and a half miles to Cullingoak yillage. He slowed down at the entrance to a gaunt red-brick building just outside Cullingoak proper and prepared to turn into the drive. Sloan looked up.

  “Not here. Farther on.”

  Crosby changed gear. “Sorry, sir, I thought…”

  “That’s the Agricultural Institute. Where young gentlemen learn to be farmers. Or young farmers learn to be gentlemen.” He grunted. “I forget which. The Convent is the next turning on the right.”

  It wasn’t exactly plain sailing when they did find the entrance.

  There was a high, close-boarded fence running alongside the road and the Convent was invisible behind it. The double doors set in it were high and locked. Crosby rattled the handle unsuccessfully.

  “Doesn’t look as if they’re expecting us.”

  “From what I’ve heard,” said Sloan dryly, “they should be.”

  Eventually Crosby found his way in through a little door set in the big one.

  “I’ll open it from the inside for the car,” he called over, but a minute or two later he reappeared baffled. “I can’t, Inspector. There’s some sort of complicated gadget here…”

  “A mantrap?” suggested Sloan heavily.

  “Could be. It won’t open, anyway.”

  His superintendent didn’t like his wit and his constables didn’t appreciate it: which was, if anything, worse.

  “Then we’ll have to walk,” he said.

  “Walk?”

  “Walk, Crosby. Like you did in the happy days of yore before they put you in the C.I.D. In fact, you can count yourself lucky you don’t have to take your shoes off.”

  Crosby looked down at his regulation issues.

  “Barefoot,” amplified Sloan.

  Crosby’s brow cleared. “Like that chap in history who had to walk through the snow?”

  “Henry Four.”

  “He’d upset somebody, hadn’t he?”

  “The Pope.”

  Crosby grinned at last. “I get you, sir. Pilgrimage or something, wasn’t it?”

  “Penance, actually.”

  Crosby didn’t seem interested in the difference, and they plodded up the drive together between banks of rhododendrons. It wasn’t wet, but an unpleasant early morning dampness dripped from the dank leaves. Nothing grew under the bushes. The drive twisted and turned, and at first they could see nothing but the bushes and trees.

  Sloan glanced about him professionally. “Pretty well cared for really. Verges neat. No weeds. That box hedge over there was clipped properly.”

  “Slave labour,” said Crosby, crunching along the drive beside him. “Don’t these women have to do as they’re told? Vow of obedience or something?” He kicked at a stone, sending it expertly between two bushes. “Anyone can get their gardening done that way.”

  “Anyone can tell you’re still single, Crosby. Let me tell you that a vow of obedience won’t get your gardening done for you. My wife promised to obey—got the vicar to leave it in the marriage service on purpose —but it doesn’t signify. And,” he added dispassionately, “if you think that shot would have got past the Calleford goalkeeper next Saturday afternoon, you’re mistaken. He’s got feet.”

  They rounded a bend and the Convent came into view, the drive opening out as they approached, finishing in a broad sweep in front of an imposing porch.,

  “Cor,” said Crosby expressively.

  “Nice, isn’t it?” agreed Inspector Sloan. “Almost a young stately home, you might say. The Faine family used to live here and then one of them—the grandfather I suppose he would be—took to horses or it may have been cards. Something expensive anyway and they had to sell out.” Sloan was a Calleshire man, born and bred. “The family’s still around somewhere.”

  There were wide shallow steps in front of the porch, flanked by a pair of stone lions. And a large crest over the door.

  Crosby spelled out the letters: “ ‘Pax Intrantibus, Salus Exeuntibus’—that’ll be the family motto, I suppose.”

  “More likely to be the good Sisters’, Crosby. Pax means peace, and I don’t think the Faines were a particularly peaceful lot in the old days.”

  “Yes, sir, but what about the rest of it?”

  He wasn’t catching Sloan out that easily.

  “Look it up, constable,” he said unfairly, “then you’ll remember it better, won’t you?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Sloan climbed the last step and advanced to the door.

  “Sir…”

  “Yes, Crosby?”

  “Er, what gives?”

  “Didn’t you get the message?” Sloan pressed the bell. “Something nasty has happened to a nun.”

  Unexpectedly a little light flashed on at the side of the door. Crosby peered forward and read aloud the notice underneath it: “ ‘Open the door and enter the hall.’ ”

  “Advance and be recognised,” interpreted Sloan, who had done his time in the Army.

  They pushed open the outer door and stood inside a brightly-lit vestibule. The next pair of doors was of glass. There was another notice attached to these: “When the buzzer sounds push these doors.” Beyond them was a small hall, and at the other side of this was a screen stretching from floor to ceiling. In the centre of the screen was a grille.

  Sloan was suddenly aware of a face looking at them through it. The two policemen were standing in the light, and beyond the grille was shadow, so they could see little of the face except that it was there—watching them. The scrutiny ended with a buzzer sounding loudly—and the lock on the glass door fell open.

  Sloan pushed the doors and walked forward into the hall.

  The face behind the grille retreated a fraction into the dark background and he saw it no better.

  Sloan cleared his throat. “I am Detective-Inspector Sloan from Berebury C.I.D.”

  “Yes?” The voice was uninviting.

  “I understand that one of the nuns—”

  “Sister Anne.”

  Behind his right ear he heard Crosby struggling to strangle a snort at birth.

  “Sister Anne,” continued Sloan hastily, “I am told has had… has unfortunately met with an…”

  “She’s dead,” said the face.

  “Just so,” said Sloan, who was finding it downright disconcerting talking to someone he could not see.

  “She’s in the cellar,” volunteered the
speaker.

  “That’s what I had heard.”

  The voice attached to the face was Irish and that was about all Sloan could tell.

  “I think you had better see the Mother Superior,” she said.

  “So do I,” said Sloan.

  There was a faint click and a shutter came down over the grille. The two policemen waited.

  There were two doors leading out of the hall but both were locked. Crosby turned his attention to the lock on the glass doors.

  “Electricity, sir. That’s how it works.”

  “I didn’t suppose it was magic,” said Sloan irritably. “Did you?”

  This wasn’t the sort of delay he liked when there was a body about. Superintendent Leeyes wasn’t going to like it either. He would be sitting in his office, waiting—and wondering why he hadn’t heard from them already.

  They went on waiting. The hall was quite silent. There were two chairs there and, on one wall, a little plaster Madonna with a red lamp burning before it. Nothing else. Crosby finished his prowling and came back to stand restively beside Sloan.

  “At this rate, sir, it doesn’t look as if they’re going to let the dog get a look at the rabbit at all…”

  There was the mildest of deprecating coughs behind his right ear and Crosby spun round. Somewhere, somehow, a door must have opened and two nuns come through it, but neither policeman had heard it happen.

  “Forgive us, gentlemen, if we startled you…”

  Sloan had an impression of immense authority— something rare in a woman—and the calm that went with it. She was standing quite still, dignity incarnate, her hands folded loosely together in front of her black habit, her expression perfectly composed.

  “Not at all,” he said, discomfited.

  “I am the Mother Superior…”

  “How do you do…” The conventional police “madam” hung unspoken, inappropriate, in the air. Sloan’s own mother was a vigorous woman in her early seventies. He struggled to use the word and failed.

  “… Marm,” he finished, inspired.

  “And this is Sister Mary St. Lucy.”

  That was easier. He could call the whole world “Sister.”

  “Sister Lucy is our Bursar and Procuratrix…”

  Sloan saw Crosby’s startled glance and shot him a look calculated to wither him into silence.

  The Mother Superior glanced briefly round the hall. “I am sorry that Sister Porteress kept you waiting here. She should have shown you to the Parlour.” She smiled faintly. “She interprets her watchdog duties very seriously. Besides which…” again the faint smile “… she has a rooted objection to policemen.”

  It was Sloan’s experience that a lot of people had, but that they didn’t usually say so straight out.

  “Not shared, I hope, marm, by all your Sisters——-”

  “I couldn’t tell you, Inspector,” she said simply. “This is the first time one has ever crossed our threshold.” She turned to one of the doors. “I therefore know very little about your routine but I dare say you would like to see Sister Anne…”

  “Not half,” whispered Crosby to her back.

  “And Sister Peter, too, though I fear she won’t be of much immediate help to you. She’s quite overcome, so I’ve sent her to the kitchen. They’re always glad of an extra pair of hands there at this time of the day. This way, please.”

  She led them through the nearer of the two doors into what had been the original entrance hall of the old house. It was two storeys high, with a short landing across one end. A pair of double doors led through into the chapel at the other end, but the centre of attraction was the great carved black oak staircase. Its only carpet was polish, and it descended in a series of stately treads from the balustraded gallery at the top to a magnificent newel post at the bottom, elaborately carved, with an orb sitting on the top.

  The Mother Superior did not spare it a glance but, closely followed by Sister Lucy, led them off behind the staircase through a dim corridor smelling of beeswax. Sloan followed, guided as much by the sound of the long rosaries which hung from their waists as by sight. Once they passed another nun coming the opposite way. Sloan tried to get a good look at her face, but when she saw the Reverend Mother and her party, she drew quietly to one side and stood, eyes cast down, until they had all passed. Then they heard the slight clink of her rosary as she walked on.

  “Inspector,” Crosby hissed in his ear, “they’re all wearing wedding rings.”

  “Brides of Christ,” Sloan hissed back.

  “What’s that?”

  “I’ll tell you later.”

  The Reverend Mother had halted in front of one of the several doors leading off the corridor.

  “This is the way to the cellar, Inspector. Sister Anne, God rest her soul, is at the foot of the steps.”

  So she was.

  Sister Lucy opened the door and Sloan saw a figure lying on the floor. Two nuns were kneeling beside it in an attitude of prayer. He went down the steps carefully. They were steep, and the lighting was not of the brightest.

  When they saw the new arrivals, the two nuns who had been keeping vigil by the body rose quietly and melted into the background.

  The body of the nun was spread-eagled on the stone floor, face downwards, her habit caught up, her veil knocked askew. The white bloodless hands were all he could see of death at first. There was a plain broad silver ring on the third finger of this left hand too.

  The Reverend Mother and Sister Lucy crossed themselves and then drew back a little, watching him.

  He couldn’t tell in the bad light where the blood on her black habit began and ended, but there was no doubt from where it had eome. The back of her head. Even in this light he could see there was something wrong with its shape. There was a hollow where no hollow should be.

  He knelt beside her and bent to see her face. There was blood there, too, but he couldn’t see any…

  “We would have liked to have moved her,” said the Reverend Mother, “or at least have covered her up, but Dr. Carret said on no account to touch anything until you came.”

  “Quite right,” he said absently. “Crosby, have you a torch there?”

  He shone it on the dead Sister’s face. Blood from the back of her skull had trickled forward round the sides of the white linen cloth she wore under her cowl and round her head and cheeks. There was a word for it that he had heard somewhere once… w… w… wimple… that was it. Well, her wimple had held a lot of the blood back, but quite a bit had got through to run down her face and then—surely—to drip on the floor. Only that was the funny thing. It hadn’t reached the floor. He swept the beam from the torch on it again. There was no blood on the floor. That on the face was congealed and dry, but there was enough of it for some to have dripped down on the floor.

  And it hadn’t.

  “So, of course, we didn’t touch anything until you saw her.” The quiet voice of the Reverend Mother obtruded into his thoughts. “But now that you have seen her, will it be all right for us to…”

  “No,” said Sloan heavily. “It won’t be all right for you to do anything at all.” He got to his feet again. “I want a police photographer down here first, and any moving that’s to be done will be done by the police surgeon’s men.”

  “Perhaps then Sister Lucy might just have her keys back. Inspector?”

  “Keys?”

  Sister Lucy flushed. “I lent them to poor Sister Anne late yesterday afternoon. She was going to go through our store cupboards to make up some parcels for Christmas. We have Sisters in the mission field, you know, and they are very glad of things for their people at this time. She did it every year.” She hesitated. “You can just see the edges of them under her habit there…”

  “No.”

  “You must forgive us,” interposed the Mother Superior gently. “We are sometimes a little out of touch here with civil procedure, and we have never had a fatal accident here before. We have no wish to transgress any law.”

&
nbsp; He stared at her. “It isn’t a question of the infringement of any rule, marm. It is simply that I am not satisfied that I know exactly how Sister Anne died. Moreover, you also have a nun here with blood on her hands which you say she is unable to explain…”

  “Just,” apologetically, “on one thumb.”

  “And,” continued Sloan majestically, “you want me to allow you to move a body and remove from it evidence which may or may not be material. No, marm, I’m afraid the keys will have to wait until the police surgeon has been. Have you a telephone here?”

  The Mother Superior smiled her faint smile. “In that sense at least, Inspector, we are in touch with the world.”

  3

  « ^ »

  Wait a minute, wait a minute,” grumbled Sister Polycarp. “I’m coming as fast as I can.” She stumped towards the front door. “Ringing the bell like that! It’s enough to waken the dead.” She stopped abruptly. “No, it’s not, you know. It won’t wake poor Sister Anne, not now.” She drew the grille back. “Oh, it’s you, Father. Come in. They’re waiting for you in the Parlour. It’s about poor Sister Anne. She, poor soul, has gone to her reward and we’ve got the police here.”

  “A nice juxtaposition of clauses,” said Father MacAuley.

  “What’s that?”

  “Nothing, Sister, nothing.” Father MacAuley stepped inside. “Just an observation…”

  “Oh, I see. I should have kept them out myself, but Mother said that wouldn’t help. Can’t abide the police.”

  “You’re prejudiced, Polycarp. Nobody worries about the Troubles any more. You won’t believe this but the Irish Question is no longer a burning matter of moment. You’re out of touch.”

  Sister Polycarp sniffed again. “That’s as may be. You’re too young to remember, Father. But I never thought to have the police trampling about again, that I can tell you. Arrest poor Sister Peter, that’s what they’ll do.”

  “Will they indeed?” Father MacAuley looked thoughtfully at the nun. “That’s the little one that squeaks when you speak to her, isn’t it? Now why should they arrest her?”