The Religious Body iscm-1 Read online

  “Nice,” said Sloan shortly.

  “Very,” agreed the pathologist. “Especially here.”

  “Cause of death?”

  “Depressed fracture of skull.”

  “Can I quote you?”

  “Lord, yes. I don’t need her on the table for that. You can see it from here. That’s not to say she hasn’t other injuries as well, but that’ll do for a start, won’t it?”

  Sloan nodded gloomily.

  Dabbe picked up his hat. “I’ve got a sample of the dust from that step and the shoe—I can tell you a bit more about that later. And the time of death…”

  The quiet of the cellar was shattered suddenly by a bell ringing. No sooner had it stopped than they could hear the reverberations of many feet moving about above them.

  “In some ways,” observed Sloan sententiously, “this place has much in common with a girls’ boarding school.”

  “You don’t say?” Dabbe cast a long, raking glance over the body on the floor. “Of course, I don’t get about as much as you chaps… What’s the bell for? Physical jerks?”

  “Meditation.”

  “They could start on one or two little matters down here. I shall give my attention to a thumb print on a manuscript, and I’ll get my chap to begin on the blood grouping.”

  Sloan saw him out and then came back to the cellar. “Dyson…”

  “Inspector?”

  “The name of your assistant?”

  “Williams.”

  “I thought so. Who is Mr. Fox?”

  Dyson hitched his camera over his shoulder and prepared to depart. “One of the inventors of photography, blast him.”

  The cellar door banged behind the two photographers, leaving Sloan and Crosby alone with Sister Anne at last.

  “Now, then, Crosby, where are we?”

  Crosby pulled out his notebook. “We have one female body—of a nun—said to be Sister Anne alias Josephine…”

  “Not alias, Crosby.”

  “Maiden name of—no, that doesn’t sound right either. They’re all maidens, aren’t they?”

  “So I understand.”

  “Well, then…”

  “Secular.”

  “Oh, really? Secular name of Josephine Mary Cartwright. Medium to tall in height, age uncertain…”

  “Unknown.”

  “Unknown, suffering from a fractured skull…”

  “At least…”

  “At least—sustained we know not how but somewhere else.”

  “Not well put but I am with you.”

  “As I see it, sir, that’s the lot.”

  “See again, Crosby, because it isn’t.”

  “No?” Crosby looked injured.

  “No,” said Sloan.

  They waited in the cellar until two men appeared with a stretcher and then gave them a hand with the ticklish job of getting their burden up the stairs. Then…

  “Inspector, I’ve been thinking…”

  “Good. I thought you would get there in the end.”

  “If that was the top of her shoe that hit the seventh step, then she didn’t even die somewhere else in the cellar.”

  “Granted.”

  “Someone threw her down those steps after she was dead?”

  “That’s what Dr. Dabbe thinks.”

  “That’s a nasty way to carry on in a Convent.”

  “Barbarous,” agreed Sloan, and waited.

  Crosby, untrammelled by classes on Logic, should be able to get further than that on his own.

  “The fall didn’t kill her?” he suggested tentatively.

  “Not this fall anyway.” He looked at the steep stairs. “A weapon more like.”

  “A weapon seems sort of out of place here.”

  “So does a body in a cellar,” said Sloan crisply. “Especially one that didn’t die there.”

  Crosby took that point too. “You mean,” he said slowly, “that they parked her somewhere else before they chucked her down?”

  “I do. For how long?”

  He was quicker this time. “For long enough for the blood on her head to dry because it didn’t drip on the floor?”

  “You’re doing nicely, Crosby.”

  Crosby grinned. “So we look for somewhere where someone stashed away a bleeding nun and/or whatever it was they hit her with?”

  “If we have to tear the place apart,” agreed Sloan gravely.

  In the event they didn’t.

  Prowling about in the dim corridor at the top of the cellar steps was Father MacAuley. He was on his hands and knees when Sloan almost fell over him.

  “Ah, Inspector,” he said unnecessarily, “there you are.”

  “Yes, sir, and there you are, too, so to speak.” He regarded the kneeling figure expressionlessly. “If it will save you any trouble, sir, I have already ascertained that this corridor was swept and polished early this morning.”

  “Really?” He got to his feet. “Good. Then we can get on with the next thing, can’t we?”

  “What’s that, sir?”

  “Finding where they left her until they pushed her down the steps, of course. It must be off this corridor somewhere.”

  “Why is that, sir?”

  “Too risky to drag a body across that enormous hall, don’t you think? Someone might have come out of the Chapel at any moment and there’s that gallery at the top of the stairs. Anyone might be watching from there. No, I think she was—er—done to death round about here, or perhaps through in the kitchens somewhere.”

  “We’ll see, sir, shall we?”

  Sloan opened the nearest door, but the priest shook his head.

  “No, Inspector, it won’t be there. That’s the—er— necessarium. It’s hardly big enough. Besides, the door only locks on the inside and there would always be the risk of someone wanting to use it, wouldn’t there?”

  The second and third doors revealed a small library, and a garden room with outside glass door, sink and vases.

  They found what they were looking for behind the fourth door. It opened on to a large broom cupboard. Crosby’s torch played over the brown stain on the bare boards of the cupboard’s floor.

  MacAuley peered inquisitively over their shoulders. “Someone kept their head—looks as if she was put in here head first so that the blood was as far away from the door as possible.”

  Crosby shifted the angle of the torch’s beam and said, “Those nuns have been in here this morning for these brooms, I’ll be bound.”

  Sloan sniffed the polish in the air. “I dare say. They wouldn’t have noticed this blood though, not without a light. We’ll see if the doctor has left.”

  “Constable, if I might just borrow your torch…” MacAuley took it deftly from Crosby and began to cover the broom cupboard inch by inch in its beam.

  Crosby stepped back into the corridor.

  “Inspector…”

  “Well?”

  “What did whoever put her in here want to go and move her for?”

  “Take a bit longer to find perhaps.”

  “Would that matter?”

  “I don’t know yet, but even the most absent-minded of this crew would have noticed her when they came to do the cleaning this morning.”

  Sloan was keeping a close eye on Father Benedict MacAuley withal. “Besides, you do get a broken skull sometimes from falling down the cellar steps but very rarely from tripping over in a broom cupboard.”

  “They hoped we would think she had fallen down those nasty steep stairs?”

  “I shouldn’t be at all surprised. Most people expect the police to jump to the wrong conclusions. And if you never do, Crosby, you will end up…” He paused. Father MacAuley was backing out of the cupboard.

  “Where, Inspector?” Crosby was ambitious.

  Sloan looked at him. “Exactly where you are now— as a Detective-Constable with the Berebury C.I.D.— because you wouldn’t be human enough for promotion. Well, Father MacAuley, have you found what you were looking for?”

&n
bsp; “No, I can’t think what has happened to them.”

  “Happened to what?” asked Sloan patiently. “Sister Anne’s glasses. She couldn’t see without them, and yet they’re nowhere to be found.”

  5

  « ^ »

  Considering how little of the flesh of a nun could be seen, Sloan marvelled how much he was aware of the differing personalities of the Mother Prioress and Sister Lucy. In both cases good bone structure stood out beneath the tight white band across the forehead.. There was self-control, too, in the line of both mouths’ and, in Sister Lucy’s case, more than a little beauty still. She must have been very good-looking indeed once, and that not so very long ago.

  He opened his notebook. “Now, marm, with regard to comings and goings, so to speak—exactly how private are you here?”

  That would be the first thing Superintendent Leeyes would want to know—an “inside” job or an “outside” one. On this hung a great many things.

  “We are not a strictly enclosed Order, Inspector. Sisters are allowed to leave the Convent for works of necessity and mercy, and so forth. They have interviews here in the Parlour unless it is a Clothing, when they come into the Chapel. Our Chapel was originally the Faine private one, and Mrs. Faine and her daughter still attend services here, as do others in Cullingoak.” She smiled gently. “We are, in fact, to have a rather special service here next month. Miss Faine is to be married to Mr. Ranby, the Institute’s Principal, and the Bishop has given his consent to our Chapel being used—as it would have been had the Faines still lived here.”

  “How do they get in?” enquired Sloan with interest.

  “There is a door leading outside from the Chapel. Sister Polycarp unlocks it before the service.”

  “Tradesmen?”

  “We have everything delivered. Sister Cellarer deals with them at the back door, and Sister Lucy here pays them.”

  “No one else?”

  “Just Hobbett—he’s our handyman. There are some tasks—just one or two, you understand—which are beyond our capacities.”

  Sloan nodded. “This Hobbett—does he have to run the gauntlet every day?”

  “Past Sister Polycarp? No, his work is at the back. He has his own key to the boiler room and his own routine—dustbins, ladders, cleaning the upstairs outside windows and so forth. And the boiler for three-quarters of the time.”

  “Three quarters?”

  “Sister Ignatius is the only person who can persuade it to function at all when the wind is in the east. Her devotions are frequently interrupted.”

  They found Hobbett in a small, not uncosy room at the foot of a short flight of outside stairs descending to cellar level not far from the kitchen door. It was lined with logs, and a litter of broken pieces of wood covered the floor. There was a chair with one arm broken and an old table. Hobbett was sitting at this having his midday break. There was a mug of steaming tea on the table. He was reading a popular daily newspaper with a tradition of the sensational.

  “I am Inspector Sloan.”

  The man took a noisy sip of tea and set the mug down carefully on the table. “Hobbett.”

  He hadn’t shaved this morning.

  “We are enquiring into the death of Sister Anne.”

  Hobbett took another sip of tea. “I heard one of ’em had fallen down the cellar steps.” He jerked his head towards the door in the corner. “I don’t go through that far meself or happen I might ’ave found her for you.”

  “How far do you go through?”

  “Just to the boiler—got to keep that going—and the coke place with kindling and that. Mostly I work in the grounds.”

  To Sloan he hadn’t the look of a man who worked anywhere.

  “What were you doing yesterday?”

  “Yesterday?” Hobbett looked surprised. “I’d ’ave to think.” He took a long pull at his tea. “I cleared out a drain first. The gutter from the Chapel roof was blocked with leaves and I had to get my ladders out. Long job, that was. I’d just finished when Sister Lucy sent for me to shift a window that’d got stuck.”

  “Upstairs or down?”

  “Up. I’d just put my ladders away, too. She wouldn’t have it left though. Said it was dangerous. One of ’em might have escaped through it, I suppose.” He sank the rest of his tea in one long swallow and licked his lips. “Not that there’s much for them to escape for, is there now?”

  “This Sister Anne,” said Sloan sharply. “Did you see her often?”

  “Wouldn’t know her if I did. Can’t tell some of them from which, if you get me. There’s about four of them that gives me orders. The rest don’t bother me much.”

  “When did you leave last night?”

  “Short of five somewhere. Can’t do much in the dark.”

  “Nice type,” observed Crosby on their way back.

  “And four doors,” said Sloan morosely, “and about thirty windows.”

  Sister Gertrude was having a bad day. First, though no one had mentioned it, she was deeply conscious of her neglect in ignoring Sister Anne’s empty cell. And now she was troubled about something else. As a nervous postulant she had fondly imagined that there would be no worries in a Convent, that the way would be clear and that obedience to the Rule would make following that way, if not easy, then at least straightforward.

  It seemed she was wrong—or was she?

  No nun was meant to carry worries that properly belonged to the Reverend Mother. Her instructions were simple. The Reverend Mother was to be told of them and her ruling was absolute. Then the Sister concerned need worry no longer.

  What they had omitted to pontificate on, thought Sister Gertrude, was at what point a worry became substantial enough for communicating to the Reverend Mother. What was bothering her was just an uneasy thought.

  It had cropped up after luncheon. There was no proper recreation until the early evening, but after their meal there was a brief relaxation of the silence in which they worked. It lasted for about fifteen minutes until they resumed their duties for the afternoon. And the person who had been speaking to her in it was Sister Damien.

  In the tradition of the Convent an empty place was left at the refectory table where Sister Anne had always sat, her napkin laid alongside it. It would be so for seven days and then the ranks of nuns would close up as if she had never been. And Sister Damien and Sister Michael who had sat for several years on either side of Sister Anne would now for the rest of their mortal lives sit next to each other instead at meals, in Chapel, and in everything else they did as a Community.

  “I think we will have our cloister now,” Sister Damien had remarked as they tidied up the refectory together.

  “Our cloister? Now?” Sister Gertrude stopped and looked at her. The Convent had always lacked a cloister but to build one as they would have liked by joining up two back wings of the house was well beyond their means. “We shall need one very badly if they build next door, but where will the money come from?”

  Sister Damien assiduously chased a few wayward crumbs along one of the tables. “Sister Anne.”

  “Sister Anne?”

  Sister Damien pinned down another crumb with her thin hand. “She knew we wanted a cloister.”

  “We all knew we wanted a cloister,” said Sister Gertrude with some asperity. “It’s very difficult in winter without one, but that doesn’t mean to say that…”

  “Sister Anne was to come into some money and she’s left it to us.”

  “How do you know?”

  “She told me,” said Sister Damien simply. “She didn’t have a dowry but she knew she was going to have this money some day.”

  Sister Gertrude pursed her lips. Money was never mentioned in the ownership sense in the Convent. In calculating wants and needs and ways and means, yes, but never relating to a particular Sister. And the size of a dowry was a matter between the Mother Superior and the Novice.

  “So we’ll be able to have our cloister now and it won’t matter about the building,” went on
Sister Damien, oblivious of the effect she was creating. “That’s good, isn’t it?”

  Sister Gertrude busied herself straightening a chair. “Yes,” she said in as neutral a voice as she could manage. “Except for Sister Anne.”

  Sister Damien wheeled round and caught her arm. “But she is in Heaven, Sister. You don’t regret that, do you?”

  But Sister Gertrude did not know what it was she regretted, and at the first sound of the Convent bell she thankfully fled the refectory.

  It was unfortunate for her peace of mind that the first person she bumped into was little Sister Peter. She was walking up the great staircase looking rather less cheerful than Mary Queen of Scots mounting the scaffold at Fotheringhay. She was holding her hand out in front of her with her thumb stuck out in odd disassociation from the rest of her body.

  “Hasn’t the Inspector finished with your thumb, Sister?” Sister Gertrude asked.

  “Oh, yes,” she said mournfully. “He’s fingerprinted my hand, and confirmed that the blood did get on the Gradual from my thumb.”

  “Well, then,” said Sister Gertrude a little testily, “surely you can put it away now?”

  Sister Peter regarded the offending member. “He doesn’t know how the blood got on it and neither do I. I’ve shown him everything I did this morning after you woke me—my own door, two flights of stairs to the long landing, the gallery, this staircase and straight into the Chapel. The Chapel door was open, Sister Polycarp does that. Sister Sacrist had got the Gradual ready like she always does. Besides everywhere’s been cleaned by now. I just don’t know…” This last was said tremolo.

  “Neither do I,” said Sister Gertrude firmly. “But you’ve helped all you can…”

  “I can’t think why anyone should want to harm poor Sister Anne.”

  “Neither can I,” said Sister Gertrude somewhat less firmly. “It might have been an accident, you know…”

  Sister Peter looked unconvinced and continued on her way.

  “Now, Sister St. Bernard, I realise that this business must have given you an unpleasant shock, but I would like you to describe how you found Sister Anne.”