The Religious Body iscm-1 Read online

  “No, madam.”

  “Because if she has, you needn’t come looking for her here.” There was a gleam of satisfaction in her voice. “She wouldn’t come back here, Inspector. I can tell you that. Not if it was the last place on earth.”

  “No, madam, it’s not that at all…”

  “Don’t say she’s done something wrong! That I would find hard to believe. I shouldn’t imagine you arrest many nuns, Inspector, but if she was one of them I must say I would derive a certain amount of amusement from the fact. She was so very pious.”

  “I’ve come to tell you that she’s dead.”

  The old mouth tightened. “She died as far as I’m concerned the day she left home.”

  “And that she was probably murdered.”

  “Poor Josephine,” she said grimly. “She didn’t escape the wicked world after all then, did she, Inspector?”

  They were back in Berebury by lunchtime.

  “Get anywhere?” asked Superintendent Leeyes.

  “I don’t know,” said Sloan. “Can’t say I blame her for leaving home. I’d have gone myself. Mother hasn’t seen her for thirty years—or so she says anyway.”

  “Check on that.”

  “Lots and lots of money there.”

  The superintendent’s head came up. “Is there now? Check on that, too, Sloan. Money is a factor in the crime equation.”

  “Yes, sir.” Last winter the superintendent had attended a course on “Mathematics for the Average Adult.” It had left its mark.

  “Who inherits?”

  “I’ll find out.”

  Leeyes looked sharply across at him. “It could be the Convent, I suppose?”

  “Not now she’s dead, would you think?”

  “Perhaps not. It would be interesting to know if she would have inherited had she lived. This mother—is she old?”

  “Very. And she wouldn’t have made her the sole heir—not from the way she was talking.”

  “Cut off with the proverbial shilling, eh?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Leeyes granted. “She mightn’t have had any say. She a widow?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where does cousin Harold come in then?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  “Find out then, man. It could be important.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And find out who gets it if the Convent doesn’t. That could be important, too.” He drammed his fingers on the desk. “I don’t suppose you’ll get out of anyone at the Convent what sort of dowry Sister Anne brought with her.”

  “Dowry?”

  “Gifts in money or kind brought to a marriage contract, Sloan. They have the same custom when a girl goes into a Convent. In India it’s a couple of cows or some sheep. My father-in-law gave me some dud shares.”

  Sloan flushed. There had been a pair of brass candlesticks that his wife had brought from her home, ugly as sin, that had dominated the mantelpiece of their best room all their married life. “I know what you mean, sir. I’ll try to find out.”

  “Of course,” said Leeyes, off now on a different tack, “this lot may have taken vows of perpetual poverty or something idiotic like that.”

  “I hope not,” said Sloan piously. “Upset all the usual motives too much, that would.”

  “What’s that? Yes, it would. We must hope that they haven’t done anything so foolish.”

  Sloan went back to his own room.

  Crosby came in. “Dr. Dabbe wants to talk to you, sir, and there’s a message from the Convent.”

  Sloan lifted his head. “Well?”

  “Please may they have their keys back?”

  8

  « ^ »

  An unused knife, fork, spoon and table napkin marked the place at the refectory table where Sister Anne had sat for most of her religious life. Sister Michael and Sister Damien sat on either side of the gap—the one professed immediately before Sister Anne, and the other immediately after. It was the midday meal and the Reader was pursuing her way through the Martyrology.

  The vicissitudes of the early faithful seemed to be as nothing compared with the trials of working through today’s pudding. A reasonable stew had been eaten with the relish of those who have been up since very early morning, but today’s pudding was obviously different.

  Custom decreed that it should be eaten (many a martyr had died of starvation—or poison); their creed forbade criticism. So fifty-odd nuns struggled with a doughy indefinable mixture lacking the main ingredients of a sweet course.

  Sister Cellarer was at the Parlour door immediately the meal was finished.

  “Mother, I hope I am lacking in neither ingenuity nor humility but I find it exceedingly difficult to cook without the basic essentials.”

  “Not ingenuity, my child. No one could say that.”

  Sister Cellarer flushed. “It’s quite impossible to…”

  “Nothing is impossible, Sister. It may be difficult but impossible is a word no true religious should use lightly.”

  “No, Mother.” Sister Cellarer lowered her eyes. “I’m sorry…”

  “As to humility, I’m not sure.” The Mother Prioress contemplated the hot and ruffled cook. “Did you feel the Community would blame you for the shortcomings of our dinner? If so, Sister, I suggest you examine your motives in complaining. I think if you look at them closely you will find an element of pride. Pride in personal skill is a dangerous matter in a Convent. All work and skill here should be offered to our Lord from whom our strength to do it comes. The sin of pride is not one I should have to look for in you.”

  A diminished Sister Cellarer was on her knees. “I ask forgiveness, Mother. I should have thought.”

  The Mother Prioress waved a hand. “May God bless you, Sister. As it happens I have sent a message about the keys, but it may well be that we will not have them yet. I can see that the police would need to know if they had any significance.”

  “They didn’t have anything to do with Sister Anne at all,” said Sister Cellarer. “Sister Lucy lent them to her just for the evening.”

  “I have told them that,” said the Reverend Mother patiently, “but until they know how it was that Sister Anne died I think they are justified in retaining them.”

  Sister Cellarer rose. “Of course,” she said soberly. “That is what matters. Poor Sister Anne. It doesn’t seem possible that only the day before yesterday none of this had happened at all.”

  “The day before yesterday seems a very long time ago now.” The Mother Prioress gathered her habit up preparatory to going somewhere at her usual speed. “Will you ask the Sacrist to come to see me in the Chapel, and the Chantress, too, if she’s about?”

  Sloan got Dr. Dabbe on the telephone.

  “Sister Anne died from a depressed fracture of the skull,” said the doctor, “caused by the application of the traditional blunt instrument. She had a postmortem fracture of her right femur almost certainly caused by the fall down the cellar steps, and also sundry haematoma…”

  “Heema what?”

  “Bruises. Also mostly caused after death. You don’t bleed much then, of course.”

  “No.”

  “I would say she was hit from behind and slightly above—perhaps by someone taller.”

  “Man or woman?” asked Sloan eagerly, and got the usual medical prevarication.

  “Difficult to say, Inspector. She wasn’t hit so hard that only a man could have done it—on the other hand there were unusual features. The coif, for instance, and the complete absence of hair. It was a heavy blow, but in a good position with a wide swing it wouldn’t have been out of the question for a woman—especially a tall one.”

  “Weapon?”

  “You want to look for something round and smooth and heavy.”

  Sloan flipped over a page of his notebook. “Time of death?”

  “Between six and seven night before last.”

  “When?”

  “I can’t tell you to the minute, you know. Let’
s put it this way—she had been dead approximately sixteen to seventeen hours when I saw her just after eleven o’clock yesterday morning.”

  “But they have supper at quarter past six and—”

  “She’d had supper,” said the pathologist laconically. “She died on a full stomach, if that’s any consolation to anybody. The meal was quite undigested. Shouldn’t have fancied it myself. Too many peas.”

  Sloan turned back to his notebook. “But she was at some service or other—I’ve got it here—Vespers—at half past eight.”

  “Not if she had steak and kidney pudding and peas at six-fifteen,” said the pathologist. “The process of digestion had barely started. I’ll put it all in writing for you.”

  “Thank you. This alters some of my ideas.”

  “Post-mortems usually do.”

  Sloan set down the telephone receiver very thoughtfully indeed.

  Sister Polycarp satisfied herself with a quicker scrutiny this time. “It’s yourself, Inspector. And the constable. Come in. You’ll be wanting the Parlour, I suppose?” She shut the grille and appeared in person through one of the doors. “This way. Mother Prioress is in the Chapel but Sister Lucy will see you.”

  They followed her through to the Parlour.

  “I don’t suppose you show many men through these doors,” ventured Sloan tentatively.

  “The plumber,” said Polycarp tartly. “Can’t do without him, and the doctor. He comes to see old Mother Thérèse.”

  “What about the Agricultural Institute? Do you have any visitors from there?”

  She shook her head. “That we do not. Young limbs of Satan, that’s what students are.”

  “What about Mr. Ranby?”

  “Oh, he came the other day to see about the wedding. I took him through to the Parlour to talk to Reverend Mother and the Sacrist. We haven’t had a wedding here before, you see. I think Mr. Ranby comes to the Chapel, too, but of course I hadn’t seen him before.”

  “Why ‘of course’?”

  She stared at him. “The grille. Across the Chapel. Haven’t you been in there?”

  “Yes, I saw the grille.”

  “Well, the Community sits in front and then there’s this screen and then the public.”

  “So you can’t see them?”

  “Naturally not.”

  “And they can’t see you?”

  “Of course not. That wouldn’t be proper, would it?”

  “Therefore you have no idea at all who comes in at the back?”

  “Except that they are local people who always come —no. I open the side door before the service and lock it up afterwards.”

  “Every time?”

  She looked him straight in the eye. “Every time, Inspector. And I do a round of doors and windows last thing at night.”

  “When would that be?”

  “Eight o’clock.”

  Sloan reckoned he had been in short trousers when eight o’clock had been “last thing at night.”

  “And Hobbett?”

  “He comes and goes according to his work and the weather. He has his own key to the boiler room.”

  Polycarp shut the Parlour door behind them.

  Crosby tapped the bare, polished floor with his foot and pointed to the plain walls. “Bit of a change from Strelitz Square for that Sister Anne.”

  “I expect that’s why she came.”

  Sister Lucy came into the Parlour with Sister Gertrude. They bowed slightly, then sat down, hands clasped together in front, and looked at him expectantly.

  Sloan undid a brown-paper parcel he had brought with him.

  “This habit. Can you tell me anything about it?”

  Sister Lucy leaned forward, and Sloan got a good look at her face for the first time. The bone structure was perfect. He didn’t know about Sister Anne, but Sister Lucy would have cut quite a figure in a drawing-room. He tried to imagine hair where there was only a white coif now. With Sister Gertrude it was easier. Hers was the round jolly face of a “good sort,” the games mistress at a girls’ school, the unmarried daughter…

  “Yes, Inspector, I think I can.” Sister Lucy’s voice was quiet and unaccented. “This is the spare habit that we keep in the flower room. Should any Sister get wet while out in the grounds she can slip this on instead while she asks permission to dry her own habit in the laundry. It is kept behind the door on a hook.” She turned it round expertly. “You see, here is the hook. It is very old and worn now, but none the less blessed for that.”

  “Thank you, Sister. Now take a look at these.”

  “Sister Anne’s glasses!” Sister Lucy and Sister Gertrude crossed themselves in unison.

  “You both confirm that?”

  The two nuns nodded. Sister Lucy said, “She wore particularly thick glasses, Inspector. I think she is the only member of the Community with them as thick as that.” Her hand disappeared inside her habit and emerged again. “Most of us wear glasses like these. For reading and sewing, you know, but Sister Anne had poor eyesight. She couldn’t see anything at all without her glasses.”

  “Thank you, Sisters. You have been very helpful.”

  They acknowledged this with another slight bow. (“Like talking to a couple of Chinese mandarins,” said Sloan later.)

  “Now I would like to tell the Mother Prioress where they were found.”

  “She is in the Chapel,” volunteered Sister Lucy, “arranging the Requiem Mass for Sister Anne. And the Great Office of the Dead. When a Sister dies violently there are certain changes in the responses and so forth.”

  Sloan permitted himself a bleak smile. “That can’t happen often.”

  “On the contrary, Inspector. We sang just the same service at Midsummer.”

  “You did? Who for?”

  “Sister St. John of the Cross.”

  “Why?”

  “She was hacked to death with a machete.”

  “What! Where?”

  “Unggadinna.”

  Sloan breathed again. “That’s different.”

  A faint chill came into the atmosphere. “Not so very different, Inspector, for us.”

  “There was Mother St. Theobald, too, just after Easter,” put in Sister Gertrude diffidently. “I was a novice when she was professed so I remember her well. She died in prison, you know, in Communist hands.”

  “We assumed,” said Sister Lucy astringently, “that she died violently, though we have had no exact details yet.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Sloan awkwardly.

  “And, of course,” persisted Sister Lucy, “there are members of our Order who were in China. We have no means of knowing whether or not they are accomplished among the elect.” They rose. “We will see if Mother has finished in the Chapel…”

  Crosby stirred in his hard chair. “Funny thing, sir. They don’t ask any questions. Most people would have wanted to know where you got those glasses and that gown thing, wouldn’t they?”

  “Unless they knew.”

  “I hadn’t thought of that.”

  The Mother Prioress came back with Sister Lucy. “You have news for us, Inspector?”

  “I don’t know if it is news or not, marm, but we think Sister Anne was murdered.”

  He was conscious of Sister Lucy’s sharp indrawn breath, but the Reverend Mother only nodded.

  “No, Inspector, that is not news. Father MacAuley had already intimated to me that Sister Anne died an unnatural death. He has also told me about last night’s bonfire.”

  “Sister Lucy has just identified the habit and Sister Anne’s glasses.”

  “How very curious that both should be found on a guy at the Agricultural Institute. Do you connect them with Sister Anne’s death?”

  “I can’t say, marm, at this stage. The glasses were hers, she couldn’t see without them; she was killed on Wednesday evening, and on Thursday evening they were found on this guy.”

  “If,” said the Mother Prioress slowly, “the whole episode of the guy had been an anti-papist demons
tration we, as a Community, would have been aware of feelings against us. After all, they are quite common. Sisters in our other Houses have them to contend with—but not without knowing the feelings existed. Hate is so very communicable. Mr. Ranby would have known, too, I think.”

  “Granted, marm. But somebody took both the old habit and the glasses.”

  She inclined her head. “It would seem that the world has been to us or that one of us has been into the world.”

  Sloan had reached this conclusion himself the evening before and turned to another matter.

  “Going back to Sister Anne, herself, marm, can you tell me anything about her? As a person, I mean.”

  The Mother Prioress smiled faintly. “We try so very hard not to be persons here, you know. To conquer the self and to submerge the personality are part of our daily battle with ourselves in the quest for true humility. I would say that Sister Anne, God rest her soul, succeeded as well as any of us.”

  “Er—yes, I see.” It was patent that he didn’t. “Now about her actual death. Did anyone stand to gain by that?”

  “Just Sister Anne.”

  “Sis…”

  “It is part of our conviction, Inspector, that all true Christians stand to gain by death.”

  He smiled weakly. “Of course. But apart from Sister Anne herself?”

  “I cannot conceive that anyone could gain from her death.”

  “In the worldly sense, perhaps?”

  “I take it that you mean financially? That is what people usually mean.”

  “Yes.”

  “The disposition of any material wealth would be entirely a matter for the Sister concerned.”

  “Was Sister Anne wealthy?”

  “I have no idea, Inspector.”

  “She came from a wealthy home.”

  “That is not always a measure.”

  “Who would know?”

  “Just the Mother Prioress at the time she took her vows.”

  “And that was?”

  “Mother Helena…”

  “And she’s dead?”

  “… of blessed memory,” finished the Mother Prioress simultaneously.

  That meant the same thing. Sloan was getting frustrated. “Is there no way of finding out?”