The Religious Body (15 page)

“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 recognized 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 defenses 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 lunchtime 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 apologize 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 gray hair. Town clothes, too. He came out of the Parlor 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.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

“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.”