The Religious Body (16 page)

“I think it's quite possible,” said Sloan, “that someone else thought so too.”

The day which had begun as routine continued that way, though in a different, more highly-geared groove. Superintendent Leeyes cancelled his regular Saturday afternoon fourball the better to superintend what had quickly become known as the Convent case.

Mr. Marwin Ranby cancelled his weekend away, spent the greater part of the afternoon on the telephone trying to get in touch with a remote farm in the West Country, and finally prevailed upon Miss Celia Faine to come round from the Dower House to the Institute for tea. That, at least, wasn't difficult.

For the Sisters it was perhaps a little easier. Saturday afternoon was for them a preparation for Sunday, a day without the significance of holiday or sport or relaxation. After Dr. Dabbe had gone and his next mournful job of work had been carried away in a plain black van, the Convent grille was closed and fifty women withdrew into their self-ordained silence. Not for them the endless unhappy speculation such as went round and round the Institute, nor the wild rumor piled upon fantasy that was tossed rapidly round the village. (Of its two institutions, Cullingoak was quite happy to exaggerate what went on at the Convent and to condemn out-of-hand the goings-on at the Institute.)

All in fact that did go on at the Convent was what anywhere else would have been termed a council of war. The Mother Prioress summoned those Sisters concerned in the finding of the dead William Tewn to the Parlor. They filed in silently, distributing themselves in an orderly circle—the neat Sister Ninian, the ebullient Sister Hilda, Sister Gertrude, Sister Lucy, a young Sister who had been with Sister Lucy when Sloan arrived, Sister Polycarp, the keeper of the gate who knew all comings and goings, and three others who had happened upon the scene of the crime. Lacking guidance about the correct religious behavior in the unusual circumstances the three had stayed and moreover had failed lamentably to practice custody of the eyes. Now they wondered if having seen they should have moved immediately away … truly it was a difficult path they had chosen when they left the world.

The Mother Prioress began as she always did without preamble. “There has been another murder. Not, as you know, a member of the Community, but a student. He was killed in our grounds some time before recreation this morning—at least that is the police view. The alternative is that he was killed somewhere else and brought to the Convent grounds. Those of you who have seen him would agree it is very unlikely. No, I fear our connection with this particular student is closer than that. He is the one who came into the Convent on Wednesday for the old habit which was subsequently rescued by Inspector Sloan from the guy on the Institute bonfire. Do I make myself clear?”

It was an unnecessary question. The Mother Prioress always made herself clear.

“Therefore,” she continued lucidly, “we still have a grave problem very near at hand. Sister Anne was killed here in the Convent. This boy William Tewn—God rest his soul—who was the one to enter the Convent on Wednesday has also been killed. Until both crimes have been solved completely we are none of us in a position to know that no member of the Community is involved.”

She waited for this more oblique point to be appreciated.

“Moreover, we are bound by certain other considerations. Murder is not normally the action of a normal human being, still less that of a religious. But it can be the abnormal action of an abnormal person. That is the fact that we cannot overlook however much we might wish to.”

The cheerful face of Sister Hilda clouded over as the significance of this struck home.

“In the ordinary way,” went on the Mother Prioress, “it would never be necessary for me to ask you to tell me of anything untoward in the behavior of your Sisters, but we are not in the ordinary way. Far from it. We are somewhere now outside our experience, and there can be no peace of mind until the unhappy soul who has perpetrated these two crimes has been found and relieved of the terrible burden of their guilt.”

It wasn't how Sloan would have put it, but it came to the same thing.

“You mean, Mother, one of us might have done it?” Sister Hilda looked quite astounded.

“I trust not, but temporary—or permanent—aberration is never impossible.”

Sister Ninian nodded agreement. “Any one of us could have slipped out into the grounds before recreation and just stayed out and come in with the others afterwards.…”

“Surely not!” exclaimed Sister Lucy.

Sister Polycarp looked down at her own strong hands. “They say he wasn't very big.”

Sister Lucy shivered. “But who—which one of us could possibly have wanted …”

“Have needed?”

“… have needed to do a terrible thing like that?”

“Two terrible things,” put in the Mother Prioress quietly.

Sister Ninian frowned. Her hair, if she had had any hair, would have been gray by now, turned by the passing years, as her eyebrows had been, to a pale grayish blur above her blue eyes. “This means, Mother, doesn't it, that there is a connection between the two deaths?”

“A strong connection,” said the Mother Prioress. “One so strong that the police feel they must interview every Sister today. They are particularly anxious that the details of the second crime of which you are already aware should not be communicated to the rest of the Community. I have undertaken that you will not discuss it either with them or with anyone else. I do not need to remind you that you are under obedience in this respect.”

There was a series of assorted nods.

“The police,” said the Mother Prioress, “have intimated to me that they consider it essential that these interviews are conducted by them with each Sister alone. It is not a procedure to which in the ordinary way I would have ever given my consent. As I have said before, we are no longer in the ordinary way. I have communicated with the Very Reverend Mother General at our Mother House and with Father MacAuley. Both are of the opinion that this is not an unreasonable request. And Inspector Sloan has sent to Calleford for a—er—lady policewoman.”

“Luston?” barked Superintendent Leeyes. “What the devil do you want to go to Luston for?”

“To see a Miss Eileen Lome, sir.”

“Are you going to tell me why, Sloan, or do I have to ask you?”

“She was a nun, sir, until about three weeks ago when she left the Convent of St. Anselm.”

“Why?”

“I couldn't rightly say, sir. The Mother Prioress said she asked to be released from her vows and she was.”

Leeyes's head went up like a bloodhound getting a scent. “Trouble in the camp?”

“Perhaps.”

“We should have been told before.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Luston's not very far.”

“No, sir. I thought I could go there while I wait for Sergeant Perkins to get over here from Calleford.”

The superintendent gave a wolfish grin. “Sent for Pretty Polly, have you?”

“Yes, sir. I can't make headway in an interview with the Mother Prioress supervising and a couple of others sitting around for good measure. I want them on their own.”

Leeyes nodded. “What about the Institute?”

“No joy there, sir. Tewn's fellow conspirators can't or won't help much. Can't—I think. Bullen can't remember anything Tewn said about the inside of the Convent that might give us any sort of lead. It might come to him, I suppose, though there's not much between his ears. Except bone. They're both trying to think hard of everything Tewn said or did since then.”

“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 apologizing 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.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

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.…”