The Religious Body (2 page)

Sister Peter was Chantress, which office weighed heavily on her slight shoulders. She was young still and inclined to start nervously when spoken to.

After the Epistle she stepped into the aisle and walked up to the altar steps for an antiphon. Her music manuscript—hand-illuminated and old—was there, ready open on its stand.

The Sisters rose, their eyes on the Chantress, waiting for her to start the Gradual.

Sister Peter's voice gave them the note, and the antiphon began. The Sisters sang their way through the time-honored phrases. On the steps of the altar, Sister Peter put out her right hand to turn the music manuscript over, touched it—and shot back as if she had been stung.

The nuns sang on.

Sister Peter's face paled visibly. She stared first at the manuscript and then at her own hand. It was as if she could not believe what she saw there. She went on staring at the manuscript. She made no attempt to turn the page over but stood there in front of the stand, an incredulous expression on her face, until the nuns had sung their own way to the end of the Gradual.

Then she genuflected deeply and turned and walked back to her stall, her face a troubled, tragic white, her hands clasped together in front of her but nevertheless visibly trembling.

The congregation settled themselves for the Gospel.

Convent life, reflected Sister Gertrude, was never without interest.

They filed out of the Chapel in twos, hands clasped together in front, bowing to the altar. They proceeded to the refectory where they bowed to the Abbatial chair and then stood, backs to their own benches, while grace was said.

“Amen,” said the Community in unison.

There was a rustle of habits and then the nuns were seated. One sat apart on a little dais, a reading desk in front of her. When all was still she began to read aloud from the Martyrology. The Refectarian stood by the serving hatch, her eye on the Reverend Mother. The Reader started to detail the sufferings of the early Christian martyrs. At the end of the first page she paused. The Reverend Mother knocked once on the table. The serving hatch flew up and the Refectarian seized an enormous teapot, set it down at a table and went back for another. A young Sister appeared with the first of several baskets of bread. This was passed rapidly down one of the long tables.

The incredible tortures inflicted on the martyrs were obscured by the crunching of crusts and the sipping of hot tea. The Reader raised her voice to tell of boiling oil and decapitation. The teapot went on its second round, the bread baskets emptied. Only little Sister Peter seemed to be with the Reader completely. Her expression would have brought satisfaction to any torturer.

It was at this point that Sister Gertrude noticed the empty place. It was between Sister Damien, angular, intense and exceedingly devout, and Sister Michael, plumpish, placid and more than a little deaf. Sister Anne's place. She must have been taken ill in the night and whisked off to the Convent's tiny sick bay. Sister Gertrude's glance slid along the bench to where the austere figure of Sister Radigund, the Infirmarium, was sitting. She would ask her at the end of the General Silence.

The morning's quota of bread and tea came to an end. The Reader was tidying up the remains of the dismembered martyrs in a general “And in other places and at other times of many other martyrs, confessors and holy virgins to whose prayers and merits we humbly commend ourselves.”

“Deo gratias,” responded the Community.

At this moment Sister Peter rose, bowed to the Mother Superior and went slowly round the table to stand in front of the Abbatial chair. The Mother Superior looked up at her and nodded. Sister Peter went down on her knees and clasped her hands together in front of her.

“I confess my fault,” began Sister Peter in a voice that was far from steady, “to God and to you, Mother Abbess, and to all the Sisters that I have committed the great sin of damaging the Gradual …” There was an indrawing of breaths that would have done credit to a chorus in their unity. “… by placing a thumb mark on it,” went on Sister Peter bravely. “For this and all my other faults and those I have occasioned in others, I humbly ask pardon of God and penance of you, Mother Abbess, for the love of God.” She finished in a rush and knelt there, eyes cast down.

The Reverend Mother considered the kneeling figure. “May the Lord forgive you your faults, my dear child, and give you grace to be faithful to grace. Say a
Miserere
and …” she paused and looked across the room, “… and ask Sister Jerome if she will take a look at the mark quickly. It may be possible to remove it without lasting damage.”

In the general bustle and end of silence after breakfast, Sister Gertrude sought out Sister Radigund.

“Sister Anne? She's not ill that I know of. She might have gone to the sick bay on her own, of course, though it's not usual.…”

It was expressly forbidden as it happened, but it would have been uncharitable of Sister Radigund to have said so.

“… I'll go up after Office if you like, to make sure.”

“Thank you,” said Sister Gertrude gratefully. She wondered now if she should have reported the empty bedroom. Her mind was more on that than on Sext, and afterwards she waited anxiously at the bottom of the staircase for Sister Radigund.

“She's not in the sick bay,” said the Infirmarium, “nor back in her own cell either. I've just checked.”

“I think,” said Sister Gertrude, “that we'd better go to the Parlor, don't you?”

They were not the only Sisters waiting at the Reverend Mother's door. Sister Jerome, the Convent's most skilled authority on manuscript illumination, and Sister Peter were both there too. They knocked and a little bell rang. Sister Gertrude sighed. That was where the world and the Convent differed so. In the Convent to every sound and every speech there was a response. In the world—well …

The four Sisters trooped in. The Mother Superior was working on the morning's post with Sister Lucy, the Bursar. There were several neat piles of paper on the table, and Sister Lucy was bending over a notebook.

The Mother Superior looked up briskly.

“Ah, yes, Sister Peter. The mark on the Gradual. I'm sure that Sister Jerome will be able to remove it, whatever it is. These culpable faults are all very well but we can't have you—er—making a meal of them, can we? Otherwise they become an indulgence in themselves and that would never do.” She gave a quick smile. “Isn't that so, Sister Jerome? Now, stop looking like a Tragedy Queen and go back to …”

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.”

CHAPTER TWO

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 village. 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 labor,” 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 recognized,” 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.