The Religious Body (3 page)

“I understand that one of the nuns—”

“Sister Anne.”

Behind his right ear he heard Crosby struggling to strangle a snort at birth.

“Sister Anne,” continued Sloan hastily, “I am told has had … has unfortunately met with an …”

“She's dead,” said the face.

“Just so,” said Sloan, who was finding it downright disconcerting talking to someone he could not see.

“She's in the cellar,” volunteered the speaker.

“That's what I had heard.”

The voice attached to the face was Irish and that was about all Sloan could tell.

“I think you had better see the Mother Superior,” she said.

“So do I,” said Sloan.

There was a faint click and a shutter came down over the grille. The two policemen waited.

There were two doors leading out of the hall but both were locked. Crosby turned his attention to the lock on the glass doors.

“Electricity, sir. That's how it works.”

“I didn't suppose it was magic,” said Sloan irritably. “Did you?”

This wasn't the sort of delay he liked when there was a body about. Superintendent Leeyes wasn't going to like it either. He would be sitting in his office, waiting—and wondering why he hadn't heard from them already.

They went on waiting. The hall was quite silent. There were two chairs there and, on one wall, a little plaster Madonna with a red lamp burning before it. Nothing else. Crosby finished his prowling and came back to stand restively beside Sloan.

“At this rate, sir, it doesn't look as if they're going to let the dog get a look at the rabbit at all.…”

There was the mildest of deprecating coughs behind his right ear and Crosby spun round. Somewhere, somehow, a door must have opened and two nuns come through it, but neither policeman had heard it happen.

“Forgive us, gentlemen, if we startled you …”

Sloan had an impression of immense authority—something rare in a woman—and the calm that went with it. She was standing quite still, dignity incarnate, her hands folded loosely together in front of her black habit, her expression perfectly composed.

“Not at all,” he said, discomfited.

“I am the Mother Superior.…”

“How do you do …” The conventional police “madam” hung unspoken, inappropriate, in the air. Sloan's own mother was a vigorous woman in her early seventies. He struggled to use the word and failed.

“… Marm,” he finished, inspired.

“And this is Sister Mary St. Lucy.”

That was easier. He could call the whole world “Sister.”

“Sister Lucy is our Bursar and Procuratrix …”

Sloan saw Crosby's startled glance and shot him a look calculated to wither him into silence.

The Mother Superior glanced briefly round the hall. “I am sorry that Sister Porteress kept you waiting here. She should have shown you to the Parlor.” She smiled faintly. “She interprets her watchdog duties very seriously. Besides which …” again the faint smile “… she has a rooted objection to policemen.”

It was Sloan's experience that a lot of people had, but that they didn't usually say so straight out.

“Not shared, I hope, marm, by all your Sisters.…”

“I couldn't tell you, Inspector,” she said simply. “This is the first time one has ever crossed our threshold.” She turned to one of the doors. “I therefore know very little about your routine but I dare say you would like to see Sister Anne.…”

“Not half,” whispered Crosby to her back.

“And Sister Peter, too, though I fear she won't be of much immediate help to you. She's quite overcome, so I've sent her to the kitchen. They're always glad of an extra pair of hands there at this time of the day. This way, please.”

She led them through the nearer of the two doors into what had been the original entrance hall of the old house. It was two stories high, with a short landing across one end. A pair of double doors led through into the chapel at the other end, but the center of attraction was the great carved black oak staircase. Its only carpet was polish, and it descended in a series of stately treads from the balustraded gallery at the top to a magnificent newel post at the bottom, elaborately carved, with an orb sitting on the top.

The Mother Superior did not spare it a glance but, closely followed by Sister Lucy, led them off behind the staircase through a dim corridor smelling of beeswax. Sloan followed, guided as much by the sound of the long rosaries which hung from their waists as by sight. Once they passed another nun coming the opposite way. Sloan tried to get a good look at her face, but when she saw the Reverend Mother and her party, she drew quietly to one side and stood, eyes cast down, until they had all passed. Then they heard the slight clink of her rosary as she walked on.

“Inspector,” Crosby hissed in his ear, “they're all wearing wedding rings.”

“Brides of Christ,” Sloan hissed back.

“What's that?”

“I'll tell you later.”

The Reverend Mother had halted in front of one of the several doors leading off the corridor.

“This is the way to the cellar, Inspector. Sister Anne, God rest her soul, is at the foot of the steps.”

So she was.

Sister Lucy opened the door and Sloan saw a figure lying on the floor. Two nuns were kneeling beside it in an attitude of prayer. He went down the steps carefully. They were steep, and the lighting was not of the brightest.

When they saw the new arrivals, the two nuns who had been keeping vigil by the body rose quietly and melted into the background.

The body of the nun was spread-eagled on the stone floor, face downwards, her habit caught up, her veil knocked askew. The white bloodless hands were all he could see of death at first. There was a plain broad silver ring on the third finger of this left hand too.

The Reverend Mother and Sister Lucy crossed themselves and then drew back a little, watching him.

He couldn't tell in the bad light where the blood on her black habit began and ended, but there was no doubt from where it had come. The back of her head. Even in this light he could see there was something wrong with its shape. There was a hollow where no hollow should be.

He knelt beside her and bent to see her face. There was blood there, too, but he couldn't see any.…

“We would have liked to have moved her,” said the Reverend Mother, “or at least have covered her up, but Dr. Carret said on no account to touch anything until you came.”

“Quite right,” he said absently. “Crosby, have you a torch there?”

He shone it on the dead Sister's face. Blood from the back of her skull had trickled forward round the sides of the white linen cloth she wore under her cowl and round her head and cheeks. There was a word for it that he had heard somewhere once … w … w … wimple … that was it. Well, her wimple had held a lot of the blood back, but quite a bit had got through to run down her face and then—surely—to drip on the floor. Only that was the funny thing. It hadn't reached the floor. He swept the beam from the torch on it again. There was no blood on the floor. That on the face was congealed and dry, but there was enough of it for some to have dripped down on the floor.

And it hadn't.

“So, of course, we didn't touch anything until you saw her.” The quiet voice of the Reverend Mother obtruded into his thoughts. “But now that you have seen her, will it be all right for us to …”

“No,” said Sloan heavily. “It won't be all right for you to do anything at all.” He got to his feet again. “I want a police photographer down here first, and any moving that's to be done will be done by the police surgeon's men.”

“Perhaps then Sister Lucy might just have her keys back, Inspector?”

“Keys?”

Sister Lucy flushed. “I lent them to poor Sister Anne late yesterday afternoon. She was going to go through our store cupboards to make up some parcels for Christmas. We have Sisters in the mission field, you know, and they are very glad of things for their people at this time. She did it every year.” She hesitated. “You can just see the edges of them under her habit there.…”

“No.”

“You must forgive us,” interposed the Mother Superior gently. “We are sometimes a little out of touch here with civil procedure, and we have never had a fatal accident here before. We have no wish to transgress any law.”

He stared at her. “It isn't a question of the infringement of any rule, marm. It is simply that I am not satisfied that I know exactly how Sister Anne died. Moreover, you also have a nun here with blood on her hands which you say she is unable to explain …”

“Just,” apologetically, “on one thumb.”

“And,” continued Sloan majestically, “you want me to allow you to move a body and remove from it evidence which may or may not be material. No, marm, I'm afraid the keys will have to wait until the police surgeon has been. Have you a telephone here?”

The Mother Superior smiled her faint smile. “In that sense at least, Inspector, we are in touch with the world.”

CHAPTER THREE

“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” grumbled Sister Polycarp. “I'm coming as fast as I can.” She stumped towards the front door. “Ringing the bell like that! It's enough to waken the dead.” She stopped abruptly. “No, it's not, you know. It won't wake poor Sister Anne, not now.” She drew the grille back. “Oh, it's you, Father. Come in. They're waiting for you in the Parlor. It's about poor Sister Anne. She, poor soul, has gone to her reward and we've got the police here.”

“A nice juxtaposition of clauses,” said Father MacAuley.

“What's that?”

“Nothing, Sister, nothing.” Father MacAuley stepped inside. “Just an observation.…”

“Oh, I see. I should have kept them out myself, but Mother said that wouldn't help. Can't abide the police.”

“You're prejudiced, Polycarp. Nobody worries about the Troubles any more. You won't believe this but the Irish Question is no longer a burning matter of moment. You're out of touch.”

Sister Polycarp sniffed again. “That's as may be. You're too young to remember, Father. But I never thought to have the police trampling about again, that I can tell you. Arrest poor Sister Peter, that's what they'll do.”

“Will they indeed?” Father MacAuley looked thoughtfully at the nun. “That's the little one that squeaks when you speak to her, isn't it? Now why should they arrest her?”

“Oh, you know what they're like. She's got some blood on her hand and she doesn't know how it got there.”

“Tiresome,” agreed Father MacAuley.

“Otherwise it would have been a straightforward fall down the cellar steps and that would have been an end to it. Unfortunate of course”—Sister Polycarp recollected that not only was she speaking about the dead, but the newly dead, and crossed herself—“but we could have sent the police packing. As it is they look like being underfoot for a long time.”

“Do they now?” Father MacAuley took off his coat. “In that case …”

“It wouldn't matter so much,” burst out Sister Polycarp, “if everyone didn't know.”

Father MacAuley wagged a reproving finger. “Polycarp, I do believe that you're worried about what the neighbors will think.”

She bridled. “It's not very nice, now, is it, for people to be seeing the police at a Convent?”

Where a lesser woman might have bustled into the Parlor, the Reverend Mother contrived to arrive there ahead of her own habit, rosary and rather breathless attendant Sister Lucy.

“Father—thank you for coming so quickly. Poor Sister Anne's lying dead at the bottom of the cellar steps and we do seem to be in a rather delicate position.…”

“Sister Peter want bailing out?”

“Not yet, thank you. No, I fancy it's not the presence of blood on the Gradual so much as the absence of blood elsewhere that's going to be the trouble. Don't you agree, Sister?”

Sister Lucy nodded intelligently. “Yes, Mother.”

Father MacAuley sat down. “Sister Anne, now she was the one with the glasses, wasn't she?”

“That's right,” agreed Sister Lucy. “She couldn't see without them. Missions were her great interest, you know.”

He frowned. “Fairly tall?”

“About my height, I suppose,” said Sister Lucy.

“But older?”

“That's right. She was professed before I joined the Order. Perhaps Mother can tell you when that would have been.…”

“No, no, I can't offhand. But I do know how she would have hated having been the cause of all this trouble. She wasn't a fusser, you know. In fact,” she paused, “she wasn't the sort of Sister whom anything happened to at all.”

“Until now,” pointed out Father MacAuley.

“Until now,” agreed the Mother Superior somberly.

There was a light tap on the Parlor door. Sister Lucy opened it to a very young nun.

“Please, Mother, Sister Cellarer says if she can't get into any of the store cupboards we'll have to have parkin for afters because she made that yesterday.”

“Thank you, Sister, and say to Sister Cellarer that that will be very nice, thank you.” The door shut after the nun and the Reverend Mother turned to Sister Lucy. “What is parkin?”

“A North Country gingerbread dish, Mother.”

“Eaten especially on Guy Fawkes' Night,” added MacAuley. “A clear instance, if I may say so, of tradition overtaking theology.”

“It often does,” observed the Mother Prioress placidly, “but this is not the moment to go into that with a cook who can't get to her food cupboards.” She told him about the keys. “However, Inspector Sloan is telephoning his headquarters now. Perhaps after that we shall be allowed to have them back.”

The Convent keys did not, in fact, figure in the conversation Inspector Sloan had with his superior.