The Religious Body iscm-1

by Catherine Aird

  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 defences 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 lunch-time 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 apologise 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 grey hair. Town clothes, too. He came out of the Parlour 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.”

  14

  « ^ »

  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.”

  “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 rumour 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 Parlour. 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 behaviour in the unusual circumstances the three had stayed and moreover had failed lamentably to practise 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 behaviour 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 grey by now, turned by the passing years, as her eyebrows had been, to a pale greyish 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 th
is 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.”