The Religious Body

by Catherine Aird

  “And you knew she wanted to leave—as a Community, I mean?”

  “Yes, we knew she wanted to leave.”

  “If, marm,” he persisted, “Sister Anne had been in a similar frame of mind, do you think you would have known?”

  “Yes, Inspector,” she said with certainty. “You probably do not realize how close are the lives we lead here. Private life, in the usual sense, does not exist. One therefore becomes very aware of the thoughts, not to say the spiritual condition, of one’s Sisters. It is inevitable, and often does not even require formulation into words. Sister Anne, I do assure you, was not contemplating renouncing her vows.”

  Sloan and Crosby went back to Berebury Police Station. Sloan spread out on his desk the list of names that the Reverend Mother had given him. They had barely sat down when the telephone beside Sloan rang.

  “Yes. Speaking. Who?” It wasn’t a local call.

  “Jenkins,” said a voice. “You rang me in London yesterday, remember? About a family called Cartwright. You still interested?”

  “I am. Go on.”

  “I think you’re on to something, Inspector. Cartwright’s Consolidated Carbons have made a move.”

  “Have they?” asked Sloan cautiously. “What sort of a move?”

  “Towards going public. It seems, and I think this will interest you—that they have had everything prepared for some time.”

  “Just waiting for someone to say the word?”

  “So it would seem,” said the London man. “These things take time, you know. Bankers to be instructed, brokers to be interested and so forth, to say nothing of organizing some useful advance publicity. Sounds as if they’re going to chance their arm about the publicity buildup and go all out for speed. They’ll get a good bit from the Sundays, of course. They’ll be laying that on now.”

  “How much speed do they want?”

  “According to my informant, and he’s usually reliable,” said Jenkins, “applications will open at ten o’clock next Thursday morning and close at one minute past. I don’t know at what sort of figure but I dare say they’ll be oversubscribed. They’re a well-organized firm.”

  “You can say that again,” said Sloan dryly.

  “What’s that? Oh, yes, I was forgetting your end.”

  “So they’ll be a public company at one minute past ten next Thursday morning?”

  “That’s it. Provided they deposit the necessary Articles of Association, seals and what-have-you with the Registrar and comply with all the rules and regulations and keep up with their paperwork.”

  “Oh, they will,” Sloan assured him. “They will. I don’t think we need worry about that.”

  “Going to put in for some?” asked Jenkins.

  “Some what?”

  “Shares.”

  Sloan laughed. “I’m not a betting man.”

  “There’s no risk,” said the other seriously. “Cartwright’s Consolidated Carbons must be one of the safest firms in the industry.”

  “I wasn’t thinking about their carbons.”

  “No, no, of course not. There’s just one thing, Inspector, though. If you’ve got any reservations about the company and the City gets to hear about them before Thursday it’ll cost someone a great deal of money.”

  “And after Thursday?”

  “It’ll still cost a great deal of money but different people will lose.”

  “And that’s business?”

  “That’s business, Inspector.”

  “I think I’ll stick to police work.”

  “I should,” agreed Jenkins. “Much cleaner.”

  Sloan put down the telephone. “Curiouser and curiouser, Crosby. That needs a bit of thinking about.” He smoothed out the list of nuns for the second time. “Have you got the name of the one that got away?”

  Crosby produced his notebook. “Miss Eileen Lome, no fixed address.”

  “Surely …”

  “Last known address, then, sir.”

  “That’s more like it.”

  “144, Frederick Street, Luston. Sister Bertha that was.”

  “We must see her, Crosby, just in case she can tell us anything.”

  “Yes, sir.” The telephone rang again. Crosby answered it, and then handed over the receiver. “For you, sir, I think. I can’t quite hear who it is—it’s a bit faint like.”

  “Inspector Sloan here. Who is that?”

  “The Convent of St. Anselm, Inspector. It’s Sister Gertrude speaking. Can you come quickly, Inspector, please? It’s Sister Ninian. She was walking through the shrubbery …” the voice faded away.

  “What happened to her?” asked Sloan urgently.

  “Hallo, Inspector, are you there? This is Sister Gertrude from the Convent. It’s about Sister Ninian …”

  “I heard that bit. What has happened to Sister Ninian?”

  “Nothing, Inspector, not to her. To somebody else …”

  “What has happened?” shouted Sloan.

  “Another accident,” came the voice of Sister Gertrude distantly.

  “Listen carefully, Sister. Keep the lower part of the telephone in front of your lips while you are talking and tell me who the accident has happened to.”

  The answer came so loudly that he jumped.

  “We don’t know who he is.”

  “He? You mean it’s a man?”

  “That’s right, Inspector. He’s dead in the shrubbery as I said. Sister Ninian found him.”

  “This is very important, Sister. What sort of a man? Can you describe him?”

  “Oh, yes, Inspector, easily. Young, with curly hair, oh—and a few freckles. Do you know him?”

  Sloan groaned aloud.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  It was a subdued Polycarp who opened the grille and then the Parlor door, and a white and slightly shaking Sister Lucy who greeted them there. A young, silent Sister was with her.

  “Mother said to take you straight to the shrubbery, Inspector, as soon as you arrived.” The religious decorum was still there but it was wavering a little in the interests of speed. “It’s quickest if you come through the house and out through the garden room.”

  She led the way through the building, past the magnificent staircase, down the dim corridor where Sister Anne had died and through a door into the room of the flower vases.

  She turned a drawn face to him. “We don’t know what happened at all, Inspector. Or when.”

  He nodded without slackening his pace.

  “You probably haven’t met Sister Ninian, Inspector. She’s one of our older Sisters. She is very fond of gardening and she often takes a turn through the grounds to keep an eye on things. She was just walking along this path when she turned down here.”

  “Down here” turned out to be a narrow path running round the perimeter of the Convent grounds. Sloan caught sight of black-habited figures among the bare winter trees. They were clustered round a still form lying awkwardly half in and half out of some bushes.

  The Mother Superior turned when she heard him.

  “I fear he’s quite dead, Inspector.”

  Sloan stepped beside her and looked down. There was no doubt about him being dead. The freckles that Sister Gertrude had described must have been those on his arms. She couldn’t have seen them on his face. It was suffused with blood, a terrible, mottled red and blue. A bloated tongue stuck out between lips parted in the mocking rictus of death.

  “Strangulation,” he said briefly.

  “Inspector.…” It seemed suddenly as if it was a great effort for her to speak. “Could this be William Tewn?”

  “What makes you say that, marm? Have you ever seen this boy before?”

  “No. No, never. Mr. Ranby came to see me this morning after you had gone. He brought two boys with him to apologize for the guy but he had been going to bring three. He said they couldn’t find William Tewn.” She stared at the supine figure. “He said he would send him over on his own whenever he turned up.”

  Looking down at th
e dead youth, Sloan felt suddenly old and tired. “Yes, marm, this is William Tewn. Now, could you all move away from here without disturbing the ground, please. It’s very important.…”

  There was quite a gathering of nuns—Sister Gertrude, Sister Lucy, and three or four whom he did not know. He shepherded them gently back to the main path and left Crosby to rope off the area round the body.

  “Now, if someone would tell me what happened.…”

  The story was Sister Ninian’s to begin with. She was a neat, sensible woman of about sixty, and economical of speech. “In winter, when it is fine, we all take some exercise before our midday meal. I do some of the gardening and make a practice of walking in a slightly different route each day. That way I can see things needing doing before they get out of hand. This path, as you can see, Inspector, runs round the entire Convent property. The Agricultural Institute is the other side of that field. Cows have been known to stray, and the branches of trees to fall. That is the sort of thing I keep my eyes open for.”

  Sloan nodded. Not, of course, for the bodies of dead man. That was chance.

  “I had just turned down this portion of the path when I noticed a shoe sticking out.…”

  It was surprising, thought Sloan academically, how often it was a shoe that caught the attention. The soles of a pair of shoes were conspicuous in a horticultural setting.

  “I approached it and found the body. I came back along this path until I found two other Sisters—Sister Gertrude and Sister Hilda here. They came back with me to the spot, and then Sister Gertrude went back to the Convent to tell Mother.”

  “And I,” said the Mother Superior, taking up the tale, “asked Sister Gertrude to send for you while I came out here to see myself.”

  “Bringing Sister Lucy with you?” asked Sloan suddenly.

  She looked at him curiously. “No, Inspector, as it happened I did not bring Sister Lucy out here with me. I left her waiting in the Parlor to bring you here as soon as you arrived. Sister Gertrude came out here with the news that she had caught you at the Police Station and that you were on your way. We were exceedingly relieved to hear it.”

  Sister Lucy, then, had been white and shaking without having seen the body? He cast back in his mind to Thursday morning. She hadn’t reacted like that to the body of Sister Anne.

  “Mr. Ranby and the two students could scarcely have got back to the Institute,” said the Mother Superior, “before Sister Gertrude came in.”

  Sloan looked at his watch. “Were they with you long?”

  “No. The two young men said they were very sorry for their intrusion; Mr. Ranby apologized on behalf of the Institute and then they went. I had had to keep them waiting a few moments because of Mr. Cartwright.”

  “He was here, too, this morning?”

  “Yes, Inspector, he and Father MacAuley both came to see me after you left.”

  Sloan sighed. “I think we had all better go indoors, marm, and Crosby can take this all down. Besides, Dr. Dabbe will be here again in a minute or two.”

  “What?” howled Superintendent Leeyes. “I don’t believe it.”

  “He’s dead,” said Sloan flatly. “Strangled and dragged off the path and half under some bushes.”

  It seemed to Sloan that he had spent most of the last three days standing in the dark, drafty corridor where the Convent kept their telephone.

  “Tewn? Tewn?” said the superintendent. “That’s the one of the three that actually went inside the Convent for the habit, isn’t it?”

  “That’s right, sir.”

  Leeyes used an expression that would have surprised the watch committee.

  “Yes, sir.” Sloan endorsed the sentiment watch committee or no.

  “It would have to be him.”

  “Yes, sir.” Bitterly. “It would.”

  “How far did you get with him last night?”

  “Just that it was child’s play to walk in the cellar door and pick up the habit. No trouble they said.”

  “He must have seen something,” said Leeyes.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “No hint of what it could have been when you spoke to him last night?”

  “Not a clue, sir. I’m pretty sure that these three arranged with Hobbett—he’s the handyman there—to leave the cellar door unlocked that night and the old habit inside. I don’t see any other possibility—there was no sign of forced entry. And it sounded as if everything went according to plan. Parker kept watch on their return to the Institute, Bullen guarded the cellar door and line of retreat and Tewn went inside.”

  “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.

  “P
erhaps 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.”