The Religious Body

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The Religious Body

A C. D. Sloan Mystery

Catherine Aird

For my parents, with love

“What I want to know is:

One—who is the criminal?

Two—how did he (or she) do it?”

—Ernest the Policeman,

in
The Toytown Mystery

by S. G. Hulme Beaman.

CHAPTER ONE

Sister Mary St. Gertrude put out a hand and stilled the tiny alarm clock long before it got into its stride. It was five o'clock and quite dark. She slipped quickly out of bed, shivering a little. The Convent of St. Anselm wasn't completely unheated but at five o'clock on a November morning it felt as if it was.

She dressed very quietly, splashing some cold water on her face from a basin in the corner of the little room. The water was really chilled and she dressed even more quickly afterwards. Her habit complete, she knelt at the
prie-dieu
in front of the window and made her first private devotions of the day. Then she drew back the curtains of the window and stripped off her bed.

It was then twenty-five minutes past five. Utterly used to a day ordained by a combination of tradition and the clock, she picked up her breviary and read therein for exactly five minutes. As the hands of the clock crept round to the half-hour she closed the book and slipped out of the door. It was Sister Gertrude's duty this month to awake the Convent.

She herself slept on the top landing of the house and she went first of all to pull back those landing curtains. Half a mile away the village of Cullingoak still slept on in darkness. There was just one light visible from where she stood and that was in the bakery. It would be another half an hour before the next light appeared—in the newspaper shop, where the day's complement of disaster and gossip arrived from Berebury by van. Sister Gertrude arranged the drawn curtains neatly at the sides of the window and turned away. Newspapers had not been one of the things she had regretted when she left the world.

She descended to the landing below and drew back another set of curtains on the other side of the house. In this direction, a couple of fields away, lay the Cullingoak Agricultural Institute. It, too, was invisible in the darkness, but presently the boy who was duty herdsman for the week would start the milking. Occasionally in the Convent they could hear the lowing of the cattle as they moved slowly across the fields. Sister Gertrude turned down a corridor, counting the doors as she passed them. Six, five, fo … four. At four doors away there was no mistaking Sister Mary St. Hilda's snore.

It rose to an amazing crescendo and then stopped with disturbing suddenness—only to start seconds later working its way up to a new climax. Sister Bonaventure called it the Convent's answer to the Institute's cows, but then Sister Bonaventure declared the snore could be heard six doors away on a good day.

She may well have been right. It was true that the only person in the Convent of St. Anselm who didn't know about Sister Hilda's snore was Sister Hilda. It was, thought Sister Gertrude wryly, a true test of religious behavior to sleep uncomplainingly up to four—or even five—doors away from her, and greet the cheerful unknowing Sister Hilda with true Christian charity each morning. She had had to do it herself and she knew. But how she had longed to be able to go in and turn her over onto her other side.

She wished now that she could wake her first but there was a prescribed order for this as there was for everything else in convent life. It was decreed that the first door on which she had to knock every morning was that of the Reverend Mother. Why this was so, she did not know. It may have been because it was unthinkable that the Mother Superior should sleep while any of her daughters in religion were awake. It may have been one of the things—one of the many things—whose origin was lost in the dim antiquity when their Order was founded.

She had to go round two more corners before she came to the Reverend Mother's door. She tapped gently.

“I ask your blessing, Mother.”

“God bless you, my daughter.” The answer came swiftly through the door in a deep, calm voice. She never had to knock twice to wake the Reverend Mother.

The next door on which she had to knock was that of the Sacrist. She must always be up betimes.

“God bless you, Sister.”

“God bless
you,
Sister,” responded the Sacrist promptly.

Then the Cellarer. She, too, had early work to do.

“God bless you, Sister.”

And the Novice Mistress.

No response.

Another knock, louder.

“God bless you, Sister,” sleepily. The Novice Mistress sounded as if she had been hauled back from a pleasant dream.

The Bursar and Procuratrix, the Mother Superior's right-hand woman Sister Lucy.

“God bless you, Sister.” No delay here. She sounded very wide awake.

Then she could start on the ordinary doors, one after the other. There were still fifty to go.

Knock.

“God bless you, Sister,” tentatively.

The unmistakable sound of dentures being seized from a tin mug.

Pause.

Then, triumphantly, “God bless
you,
Sister.”

Knock, blessing, response. Knock, blessing, response.

In a way the formula made the job easier. “Half past five on a November morning and all's well” doubtless would have its uses, but hardly in a Convent. She drew back yet another set of landing curtains and was glad she didn't have to say something about the weather fifty-five times every morning. It wasn't a particularly nice morning but not bad for November, not bad at all. It looked as if it would stay fine for tonight, which was Bonfire Night. Sister Gertrude had not been so long out of the world that she couldn't remember the importance to children of having a fine night for their fires. Besides, a damp November Fifth was a sore trial to everyone—then you never knew when they would let their fireworks off. She wondered what the students at the Agricultural Institute were planning. Last year they had burnt down the old bus shelter in the center of the village. Not before time, she had been told, and now there was a brand new one there.

Knock, blessing, response. Knock, blessing, response.

The older the Sister, the quicker the response. Sister Gertrude had worked that out long ago. She called the older ones first—partly because they slept on the lower floors, partly because she could still remember how much those extra minutes' sleep had meant when she was a young nun. Sleep had been a most precious commodity then.

Knock, blessing, unintelligible response. That was old Mother Mary St. Thérèse, aged goodness knows what, professed long before Sister Gertrude was born, with a memory like a set of archives. Woe betide any Reverend Mother with an eye for innovation. Mother Thérèse had outlived a string of Prioresses, each of whom, she managed to infer (without any apparent lapse of Christian charity), was not a patch on their predecessor. There were days now when she was not able to leave her room. The Reverend Mother would visit her then, and listen patiently to interminable recitations of the virtues of Mother Helena of blessed memory, in whose time it seemed life in the Convent of St. Anselm had been perfect.

Knock, blessing, response.

She turned back into the corridor where Sister Hilda was the soundest sleeper. The snore was still rising and falling “like all the trumpets,” thought Sister Gertrude, before she realized that it was an irreverent simile, and that custody of the mind was just as important as custody of the eyes even if it was half past five in the morning and she was all alone in the dim corridor.

Knock, blessing, response.

That was the door next to Sister Hilda, Sister Jerome. Sister Gertrude wondered what sort of a night she had had. Perhaps the snore didn't bother her, but if it did, she couldn't very well say, not after solemnly undertaking to live at peace for ever with her Sisters in religion.

Knock, blessing, response.

Sister Hilda's door.

The snore ground to a halt, there were a couple of choking snorts, and then the pleasant voice of Sister Hilda sang out warmly, “God bless
you,
Sister.”

It was strange but true that Sister Hilda had one of the most mellifluous speaking voices in the Convent. Sister Gertrude shook her head at this phenomenon and passed on to the next door.

Knock, blessing … no response.

Knock (louder), blessing (more insistently) … still no response.

Sister Anne's teeth were her own. She could think of no other reason for delay in answering and put her hand on the door: the room was empty, the bed made. A very human grin spread over Sister Gertrude's face. Sister Anne hadn't been able to stick another minute of that snore and had crept down early. Strictly forbidden, of course. So was making your bed to save dashing up before Sext. She made a mental note to pull her leg about that later, and, taking a look at her watch, hurried along to the next door. There was still the entire novitiate to be woken, to say nothing of a row of postulants—and
they
never wanted to get up.

At ten minutes to six Sister Gertrude slipped into her stall in the quiet Chapel and went down on her knees until the service began. There was no formal procession into the Chapel for this service. Each Sister came to her own stall and knelt until the stroke of six. She heard the crunch of car wheels on the gravel outside. That was Father MacAuley come to take the service. She lowered her head. She was glad enough to kneel peacefully, her first task of the day completed. Gradually in the few minutes before the service she emptied her mind of all but prayer and worship, and as the ancient ritual proceeded she was oblivious of everything save the proper order of bidding and response.

Until Sister Peter moved forward.