The Religious Body (11 page)

“Yes,” interrupted Sister Gertrude unexpectedly. “Yes, it would, Mother.”

Suddenly finding herself the object of every eye in the Parlor, Sister Gertrude blushed and lowered her head.

“Pray explain, Sister.”

“This potential that you are talking about was some money that Sister Anne was to come into, wasn't it?”

Sloan nodded.

“Well, she knew about it. She told Sister Damien that the Convent would have it one day and then we could have our cloister.”

There was silence.

Sister Gertrude looked from Inspector Sloan to Father Benedict MacAuley and back again. “I don't know if there would have been enough for a cloister or not,” she said nervously, “but Sister Damien thought so, and so did Sister Anne.”

“I think,” said the Mother Prioress heavily, “that we had better see Sister Damien and Sister Michael now.”

Sister Damien came first. Tall, thin and stiff-looking even in the soft folds of her habit, she swept the assembled company with a swift look and bowed to the Mother Prioress.

“The inspector has some questions for you, Sister. Pray answer them to the best of your recollection.”

Sister Damien turned an expectant glance to Sloan.

“I want you to take your mind back to the events of Wednesday evening,” he began easily. “Supper, for instance—what did you have?”

“Steak and kidney pie, and bread and butter pudding. The reading was of the martyrdom of Saint Denise.”

“And Sister Anne sat next to you?”

“Naturally.”

“Did you speak to her then?”

“Talking at meals is not permitted.”

There was an irritating glint of self-righteousness in her eye that Sloan would dearly love to have squashed. Instead he said, “When did you see her again?”

“Not until Vespers.”

“What about Recreation?”

“I didn't see her then. I was talking to Sister Jerome about some lettering ink for prayer cards. We are,” she added insufferably, “permitted to move about at Recreation.”

“When did you go into the Chapel?”

“About a quarter past eight.”

“Was Sister Anne there then?”

“No. She came much later. I thought she was going to be late.”

“But she wasn't?”

“No, not quite.”

“Did you speak to her?” asked Sloan—and wished he hadn't.

“Speaking in Chapel is not permitted,” said Sister Damien inevitably.

“Did you notice anything about her particularly?”

“No, Inspector, but we practice custody of the eyes.”

“Custody of the eyes?”

The Mother Prioress leaned forward. “You could call it the opposite of observation. It is the only way to acquire the true concentration of the religious.”

Sloan took a deep breath. Custody of the eyes didn't help him one little bit. “I see.”

“There was just one thing, Inspector.…”

“Well?”

“I think she may have been starting a cold. She did blow her nose several times.”

“About the cloister.…”

An entirely different sort of gleam came into Sister Damien's eye. She smoothed away an invisible crease in her gown.

“Yes, Inspector, we shall be able to have that now. Sister Anne said that when she was dead we should have enough money to have our cloister. She told me so several times. And there would be some for the missions, too. She took a great interest in missionary work.”

“Did she tell you where the money was to come from?” asked Sloan.

“No. Just that it would be going back to those from whom it had been taken.” Sister Damien seemed able to invest every remark she made with sanctimoniousness. “And that then restitution would have been made.”

Sister Michael was fat and breathless and older. She did not hear at all well. Panting a little she agreed that Sister Anne had been very nearly late. The last in the Chapel, she thought. She hadn't noticed anything out of the ordinary but then she never did. She was a little deaf, you see, and had to concentrate hard on the service to make up for it.

But Sister Anne was there?

Sister Michael looked blank and panted a little more. One service was very like the next, Inspector, but she thought she would have remembered if Sister Anne hadn't been there, if he knew what she meant.

But she had just told him that Sister Anne was late.

Yes, well, Sister Damien had reminded her about that this morning.

What about yesterday morning when Sister Anne definitely wasn't there. Had she noticed then?

Well, actually, no. She wasn't ever very good in the mornings. It took her a little while to get going if he knew what she meant. Deafness, though she knew these minor disabilities were sent purely to test the weak on earth and were as nothing compared with the sufferings of saints and martyrs, was in fact very trying and led to a feeling of cut-offness. Of course, in some ways it made it easier to be properly recollected, if he knew what she meant.

He didn't. He gave up.

CHAPTER TEN

Harold Cartwright received them in his bedroom at The Bull. He appeared to have been working hard. The table was strewn with papers and there were more on the bed. There was a live tape recorder on the dressing table and he was talking into it when the two policemen arrived. He switched it off immediately.

“Sit down, gentlemen.” He cleared two chairs. “It's not very comfortable but it's the best Cullingoak has to offer. I don't think they have many visitors at The Bull.”

“Thank you, sir.” Sloan took out a notebook. “We're just checking up on a matter of timing and would like to run through your movements on Wednesday again.”

Cartwright looked at him sharply. “As I told you before, I drove myself down here from London.…”

“When exactly did you leave?”

“I don't know exactly. About half past four. I wanted to miss the rush-hour traffic.”

“Can anyone confirm the time you left?”

“I expect so,” he said impatiently. “My secretary, for one. And my deputy director. I was in conference most of the afternoon and left as soon as I'd cleared up the matters arising from it. Is it important?”

“And how long did it take you to arrive here?”

He grimaced. “Longer than I thought it would. Several hundred other motorists had the same idea about leaving London before the rush hour. I drove into The Bull yard a few minutes before half past seven.”

“Three hours? That's a long time.”

“There was a lot of traffic.”

“Even so …”

“And I didn't know the way.”

“Ah,” said Sloan smoothly. “There is that. Did you by any chance take a wrong turning?”

“No,” said Cartwright shortly. “I did not. But I was in no hurry. I had planned to have the evening to myself and most of the following day. I don't know enough about the routine of convents to know the best time to call on them—but in the event that didn't matter, did it?”

“This business that you had come all this way to talk to your cousin about, sir, you wouldn't care to tell me what it was?”

“No, Inspector,” he said decisively. “I should not. I cannot conceive of it having any bearing on her death. It was a family affair.”

“But you're staying on?”

“Yes, Inspector, I'm staying on.” He sat quite still, a figure not without dignity even in an hotel bedroom. “The Mother Prioress has given me permission to attend Josephine's funeral but not—as you might have thought—to pay for it. Apparently a nun's burial is a very simple affair.”

Superintendent Leeyes was unsympathetic. “You've had over twenty-four hours already, Sloan. The probability that a crime will be solved diminishes in direct proportion to the time that elapses afterwards, not as you might think in an inverse ratio.”

“No, sir.” Was that from “Mathematics for the Average Adult” or “Logic”?

“And Dabbe says that she died before seven and these women say they saw her after eight-thirty?”

“Just one woman says so, sir.”

“What about the other fifty then?”

“They'd got their heads down. Sister Anne sat in the back row always and apparently it isn't done to look up or around. Custody of the eyes, they call it.”

Leeyes growled. “And this woman that did see her then, what was she doing? Peeping between her fingers?”

“She could be lying,” said Sloan cautiously. “I'm not sure. She could be crackers if it came to that.”

“They can't any of them be completely normal, now can they?” retorted Leeyes robustly. “Asking to be locked up for life like that. It isn't natural.”

“No, sir, but if there had been someone—not Sister Anne—at Vespers it would explain the glasses, wouldn't it?”

“It's better than ‘Sister Anne Walks Again' which is what I thought you were going to say.”

“No, sir, I don't believe in ghosts.”

“Neither do I, Sloan,” snapped Leeyes. “I may be practically senile, too, but I don't see how it explains the glasses either.”

“Disguise,” said Sloan. For one wild moment he contemplated asking the superintendent to cover his head with a large handkerchief to see if he would pass for a nun, but then he thought better of it. His pension was more important. “I reckon, sir, that either there wasn't anyone at all in Sister Anne's stall at Vespers or else it was someone there in disguise.”

“Well done,” said Leeyes nastily. “You should come with me on Mondays, Sloan. Learn a bit about Logic. And was it Cousin Harold who was standing there?”

“I don't know, sir.”

“If it was, why the devil didn't he clear off? We didn't know he was there. We might never have found out.”

“Those footprints aren't his.”

“You're not making much headway, Sloan, are you?”

“Not since I've heard from Dr. Dabbe, sir.”

For the first time he got some sympathy.

“It's usually the doctors,” grumbled Superintendent Leeyes. “Try to pin them down on something and they'll qualify every single clause of every single sentence they utter. Then, when it's a blasted nuisance they'll be as dogmatic as … as …” he glared at his desk in his search for a comparative “… as a lady magistrate.”

Sloan watched the superintendent drive off towards his home and next meal, and went back to his own room. Crosby was there with two large cups of tea and some sandwiches.

“Well, Crosby, what did you make of Sister Damien's story?”

“Someone wanted us to think Sister Anne was still alive at eight-thirty.”

“Ah, yes, but was it Sister Damien who wanted us to think that? Or was it someone else?”

Crosby took a sandwich but offered no opinion.

“And
why
did they want us to think that?”

“Alibi?” suggested Crosby.

“Perhaps. No one missed Sister Anne at Recreation so presumably they can move about then more or less as they like.”

“More or less, sir,” echoed Crosby darkly.

Sloan grinned. The man had a sense of humor after all. “Did you give them back their keys?”

“Yes, sir. I went round all their cupboards with that Sister Lucy and opened them up. Nothing much there—food, stores and what have you. It was a hefty bunch of metal all right. Sister Lucy wears it round her waist all the time. They were certainly glad to have them back again.”

“What about their local standing?”

“High, sir. I checked with quite a few people in the village. They like them. They aren't any trouble. Their credit is good and they pay on the nail for everything. They live carefully, not wasting anything, and they do as much of their shopping as possible in Cullingoak.”

“That always goes down well.”

“I got on to Dr. Carret, too. Only on the telephone though. He was out when I went there. He was called to the Convent when Sister Anne was found, realized she hadn't fallen downstairs in the ordinary way and sent for us.”

“Very observant of him, that was. Is your standing with the canteen manageress good enough for another couple of cups?”

Apparently it was, for Crosby brought two refills back within minutes.

Sloan picked up a pencil. “Now, Crosby, where are we now?”

“Well, sir, yesterday we had this body that we thought had been murdered. Today we know it has been. Weapon, something hard but blunt, probably touched by Sister Peter early yesterday morning.”

“And still to be found.”

“Yes, sir. We know that Sister Anne was also Josephine Mary Cartwright and that her mother said ‘Never darken these doors again' a long time ago. And that when her mother dies she was due to come into a lot of money.”

“Only if she outlived her, Crosby. If she died first it reverts to Uncle Joe and his heirs, one of whom is camping at The Bull for some reason not yet revealed to us.”

“Well, there's money for someone in it somewhere, sir.”

“Show me the case where there isn't, Crosby, and I may not know how to solve it.”

“Sir, did that thin one, Damien, know that if Sister Anne died before her uncle, the uncle got the lot?”

Sloan nodded approvingly. “That is something I should dearly like to know myself. You realize we have only got her word for it that Sister Anne—or someone she thought was Sister Anne—was at Vespers at eight-thirty? The other one—Sister Michael—what she said wasn't evidence. More like hearsay.”

Crosby stopped, his cup halfway to his lips. “You mean Sister Damien might be lying about that?” It was clearly a new idea to him.

“Don't look so shocked, Crosby.”

“I didn't think
they
would lie, sir.”

“Someone, somewhere,” he said sarcastically, “is being untruthful with us, don't you think?”

“Oh, yes, sir, but I didn't think nuns would lie.”

“Not quite cricket, Crosby?”