“No.”
“Well, then, sir…”
“You’re forgetting Caesar’s wife, Crosby.”
Crosby doubled-declutched to give himself time to think. “Who, sir?”
“Caesar’s wife. She was above suspicion.”
12
« ^ »
In the beginning Saturday morning resolved itself into routine.
Harold Cartwright had a large mail delivered to him at The Bull, and spent many more than the usual three minutes on the telephone to London. Mrs. Briggs at the Cullingoak Post Office was hard put to it to keep up with his calls as well as serve her usual Saturday morning customers.
That part of the Agricultural Institute on early call got up and began to go about its business, regretting being born to the land and married to the land, wishing that it led urban lives when it wouldn’t have had to get up early ever and not get up at all on Saturdays.
Life at the Convent proceeded very much as usual. Sister Gertrude woke the Community at the appointed time and they began to work their way through their immemorial, unchanging round. With one difference. Each Sister had to write on a piece of paper her secular name and address, date of profession and precise location immediately after supper on Wednesday evening. Only old Mother St. Thérèse, to whom all days were the same, found this difficult.
It was routine, too, at the Berebury Police Station to begin with. Superintendent Leeyes sent for Sloan as soon as he got to his office. He was at his worst in the morning. That, too, was routine.
“Seen the papers?” Leeyes indicated a truly sepulchral photograph of Sister Polycarp behind the grille, caught in the camera flash with her eyes shut and mouth open. Under this was a much more sophisticated picture taken from a long distance with a telephoto lens of the outside of the Convent through the trees. The effect was sinister in the extreme.
“Pursuing your enquiries, Sloan, that’s what they say you’re doing.”
“Yes, sir.” Sloan bent over to read the report. He was too good a policeman to scorn any facts newspaper reporters might dig out. Besides, they were free men by comparison—no Judges’ Rules for them.
There wasn’t very much in the paper. The brief news that a nun (unnamed) had died in the Convent of St. Anselm at Cullingoak (short historical note on the Order and its Foundress—see any reference book) once the family seat of the Faines (three paragraphs on the Faine family straight from the nearest Guide to the Landed Gentry), and what they were pleased to call a startling coincidence—the burning of a nun as a guy the very next night—at the nearby Agricultural Institute (run by the Calleshire County Council, Principal, M. Ranby, B. Sc, formerly Deputy Head of West Laming School). Mr. Ranby, said the report, was not available for comment at the Institute yesterday. “Wise man,” thought Sloan. Then followed a highly circumstantial account of the burning of the guy by “a student” who preferred not to give his name. The story wound up with a few generalisations about student rags and the information that an inquest was to be held on Monday morning next in the Guildhall, Berebury. Sloan straightened up.
“Could be worse.”
Leeyes grunted. He did not like the Press. “Wait till you’ve seen the Sundays. Especially if they get hold of this time business.”
“Or the trio who got the habit. A pretty picture they would make. By the way, sir, it was Bullen and Tewn’s footprints Crosby found. He’s just checked. Bullen stood in one spot under the rhododendrons while Tewn went down in the cellar for the habit. That’s what they told us, and the footprints tie up with that.”
“Not Harold Cartwright’s?”
“No, sir.”
“Can’t understand what the devil he’s doing here, Sloan.”
“I don’t know what he’s doing, but he’s working,” said Sloan. “I’ve got a man keeping an eye on him. Lots and lots of paper work, telephone calls, tape recorders, the lot.”
“He’ll be lucky if he gets anything done that way. I never do. Quiet thinking is what gets things done, Sloan. More things are wrought by—er—quiet thought than you would believe.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Logical thought, of course, Sloan.”
“Of course, sir.”
“There’s one aspect of this case I’ve been thinking about a lot…”
“Sir?”
“This weapon that Dabbe talks about…”
Sloan nodded. “He said it was something smooth and round and heavy.”
“That describes a paperweight and a cannon ball,” said the superintendent testily. “We haven’t found it yet, have we?”
“Not yet, sir.” Sloan liked the “we.”
“We instituted a search on Thursday morning but found nothing. That Sister Peter wasn’t what you could call a good witness. Too worked up for one thing. Swore she showed us everywhere she’s been, and that wasn’t very exciting, but no sign of any blunt instruments.”
“It must have been there, Sloan.”
“It must have been there when she touched it, sir. Crosby and I didn’t see it. We went back for another look afterwards when she’d gone off to tell her troubles to somebody else, but we couldn’t pick any lead up anywhere.”
“Narrows the field a bit, doesn’t it?” said Superintendent Leeyes, just as Crosby had done.
“I don’t see why,” said Sloan obstinately. “Someone had only to know what it—whatever it was—was there, hadn’t they? Comes to the same thing.”
Leeyes pounced. “Ah, so you think it’s an outside job, do you?”
Sloan shook his head. “I don’t know, sir. Not yet. I’ve an open mind.”
“Have you?” Leeyes glared at him. “I hope that you don’t mean an empty one.”
“No, sir. On the contrary, the possibilities are still infinite.”
The concept of infinity had already come up in the superintendent’s Logic course. It was now a word he treated with respect and no longer understood. He let the inspector get as far as the door. “Sloan…”
“Sir?”
“Do you know what they make nuns’ habits from?”
“Wool, I suppose, sir.”
“Ah, but what sort of wool?”
“I couldn’t say, sir.”
“From black sheep, Sloan.”
The day was still relatively young when Sloan and Crosby reached the Convent. The Mother Superior and Sister Lucy received them as if it was already half over. The Mother Superior handed him a list of names.
“Thank you, marm. I feel we need all the information we can get in this matter.”
“Such knowledge as I have is, of course, at your disposal, Inspector.”
“First, marm, I have some news for you. Mr. Ranby has traced the culprits of Thursday night’s incident— three of his students were responsible for making the guy. He intends to bring them over this morning to apologise in person.”
She inclined her head graciously. “There is no need for him to go to such trouble, but if he wishes it… Has their escapade any bearing on Sister Anne’s death, would you say?”
“If,” countered Sloan carefully, “she had happened upon them in the grounds or in the Convent itself it might have—but I think it unlikely.”
“So do I,” said the Mother Superior firmly. “Sister Anne—God rest her soul—would have reported such intruders to me immediately. I do not like to think that the students would have reacted to discovery with murder.”
“No, marm, nor do I.”
They faced each other in the small Parlour. Irrelevantly it spun through Sloan’s mind that he had never seen such fine skin on two women before. The older, more flaccid face of the Mother Superior reminded him of cream, the younger, firmer skin of Sister Lucy of the peaches that go with it. He remembered reading somewhere that good skin—like a good car—only needed washing with water. He must make a note to tell his wife about their complexions.