“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.
13
« ^ »
It was a subdued Polycarp who opened the grille and then the Parlour 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 apologise 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 the 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 practise 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 Parlour 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 apologised 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, draughty 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 those 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 recognised him.”
“What about today?” asked the superintendent heavily.