“You knew her well, of course?”
“Of course, Inspector. We had shared the same Community life for over twenty-five years.”
“Tell me about her,” urged Sloan gently.
Miss Lome needed no persuading. “She was professed about four years before me—the year I became a postulant, I think it was, though it’s rather a long time ago for me to be sure. She had given up a very gay life in London, you know, to become a nun.” Miss Lome glanced round the modest sitting-room, economically furnished, plainly decorated. “Dances, parties, the London Season—that sort of thing. Her family had money, I think…”
Sloan nodded.
“It used to worry Sister Anne a lot,” volunteered Miss Lome.
“What did?”
“All that money.”
Sloan read the look on Crosby’s face as easily as if it had been the printed word. A lot of money wouldn’t have worried him, it said. Just give him the chance and he’d prove it.
“In what way did it worry her?” asked Sloan.
“It was where it had all come from, Inspector, that was what she thought wrong. It was some sort of manufacturing process that was very valuable in making munitions in the First World War. But half the firm was to be hers one day, and then she intended to make restitution.”
Sloan felt a momentary pang of sympathy for Cousin Harold.
“She always took an interest in foreign missions,” continued Miss Lome. “She thought it was a way in which she could atone.”
The look on Crosby’s face, still easily readable, had changed to incredulity.
“She intended to sell out her interest in the firm?”
“That’s right. As soon as it came to her.”
“And this was common knowledge?”
Miss Lome gave a quick jerk of her head. “We knew it was something that worried her.”
“All those years?”
“Time,” said Miss Lome again, ruefully, “has a different meaning in a religious house.”
She might have left the Convent but she had brought with her the training of a lifetime. When not speaking her eyes dropped downwards, and her hands lay folded in her lap. In gawky, unsuitable clothes, face and figure innocent of make-up or artifice, the mannerisms of the nun bordered on the grotesque.
“Nevertheless,” said Sloan pedantically, “you must have been very surprised and shocked to read about the murder…”
Another quick jerk of the head. “I’ve been trying so hard not to think about the past—until today. Now, I can’t think about anything else except poor Sister Anne.” She brightened with an effort. “But one mustn’t dwell on the bad things, must one? There were some very happy times, too.” She stared at him through a mist of tears and said wistfully, “When everything seemed quite perfect.”
“Yes, miss, I’m sure there were. Tell me, have you been tempted to go back at all since you left?”
A curious colour crept over her face, and Crosby looked quite startled. Miss Lome was actually blushing.
“Just to the gate, Inspector. Not inside. There’s a part of the Convent you can see from the road if you know where to look…”
“The newspaper photographer found it.”
“That’s right. I’ve been back as far as there—just to have a look, you understand. Silly and sentimental of me, I suppose.”
“When?”
“Funnily enough, it was this morning.”
16
« ^ »
All right, all right,” challenged Superintendent Leeyes. “You tell me of someone who wasn’t at the Convent this morning for a change. The whole bang shooting match were there if you ask me—Hobbett, Cartwright, MacAuley, Ranby, Bullen, Parker, fifty nuns and now this woman. Anyone could have killed Tewn. Anyone. It’s a wonder he wasn’t trampled to death in the crowd.”
“This woman says she just went as far as the gate, sir.”
“Tewn didn’t go much farther himself, did he? And look what happened to him.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And as for her saying she just went as far as the gate, how do you know that? How do we know she didn’t go farther than the gate on Wednesday? Suppose she’s the answer to it being an inside job or an outside one—a bit of both, in fact? What’s to stop her coming in on Wednesday, slipping into the back of the Chapel for one of their eternal services and then waiting behind afterwards? You tell me the nuns don’t know who comes into their Chapel from outside for services. Then all she has to do is to wait somewhere until just after supper. She knows where to find that old habit. And how to behave in it.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then, after supper she waits in that corridor with a weapon that you’ve proved to me must have come from the Convent though you can’t find it.”
“No, sir.”
“Then she kills Sister Anne, hears someone coming and pushes her into the broom cupboard. Probably goes inside with her. And at half past eight she creeps out for some service or other.”
“Vespers.”
“To stop the hue and cry being raised until the morning. She goes in last, knowing the others are too damn ladylike to look up, pretends she’s got a cold and keeps her face buried in a handkerchief. Probably comes out last, too, then while the others go up to bed she sidles down the corridor and hides somewhere until it’s all quiet.”
“The necessarium?” offered Sloan.
“The what?”
“The smallest room, sir.”
The superintendent turned a dull shade of purple. “Very probably, Sloan, very probably. I was forgetting,” he added savagely, “that they aren’t fairies. Then when all the others are tucked up in their nice warm cells, she comes out of there and pops into the broom cupboard, heaves Sister Anne’s body down the cellar steps, and lets herself out through the cellar door and legs it back to Luston.”
Sloan studied the ceiling. “Leaving the habit in the cellar for Tewn, who comes along ten minutes later and takes it away?”
Leeyes glared.
“Or alternatively,” went on Sloan, switching his gaze to the floor, “she just happens to discard the habit there and Tewn just happens to come along and pick it up?”
“Tewn came there by arrangement, didn’t he?” Leeyes shifted his ground with subtlety.
“With Hobbett, sir. He promised to have the habit there for the students and to leave the outside cellar door open.”
“Someone knew about that little conspiracy, Sloan.”
“Yes, sir, unless…”
“Unless what?”
“It was a totally inside job. Then it wouldn’t have mattered what happened to the outside cellar door or the habit.”
“Who would have been lying?”
“Sister Damien.”
Leeyes shrugged. “I don’t like coincidence. Never have done.”
“Neither do I, sir, but you must allow for it happening.”
The superintendent gave an indeterminate growl. “What next?”
“Back to the Convent with Sergeant Perkins, sir.”
“Have they brought Hobbett in yet?”
“Not yet, sir.”
“There’s always the chance, I suppose,” said Leeyes hopefully, “that he’ll stand on one of them’s toe…” The other three golfers would be coming up the eighteenth fairway by now—without him. “Sloan…”
“Sir?”
“This woman, Eileen Lome—why did she leave the Convent?”
“She lost her vocation,” said Sloan, shutting the door behind him very gently indeed.
Sergeant Perkins was in his room when he got back.
He nodded briskly. “What do you know about Convents, Sergeant?”
“That they’re not allowed to have mirrors there,” she said. She was a good-looking girl herself.
“Poor things,” said Sloan unsympathetically. “Now, about the case…”