He wasn’t catching Sloan out that easily.
“Look it up, constable,” he said unfairly, “then you’ll remember it better, won’t you?”
“Yes, sir.”
Sloan climbed the last step and advanced to the door.
“Sir…”
“Yes, Crosby?”
“Er, what gives?”
“Didn’t you get the message?” Sloan pressed the bell. “Something nasty has happened to a nun.”
Unexpectedly a little light flashed on at the side of the door. Crosby peered forward and read aloud the notice underneath it: “ ‘Open the door and enter the hall.’ ”
“Advance and be recognised,” interpreted Sloan, who had done his time in the Army.
They pushed open the outer door and stood inside a brightly-lit vestibule. The next pair of doors was of glass. There was another notice attached to these: “When the buzzer sounds push these doors.” Beyond them was a small hall, and at the other side of this was a screen stretching from floor to ceiling. In the centre of the screen was a grille.
Sloan was suddenly aware of a face looking at them through it. The two policemen were standing in the light, and beyond the grille was shadow, so they could see little of the face except that it was there—watching them. The scrutiny ended with a buzzer sounding loudly—and the lock on the glass door fell open.
Sloan pushed the doors and walked forward into the hall.
The face behind the grille retreated a fraction into the dark background and he saw it no better.
Sloan cleared his throat. “I am Detective-Inspector Sloan from Berebury C.I.D.”
“Yes?” The voice was uninviting.
“I understand that one of the nuns—”
“Sister Anne.”
Behind his right ear he heard Crosby struggling to strangle a snort at birth.
“Sister Anne,” continued Sloan hastily, “I am told has had… has unfortunately met with an…”
“She’s dead,” said the face.
“Just so,” said Sloan, who was finding it downright disconcerting talking to someone he could not see.
“She’s in the cellar,” volunteered the speaker.
“That’s what I had heard.”
The voice attached to the face was Irish and that was about all Sloan could tell.
“I think you had better see the Mother Superior,” she said.
“So do I,” said Sloan.
There was a faint click and a shutter came down over the grille. The two policemen waited.
There were two doors leading out of the hall but both were locked. Crosby turned his attention to the lock on the glass doors.
“Electricity, sir. That’s how it works.”
“I didn’t suppose it was magic,” said Sloan irritably. “Did you?”
This wasn’t the sort of delay he liked when there was a body about. Superintendent Leeyes wasn’t going to like it either. He would be sitting in his office, waiting—and wondering why he hadn’t heard from them already.
They went on waiting. The hall was quite silent. There were two chairs there and, on one wall, a little plaster Madonna with a red lamp burning before it. Nothing else. Crosby finished his prowling and came back to stand restively beside Sloan.
“At this rate, sir, it doesn’t look as if they’re going to let the dog get a look at the rabbit at all…”
There was the mildest of deprecating coughs behind his right ear and Crosby spun round. Somewhere, somehow, a door must have opened and two nuns come through it, but neither policeman had heard it happen.
“Forgive us, gentlemen, if we startled you…”
Sloan had an impression of immense authority— something rare in a woman—and the calm that went with it. She was standing quite still, dignity incarnate, her hands folded loosely together in front of her black habit, her expression perfectly composed.
“Not at all,” he said, discomfited.
“I am the Mother Superior…”
“How do you do…” The conventional police “madam” hung unspoken, inappropriate, in the air. Sloan’s own mother was a vigorous woman in her early seventies. He struggled to use the word and failed.
“… Marm,” he finished, inspired.
“And this is Sister Mary St. Lucy.”
That was easier. He could call the whole world “Sister.”
“Sister Lucy is our Bursar and Procuratrix…”
Sloan saw Crosby’s startled glance and shot him a look calculated to wither him into silence.
The Mother Superior glanced briefly round the hall. “I am sorry that Sister Porteress kept you waiting here. She should have shown you to the Parlour.” She smiled faintly. “She interprets her watchdog duties very seriously. Besides which…” again the faint smile “… she has a rooted objection to policemen.”
It was Sloan’s experience that a lot of people had, but that they didn’t usually say so straight out.
“Not shared, I hope, marm, by all your Sisters——-”
“I couldn’t tell you, Inspector,” she said simply. “This is the first time one has ever crossed our threshold.” She turned to one of the doors. “I therefore know very little about your routine but I dare say you would like to see Sister Anne…”
“Not half,” whispered Crosby to her back.
“And Sister Peter, too, though I fear she won’t be of much immediate help to you. She’s quite overcome, so I’ve sent her to the kitchen. They’re always glad of an extra pair of hands there at this time of the day. This way, please.”
She led them through the nearer of the two doors into what had been the original entrance hall of the old house. It was two storeys high, with a short landing across one end. A pair of double doors led through into the chapel at the other end, but the centre of attraction was the great carved black oak staircase. Its only carpet was polish, and it descended in a series of stately treads from the balustraded gallery at the top to a magnificent newel post at the bottom, elaborately carved, with an orb sitting on the top.
The Mother Superior did not spare it a glance but, closely followed by Sister Lucy, led them off behind the staircase through a dim corridor smelling of beeswax. Sloan followed, guided as much by the sound of the long rosaries which hung from their waists as by sight. Once they passed another nun coming the opposite way. Sloan tried to get a good look at her face, but when she saw the Reverend Mother and her party, she drew quietly to one side and stood, eyes cast down, until they had all passed. Then they heard the slight clink of her rosary as she walked on.
“Inspector,” Crosby hissed in his ear, “they’re all wearing wedding rings.”
“Brides of Christ,” Sloan hissed back.
“What’s that?”
“I’ll tell you later.”
The Reverend Mother had halted in front of one of the several doors leading off the corridor.
“This is the way to the cellar, Inspector. Sister Anne, God rest her soul, is at the foot of the steps.”
So she was.
Sister Lucy opened the door and Sloan saw a figure lying on the floor. Two nuns were kneeling beside it in an attitude of prayer. He went down the steps carefully. They were steep, and the lighting was not of the brightest.
When they saw the new arrivals, the two nuns who had been keeping vigil by the body rose quietly and melted into the background.
The body of the nun was spread-eagled on the stone floor, face downwards, her habit caught up, her veil knocked askew. The white bloodless hands were all he could see of death at first. There was a plain broad silver ring on the third finger of this left hand too.
The Reverend Mother and Sister Lucy crossed themselves and then drew back a little, watching him.
He couldn’t tell in the bad light where the blood on her black habit began and ended, but there was no doubt from where it had eome. The back of her head. Even in this light he could see there was something wrong with its shape. There was a hollow where no hollow should be.