The Convent keys did not, in fact, figure in the conversation Inspector Sloan had with his superior.
“Speak up, Sloan, I can’t hear you.”
“Sorry, sir, I’m speaking from the Convent. The telephone here is a bit public.”
There was a grunt at the other end of the line. “Like that, is it? Devil of a long time you’ve been coming through. What happened?”
“This nun is dead all right. Has been for quite a few hours, I should say. The body’s cold, though the cellar’s pretty perishing anyway and that may not be much to go on. I’d like a few photographs and Dr. Dabbe, too…”
“The whole box of tricks?”
“Yes, please, sir—she’s lying at the foot of a flight of stairs with a nasty hole in the back of her head.”
“All right, Sloan, I’ll buy it. Did she fall or was she pushed?”
“That’s the interesting thing, Superintendent. I don’t think it was either.”
“Not like the moon and green cheese?”
“I beg your pardon, sir?”
“Either it is made of green cheese or it isn’t.”
“N—no, sir, I don’t think so.”
“If it’s not one of the two possible alternatives then it must be the other, always provided, of course, that…”
Sloan sighed. Superintendent Leeyes had started going to an Adult Education Class on Logic this autumn and it was playing havoc with his powers of reasoning.
“I’ve left Crosby down in the cellar with the body, sir, until Dr. Dabbe gets here.”
“All right, Sloan, I know when I’m being deflected. But remember—failure to carry a line of thought through to its logical conclusion means confusion.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Now, what was this woman called?”
“Sister Anne,” said Sloan cautiously.
“Ha!” The superintendent ran true to form. “Perhaps she didn’t see anyone coming, eh?”
“No, sir.”
“And her real name?”
“I don’t know yet. The Reverend Mother has gone to look it up.”
“Right. Keep me informed. By the way, Sloan, who found her in the cellar?”
“I was afraid you were going to ask me that, sir.”
“Why?”
“You’re not going to like it, sir.”
“No?”
“No, sir.” Unhappily. “It was Sister St. Bernard.”
The telephone gave an angry snarl. “I don’t like it, Sloan. If I find you’ve been taking the micky, there’s going to be trouble, understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And Sloan…”
“Sir?”
“If you expect that to go in the official report, you had better bring that little barrel of brandy back with you.”
Sloan waited for Dr. Dabbe at the top of the cellar steps and wished on the whole that he was back at the girls’ boarding school. He could understand their rules. Not long afterwards the police surgeon appeared in the dim corridor, ushered along by a new Sister.
“Morning, Sloan. Something for me, I understand, in the cellar.”
“A nun, doctor. At the bottom of this flight of stairs.”
“Aha,” said Dr. Dabbe alertly. “And she hasn’t been moved?”
“Not by us,” said Sloan.
“Like that, is it? Right.”
Sloan opened the door inwards, disclosing a scene that, but for the stolid Crosby, could have come—almost—from an artist’s illustration for an historical novel. The two attendant Sisters were still there, kneeling, and the dead Sister lying on the floor. The solitary, unshaded electric light reflected their shadows grotesquely against the whitewashed walls.
“Quite medieval,” observed Dabbe. “Shall we look at the steps as we go down?”
“There’s not a lot to see,” said Sloan. “Several of the nuns and the local G.P., Dr. Carret, went up and down before we got here, but there is one mark at the side of the seventh step that could be from her foot, and there is some dust on the right shoe that could be from the step. On the top of the shoe.”
“Just so,” agreed Dabbe, following the direction of the beam from Sloan’s torch. “Steps dusted recently but not very recently.”
The Sister with them coughed. “Probably about once a week, doctor.”
“Thank you.” He glanced from the step to the body. “Head first, Sloan, would you say?”
“Perhaps.”
“I see.” The pathologist reached the bottom step, nodded to Crosby, bowed gravely in the direction of the two kneeling nuns and turned his attention to the body. He looked at it for a long time from several angles and then said conversationally, “Interesting.”
“Yes,” said Sloan.
“Plenty of blood.”
“Yes.”
“Except in the one place where you’d expect it.”
Sloan nodded obliquely. “The photograph boys are on their way.”
“I know,” Dabbe said blandly. “I overtook them.” The pathologist was reckoned to be the fastest driver in Calleshire. “Notwithstanding any pretty pictures they may take, you can take it from me that whatever this woman died from, she didn’t die in the spot where she is now lying.”
“That,” said Sloan, “is what I thought.”
If anything Sloan appeared relieved to see another man in the Parlour.
“Our priest, Inspector—Father Benedict MacAuley.” The Reverend Mother’s rosary clinked as she moved forward. “I asked him to come here as I felt in need of some assistance in dealing with—er—external matters. Do you mind if he is present?”
“Not at all, marm. I have left the police surgeon in the cellar. In the meantime, perhaps you would tell us a little about the… Sister Anne.”
Sloan wouldn’t have chosen the Convent Parlour for an interview with anyone. It was the reverse of cosy. The Reverend Mother and Sister Lucy disposed themselves on hard, stiff-backed chairs and offered two others to the two policemen. Father MacAuley was settled in the only one that looked remotely comfortable. Sloan noticed that it was the policemen who were in the light, the Reverend Mother who was in the shadow, from the window. Vague thoughts about the Inquisition flitted through his mind and were gone again. The room was bare, as the entrance hall had been bare, the floor of highly polished wood. In most rooms there was enough to give a good policeman an idea of the type of person he was interviewing—age, sex, standards, status. Here there was nothing at all. The over-riding impression was still beeswax.
The Reverend Mother folded her hands together in her lap and said quietly, “The name of Sister Anne was Josephine Mary Cartwright. That is all that I can tell you about her life before she came to the Convent. We have a Mother House, you understand, in London, and our records are kept there. I would have to telephone there, for her last address and date of profession. I’m sorry—that seems very little…”
Sister Lucy lifted her head slightly and said to the Reverend Mother: “She was English.”
“As opposed to what?” asked Sloan quickly.
“Irish or French.”
“Frequently opposed to both,” said the Reverend Mother unexpectedly. “When all else is submerged, that sort of nationality remains. It is a curious feature of Convent life.”
“Indeed? Now we had a message this morning…”
“That would be from Dr. Carret. He is so kind to us always. We sent for him at once.”
“When would that have been, marm?”
“After Office this morning. We didn’t know about last night.”
“What about last night?”
“That she might have been lying there since then.”
“What makes you think that?”
“Dr. Carret, Inspector. He said that was what had probably happened.”
“I see. But you didn’t miss her?”
“Not until this morning.”
“When?”
“The Caller, Sister Gertrude, found her cell empty this morning. She thought first of all that she had merely risen early, but as she was not at breakfast either she mentioned it to the Infirmarium.”