“We are not a strictly enclosed Order, Inspector. Sisters are allowed to leave the Convent for works of necessity and mercy, and so forth. They have interviews here in the Parlour unless it is a Clothing, when they come into the Chapel. Our Chapel was originally the Faine private one, and Mrs. Faine and her daughter still attend services here, as do others in Cullingoak.” She smiled gently. “We are, in fact, to have a rather special service here next month. Miss Faine is to be married to Mr. Ranby, the Institute’s Principal, and the Bishop has given his consent to our Chapel being used—as it would have been had the Faines still lived here.”
“How do they get in?” enquired Sloan with interest.
“There is a door leading outside from the Chapel. Sister Polycarp unlocks it before the service.”
“Tradesmen?”
“We have everything delivered. Sister Cellarer deals with them at the back door, and Sister Lucy here pays them.”
“No one else?”
“Just Hobbett—he’s our handyman. There are some tasks—just one or two, you understand—which are beyond our capacities.”
Sloan nodded. “This Hobbett—does he have to run the gauntlet every day?”
“Past Sister Polycarp? No, his work is at the back. He has his own key to the boiler room and his own routine—dustbins, ladders, cleaning the upstairs outside windows and so forth. And the boiler for three-quarters of the time.”
“Three quarters?”
“Sister Ignatius is the only person who can persuade it to function at all when the wind is in the east. Her devotions are frequently interrupted.”
They found Hobbett in a small, not uncosy room at the foot of a short flight of outside stairs descending to cellar level not far from the kitchen door. It was lined with logs, and a litter of broken pieces of wood covered the floor. There was a chair with one arm broken and an old table. Hobbett was sitting at this having his midday break. There was a mug of steaming tea on the table. He was reading a popular daily newspaper with a tradition of the sensational.
“I am Inspector Sloan.”
The man took a noisy sip of tea and set the mug down carefully on the table. “Hobbett.”
He hadn’t shaved this morning.
“We are enquiring into the death of Sister Anne.”
Hobbett took another sip of tea. “I heard one of ’em had fallen down the cellar steps.” He jerked his head towards the door in the corner. “I don’t go through that far meself or happen I might ’ave found her for you.”
“How far do you go through?”
“Just to the boiler—got to keep that going—and the coke place with kindling and that. Mostly I work in the grounds.”
To Sloan he hadn’t the look of a man who worked anywhere.
“What were you doing yesterday?”
“Yesterday?” Hobbett looked surprised. “I’d ’ave to think.” He took a long pull at his tea. “I cleared out a drain first. The gutter from the Chapel roof was blocked with leaves and I had to get my ladders out. Long job, that was. I’d just finished when Sister Lucy sent for me to shift a window that’d got stuck.”
“Upstairs or down?”
“Up. I’d just put my ladders away, too. She wouldn’t have it left though. Said it was dangerous. One of ’em might have escaped through it, I suppose.” He sank the rest of his tea in one long swallow and licked his lips. “Not that there’s much for them to escape for, is there now?”
“This Sister Anne,” said Sloan sharply. “Did you see her often?”
“Wouldn’t know her if I did. Can’t tell some of them from which, if you get me. There’s about four of them that gives me orders. The rest don’t bother me much.”
“When did you leave last night?”
“Short of five somewhere. Can’t do much in the dark.”
“Nice type,” observed Crosby on their way back.
“And four doors,” said Sloan morosely, “and about thirty windows.”
Sister Gertrude was having a bad day. First, though no one had mentioned it, she was deeply conscious of her neglect in ignoring Sister Anne’s empty cell. And now she was troubled about something else. As a nervous postulant she had fondly imagined that there would be no worries in a Convent, that the way would be clear and that obedience to the Rule would make following that way, if not easy, then at least straightforward.
It seemed she was wrong—or was she?
No nun was meant to carry worries that properly belonged to the Reverend Mother. Her instructions were simple. The Reverend Mother was to be told of them and her ruling was absolute. Then the Sister concerned need worry no longer.
What they had omitted to pontificate on, thought Sister Gertrude, was at what point a worry became substantial enough for communicating to the Reverend Mother. What was bothering her was just an uneasy thought.
It had cropped up after luncheon. There was no proper recreation until the early evening, but after their meal there was a brief relaxation of the silence in which they worked. It lasted for about fifteen minutes until they resumed their duties for the afternoon. And the person who had been speaking to her in it was Sister Damien.
In the tradition of the Convent an empty place was left at the refectory table where Sister Anne had always sat, her napkin laid alongside it. It would be so for seven days and then the ranks of nuns would close up as if she had never been. And Sister Damien and Sister Michael who had sat for several years on either side of Sister Anne would now for the rest of their mortal lives sit next to each other instead at meals, in Chapel, and in everything else they did as a Community.
“I think we will have our cloister now,” Sister Damien had remarked as they tidied up the refectory together.
“Our cloister? Now?” Sister Gertrude stopped and looked at her. The Convent had always lacked a cloister but to build one as they would have liked by joining up two back wings of the house was well beyond their means. “We shall need one very badly if they build next door, but where will the money come from?”
Sister Damien assiduously chased a few wayward crumbs along one of the tables. “Sister Anne.”
“Sister Anne?”
Sister Damien pinned down another crumb with her thin hand. “She knew we wanted a cloister.”
“We all knew we wanted a cloister,” said Sister Gertrude with some asperity. “It’s very difficult in winter without one, but that doesn’t mean to say that…”
“Sister Anne was to come into some money and she’s left it to us.”
“How do you know?”
“She told me,” said Sister Damien simply. “She didn’t have a dowry but she knew she was going to have this money some day.”
Sister Gertrude pursed her lips. Money was never mentioned in the ownership sense in the Convent. In calculating wants and needs and ways and means, yes, but never relating to a particular Sister. And the size of a dowry was a matter between the Mother Superior and the Novice.
“So we’ll be able to have our cloister now and it won’t matter about the building,” went on Sister Damien, oblivious of the effect she was creating. “That’s good, isn’t it?”
Sister Gertrude busied herself straightening a chair. “Yes,” she said in as neutral a voice as she could manage. “Except for Sister Anne.”
Sister Damien wheeled round and caught her arm. “But she is in Heaven, Sister. You don’t regret that, do you?”
But Sister Gertrude did not know what it was she regretted, and at the first sound of the Convent bell she thankfully fled the refectory.
It was unfortunate for her peace of mind that the first person she bumped into was little Sister Peter. She was walking up the great staircase looking rather less cheerful than Mary Queen of Scots mounting the scaffold at Fotheringhay. She was holding her hand out in front of her with her thumb stuck out in odd disassociation from the rest of her body.