Leeyes growled non-committally.
“Hobbett,” went on Sloan, “doesn’t know Sister Lucy doesn’t wear glasses all the time. Any more than Ranby does. She would have been wearing them at the enquiry and when she paid Hobbett.”
“You make it sound very simple,” complained the superintendent.
“It was, sir. Motive, means and opportunity, the lot. He can’t risk failure of a second attempt to marry a well-to-do unprotected girl—so there’s the motive. The means are at hand—even down to the weapon—and his own students presented him with opportunity.”
“Are you trying to tell me, Sloan, that Ranby can have gone to that Chapel with his future intended and those nuns not have known him from Adam?”
“Yes, sir. The Sisters sit in front of a grille, and the congregation would only ever see their backs. And,” he added under his breath, “they none of them know Adam.”
“What’s that, Sloan?”
“Nothing, sir.”
“I don’t want any of your case based on false premise.”
“No, sir.” That was the course on Logic rearing its head again.
Leeyes turned to Crosby. “None of this ‘when did you stop beating your wife’ stuff, eh, constable?”
Crosby looked pained. “I’m not married, sir.”
Harold Cartwright was still at The Bull.
“Fine woman, the Mother Superior. Makes me realise some of my ideas were a bit Maria Monk—you know, the Awful Disclosures thereof.”
Sloan did not know, and said instead, “Any news of your father, sir?”
Cartwright shot him a sharp glance, “You knew, didn’t you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“He’s much the same, Inspector, thank you. I’m going back home today but I’m coming back… Inspector Sloan?”
“Sir?”
“It was Ranby who sent for the police on Bonfire Night, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, sir. I think he wanted us to see the habit and glasses just in case he had to pin something on someone else. After all, it wasn’t very likely one nun would kill another really.”
“And safer than throwing the glasses away.”
“He was a bit too anxious to implicate the students. He suggested they might have got out of the Biology Laboratory window long before he was supposed to know what time they had gone to the Convent.”
Cartwright gave his quick smile. “That job’s still open for you, Inspector.”
“No, thank you, sir, but there is one—what you might call—lost soul in need of one rather badly. A defector from St. Anselm’s. I doubt if she’s really employable myself.”
“I could see,” offered Cartwright.
“The name is Lome, Miss Eileen Lome. I’ll give you her address.”
“And I’ll give you my London one;”
Sloan coughed. “I have it, sir, thank you.”
Cartwright nodded gravely. “I was forgetting. But I’ll be coming back to The Bull. Funny thing you know, The Bull doesn’t mean the animal at all.”
“No, sir?”
“No. It means the Papal Bull. Isn’t that odd? The Mother Superior told me.”
Sloan went back to the car and tapped Crosby on the shoulder. “Get thee to a nunnery.”
Sister Gertrude set off in the direction of the Parlour. There must be visitors there again. Usually Sister Lucy was sent for but today Sister Lucy was being kept very busy by the Mother Superior on the question of the cost of a cloister. And this time they knew where the money was coming from. Mr. Harold Cartwright. Usually, when the Convent of St. Anselm spent some money they had no idea from whence the wherewithal would appear. It always came, of course, but that was not easy to explain to a builder.
She hurried down the great staircase and wondered how long it would be before she could look at the newel post without a shudder. There was a portrait at the bottom of the stairs, framed and glass-covered. If you stood in a certain way you could catch sight of your own reflection. Sister Gertrude paused, squinted up at herself and pulled her coif quite straight. Very wrong of her, of course. She would try not to do it again. But it was a temptation.
She joined the Mother Superior and went into the Parlour.
“So it was Mr. Ranby all the time,” said the Mother Superior directly.
“Yes, marm,” said Sloan. “He swallowed the bait— Sergeant Perkins—hook, line and sinker. If I may say so, Father MacAuley has a real talent for dissembling. Ranby never guessed the idea of the night watch was all a put-up job.”
“Inspector, there is no doubt is there?”
“No, marm, we’ve found out other things too. He shaved twice that day and so on.”
“Poor soul,” she said compassionately, “to be so concerned with the passing things of this world.”
“Yes, marm.” He coughed. “Miss Faine… how…”
“Father MacAuley went to see her this morning after Mass. We must pray for her.”
Sloan shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “Of course.”
“The two boys from the Institute?” she enquired.
Sloan brightened. “They’re taking it very well. It’s quite taken their minds off Tewn.”
“Inspector, when did you first suspect… ?”
“Sister Lucy was white and shaking when I got here yesterday after you’d found Tewn’s body. It wasn’t that that had upset her because she hadn’t seen it. What she had seen, of course, was Ranby. And Ranby had seen her and realised he’d killed the wrong Sister.”
“He must have been a desperate man by last night.”
“He was, marm. He tried to kill Sergeant Perkins. There was no doubt about that.”
The Mother Superior inclined her head. “Sergeant Perkins is a courageous woman.”
“In the course of duty, marm,” he said hastily. It was a different discipline, a different dedication from that of the Sisters, but for all that it was still an equally dedicated way. “About Hobbett…”
“In future,” she said dryly, “he can ring for Sister Polycarp.”
A bell suddenly echoed through the Convent. Both nuns rose, Sister Gertrude with a perceptible start. She had been wondering who it would be among the Community who would be bidden to move into the cell that had been Sister Anne’s, the cell next to Sister St. Hilda the snorer. Was it wrong to pray God it wouldn’t be her?
Sister Polycarp stumped to the door with the two policemen. “Good day, gentlemen…”
Was it Sloan’s imagination or did she slam the grille behind them?
Crosby looked back at the Convent. “You wouldn’t have thought, sir, would you, that after all that, it would turn out to be a crime passionnel?” He pronounced it “cream.” “Not here.”
“No,” said Sloan shortly, “you wouldn’t.”
“That motto on the door, Inspector…”
“Well?”
“Do we really know what it means?”
Sloan turned on his heel and stared at the writing. “Pax Intrantibus, Salus Exeuntibus. Didn’t you look it up, Crosby? You should have done. Very enlightening.”
“Please sir…”
“Peace to those who enter,” translated Sloan. “Salvation to those who leave.”
—«»—«»—«»—
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Catherine Aird had never tried her hand at writing suspense stories before publishing The Religious Body— a novel which immediately established her as one of the genre’s most talented writers. A Late Phoenix, The Stately Home Murder, His Burial Too, Some Die Eloquent, Henrietta Who? and A Most Contagious Game have subsequently enhanced her reputation. Her ancestry is Scottish, but she now lives in a village in East Kent, near Canterbury, where she serves as an aid to her father, a doctor, and takes an interest in local affairs.
—«»—«»—«»—
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Catherine Aird
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