The Religious Body

The Religious Body

Catherine Aird

Calleshire Chronicles 01

INSPECTOR C. D. SLOAN HAD NEVER BEEN INSIDE A CONVENT BEFORE.

On their part the community of nuns at the Convent of St. Anselm in the village of Cullingoak were equally ignorant of the ways of the police force. When murder brought them together each institution found it had much to learn about the other. Interviewing half a hundred black-habited Sisters as potential suspects for murder was no simple task, especially when Sloan found that, to him, one nun looked very much like the next.

The Religious Body is a thoroughly intriguing British mystery novel which marks the debut of a stylish newcomer. Miss Aird combines sound plotting with well-developed background atmosphere, and a nice sense of character, especially as revealed in the sardonic Inspector Sloan and his amiably brash assistant, Crosby.

For my parents, with love

“What I want to know is:

One—who is the criminal?

Two—how did he (or she) do it?”

—Ernest the Policeman, in The Toytown Mystery by S. G. Hulme Beaman.

1

Sister Mary St. Gertrude put out a hand and stilled the tiny alarm clock long before it got into its stride. It was five o’clock and quite dark. She slipped quickly out of bed, shivering a little. The Convent of St. Anselm wasn’t completely unheated but at five o’clock on a November morning it felt as if it was.

She dressed very quietly, splashing some cold water on her face from a basin in the corner of the little room. The water was really chilled and she dressed even more quickly afterwards. Her habit complete, she knelt at the prie-dieu in front of the window and made her first private devotions of the day. Then she drew back the curtains of the window and stripped off her bed.

It was then twenty-five minutes past five. Utterly used to a day ordained by a combination of tradition and the clock, she picked up her breviary and read therein for exactly five minutes. As the hands of the clock crept round to the half-hour she closed the book and slipped out of the door. It was Sister Gertrude’s duty this month to awake the Convent.

She herself slept on the top landing of the house and she went first of all to pull back those landing curtains. Half a mile away the village of Cullingoak still slept on in darkness. There was just one light visible from where she stood and that was in the bakery. It would be another half an hour before the next light appeared—in the newspaper shop, where the day’s complement of disaster and gossip arrived from Berebury by van. Sister Gertrude arranged the drawn curtains neatly at the sides of the window and turned away. Newspapers had not been one of the things she had regretted when she left the world.

She descended to the landing below and drew back another set of curtains on the other side of the house. In this direction, a couple of fields away, lay the Cullingoak Agricultural Institute. It, too, was invisible in the darkness, but presently the boy who was duty herdsman for the week would start the milking. Occasionally in the Convent they could hear the lowing of the cattle as they moved slowly across the fields. Sister Gertrude turned down a corridor, counting the doors as she passed them. Six, five, fo… four. At four doors away there was no mistaking Sister Mary St. Hilda’s snore.

It rose to an amazing crescendo and then stopped with disturbing suddenness—only to start seconds later working its way up to a new climax. Sister Bonaventure called it the Convent’s answer to the Institute’s cows, but then Sister Bonaventure declared the snore could be heard six doors away on a good day.

She may well have been right. It was true that the only person in the Convent of St. Anselm who didn’t know about Sister Hilda’s snore was Sister Hilda. It was, thought Sister Gertrude wryly, a true test of religious behaviour to sleep uncomplainingly up to four—or even five—doors away from her, and greet the cheerful unknowing Sister Hilda with true Christian charity each morning. She had had to do it herself and she knew. But how she had longed to be able to go in and turn her over onto her other side.

She wished now that she could wake her first but there was a prescribed order for this as there was for everything else in convent life. It was decreed that the first door on which she had to knock every morning was that of the Reverend Mother. Why this was so, she did not know. It may have been because it was unthinkable that the Mother Superior should sleep while any of her daughters in religion were awake. It may have been one of the things—one of the many things— whose origin was lost in the dim antiquity when their Order was founded.

She had to go round two more corners before she came to the Reverend Mother’s door. She tapped gently.

“I ask your blessing, Mother.”

“God bless you, my daughter.” The answer came swiftly through the door in a deep, calm voice. She never had to knock twice to wake the Reverend Mother.

The next door on which she had to knock was that of the Sacrist. She must always be up betimes.

“God bless you, Sister.”

“God bless you, Sister,” responded the Sacrist promptly.

Then the Cellarer. She, too, had early work to do.

“God bless you, Sister.”

And the Novice Mistress.

No response.

Another knock, louder.

“God bless you, Sister,” sleepily. The Novice Mistress sounded as if she had been hauled back from a pleasant dream.

The Bursar and Procuratrix, the Mother Superior’s right-hand woman Sister Lucy.

“God bless you, Sister.” No delay here. She sounded very wide awake.

Then she could start on the ordinary doors, one after the other. There were still fifty to go.

Knock.

“God bless you, Sister,” tentatively.