“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.
“Hasn’t the Inspector finished with your thumb, Sister?” Sister Gertrude asked.
“Oh, yes,” she said mournfully. “He’s fingerprinted my hand, and confirmed that the blood did get on the Gradual from my thumb.”
“Well, then,” said Sister Gertrude a little testily, “surely you can put it away now?”
Sister Peter regarded the offending member. “He doesn’t know how the blood got on it and neither do I. I’ve shown him everything I did this morning after you woke me—my own door, two flights of stairs to the long landing, the gallery, this staircase and straight into the Chapel. The Chapel door was open, Sister Polycarp does that. Sister Sacrist had got the Gradual ready like she always does. Besides everywhere’s been cleaned by now. I just don’t know…” This last was said
“Neither do I,” said Sister Gertrude firmly. “But you’ve helped all you can…”
“I can’t think why anyone should want to harm poor Sister Anne.”
“Neither can I,” said Sister Gertrude somewhat less firmly. “It might have been an accident, you know…”
Sister Peter looked unconvinced and continued on her way.
“Now, Sister St. Bernard, I realise that this business must have given you an unpleasant shock, but I would like you to describe how you found Sister Anne.”
Sloan was back in the Parlour with Crosby in attendance facing the Reverend Mother with Sister Lucy at her side. Sister St. Bernard was standing between them. There would come a time when he would want to see a nun on her own but that time was not yet. Sister Lucy looked anxious and strained, but the Reverend Mother sat calm and dignified, an air of timelessness about her.
Sloan was being the perfect policeman talking to the nervous witness. There was no doubt that Sister St. Bernard was nervous. Her damp palms trembled slightly until she hit on the idea of clasping them together in front of her, but she could not keep a faint quaver out of her voice so easily.
“We were asked to help look for Sister Anne about an hour after Mass this morning in case she had been taken ill anywhere. Sister Lucy and the others were going through the upstairs rooms and Sister Perpetua and I were doing the downstairs ones…”
Sloan was prepared to bet that Sister Perpetua was as young as Sister St. Bernard and that no one had expected either of them to find the missing Sister.
“I don’t know what made me open the cellar door… I had been in all the rooms along that corridor and —”
