Night—you’d been gated too and there was the Convent practically next door, tempting Providence you might say almost.” He paused. “And an old habit wasn’t much compared with a bus shelter.”
Bullen stirred. “We didn’t think we were doing any harm. We didn’t think it would end like this.”
Parker retained more self-control. “But why should Tewn get killed? After all, we only swiped an old habit— there’s no great crime in that, is there?”
“I think,” said Sloan, “Tewn’s crime was that he saw something.”
“What?” asked Bullen dully.
“I don’t know, but I’m hoping you two might. Listen —all three of you plan to get inside the Convent on Wednesday night to take an old habit. Of the three of you only Tewn actually goes inside. Of the three of you only Tewn gets killed.”
“And that’s not coincidence, you mean?” said the slow-thinking Bullen. He was paying more attention now, but he still looked like someone who has been hit hard.
“The police don’t like coincidence,” said Sloan. “Tewn went inside and Tewn was killed.”
“Tewn
Sloan wasn’t listening. A new and interesting thought had come to him. What had he just said himself? “The police don’t like coincidences.” There was one coincidence too many in what Parker had said.
“Listen both of you. I want you to go right back to the beginning and tell me where this idea about the habit came to you. And when.”
“I don’t know about where,” said Bullen, “but I know when. Sunday, after supper. The Principal said we were to be gated from four o’clock on Guy Fawkes’ Night because of what happened last year.”
“Up till then what had you meant to do?”
Bullen looked a bit bashful. “Do you know Cherry Tree Cottage? It’s on the corner by the Post Office.”
“No.”
“It’s a funny little place with a rather awful woman in it. I don’t know the word that describes it best but —”
“Twee,” supplied Parker shortly.
“That’s it. Well, she’s got a garden full of those terrible things.”
“What terrible things?” Bullen was hardly articulate.
“Gnomes,” said Parker.
“And fairies,” said Bullen, “and frogs and things. It’s full of them. We thought—that is to say…”
“This year’s good cause?” suggested Sloan.
“That’s it,” said Bullen gratefully.
“I see. And when Mr. Ranby forestalled you?”
“Then we had to think of something else quickly.”
“Whose idea was it to have a nun as a guy?”
Bullen shook his head. “I can’t remember. Not mine.”
“Nor mine,” said Parker quickly. Too quickly.
“Can you remember,” said Sloan sedulously, “whereabouts it was that this idea didn’t come to you?”
“Oh, yes,” said Bullen. “In The Bull. That’s where we…” He stopped.
“That’s where you got on to Hobbett,” Sloan finished for him.
Bullen flushed.
Sloan went on talking. “That’s where you two and Tewn settled that Hobbett was to take the old habit from the garden room to the cellar and to leave the cellar door—the only one to which he had a key— open on Wednesday night. You were to creep in and take it away and you presumably showed your appreciation of Hobbett’s—er—kindness in the usual manner. I’m not concerned just now with the rights and wrongs of all that. What I want to know is: how many people knew you were going to be inside the Convent that night?”
Parker looked up intently. “I get you, Inspector. Quite a few, I should say, one way and another. Some of the men here for a start, the chap in charge of building the fire…”
“Anyone at The Bull?”
He frowned. “I dare say there might have been one or two. Hobbett’s not the sort of man you’d want to sit down and talk to in the ordinary way, is he? He’s quarrelsome and people mostly keep away from him. We sat with him in a corner for a while and led him round to it. It’s pretty crowded in there at weekends— it’s the only place in Cullingoak, and all the Institute men go there for a start. I reckon anyone seeing us could have put two and two together easily enough— we felt it was quite a good joke at the time.”
“I think it’s quite possible,” said Sloan, “that someone else thought so too.”
The day which had begun as routine continued that way, though in a different, more highly-geared groove. Superintendent Leeyes cancelled his regular Saturday afternoon fourball the better to superintend what had quickly become known as the Convent case.
Mr. Marwin Ranby cancelled his weekend away, spent the greater part of the afternoon on the telephone trying to get in touch with a remote farm in the West Country, and finally prevailed upon Miss Celia Faine to come round from the Dower House to the Institute for tea. That, at least, wasn’t difficult.
For the Sisters it was perhaps a little easier. Saturday afternoon was for them a preparation for Sunday, a day without the significance of holiday or sport or relaxation. After Dr. Dabbe had gone and his next mournful job of work had been carried away in a plain black van, the Convent grille was closed and fifty women withdrew into their self-ordained silence. Not for them the endless unhappy speculation such as went round and round the Institute, nor the wild rumour piled upon fantasy that was tossed rapidly round the village. (Of its two institutions, Cullingoak was quite happy to exaggerate what went on at the Convent and to condemn out-of-hand the goings-on at the Institute.)
All in fact that did go on at the Convent was what anywhere else would have been termed a council of war. The Mother Prioress summoned those Sisters concerned in the finding of the dead William Tewn to the Parlour. They filed in silently, distributing themselves in an orderly circle—the neat Sister Ninian, the ebullient Sister Hilda, Sister Gertrude, Sister Lucy, a young Sister who had been with Sister Lucy when Sloan arrived, Sister Polycarp, the keeper of the gate who knew all comings and goings, and three others who had happened upon the scene of the crime. Lacking guidance about the correct religious behaviour in the unusual circumstances the three had stayed and moreover had failed lamentably to practise custody of the eyes. Now they wondered if having seen they should have moved immediately away… truly it was a difficult path they had chosen when they left the world.
The Mother Prioress began as she always did without preamble. “There has been another murder. Not, as you know, a member of the Community, but a student. He was killed in our grounds some time before recreation this morning—at least that is the police view. The alternative is that he was killed somewhere else and brought to the Convent grounds. Those of you who have seen him would agree it is very unlikely. No, I fear our connection with this particular student is closer than that. He is the one who came into the Convent on Wednesday for the old habit which was subsequently rescued by Inspector Sloan from the guy on the Institute bonfire. Do I make myself clear?”
It was an unnecessary question. The Mother Prioress always made herself clear.
“Therefore,” she continued lucidly, “we still have a grave problem very near at hand. Sister Anne was killed here in the Convent. This boy William Tewn— God rest his soul—who was the one to enter the Convent on Wednesday has also been killed. Until both crimes have been solved completely we are none of us in a position to know that no member of the Community is involved.”
She waited for this more oblique point to be appreciated.
“Moreover, we are bound by certain other considerations. Murder is not normally the action of a normal human being, still less that of a religious. But it can be the abnormal action of an abnormal person. That is the fact that we cannot overlook however much we might wish to.”
The cheerful face of Sister Hilda clouded over as the significance of this struck home.
“In the ordinary way,” went on the Mother Prioress, “it would never be necessary for me to ask you to tell me of anything untoward in the behaviour of your Sisters, but we are not in the ordinary way. Far from it. We are somewhere now outside our experience, and there can be no peace of mind until the unhappy soul who has
