“Ranby stepped out of that habit somewhere around nine-fifteen or nine-twenty after being inside it for nearly an hour. Tewn picked it up at nine-thirty.”
“Well?”
“It would still be warm, sir. I think Tewn noticed.”
“That crack about warm milk,” burst out Crosby involuntarily.
Sloan nodded. “Ranby must have had good reason for thinking Tewn knew or guessed something. It would be easy enough for him to catch Tewn in between the study periods yesterday morning and tell him they were walking over to the Convent without the others.” He shrugged his shoulders. “We’ll never know what it was Tewn knew. Unless Ranby tells us. Mind you, sir, I don’t think he will. The only thing he’s said so far is ‘Get me my solicitor.’ ”
“Much good that’ll do him,” said the superintendent. “You’ve got him cold, I hope.”
“I hope so,” echoed Sloan piously, “but it’s a long story.”
The superintendent sighed audibly. “Suppose you go back to the beginning…”
“There are really two beginnings, sir.”
“One will do very nicely, Sloan. Let’s have the earliest first.”
“That was twelve years ago, sir, in West Laming. Where Sergeant Gelden went last night.”
Sergeant Gelden nodded corroboratively.
“It concerns two people,” said Sloan, “Mr. Marwin Ranby, then Deputy Headmaster of West Laming School, and a Miss Felicity Ferling, niece of Miss Dora Ferling of West Laming House. It was their both having come from West Laming that put me on to Ranby. This pair became very friendly indeed—Miss Ferling was a very charming, good-looking girl, greatly loved by her aunt who had brought her up. She became engaged to be married to this promising young schoolmaster and everything was arranged for the wedding. Two weeks before it Miss Dora Ferling had a visitor—Mr. Ranby’s wife. He was already married. The wedding was abandoned, and Miss Felicity Ferling broken-hearted.”
“So she took her broken heart to the Convent?”
“Not at first. They don’t like women there for that reason, but apparently she’d always been very devout and interested in the life.”
“He seems to like ’em that way,” observed the superintendent. “Some men do. And the second beginning?”
“Ten days ago. At a public enquiry into the planning application to develop the land in between the Convent property and the Institute. Both sent representatives to it. The Institute sent Mr. Ranby and someone from the County Education Department. The Convent sent the Mother Superior and—”
“Don’t tell me,” said the superintendent. “I can guess.”
“Sister Lucy—their Bursar. Just the worst possible time for her to turn up from Ranby’s point of view. He’s engaged again—this time to Miss Celia Faine, who stands a good chance of being wealthy if this development is allowed.”
“Nasty shock for him—seeing his old flame sitting there.”
“Very. And in nun’s veiling too. Pretty impregnable places, convents.”
“Ahah, I see where you’re getting, Sloan.”
“Exactly, sir. Ranby goes home to brood on ways and means.”
“And his own students provide the answer?”
“That’s right, sir. Plot Night in more ways than one. I think we shall find that Ranby either overheard or got to hear of the arrangement with Hobbett and seized his chance that night. The only other thing he needed to know was how to identify Sister Lucy without looking each nun in the face. A little judicious pumping of Hobbett would give him the answer to that, too—she always wore a great big bunch of keys. You’ll have spotted the other misleading fact yourself, I’m sure, sir.”
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
