“I’ll tell you later.”
The Reverend Mother had halted in front of one of the several doors leading off the corridor.
“This is the way to the cellar, Inspector. Sister Anne, God rest her soul, is at the foot of the steps.”
So she was.
Sister Lucy opened the door and Sloan saw a figure lying on the floor. Two nuns were kneeling beside it in an attitude of prayer. He went down the steps carefully. They were steep, and the lighting was not of the brightest.
When they saw the new arrivals, the two nuns who had been keeping vigil by the body rose quietly and melted into the background.
The body of the nun was spread-eagled on the stone floor, face downwards, her habit caught up, her veil knocked askew. The white bloodless hands were all he could see of death at first. There was a plain broad silver ring on the third finger of this left hand too.
The Reverend Mother and Sister Lucy crossed themselves and then drew back a little, watching him.
He couldn’t tell in the bad light where the blood on her black habit began and ended, but there was no doubt from where it had eome. The back of her head. Even in this light he could see there was something wrong with its shape. There was a hollow where no hollow should be.
He knelt beside her and bent to see her face. There was blood there, too, but he couldn’t see any…
“We would have liked to have moved her,” said the Reverend Mother, “or at least have covered her up, but Dr. Carret said on no account to touch anything until you came.”
“Quite right,” he said absently. “Crosby, have you a torch there?”
He shone it on the dead Sister’s face. Blood from the back of her skull had trickled forward round the sides of the white linen cloth she wore under her cowl and round her head and cheeks. There was a word for it that he had heard somewhere once… w… w… wimple… that was it. Well, her wimple had held a lot of the blood back, but quite a bit had got through to run down her face and then—surely—to drip on the floor. Only that was the funny thing. It hadn’t reached the floor. He swept the beam from the torch on it again. There was no blood on the floor. That on the face was congealed and dry, but there was enough of it for some to have dripped down on the floor.
And it hadn’t.
“So, of course, we didn’t touch anything until you saw her.” The quiet voice of the Reverend Mother obtruded into his thoughts. “But now that you have seen her, will it be all right for us to…”
“No,” said Sloan heavily. “It won’t be all right for you to do anything at all.” He got to his feet again. “I want a police photographer down here first, and any moving that’s to be done will be done by the police surgeon’s men.”
“Perhaps then Sister Lucy might just have her keys back. Inspector?”
“Keys?”
Sister Lucy flushed. “I lent them to poor Sister Anne late yesterday afternoon. She was going to go through our store cupboards to make up some parcels for Christmas. We have Sisters in the mission field, you know, and they are very glad of things for their people at this time. She did it every year.” She hesitated. “You can just see the edges of them under her habit there…”
“No.”
“You must forgive us,” interposed the Mother Superior gently. “We are sometimes a little out of touch here with civil procedure, and we have never had a fatal accident here before. We have no wish to transgress any law.”
He stared at her. “It isn’t a question of the infringement of any rule, marm. It is simply that I am not satisfied that I know exactly how Sister Anne died. Moreover, you also have a nun here with blood on her hands which you say she is unable to explain…”
“Just,” apologetically, “on one thumb.”
“And,” continued Sloan majestically, “you want me to allow you to move a body and remove from it evidence which may or may not be material. No, marm, I’m afraid the keys will have to wait until the police surgeon has been. Have you a telephone here?”
The Mother Superior smiled her faint smile. “In that sense at least, Inspector, we are in touch with the world.”
3
« ^ »
Wait a minute, wait a minute,” grumbled Sister Polycarp. “I’m coming as fast as I can.” She stumped towards the front door. “Ringing the bell like that! It’s enough to waken the dead.” She stopped abruptly. “No, it’s not, you know. It won’t wake poor Sister Anne, not now.” She drew the grille back. “Oh, it’s you, Father. Come in. They’re waiting for you in the Parlour. It’s about poor Sister Anne. She, poor soul, has gone to her reward and we’ve got the police here.”
“A nice juxtaposition of clauses,” said Father MacAuley.
“What’s that?”
“Nothing, Sister, nothing.” Father MacAuley stepped inside. “Just an observation…”
“Oh, I see. I should have kept them out myself, but Mother said that wouldn’t help. Can’t abide the police.”
“You’re prejudiced, Polycarp. Nobody worries about the Troubles any more. You won’t believe this but the Irish Question is no longer a burning matter of moment. You’re out of touch.”
Sister Polycarp sniffed again. “That’s as may be. You’re too young to remember, Father. But I never thought to have the police trampling about again, that I can tell you. Arrest poor Sister Peter, that’s what they’ll do.”
“Will they indeed?” Father MacAuley looked thoughtfully at the nun. “That’s the little one that squeaks when you speak to her, isn’t it? Now why should they arrest her?”
“Oh, you know what they’re like. She’s got some blood on her hand and she doesn’t know how it got there.”
“Tiresome,” agreed Father MacAuley.
“Otherwise it would have been a straightforward fall down the cellar steps and that would have been an end to it. Unfortunate of course”—Sister Polycarp recollected that not only was she speaking about the dead, but the newly dead, and crossed herself—“but we could have sent the police packing. As it is they look like being underfoot for a long time.”
“Do they now?” Father MacAuley took off his coat. “In that case…”
“It wouldn’t matter so much,” burst out Sister Polycarp, “if everyone didn’t know.”
Father MacAuley wagged a reproving finger. “Polycarp, I do believe that you’re worried about what the neighbours will think.”
She bridled. “It’s not very nice, now, is it, for people to be seeing the police at a Convent?”
Where a lesser woman might have bustled into the Parlour, the Reverend Mother contrived to arrive there ahead of her own habit, rosary and rather breathless attendant Sister Lucy.
“Father—thank you for coming so quickly. Poor Sister Anne’s lying dead at the bottom of the cellar steps and we do seem to be in a rather delicate position…”
“Sister Peter want bailing out?”
“Not yet, thank you. No, I fancy it’s not the presence of blood on the Gradual so much as the absence of blood elsewhere that’s going to be the trouble. Don’t you agree, Sister?”
Sister Lucy nodded intelligently. “Yes, Mother.”
Father MacAuley sat down. “Sister Anne, now she was the one with the glasses, wasn’t she?”
“That’s right,” agreed Sister Lucy. “She couldn’t see without them. Missions were her great interest, you know.”
He frowned. “Fairly tall?”
“About my height, I suppose,” said Sister Lucy.
“But older?”
