And getting in the way. I want some pictures from over that side but I’m blowed if I’m going on my knees beside them.”
“It might give them the wrong idea, Dyson,” agreed Sloan softly. “They don’t know you as well as I do.” He glanced across the cellar. “They’re not upsetting the doctor.”
“He’s a born exhibitionist. All pathologists are and nothing upsets him. Nothing at all. I sometimes wonder if he’s human.” Dyson screwed a new flash bulb into its socket. “Besides, I don’t want those two figuring in any pix I do take. Or I’ll be spending the rest of my life explaining that they’re not ravens from the Tower of London or the Ku Klux Klan or something.”
“Too much imagination, Dyson, that’s your trouble.”
Nevertheless, he went back upstairs and found Sister Lucy.
“Certainly, Inspector,” she said, when he explained. “I will ask the Sisters to continue their prayers and vigil in the Chapel.”
Sloan murmured that that would do very nicely, thank you.
At a word from her the two Sisters in the cellar rose from their knees in one economical movement, crossed themselves and withdrew.
“That’s better,” said Dyson, changing plates rapidly. “It’s our artistic temperaments, you know, Inspector. Very sensitive to atmosphere.”
“Get on with it,” growled Sloan.
Dyson jerked a finger at his assistant and crouched on his knees in a manner surprisingly reminiscent of that of the two nuns. Instead of having his hands clasped in front of him they held a heavy camera. He pressed a button and, for a moment, the whole cellar became illumined in a harsh, bright light.
A moment later the pathologist came up to him.
“I don’t know about Mr. Fox over there,” said Dr. Dabbe, “but I’ve finished down here for the time being. I’ve got the temperature readings—did you notice she was in a draught, by the way?—and all I need about the position of the body. It’s cold down here but not damp. At the moment I can’t tell you much more than Carret—a good chap, incidentally—that she died yesterday evening sometime. The body is quite cold. You’ll have to wait for more exact details—which is a pity because I dare say it’s important…”
“Yes,” said Sloan.
“I’ll be as quick as I can.” He paused. “From what I can see from here there’s a fair bit of post-mortem injury—I think she was dead before she was put in this cellar and then damaged by the fall and so forth.”
“Nice,” said Sloan shortly.
“Very,” agreed the pathologist. “Especially here.”
“Cause of death?”
“Depressed fracture of skull.”
“Can I quote you?”
“Lord, yes. I don’t need her on the table for that. You can see it from here. That’s not to say she hasn’t other injuries as well, but that’ll do for a start, won’t it?”
Sloan nodded gloomily.
Dabbe picked up his hat. “I’ve got a sample of the dust from that step and the shoe—I can tell you a bit more about that later. And the time of death…”
The quiet of the cellar was shattered suddenly by a bell ringing. No sooner had it stopped than they could hear the reverberations of many feet moving about above them.
“In some ways,” observed Sloan sententiously, “this place has much in common with a girls’ boarding school.”
“You don’t say?” Dabbe cast a long, raking glance over the body on the floor. “Of course, I don’t get about as much as you chaps… What’s the bell for? Physical jerks?”
“Meditation.”
“They could start on one or two little matters down here. I shall give my attention to a thumb print on a manuscript, and I’ll get my chap to begin on the blood grouping.”
Sloan saw him out and then came back to the cellar. “Dyson…”
“Inspector?”
“The name of your assistant?”
“Williams.”
“I thought so. Who is Mr. Fox?”
Dyson hitched his camera over his shoulder and prepared to depart. “One of the inventors of photography, blast him.”
The cellar door banged behind the two photographers, leaving Sloan and Crosby alone with Sister Anne at last.
“Now, then, Crosby, where are we?”
Crosby pulled out his notebook. “We have one female body—of a nun—said to be Sister Anne alias Josephine…”
“Not alias, Crosby.”
“Maiden name of—no, that doesn’t sound right either. They’re all maidens, aren’t they?”
“So I understand.”
“Well, then…”
“Secular.”
“Oh, really? Secular name of Josephine Mary Cartwright. Medium to tall in height, age uncertain…”
“Unknown.”
“Unknown, suffering from a fractured skull…”
“At least…”
“At least—sustained we know not how but somewhere else.”
“Not well put but I am with you.”
“As I see it, sir, that’s the lot.”
“See again, Crosby, because it isn’t.”
“No?” Crosby looked injured.
“No,” said Sloan.
They waited in the cellar until two men appeared with a stretcher and then gave them a hand with the ticklish job of getting their burden up the stairs. Then…
“Inspector, I’ve been thinking…”
“Good. I thought you would get there in the end.”
“If that was the top of her shoe that hit the seventh step, then she didn’t even die somewhere else in the cellar.”
“Granted.”
“Someone threw her down those steps after she was dead?”
“That’s what Dr. Dabbe thinks.”
“That’s a nasty way to carry on in a Convent.”
“Barbarous,” agreed Sloan, and waited.
Crosby, untrammelled by classes on Logic, should be able to get further than that on his own.
“The fall didn’t kill her?” he suggested tentatively.
“Not this fall anyway.” He looked at the steep stairs. “A weapon more like.”
“A weapon seems sort of out of place here.”
“So does a body in a cellar,” said Sloan crisply. “Especially one that didn’t die there.”
Crosby took that point too. “You mean,” he said slowly, “that they parked her somewhere else before they chucked her down?”
“I do. For how long?”
He was quicker this time. “For long enough for the blood on her head to dry because it didn’t drip on the floor?”
“You’re doing nicely, Crosby.”
Crosby grinned. “So we look for somewhere where someone stashed away a bleeding nun and/or whatever it
