was they hit her with?”
“If we have to tear the place apart,” agreed Sloan gravely.
In the event they didn’t.
Prowling about in the dim corridor at the top of the cellar steps was Father MacAuley. He was on his hands and knees when Sloan almost fell over him.
“Ah, Inspector,” he said unnecessarily, “there you are.”
“Yes, sir, and there you are, too, so to speak.” He regarded the kneeling figure expressionlessly. “If it will save you any trouble, sir, I have already ascertained that this corridor was swept and polished early this morning.”
“Really?” He got to his feet. “Good. Then we can get on with the next thing, can’t we?”
“What’s that, sir?”
“Finding where they left her until they pushed her down the steps, of course. It must be off this corridor somewhere.”
“Why is that, sir?”
“Too risky to drag a body across that enormous hall, don’t you think? Someone might have come out of the Chapel at any moment and there’s that gallery at the top of the stairs. Anyone might be watching from there. No, I think she was—er—done to death round about here, or perhaps through in the kitchens somewhere.”
“We’ll see, sir, shall we?”
Sloan opened the nearest door, but the priest shook his head.
“No, Inspector, it won’t be there. That’s the—er— necessarium. It’s hardly big enough. Besides, the door only locks on the inside and there would always be the risk of someone wanting to use it, wouldn’t there?”
The second and third doors revealed a small library, and a garden room with outside glass door, sink and vases.
They found what they were looking for behind the fourth door. It opened on to a large broom cupboard. Crosby’s torch played over the brown stain on the bare boards of the cupboard’s floor.
MacAuley peered inquisitively over their shoulders. “Someone kept their head—looks as if she was put in here head first so that the blood was as far away from the door as possible.”
Crosby shifted the angle of the torch’s beam and said, “Those nuns have been in here this morning for these brooms, I’ll be bound.”
Sloan sniffed the polish in the air. “I dare say. They wouldn’t have noticed this blood though, not without a light. We’ll see if the doctor has left.”
“Constable, if I might just borrow your torch…” MacAuley took it deftly from Crosby and began to cover the broom cupboard inch by inch in its beam.
Crosby stepped back into the corridor.
“Inspector…”
“Well?”
“What did whoever put her in here want to go and move her for?”
“Take a bit longer to find perhaps.”
“Would that matter?”
“I don’t know yet, but even the most absent-minded of this crew would have noticed her when they came to do the cleaning this morning.”
Sloan was keeping a close eye on Father Benedict MacAuley withal. “Besides, you do get a broken skull sometimes from falling down the cellar steps but very rarely from tripping over in a broom cupboard.”
“They hoped we would think she had fallen down those nasty steep stairs?”
“I shouldn’t be at all surprised. Most people expect the police to jump to the wrong conclusions. And if you never do, Crosby, you will end up…” He paused. Father MacAuley was backing out of the cupboard.
“Where, Inspector?” Crosby was ambitious.
Sloan looked at him. “Exactly where you are now— as a Detective-Constable with the Berebury C.I.D.— because you wouldn’t be human enough for promotion. Well, Father MacAuley, have you found what you were looking for?”
“No, I can’t think what has happened to them.”
“Happened to what?” asked Sloan patiently. “Sister Anne’s glasses. She couldn’t see without them, and yet they’re nowhere to be found.”
5
« ^ »
Considering how little of the flesh of a nun could be seen, Sloan marvelled how much he was aware of the differing personalities of the Mother Prioress and Sister Lucy. In both cases good bone structure stood out beneath the tight white band across the forehead.. There was self-control, too, in the line of both mouths’ and, in Sister Lucy’s case, more than a little beauty still. She must have been very good-looking indeed once, and that not so very long ago.
He opened his notebook. “Now, marm, with regard to comings and goings, so to speak—exactly how private are you here?”
That would be the first thing Superintendent Leeyes would want to know—an “inside” job or an “outside” one. On this hung a great many things.
“We are not a strictly enclosed Order, Inspector. Sisters are allowed to leave the Convent for works of necessity and mercy, and so forth. They have interviews here in the Parlour unless it is a Clothing, when they come into the Chapel. Our Chapel was originally the Faine private one, and Mrs. Faine and her daughter still attend services here, as do others in Cullingoak.” She smiled gently. “We are, in fact, to have a rather special service here next month. Miss Faine is to be married to Mr. Ranby, the Institute’s Principal, and the Bishop has given his consent to our Chapel being used—as it would have been had the Faines still lived here.”
“How do they get in?” enquired Sloan with interest.
“There is a door leading outside from the Chapel. Sister Polycarp unlocks it before the service.”
“Tradesmen?”
“We have everything delivered. Sister Cellarer deals with them at the back door, and Sister Lucy here pays them.”
“No one else?”
“Just Hobbett—he’s our handyman. There are some tasks—just one or two, you understand—which are beyond our capacities.”
Sloan nodded. “This Hobbett—does he have to run the gauntlet every day?”
“Past Sister Polycarp? No, his work is at the back. He has his own key to the boiler room and his own routine—dustbins, ladders, cleaning the upstairs outside windows and so forth. And the boiler for three-quarters of the time.”
“Three quarters?”
“Sister Ignatius is the only person who can persuade it to function at all when the wind is in the east. Her devotions are frequently interrupted.”
They found Hobbett in a small, not uncosy room at the foot of a short flight of outside stairs descending to cellar level not far from the kitchen door. It was lined with logs, and a litter of broken pieces of wood covered the floor. There was a chair with one arm broken and an old table. Hobbett was sitting at this having his midday break. There was a mug of steaming tea on the table. He was reading a popular daily newspaper with a tradition of the sensational.
“I am Inspector Sloan.”
The man took a noisy sip of tea and set the mug down carefully on the table. “Hobbett.”
He hadn’t shaved this morning.
“We are enquiring into the death of Sister Anne.”
Hobbett took another sip of tea. “I heard one of ’em had fallen down the cellar steps.” He jerked his head towards the door in the corner. “I don’t go through that far meself or happen I might ’ave found her for you.”
