Symposium by Muriel Spark

upright enough in her wing chair.
‘Especially Sister Lorne: who milked the cow with the crumpled horn. Do you
know who the cow is? — Everything is symbolic. I’ll tell you who the cow is. Sister
Lorne’s husband. She married a farm-boy with clammy hands and huge big round
eyes. He looks at you like a cow. Sister Lorne is the maiden all forlorn who
milked — or maybe it’s tossed — the cow with the crumpled horn.’
    Miss
Jones registered all this but later edited it out, so that it never appeared in
the programme. In fact, none of the Mother Superior’s speeches was reproduced,
and she looked absolutely sublime sitting there with her visible charm to
grace the programme. However, Rita Jones, the clever girl, thought she might as
well ask Sister Lorne if it was true she had once been married. ‘I am married,’
said Sister Lorne.
    ‘Married?
Isn’t that against your vows?’
    ‘Yes,’
said Sister Lorne. ‘But he worked on a farm. Ecology comes before vows.’
    ‘Oh
yes, but I don’t quite follow,’ said Miss Jones. ‘Your Mother Superior was
quoting from “The House that Jack Built”.’
    ‘Really?
What did she say?’
    ‘That
you were married to a young farmer, Sister Lorne.’
    ‘The
farmer sowing his corn, who married the maiden all forlorn … Is that what she
said?’
    ‘Something
like that. Of course I’m not going to use it in the programme. Your Mother
Superior obviously wanders in her mind. But I just —’
    ‘You’re
right, you’re not going to use it in the programme. She thinks I want to step
into her shoes.’
    ‘I just
wondered if your husband ever comes to the convent?’
    ‘Now
and again.’
    ‘May I
say just that?’
    ‘No,
no. As a matter of fact it would be impossible to prove. The other nuns
wouldn’t like it. He comes dressed as a curate,’ she confided. Sister Lorne
smiled, breathing heavily.
    Miss
Jones had already got plenty of unusual material, so she thought it wise to
drop this alarming and rather cloudy subject.
    But
Margaret, whose job it had become to keep the old nun company, and who occupied
another bed in the same bedroom, had plenty of opportunity to hear variations
on the theme of Sister Lorne and her imputed spouse. Margaret kept an eye open
for a curate with large round eyes.
    Two
months after the successful transmission of the BBC programme Sister Rose, the
much-loved and admirable young plumber’s assistant, was found dead in the
little convent courtyard. She had been strangled but not raped or sexually
assaulted in any way. The girl was large and strong; she had been strangled by
a pair of large hands. It was not established whether her killer was a man or a
woman.
    Big and
manly as were some of the nuns of Good Hope, it happened that not one of them
possessed excessively large hands. This did not entirely exclude some nun in a raptus of homicidal strength from having committed the crime, but it weakened the
possibility. The male frequenters of the convent, two priests and the
agricultural husband of Sister Lorne, were also excluded, the priests because
one was in Fulham at the time of the murder and the other was on a plane to
Glasgow. Sister Lorne’s spouse was at the time in a boarding-house at
Cirencester where she had sent him to study agriculture at the college there,
and make a man of him.
    The
nuns were now being questioned closely, interrogated one by one. So far, nobody
knew, had seen, heard or suspected anything. It had not even reached Margaret’s
turn when the Mother Superior wove her way into the refectory where a man from
Scotland Yard was taking notes from Sister Rooke; the old lady leaned against
the much-adorned wall and confessed to the murder.
    This
was unlikely though not impossible. Her confession was taken note of in the
greatest detail and put aside by the police, as it were for a rainy day. The
interrogations of the nuns continued while the Mother Superior was ushered up
to bed. There she suffered cardiac arrest, rallied,