The Sinful Stones by Peter Dickinson

witness Rutherford’s rug and his damned bladder. Nor could the old man send for someone and tell him to take the mike away—things a’n’t like that, not like that at all. Kick too much for the comfort of the Community, and where’s your cortisone? Twenty-four hours would crumble the most famous intellect in Europe into a senile shambles.
    For a few clear-headed seconds Pibble knew which side he was on. Hitherto Pibble had been neutral between his two hereditary enemies, the betrayer of his father and the seducers of his mother. (Mr Toger could not be present, so the whole Community stood proxy.) But murder is murder.
    The dust-mark on the shelf showed where the book had lain, so he put it carefully back. The bottle had about a dozen of the genuine white pills left in it, and Pibble considered swapping six of them for the fake ones in the lozenge-tin; but they were so obviously more professional that it was too much of a risk—Patience would be sure to pick among them to choose the least deficient, and then to spot that they were all suddenly perfect. No one is so aware of the blemishes in his work as the actual forger.
    Instead he took two pills out of the bottle and knotted them into the corner of his handkerchief. He would like to have taken more, but three seemed to diminish the contents by a noticeable amount.

4
    W ell, then, the only other natural way to be found waiting was staring out of the window. The line where sea met sky was quite clear under the scouring wind, which hissed round an ill-fitting pane like a groom rubbing a horse down—the draggled pony that had pulled the Clapham Patent Bread Company van and had been stabled behind the Pakenham Arms, where old Simon the pot-boy had inexpertly tended the poor beast in preparation for the dream time coming when he’d go and live in the country and have a farm of his own. Hinges creaked.
    â€œReady?” said Brother Providence’s donnish voice.
    â€œI hope nobody was badly hurt,” said Pibble.
    â€œHurt?”
    â€œI thought a stone had fallen on someone’s ankle—Gavin’s.”
    â€œAlas, Superintendent, one forgets how to think in these terms. God has chosen to punish us by breaking the leg of a strong workman. Compared with the shock of that the hurt is nothing, an illusion of fallen matter.”
    And the iodine was nothing. And Ted Fasting’s pea-sticks nothing.
    â€œDo many of these, um, punishments happen?” said Pibble.
    â€œNone hitherto.”
    â€œI hope it isn’t me that brought you the bad luck,” said Pibble. The presence of the bearded monk seemed to bring inanities to his lips unwilled. And the remark was a mistake, too—not for its inanity but for some other unguessable reason. Brother Providence’s remote amber gaze became intent as a lepidopterist’s, and his tone darkened.
    â€œLuck is an illusion also,” he said. “Nothing occurs without reason. We will begin by climbing the tower.”
    Sister Dorothy came striding along the cloisters towards them, grim-faced, carrying a steaming enamel jug. Pibble, used to the lightning instincts of London pavements, veered a little to his left to let her pass, expecting her to do the same; but she came on like an ironclad, seemed only to see him when she was a foot or two away, started to say something but stopped as she plunged into him, tilting a gill of hot water over his thigh. Swearing under her breath she staggered towards a pillar, hugged it with her free arm, waited for the jug to stop slopping, and marched off without even a snort of apology. Behind her the chill air reeked like a Dublin pub.
    â€œSister Dorothy seems an unusual member of the Community,” suggested Pibble.
    â€œShe was tight,” said Brother Providence calmly.
    â€œI had not imagined that you made use of spirits,” said Pibble. The prim phrase and the primmer tone were Mr Toger’s, remembered from a