St. Peter's Finger (Mrs. Bradley) Read online

  “Macbeth?” said Mrs. Bradley. Ulrica looked at her expectantly, but Mrs. Bradley had no more to say. They turned out of the nuns’ garden and were going back towards the school when they came to a small wooden hut. Mrs. Bradley asked what it was.

  “It’s the handicraft centre,” Ulrica Doyle replied. “Do you want to go inside? It isn’t particularly thrilling, but visitors usually go over it. Mother Saint Simon-Zelotes doesn’t like it if they don’t. She spends all her spare time in there, copying the chalice and the paten. We are all excited about it. They’re very old, you know.”

  “Is that where they make those charming silver vases and metal ash-trays which I saw in the guest-house, I wonder?”

  “Yes, but it’s very noisy, with hammering and all the other work going on. Still, they do make some nice things. But it’s Mother Saint Simon-Zelotes’s own work that you really want to see. The nuns here haven’t many treasures, and can’t afford beautiful things, and so they make them. My grandfather wanted to buy the chalice and paten—they’re thirteenth and fourteenth century—but Reverend Mother Superior wouldn’t part with them. She said that some day the convent might have to let them go, but that that day had not yet come. We’re longing to see Mother’s work. She was an artist in metal-work—ever so famous, I believe—before she joined the Community. Do you really want to go in?”

  “I particularly want to go in,” said Mrs. Bradley. “I greatly admired the art room and the laboratory.” The handicraft centre was far enough from the main building to ensure that the sound of hammering did not reach the classrooms, Ulrica went on to explain as they went inside. There were three benches, each under a window with a rack of tools above it and drawers and boxes by the side. The nun in charge was a briskly cheerful middle-aged woman with a face which looked as though it had been newly scrubbed. She had good teeth, a short, aggressive nose, and large, very fine, strong hands. Mrs. Bradley recognised her at once, and, to her pleasure, addressed her by the name she had borne in the world.

  “We do not forget our artists,” she said, with a startling cackle of laughter. She paused where two girls were working.

  “It should be three to a bench, but that poor child, Ursula Doyle, it is her place that is vacant,” Mother Simon-Zelotes explained. “The eight girls in this room are half the form. I have half of them, and the other half take theory of music with Sister Saint Gregory and Latin with Sister Saint Benedict. Then we change over to-morrow. Last week I did not take them. I did my own work instead.”

  The girls began to put away their tools. It was the end of the first period of afternoon school. Ulrica took Mrs. Bradley back to Mother Francis.

  “I wish you would give me a copy of the school time-table, and a list of the teachers’ duties and free time,” said Mrs. Bradley, when Ulrica, having curtsied to both of them separately, had gone.

  “I have them ready. I anticipated that you would require them,” Mother Francis observed, as she handed them over.

  Armed with these, Mrs. Bradley was escorted back to the guest-house by Ethel and handed over to Annie.

  “I want you to ask Mother Saint Jude to let me have that list of the guests who were staying here last week, Annie,” Mrs. Bradley said, “and I want their home addresses. Perhaps she has put those down beside the names, but just in case she hasn’t—”

  “Very good, madam. We got you a room ready, madam, as we weren’t sure whether you were going to stay here or not.”

  “Is there a room to spare?”

  “We’ve put Sister Bridget in the Orphanage. She won’t mind.”

  “I don’t like to turn out Sister Bridget.”

  “She really won’t notice, madam. She’s very biddable and harmless. She never notices nothing, except the matches, which we generally keep out of sight, and her little mouse.”

  Annie went off to get the list of guests and their home addresses, and Mrs. Bradley was making notes when Bessie entered abruptly and rather rudely, and announced that she had been sent by Mother Saint Ambrose to show Mrs. Bradley her room.

  “I’m glad I don’t sleep here meself,” she observed sincerely, as they passed the door of the bathroom in which the dead child had been found. “Frightened of ghosts, I am, and I bet she walks of a night.”

  “I thought that Catholics didn’t believe in ghosts?”

  “You got another think coming. Course they believe in ’em. What’s done can’t be undone. It’s only common sense, after all.”

  With this majestic retort, Bessie led the way along a landing to a door marked with a black number seven.

  “You got a lucky number, anyway,” she said. “Old Sister Bridget would have this room with a seven. Young Maggie’s been give the job of painting it on the door of her cubicle over the Orphanage now, to let her think she’s at home. Seems more than a week ago that that there happened, don’t it?”

  “I cannot say, Bessie,” Mrs. Bradley replied. “Is there any means of sending to Blacklock Tor for my things?”

  “Father Clare would give the word at the pub, if you asked him. He’s over here now with Reverend Mother Superior. Daresay he’ll stay to supper. He often do of a Monday. Nothing much at the Presbytery, I suppose.”

  “Does that mean that he was here last Monday, then?”

  “Course he was. What you think? Didn’t he go with our little ’uns to the pictures? No more pictures for us till after Easter, Mother Saint Ambrose’s orders. Who do you like the best? Somebody ’ighbrow, I suppose?”

  “Katharine Hepburn,” said Mrs. Bradley, after a suitable pause for thought.

  “Ginger Rogers for me. Oh, boy! She’s lovely! Her and Fred Astaire! See her and Hepburn act in that one about the chorus girls and that? That bit where Ginger gets lit! Oh, glory, didn’t I laugh! On the Q.T. I see that. Supposed to be hout on an ’ike. Only Annie knowed, and she wouldn’t tell. Not bad, old Annie isn’t.”

  “Oh, Bessie,” said Mrs. Bradley, suddenly interrupting, “how long after Annie did you go into that bathroom?”

  “Me? I never went in. You can’t pin nothing on me!”

  “Why do you use that expression? The little girl committed suicide, didn’t she?”

  “Did she? Let them as think so fry in their fat, I says.”

  “But it was you who suggested to me how cruelly treated the children were, and how natural it was that they should be driven to dreadful deeds.”

  Bessie seemed taken aback, and for once had no answer ready.

  “So you didn’t go into the bathroom at all,” said Mrs. Bradley, in gentle, musing tones. Bessie glowered suspiciously.

  “Suppose I said I did?”

  “I should not suppose anything so improbable,” said Mrs. Bradley briefly. “Were you going to show me my room? Later on, I think. I have to go back to the private school for a bit.”

  CHAPTER 8

  RETROSPECT

  “And from these springs strange inundations flow

  To drown the sea-marks of humanity.”

  FULKE GREVILLE, LORD BROOKE: The Nature of a True Religion.

  It was the time of the afternoon break. Mrs. Bradley stood in the school grounds and watched the girls come out. With them came two nuns to supervise the recreation period. The girls came out with decorous quietness, but soon conversation became animated, groups formed, the see-saw and the netball posts were requisitioned, and girls linked arms to walk about. Some went up to talk to the nuns, but Mrs. Bradley decided that this was too good an opportunity to be wasted, so she, too, joined the group. The girls made way for her politely, and drifted off. The nuns bowed and smiled.

  “I believe,” said Mrs. Bradley, “that when visiting mistresses take lessons, it is the custom for some of you to be in attendance.”

  The nuns bowed again. Mrs. Bradley, remembering the curious silences and clipped-off conversation of Mother Ambrose and Mother Jude, proceeded:

  “May I have your names, please, for my notebook?”

  “I am Sister Saint Timothy,” said the
elder of the two.

  “I am Sister Saint Dominic,” said the slightly younger one. Mrs. Bradley wrote down the names, putting Mother, instead of Sister, as the title, a complimentary manœuvre which the nuns received with smiles, and then said briskly:

  “On the afternoon that Ursula Doyle was found dead, the orphans had extra netball. Which of you supervised that game?”

  The sisters lowered their eyes, and concentrated deeply on the question. Mother Timothy spoke first.

  “I do not think anybody did.”

  “There was no arrangement,” said Mother Dominic. “It was something quite out of the ordinary, you see, for Miss Bonnet to take the game then.”

  “Do you know how long the game lasted?”

  Neither of them knew that.

  “Miss Bonnet will be here again on Thursday,” volunteered Mother Timothy. “She took the game. She will know.”

  As soon as the break was over, the nuns, with further bows and smiles, went in, and Mrs. Bradley, watching them go, decided that the time had come to ask a few questions of the orphans with whom Miss Bonnet had taken the extra netball.

  She went first to Mother Ambrose whom she discovered in the dayroom counting sheets. She asked permission to talk to the orphans. Mother Ambrose gave it readily, and offered to send for the children so that Mrs. Bradley could interview them apart from their classmates.

  So the fourteen orphans who had had the extra netball practice were paraded in the Orphanage dayroom, and stood in a deferential semi-circle to be questioned. Mother Ambrose remained in the room with the lay-sister who was helping to check the laundry count, but she removed herself to a courteous distance from the questioner.

  “Now, children,” said Mrs. Bradley, “sit down and answer me carefully.”

  They sat on the floor in silence, and fixed their eyes upon the middle button of her blouse.

  “You remember last Monday dinner time when Miss Bonnet kindly took you for extra netball? At what time was that game over?”

  “Two o’clock, madam,” they replied, more or less in chorus.

  “And what did you all do then?”

  “If you please, madam, we all went and washed,” volunteered a child of thirteen.

  “And what did Miss Bonnet do while you had all gone to wash?”

  “She came with us to see there’s no noise,” said a twelve-year-old.

  “How long did it take you to wash?”

  They could not answer that with any certainty.

  “What did you do when you had washed?”

  “We went in school and learnt our spellings ready for half-past two,” said the girl who had spoken first.

  “Who was with you, then, until half-past two?” It turned out that no one was ever with them at that time. From one o’clock until two they had recreation, and then from about ten past two until half-past, whilst the Community went to Vespers, the children were set to learn some piece of work or other in the classroom, and lessons proper began at half-past two, when the nuns came back from church.

  “Who generally supervises the games on Monday dinner times?” was Mrs. Bradley’s next question.

  “If you please, madam, nobody don’t. We plays by ourselves of a dinner time. Reverend Mother Superior put it to us to be good, and let Mother Saint Ambrose have a rest.”

  “Oh, I see. That’s a very good idea. So you always look after yourselves from one o’clock until two, and then in the classroom from two until half-past two?”

  When they had all been dismissed to go back to their lessons, Mother Ambrose volunteered the information that one of the orphans had been fairly badly hurt during the early part of the game.

  “The child who was playing in the centre position fell and hurt herself, and was brought to me here in the Orphanage where I spent about twenty minutes in attending to her injuries,” she said.

  Mrs. Bradley took out her notebook.

  “How did she come to hurt herself so badly?” she enquired.

  “She jumped for the ball at the same time as Miss Bonnet jumped for it. Miss Bonnet, being considerably heavier than the child, got the better of the encounter. The child was knocked down and sustained a fair number of abrasions, which I bathed, anointed and bound up. By the time I had finished, the game, I think, was over. Sister Saint Jude came over from the guest-house and gave me some assistance, I remember.”

  “Miss Bonnet played centre, then, did she?”

  “Oh, no. She always said that no one could direct the game from the centre position. When she took part in the games, she always played against the shooter.”

  “Inside the goal circle?”

  “Yes, with her whistle between her teeth, which always seemed to me dangerous.”

  “The child was not badly hurt, then?”

  “No, but the asphalt is rough. If the players fall they always cut their hands and knees. Then they must darn their stockings. It is all good training for life.”

  Mrs. Bradley digested what was to her a novel view, and then asked:

  “You came out into the playground, perhaps, before Vespers?”

  “Certainly. Five minutes, I should think, before time, to make sure that the game was over and the children had gone off to wash.”

  “Thank you, Mother Saint Ambrose. What happened to Miss Bonnet between the end of the game at about five minutes to two, then, and the time when she went for her bath, so very much later?”

  “She had asked permission, I understand, of Sister Saint Francis, as the afternoon was at her own disposal—she would ordinarily, but for the holiday, have been at Kelsorrow School—to give some extra gymnastic coaching to some of the girls at the private school.”

  “That would have been between two o’clock and two-thirty?”

  “Yes. While the Community were in church.”

  “I suppose she did give them the coaching?”

  “I assume that she did. It is no concern of mine, and I know very little about it, and nothing directly—that is to say, from Miss Bonnet or Sister Saint Francis.”

  Mrs. Bradley thanked her again, and then went to find Mother Francis, in order to get permission to speak to one of the girls. She wanted a girl who was friendly with either of the cousins of the dead girl, but not with the dead girl herself. She disliked the necessity for questioning the children at all, and was resolved to cause as little distress as she could.

  “Oh, child,” she said, when a girl of twelve was sent out to her, “did you know Ursula Doyle?”

  “Yes, a little. Not as well as I know her cousin, though.”

  “On the day Ursula died Miss Bonnet gave extra to some of the girls in the gymnasium, didn’t she?”

  “Yes. I was one, and Ursula was supposed to have been another. Then there were two of the sixth form, and a girl who is terribly good. The rest of us had the extra coaching because we’re fairly bad at gym, and Miss Bonnet wanted to improve us before the drill inspection.”

  “Drill inspection?”

  “All this Keep Fit—you know. They send people round to the schools. Miss Bonnet was very anxious to have us make a good impression.”

  “She seems a hard-working young woman.”

  “Oh, she’s ever so keen. I wish I could do P.T. better. It’s lovely for the girls who can. She took us individually. I was the last one she came to.”

  “How do you mean—individually?”

  “She gave us all an exercise to get on with, and then she went the rounds and put each one right in what she was doing.”

  “You were all in the gymnasium at once?”

  “Oh, yes. One had rope-climbing, another the parallel bars, two others had to practise the box work, with two more acting as supports, somebody else had ribstalls, and I had the balancing form because my balance is so frightful.”

  “And Miss Bonnet was with you all the time up to half-past two?”

  “Well, twenty-five past. She was quite disappointed she couldn’t have us for longer.”

  “I see. Yes, th
ank you, child.” The girl went back to her class, and Mrs. Bradley went back to Mother Francis.

  “I would like to question all the girls who took extra physical training with Miss Bonnet last Monday afternoon between two o’clock and two-thirty,” she said.

  Mother Francis looked at her in perplexity.

  “But no one took extra physical training then.”

  “I have just been told that Miss Bonnet took a few girls—half a dozen or so—for extra gymnastic work on that day at that time.”

  “Oh, well, she may have done so, then. There is no reason why she should not, if she had the time to spare. Only—I knew nothing about it.”

  “Mother Saint Francis, are you certain?”

  “Perfectly certain. Does it matter?”

  “I don’t know. The child who told me about it certainly thought that your permission had been given.”

  “My permission was hardly necessary in the circumstances, except that it would have been more courteous to ask for it. That would not occur to Miss Bonnet, I daresay.”

  “Except also that I thought the girls were always supervised when they were in the charge of visiting mistresses,” Mrs. Bradley remarked.

  “Yes—the whole form. But an extra piece of recreational work is not, perhaps, quite the same thing. Nevertheless, I am glad you have found out about it. On Thursday, when she comes again, I will have a word with Miss Bonnet. She is very zealous. I suppose she did not think.”

  “One could almost imagine she thought very hard,” said Mrs. Bradley. Mother Francis looked at her, but if she felt any curiosity it went ungratified, for Mrs. Bradley remarked:

  “May I ask you not to mention the matter to Miss Bonnet just at present?”

  Mother Francis gave the promise, and also gave permission for the girls who had participated in the extra physical training to be questioned.

  The girls—there were nine of them—were unanimous in the assertion that Miss Bonnet had been with them until two-thirty or just before.

  “And Ursula Doyle?” said Mrs. Bradley. They agreed that she had not been there.