Convent on Styx (Mrs. Bradley)

by Gladys Mitchell

  Except that the room was appreciably narrower than the one she was leaving, it appeared to differ from it in no other particular except that the basket chair creaked more protestingly than her own had done. This, however, could be remedied very easily by changing the chairs over.

  With Mrs. Polkinghorne’s help Miss Lipscombe was at last satisfied that the move was complete. Nothing now remained but to get rid of Mrs. Polkinghorne and begin her investigations.

  Over one object Sister Marcellus had allowed her imagination to run away with her. There was no fireplace in the room and therefore no chimney. In the Spartan days of the boarding school the dormitories had been unheated. Since they had been converted into private rooms, however, a gas fire, with slot-meter, had been installed in each. Miss Lipscombe inspected this arrangement, but found nothing of interest.

  Neither did the floorboards offer any scope. They were covered with cheap linoleum which had been firmly tacked down. There remained the bed itself, but here Miss Lipscombe’s resolution failed her. She felt she could not face the prospect of unseaming a flock mattress, and why, after all, should Mrs. Wilks have concealed anything in her mattress which she was willing to leave behind—money, perhaps, or family papers? Thwarted and disappointed, Miss Lipscombe went over to the window and looked out. Like the window of the room she had vacated, it overlooked the convent car-park, from which there was open access to the road until the double gates were locked at dusk.

  There was little more to be seen than from the window of her former pied-a-terre. Miss Lipscombe felt cheated. She had sacrificed a larger room for a smaller one, and had expended energy, especially in moving in her good chair and carrying out the one which appeared to resent having anybody sit in it.

  Just as she was preparing to seat herself in her own good chair, she heard a slight sound at the window.

  Turning quickly, she was in time to see the impudent face and round eyes of a boy who was looking into the room. As soon as he realised she had seen him, he made a rude gesture and ran off.

  “Well, I declare!” exclaimed Miss Lipscombe. “I shall complain to the milkman! How dare he bring his son out with the milk van on Saturdays! The behaviour of children nowadays gets worse and worse!” She went to the window and threw up the lower sash. The bars were on the outside, so that the window could be opened. She grasped two of the bars and prepared to attract the milkman’s attention, but his van moved off before she could call out.

  There was compensation, however. Mrs. Wilks’s room had held a secret, after all, although, even in her excitement at her discovery, Miss Lipscombe could hardly see at first what use Mrs. Wilks would ever have made of it. The fact was that the bars of the window were loose. Cautiously she tried them again and discovered that it was possible to lift the whole lot out at once. They formed a grid of sorts and this was slotted into the wooden window frame and was readily removable. What was more, it was only a step down from the window to the ground outside. “So she could get out of this room without having to use the front door or the kitchen garden door!” thought Miss Lipscombe. “The sinful old bag!” But then another and a less agreeable idea came to her. “But so anybody could get in, as well,” she said to herself. “I’d better let Tom Quince know, and ask Sister to tell him to fix these bars, otherwise I’ll never feel safe.”

  “Them bars on Mrs. Wilks’s old window?” said Tom Quince. “Oh, yes, Miss, we knows all about them. Done in the war, they was, when the school had an air-raid shelter under the car-park and in the cellar. The headmistress and the prioress at that time—before Sister Hilary and Sister St. Elmo, of course—they wanted to make sure the kids in the dormitories could get out nice and easy, so them in your old room and your present one, which was all one big dormitory in them days, was trained in air raid drill to hop out the winder, while them in Mrs. Polkinghorne’s and Sister Ignatius’s, which was also throwed into one, was to run out the front door into the shelter so as them in the dormitory on the next floor could come down the stairs and get into the cellar down the door in the cloister. I was gardener’s lad at the time and I remember how it used to make me laugh, them kids all wrapped up in their overcoats and all hung about with their little gas-masks, practisin’ jumping out the winder and two nuns outside ready to catch ’em if they come a mucker, though it’s only about a foot and a half to the ground, as you can see. Mrs. Wilks, I reckon, used to sneak out that way and go to bingo, nights, in the village hall.”

  “That’s very interesting, of course,” said Miss Lipscombe stiffly, “but I don’t like the idea that anybody can get into the house so easily. It’s not very safe, is it?”

  “Can’t see who’d want to break into a convent, blowed if I can. Nothing worth pinching, is there?”

  “Well, I’d like you to cement those bars in, all the same.”

  “I couldn’t do that without the prioress said so.”

  “Well, you must ask her, then. I shan’t sleep a wink at night until I know those bars are secure.”

  “P’raps she’d like me to come in at nights and make sure there’s no burglars under her bed,” said Tom to Sister Marcellus, with whom he permitted himself more liberties, or liberties of a different kind, than those he took with the other nuns.

  “Anyway, it’s no use to go to Mother,” said Sister Marcellus, who was as much of a traditionalist as Sister Wolstan. “It’s a structural alteration and might even have to be approved by the General Council. Besides, it might be very useful in case of fire.”

  “I’ll point that out to the old lady, then. My bet is she’ll clear off back into her old room. She only changed over so’s she could have a snoop round to see what the other old lady might have left behind.”

  His prognostication turned out to be correct. Having heard him out and listened to his version of Sister Marcellus’s opinion on the subject of the bars, Miss Lipscombe, once more enlisting the aid of Mrs. Polkinghorne, moved back into her old room. She did not seek permission this time, arguing that this was unnecessary. There could be no objection to her moving back to where she felt she belonged.

  So the basket chair, the bedding, the big Family Bible, and the other bits and pieces, were taken into their former domain, but for several nights Miss Lipscombe lay awake wondering whether she could hear sounds which indicated that the set of bars was being removed and an intruder was climbing into the convent.

  “An old maid’s dream!” said Tom Quince sardonically to Sister Marcellus. “Present company excepted, of course, Sister,” he hastened to add. But Miss Lipscombe, back in her old room, was still not happy. There were those cellars under the ground floor and she sometimes thought that they were occupied.

  There was another shot left in Miss Lipscombe’s locker. She let a week go by and then she went to the prioress and asked for Mrs. Wilks’s address.

  “I’m afraid I can’t give it you,” said Sister St. Elmo. “She must write first, I think, but we have not heard from her since she moved.”

  “She did not leave an address? But how very strange,” said Miss Lipscombe. “Suppose any letters come for her? How will they be sent on?”

  The prioress shrugged her shoulders.

  “The post office will see to it, no doubt.” She did not add that Mrs. Wilks had asked her not to disclose the address.

  “Oh, really? Well, I never! Some people do like to keep themselves to themselves, don’t they?” said Miss Lipscombe disagreeably.

  “They are not to be blamed for that, Miss Lipscombe. Sister Marcellus tells me that you have gone back to your old room,” said the prioress, changing the subject.

  “Yes, the other proved too small; besides, I found that people could get in. Those bars on the window . . .”

  “But who would want to get in? There is nothing worth stealing in this house.”

  “You don’t mind that I’ve moved back, do you, dear Mother?”

  “Why should I, if you don’t mind the draughts you mentioned?” retorted Sister St. Elmo.

  �
��Draughts are better than being murdered in one’s bed,” said Miss Lipscombe. She retired from the presence, put on her hat and coat, and walked down the hill into the village. Her objective was the post office and general shop, but she was far too secretive to go to it straight away. She halted at the baker’s, studied the bread and cakes in the window, went in, and purchased a couple of doughnuts; then she stood gazing into the draper’s as though she were pricing up materials or deciding between skimpy little blouses and shoddy pullovers; the chemist’s detained her next. She went in and bought a small tin of blackcurrant lozenges and discussed the weather. At last she sought out the post office. Here she bought half-a-dozen second-class stamps and then said brightly, referring to her purchase,

  “I want to write to dear old Mrs. Wilks, you know. She left us just over a week ago and I do wonder how she’s getting on in her new home.”

  “Yes, we heard she’d gone,” said the postmistress. “Unfortunately she forgot to leave me her address. I expect you’ve got it, though?”

  “Me? No, I haven’t got it. She didn’t leave it with us and, even if she had, I couldn’t pass it on without her permission,” said the postmistress.

  “Why ever not, Miss Hankin? You know what close friends Mrs. Wilks and I have been.”

  “That’s as maybe, Miss Lipscombe. Perhaps the nuns have got the address. Why don’t you ask them for it?”

  “Oh, yes, of course,” said Miss Lipscombe, unwilling to disclose that she had already tried this policy. She put the stamps carefully into her purse and walked out of the shop. Outside the door, when she had closed it behind her, she anxiously checked her money, although she knew all too well how little she had. She made up her mind as to her next step, closed her handbag with the purse inside it, and walked to the bus stop. Here she consulted the timetable, although she knew the times of the buses off by heart, and debated mentally whether it was worth while to take a bus to the town and try to obtain the address at the big sub-post office in the high street, where Mrs. Wilks, she concluded, must have left it, since it was not at the village post office.

  Regretfully she thought of the number of counter clerks, always so busy, or apparently so; she thought of the queues of people with their savings books, their pension books, their interminable enquiries; she thought of Miss Hankin’s declaration: Not without permission.

  Dejectedly she returned to the convent.

  CHAPTER 6

  Repercussions

  “But in the midst of this bright-shining day

  I spy a black, suspicious, threatening cloud . . .”

  William Shakespeare

  The next hint of a threatening cloud came in the form of two more anonymous letters, one addressed to the prioress, the other to Sister Hilary at the school. Neither was typical of the usual epistles of this sort. Neither contained threats, blasphemous epithets, filthy accusations, nor, indeed, gave any indication of mental instability on the part of the writer. The first said: “Madam Prioress, why did you turn that poor old lady from your door when she had done nothing wrong? Couldn’t she pay her way?”

  The second read: “To the headmistress of the convent school what brane-wash little children keep your teachers and there cars out the village we do not want you nuns killing our kids.”

  Both letters came by post. Sister Hilary showed hers to Sister Wolstan and said,

  “It’s a pity Sister Raymund or Sister Romuald has to take Sister Marcellus into the town on a Saturday, because, of course, that is just the day when the village children are all over the place. The next thing, I suppose, will be stones thrown at the car. The village never has liked us very much and there isn’t a single Catholic family in it.”

  “By taking a longer route to the town the village can be avoided,” Sister Wolstan pointed out.

  “That seems a waste of time and petrol and, anyway, I don’t like giving in. I’ll show Sister St. Elmo the letter and see what she says.”

  At the convent Sister St. Elmo read her own letter and took it to the parlour, where she expected to find Miss Lipscombe and Mrs. Polkinghorne, who would have breakfasted but not yet gone out, supposing they intended to do so. She showed them the letter and, when both had read it, she said,

  “Someone has hold of the wrong end of the stick. As you both know, Mrs. Wilks left this house entirely of her own accord. She told me she had been invited to make her home with relatives and naturally I was pleased on her behalf. If either of you is confronted with the sort of rumours which must have inspired the writer of this letter, I look to you to reject them and deny them. May I rely on you to do that?”

  “It might be easier if we knew where these relations live,” said Miss Lipscombe.

  “Well, you don’t. All the same, you both know that the suggestion conveyed in this letter is untrue and unjust.”

  “But that’s just what we don’t know,” said Miss Lipscombe to Mrs. Polkinghorne when the prioress had left them. “And she didn’t like the letter, did she? More than a grain of truth in it, I’d say.”

  “I do not believe the good religiosas would turn anyone away because she could not pay,” objected Mrs. Polkinghorne. “Besides, Mrs. Wilks did pay. She had her pension, oh, yes, and money besides. And I think she went to live with people who had money, too. That was a very large car which came for her.”

  “So you remarked at the time. I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. I’m going to find out where she went. I asked at the village post office and they didn’t know. I didn’t try the big post office in the town because they always have such long queues there, and I don’t suppose they would give me her address, anyway.”

  “So what will you do?”

  “That’s my secret for the present. If it comes off, I’ll let you know,” said Miss Lipscombe.

  She went along to her bedroom, humming a little tune. In the cloister she passed Sister Marcellus. The former lay-sister looked at her retreating back and said to herself, “That one is up to mischief. The prioress went to the parlour this morning. I wonder why she did that? And now that one comes along with a light step and singing. I don’t like it. There is something afoot.”

  Upon reaching her room Miss Lipscombe wrote a letter. She addressed the envelope to Mrs. Wilks, care of the Post Office, High Street, and added under this the name of the town and county and along the top of the envelope she affixed one of the stamps she had bought at the village post office when she had made her abortive enquiry there for Mrs. Wilks’s address. Then she walked into the village and posted the letter.

  Middle Hour prayers at the convent were purposely kept short because they were arranged to coincide with the school dinner-hour, so that all the teaching nuns, unless they were on dinner duty or on an educational outing, could attend chapel. Lunch was an informal meal. It usually consisted of thick soup followed by a simple dish including fish on Wednesdays and Fridays. Before Sister Marcellus’s journeys to the town had been restricted to Saturdays, the fish was apt to be herrings or mackerel soused in vinegar, but, pending the arrival of the large refrigerator with its deep-freeze compartment, sardines, tinned pilchards, and tinned herrings in tomato sauce had added interest to the Wednesday and Friday menus. Each nun helped herself to what there was, took a thick slice of bread, and at the end of her meal she washed up her own plate, cutlery, and her glass which had held water, before she returned to school.

  On this occasion the prioress said to the headmistress, when both had lunched,

  “Come to my office, Sister. I want a word with you.”

  “And I with you,” said Sister Hilary. “I’ve had a letter.”

  “So have I. I imagine they are both on the same subject.”

  This did not prove to be the case.

  “It would be just as sensible to blame you for Mrs. Wilks’s abrupt departure and me for the accident to that unfortunate child,” said the prioress, “which only goes to show how idiotic both these letters are.”

  “What do you propose to do about them?�
��

  “There is nothing we can do. Both are unsigned, but, even if we knew who the writers are, I do not think it would be wise to make an issue of it. Both incidents will soon blow over and the less notice we take of letters like these the sooner any ill-feeling will die down. I think we ought to carry on as usual and appear to take no notice of your letter. I imagine it comes from the parents of the child. It can hardly express the common view. Sister Raymund was held to be blameless.”

  “What about the Saturday shopping excursions to the town?” asked Sister Hilary. “Since the accident—at any rate, up to last Saturday—Miss Webb, the gymnastics mistress, has kindly undertaken the shopping in her own car; but we cannot impose upon her again. Besides, on Tuesday Sister Romuald went to the town with you and Sister Marcellus. There was no trouble when driving through the village on the way to town, was there?”

  “None. But it wasn’t on a Saturday, of course. All the same, to give in and go to the town by a circuitous route on Saturdays would look as though we acknowledged the guilt that the writer of the letter attaches to us and we cannot continue to shop on Tuesdays.”

  “Has a circuitous route been suggested?”

  “Yes, it has. Sister Wolstan thought it might be a good idea for our own car to avoid the village on Saturdays for a bit.”

  “To my mind that is a mistaken view, but Sister Raymund and Sister Romuald are the people most concerned. Has either of them expressed an opinion?”

  “No. Their opinion was not required, although I have shown them the letter. You had better question them.”

  “Oh, I know they will do as they’re told. Very well, then, they shall take the Saturday shopping excursions as before, and we will ignore the letter.”