St. Peter's Finger (Mrs. Bradley)

by Gladys Mitchell

  “Now then,” said Mrs. Bradley briskly, “I want to see Bessie. Please go and fetch her, and bring her up here to this landing.”

  “Very good, madam.”

  She went, and as soon as she was gone, Mrs. Bradley stepped inside the bathroom, and closed the door. The little room was as bare and clean as a cell. It was tiled to a height of four feet, and above the tiling the walls were covered with washable distemper. There was a window which opened casement fashion, and beneath it was a wash-bowl. Under the bowl was a cork-topped bathroom stool, and beside the bowl, over the outlet end of the bath, was the gas water-heater. This Mrs. Bradley examined minutely. She lit it, let water run, turned it off again, examined the gas-pipes, and noticed nothing amiss except that the room had no ventilator. The geyser, however, had a correctly fitted flue.

  She heard footsteps outside and went on to the landing again. A short, dark, sullen-looking girl was standing a yard behind Annie. Mrs. Bradley sent Annie away for Mother Ambrose and Mother Jude and then turned on the second eldest orphan, summed her up, and spoke sharply:

  “Now, then, Bessie,” she said. “The truth, and quickly.”

  “Don’t know nothing, and don’t want to,” said Bessie with discouraging abruptness.

  “I see,” said Mrs. Bradley. “No use to ask you, then, whether the bathroom window was open or shut.”

  “I don’t know. I heard Annie yelling, and I run.”

  “Annie, I suppose, is a very excitable girl.”

  “Nothing don’t excite her. That’s why I run.”

  “Did you hear quite clearly what she said?”

  “No, but we always runs for Mother Saint Ambrose when anything over either house goes wrong.”

  “I see. So you took it for granted that you were to fetch Mother Saint Ambrose. Where, by the way, did you find her?”

  “Same place as usual.”

  “And she came immediately?”

  Bessie, slightly nonplussed by this calm acceptance of her uncouth behaviour, replied, still doggedly sulky but with a greater degree of animation than, so far, she had displayed:

  “Most immediate she come, and when she gets there she sends me darting off for Mother Saint Jude.”

  “And was Mother Saint Jude also in the same place as usual?”

  “She was in the kitchen, if that’s where you mean.”

  “Supervising the baking?”

  “How do you know?”

  “Routine.”

  “She was telling off young Maggie.”

  “An unusual occurrence?”

  “Eh?”

  “Did she often tell Maggie off?”

  “Every day. So did Mother Saint Ambrose. Young Maggie don’t half muck about. Wish I had half her sauce.”

  “But she stopped as soon as you burst in.”

  “I never busted in. Trust me! You won’t go busting in, neither, time you’ve been here for a bit. Busting’s a thing of the past.”

  “How long have you been here, Bessie?”

  “Best part of a year, since I left the Industrial School.”

  “Are you a Catholic?”

  “Me mother was. That’s why Father Thomas bunged me in here when she died. I don’t care. They’ll have to let me go when I’m eighteen, else I can have the law on them.”

  “Did you see them carry the little girl out of the bathroom to the bedroom?”

  Bessie’s sullen face softened.

  “Ah, poor little nipper,” she said. “Tell you what I reckon, but for God’s sake don’t go passing it on. I reckon the coroner was right, and she did go and do herself in, that’s what I reckon. Always scared she was, I used to notice. I had the job of laying the tables, see, for the paying kids’ lunch. Only a few are boarders, but plenty stops to lunch. And I used to see her, and my heart didn’t half used to bleed. Some horrible things can happen in these here convents, take my word for it.”

  “Has anything happened to you?”

  “Oh, I can take care of myself. I’m tough, I am. ’Tisn’t everyone that’s been sent incorrigible to an Industrial School for two years. You wait till I get out of here, and then you watch my smoke!”

  Sorrowfully Mrs. Bradley agreed to do this.

  “What happened after the child had been carried into the bedroom?” she enquired.

  “I don’t know. Mother Saint Ambrose put her head out and told me to go on downstairs, and she went down to the telephone.”

  “Did you go downstairs when you were told?”

  “Course I went. What you think?”

  “I think you did go. Where was Annie then?”

  “She let the water out of the bath and cleaned up the bathroom, and shut the window up what Miss Bonnet had opened.”

  “How do you know what she did if you were downstairs?”

  “I heard the water running out, then there wasn’t nothing except the water running, then I heard the bang of Annie shutting the window. Here’s Mother Saint Ambrose. Better look out what you’re saying. She don’t stand for much, I can tell you.”

  “Bessie,” said Mrs. Bradley, stretching out a thin yellow claw and yanking Bessie with unceremonious adroitness into the bathroom and gently closing the door, “do you dislike Miss Bonnet?”

  “I got no use for any of her sort. More like a policewoman, she is, and not of the best of them.”

  “You do dislike her, then?”

  “I never said so.”

  “You’re intelligent, though,” said Mrs. Bradley. “You tumbled to the point about the window. Miss Bonnet didn’t open it, Bessie, did she?”

  “I thought as how she did. No, that’s right! Annie said she did. I never see her.”

  “What class were you in at school—before you were sent to the Industrial School, I mean?”

  “Class Two.”

  “Not the top class, was it?”

  “Next to the top.”

  “Queer. I should say you had brains.”

  “Nothink to do with brains. If you’re lousy they doesn’t put you up to the top class, see?”

  “And were you lousy?”

  “Yes, I was. Think they can get me clean, sending me to that old bitch at that bloody clinic!”

  “But you’re clean here, Bessie, aren’t you?”

  “Ain’t no louses, that’s why.”

  “Have you ever taken an oath in a court of law?”

  “Course I have. Didn’t me step-father do a seven-year stretch?”

  “And are you prepared to tell me the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about what happened here?”

  “About the little nipper?”

  “Yes”

  “I dunno.”

  “Bessie, did Miss Bonnet shut the window?”

  “No, that was Annie, I tell you.”

  “Miss Bonnet then, neither shut nor opened the window, as far as you yourself know? Don’t answer for Annie, please.”

  “O.K. Suit yourself what she did. Don’t matter to me.”

  “I will suit myself. Ask Annie to come in here.”

  “I suppose you know you’re keeping Mother Saint Ambrose waiting,” said Bessie, with a last impudent fling as she went outside. Annie came almost immediately.

  “Annie, was the bathroom unlocked, then, so that Miss Bonnet could walk in?”

  “Why, yes, madam, certainly it was.”

  “Was it usual, do you know, for the children to leave the bathroom door unlocked when they had a bath? I know it is sometimes done.”

  “I couldn’t say about the boarders, madam. Us orphans never lock the door, but it’s different in the Orphanage from here. It’s all our own place. There’s no strangers.”

  “Now, Annie, one more thing. You say that Miss Bonnet asked you to go for help. Why didn’t you do as she told you, instead of shouting for Bessie?”

  “Miss Bonnet clutched a-hold on me and said, ‘Don’t go! Don’t leave me, Annie! There will have to be witnesses of this!’”

  “What did she mean? Do you k
now?”

  “I think she was just took a-back, madam, finding the little girl dead.”

  “Did you see the dead girl?”

  “Well, yes. She looked kind of peaceful, in a way. But her head was right under the water, and I never see such a lovely colour on anybody.”

  “What colour was she, then?”

  “Ever so pink. I only ever saw one other dead person, and they was as white as death. That’s what you say, madam, ain’t it?—as white as death.”

  “Quite right, Annie. Go on.”

  “Yes, well, she wasn’t, see? And her little eyes shut, and her little mouth just a bit open, as though she might be asleep. I don’t think she suffered much, madam, really I don’t. She had gone to join the blessed saints, I’m sure.”

  “So you don’t believe in the suicide theory, Annie?”

  “What, kill herself? That little dear? Oh, madam, I’m certain she never. It must have been an accident. She could never have looked so peaceful, lying in mortal sin.”

  “Perhaps not. Thank you, Annie. And you heard Miss Bonnet close the window?”

  “Open the window, madam. She said because of the gas, but I think as how she felt faint. I’m sure I couldn’t smell gas, let Mother Saint Ambrose persuade me how she will, not until I went in to clean up. But they’d all had a fidget with the pilot light, I reckon, before then. I know the doctor did later. And then that stink of creosote off of the fence.”

  Mrs. Bradley stepped on to the landing and apologised to the nuns for keeping them waiting.

  CHAPTER 6

  NUNS

  “These iiij figures, combyned into one,

  Sette on thy mind for a memorial;

  Erthe and iren, foure trees, and the stone

  To make us fre, whereas we were thral.”

  JOHN LYDGATE: Let devoute peple kepe observance.

  “I want to know all the details,” said Mrs. Bradley. Mother Ambrose, buxom, black-browed, and tall, her meek habit declining to look, upon her, anything but militant, gazed straight ahead without a glance for little, apple-cheeked, dimple-chinned Mother Jude, and then said in a deep voice resonant as an organ:

  “Bessie came to me in the ironing-room and asked me to go over to the guest-house immediately. I rebuked her for her state of mind, which seemed to me an unnecessarily excited one, and then hastened to this landing with her. When I discovered what had happened I sent Bessie off again for Sister Saint Jude.”

  “You say ‘when I discovered what had happened.’ What did you think had happened?”

  “I could see that the child was dead.”

  “You felt certain of that?”

  “Yes. Illogically, however, I bent over the water and raised the child’s head.”

  “Was the head completely submerged when you saw the child first?”

  “Yes, indeed. The water was very deep—almost up to the top of the bath.”

  “What was the temperature of the water?”

  “I could not say, except that it was quite cold.”

  “When you say that—?”

  “I mean that it was a shock to me when I plunged my hands into the cold water. I suppose I had taken it for granted, subconsciously, that the water would be warm.”

  “Yes…thank you.”

  “Sister Saint Jude arrived very soon after I had sent for her,” Mother Ambrose continued, “and came into the bathroom. She said: ‘Oh, poor little Ursula!’ Then we lifted the child out of the water and I had to call to the two girls, Bessie and Annie, to bring some towels from the airing cupboard, as I could not see any in the bathroom, although, later on, one was found beneath the bathroom stool. It was wet, as though it had fallen into the water by accident, and had been wrung out.”

  “At first, did you not think it very odd to find no towel?” asked Mrs. Bradley.

  “I should have found it incredible,” Mother Ambrose replied, in her deep voice, “if children were reasoning beings. I doubt whether they are. The apparent absence of towels did not surprise me. When we had rolled the child in the towels that were brought, we carried her into the nearest bedroom, and, leaving Miss Bonnet and Sister Saint Jude to attempt artificial respiration, I telephoned for the doctor.”

  “May I have his name and address?”

  Mother Ambrose gave them, and continued:

  “All efforts to resuscitate the child failed. Miss Bonnet then volunteered to acquaint Sister Saint Francis with what had happened, but Sister Saint Jude and I thought it better that the news should be delivered by one of us. In the meantime, Annie, acting on my instructions, had cleared up in the bathroom, and had found a saturated towel.”

  She closed her lips and indicated by her bearing that nothing else presented itself to her mind as having any immediate bearing upon the subject under scrutiny. Mrs. Bradley finished writing and then turned to Mother Jude, who had stood by, silent as a Rubens’ picture, as clear, as fair, as motionless, whilst the other nun had been speaking.

  “I must ask you, Mother Saint Jude,” she said, “to corroborate or contradict what Mother Saint Ambrose has said.”

  The little nun beamed.

  “I can corroborate every word,” she said, “except with regard to the towels. As soon as Bessie came into the kitchen I knew that something was wrong. I thought it was the dining-room fireplace again, and I was vexed, because we had it done in the autumn and it was very, very expensive. We had to instal the portable gas fire while the work was being carried on. I did not see how the guest-house was going to balance its books if the fireplace had to be done again so soon. All Bessie would say was ‘Come!’ So I gathered up my habit and I flew!”

  Mrs. Bradley grinned sympathetically. It was easy and pleasant to imagine little, rotund Mother Jude, with her full skirts gathered in her hand, sprinting from the kitchen to the gatehouse, and through the archway round to the guest-house door.

  “There’s just one other thing,” she said, “before we come to the towels. Was the window open, Mother Saint Ambrose, when you first went in?”

  “Indeed it was. Wide open. I was startled. It seemed immodest.”

  “Ah, yes. And talking of that—is it true that you get the children to cover themselves with a sheet or shift, or such, when they take a bath?”

  “It is the custom,” replied Mother Ambrose. “There was no such covering on the child, or visible in the bathroom,” she added immediately.

  “The people who stay in the guest-house—”

  “I cannot say. Coverings are provided, and are always served out by the maids. Whether they are always used I cannot tell. They are usually wetted to make it appear that they have been used.”

  “Tactful,” said Mrs. Bradley. “People have very nice natures, more’s the pity.”

  The nuns made no verbal reply to this remark, although Mother Jude’s eyes twinkled. Mrs. Bradley wrote again, and then asked:

  “Can either of you tell me anything about the dead child herself? I take it that such an exploit as stealing into the guest-house during school hours and taking a bath would be regarded by the girls as a highly daring proceeding?”

  “It would be so regarded,” Mother Ambrose agreed, after a moment’s thought.

  “It has been done once before, and once only, so far as we know,” supplemented Mother Jude. “A girl called O’Donovan did it in 1925, when the guest-house was one-third its present size. She did it because she was dared, but she was found out because she was obliged to call for help. The key broke off in the lock, and the girl, having had the bath, could not get out of the bathroom again.”

  She broke off to laugh. Mrs. Bradley regarded her with affection.

  “It has been a permanent ‘dare’ in the school since then,” Mother Ambrose contributed after a pause. “It grieves me to have to tell you these things,” she added, with a fleeting glance of immense disapproval directed towards Mother Jude, “but we are all under obedience to assist this enquiry in any way that presents itself. Your questions guide me to te
ll you that the girl in question was expelled.”

  “She is now,” Mother Jude interpolated neatly, “a Franciscan nun, doing missionary and medical work in South India.”

  “What is the nature of the ‘dare’?” enquired Mrs. Bradley. “Merely to take the bath?”

  “There is a condition attached. The girl who dares another must first have performed the feat,” replied Mother Jude.

  “You throw new light, so far as I am concerned,” said Mrs. Bradley, “upon the mentality of children educated in convent schools.”

  “Children vary very little,” said Mother Jude, with her blissful, charitable smile.

  “I suppose that the child’s clothing was found in the bathroom,” Mrs. Bradley observed.

  “Oh, yes. And in such a state! Tops torn out of both her good black woollen stockings, one suspender broken, the neck of her vest torn and the tape knotted and broken. Sister Genevieve, who acts as matron to the boarders, was horrified when she saw the state the clothes were in. She said that she had never known Ursula Doyle to be so careless and destructive, and would not have believed she could tear and damage her clothes, and soil her good tunic.”

  “Interesting,” said Mrs. Bradley.

  “Of course, if the unfortunate child was breaking the rules by being in a guest-house bathroom, I suppose she would naturally tear off her clothes in a hurry,” Mother Ambrose observed.

  “I wonder whether it would be possible for me to examine the clothing at some time? I must see Sister Genevieve about it. And now, Mother Saint Jude, I must ask you to let me have, at your convenience, a list of all the guests who were here when the death occurred. I should like to be able to find out exactly where they were, and what they were doing during that afternoon.”

  “I will write you a list and I can tell you what they were doing,” said Mother Jude promptly. “They took the youngest orphans to the cinema, and they and the children had lunch very early. The cinema at Hiversand Bay charges at a cheaper rate until three o’clock in the afternoon, and the guests, including the priest from Bermondsey, Father Thomas, had arranged to leave the convent at half-past twelve so as to arrive for the commencement of the performance, which was at half-past one. One of the contractors at Hiversand Bay had lent a lorry, in which the party travelled, and Sister Saint Ambrose and I, and the older orphans, saw them upon their way before we had our own meal.”