St. Peter's Finger (Mrs. Bradley)

by Gladys Mitchell

  The murderer had had bad luck, Mrs. Bradley concluded. The flaw in a well-constructed scheme had been the death of the child from the gas instead of death by drowning. The gas was meant to make her unconscious only, not to kill her. It is never possible to determine the exact amount of carbon monoxide which will cause death; and it is not possible to tell, in the case of any particular supply of coal gas, how much carbon monoxide is present in its constitution, she reflected. The murderer had killed the child instead of stupefying her, and could have had no plan to cover the dire emergency.

  She climbed the pipe again and worked her way back towards the bathroom window. Just as her hand was reaching over the sill to grasp the edge of the window to pull it open, she saw—it was less than a shadow—another hand, from inside, grope towards the sill. She flung herself flat on the leads, as a heavy jar of bath salts, the crystals scattering in every direction, flew clean across her and crashed against the trunk of a small, old tree in the garden down below.

  Out from the front door came the four eldest orphans, mouths open, Ethel clutching her chest, Bessie with a shower of oaths, Annie breathless and alarmed, Kitty dancing with excitement. Mrs. Bradley, recognising that they would be her saviours, crawled to the edge and waved to them.

  “Stay where you are,” she said. “I’m coming down.”

  “Thought you was killed,” said Bessie.

  “Who was in the bathroom?” Mrs. Bradley demanded when she joined them in front of the guest-house.

  “Why, nobody, madam,” they said.

  “Let’s go and look,” said Kitty.

  “There won’t be anyone there by this time,” said Mrs. Bradley. “There’s been every chance to get away, with none of you on the look-out.”

  “Oh, yes, out the back door, but they couldn’t climb over the wall, I bet,” said Bessie. “What say we run? We might ketch ’em, eh? What say?”

  But nobody was in sight, although they all ran round through the gateway and tore as hard as they could towards the school.

  “Dear me,” said Mother Francis, when she heard of it. “Surely it was very unsafe, in any case, for you to climb about on the guest-house roof, Mrs. Bradley?”

  “Yes, I expect so,” Mrs. Bradley meekly replied.

  CHAPTER 23

  PREPARATION

  “Strong the tall ostrich on the ground;

  Strong through the turbulent profound

  Shoots Xiphias to his aim.”

  CHRISTOPHER SMART: A Song to David.

  The Bishop had been put off. Mrs. Bradley had seen to it. Driven by George to Bermondsey, she had interviewed Father Thomas, caught him up in the car and borne him off to conduct the negotiations which should result in the Bishop’s visit being put off until Thursday, or, at the earliest, Wednesday afternoon. By Wednesday afternoon Ulrica Doyle would be on her way to Southampton.

  This being settled, Father Thomas was restored to his presbytery and George drove Mrs. Bradley to Hiversand Bay, where she had booked a room at the hotel. It was the only hotel in the place, modern and fairly comfortable, and at that time of year almost empty. Ulrica Doyle, who had been sent to it under escort earlier in the evening, discovered, to her horror and annoyance, that she and Mrs. Bradley were to share a room, and, what was worse, not a good room, but one on the third floor, one with a window not only not overlooking the sea, but with a sheer long wall underneath it up which no cat or monkey could have climbed.

  “Here we shall be undisturbed,” said Mrs. Bradley urbanely, when she arrived. No one but George, the Mother Superior, and the two nuns who had escorted Ulrica, and who were seated, like two black birds, bolt upright on hard bedroom chairs, knew where Mrs. Bradley was staying. George drove the sisters back to the convent, and took the car on to Blacklock Tor and garaged it there as usual.

  Ulrica also had been up when Mrs. Bradley came in, and while she was undressing Mrs. Bradley noticed a sharp-toothed band of metal, like an uncomfortable bracelet, clasping her upper left arm.

  “What’s that?” she asked, regarding it with the detached scientific interest which she would have displayed for totem worship or a ring worn through the lip or nostril. Ulrica flushed, and answered:

  “It’s voluntary penance, that’s all.”

  “It will probably fester. And I notice that you are wearing it above the injury which you sustained on your journey to my house at Wandles Parva.”

  “I don’t see why I had to be sent to Wandles, and I don’t see why you have brought me here. It can’t be necessary,” said the girl.

  “Tell me what happened, Ulrica,” said Mrs. Bradley. She took off her hat and coat, and sat on her own bed, looking towards the girl.

  “Nothing happened. At the end of afternoon school Mother Saint Francis sent for me and told me to get my packing done because I should be staying here until Wednesday. It’s quite absurd, and, of course, I’m not going to stay.”

  “It’s tiresome for you, I know,” said Mrs. Bradley. This mild reply apparently surprised the girl, and she said no more. As it was past eleven o’clock, Mrs. Bradley switched off the light as an encouragement to Ulrica to sleep. She herself did not propose to sleep. She listened to every sound, and strained her eyes for shadows, the approach of death.

  Morning came, however, after a night of peace, and Mrs. Bradley was out of the bedroom and seated in the lounge of the hotel, by the time that Ulrica awoke. The girl dressed, and came quietly into the lounge. Nobody else was there. She crossed to Mrs. Bradley’s side, and said a little nervously, “I suppose I may go for a walk before breakfast?”

  “Yes, if I come with you. You can’t go out alone.”

  “But it’s silly, and I won’t have it.” She stared at Mrs. Bradley as though she were trying to fathom what was going on in her mind. Then, after a hasty glance over her shoulder to make sure that nobody else was there, she said: “I believe you think I did it.”

  “Do you?”

  “I suppose it isn’t the slightest use to tell you that I loved Ursula, and that I would sooner have died than have any harm befall her?”

  “Not the least use. I shouldn’t believe you on either count,” said Mrs. Bradley cheerfully.

  “But I was giving up my spare time to helping her with her Latin! You remember you asked me about it. And I was—”

  “Be quiet,” said Mrs. Bradley. “If you want to go for a walk I am ready to go.”

  So they walked together along the rough, new promenade, and the wind blew strongly in their faces from the west. Ulrica had no idea that a car containing George and Ferdinand cruised past them several times along the new marine drive which ended—for they walked as far—on the moor in a smuggler’s mule-track.

  Breakfast was eaten in silence. Mrs. Bradley had a newspaper, and hid behind it without doing very much reading. Her son was breakfasting at a table in an alcove near by, but no sign passed between them. Ulrica ate dry toast and drank sugarless coffee.

  “I do wish, please,” she said, quite timidly, at last, “that you’d let me go back to school. If you can’t, will you drive me into Kelsorrow? There is a church there where I can pray.”

  “School, then,” said Mrs. Bradley, “but you’ll have to come back here for the night, and you will go from here to Southampton on Wednesday morning.”

  It suited her own plans that they should return to the school. Her son sat beside George, but got off before they reached the convent gates, and thanked Mrs. Bradley for the lift as though they had been chance acquaintances. If Ulrica recognised him she made no sign. He walked downhill towards the village. As soon as George had set down his other passengers he drove off at good speed over the bumpy road in the direction from which they had come. He did not stay in Hiversand Bay, however, but drove through it, turned south-east, and arrived in Kelsorrow just after half-past ten. He pulled up outside the High School and rang the bell.

  “Message for the headmistress from St. Peter’s Convent,” he said; and, when he was taken in to see the headmistre
ss, he added, “An S.O.S., madam, from the Reverend Mother Superior. Could you spare one of your physical training ladies to give the St. Peter’s young ladies a polishing-up for the Bishop?”

  So Miss Bonnet—to her disgust, for it was her day for two free periods at Kelsorrow and she had been going to spend them in overhauling all the apparatus that was not being used by her superior, the full-time mistress—was hustled by George into his car—her own being in the garage, for she did not bother to get it out to go to Kelsorrow School, which was distant about a hundred yards from her lodgings—and driven swiftly and expertly to the convent.

  “So very good of Miss Heath. So nice of you, my dear,” said Mother Francis, who did not, as a matter of fact, Miss Bonnet thought, give the slightest impression that either opinion was her true one. She sent Miss Bonnet into the gymnasium, where the sixth form awaited instruction. Miss Bonnet began bad-temperedly, but soon the excellent response she got, as usual, from the girls, and the fun of feeling the secret gratification that power over the actions of others always gave her, brought her out bright, like the sun appearing from clouds.

  The girls liked her better like this; and always argued that “Dulcie” was jollier after she’d been in the sulks than when she had started cheerful. Besides, they had had it impressed upon them that they must be at their very best for the Bishop. All things were opened for his inspection: the pigsties no less than the gymnasium; the private school no less than the Orphanage; Mother Saint Cyprian’s needlework, Mother Saint Benedict’s illuminations, Mother Saint Simon-Zelotes’s metal-work—had not the Bishop’s candlesticks been wrought by her, and his altar cloths and missal adorned by the others?

  Miss Bonnet worked with goodwill, and no one but Mrs. Bradley came and watched. This, in itself, was a departure from custom of more than ordinary significance, for it meant that none of the nuns was on supervising duty. All were extremely busy, as Mrs. Bradley knew, and there was, in any case, no provision for the supervision of physical training that day. Little Mother Jude was superintending the scouring and polishing of all the kitchen utensils, and proposed to go fishing in the moorland streams to give the Bishop a palatable Lenten dish. That it was just a little early for trout had caused her a sleepless night, but none of the fishing was preserved, and she had her own methods—having poached salmon in her unregenerate days, when she was a barefoot child—for obtaining what she required. Indeed, as she declared, with a smile, to Mrs. Bradley, she would poach fish for the Bishop any day, and on Sundays, too, should he desire it. Mrs. Bradley could scarcely poke a nun in the ribs, but she cackled with great appreciation.

  Mother Ambrose was burnishing the Orphanage, and all the orphans were let off school to help her. They polished and scrubbed and fetched and carried, and tripped over pails of water, cleaned paint, slid on the soap, and had narrow escapes from death in many forms. They were, most of them, very happy, because they liked anything better than school and their lessons. The Bishop, in fact, was very generally popular, Mrs. Bradley gathered, and soon would arrive, fat and laughing, to have his ring kissed, himself idolised, his every word received with breathless ecstasy. A rather indelicate comparison of a cock among hens, which came unbidden to her mind, Mrs. Bradley quickly smothered out of existence.

  Mother Simon-Zelotes, her copies of the chalice and paten now carefully locked away, the originals in the strong-room of the bank, was getting her special class to finish their own designs so that there could be a good show of work for the Bishop to see. Mother Cyprian, her embroidered bookbindings done, was energetically exhorting her pupils to get on with their needlework, decorative stitchery, pattern drafting, knitting, and drawn-thread work. Even Mother Francis herself, still calm, but sharp-tongued and critical, was getting drawings and paintings mounted ready for show, and urging her flock to fresh efforts, clear colours, rare images and ideas, so that the Bishop should make favourable comment on her work.

  Only the Mother Superior, in the impregnable calm of age, awaited the Bishop without trepidation or excitement; awaited the Bishop merely as one friend will wait for another, knowing well that partings and meetings, even the parting of death and the meeting of souls cannot weaken or strengthen the bonds forged of confidence, sympathy, mutual goodwill and affection.

  She sent for Mrs. Bradley to go and see her. She was in the nuns’ parlour, a pleasant room except for the inevitable religious picture with its emphasis on suffering and death. It was odd, Mrs. Bradley thought, thus to insist upon death rather than upon life and resurrection.

  “My dear,” said the Mother Superior, “I asked you to come because I want to know whether you’re sure.”

  “Quite sure.”

  “It is a case, then, for the police?”

  “We shall have to decide about that.”

  “You have proof?”

  “Enough for any prosecuting counsel.” The old woman in the heavy black robes sighed profoundly.

  “From the very first I feared it,” she said.

  “Yes,” said Mrs. Bradley. “I know. I knew, when first my son came along with the tale, that you feared it. We shall get the girl off to New York by to-morrow’s boat. What about the paten and the chalice?”

  “If your chauffeur will call for them, and give a receipt to-morrow morning, they should be here about twelve.”

  “It’s the best we can do, I suppose. I would like to leave it as late as we possibly can.”

  “At what time does Ulrica leave?”

  “She is catching a train at ten-thirty.”

  “Your son is going to meet her?”

  “At the docks, and see her on to the boat. There mustn’t be any hitch.”

  “She will be well looked after on the journey. Two of us will take her to her destination.”

  “Mother Saint Timothy and Mother Saint Dominic isn’t it? And that, I hope, will mean the end of this dreadful business. Already rumour has died down, and I think no more children have been taken away from the school. As for me, I am going along to the guest-house to get some sleep. I expect to have another wakeful night.”

  “You guard the child well. We are indebted to you. Oh, and for more than that.”

  “I keep awake for my own sake,” Mrs. Bradley replied, with a humorous grimace and a shrug. “It is easy enough, for I live the life of a hunted animal.” She concluded the statement with a chuckle.

  “You are good to us—very good. God will reward you,” the other old woman said gently. With very faint faith in this vicarious promise, Mrs. Bradley took her leave. When she had gone the Mother Superior knelt at the prie-dieu and prayed for Mrs. Bradley—for her bodily safety, for the success of her enterprise, and, last but not least, for her to be saved from the sin of unseemly levity.

  Mrs. Bradley, who was conscious not of levity, unseemly or otherwise, but of the equally sinful feeling of acute depression, a sensation which she had been trying to fight off for days, walked over to the guest-house with less than her customary briskness. It was a quarter to twelve, for she had remained in the gymnasium some time before going to the Mother Superior. She found Bessie and Maggie in the kitchen peeling potatoes. They had nearly finished this task and apparently were not on speaking terms, for a deathly silence reigned, a silence as foreign to both their natures as to a stream bounding downhill over boulders.

  “Oh, Bessie,” said Mrs. Bradley, “I am going to my room for a bit. Will you come and wake me, without fail, at twenty past twelve?”

  “Yes, certainly, madam,” Bessie tonelessly replied. Mrs. Bradley’s jaw did not drop, but her mental reaction was the same as if it had done so. She made no comment, however, thanked Bessie, smiled at Maggie, and went up the stairs.

  “Won’t be the same without her,” said Bessie, gazing at the door which had closed behind Mrs. Bradley’s small figure. “Not ’arf a corf-drop, she ain’t.”

  This tribute was received with an emotional sniff by Maggie, who always cried very easily, and was forgiven her faults as easily in consequence, si
nce tears were regarded as a sign of penitence, leading to grace, by Mother Ambrose.

  “But you don’t really know she’s leaving,” she affirmed for the fourteenth time since Bessie had first announced the imminence of Mrs. Bradley’s departure. Bessie, who had already made thirteen replies to this gambit, disdained another, flung the last potato into the bowl so that the water leapt up and splashed Maggie from head to foot, rinsed her hands under the tap, and dried them, in austere silence, upon the roller towel.

  “Perhaps she’ll come back and see us,” volunteered Maggie, unresentful of the spattering, and wiping off the water with apparent unconsciousness. She went to the cupboard, took out a cake-tin which was burnished to spotless brilliance, held it up in a good light and re-set her curls. “She might give us all an outing after Easter.”

  “Outing!” said Bessie, spewing out the word as though it were something loathsome. “All you think about, and having a goggle at boys when Mother Saint Ambrose takes her optics off you!”

  As this was the exact truth, with no exaggeration whatever as a basis for argument, and as Bessie herself despised boys except in the capacity of gun-men and other law-breakers, there was nothing for Maggie to say. She giggled amiably, put the potatoes on to boil, then went and peeped at the clock in the parlour and set the kitchen clock right. The kitchen clock was supposed to be sacred to the ministrations of Mother Jude, but in her absence the orphans kept it going, for she, unlike Mother Ambrose, was happy-go-lucky as regarded her special privileges, and farmed them out to the deserving and (in Mother Ambrose’s tight-lipped, militant opinion) to the undeserving also, in an irresponsible manner for which, later on, she would certainly be called to account.