St. Peter's Finger mb-9

by Gladys Mitchell

  “Yes, I suppose so,” Mother Francis agreed. “But to obtain a full report of her movements I am afraid you will have to go to see her at Kelsorrow School or wait until she comes here again on Thursday. She lives in Kelsorrow. I do not know her private address or I would give it you.”

  “There is no particular hurry,” said Mrs. Bradley. School finished for all the children at twenty past four. Tea at the guest-house was at half-past four, so Mrs. Bradley missed it in order to question the child who had been injured in the game of netball.

  She proved to be a big, strongly-made girl of fourteen. The scars of her injuries were still visible, and she showed them with obvious pride.

  “Dear me!” said Mrs. Bradley, examining with very great interest the marks of battle. “You must have had a very bad fall.”

  “I did, madam. Didn’t half hurt.”

  “Yes, I should say it did. Do all you children come from London?”

  “Mostly, except for the Irish. And lots of them are London born. Father Thomas sends us, mostly, and helps to pay for some of us, too and all.”

  “He must be a very wealthy man.”

  “He’s rich in good works, madam,” the child quaintly responded, “and his place is prepared in heaven.”

  As this proposition was unarguable, Mrs. Bradley accepted it with a nod. She had heard much from her son about Father Thomas and his London-Irish flock.

  “Now, how long were you out of school on the afternoon that this happened?” she asked, pressing a kneecap delicately with her long, thin, yellow fingers. “That hurt? Yes, and you limp a bit still, don’t you? You ought to rest that leg. I’ll see Mother Saint Ambrose about it.”

  “I never went in school that afternoon. I couldn’t walk, and the classrooms are up the stairs,” the girl responded.

  “I see. Who was with you all that time?”

  “At first, when Miss Bonnet carried me in, Mother Saint Ambrose came. Then Mother Saint Jude, she came. Then they had to go, and Miss Bonnet came, but she didn’t stop very long.”

  “How long?”

  “Not hardly five minutes. Then she said: ‘Oh, lor! I’d forgotten those private school kids. You’ll be all right here, won’t you?’ So I said I would, and she give me a comic, what I shoved away under the cushion if I heard any steps, because we’re never allowed to have comics because Mother Saint Ambrose says they’re low and wicked, although the lay-sister winks the other eye—”

  “So Miss Bonnet left you and went to the private school. Did she come back later on?”

  “Just poked her head in at half-past two, and asked me how I was, but my belief she meant to bunk straight off again, only we heard Mother Saint Ambrose coming back, so Miss Bonnet took a seat and never moved off it until Mother Saint Ambrose had gone off to check all the laundry.”

  “Does she check the laundry every Monday afternoon?”

  “Yes, to see what we’ve tore, and whether we’ve kept ourself clean. She tells by the pillow-cases mostly.”

  “I understand. What does she do, then, on Monday mornings?”

  “She learns us in school.”

  “I see.”

  “The private school washing gets done of a Monday, you see, and ourn gets done of a Tuesday.”

  “Ah, yes. I understand. Did Miss Bonnet come back any more?”

  “Yes, popped her head in about playtime, and asked how I was, and said she was going to ask for a bath and go home. She said she was ever so sorry she knocked me down, and give me a tanner, and then she hopped it. She never came in any more.”

  “Thank you very much, my dear. What’s your name?”

  “Minnie Botolph.”

  “I see.” Mrs. Bradley wrote it down and added a note. “Now mind you rest that leg. There’s slight fluid, and we must disperse it. Have you had the doctor?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “I said it never hurt.”

  “Silly to say that when it does.”

  “Don’t want no doctor messing me about.”

  “Probably not. You sit where you are for a little while, anyway, Minnie, and I’ll go and talk to Mother Saint Ambrose.”

  “Want me tea,” said Minnie, sotto voce, to Mrs. Bradley’s back. Her tea and Mother Saint Ambrose came in seven minutes later. Mrs. Bradley walked into Hiversand Bay and had tea and buttered toast at the hotel.

  chapter 9

  documents

  “Which they have written in their inward eye;

  On which they feed, and in their fastened mind

  All happy joy and full contentment find.”

  edmund spenser: Hymn of Heavenly Beauty.

  « ^ »

  Mrs. bradley’s bedroom in the guest-house was large, airy and clean. It smelt of lavender, yellow soap and, most unaccountably, mice. The gas lighting was adequate, and a small table having been especially imported about an hour earlier by a willing and almost mild-mannered Bessie, Mrs. Bradley seated herself at it after the evening meal, and studied the papers with which she had been provided. The school time-table and the list of guests she put aside at first in favour of the detailed account of the circumstances of the child’s death.

  Mother Saint Francis had done her work with all the neat and loving thoroughness of a nun, and the document gave Mrs. Bradley some valuable information. Her own thoughts at this point in the investigation were mixed. The Community, in desiring her presence at the convent, had had in mind, she knew well, the possibility that her investigations might change the theory of suicide into one of accident. If, as she began to perceive most clearly it must, the case resolved itself into one of murder (person or persons unknown at that point in her enquiry) she wondered in what light her services would continue to be appreciated. She realised, too, that, apart from any shock that might be in store for the nuns, her own intelligence shied from the thought of murder in such a connection for much the same reason as a horse, accustomed to motors, will shy at a piece of white paper fluttering down a country lane. The effect was too startling to be in tune with the surroundings. Murder and the conventual life were mutually contradictory. The theory of accident she had been inclined to discard as soon as she had heard the report of the man in the Gas Company’s showrooms. She knew that there had been cases of gas poisoning in which no escape of gas was traceable, and it was possible that this was one of them, but such cases were rare, and the law of averages was not in favour of too frequent a repetition of such coincidence.

  Another strange feature, even as far as she had gone, was the mutual contradiction of possibly unimportant points of evidence. The most striking, she felt, was Annie’s confident assertion that there had been no smell of gas when she first went into the room. Yet Miss Bonnet had opened the window wide, and both the nuns had smelt gas in spite of the fact that the window, by the time they arrived, was open. Of course, there was the creosote, she reflected; a substance with a most pungent, gas-like odour, yet none of the witnesses appeared to have taken it much into account. The smell, in any case, would have been greater downstairs in the rooms at the front of the house than in the bathroom right round to the side.

  A curious feature, too, was that the child’s head should have been completely submerged. If murder had been committed by the administration of carbon monoxide gas, and as there was no way of hiding the method of killing, it seemed redundant to add apparent drowning to the affair… unless, of course—and at this Mrs. Bradley frowned in an attempt to reject an idea which was becoming increasingly persistent—unless the death had been accomplished not by an adult, but by another child, who had plotted it carefully, but did not feel sure that the method would be efficacious. On the other hand, there was Miss Bonnet. Mrs. Bradley desired to be perfectly just with regard to Miss Bonnet, and her first act of grace was to acknowledge to herself, fairly and squarely, that she disliked Miss Bonnet very much indeed, and that so far as she herself was concerned, if the thing turned out to be murder, she would sooner suspect Miss Bonnet than anybody el
se in the place. Then she dismissed all prejudice from her mind, and settled herself to examine the fact that Miss Bonnet —sinister sign very often in a case of murder!—had been the very first person, so far as anyone knew, to come upon the body.

  She studied the report again. It was certain that the child had been present at the midday meal. What, to Mrs. Bradley’s mind, was very much less certain, was that, according to Mother Francis, the child had also been present at the beginning of afternoon school. Mother Francis based this statement upon the fact that she had not been noticed to be absent, but recollections of the exploits of her own nephews and nieces at school caused Mrs. Bradley to reflect that it is by no means unheard-of for a child to answer a name or sign a sheet for an absentee member of the form, and never confess to the fact.

  Obviously, if this had been done, no later confession had been made, or Mother Francis would have said as much. Mrs. Bradley went back to the school timetable, and noted again the lessons for Monday, but this did not help her. According to the readings, Mother Gregory should have been taking Ursula’s form for music at the beginning of the afternoon, and had made no report of her absence. Mrs. Bradley made another note, and then put down the names of all of the Community who were engaged in teaching on Monday afternoons. These, she found, were Mother Cyprian, who taught needlework all the afternoon; Mother Simon-Zelotes, who taught in the Orphanage first, and then took metal-work; Mother Mary-Joseph, who taught English and History at the private school until twenty minutes past four; Mother Gregory, who took music until the same hour; and old Mother Bartholomew, whose time was occupied in teaching dancing and elocution.

  Mrs. Bradley put a tick against all these names, because if the child had gone into class at half-past two, none of the people employed in teaching from half-past two until after four o’clock could have been directly occupied in making away with her. If it could be shown that she had not gone into class at all on that Monday afternoon, the field was considerably wider, because the Community had an hour of recreation between one and two o’clock (except for those who had duties during that time, and whose activities would have to be taken note of), and the child might have been dead before the end of that recreation period. There had been nothing in the medical evidence to render such a possibility void. It was significant that she had not turned up for that physical training practice at two o’clock.

  But still—and Mrs. Bradley found herself continually referred back to this extraordinarily difficult problem— by far the most important point at issue was to ascertain the means by which the child had been forced or induced to breathe the carbon monoxide which had killed her. One whiff of the deadly gas would have been sufficient to make the little girl unconscious, but with a gas water-heater in perfect order, and no clue to the way in which sufficient gas had been administered to the victim to kill her, Mrs. Bradley felt that her theory of murder would scarcely carry conviction.

  Still, the Community’s theory of accident was even less capable of proof; in fact, in the face of the evidence, it was nonsense. And yet—Mrs. Bradley nodded very slowly—why the turned-off gas, the turned-off taps, and the water to the rim of the bath? It almost seemed as though it might have been suicide, after all, and that the dead body had been discovered earlier than the time at which Miss Bonnet invaded the bathroom. In this case, it might be that an innocent but panic-stricken person—one of the older orphans, very likely—had turned off the gas and the running water, but had failed to report the death in case she found herself involved in its awkward consequences.

  But, if this were so—and it was quite a likely hypothesis—why the singular manœuvres of Miss Bonnet? Why, in particular, the obviously staged attack on the unfortunate Minnie Botolph? It was unusual, to say the least, for the centre player to be knocked out, in netball, by the goal defence.

  She left the point for the moment, and came back to her newest theory. The more she examined this idea, the more improbable it seemed, however, for in such case—accidental discovery of the body of a gas-suicide— the gas would probably have rendered the invader unconscious. Apart from that, Mrs. Bradley could not believe that Annie, in particular, had guilty knowledge, or that Bessie would have lacked courage to report to Mother Ambrose the accident if she had discovered it. Of course, there was Kitty, who had been on duty that day. Kitty might have to be interviewed.

  There was also to be considered the slightly mysterious Mrs. Waterhouse, but she, presumably, had been fully employed, and had had no opportunity for murder. All the infant orphans, it was true, had been taken off her hands for the afternoon, but there were a number of private school children of kindergarten age who had to be taught. She looked up Mrs. Waterhouse in Mother Francis’ report. Mrs. Waterhouse, Mother Francis deposed, had been engaged in teaching five little children from the private school until a quarter to four—that is to say, until after the body had been found. Moreover, at a quarter to four she had taken them, by invitation, and as a special treat, to see the Mother Superior, who gave them sweets, and whom they were accustomed to address as Grandma. Unless Mrs. Waterhouse had managed to sneak away from her charges during the early part of afternoon school, therefore, or had committed the murder between the end of the morning session and the beginning of the afternoon one, she seemed to be fully covered.

  But Mrs. Bradley paused. Waterhouse? Waterhouse? Memory flooded back. A woman of that name had been tried, five years before, for the murder of her husband in a London tramway depot. It had been an extraordinary case. Ferdinand had defended the woman, and she had been acquitted, amid considerable female hysteria, of a crime which it seemed quite certain she had committed. Ferdinand affected a complete belief in her innocence, Mrs. Bradley remembered. Brave of her not to have changed her name, she thought.

  She folded the document from which she had made her notes, compared what she had written with the information supplied by the school time-table, and then studied Mother Jude’s clearly-written list of guests. It suggested nothing until she came to the last name on the paper. “Mrs. A. P. Maslin,” she read; there followed the woman’s address, and a note, written neatly in the margin, to state that the wet towel found in the bathroom had come from her room. A sufficiently startling entry, this, Mrs. Bradley thought. She had not understood, from conversation with Mother Ambrose and Mother Jude, that an aunt of the dead girl had been staying at the guest-house at the time when the death occurred. It was this aunt, then, who had taken the body home for burial. It was she who was coming back later to hear the result of Mrs. Bradley’s enquiry. In view of the provisions of the grandfather’s will, there was something extraordinarily sinister in the fact that this aunt had been living at the guest-house at the time when the death occurred. There was a large fortune for Mary Maslin, Mrs. Bradley remembered, if two people between her and the money could be removed; one had gone already; there remained the pale, self-possessed girl who had taken her on a tour of the convent grounds at the end of afternoon school. On the other hand, why had the woman made such a fuss about the verdict? That did not look like guilt.

  She picked up the list and went through it carefully again. Father Thomas’ name came first and was followed by those of Miss Philippa Carey, Mrs. George Trust, Kathleen O’Hara, professed nun, Monica Temple, the same, Dom Pius Edmonds, Mademoiselle Yvonne Damier, Mademoiselle Jacqueline Damier, Señorita Mercedes Rio, and then, as though placed there for special attention and notice, Mrs. A. P. Maslin.

  Of these, the two nuns had arrived on the Wednesday following the death of the child, and from no point of view could be involved. The foreigners, too, Mrs. Bradley was inclined to leave out of serious consideration. The Benedictine monk was probably, she thought, not a murderer, and she entertained no suspicions of Father Thomas. Of Miss Philippa Carey and Mrs. George Trust she knew nothing except their names, and was inclined to the opinion that that was all she would need to know. But Mrs. Maslin, with only one life now between her step-daughter and the fortune of Timothy Doyle, was in a different
category, in spite of the fact that she had not accepted the verdict, and Mrs. Bradley added her name to a short neat list which read thus:

  Ulrica Doyle.

  Mary Maslin.

  Miss D. T. Bonnet.

  Person or persons unknown.

  The Community of Saint Peter.

  Mrs. Waterhouse (?).

  Mrs. A. P. Maslin.

  Then she glanced at her watch. Her room was at the back of the house and overlooked the grounds of the convent. There was not a light to be seen. Bed-time seemed depressingly early in that house of the religious, but she knew that the lay-sisters were up before half-past five and the choir-nuns before six every morning. She turned her back to the window and looked at the narrow bed which had been assigned to her, and speculated, not without sympathy, upon its last occupant, the half-witted lay-sister Bridget, asleep by now, she supposed, in the grim-looking Orphanage opposite.

  Suddenly she went to the door, opened it, and peered out into the passage. She could not have said that she had heard anything, yet some sort of signal had been transmitted to her conscious mind through one of her senses, and that, almost certainly, the aural one.

  A night-light was burning inside a small glass lantern, and Mrs. Bradley, though dimly, could see to the end of the passage. She waited, but a considerable interval elapsed before she made out a body, clothed in dark, bundled garments, flattened against the wall.

  “How are you, Sister Bridget, dear child?” she said. “Come along into your room and let’s have some cocoa and biscuits.”

  The motionless heap did not stir. Mrs. Bradley went inside the room again, but left the door ajar. She seated herself at the table and watched and waited. A quarter of an hour went by, and the room began to get chilly from the draught through the open doorway. Mrs. Bradley was beginning to think that she had been mistaken, and that it was not Sister Bridget outside, when the door opened very, very slowly, and the halfwitted lay-sister, with her dead-white, puffy face, upon which was a calculating, slightly leering expression, and her shuffling, lop-sided walk, came inch by inch into the room. She seemed extremely nervous, and retained her hold upon the door. Still facing Mrs. Bradley, she shut the door behind her, and stood with her back to it, waiting.