St. Peter's Finger mb-9

by Gladys Mitchell

  The fourth form began the morning on Tuesdays with needlework, and as a rule Ulrica was glad. The subject, in Lent, when the choice of the garments was guided, the children thought, by the penitential nature of the season, was not as attractive, to most of the form, as at other times of the year, when they learned embroidery, knitting and the drafting of patterns for clothes to fit themselves. But to Ulrica, who had the outlook of a mystic, there was something satisfying, in a harsh season, in the harsh material, the roughening of her fingers, even in a Little Penance for breaking needles. She needed to suffer, she felt, and wished that the suffering could be greater so that she could identify herself more closely with the solemnity and preparation of the time.

  Her hopes, as she sewed, were high, and trembled on the brink of fulfilment. Already she had felt the call to the religious life, and her grandfather, her guardian now that her father was dead, had not attempted to dissuade her, in his letters, from pursuing the vision to the end, from entering one of the enclosed religious orders as soon as she was old enough to do so.

  Her fears were as genuine as her hopes. She had had an interview, difficult for them both, with her aunt by marriage, after Ursula’s death. Mrs. Maslin had told her that she approved of her desire to enter upon her novitiate as soon as she was old enough, and had drawn a convincing picture of the dead child as another candidate for entry.

  Ulrica, however, was not a fool. She disliked Mrs. Maslin intensely, and was always very polite to her in consequence. She saw through the attitude of approval, and reached back to the cause of it without difficulty.

  “She doesn’t believe that grandfather will let his money go to the Church,” she said to herself. The thought troubled her, because Mrs. Maslin’s doubts were equally her own. She did not know how her grandfather’s fortune had been made, and she did not remember ever having seen the old man, for, although he had been her guardian for several of her fifteen years, he had had her brought up in England, and, except when they were invited to spend the holidays at Wimbledon with Mary, she and Ursula had remained at the convent, spoilt by the lay-sisters and mothered by the nuns.

  “If Mary were out of the way… if Mary died,” she thought, her needle pushing carefully into the stiffness of the calico, her finger, where she had pushed the needle with it instead of with the covering thimble, springing red, “grandfather would not be tempted… he would have to leave me the money… there isn’t anybody else…”

  After needlework came French with Mother Dominic, and, following French, in which she always shone—but why was the verb “tuer” that morning, and why did Mother Dominic ask her to give a sentence in the past tense, and why did she begin “J’ai tu—” and then stop and suddenly burst into tears?—there came history with Mother Lazarus.

  Mother Lazarus was small, white-faced and uncannily energetic. She reported upon King Henry VIII as though he were a personal enemy, and upon Martin Luther as upon a man who had cheated her at cards. She was a Frenchwoman, and had all the logic and sentimentality of an extraordinarily gifted race, so that usually Ulrica came away from a history lesson in tears, much as some Irishmen will cry at the mention of Ireland—or would, before the days of Home Rule—for history caught at all that was romantic in her nature, and with historical persons, especially the martyrs to religion, she completely identified herself. But on this particular morning she heard scarcely a word of the lesson, was all abroad when pounced on suddenly by Mother Lazarus for an answer, and achieved another Little Penance, which this time she took to her bosom with a smile as being simple, easy and near. It was to translate back into Latin and learn in the recreation hour to recite at supper that evening, a Lenten hymn. It was to Ulrica’s taste to do this, and she remained in the room to tell Mother Lazarus so. But the aged nun, with a chuckle, declined to alter the gift, and gave her a comfit out of a small tin box. It was extraordinary, Ulrica thought, as she walked sedately after her classmates to put away her books in her own form-room, that people should be so kind.

  Having put away her history books, she tidied the desk meticulously against Mother Dominic’s daily inspection of lockers, put her hymnbook into the pocket of her overall so that she need lose no time after dinner in commencing her task for Mother Lazarus, and went along to the refectory. Seated next to Mother Francis, who presided, was the little old woman whom Ulrica had conducted round the grounds on the previous afternoon. ( 2 )

  Tuesday

  Mary Maslin ate slowly, and talked, in the low-voiced convent tones, to her neighbours. She was hungry; she was always hungry, and the discipline of eating slowly was for her a real one. At home she gobbled her food and talked very fast, about school. At school she conformed to the rules, because that was the easiest plan and led to the fewest complications.

  After the meal was over, grace was said, and the girls went out for games. Mary played defending centre in netball, played well, and enjoyed herself. A sixth-form girl umpired the game, and two nuns, Mother Simon-Zelotes and Mother Cyprian, watched, with austere detachment, from the side-lines. That the religious took it in turns and always in pairs to supervise games and physical training lessons was a thorn in the flesh of Miss Bonnet, who regarded it as approximating to a vote of No Confidence in her, but, although she had made, at the beginning, a vigorous protest to Mother Francis upon the subject, the system of supervision was continued.

  “We think it best,” Mother Francis had replied to every spirited argument. Against the rock of the headmistress’ invincible faculty of never engaging in controversy, Miss Bonnet’s protestations hammered in vain. Whatever the weather, so long as the children could be out in it at play, the two nuns on duty, stout in their habits like black birds with feathers ruffled against the cold, stood on the touch-line and watched, or appeared to watch, everything that went on.

  When the netball practice was over, the girls went off to wash, and then followed half an hour’s reading in the classroom, or the time could be given to a hobby or to sewing, whilst the choir nuns were at Vespers. Mary was no reader; she took out of her locker a pillow-case which she was hemstitching for her stepmother, sat down and got on with the work. As she sewed she thought, for most of the form were reading and the room was comparatively quiet, although there was no rule of silence. She thought about Mrs. Bradley, and wondered why she had come to lunch in the refectory when she might have had more interesting food at the guest-house. She also thought about tea, which would not be served for another two hours and a half. There would be, of course, currant buns. She always looked forward to tea-time. She licked the end of her cotton and re-threaded her needle; the action recalled to her her cousin Ursula. Ursula had been hemstitching pillow-cases, too. Each was to finish a pair for Mrs. Maslin’s birthday. Ursula, Mary remembered, had kept her work cleaner than she had, and had done it a good deal more quickly. She thought, with a shiver, of the night that was to come. For four or five nights now she had dreaded to be left alone in the dark. It was a chance remark overheard on the Wednesday evening succeeding Ursula’s death which had opened, as it were, a chasm in her imagination up which crawled dreadful things, shapeless, black and evil. One of the sixth-form girls had made it to another during the time, which the children spent as they pleased, between tea and preparation.

  “She wouldn’t have gone there unless she’d been enticed…”

  Enticed … it was the most sinister, horrid word that Mary had ever encountered. There was an unmistakable smack of the devil about it. It was serpentine, sinuous, plausible, coaxing, sensuously soft-handed and impure. Gilded vice was in it, and something terrifying, like a nightmare begun as a pleasant dream and suddenly slipping into horror.

  Who had enticed the mild Ursula? Mary remembered trying to tempt her to eat a sweet in Mother Mary-Joseph’s English hour, whilst the serious young nun read them stories and a surreptitious sucking, so long as it remained inaudible, was indulged in fairly generally by the class. The sweets had come from Mrs. Maslin and were confiscated promptly, as soon as
the postman delivered them. Then they were given out to Mary once a week on Saturday afternoons. Mary hoarded them sometimes. They helped a little to stay the pangs on days when prunes and custard were on the menu. But Ursula was firm, and did not appear to fight with temptation at all. Enticed . . . Mary’s mental reactions to the idea, especially after nightfall, were compounded of horror and fear. ( 3 )

  Wednesday

  Miss Bonnet cast an approving eye on the Lower Fourth at Kelsorrow High School for Girls. She was proud of the Lower Fourth. Bequeathed to her slack and disorderly, with a tendency to stand, graceful but insolent, with one knee bent, whilst requesting to be allowed to sit out of the physical training lesson because they were not very well, they were now, she felt, a credit to themselves, to her, to the school and to one another. She had worked very hard for this. Once she had boxed a girl’s ears.

  Her superior, the full-time instructor in the subject, always handed to her the rottenest classes—got them in a mess and then got rid of them, was Miss Bonnet’s private judgment on this behaviour—and the present Lower Fourth was a case in point. Now, to see them, under their leaders, at practice in the four corners of the big hall, doing group work of an advanced and difficult kind, was to see the fruits of last term’s terrible grind and lengthy warfare.

  “Pity somebody from the governing body can’t see them,” she thought, as she kept a watchful eye on running somersaults over a two-foot rope. “But, there! You’d have to see what they were like this time last term to get any idea of what’s happened.”

  She blew a whistle, and the four teams formed file and stood still. Briefly and clearly she explained a new game they were to play. The girls ran to their places. The game began, and picked up speed. The girls were laughing and happy; their play was accurate and bold. They took risks, and the risks came off. There was a first-class exhibition of swift, clean, neat-handed passing.

  She blew her whistle; breathed the form; dismissed it; sat on the edge of the platform to wait for the next class to come. Her thoughts, as at all times now when she was not completely occupied, turned again to that bathroom in which she had seen the dead child. She flicked her head nervously, as though to flick away the vision. She supposed that in time she would get over the shock, and forget it. She forced her thoughts, as she had been doing for a week, away from the subject and on to something more pleasant. She wished she could afford to give up her job at the convent; ten shillings a day was all they paid her; five shillings for the half-day; charwoman’s wages. She knew they would double the pay if she said the word. They had to have a qualified person to take the physical training. Amateurs at the job were inefficient and dangerous. The Community could not, however tiny their income, afford to lose Miss Bonnet for the sake of a little more pay. But she would not say the word. She liked to think that she could not. It was a fancy of hers, a vanity, she pretended to the Kelsorrow staff, to go to them for half-pay. Besides, she had hoped to get a testimonial out of them later on; one from Kelsorrow, too. That other unlucky business—she flicked that away as well. It seemed as though there was no clear, happy course for her wandering thoughts to take; death, ignominious dismissal—the one had been a shock, the other still rankled. It was not as though they could prove that she had done wrong. The evidence of children ought not to be accepted against adults, she felt, especially in a case of lost property. Their answers had been suggested to them, and by the headmaster, too! Mixed schools were the devilt anyway. She hated giving P.T. lessons to girls who were taught their academic subjects by men. Dismissal or a court case! What a choice!

  Naturally, she had chosen to go. They could not have proved her guilt—she knew that perfectly well—but other things might have come up. That was the worst of having no testimonials to show except her college one. Lucky to have got to Kelsorrow, she supposed, even in a temporary capacity. Her appointment had never been confirmed. They could dismiss her without notice, she supposed. She wished she were independent of a job, and could please herself what she did. She supposed she would take up golf. There was good publicity in golf. She had a pretty good handicap, as it was, when she played only during week-ends and at holiday times. With practice and regular coaching, and money to spend, she believed she could be very good. It was a game one could play for years; not like these team games—hockey, lacrosse—not like swimming or rowing —in which, speaking generally, one was not much good after twenty-four or so…

  She jumped down to take the next form who were trickling into the gymnasium, dancing up and down to warm up, as she had taught them; long-legged girls in shorts and thin white blouses; nothing on their feet but socks and rubber shoes; nothing in their heads, when first she took them over, but cinemas, boys and dodging compulsory games… She looked them over complacently. Good stuff now. She cracked out an order. Nice to give up the military style of command, out of date, really, nowadays, but until one was certain of these girls… Thank goodness none of them looked in the least like the dead, pink-faced child in the bath. It had been like a tinted waxwork, that still, dead face; like the Little Mermaid, asleep, or the angel, that troubled the waters, drowned in them after all. ( 4 )

  Wednesday

  Mrs. Maslin sat straight and looked at Mr. Grogan.

  “I couldn’t contest it?” she said. Mr. Grogan shook his head. He was a good-looking man whom a judge’s wig would have suited. He screwed the top on his fountain-pen and slightly pulled in his lips as though the task were a ticklish one, and he not sure of success. Then he laid the pen down between the open pages of a book and opened a box of cigarettes.

  “You smoke?” he said. Mrs. Maslin took a cigarette and tapped it exasperatedly upon the enamelled lid of the flap-jack from which she had powdered her nose some three minutes previously.

  “I can’t understand it,” she said. Mr. Grogan, who had always regarded Mrs. Bennett’s remarks about the entail as giving a very fair view of women’s general incapability of grasping even the less abstruse points of testamentary law, shook his fine head sympathetically.

  “Well, there it is,” he said. He smiled, and made a joke. “You would have to prove that the young lady murdered her cousin before you could justly claim the estate for your stepdaughter, my dear lady.”

  Mrs. Maslin went home very thoughtful. As soon as dinner was over, and the servants had cleared, and coffee was on the table, she said to her husband:

  “I’ve been thinking about the death of poor little Ursula.”

  “Seen Grogan this afternoon?”

  “Well, yes, I did see him. He wasn’t particularly helpful.”

  “Well, face the facts, my dear. How could he be?”

  “Percival,” said Mrs. Maslin, laying down her coffee spoon and speaking with great distinctness, “do you think there’s anything at all in Grogan’s suspicion that Ulrica killed her little cousin?”

  “Good Lord, no! Why, Nessa, what a terrible idea! Damn’ silly, too. Surely Grogan couldn’t have said such a thing?”

  “Didn’t he, though? And, you know, there might be something in it! A most extraordinary girl!”

  “What nonsense, my dear! Face the facts! The girl’s got religion. You told me so yourself.”

  “I know, and that’s just what I mean.”

  “Look here, Nessa,” said Mr. Maslin, for once asserting himself, “I don’t believe it, and I won’t have you suggest it. Grogan must be mad. I’d as soon believe you killed the child yourself!” ( 5 )

  Thursday

  To say that Mrs. Waterhouse loved her work would be not so much to contradict facts as to avoid them. Her work was a refuge, and she buried herself in it much as an ostrich will bury its head in sand. But it had always been understood, except by the victims themselves, that primary school teachers loved their work, and Mrs. Waterhouse, far from being irritated by the assertion (which had been made in her hearing by her former headmistress and by various committee members, as they were called), fostered it. It gave her, in the eyes of those who supervised and emplo
yed her, a palpable raison d‘être which she felt she was the safer for possessing.

  The truth was that she neither loved nor hated her work; she merely did it. To her it was a job, like other jobs; a good deal more tiresome, perhaps, and a little better paid (not at the convent, certainly, but in the old days, before her marriage) than other jobs she might have got, but a job, nevertheless; not a vocation, a hobby, a life-work or a missionary enterprise; merely a job, and one that she did very well.

  When Mrs. Bradley discovered Mrs. Waterhouse— on the Thursday, the day following that upon which she had dined with the school—it was turned ten minutes past twelve, and Mrs. Waterhouse was in the middle of a weltering democracy of four- and five-year-old children, some of them orphans, some of them of noble and one of royal blood. She was taking (like and unlike Miss Bonnet) a physical training lesson. Little mats were laid upon the netball court, but the children had abandoned these, and, when Mrs. Bradley first saw them, were fiendishly scrumming for a small light football, of the kind known as a handball. All were shrieking their heads off.

  Mrs. Waterhouse clapped her hands, picked up the only naughty child to prevent her from grabbing the ball when everyone else had obediently let it alone, and turned to Mrs. Bradley.

  “Good morning,” she said, and as she said it she suffered a sudden, unceremonious return of a peculiar feeling she had always experienced in the old days when she knew that His Majesty’s Inspectors of Schools had arrived on the premises and were seeking whom they might devour.