St. Peter's Finger mb-9

by Gladys Mitchell

  chapter 13

  picador

  “Fluttering, piercing as a needle’s point,

  No armour may it stay, nor no high walls,”

  william langland; The Vision of Holy Church.

  « ^ »

  Miss bonnet took a netball practice with the private-school girls from half-past one until two, and then went off to wash. Mrs. Bradley waited in the school hall and waylaid her as she came back. Miss Bonnet, in the trousers which she had worn to referee the game—for the March wind was fresh and blew cold from seawards—looked subtly different from the stocky young woman in tweeds who had spoken to Mrs. Bradley on the moors.

  “Half a second; must climb into a skirt,” she observed, rather nervously. Mrs. Bradley vetoed the suggestion with some promptness, and led her firmly towards the staff room.

  “Here we shall not be disturbed,” she said. “Sit down. I have a number of questions to ask you.”

  “Oh, but look here,” said Miss Bonnet, “I can’t help you, you know. You see, I’ve got to be pretty careful what I say.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Well, rightly or wrongly, I was the person responsible for the blinking kid committing suicide, you know. I mean, it was no fault of mine. All in the day’s work, and that kind of thing, of course, but there’s no doubt whatever that the poor wretched kid had got me up her nose a bit.”

  “Because you take the physical training lessons?”

  “You’ve got it in one. What’s more, I had arranged particularly to give her extra coaching. I figure that she funked it, and bunked to that beastly bathroom and finished things off. I’ve been in the devil of a stew ever since, as you can imagine.”

  “So that,” said Mrs. Bradley, regarding her shrewdly, “is why you, almost alone of all the people I have questioned, are convinced that the child committed suicide.”

  “That’s about the size of it,” Miss Bonnet readily agreed. “You see, my methods aren’t all that gentle and tactful, I’m afraid. I admit it, but I can’t alter them. It goes down all right with the majority of kids, and then you get some poor little misfit like this one— and off she goes and shoots up the whole outfit. I feel pretty much like a murderer, I can tell you.”

  “Yes,” said Mrs. Bradley, “yes, you must do.” She made a few notes, and then rose. “I suppose,” she said suddenly, as Miss Bonnet also got up, “that you can account for all the children who were supposed to have that extra physical training practice with you during the Monday dinner hour?”

  “Account for them? Yes, I think so.”

  “And you yourself. What were you doing between the time that practice ended, and the time you went for your bath?”

  “Doing? Oh—I remember. That wretched kid I knocked over at netball—I went to see how she was getting on, and stayed a bit, and then went over to Kelsorrow in the car—and then I came back, and— well, that’s when we found her.”

  “Ah, yes. You saw nothing of Ulrica Doyle, I suppose?”

  “Ulrica Doyle? I shouldn’t expect to see her.”

  “Is she good or bad at her physical work?”

  “Average. She could be very good indeed, but she isn’t keen. Pretty rotten family, the whole lot of them, really, I think.”

  “Most likely. Well, thank you, Miss Bonnet.”

  “Of course,” said Miss Bonnet, as she was going off, “you can’t prove or disprove a single thing I’ve said, but take my tip: suicide don’t suit the nuns’ book. Accident is what they’re after. But it wasn’t accident. Couldn’t have been! Look at the facts!”

  “I have,” replied Mrs. Bradley. “Ad nauseam,” she added to herself, as Miss Bonnet cantered away to change her trousers. Mrs. Bradley walked back to the guest-house, but suddenly changed her mind about going in, and hurried off across the moors to meet George at the village inn.

  George was finishing his lunch—roast beef, Yorkshire pudding, potatoes, cauliflower and beer, followed by boiled suet pudding with butter and sugar.

  “Good heavens, George!” said Mrs. Bradley. She ordered the first course herself, regardless of the fact that she had already lunched at the guest-house, ordered half a pint of beer, and finished up with biscuits and cheese.

  Fortified, she got into the car, and George drove her to Hiversand Bay.

  It was easy enough to check Dom Pius’ alibi. The assistant curator at the small museum, who happened also to be assistant librarian—for the exhibits were housed in the vestibule of the library and on its first-floor landing—testified, without having to stop to think, that a gentleman in the dress of a monk had visited the collection and seemed interested

  “Quite an Oxford man, by his speech,” said the assistant librarian and curator, “and interested in the local history. I put him on to some books, and he seemed very pleased. Stayed until nearly four o’clock. The nuns come occasionally, of course, to look up stuff for their school work, but we’ve never had a gentleman before. Very cultured, he seemed, and spoke very nicely of the collection and the way we’d got it set out.”

  For Mrs. Trust the evidence was not as easy to collect, and Mrs. Bradley took no particular trouble to collect it. She haunted the two shelters which were all that had been erected on what, later on, she supposed, would be a made-up promenade, and questioned a nursemaid with a perambulator. A foreign lady, looking very ill, had sat and talked a bit one afternoon; she could not remember which. Oh, wait a bit, though. Yes, perhaps—no—yes, it would be a Monday. They had had the cold lamb and nothing but mashed potatoes and, of all things, boiled rice to follow. No, well, you could not hardly expect to have the oven on, not with no roast joint, but—boiled rice! Well, she asked you!

  Mrs. Bradley expressed comprehension, sympathy and amazement. The evidence made no difference to the enquiry. No time could be established, the nursemaid saying definitely that she had not the very foggiest, only Brian was being a bit awkward, and she took him in earlier than usual, fancying he felt a bit cold and it made him pulish.

  Mrs. Bradley, treasuring the Shakespearian derivative, got up and walked west towards the convent. The coast road, high and lonely, led away from the raw little town until from its eminence nothing could be descried but rough grass, cloud and sky. Even the sea was hidden, for the road did not follow the cliff, but kept, for safety, inland. Gorse was in bud, and at one place she came upon a goat tethered to a thick, tough stem. It ran at her with its head down until its chain brought it up short. Further on she met a man with a dog. There was no other sign of life, apart from the promise of heather, bramble and bracken, except for the gulls.

  She reached the convent at four, having sent George back with the car some hour or so earlier, had tea in the guest-house, and then walked into the village of Blacklock Tor. Three minutes after her arrival at the inn she was in the car again, being driven to Kelsorrow High School. Although school hours were over by the time she arrived, she had planned her visit well. Several of the mistresses were still on the building, and the headmistress was still in her room. The caretaker, an ex-soldier, who gave her the information, recognised George. Mrs. Bradley left them in delighted conversation whilst the caretaker’s wife conducted her to the secretary’s office, and the secretary took her in to the headmistress.

  “If you had come an hour earlier, you might have given a travel talk to the school,” was the headmistress’ characteristic lament upon recognising her visitor. Mrs. Bradley grinned, and stated her errand.

  “I want to know all you can tell me about Miss Bonnet,” she said.

  “But you don’t suspect Miss Bonnet of murdering a child of thirteen?”

  “I should if I could find that she had a motive,” Mrs. Bradley replied. The headmistress rang for the secretary and asked her to make some tea. She was a young headmistress, and had held the post for three years.

  “I don’t know much about her, you know,” she said. “She’s efficient, and I don’t make the private lives of the staff my concern as long as their work is satisfactory.
”

  “I understand that she was lucky to get a post here, even a temporary one.”

  “I don’t know what you mean by a temporary one. She’s been here longer than I have, and I shouldn’t dream of trying to get rid of her. I believe she was dismissed from her last post for theft, but—-you ought to know—aren’t these cases so often pathological? It turned out that she’d had a row with her young man, and the thefts followed hard upon that.”

  “She didn’t go to prison, I believe?”

  “No, but the school governors dismissed her without a testimonial. Then it turned out that she had a friend —her father’s friend, actually—on the governing body here, and he persuaded the rest of them to give her a trial. That was four years ago, or very nearly. She’s been here ever since.”

  “And you’ve no fault to find with her at all?”

  “Her discipline is military, but I don’t know that I object to that, within reason. She is not too popular with the girls, but neither is she disliked. The girls respect efficiency, and like to be bossed—more’s the pity.”

  “What did she steal?”

  “Pictures.”

  “Valuable ones?”

  “Yes, very.”

  “Did she sell them?”

  “She didn’t, no. But whether she was caught too soon, or whether she never intended to part with them, I don’t think anybody knew. Personally, I feel sorry for the girl. Of course, if the case had gone to the police, as some people, I expect, thought it ought, no doubt they would have found out whether she was in touch with a receiver and so on. But my view, and I’ve known her for three years now, is that the girl passed through an abnormal phase consequent on this quarrel with her lover. There was an abnormal aunt, or something, too, so heredity may be against her.”

  “What happened to the lover, do you know?”

  “Oh, yes. He married, and went to East Africa to live. I suppose he has leave at times, but I don’t think she’s ever seen him since they parted.”

  “What made her confide in you?”

  “She had been taking a hockey practice, and one of the half-backs rolled the ball in from the side-line after it had been hit out of play, and it slipped from her hand and struck Miss Bonnet on the head. They had to carry her here, and I looked after her a bit. She got a pretty good crack on the temple—rather nasty—and spent the afternoon in here on my settee. We talked a bit, and she told me about herself.”

  Mrs. Bradley was not surprised. There are people who seem to be the natural confidantes of those with whom they come in contact, and Mrs. Bradley could readily understand that the head mistress of Kelsorrow would give an impression of sympathetic understanding.

  “How was it discovered that she was the thief?” she asked.

  “Rather oddly. Of course, Miss Bonnet said nothing to me about the thefts, only about her young man, and I should not dream of mentioning them to her. That sort of thing is far better over and forgotten. But I was told of her record when I received the appointment here. The governors thought it fair to me to tell me. It seems that she got rather drunk one night at a dinner. The rowing club she belonged to had won an important race at Henley, and were celebrating. During the evening she happened to describe one of the pictures to a man who knew that, unless she had stolen the picture, the probability was that she couldn’t even have seen it.”

  “How extraordinary!”

  “Indeed it was. Of course, she had no idea that he was an expert. She knew him only as the chairman of her rowing club, not as an expert in pictures. Actually he happens to be a dealer.”

  “Whose were the pictures, then?”

  “They were the property of the school at which she taught, and were kept in the Governors’ Room, as it was called, on the second floor. This room was sometimes used, apart from meetings of the Governors, but when it was, two of the pictures whose subject-matter was thought unsuitable for children—rather peculiar and horrid martyrdoms, I believe—were carefully covered up. The others were left on view, and were familiar, probably to the staff of the school. But the hidden pictures, one of which she described, were not. When the room was not in use it was always kept locked because the pictures were valuable. Of course, it was recognised that she might have seen the pictures at some time, but the chairman, who was anxious, naturally, to get them back, had enquiries made, and very soon they were recovered.”

  “What excuse did she offer?”

  “None.”

  “What reason, then, for having stolen them?”

  “She said she must have been mad.”

  “It is possible that she was right, and that it was a temporary mental aberration. How valuable were the pictures?”

  “Christie’s valued them at sixty thousand pounds. They would have been worth a great deal more than that if two of them had not been suspected of being contemporary copies.”

  “Contemporary copies?”

  “That isn’t as unusual a happening as one might think. These pictures were painted for churches, and an interesting rendering of—you must remember—a traditional happening, might well be copied half a dozen times.”

  “To Miss Bonnet, I suppose, sixty thousand pounds would be a great deal of money.”

  “She wouldn’t have got a quarter of that from a receiver.”

  “Not if the receiver had a market? There are plenty of wealthy people, especially in America, with collectors’ mania, I believe.”

  “Oh, I see… a ready market. Anyhow, it all came out, and the pictures were returned undamaged. She had cut them out of their frames with a very sharp penknife, and had hidden them under the carpet in her room.”

  “Ah, yes. Where does she live?”

  “In lodgings. The address is Nineteen, Hiversand Bay Road, Kelsorrow—quite near this school.”

  “Was she in lodgings when she taught at her last school?”

  “Yes, she was. Her landlady turned her out as soon as the pictures were found. Gave her an hour to pack and take herself off. People are terribly heartless.”

  “Yes, aren’t they?” said Mrs. Bradley; but she spoke absentmindedly, her eyes on the clock on the desk.

  “How do you know her landlady turned her out?” she asked, comparing her watch with the clock.

  “She told me, but not the reason. That I guessed. That clock is ten minutes fast. I must put it right.”

  “And I,” said Mrs. Bradley, “must be off. You did not, of course, see Miss Bonnet at any time on that Monday, the day that the child was found dead? She was engaged to teach at the convent that morning, I believe?”

  “Oh, yes, I saw her. She turned up here at about a quarter to one, to ask whether, as there was a holiday, I wanted her to do extra coaching.”

  “She came here, then, immediately she had finished her morning’s work at St. Peter’s School?”

  “Yes, she must have done. She drives most recklessly.”

  “How long did she stay?”

  “I cannot tell you. She was in here less than five minutes. I thought it rather nice of her to come. There was no reason why she should.”

  “She went back to St. Peter’s and gave the orphans some netball.”

  “Yes, she would do a thing like that. She’s a very good-natured sort of girl, in a coarse, hearty sort of way, and tremendously keen on games.”

  “But didn’t she come again in the afternoon?”

  “Not to my knowledge. Besides, there was nobody here except the caretaker and his wife. It was a holiday, you see.” So Mrs. Bradley applied to the school caretaker for information as soon as she had left the headmistress.

  “Miss Bonnet, mam? Turned up at a quarter to one, when all the girls had gone home, and might have stopped the time it would take her to smoke a cigarette, I should think. I couldn’t say exactly to the minute, but she certainly wasn’t here long. Left again before one o’clock, I reckon, because I was out there doing a bit of repairs to the bicycle shed when she came, and hadn’t, I’m sure, done fifteen minutes at the jo
b before she went. Her little car stood in the drive where I could see it, and she drove off very fast, like she always do—have a smash-up one of these days, I shouldn’t wonder—and I got on doing the job till four o’clock. Chucked her cigarette-end down, I remember, on to a heap of shavings.”

  “And nobody else came here?”

  “Nobody else that I know of, and that’s as good as saying that nobody came.”

  “The plot thickens, George,” said Mrs. Bradley, as she got into her own car again to drive back to St. Peter’s. “Can you think of any reason why Miss Bonnet should kill Ursula Doyle?”

  “No, madam, but time will show. Not altogether a sympathetic character, the young lady.”

  “I believe, however, that you and I are unique in that opinion. On all sides I am told how unselfish and good-hearted Miss Bonnet is.”

  “At the pub, madam, in Blacklock Tor, there’s a feeling that the nuns know all about it.”

  “That wouldn’t surprise me, George. They are a very reticent body, and, I’m sure, know more that they say.”

  “They withhold information, madam?”

  “I don’t suppose they would like that way of putting it. They don’t want a murder, George, naturally.”

  “Artful, madam, some of them. Wrong-headed, too, in a way. Did you ever study the history of the Jesuits?”

  “That reminds me, George,” said Mrs. Bradley. “Stop at the cinema at Hiversand Bay. I want to bounce the box-office clerk into giving me information.”

  This proved a simple matter. At that time of day business in the cinema was slack. Mrs. Bradley asked the clerk whether the gloves had been picked up.

  “What gloves?” the girl enquired.

  “A pair of doeskin gloves, dark brown. My friend believes she must have dropped them off her lap when she rose from her seat in the cinema last Monday week. I understood she had enquired about them herself— a woman in a musquash coat over a greenish tweed costume, with a green hat to match.”

  “Oh—her as walked out early? One of them as brought the little children?”