“That’s the one, madam. That’s the bathroom where she was found.”
“Are you afraid to go in?”
“No, madam, not in the least.”
“What did you do whilst Bessie had gone running along for Mother Saint Ambrose and Mother Saint Jude?”
“I stayed where I was with Miss Bonnet.”
“Where was that? Will you stand in the same place again?”
Annie walked a couple of paces forward.
“It would have been here, madam.”
“Now tell me where I should stand, supposing I had been Miss Bonnet.”
“Forward of me, madam, not quite so near the door. She went bursting in, do you see, and came bursting out again.”
“What, once again, did she say?”
“She began with an oath, madam. Do you order me to repeat it?”
“Just as you like.”
“She said, ‘Good God! Annie, run and get someone! I’m not going to touch her! I can’t!’ ”
“Now, look here, Annie, I want you to think very carefully for a minute. I have in my notes”—she turned back the pages—“that when Miss Bonnet came out of the bathroom she did not scream out; she merely said, ‘Annie, fetch somebody quick.’ Which were her actual words? Those, or the words you told me just now?”
Annie looked distressed.
“I didn’t think you’d want me to swear,” she said.
“Very well, Annie. Then Miss Bonnet really said, ‘My God! Go and get Mother Saint Ambrose!’ ”
“No, madam. ‘Good God! Annie, run and get someone. I’m not going to touch her! I can’t!’ That’s what she said, and I shouted to Bessie, and Bessie must have run fast.”
“Then Mother Saint Ambrose arrived. Now what did she say?”
“She sent Bessie off for Mother Saint Jude, and told me to get some towels from the airing cupboard, although as a matter of fact there was one in the bathroom already, and I suppose she beckoned Miss Bonnet in to help her, because Miss Bonnet said, ‘I can’t! I can’t!’ Very upset she seemed.”
“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?”