“From two until half-past two she was with us at Vespers, and when we resumed our duties after Vespers she had her afternoon sleep in her bedroom here.”
The nuns, concluding this triumphant duologue, closed their mouths and modestly dropped their eyes.
“In her bedroom here in the guest-house?” asked Mrs. Bradley.
“Yes,” said Mother Jude, for the guest-house was her province.
“Did the noise made by Miss Bonnet, when she discovered the child’s body, disturb Sister Bridget, do you know?”
“I do not know. Her room is on the same floor, but I saw nothing of her. I did not think of her. There was so much to be done, and the whole affair was so dreadful that my mind was filled completely.”
“And you, Mother Saint Ambrose?”
“I saw nothing of Sister Bridget. I did think of her, though. I hoped that she would not come out upon us because we were so much occupied.”
“Can you tell me anything more about her? I labour the point because it seems as though she must have been the only person in the guest-house, except for the girls in the kitchen, when the child entered the bathroom. Is she usually left by herself?”
“Oh, no!” said both the nuns immediately. Mrs. Bradley looked mildly surprised.
“We never leave Sister Bridget entirely alone anywhere, except in her bedroom,” Mother Jude explained, “and even then there is a lay-sister or one of the other orphans within call, and often I am here, too, with Sister Saint Cyprian, who teaches needlework to both orphans and private-school children. On the afternoon in question Kitty and Bessie were on duty together here, Mother Saint Ambrose was supervising laundry work in the laundry (a separate building with its drying-ground just behind this guest-house). I was in the kitchen—the Community kitchen, that is, which adjoins the frater on the south side of the cloister— and Sister Saint Cyprian was taking a needlework class at the school. But you must not think of Sister Bridget as usually being alone and left to her own devices.”
“That is quite clear. Is it likely or unlikely that Kitty and Bessie would have seen the child when she came to the guest-house for the bath?”
“It is quite likely they would be unaware that anybody had come in. Generally we use only one door, and that is in the front of the house, and the wall along the end of the guest-house garden is far too high to climb. If Kitty and Bessie were sitting in the kitchen doing some mending or getting on with their compulsory reading, they might not know that the house had been entered from the front. We do not lock the front door until sunset or after.”
“Is the entrance to the convent grounds also kept open during the daytime, then? I mean, would the child have experienced any difficulty in getting past Sister Magdalene at the gate?”
“It depends upon the time. The gate is left unlocked from about eight o’clock in the morning until the late afternoon, and the portress is nominally in charge of it. But, of course, she has other duties, and it would not be difficult for a child to slip through the unlocked gate without being seen. If she went through while the portress was at Vespers, she certainly would not be seen.”
“I see. Thank you.” She made another note. “And now about Miss Bonnet. What was she doing, Mother Saint Ambrose, when first you saw her that day?”
“Taking off her trousers,” was Mother Ambrose’s startling reply.
“Taking—?” Mrs. Bradley looked nonplussed.
“Miss Bonnet described to me once how essential it is, if one wishes to succeed in sports or games, to keep the limbs warm,” said Mother Jude.
“She was going to play netball with the orphans—”
“She always played games in shorts—”
“And over the shorts she wore trousers.”
“These she took off at the moment that play commenced.”
“She is quite a modern young woman.”
“I understand, I think,” said Mrs. Bradley, not knowing whether to admire most the quick comedy-patter of the duologue, or the self-control with which, having said their say, the nuns switched off, as it were, an electric current, and lapsed into immobile silence. “Pardon me for having put my question so ambiguously. I meant, what was she doing when you came into the bathroom that day?”
“She was on the landing, just outside the door.”
“Doing nothing?”
“Nothing at all, so far as I remember. She looked very pale, as though she might be going to faint or turn bilious,” said Mother Ambrose.
“What was she wearing then?”
“She was wearing her drill tunic and a jersey.”
“Not her trousers?”
“She had her trousers with her, but for going about the school she always, at the special request of Reverend Mother Superior, put something over her shorts for modesty.”
“Were the trousers actually in her hand when you saw her first?”
“No, on the bathroom floor, as though she had dropped them and forgotten them in the shock of seeing the dead child.”
“And the window, you say, was wide open.”
“Quite wide open.”
“Miss Bonnet, Annie thinks, had opened it.”
“And had dropped what she was carrying to do so?”
“That would be my inference.”
“Very sensible of her, I should say. I suppose she wanted to let out the smell of gas.”
“Did you smell gas, Mother Saint Ambrose?”
“Certainly. Not strongly, because, of course, the open window must have dispersed the fumes, but strongly enough to be noticeable, and to make obvious the cause of death.”
“Yet Annie declares that she could smell no gas.”
“Then her sense of smell must be defective.”
“Did you smell gas, Mother Saint Jude?”
“Certainly. I looked to see whether the pilot light of the geyser had been turned off.”
“Had it?”
“Yes, quite securely.”
“But had not the guest-house fence been coated with creosote?”
“Oh!” said both nuns, as though this point had escaped them.
“Tell me, please,” said Mrs. Bradley, as though she had decided not to labour it, “about the guest-house towels.”
“The guest-house towels are distinctive,” said Mother Jude, “and the wet towel seems to have come from one of the rooms. The towels are striped in blue and white, and carry the name of the convent, ‘Sisters of St. Peter in Perpetuity,’ embroidered in red across the corner.”
“Was the wet towel mentioned at the inquest?”
“It seemed of no importance.”
“No? Yet surely that towel might have changed the verdict from suicide to accident? Would a suicide take a towel?”
“I don’t believe it would have helped to get the verdict altered,” Mother Jude sadly interposed. “People do so many things from habit.”
“Yet Mother Saint Ambrose said, a short while ago that she was not astonished to find no towels in the bathroom. That, in her opinion and according to her experience, children were feckless beings whose common sense could never be relied on. Perhaps, however, you are right. The towel makes a small point only, although an interesting one. There is one thing more; what happened when you found that it was impossible to resuscitate the child?”
“Miss Bonnet and the doctor went to have another look at the bathroom, which Annie, by then, had tidied. Sister Saint Ambrose and I went together to Sister Saint Francis to let her know what had occurred. Annie and Bessie were told to remain in the kitchen until they received other instructions, and on no account to let anyone know what had happened.
“Did you speak to the doctor again before the inquest?”
“Yes, he returned with the police.”
“That seems an extraordinary thing.”
“He was frank with us. He said that, although he could smell gas when he went into the bathroom with Miss Bonnet—although, now you have mentioned the creosote, it might have been that—he could detect nothing wrong with the water-heater—he is quite a practical man—and that the circumstances needed explaining.”