“Tell me about her. I am anxious to learn all I can.”
“She came here when she was six. She was then, and has been, ever since, one of the sweetest children we have ever had in the school. She was not good at her lessons—not nearly so good as her cousin, Ulrica Doyle, who now becomes the grandfather’s heiress, and not much better than her good, stupid cousin, Mary Maslin, whom we put in the form below. But her religion was part of her life, in the most genuine sense of those words, and under no circumstances whatever can I imagine her, of her own will and wickedness, putting an end to that life. People never do things out of character. You agree?”
Mrs. Bradley, with a mental reservation (for she wondered whether her interpretation of the statement would coincide with that of Mother Francis if both defined their meaning), said that she agreed.
“Well, it was entirely out of character for Ursula Doyle to have ended her life by suicide. Her death was not of her own premeditation. She died by some terrible accident. Look! I will show you her picture.”
She opened a drawer of her writing-table. A photograph lay on top of a large portfolio. She took up the photograph, glanced at it, and passed it to Mrs. Bradley. It showed a group of six children in fancy dress, apparently at a garden fête.
“Our last school concert. Ursula is the one on the extreme left,” she said. “That comes slightly in profile. Here is another full-face. Both are extremely good likenesses.”
Mrs. Bradley studied the photographs closely. They conveyed very little to her mind. Ursula Doyle, a slender, delicate-looking, apparently fair-haired child, might have been one of a hundred or so almost identically similar children whom Mrs. Bradley had looked at in school photographs. She handed the likenesses back with a very slight shrug.
“She looks a nice little girl, but so did Constance Kent,” she observed with crude directness. Mother Francis, however, appeared not to know the name of Constance Kent, and put the photographs very carefully away without replying. Then she looked up and said:
“She was a nice little girl. Who is Constance Kent?”
Instead of replying to the question, Mrs. Bradley asked another.
“What are the possibilities of accident?” she enquired.
“Obviously, that something went wrong with the water-heater.”
“Yes, that is so. Now, apart from the fact, which you know, and which formed the basic evidence in favour of the verdict of suicide, that there was nothing wrong with the water-heater, tell me this: was Ursula Doyle the kind of child you would envisage as having done a thing which, I hear, was strictly forbidden to the children, and for which one girl has been expelled?”
Mother Francis took up a pen and tapped restlessly upon the table. She was obviously greatly agitated, and when she spoke it was in a low voice and as though the words were being dragged from her.
“I know,” she said. “She was no more the child to have acted so disobediently and wildly than she was the child to have killed herself deliberately. I don’t know what to think. I can’t bear to think. She was the heiress to a vast fortune… I was saying to you just now that we know our girls, and I say to you also that I have been the headmistress of this school for nearly ten years and never once, in investigating the little charges of naughtiness, disobedience, wilfulness which can be laid at the doors of even the sweetest children, never once have I been at fault. I say it in all humility. Where, in my own mind, I have apportioned blame, I have discovered that the facts, when I had them, invariably bore me out. I have thought long and earnestly about this dreadful occurrence. I have prayed. The result is a terrible conviction for which I can give no reason except—that I knew the child. You understand me, I think?”
Mrs. Bradley said nothing for more than a minute. When she did speak, her question seemed irrelevant.
“Tell me,” she said, “what you know about Miss Bonnet, please, Mother Saint Francis.”
The nun looked up.
“You have a quick mind,” she said. “I did not think you would ask that quite so soon. Miss Bonnet is not a Catholic. She is a fully qualified teacher of physical training, and had a very good post in the Midlands before she took up her duties at Kelsorrow High School. I do not know quite what happened, but she did not get on very well at her first school, and— well, it is only fair that you should have the facts, as you have undertaken this investigation—it appears that she stole some rather valuable pictures. She comes of quite a good family, and had a kleptomaniac aunt—a genuine case, by the way; this aunt, now dead, spent a considerable part of her later life in a private mental hospital. The school did not press the charge against Miss Bonnet, but they felt they had to dismiss her, and she was lucky, I understand, to be appointed at Kelsorrow—really a very good school. The full-time post there, however, is held by another physical training specialist and Miss Bonnet’s post is a temporary one in which she is employed by the half-day. The school has expanded considerably during the past two years, partly owing to the development of the seaside resort of Hiversand Bay, so Miss Bonnet is now employed for seven half-days a week, but is not yet counted a member of the regular staff. That is to say, she still has the position of a visiting mistress only. The other three half-days of the ordinary school week, namely, Monday morning and all day Thursday, she comes to us here, and we also employ her on Saturday mornings, when Kelsorrow High School is closed.”
“And what of the girl herself? Do you like her?”
“She is efficient.”
“How did she manage to get another post?”
“Her father has some influence with the governors of the school, I believe, or she might not have been taken on at Kelsorrow or anywhere else. But I know very little of what happened, and should not ask to be told more.”
“But you do not think her an undesirable person to have here among your children?”
“She works well, and the girls are under good supervision—our own. One of us is always on duty when she takes the physical training lessons here.”
“You do not trust her, then?”
“It is our custom to keep the girls under our own supervision when they are taught by visiting mistresses. As for Miss Bonnet, she has a good heart and is willing to give good service, but she lives in a drama, I think, of which she is not only the heroine, but in which she occupies, always, the centre of the stage. That is sometimes a little boring for the audience, and may lead the actor into trouble.”
“Would you call her a truthful person?”
“Truth, in her, is subordinated to her conception of herself.”
“You believe that she might tell lies?”
“Oh, yes,” said Mother Francis. “In fact, she does tell lies. But she is really a very good teacher, and comes here for half her usual fee.”
“So the Mother Superior told me. Now, these two cousins who also come to the schooclass="underline" I should like to talk to them at some time when it is convenient.”
“Whenever you like.” She glanced at the large school time-table. “Ulrica—”
“She is now the heiress?”
“Yes—is in the fourth form. She is rather an unusual kind of girl. It is a sad case. The father left the Church, and the poor child, until she came to us three years ago, had never been to church at all. Now, of course, she is anxious to do all in her power to combat the evil that has been done. We allow her more liberty than some of the children have. She is by nature solitary, loves long walks (which she is allowed to take quite often without supervision) and is an interesting child altogether. Mary Maslin, younger, of course, is in the second form. She is rather a backward girl in most school subjects, but does not lack intelligence, I believe. She will be doing elocution after break with Sister Saint Bartholomew.”