“That isn’t—?”
“Yes, Rosa Cardosa. She entered the religious life after the terrible catastrophe at the Duntrey Theatre in which she lost every penny. She wasn’t insured, you know, and, as I expect you remember, the theatre was burnt right out.”
“Poor Rosa! But I thought there was a fund?”
“Her friends agreed to support her. Hundreds of pounds were collected. She sent them all back, and said that she was going to take what she had—a little money her mother had left her, and which, for some superstitious or sentimental reason, she had never used for her theatrical enterprises—and give it to God. So she brought it along as her dowry, and has been with us now many years. She taught me when I was fifteen, at our other house.”
“And she has never wished to go back, and begin again?”
Mother Francis smiled, raised her hands in a gesture so slight as to be almost unnoticeable, and answered:
“Who can tell?”
“Her father-confessor?”
“Yes, or Reverend Mother Superior, and they will not.”
There was a pause; then Mother Francis, as though she felt that she had rebuked her visitor and wished to make some amends, said: “Tell me, ought I to send those two children home? Both are suffering from shock, and Mary from grief. Ulrica seems afraid. She is highly strung; a rather peculiar girl, although very clever.”
“As I do not know either of the girls, I cannot offer any advice,” said Mrs. Bradley. “Have you any seculars besides Miss Bonnet on the staff of the school?”
“Yes. There is Mrs. Waterhouse. She teaches all the children under six, orphans and others. We pay her forty pounds a year and she has a cottage next door to the presbytery at Hiversand Bay, which was rather a pleasant little place before the speculative builders came.”
“What are her qualifications?”
“She was an elementary schoolteacher employed by the London County Council before her marriage. She is a widow now, and lives in this district for her health. That is why we get her so cheaply. She lives rent free, and has her midday meal, and, if she wants it, her tea, with the orphans. She has no children, and lives alone.”
“Is she a Catholic?”
“I have no reason to think so.”
This, Mrs. Bradley thought, was an extraordinary reply, so she noted it. Then she asked:
“Are all the children Catholics?”
“All the orphans are Catholics. Of the private schoolchildren about nine-tenths are Catholics.”
“The dead child—?”
“Yes.”
“Mary Maslin?”
“Mary Maslin comes of a Catholic family, although her father’s present wife, I believe, is not a Catholic. In the other case, the father lapsed from the Church, as I told you just now—his father and mother were converts—and the child has been brought up without religious knowledge. It is very sad. I have hopes, however—”
Mrs. Bradley nodded.
“Do you find that the non-Catholic children tend to become Catholics in their later life?” she asked.
“We do not use any influence,” said Mother Francis sharply.
“What proportion become Catholics later on?”
“A fair number.” Her momentarily defensive attitude melted. She smiled with great sweetness. “Our Faith fights its battles,” she observed.
“It has its attractions,” said Mrs. Bradley, “in an unstable, undisciplined world. Will you arrange to have Ulrica Doyle escort me on a tour of the buildings and grounds? I should like to meet her, as it were, unofficially, as though I were an ordinary visitor to the school.”
“Certainly. The girls are accustomed to show our visitors round the gardens. I will send for her now if you would like me to do so. It is just as well that you should get to know her.”
“I should be very much obliged.”
Mother Francis pressed a bell.
“Ulrica Doyle, from Mother Saint Gregory’s music class,” she said to the girl who appeared. “That is Ethel, one of the older orphans,” she added, after the girl had gone. “They take it in turns to sit in the adjoining room doing needlework or practising shorthand, and act as messengers if I require it. I very seldom do require it, but it is convenient to have somebody there if visitors come, and quite good practice for the girls to take courteous, correctly-rendered messages.”
Ethel was not long gone. She returned with a tall, blue-eyed girl, wearing the convent black pinafore and badge, whose face told of sleeplessness, strain and acute anxiety. She curtsied to Mother Francis, and waited with exaggerated meekness to hear what she was to do. She curtsied again when she had heard it, opened the door for Mrs. Bradley and then walked sedately beside her along the whole length of the corridor as silently as a ghost. She seemed to Mrs. Bradley as quiet as a nun. The disembodied manner in which the religious suddenly appeared and retreated without sound was startling, but not uncanny. In Ulrica Doyle this silence was disquieting.
The girl took charge of her, however, without awkwardness or shyness, and showed her the grounds and the buildings. It was not until they were walking in the nuns’ garden that she mentioned her dead cousin. The fact that she did so at all surprised Mrs. Bradley and gave her occasion for thought.
“I suppose you have heard about Ursula?” Ulrica said.
“Yes, child.” Neither looked at the other. Ulrica stared at the gravel, Mrs. Bradley at the wall of the frater.
“What do you think about it? Tell me, please, what you think. I want to know.”
“I have no idea what I think about it, except that it was a very terrible thing.”
“But you’ve come to find out about it, haven’t you?”
“Yes, child. How did you know?”
“Father Thomas promised me that he would try to get you to come here. Ursula must have been killed. She would never have killed herself. I wish you would let me help you.”
“You come first on my list of suspects,” Mrs. Bradley observed, with a strangely mirthless grin.
“Because of the money, you mean? Yes, it’s a motive, I suppose. It couldn’t benefit me personally, though, because I am going to enter as soon as I am old enough.”
“Enter?”
“Join the Community. Become a nun.”
“I see. So you would get no benefit from the money?”
“All my property will come to the convent when I enter. Poverty is part of the Rule.”
“Why do you suspect that your cousin’s death was not suicide?”
“I knew Ursula very well indeed. She was a sweet child. She would never have done such a thing.”
“Have you any idea why anybody should desire her death?”
“No—I don’t think I have. At least, it isn’t definite, and I would rather be torn to pieces than put suspicion on anybody unjustly. That would be awful, wouldn’t it?”
“Do you speak literally, I wonder?”
“About what I would suffer? Saints have been torn to pieces, and what they endured, I can.”
“I see. Does your cousin, Mary, share your theories?”
“Oh, Mary’s a silly little thing. I should never dream of talking to her about Ursula. She didn’t like Ursula; I loved her.”
“That, of course, would make a good deal of difference.”
“The part I can’t understand is how anybody ever persuaded Ursula to do a naughty thing like going to a guest-house bathroom. It’s dead against the school rules, and she was such a gentle, timid little thing that I can’t imagine her letting anybody lead her astray. It must have been a grown-up person. Nobody in the school would ever have persuaded Ursula to break the rules like that.”
“Whom do you suggest?”
“I am not prepared to name anybody. And, besides, by the time you’ve taken out the nuns and Miss Bonnet and Mrs. Waterhouse, none of whom, I suppose, can very well be suspected, there isn’t anyone else except the guests, who all have an alibi; and old Jack, the hedge-trimmer and gardener, and he wouldn’t hurt a fly.”