“Not hardly five minutes. Then she said: ‘Oh, lor! I’d forgotten those private school kids. You’ll be all right here, won’t you?’ So I said I would, and she give me a comic, what I shoved away under the cushion if I heard any steps, because we’re never allowed to have comics because Mother Saint Ambrose says they’re low and wicked, although the lay-sister winks the other eye—”
“So Miss Bonnet left you and went to the private school. Did she come back later on?”
“Just poked her head in at half-past two, and asked me how I was, but my belief she meant to bunk straight off again, only we heard Mother Saint Ambrose coming back, so Miss Bonnet took a seat and never moved off it until Mother Saint Ambrose had gone off to check all the laundry.”
“Does she check the laundry every Monday afternoon?”
“Yes, to see what we’ve tore, and whether we’ve kept ourself clean. She tells by the pillow-cases mostly.”
“I understand. What does she do, then, on Monday mornings?”
“She learns us in school.”
“I see.”
“The private school washing gets done of a Monday, you see, and ourn gets done of a Tuesday.”
“Ah, yes. I understand. Did Miss Bonnet come back any more?”
“Yes, popped her head in about playtime, and asked how I was, and said she was going to ask for a bath and go home. She said she was ever so sorry she knocked me down, and give me a tanner, and then she hopped it. She never came in any more.”
“Thank you very much, my dear. What’s your name?”
“Minnie Botolph.”
“I see.” Mrs. Bradley wrote it down and added a note. “Now mind you rest that leg. There’s slight fluid, and we must disperse it. Have you had the doctor?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I said it never hurt.”
“Silly to say that when it does.”
“Don’t want no doctor messing me about.”
“Probably not. You sit where you are for a little while, anyway, Minnie, and I’ll go and talk to Mother Saint Ambrose.”
“Want me tea,” said Minnie, sotto voce, to Mrs. Bradley’s back. Her tea and Mother Saint Ambrose came in seven minutes later. Mrs. Bradley walked into Hiversand Bay and had tea and buttered toast at the hotel.
chapter 9
documents
“Which they have written in their inward eye;
On which they feed, and in their fastened mind
All happy joy and full contentment find.”
edmund spenser: Hymn of Heavenly Beauty.
« ^ »
Mrs. bradley’s bedroom in the guest-house was large, airy and clean. It smelt of lavender, yellow soap and, most unaccountably, mice. The gas lighting was adequate, and a small table having been especially imported about an hour earlier by a willing and almost mild-mannered Bessie, Mrs. Bradley seated herself at it after the evening meal, and studied the papers with which she had been provided. The school time-table and the list of guests she put aside at first in favour of the detailed account of the circumstances of the child’s death.
Mother Saint Francis had done her work with all the neat and loving thoroughness of a nun, and the document gave Mrs. Bradley some valuable information. Her own thoughts at this point in the investigation were mixed. The Community, in desiring her presence at the convent, had had in mind, she knew well, the possibility that her investigations might change the theory of suicide into one of accident. If, as she began to perceive most clearly it must, the case resolved itself into one of murder (person or persons unknown at that point in her enquiry) she wondered in what light her services would continue to be appreciated. She realised, too, that, apart from any shock that might be in store for the nuns, her own intelligence shied from the thought of murder in such a connection for much the same reason as a horse, accustomed to motors, will shy at a piece of white paper fluttering down a country lane. The effect was too startling to be in tune with the surroundings. Murder and the conventual life were mutually contradictory. The theory of accident she had been inclined to discard as soon as she had heard the report of the man in the Gas Company’s showrooms. She knew that there had been cases of gas poisoning in which no escape of gas was traceable, and it was possible that this was one of them, but such cases were rare, and the law of averages was not in favour of too frequent a repetition of such coincidence.
Another strange feature, even as far as she had gone, was the mutual contradiction of possibly unimportant points of evidence. The most striking, she felt, was Annie’s confident assertion that there had been no smell of gas when she first went into the room. Yet Miss Bonnet had opened the window wide, and both the nuns had smelt gas in spite of the fact that the window, by the time they arrived, was open. Of course, there was the creosote, she reflected; a substance with a most pungent, gas-like odour, yet none of the witnesses appeared to have taken it much into account. The smell, in any case, would have been greater downstairs in the rooms at the front of the house than in the bathroom right round to the side.
A curious feature, too, was that the child’s head should have been completely submerged. If murder had been committed by the administration of carbon monoxide gas, and as there was no way of hiding the method of killing, it seemed redundant to add apparent drowning to the affair… unless, of course—and at this Mrs. Bradley frowned in an attempt to reject an idea which was becoming increasingly persistent—unless the death had been accomplished not by an adult, but by another child, who had plotted it carefully, but did not feel sure that the method would be efficacious. On the other hand, there was Miss Bonnet. Mrs. Bradley desired to be perfectly just with regard to Miss Bonnet, and her first act of grace was to acknowledge to herself, fairly and squarely, that she disliked Miss Bonnet very much indeed, and that so far as she herself was concerned, if the thing turned out to be murder, she would sooner suspect Miss Bonnet than anybody else in the place. Then she dismissed all prejudice from her mind, and settled herself to examine the fact that Miss Bonnet —sinister sign very often in a case of murder!—had been the very first person, so far as anyone knew, to come upon the body.
She studied the report again. It was certain that the child had been present at the midday meal. What, to Mrs. Bradley’s mind, was very much less certain, was that, according to Mother Francis, the child had also been present at the beginning of afternoon school. Mother Francis based this statement upon the fact that she had not been noticed to be absent, but recollections of the exploits of her own nephews and nieces at school caused Mrs. Bradley to reflect that it is by no means unheard-of for a child to answer a name or sign a sheet for an absentee member of the form, and never confess to the fact.
Obviously, if this had been done, no later confession had been made, or Mother Francis would have said as much. Mrs. Bradley went back to the school timetable, and noted again the lessons for Monday, but this did not help her. According to the readings, Mother Gregory should have been taking Ursula’s form for music at the beginning of the afternoon, and had made no report of her absence. Mrs. Bradley made another note, and then put down the names of all of the Community who were engaged in teaching on Monday afternoons. These, she found, were Mother Cyprian, who taught needlework all the afternoon; Mother Simon-Zelotes, who taught in the Orphanage first, and then took metal-work; Mother Mary-Joseph, who taught English and History at the private school until twenty minutes past four; Mother Gregory, who took music until the same hour; and old Mother Bartholomew, whose time was occupied in teaching dancing and elocution.
Mrs. Bradley put a tick against all these names, because if the child had gone into class at half-past two, none of the people employed in teaching from half-past two until after four o’clock could have been directly occupied in making away with her. If it could be shown that she had not gone into class at all on that Monday afternoon, the field was considerably wider, because the Community had an hour of recreation between one and two o’clock (except for those who had duties during that time, and whose activities would have to be taken note of), and the child might have been dead before the end of that recreation period. There had been nothing in the medical evidence to render such a possibility void. It was significant that she had not turned up for that physical training practice at two o’clock.