But still—and Mrs. Bradley found herself continually referred back to this extraordinarily difficult problem— by far the most important point at issue was to ascertain the means by which the child had been forced or induced to breathe the carbon monoxide which had killed her. One whiff of the deadly gas would have been sufficient to make the little girl unconscious, but with a gas water-heater in perfect order, and no clue to the way in which sufficient gas had been administered to the victim to kill her, Mrs. Bradley felt that her theory of murder would scarcely carry conviction.
Still, the Community’s theory of accident was even less capable of proof; in fact, in the face of the evidence, it was nonsense. And yet—Mrs. Bradley nodded very slowly—why the turned-off gas, the turned-off taps, and the water to the rim of the bath? It almost seemed as though it might have been suicide, after all, and that the dead body had been discovered earlier than the time at which Miss Bonnet invaded the bathroom. In this case, it might be that an innocent but panic-stricken person—one of the older orphans, very likely—had turned off the gas and the running water, but had failed to report the death in case she found herself involved in its awkward consequences.
But, if this were so—and it was quite a likely hypothesis—why the singular manœuvres of Miss Bonnet? Why, in particular, the obviously staged attack on the unfortunate Minnie Botolph? It was unusual, to say the least, for the centre player to be knocked out, in netball, by the goal defence.
She left the point for the moment, and came back to her newest theory. The more she examined this idea, the more improbable it seemed, however, for in such case—accidental discovery of the body of a gas-suicide— the gas would probably have rendered the invader unconscious. Apart from that, Mrs. Bradley could not believe that Annie, in particular, had guilty knowledge, or that Bessie would have lacked courage to report to Mother Ambrose the accident if she had discovered it. Of course, there was Kitty, who had been on duty that day. Kitty might have to be interviewed.
There was also to be considered the slightly mysterious Mrs. Waterhouse, but she, presumably, had been fully employed, and had had no opportunity for murder. All the infant orphans, it was true, had been taken off her hands for the afternoon, but there were a number of private school children of kindergarten age who had to be taught. She looked up Mrs. Waterhouse in Mother Francis’ report. Mrs. Waterhouse, Mother Francis deposed, had been engaged in teaching five little children from the private school until a quarter to four—that is to say, until after the body had been found. Moreover, at a quarter to four she had taken them, by invitation, and as a special treat, to see the Mother Superior, who gave them sweets, and whom they were accustomed to address as Grandma. Unless Mrs. Waterhouse had managed to sneak away from her charges during the early part of afternoon school, therefore, or had committed the murder between the end of the morning session and the beginning of the afternoon one, she seemed to be fully covered.
But Mrs. Bradley paused. Waterhouse? Waterhouse? Memory flooded back. A woman of that name had been tried, five years before, for the murder of her husband in a London tramway depot. It had been an extraordinary case. Ferdinand had defended the woman, and she had been acquitted, amid considerable female hysteria, of a crime which it seemed quite certain she had committed. Ferdinand affected a complete belief in her innocence, Mrs. Bradley remembered. Brave of her not to have changed her name, she thought.
She folded the document from which she had made her notes, compared what she had written with the information supplied by the school time-table, and then studied Mother Jude’s clearly-written list of guests. It suggested nothing until she came to the last name on the paper. “Mrs. A. P. Maslin,” she read; there followed the woman’s address, and a note, written neatly in the margin, to state that the wet towel found in the bathroom had come from her room. A sufficiently startling entry, this, Mrs. Bradley thought. She had not understood, from conversation with Mother Ambrose and Mother Jude, that an aunt of the dead girl had been staying at the guest-house at the time when the death occurred. It was this aunt, then, who had taken the body home for burial. It was she who was coming back later to hear the result of Mrs. Bradley’s enquiry. In view of the provisions of the grandfather’s will, there was something extraordinarily sinister in the fact that this aunt had been living at the guest-house at the time when the death occurred. There was a large fortune for Mary Maslin, Mrs. Bradley remembered, if two people between her and the money could be removed; one had gone already; there remained the pale, self-possessed girl who had taken her on a tour of the convent grounds at the end of afternoon school. On the other hand, why had the woman made such a fuss about the verdict? That did not look like guilt.
She picked up the list and went through it carefully again. Father Thomas’ name came first and was followed by those of Miss Philippa Carey, Mrs. George Trust, Kathleen O’Hara, professed nun, Monica Temple, the same, Dom Pius Edmonds, Mademoiselle Yvonne Damier, Mademoiselle Jacqueline Damier, Señorita Mercedes Rio, and then, as though placed there for special attention and notice, Mrs. A. P. Maslin.
Of these, the two nuns had arrived on the Wednesday following the death of the child, and from no point of view could be involved. The foreigners, too, Mrs. Bradley was inclined to leave out of serious consideration. The Benedictine monk was probably, she thought, not a murderer, and she entertained no suspicions of Father Thomas. Of Miss Philippa Carey and Mrs. George Trust she knew nothing except their names, and was inclined to the opinion that that was all she would need to know. But Mrs. Maslin, with only one life now between her step-daughter and the fortune of Timothy Doyle, was in a different category, in spite of the fact that she had not accepted the verdict, and Mrs. Bradley added her name to a short neat list which read thus:
Ulrica Doyle.
Mary Maslin.
Miss D. T. Bonnet.
Person or persons unknown.
The Community of Saint Peter.
Mrs. Waterhouse (?).
Mrs. A. P. Maslin.
Then she glanced at her watch. Her room was at the back of the house and overlooked the grounds of the convent. There was not a light to be seen. Bed-time seemed depressingly early in that house of the religious, but she knew that the lay-sisters were up before half-past five and the choir-nuns before six every morning. She turned her back to the window and looked at the narrow bed which had been assigned to her, and speculated, not without sympathy, upon its last occupant, the half-witted lay-sister Bridget, asleep by now, she supposed, in the grim-looking Orphanage opposite.
Suddenly she went to the door, opened it, and peered out into the passage. She could not have said that she had heard anything, yet some sort of signal had been transmitted to her conscious mind through one of her senses, and that, almost certainly, the aural one.
A night-light was burning inside a small glass lantern, and Mrs. Bradley, though dimly, could see to the end of the passage. She waited, but a considerable interval elapsed before she made out a body, clothed in dark, bundled garments, flattened against the wall.