“How are you, Sister Bridget, dear child?” she said. “Come along into your room and let’s have some cocoa and biscuits.”
The motionless heap did not stir. Mrs. Bradley went inside the room again, but left the door ajar. She seated herself at the table and watched and waited. A quarter of an hour went by, and the room began to get chilly from the draught through the open doorway. Mrs. Bradley was beginning to think that she had been mistaken, and that it was not Sister Bridget outside, when the door opened very, very slowly, and the halfwitted lay-sister, with her dead-white, puffy face, upon which was a calculating, slightly leering expression, and her shuffling, lop-sided walk, came inch by inch into the room. She seemed extremely nervous, and retained her hold upon the door. Still facing Mrs. Bradley, she shut the door behind her, and stood with her back to it, waiting.
At this, Mrs. Bradley smiled—not her usual rather frightening grimace, but with a gentle kindliness which softened the brilliance of her eyes—and patted the armchair near her to encourage her visitor to be seated. Sister Bridget, leaving what she evidently felt was the friendly locality of the doorway, at last came sagging across the room with the heavy, ungainly movements of the mentally enfeebled, and seated herself in the chair. The cheerful little fire had been replenished by Annie before she went to bed, and Sister Bridget, leering with satisfaction, stretched out her hands to the warmth.
Mrs. Bradley got up, without haste, and went over to a small hanging cupboard. From it she took biscuits and some sweets. Quiet and unhurried although she was in all she was doing, the lethargic lump in the fireside chair watched her closely, following every movement with anxious, suspicious eyes.
“There now,” Mrs. Bradley said, when she had arranged the sweets and the biscuits on plates. “We will settle down together and be comfortable.”
So they ate the biscuits and sweets, and Mrs. Bradley boiled milk on the fire and made cocoa for her visitor. Then they began to talk. It did not take long to discover that, whoever might have knowledge of the events leading up to the death of Ursula Doyle, the poor half-wit knew nothing about it. Word associations, skilfully introduced into a rather one-sided conversation—for Sister Bridget ate too voraciously to have very much time for talking—produced nothing but negative results. Even a test which was given under light hypnosis (attempted and successfully concluded in about a quarter of an hour, the subject having previously become a little drowsy), failed to prove the slightest degree of guilty knowledge on Sister Bridget’s part concerning the tragedy.
Mrs. Bradley had not thought that the lay-sister would be connected with the affair, but it was with a sense of thankfulness that she concluded her tests.
Sister Bridget remained drowsy for a while, then slept for a bit. She woke with a little squeal of fear, apparently out of a bad dream, and was alarmed, for a minute or two, to find Mrs. Bradley in the room. Her lips slobbered, and she made passes as though to ward off attack. Mrs. Bradley talked to her quietly, and reassured her, and the lay-sister, leering pleasedly, suddenly gave a peculiar little call, and out of the corner of the room came a large, fat mouse. Its intelligent eyes took in everything, and at Sister Bridget’s command it swarmed from her dress to her shoulder, then sat on the corner of the mantelpiece. The half-wit gave it some biscuit which it nibbled with delicate grace; then it sat brushing its nose with a tiny paw.
“What is its name?” Mrs. Bradley asked. When she had repeated the question twice, Sister Bridget replied that he was her brother. She was silent for a time after that, but Mrs. Bradley could see that she wrestled with words, and wanted to give voice to something which was almost beyond her capacity to express. Mrs. Bradley waited patiently, her bright black eyes on the bright black eyes of the mouse. She placed a bit of biscuit near it, but Sister Bridget snatched it up and ate it herself before the mouse could have it. Mrs. Bradley handed the next bit of biscuit to the lay-sister, and, with sly chuckles, Sister Bridget fed her pet.
Suddenly, in her outlandish jargon, she began to talk. Her excitement was fearful to watch, and so were the contortions of her face and body. Mrs. Bradley found it impossible at first to grasp the essence of the outburst, but concentration plus a little imagination brought its reward. The mouse had nearly died. Something had nearly killed the mouse. The mouse had lain for dead. His little paws had been bent; he had lain on his back, his little eyes had been glazed and his tail had not moved even when Sister Bridget had slightly tweaked it. He had been dead. He had been dead. And then, like Lazarus, he had been alive. Both miracles, Sister Bridget apparently understood and firmly believed, had been worked by divine agency.
Mrs. Bradley was almost as excited as the lay-sister, although not as obviously so, and not for the same reason. She began, very carefully, to lead the feeble mind back to the occasion on which the near-death of the mouse had come about. She did not want to suggest time, but thought it could do no harm to lead towards locality. Not immediately, but in a minute or two, she induced Sister Bridget to name the place in which she had found the mouse lying unconscious on the floor. The lay-sister, full of her subject, which had affected her deeply—so deeply that she had not (extraordinarily, considering her mental condition) forgotten the occurrence—took Mrs. Bradley’s hand and shambled, mopping and mowing, towards the door. Mrs. Bradley produced a small electric torch with her free hand from the deep pocket of her skirt, and switched it on as they reached the dimly lit corridor.
Sister Bridget led the way to the bathroom immediately above that in which the dead child had been found —a curious mental aberration, Mrs. Bradley thought— and showed the exact spot on the floor where the mouse had lain unconscious. Mrs. Bradley focused the light of her torch upon the spot and took a very small box of drawing-pins from her pocket. She instructed Sister Bridget to press one into the floor on the spot where the mouse had lain. Then they went back to the bedroom and again fed the mouse, who had supplied the first direct evidence, apart from that produced by the medical examination of the body, that the gas supply in the bathrooms might be faulty or had been tampered with.
Mrs. Bradley remarked, as together they watched the mouse:
“What a pretty colour he is.”
Sister Bridget agreed, took Mrs. Bradley’s hand and fondled it, mumbling affectionately. The suggestion as to colour aroused no reaction, and the evidence remained unconfirmed. Either Sister Bridget had not noticed, or the mouse had not produced, the usual symptoms of carbon monoxide poisoning. Nevertheless, the clue, as a clue, remained.
It was shortly after this that Sister Bridget decided to go to bed. She omitted every formality attendant upon this inclination except for removing her shoes, which were very muddy. Mrs. Bradley sat still until she was sure that the lay-sister was asleep. She slept as nuns do —stretched flat upon her back in the bed, her old arms crossed on her breast, her loose-hanging mouth closed firmly. So she slept every night, and so she would sleep in death, Mrs. Bradley reflected. She turned out the gas, lighted a candle, placed it on the table and took up the documents again. A tap at the door made her turn her head. The door-handle twisted, and Mother Ambrose, still fully habited, although it was long past midnight, came noiselessly into the room.
Mrs. Bradley got up and went towards her, carrying the candle so that it lighted her face. She thought that the nun was startled, but Mother Ambrose’s voice was calm and low-pitched as she said:
“Sister Bridget is not in the Orphanage bedroom where we put her. I thought perhaps she might have wandered back here. She is greatly attached to this room.”
“She is here asleep,” Mrs. Bradley observed, as she raised the candle to let its yellow glow illumine the lower part of Sister Bridget’s face. “What is more, she has been of material help to me.”