andrew marvelclass="underline" The Coronet.
« ^ »
Annie was cleaning taps. She smeared on the polish very evenly, thinly and carefully, and then rubbed with such energy and goodwill that the metal seemed to burst into sunshine underneath her hand. Mrs. Bradley watched her, and the girl, unconscious of her presence, worked on, her breathing a little laboured, her cheeks brightly flushed, and a stray quiff of hair hanging loose from her neat mob cap.
“Good work, Annie,” said Mrs. Bradley pleasantly, as the girl gave up and began to screw the cap on the tin of polish. Annie, accustomed to the unheralded comings and silent going of nuns, looked round and smiled.
“Good morning, madam. Did you sleep well at the guest-house?”
“Not at the guest-house; here, in the Orphanage,” Mrs. Bradley replied, surprised that Bessie had not passed on the fact of her presence.
“Really, madam?”
“Yes. Sister Bridget decided to come home to roost. Annie, did you know she had a tame mouse?”
“Certainly, madam. Last Thursday week it nearly died, or something. She was that excited we could hardly get anything out of her. Not as it’s easy, any time, to quite make out all she says.”
“I can’t think why nobody told me about this mouse. I want to go across and have a look at the bathroom. Will you ask Kitty to come with me? And can you come as well?”
“I’ll just speak to Mother Saint Ambrose a minute, then, madam.”
She put away her cleaning things, washed her hands, and went off in search of the nun. Mrs. Bradley, who had wandered into the kitchen from the dining-room, wandered back again. The Orphanage was rather sternly be-texted, and religious pictures simpered from most of its walls, but the walls were also cheerful with yellow paint, and there were branches of hazel in vases. Mother Ambrose came in less than three minutes, and readily gave permission for Annie and Kitty to go with Mrs. Bradley to the guest-house.
The drawing-pin was still in position, and, watched by the two girls, Mrs. Bradley knelt down and scrutinised it. Kitty involuntarily giggled, but was nudged into silence by Annie. Near the drawing-pin, which marked the spot on which, according to Sister Bridget, the unconscious mouse had been found, the gas pipe connected to the geyser came up through a hole in the floor. Mrs. Bradley poked an inquisitive, long, yellow finger into the hole in the boards, but could touch nothing.
She sat back on her heels, turned her head and spoke to the girls over her shoulder.
“If I become unconscious, drag me away and open the window and door, children,” she said, with a ghastly cackle. “Shut both, and then I shall begin.”
Annie closed the window, Kitty the door. Mrs. Bradley lay full length, her face above the hole. After a full three minutes she got up.
“Do you feel all right, madam?” asked Annie. Mrs. Bradley blew her nose and nodded.
“Unfortunately, quite all right,” she said. “Kitty, why didn’t you tell anybody that you had found someone lying unconscious in the bath?”
“When, madam?” Kitty’s prominent eyes opened wide. “Sure, you wouldn’t be meaning that poor little girl?”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“Well, madam, I thought it was in the bathroom underneath this one she was found. Anyways, Miss Bonnet found her, not me. I never was after finding her. Indeed, I know nothing about it, beyond what I’m hearing from Annie.”
“But surely you should have been on duty here?”
“Sure and indeed I should have been, only, do you see, I was doing a Little Penance for coughing in Silence Time. ’Tis by way of being a privilege to work in the guest-house. We lose it if we are offensive.”
“I see,” said Mrs. Bradley. “What were you doing instead?”
“Cleaning pigs.”
“Is that a penance?”
“Not to me; I like it. But to most here it is.”
“Kitty pulled it out of the bag, madam, and Mother Saint Ambrose couldn’t change it, you see,” Annie politely explained. “Cleaning pigs, cleaning water closets, weeding gravel, killing slugs, making breadcrumbs, gutting fish, is all Little Penances, and you fish for one out of the bag if you’ve done something wrong, whether Mother Saint Ambrose knows or not; we’re on our honour, us older ones, we are.”
“What happens to all those jobs when nobody has qualified for a Little Penance?” Mrs. Bradley enquired. The two girls looked at one another.
“Sometimes some of us do one to gain merit, but that don’t happen very often,” said Annie, pensively. “There’s Bessie, for one. Always in trouble, she is. And swapped her Little Penance, once, for a Grand Penance Maggie got given her, because she liked it better.”
“What was the Grand Penance, then?”
“Not to see Reverend Mother Superior for a fortnight.”
“What did she change it for?”
“Killing slugs. You see, you can’t be found out in that, because Reverend Mother Superior don’t know who’s allowed to see her and who isn’t, and as long as you can show a fair number of slugs, nobody watches while you find them. So Bessie pulled it off, only Maggie let it out by mistake.”
“What happened then?” asked Mrs. Bradley, hoping to get more light on the character of Mother Ambrose.
“Nothing happened,” said Annie, inconclusively. “Not as we know of, anyway. But Maggie said she would never do it again.”
“I think I’d like to see Maggie. I wonder, Kitty, whether you could go back now and send her over?”
Maggie proved to be fat and fair, and, looking at her, Mrs. Bradley felt that it was incredible that she should have achieved a Grand Penance. So intrigued was she that she asked, point-blank, for an explanation,
“Oh, madam—” said Maggie. She twisted up her apron, drew in her breath with a sudden, sharp hiss, and then laughed until Mrs. Bradley was afraid she would suffocate.
“Oh, madam—” said Maggie again, with another hysterical burst. Mrs. Bradley was beginning to regret that she had embarked upon the subject when Maggie, gathering herself together, said, with a rush, so that laughter should not eclipse speech: “I told a lie, madam! I really had to. It was all through the milkman, madam. He left a rose in a carton of cream—for Kitty, we thought, only it was really for me, only neither of us didn’t like to tell Mother Saint Ambrose, it made us feel so awkward—so I told Mother Saint Ambrose we didn’t know who it was meant for, and there was poetry on it and everything, only we hadn’t seen it. It was tied round the carton under the rose, and I suppose Mother Saint Ambrose must have read it and found my name on it, and she gave me a Grand Penance for lying—only, you see, it wasn’t really a lie —and made me do my hair back tighter.”
“Well, that’s very interesting, Maggie. By the way, why didn’t you call somebody to help you when you went into the other bathroom and found the little girl dead?”
“I never went in there, madam. I never do.” Maggie looked puzzled, not scared.
“Do you mean that you never do the work in that bathroom?”
“No, madam, not in that bathroom. It’s Kitty’s and Annie’s work. All of us have our own work, though we don’t always have our own partners.”
“Have you never been inside it before?”
“Yes, madam, but only when fetched. I came into this bathroom, madam, when Sister Bridget’s mouse was found. I picked it up, madam, as nobody else fancied touching it.”
“Didn’t Sister Bridget touch it?”
“No. She spoke very blaspheemious, although nobody thought she could help it. It was just the devil taking advantage of her, being as she’s simple, madam.”
“But she didn’t pick up the mouse?”
“No, madam. Mother Saint Ambrose ordered Bessie to, but Bessie said she couldn’t, not for nobody, so Mother Saint Ambrose said: ‘Fetch Kitty.’ So Bessie said (only she muttered it, so she told me) to the effect that ‘Maggie’s the one for your money! She’s our little old slug-catcher!’ So she fetched me along, against order, but acting innocent, like she do.”