“You didn’t mind picking up the mouse?”
“What’s the use of minding? My father was a mole catcher. Help him put ’em out in rows, I have, many’s the time, and wish I could help him again.”
She began to whimper and, at a nod from Mrs. Bradley, who added: “The other two,” Annie led Maggie away. Maria, aged fifteen, and Ethel, aged fourteen and three-quarters (whom Mrs. Bradley had already seen as Mother Francis’ monitor), were as innocent as the others, it appeared, of having opened the bathroom door and found the body. This left Mrs. Bradley where she had started, except that to have eliminated the orphans led one step further from suicide or accident, and one step nearer murder, she decided, since an innocent adult person would surely have summoned assistance and made the death known.
Shaking her head, she went over to the school for Mother Gregory. She knew that the Sacristan did no teaching on Tuesday mornings, so, after a glance in at the doorway of the staff-room where the nuns, if they wished, could sit and correct exercise books without having to carry these off the school premises, she wandered across to the cloister, and heard the sound of the organ. Quietly she went into church, and knelt for a moment, as she would have covered her shoes with over-slippers if she had been entering a mosque. Then she got up and moved quietly towards the organ.
The church was almost all new, although it stood on the site and was built on the foundations of the monastic church which had commanded that high headland before the Dissolution. The Community had purchased the site very cheaply from a local Catholic landowner, and much of the labour of putting up and restoring the conventual buildings had been done by the nuns themselves. It had been an heroic task, and, later, Mrs. Bradley had the story of it from the Mother Superior, who, except for Mother Simon-Zelotes, Mother Gregory and a very old lay-sister named Catherine, was the only person who remembered those days of toil and of glory.
Mrs. Bradley walked on, found the steps leading up from the chancel to the organ, mounted them and stood at the organist’s side. Mother Gregory, spectacles on nose, dim eyes, even so, strained closely towards the copy of the music, played on, regardless of, or else indifferent to, the proximity of the listener. Then she finished; turned on the stool, faced Mrs. Bradley, smiled kindly and vaguely, as old people, well-disposed, do, and extended a fine, large hand. Mrs. Bradley helped her from her seat, made way for her, and followed her out of the church.
“Who wants me now?” Mother Gregory hoarsely enquired.
“I do.” They walked through the archway which led from an angle of the cloister into the nuns’ garden. “Can you cast your mind back to yesterday week?”
“A Monday. Yes, I can. That was the day I had a double class for music, because Sister Saint Dominic took those poor children to the dentist.”
“Is that all? Does nothing else come to your mind about that day?”
“Wait. Yes, it does. That was the day when that poor little child was found drowned.”
“Now that is what I want to talk to you about. Do you remember her going out of class? According to the school time-table, you take the third form—her class—for music at the beginning of the afternoon.”
“Nobody went out of class. Why should she?”
“I cannot say. Are you certain that nobody went out?”
“The last time that anybody went out of class in one of my lessons was when a girl called Farley—Clarice Farley—was sick after eating trout. Nonsensical,” said Mother Gregory, hoarsely. “As if trout could make anyone sick!”
“And when was that, do you remember?”
“Certainly. That was in the last week of last term— just before Christmas. I remember perfectly well saying to the poor child: ‘If you can do this with trout, what do you suppose you will do with your Christmas dinner?’ ”
“And what did she suppose she would do with her Christmas dinner?” Mrs. Bradley could not help but enquire. Mother Gregory snorted, and then observed aptly:
“La variété des viandes, si elles sont en grande quantité, charge toujours l’estomach; mais s’il est foible, elle le ruine.”
Mrs. Bradley chuckled, and the nun cocked a witty eye and added: “And that is not the best use to make of the letters of Saint François de Sales, unless—” she resumed her normal expression, “you know how to take a hint.”
Mrs. Bradley was silent for a minute or two, and they strolled on, the nun majestic in the dignity of her habit, Mrs. Bradley insignificant as a sparrow, for, in deference to her surroundings, she was dressed in drab brown with no more than a touch of yellow to enliven a withered, autumnal uniformity of colour.
“How many children are there in the third form?” she enquired, to end the pause, during which she had thought furiously hard.
“About twenty, I believe,” Mother Gregory answered. Her face was benign in repose, and had the curiously self-satisfied expression which spectacles can bestow upon some countenances.
“I suppose you would have noticed if anybody had been absent from your class? Had not shown up at all, I mean, to the lesson?”
“I might have done in the ordinary way, but as I was taking the two forms together and am, as no doubt you have observed, particularly short-sighted, it is highly probable that I should not have noticed whether any particular child was there or not. Choral singing is not quite like most other lessons. One has no direct dealing with individuals. I have already discussed all this with Sister Saint Francis.”
Mrs. Bradley, no longer surprised to learn that there were a good many facts which she was not told by the religious, merely nodded.
“And now,” she said, “forgive me for pressing the point, but it may be extraordinarily important— do you think you would have noticed if two children had been absent from that double class?”
“I don’t know that I should have noticed,” Mother Gregory admitted.
“It is possible that two children might have been absent then,” Mrs. Bradley observed. She made a note. “Do you call a register, by the way?”
“I do not. There is no need. The children like music.”
Mrs. Bradley was aware of a cocked eye again. She frowned. The nun was still hinting. She accompanied her to the further end of the garden, from which there was a short cut back to the church, saw her enter by the west door, and herself went over to the private school again. She did not seek Mother Francis immediately, but seated herself in a small, light-panelled vestibule and wrote out Mother Gregory’s quotation from La Vie Parfaite. Then she knocked at Mother Francis’ door.
“For how long beforehand,” she asked, “had it been known that Mother Saint Gregory was to have a double class on that particular day?”
“For a week,” Mother Francis replied. “Sister Saint Gregory gave out the notice herself to both forms on the previous Monday, because she wanted the words of two or three songs learned in readiness for choral singing.”
“I see,” said Mrs. Bradley slowly. “I believe you told me that Ulrica Doyle is in the fourth form, and Mary Maslin in the second?”
“Yes. Mary is six months older than poor little Ursula was, but is rather a dull child, as I think I said before.”
“Then Ulrica will be able to tell me whether Ursula was in class for the music lesson, I dare say,” Mrs. Bradley observed, “since forms three and four were taken together that Monday afternoon. Have you any objection to my questioning her about it?”
“None whatever. Please do whatever you think best. Would you like me to send for her?”
“I will talk to her during the dinner hour. It will be less formal then. This news of the double lesson is important. I wish I had known it before.”
Mother Francis lowered her eyes. It seemed to Mrs. Bradley as though she were fated always to be finding fault with one or other of the Community, and their docility in accepting rebuke unnerved her. She said, when the nun looked up again: