“She said she must have been mad.”
“It is possible that she was right, and that it was a temporary mental aberration. How valuable were the pictures?”
“Christie’s valued them at sixty thousand pounds. They would have been worth a great deal more than that if two of them had not been suspected of being contemporary copies.”
“Contemporary copies?”
“That isn’t as unusual a happening as one might think. These pictures were painted for churches, and an interesting rendering of—you must remember—a traditional happening, might well be copied half a dozen times.”
“To Miss Bonnet, I suppose, sixty thousand pounds would be a great deal of money.”
“She wouldn’t have got a quarter of that from a receiver.”
“Not if the receiver had a market? There are plenty of wealthy people, especially in America, with collectors’ mania, I believe.”
“Oh, I see… a ready market. Anyhow, it all came out, and the pictures were returned undamaged. She had cut them out of their frames with a very sharp penknife, and had hidden them under the carpet in her room.”
“Ah, yes. Where does she live?”
“In lodgings. The address is Nineteen, Hiversand Bay Road, Kelsorrow—quite near this school.”
“Was she in lodgings when she taught at her last school?”
“Yes, she was. Her landlady turned her out as soon as the pictures were found. Gave her an hour to pack and take herself off. People are terribly heartless.”
“Yes, aren’t they?” said Mrs. Bradley; but she spoke absentmindedly, her eyes on the clock on the desk.
“How do you know her landlady turned her out?” she asked, comparing her watch with the clock.
“She told me, but not the reason. That I guessed. That clock is ten minutes fast. I must put it right.”
“And I,” said Mrs. Bradley, “must be off. You did not, of course, see Miss Bonnet at any time on that Monday, the day that the child was found dead? She was engaged to teach at the convent that morning, I believe?”
“Oh, yes, I saw her. She turned up here at about a quarter to one, to ask whether, as there was a holiday, I wanted her to do extra coaching.”
“She came here, then, immediately she had finished her morning’s work at St. Peter’s School?”
“Yes, she must have done. She drives most recklessly.”
“How long did she stay?”
“I cannot tell you. She was in here less than five minutes. I thought it rather nice of her to come. There was no reason why she should.”
“She went back to St. Peter’s and gave the orphans some netball.”
“Yes, she would do a thing like that. She’s a very good-natured sort of girl, in a coarse, hearty sort of way, and tremendously keen on games.”
“But didn’t she come again in the afternoon?”
“Not to my knowledge. Besides, there was nobody here except the caretaker and his wife. It was a holiday, you see.” So Mrs. Bradley applied to the school caretaker for information as soon as she had left the headmistress.
“Miss Bonnet, mam? Turned up at a quarter to one, when all the girls had gone home, and might have stopped the time it would take her to smoke a cigarette, I should think. I couldn’t say exactly to the minute, but she certainly wasn’t here long. Left again before one o’clock, I reckon, because I was out there doing a bit of repairs to the bicycle shed when she came, and hadn’t, I’m sure, done fifteen minutes at the job before she went. Her little car stood in the drive where I could see it, and she drove off very fast, like she always do—have a smash-up one of these days, I shouldn’t wonder—and I got on doing the job till four o’clock. Chucked her cigarette-end down, I remember, on to a heap of shavings.”
“And nobody else came here?”
“Nobody else that I know of, and that’s as good as saying that nobody came.”
“The plot thickens, George,” said Mrs. Bradley, as she got into her own car again to drive back to St. Peter’s. “Can you think of any reason why Miss Bonnet should kill Ursula Doyle?”
“No, madam, but time will show. Not altogether a sympathetic character, the young lady.”
“I believe, however, that you and I are unique in that opinion. On all sides I am told how unselfish and good-hearted Miss Bonnet is.”
“At the pub, madam, in Blacklock Tor, there’s a feeling that the nuns know all about it.”
“That wouldn’t surprise me, George. They are a very reticent body, and, I’m sure, know more that they say.”
“They withhold information, madam?”
“I don’t suppose they would like that way of putting it. They don’t want a murder, George, naturally.”
“Artful, madam, some of them. Wrong-headed, too, in a way. Did you ever study the history of the Jesuits?”
“That reminds me, George,” said Mrs. Bradley. “Stop at the cinema at Hiversand Bay. I want to bounce the box-office clerk into giving me information.”
This proved a simple matter. At that time of day business in the cinema was slack. Mrs. Bradley asked the clerk whether the gloves had been picked up.
“What gloves?” the girl enquired.
“A pair of doeskin gloves, dark brown. My friend believes she must have dropped them off her lap when she rose from her seat in the cinema last Monday week. I understood she had enquired about them herself— a woman in a musquash coat over a greenish tweed costume, with a green hat to match.”
“Oh—her as walked out early? One of them as brought the little children?”
“I didn’t realise she walked out early. Ah, that accounts for it, then. She wasn’t feeling well, and came out in rather a hurry.”
“I should say, too and all, she did. Didn’t look ill, neither. Fair raced to the bottom of the road, and took Bill Gander the taxi. Does for us and the station. Walked out of here to see her go, I did. Well, no gloves haven’t been found, so far as I know.”
“Thank you so much. She must have dropped them on her way, then. They were rather expensive gloves —she’d like to find them. I wonder—I’d better ask at the police station, perhaps. Do you know when she left the cinema? I should have to tell them that, I expect, should I not?”
“Two o’clock, as near as I can remember. She hadn’t been in long, I can swear to that.”
“Oh, thank you so much. That’s helpful.” Armed with this unexpected bit of evidence that Mrs. Maslin had, as matters stood, no alibi for the time of the child’s death, she got back to the guest-house to discover that Mrs. Maslin herself had arrived the day before she was expected, and was at that moment walking histrionically up and down the guest-house dining-room, to which she had laid claim for the purpose of a private interview, waiting to see Mrs. Bradley.
Mrs. Bradley found a small, ferrety-looking woman, sharp-featured and pale, with hard grey eyes, foxy-red hair and a thickish coat of inartistic make-up, and Mrs. Maslin saw a small, black-eyed, elderly woman with a fiendish smile and an air of being able to see through to the back of Mrs. Maslin’s head.
“I hear that nothing has been done to clear up the mystery of my niece’s death,” Mrs. Maslin announced belligerently, instinct warning her that with an adversary of this calibre it would be as well to get her word in first.
“Let us sit down,” said Mrs. Bradley, taking the most comfortable chair she could see, and fishing out a mangled length of knitting from an untidy, brightly coloured bag.
Mrs. Maslin complied with this suggestion, and, as she had had no reply to her question and did not propose to repeat it, sat in what was intended for haughty silence whilst the newcomer knitted a couple of rows and carefully counted her stitches.
“And purl two,” said Mrs. Bradley, nodding slowly and agreeably. She looked up suddenly and said:
“Why didn’t you stay in the cinema all the time?” The question took Mrs. Maslin entirely by surprise.
“What cinema?” she said, hedging rather too obviously. Mrs. Bradley took up her knitting again, bent her gaze upon its intricacies, and said: