“On the afternoon when your niece was found dead, you went to the cinema with the other guests here and the younger children from the orphanage.”
“Yes, I did. And—oh, yes, I remember now. But who told you that I left early?”
“How early?” asked Mrs. Bradley, again not answering the question.
“I don’t know. It was hot. I was bored. I wanted some air. I expect, now I look back, that some instinct warned me.”
“Warned you of what?”
“Why, naturally, that something had happened to Ursula.”
“Why should it do such a thing?”
“Well, I am, I suppose, the relative—I mean, I was—most nearly in touch with her, poor child.”
“Only by marriage, though, aren’t you?”
“What I want to know is—what has been done about the death? The sisters promised me that the death should be fully investigated,” said Mrs. Maslin, leaping away from the question with very suspicious celerity.
“Why do you want it investigated?”
“Well, surely, my own niece—and such a terrible verdict!”
“You mean you think the child’s death was accidental?”
“I do not believe it was suicide.”
“No,” said Mrs. Bradley, “neither do I.”
“M-murder?” said Mrs. Maslin, a gleam—was it of hope?—in her calculating grey eyes.
“There is no evidence that one could give to the police.”
“Oh, isn’t there?” said Mrs. Maslin, becoming volcanic. “You tell me what you’ve found out, and I’ll soon get something for the police, with that and what I know!”
“I have discovered,” said Mrs. Bradley, “that with Ursula Doyle and her cousin Ulrica dead, your stepdaughter Mary would inherit the grandfather’s fortune.”
“Yes, but that’s no good,” said Mrs. Maslin vigorously, refusing to admit the implication. “It’s Ulrica we must look at. Have you examined her movements? She’s a most peculiar child. Her father was a most dreadful man—an atheist—believed in nothing.”
“And Ulrica proposes to enter a convent.”
“Yes, don’t you see?— It’s abnormal.”
“What is? To enter a convent?”
“Well, in my opinion, it is. But that’s neither here nor there, and I’m sure you know what I mean.”
“Yes, yes,” replied Mrs. Bradley, taking up her knitting again and doing some rapid decreasing which she felt she would regret later on. “You want me to trump up a case against your niece Ulrica to show that she murdered her cousin. As the law stands, no murderer may stand to gain by the results of his murder—in this case the family fortune—so the money, you hope, would automatically come to Mary.”
“I don’t think you’re being serious! You are not being serious!” said Mrs. Maslin, flushing in sudden fury. “It’s intolerable! It’s just making fun! No one would think that a dreadful tragedy had occurred— or that you were being paid to investigate it,” she added spitefully.
“On the second count he would be quite right,” said Mrs. Bradley, unperturbed, and counting stitches again. Mrs. Maslin bristled. Had she had hackles on her neck they would certainly have stood upright. Mrs. Bradley let her simmer, and then said:
“So you refuse to account for your movements on the afternoon of the crime?”
“Of course I don’t! It’s ridiculous! I walked back here to have a look at the school?”
“You walked? How long did it take you?”
“I don’t know, but all this is silly.”
“Did you speak to anybody here when you arrived?”
“No. I walked round the grounds.”
“Who opened the gate?”
“It was open.”
Mrs. Bradley reflected sadly that this was true. The gate was always left open during the day.
“Didn’t anybody see you?” she said. Mrs. Maslin suddenly looked frightened.
“It can’t possibly make any difference whether anybody did or not!” she blustered feebly, her foxy little face quite sharp with anxiety and fear. Mrs. Bradley wagged her head.
“A difficult position, most,” she observed without compunction.
chapter 14
hobbies
“The ever-flourishing and fruitful soil
Unpurchased food produced: all creatures were
His subjects, serving more for love than fear.”
george sandys: Deo Opt. Max.
« ^ »
Mother patrick was grafting fruit-trees. It was the Saturday half-holiday for the private-school children, and the day, although dull, was calm and not cold. She descended the ladder when she saw Mrs. Bradley, and waved her grafting knife.
“Go and find me two sensible children, dear,” she said. Feeling rather like a sensible child herself, Mrs. Bradley grinned amiably and walked towards the school. But no children, sensible or otherwise (and, in any case, how she was to pick out the one kind from the other, since she could neither see with Mother Patrick’s eyes nor think with her mind, she did not know), were anywhere to be seen. At last, in a corner of the vestibule, she found a child, who, challenged, said that her name was Mary Maslin. Mary Maslin was crying.
“I beg your pardon,” said Mrs. Bradley formally, “but I have been asked by Mother Patrick to find her two sensible children. Can it be that you are a sensible child? For, if so, half my task is accomplished.”
“But I don’t want to help Mother Patrick. I don’t want to help anybody,” said Mary Maslin, through sobs. Mrs. Bradley sat down beside her on a bench which covered school boot-holes, and observed that it was not a very nice day for anybody to be out of doors.
“It isn’t that,” said Mary, obviously in need of a confidante. “It’s because my mother’s come back here to take me away.”
“To take you away from school?”
“Yes. She’s going to let me have a private governess, and perhaps I’m to go to New York. But I don’t want a private governess. I want to stay here with the girls.”
“It certainly seems rather trying,” Mrs. Bradley agreed, “to be obliged to leave school in the middle of term like this.”
“All because of what happened to Ursula,” Mary observed without reticence. “It’s so stupid. As if I should do a dreadful thing like that! They know quite well I shouldn’t!”
“Of course not. But I can understand your mother’s feelings.”
“She wants Ulrica to come away, too. She wants to have her stay with me, and for us to share the governess. And I don’t want that! I don’t like Ulrica much. She’s clever and I’m not, and I’m glad I’m not. I’d hate to be clever and horrible, and I don’t want her anywhere near me! I suppose I can’t say so to mother, but Ulrica scares me. I don’t feel comfortable with her.”
“But you don’t feel comfortable at all,” Mrs. Bradley pointed out. “Look here, Mary, I think I can make you a promise. I will speak to your mother, and although I shall not be able to prevent her from taking you away from the school—in fact, it’s just as well that you should go—a change will do you good— I certainly will see to it that Ulrica doesn’t go with you.”
“Will you?” said Mary Maslin, cheering up a little. “Well, that’ll be something, anyway. Thanks a lot. Well, all right, then, I’ll go and hold bits of stick for Mother Patrick. Doesn’t she look lovely on a ladder?”
Off she went, and Mrs. Bradley, left with a new idea, walked out of the building in quest of one more child. Failing to find one, she went back herself, and meekly assisted in the work. Some of the orchard trees were large and old, and had been cut back by the gardener some weeks earlier in preparation for Mother Patrick’s talents. She first cut them back a little more, and then made a slit between the bark and the wood. Mrs. Bradley and Mary Maslin held delicately-prepared grafts and handed them up on demand, to be inserted in the slit like rather spiky trimming on a hat.