This time Mrs. Bradley did not interrupt the old lay-sister’s thoughts, and they sat in companionable silence until Sister Lucia, the assistant Infirmarian, came in to tell Mrs. Bradley that the child was awake, had breakfasted, seemed much better, and, in short, with the doctor’s permission, could be interviewed.
Mrs. Bradley walked from the parlour to the infirmary, which was on the top floor of the Orphanage. The spring morning was windy, with bright sunshine except when, at intervals, the fast-moving clouds obscured for a moment the sun. The nuns’ garden was sheltered by its hedges and high wall, and in it the early daffodils were already in flower, and there were the last of the crocuses at the base of trees, among the grass, and the trim borders were brilliant with anemones of all imaginable colours.
The fruit trees in the orchard showed traces of Mother Patrick’s labours. Bulges of clay on the crown-grafted ancient trees, and neat criss-cross of bast on the younger ones, which had been tongue-grafted with delicate, precise insertions in T-shaped incisions, proved that her leisure had been employed as pleased her best. Mrs. Bradley nodded, reviewing her own assistance in these labours.
chapter 19
culprit
“I leave the plain, I climb the height;
No branchy thicket shelter yields;
But blessed forms in whistling storms
Fly o’er waste fens and windy fields.”
alfred, lord tennyson: Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington.
« ^ »
The infirmary, a large, cheerful room with a view seawards which was partly blocked by the church, was, when Mrs. Bradley arrived, in the charge of Mother Mary-Joseph, who sat in a corner and, as it was Sunday, sedulously read from a book of religious character; what it was Mrs. Bradley did not know. She was seated out of earshot of any conversation which might be held between Mrs. Bradley and the child, and she kept this distance away all the time that Mrs. Bradley was there.
Mary looked pale, more from fear of getting into trouble than from the consequences of the fall, Mrs. Bradley thought. She greeted her cheerfully, whereupon the child burst into tears. This reaction, in one so obviously phlegmatic, provoked Mrs. Bradley’s interest.
“Come, now,” she said, with brisk kindness. “That’s enough of that. You and I must not waste each other’s time. What were you up to yesterday?”
“I thought I had a clue.”
“What about?”
“About Ursula.”
“Tell me.”
“Ulrica always thought that Ursula was murdered. It frightened me at first, but then I saw that Ulrica was also horribly frightened, and I asked her why, and she said that she supposed she would be the next one, and she didn’t want to die with her sins upon her. She isn’t a Catholic yet, you know. She was sure she was going to be murdered.”
“Rubbish. Accidents will happen,” said Mrs. Bradley.
“Yes, I know. But this was no accident. I found that out last night. Any more than poor Sister Bridget was an accident.”
“Sister Bridget,” said Mrs. Bradley, who knew that the children had heard nothing definite beyond what the first spate of gossip had washed down to the schoolgirls at the very beginning of the affair, “had a nasty experience, and is lucky to be on the way to recovering from it. She is not quite responsible for her actions, as I think we all know, and things may happen to her which would not happen to others who are better able to take care of themselves.”
“But they said she was hit on the head,” said Mary, rightly disregarding this conventional and insincere explanation.
“Of course she was,” Mrs. Bradley vigorously answered. “If people rush about the place at night as though they are burglars, naturally they get hit on the head if the people in charge have anything to hit them with.”
“No one confessed to hitting her, though,” said Mary, with irritating logic.
“Naturally not, since she nearly died of the blow,” said Mrs. Bradley tartly.
“But—”
Mrs. Bradley, who had had considerable experience of adolescents who said: “But,” decided to change the subject.
“You haven’t told me your clue yet,” she remarked.
“Oh, that! Well, I soon realised that things were more dangerous for Ulrica than for me, and, when I thought that, I cheered up quite a lot, because, you see, if it was the money, I can’t get any until Ulrica is dead— I don’t mean that to sound horrid; it’s just common sense. So I decided to do a bit of snooping.”
“Do a—” said Mrs. Bradley, the accusing spectacle of Mother Mary-Joseph, teacher of English, there in the corner of the infirmary and immediately before her eyes.
“Oh, you know—snooping. Like detectives do. I thought perhaps the others had missed something that I might discover, and I thought how lovely that would be.”
“Yes?”
“Oh, yes. Well, we’re never allowed in the guesthouse unless one of the guests invites us, so I made up my mind—I say, you won’t have to tell Mother Francis this?—to get into the guest-house somehow and have a look at that bathroom—only—I didn’t know, you see, which bathroom it was. That had to be found out first.”
“And what were your plans for getting into the guest-house?”
“Well, Ursula managed it, didn’t she? And she never broke any rules, as far as anyone knew. I thought there must be an easy way in, and it only needed finding.”
“Now this,” said Mrs. Bradley, “is what I’ve felt all along was the very nub of the matter. She never broke any rules, yet she broke one of the strictest rules of all. I understand from the nuns that it is only the most hardened offenders who ever dream of breaking into the guest-house.”
“The last girl who did it was expelled.”
“Were you willing to risk expulsion?”
“Oh, I shouldn’t have minded in a way, as soon as the row was over. Of course, I wouldn’t in the ordinary way want to leave the convent, but mother has been such a beast about taking me away in any case, that it didn’t seem to matter in quite the same way. And whether I am expelled or not, I am going to be taken straight out to my grandfather in New York.”
“Why is that?”
“Mother thinks he would like me better than Ursula or Ulrica, if he saw me, because Ursula was a bit mousy, and Ulrica really is rather fascinating, and, of course, most awfully clever, but I’m decidedly stupid, and as grandfather seems a bit stupid, too, mother—she isn’t my mother really, of course, she’s only my step, and I’m not, as a matter of fact, too terribly keen—”
“And as grandfather also seems a bit stupid,” said Mrs. Bradley, gently.
“Oh, yes. Mother thought he might like me a good deal better than either of them, and give me the money after all. It seems beastly to talk like this, but you do want to know it all, don’t you?”
“One moment,” said Mrs. Bradley. She wrote in her little notebook, the pencil that described her hieroglyphic shorthand flicking over the pages like a whip of silver fire.
“When did you know that your parents proposed to take you to New York to visit your grandfather!“she enquired.
“Oh, days! It was one of the first things mother mentioned when she got here.”
“And how many people have you told?”
“Oh, dozens. Simply everybody, by now.”
“And what made you sick on Friday?”
“I don’t really know.”
“Did you eat anything out of the ordinary?”
“No, but I don’t like fat, and I had an awful lot on my plate at dinner, and, of course, we have to eat everything on the plate. I rather expect it was that.”
“Why can’t you see your grandfather during the summer vacation?”