“Grace! Oh, yes, of course.”
This time it was the Jesuit, Father Clare, who sat at the head of the table. The short Latin grace he pronounced—two words—suited his soldierly figure and stern, hard, handsome face. He was a ruthless-looking young man, with an unsavoury grubbiness about him. She sat next to him. He talked well, chiefly about cattle-rearing in the Argentine. He had lived out there as a boy, he told Mrs. Bradley; had an Irish father and a Spanish-Indian mother.
“A good mixture,” he observed, without pride, but as one who stated a fact which none could controvert. Mrs. Bradley worked the conversation through Mexico to Colorado, and from Aztec civilisation and the Grand Canyon to New York and Timothy Doyle. She learned nothing new however, and got up from table disliking the priest but with no other positive feelings.
Ferdinand offered to go for a walk with her after lunch, but Mrs. Bradley, poking him in the ribs with a bony forefinger, told him to go and rest, as he had been invited to do.
“Mother Saint Jude’s word is law in this house, dear child. She is Hospitaller here, and if arrangements are made for your comfort, comfortable you must be,” she said lightly but firmly. She pushed him towards the little nun, who, with a grinning Bessie and a blushing Annie at her heels, was about to show him to his room.
It was the first hour of convent recreation. The time was just after one. Mrs. Bradley walked over to the school to watch the games, and then went along through the pleasant garden to the cloister, and tapped at the door of the frater. But no one was there except Sister Lucia, piling up wooden platters on which a few crumbs of bread and the bones of salt fish bore witness to a Lenten repast.
“The Community are all in the Common Room, except for those that are superintending the school-children’s meal,” she said, with a wide, calm smile and a little gesture towards the refectory door, “and those will be out in ten minutes.”
Mrs. Bradley smiled in response, and thanked the lay-sister. She had found out what she wanted to know, that, at the time the school-children finished their lunch, the frater was always empty. Sister Lucia would have done clearing by then.
“Are the children ever allowed in here?” she asked suddenly.
“There is nothing to prevent them from coming in, if they wish to do so. In wet weather, when the room is empty, some of them do.”
“Would it occasion any remark if in fine weather any came in?”
“Not from me, and most likely I would be the only person to see them, apart from old Sister Catherine, who helps me most days. But she has a liking for children, and never would drive them away.”
Mrs. Bradley nodded, and in a moment in came old Sister Catherine, picked up a glass in each hand, carried the glasses to the kitchen, came back for more, and so on until she had cleared the glasses from the great bare wooden board. Every time she passed in front of the Crucifix on the wall she genuflected profoundly; so, with less ostentation but perhaps, Mrs. Bradley thought, more piety, did the calm-eyed Sister Lucia.
“How is the consumptive girl?” she asked her.
“She has returned to the home of her English husband’s parents. They cannot go back to Spain. His business is ruined. She is not well. She cannot grow well in England.”
In a very few minutes the school-children came from their refectory, and walked along the cloister to their games. Mrs. Bradley followed, and caught up Ulrica Doyle, who was closely attended by her nuns. They smiled and bowed when they saw Mrs. Bradley. She returned both courtesies, and said:
“I should like to speak to Ulrica.” Obviously against the girl’s will she led her into the frater.
“When you helped Ursula with her Latin and her Science and other lessons, was it in here you used to come?” she asked gently.
“Yes—sometimes.”
“Did you bring her in here on the day of her death?”
The girl looked terrified.
“I don’t remember! Don’t look at me like that! Truly I don’t remember! How can you ask me to remember anything that happened on that day! As though I know now what I did, or where we went, or anything!”
“I see. But you came in here sometimes?”
“What does it matter? I’ve told you we came in sometimes! We’re allowed to. There’s nothing against it in the rules!”
“I know that, Ulrica. You told me, you remember, that your cousin did not kill herself. You want to know what killed her, don’t you? And that’s what I’m trying to find out.”
“It couldn’t be anything to do with this place. There’s no gas fire here, or anything! You don’t think —it couldn’t be here!”
“No, it couldn’t be here, gas fire or not,” said Mrs. Bradley. “But you did come here sometimes, you say. That’s all I wanted to know, just that it was possible for girls to come here, with permission, of course, in their recreation time.”
“Lots of the girls come,” said Ulrica. She remained staring after Mrs. Bradley when the little old woman went out. One of the guardian nuns came up and touched her on the arm.
chapter 22
reconnaissance
“Heaven and erthe and also helle,
And all that ever in hem dwelle.”
anon.: Good Day, Sire Cristemas.
« ^ »
Mother saint jude,” said Mrs. Bradley, going back to the guest-house and waylaying the little nun as she was leaving the guest-house for the cloister, “don’t let me delay you, but I wonder whether you can remember a trifling point in connection with a child— one of the orphans—whom Miss Bonnet knocked over in a netball practice on the day that Ursula Doyle was found dead.”
“I remember that the child was injured.”
“How did you come to be brought into the thing? It isn’t part of your work to attend to injured orphans.”
“Miss Bonnet herself came and fetched me from the guest-house. I stayed with the child and with Sister Saint Ambrose until it was time for us to go to Vespers, and then Miss Bonnet kindly offered to stay with the child until it was time for us to begin the afternoon lessons.”
“But she didn’t stay with her, did she?”
“She was with her when we came back. She explained that she had been away for a time to give some extra coaching in gymnastics.”
“Yes, that seems to be true.”
“Do you believe, then—?” The nun looked surprised. Mrs. Bradley laughed.
“Mother Saint Francis told me, long ago, that Miss Bonnet was a liar,” she observed. “One more question: have you any reason to suspect that one of the gas fires in the guest-house consumed more gas than usual the week the child was found dead!”
“No, certainly not. There is only one gas fire in the guest-house, and that is the one you saw in the northern wall of the parlour, the small portable heater. You did see it, you remember?”
“Yes, of course. What other gas appliances are there, besides the geyser?”
“None at all. There are geysers in all three bathrooms.”
“Yes, I know. I have looked at them all. I will be frank with you, Mother Saint Jude. I have to find out whether it is possible that Ursula Doyle was murdered in some place other than the bathroom in which she was found.”
“And her body carried to the bathroom?”
“Yes. There is very little possibility of it, I am afraid, but, if it should turn out so, my problem, a pressing one, would be to discover the room where the murder took place.”
“There are two gas fires in the Orphanage.”
“In the Orphanage?”
Mother Jude smiled and shook her head.
“I agree with you,” she said. “It could not have been done at the Orphanage. The risk of discovery would have been too great. It would have been so much easier in the guest-house, too. Undoubtedly it was the parlour. Strange, though, that no one smelt gas.”