“But the police knew jolly well that whoever had bought the thing had bought it cheap, and knew it to be stolen! He’d have been in an awkward fix if they’d ever traced it to him.”
“Well, they didn’t, and there you are.”
“That’s what I say. You can’t rattle him. If we do go across, and I think it’s a pretty good plan, all things considered, you leave the talking to me. Even if he divided his money between them there’d be a nice lump for Mary. He’s done pretty well, the old coper!”
chapter 4
athlete
“My unwashed Muse pollutes not things divine.”
thomas carew: To my worthy friend, Master George Sandys, on his translation of the Psalms.
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Mrs. bradley slept well, on a bed neither hard nor soft, in a room where the window would not open. The sheets were rough and smelt of lavender, and the floor was linoleum-covered except for a strip of what seemed to be discarded stair-carpet which had been placed by the side of the bedstead.
A little maid woke her in the morning and offered her tea and toast.
“A nice morning,” she remarked, as she set down the tray on a table near the head of the bed. She arranged Mrs. Bradley against pillows and carefully shut the door, which all night long had been left wide open.
“Did you leave the door gaping all night?” she enquired, returning to the bedside. She cut the toast into fingers, and brought the tray to the bed. “Can you balance it? There! That’s clever.”
Mrs. Bradley cackled.
“Air, child,” she said. “The window doesn’t open.”
“And why should it? Night air is no manner of good to anyone. Would you not fear to be murdered in your bed? I could never sleep with the door gaping, come what would! I’d sooner be smothered, I know.”
“Smothered?” said Mrs. Bradley. “Has anybody ever been murdered on these premises?”
“Lord, no, I hope not! Oh, what a dreadful idea!”
“It was yours,” said Mrs. Bradley, sipping tea.
“Oh, no! I’m sure, then, it wasn’t. But you can’t help thinking things, with all you see and hear.”
“You mean the convent?”
“Ah, that I do.” She sat down, folded her hands in a sociable manner and leaned forward, prepared to gossip. “Such goings-on, I can’t tell you. Some poor little maid poisoned in her bath, so they do say.”
“When? Lately?”
“Come a week. Happened last Monday afternoon, the poor little dear.”
“I suppose there had to be an inquest?”
“That’s the scandal of it.”
“What were the findings?”
“Soocide! A little dear of that age! As if she’d think of such a wicked thing! Of course, the coroner couldn’t speak against the convent.”
“Oh? I didn’t understand. But how do they know she was poisoned?”
“It’s common talk in the village. One of the schoolchildren brought it home to her dad, and he’s tooken her away and put her to the High School over to Kelsorrow. And I reckon other parents ’ull do the same. I know I would if I had a little dear there.”
“People nearly always exaggerate when they write or talk about convents. I don’t think we have the right to assume what has not been proved,” said Mrs. Bradley.
“Can’t get over Gunpowder Plot, though, can ’ee?” This reference to a deplorable historic event, the second she had heard since first she had taken up the case, roused Mrs. Bradley to retort,
“But what about 1829?”
“I dunno,” said the little maid cautiously, treating this date with respect. “But the name of the people is Waller, and they live in one of they little bungalows just this side of Hiversand Bay, and for why should they take their child away and send her to a school all that way off, if there wasn’t sommat nasty going on? More tea? I’ll pour it. Happen you might have an accident, awkward like, if you pours it out settin’ up in bed.” She poured out the tea with motherly good nature and then went to the window and looked out.
“Some of they lads over Brinchcommon way enjoyed theirself Saturday night when they had a couple of beers or so inside ’em,” she volunteered, turning her head.
“You mean they made a demonstration?”
“Ah, I should just say they did. Oh, it were a mess up there at the convent, too; and rude words writ on the gate, and dirt put into the letter-boxes, and songs sung and all of them yowling like wolves. Would a-frit me into a fit if I’d been there. We could hear it, too, from this house, and that’s a mile away, and see the sky rockets, nearly a hundred of ’em, all of ’em yowling like wolves,” pursued the little maid, composing the hooligans and the sky-rockets into an Elizabethan medley of fire and terror. “But then, come yesterday early morning, all the mess was cleared up, and you wouldn’t have known, bar a couple of windows broken, that anybody went there that night. Wonderful tidy the nuns are, and Tom Shillen asleep in his bed, and nobody able to wake him to put on his helmet and go and owst they lads. Be you going to eat that toast? Another cup? I’ll take it all off of you, then, and you can have a nice half-hour before you needs to get up. Breakfast don’t be before nine.”
Hiversand Bay, Mrs. Bradley discovered, exploring by car a little later, was reached by a secondary road which branched off north and a point by east across the moors and avoided the convent which was left away to the west. The small seaside resort was still in process of development, and most of the houses and bungalows not directly facing the sea were not finished or else still for sale. The shops, small, single-fronted lock-ups, were new, for the most part, too, and enquiry at the first of them, a butcher’s, produced the exact address of the Wallers.
Mrs. Waller was at home, and the little maid who opened the door left Mrs. Bradley on the front doorstep whilst she went in search of her mistress. In a minute both came to the door.
“Says she would be glad of a word,” Mrs. Bradley heard, as they came from the kitchen towards her. Then the little maid retreated, and Mrs. Bradley was left face to face with the lady of the house. Mrs. Waller was a large, benevolent woman in horn-rimmed glasses which, at the moment, were clouded by kitchen steam. She removed them, revealing kindly, protruding eyes.
“I can’t think who you are, but come in, do,” she said with brisk hospitality. “Everybody comes to see us now we live near the sea. You’ll have to excuse the house. You know what it is, Monday mornings.”
“I ought to tell you,” said Mrs. Bradley, “that I am not proposing to claim acquaintance with you, Mrs. Waller. In fact I can make no possible claim at all, either on your time or your hospitality.”
“Oh, I don’t want to buy anything,” said Mrs. Waller, looking disappointed.
“No, I have nothing to sell. I had hoped to get some information from you, that is all.”
“Oh—you mean about taking Ellie away from the convent?”
“It can’t be as easy as this,” thought Mrs. Bradley.
But it was. Mrs. Waller had had the reporters and she had loved them. Even when she knew that Mrs. Bradley did not write for the papers she was still interested in her visit, and took her into the drawing room and produced, with the little maid’s help, various “elevenses,” including a wine cocktail ready mixed and purchased in bottle, biscuits, chocolates, sherry, small home-made cakes and a bottle of ginger wine.
“Of course, I don’t say I welcome it, poor child, but if I’ve said to Stanley once that a convent wasn’t the place for Ellie, I’ve said so ninety-nine times. You see it isn’t though we’re Catholics, and she’ll learn all the deportment, and all the French, too, that she’s ever likely to need, at Kelsorrow High School. I said, too, that she needs her games, does Ellie, and although the convent grounds are very lovely, it’s hardly like hockey and cricket.”