Of all the searchers for Mary Maslin, the most feverish, apart from the Maslins themselves, who had been into Kelsorrow to interview the police and then had scoured the country-side in the fast red sports car for clues, were Mother Benedict and Miss Bonnet. Fortunately, the useful rule of obedience could be brought into play to prevent the nun from continuing the useless search, but not even the news that the police were on the track of the missing child (brought back from Kelsorrow police-station by a greatly-relieved Mr. Maslin as additional information to that supplied by Mrs. Bradley) could abate Miss Bonnet’s ardour or allay her obvious anxiety. In the end, even she gave up, and a bed was found for her in the Orphanage on the top floor where Sister Bridget, now practically recovered, lay attended, as usual, by the Infirmarian, in the large infirmary ward.
On the floor below slept the orphans, some thirty-six of them, their ages ranging from three to seventeen or eighteen. They were in five dormitories, and in each dormitory slept a nun. Mother Ambrose and Mother Jude were always on duty, and the rest of the Community slept week by week in the Orphanage dormitories by rota, with the exception of Mother Francis, who remained in charge of the private school children in their cubicled dorters on the west side of the cloister.
Before the attack with the hammer Sister Bridget had been a heavy sleeper, but her sleep had been fitful during her sojourn in the Infirmary. Since she had recovered consciousness she had thought a good deal, in her rambling non-consequential way, about her mouse, and had mentioned it once or twice to Mrs. Bradley. Mrs. Bradley had soothed her with accounts of its well-being, and had suggested to Mother Ambrose that it should be imported into the Orphanage. Mother Ambrose, however, with courtesy and finality, had declined to have the mouse brought anywhere near the house of which she was in charge.
“It will breed,” was her last and unarguable dictum. So the mouse remained in Mrs. Bradley’s room, and she fed it and grew accustomed to its company and to finding it on her pillow, in her shoe, climbing the curtains, and almost drowned in the ewer. On the Tuesday night, when Mary Maslin was missed, the general excitement even penetrated to the Infirmary, for its guardian had joined in the search with everyone else, and had come back, tired and flushed, to sleep a good deal more soundly than usual.
Sister Bridget was wakeful and excited. She was aware of vague cravings, and these crystallised themselves, at about half-past eleven, into a violent desire for the companionship of her mouse. She knew that it was of no use to call her mouse, as she had been wont to do when she slept in her bedroom at the guest-house, for, although she was extremely vague as to where she was, she did know that she had called it, and called it in vain, a good many times just lately, so she made up her mind to go and look for it.
She had managed to steal and secrete two boxes of matches since the accident. She crept from her bed, leering happily, since, childishly, her happiness was rooted in action, not contemplation, and, opening the window, put her hand out between the bars—for all the second- and third-floor windows in the Orphanage were barred—and brought in a box of matches.
Then she waddled, bare-footed, to the door, and went to look for her mouse. She began on the bottom floor —not for any reason, but because she forgot, half-way, what it was she was going to do, and the endless stairs, from the third floor down to the ground, became a kind of pilgrimage which could be undertaken without thought. There were exactly the same number of stairs in each flight, and there were two flights, with a turn, between each floor. She sat down, as a baby will, and shifted her seat from stair to stair, clutching hold of the banisters in the darkness to reassure herself, and so that she did not fall.
When she got to the bottom and found there were no more stairs, she began to whimper. Then she remembered what she had-come for, and, striking matches and dropping them, began to look for her mouse. ( 3 )
Mrs. Bradley had given up her room in the guesthouse to Mr. Maslin, for the guest-house had no double rooms. She herself had received accommodation, as before, in the Orphanage, and had gone to bed at eleven, happy in the belief that her responsibilities for the night were over, and that Mary Maslin and Ulrica Doyle were safe at Hiversand Bay.
It was with a feeling of unaccountable anxiety, therefore, that she woke at about midnight, and sat up in bed. She listened, but there was nothing to be heard. She got out of bed and walked to the window, but there was nothing to be seen. She went back to bed again, lay down and tried to go to sleep. It was useless.
She went to the door, which she had locked, and turned the key. Then she knew what had awakened her. Somewhere, lower down in the house, was a muffled crackling and roaring. Mrs. Bradley took George’s revolver from under her pillow, put on her peacock dressing-gown and a pair of stout shoes which she used when she walked on the moors, and descended the stairs to find out the cause of the noises.
Fire! The gust of hot air struck against her as she reached the first-floor landing. Fire! The whole of the ground floor appeared to be in flames. As she arrived at the top of it, the whole of the last flight of stairs collapsed almost under her feet.
She raced for the children’s dormitories, found Mother Ambrose awake, and told her, quickly but quietly, what had happened. Mother Ambrose got up at once, and—interesting reaction, Mrs. Bradley thought —clothed herself fully and then prayed before she began to make the rounds of the various dormitories and wake the children. Mrs. Bradley left her, and made a systematic tour of the two top floors of the house.
She first roused Miss Bonnet, who immediately pulled over her pyjamas the inevitable pair of trousers, shoved her arms into a blazer, and her feet into brogues. She was as calm as Mother Ambrose had been, Mrs. Bradley noted with relief.
Little Mother Jude knelt and prayed, then put on her habit—perhaps this was part of the rule, Mrs. Bradley thought—and also began to go the round of the beds. Mother Benedict and old Mother Bartholomew, the two nuns who happened to be on duty at the Orphanage that night, placed themselves under the direction of Mother Ambrose.
All this was accomplished with the greatest rapidity and quietness, but, by the time all the children had been roused, the fire had gained ground, and the bottom floor of the house was an inferno. The children were kept in the rooms whilst Mrs. Bradley and Mother Jude went to survey the chances of escape by the staircase. The position, as Mrs. Bradley had known it must be, was hopeless.
“Never mind,” said Mother Ambrose, who had lined up the orphans and put each section in charge of one of the eldest, “there’s a fire escape from the top storey. Let us all go up there.”
So up the stairs they mounted to the Infirmary, and found Sister Bridget, the cause of all the mischief, asleep in her bed. She had run away from the fire, and, by the time she was back in the Infirmary, had forgotten both the danger and her mouse.
They left her asleep for the moment, whilst Miss Bonnet took it upon herself to investigate the chances of escape down the outside ladder.
She opened the Infirmary window, which ended in a broad, perforated iron platform, the top of the fire escape, and lowered herself into the darkness. Suddenly a great tongue of flame leapt out of a window, and in a minute Miss Bonnet came back into view at the top of the ladder.
“No go,” she muttered in Mrs. Bradley’s ear.
“Smoke?”
“Flames, too. The blinking thing’s red hot on the floor below the upper dormitory. I blistered my hands on the metal. We might risk it, but these kids will never face it. What are we going to do?”
“Tell the others,” said Mrs. Bradley. “The decision, I suppose, must rest with Mother Saint Ambrose.”
“Right. You tell ’em. I’ll stay here with the kids and quell any riot,” Miss Bonnet officiously observed.