Sister Badgery had come, and Mrs Lippmann was giving them lunch in the breakfast room.
Badgery said, when she could get a word past her chicken, ‘Quite like old times, isn’t it? Except for Her.’ She swallowed. ‘And Flora Manhood.’
For some reason the others were unwilling to chat. ‘What’s become of little Flora?’ It would have been unnatural not to inquire.
Sister de Santis professed ignorance. Mrs Lippmann made no attempt to answer; she had never looked so livery: some Jewesses are near as anything black.
Sister Badgery said, ‘Perhaps she’s decided he’s Mr Right after all. Well, good luck to her!’ She sighed, laughed, and popped another forkful of chicken into her mouth, all at the same time. (She would pay for it: creamy foreign sauce, smelling, she would not have admitted to her thought, of some women’s stale underwear.)
‘Will you attend the auction?’ Sister Badgery asked; they were so down in the mouth she only wanted to cheer them up.
Neither Sister de Santis nor Mrs Lippmann could whip up enthusiasm for auctions.
Sister Badgery might look in. ‘Buy myself a keepsake. If everything isn’t beyond my means — as it well might be.’ She showed her gums, and a morsel of chicken fell back on her plate. ‘Perhaps find a present to take my friend Sister Huxtable.’
‘Sister Who?’ Mrs Lippmann asked.
‘Winifred Huxtable of Auckland, New Zealand. Don’t you remember — she and I — went with a group — year before last — to Lord Howe Island?’
Her audience seemed peculiarly apathetic. Sister Badgery tilted her head, dropped one shoulder, and began mopping up her sauce with a gobbet of bread. They would both know she knew what you don’t do; but weren’t we among friends?
‘Surely you must remember, Sister?’ A corner of Sister Badgery’s mouth failed to contain a drop of that grey, stale-smelling sauce. ‘Win Huxtable — a large girl with a flushed complexion. Well, she’s a woman now. And more flushed, if anything. Didn’t we all do obstets together?’
Sister de Santis had to confess she couldn’t remember doing obstets with the flushed Winifred Huxtable.
‘There are those who say— malicious people,’ Sister Badgery crooked a finger to flick a speck of sauce off her front, ‘and a great many people are malicious, aren’t they? they say that Win Huxtable in her middle age is red as a beetroot. If she is, nothing can be done about it. I know. She and I never refer to her affliction. Those same malicious, hurtful people imply it’s caused by alcohol. It isn’t. I could assure them. Not that Win doesn’t enjoy her brandy dry — socially. She never goes too far, though.’
Sister Badgery might have enjoyed another mopping of sauce if Mrs Lippmann had not begun clearing the plates; there was nothing you could do about that either, short of forgetting yourself.
‘Sister Huxtable and I have planned a coach tour of New Zealand — both islands,’ she informed them after controlling her wind: that sauce again.
Sister de Santis held up her throat and smiled encouragingly at the wall.
Mary de Santis is putting on weight. ‘It’s thanks to Mrs Hunter — her gift,’ Sister Badgery said rather loudly. ‘The five hundred dollars.’ She crooked her finger above the still unused pudding spoon. ‘Do you — I ask you in confidence, Sister — do you think it all above board? I would have expected more of Mrs Hunter, such a generous woman — and lovely lady. What I mean to say is, she mightn’t have had her own way. Others may have dictated, so to speak.’
Sister de Santis might have been listening; she might not.
‘Don’t think I’m not grateful,’ Sister Badgery insisted. ‘It’s thanks to Mrs Hunter that I’m doing this little tour of New Zealand with Win Huxtable. Only if the legacy had been slightly larger — Win has had quite a windfall — we might have got as far as Japan.’
The silence was awful in the breakfast room where they still had to finish what Mrs Hunter had always, and now Sister Badgery herself, referred to as ‘luncheon’.
Sister Badgery suddenly snorted down her nose. ‘It looks as if I have a lust for travel!’ The confession made her giggle. ‘You will understand that, Mrs Lippmann.’ She turned to the housekeeper who had brought this ‘tort’.
‘Oh, I have travelled. But have no lust.’
The Germans are a heavy lot.
As the housekeeper dished up the pudding, Sister Badgery noticed a bandage.
‘Damaged yourself, have you, dear?’
‘It is nothing. I have cut my finger. It is my new little vegetable knife, which is sharper than I have thought.’
Sister Badgery sucked her teeth. ‘There’s nothing like a superficial cut for incapacitating a person.’ She had done her duty, and might be allowed to return to graver issues. ‘This will,’ she said, ‘if you won’t think I’m harping on it. Mr Wyburd, though a good soul, was always too soft. Sir Basil Hunter is the perfect gentleman — you can tell. I know nothing about actors, but can recognize a gentleman.’ Something forced Sister Badgery to pause. ‘It’s Princess Dorothy — I feel — would not be above manipulating.’
Sister de Santis looked down at her plate; Mrs Lippmann was too far off: perhaps on her travels.
‘And the sapphire. Did they ever find it?’
‘Not as far as I know,’ Sister de Santis replied. ‘It may come to light when the furniture is gone and the carpets have been taken up.’
‘It may. But I think I know it won’t.’
‘Possibly.’
‘I have my—intuitions.’ Sister Badgery was proud of that. ‘In fact, if I wasn’t a nurse — but I wouldn’t give up nursing, not for worlds — I often think I might offer my services to the police. I am always right.’ Laughter exposed almost the whole of the pale gums before the mouth closed abruptly; she might have overdone it, owning to psychic powers in front of a colleague.
‘Will you take a little trip yourself, Sister?’
‘Oh, no! I couldn’t! After sitting here all these months.’ Thought of her recent inactivity seemed to agitate Sister de Santis; she shifted heavily in her chair.
Though she wasn’t one to criticize, Sister Badgery had always considered de Santis rather on the stout side. At the same time she had admired her colleague for a certain stateliness of manner. Today and out of uniform, she had shed the stateliness. Tactful is tactful, but in the course of luncheon, de Santis had not expressed a single opinion, not even with her face. You could not say she looked unhappy, not like the Jewess. Sister de Santis was more sort of calm: she had the smooth, washed look of some of the more simple-minded nuns.
Sister de Santis raised her voice; the tablecloth in front of her subsided. ‘As a matter of fact I’ve accepted a case, f m expected tomorrow. It was the obvious thing — since the auctioneers are taking over.’
‘We have our professional duty of course.’ Sister Badgery was very firm on that score. ‘Is it a difficult case, Sister?’
‘A young girl paralysed in both legs.’
Sister Badgery shook her head, sympathy straying between her vision of this young girl and the slice of Torte the housekeeper had put before her. ‘Win Huxtable had a private case — a boy in an iron lung; it got her down in the end.’ By which time Sister Badgery considered she might decently help herself to cream.
‘Cream, Mrs Lippmann? I must say the tort looks scrumptious. Your puddings were always lovely.’
Neither Mrs Lippmann nor Sister de Santis was prepared to touch the Torte.
Sister de Santis might have removed herself already. Though she was faintly smiling, the smile was an impersonal one, stranded on her lips as she withdrew behind her eyes, amongst her thoughts.