St. Peter's Finger

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.”

“And so, when you heard of that poor child’s death, you removed your daughter from the school?”

“Well, what do you think? She came home full of it. ‘Oh, mother,’ she said, ‘whatever do you think? A girl called Doyle—not Ulrica Doyle, but her cousin, Ursula Doyle—has committed suicide at school, and Ulrica, who’s quite old—in the Fourth Form—had hysterics and had to be taken to the sick-room by Mother Francis.’ It was just like one of those horrid things in the papers. Well, of course, this has been in the papers. I gave five or six interviews myself. ‘You ought to be on the films, mother,’ Ellie said.”

“Are you sure that Ellie mentioned suicide on the very day it happened?“ asked Mrs. Bradley.

“That was the story that all the girls had got hold of. Strange it should turn out right. I always say to Stanley that children know more than we think. According to Ellie, this girl was never in trouble at school, and last week she had done something wrong—most unusual for her—and the nuns, or some of them, were angry. She was such a sensitive little thing, it seems—no parents, and her old grandfather in America with all that money to leave—it really does seem most sad. So Stanley withdrew all his arguments, and the High School had a place because a girl went back to India— a little Indian girl—always wore the native dress, so pretty, isn’t it, and graceful?—so down went Ellie, on their books, and this morning off she goes on her bicycle to Kelsorrow, just as pleased as Punch. ‘I’m sick of that old convent, mother,’ she said. ‘The nuns are ever so sweet, but we only have Miss Bonnet four half-days a week, and the Kelsorrow girls get her all the rest of the time; and another physical training mistress full time as well.’ Miss Bonnet takes the physical training, you know. Stanley doesn’t agree with so much of it for girls, but, as for me, I love it. I go to Kelsorrow every week myself, for the League of Health and Beauty. It keeps me cheerful, and Ellie and I do all our practice together. ‘Oh, mother!’ she said, the first time she saw me in shorts. But now she’s got quite used to it.”

“I’m interested to hear that the girls themselves concluded that Ursula Doyle committed suicide. Were the punishments at the convent very severe?” Mrs. Bradley said, as Mrs. Waller sat back and sipped her drink.

“Well, I shouldn’t call them anything at all, and Ellie always said they made her hoot. Of course, she’s very non-suggestible. I mean, it’s the atmosphere does it. I mean, actually, I believe, they just lose a badge which all the good girls are entitled to wear, but it’s the atmosphere. And not being allowed to be in the processions, I believe, that’s another thing; and not being asked in to sing and recite to the nuns while they do their mending. ‘Good Lord, I shouldn’t want to,’ said Ellie’s little cousin when she came down here for Christmas, but Ellie, who, mind you, as I said, is simply most non-suggestible, said, ‘Oh, yes, you would want to. They make you want to want to, whether you want to or not.’ And, of course, they do creep about, and that always gets on children’s nerves, I think. I’ve always said to Ellie, ‘Make a noise. When you’re making a noise I know what’s happening. If you’re quiet you’re probably in mischief.’ And I never found myself far wrong.”

There seemed nothing more to glean, but Mrs. Bradley felt that to take too early a departure would be unkind. When she did get away the car crawled slowly along the coast road and discovered three-quarters of a mile of promenade, untidy at the ends, and a café or two, closed at that season, for Easter was some weeks off and there was scarcely a visitor in the town. Mrs. Bradley did not care for Hiversand Bay, and directed George to drive on. They inspected Kelsorrow, a respectable market-town about a dozen miles farther east, and then Mrs. Bradley announced her intention of turning about and presenting herself at the convent.

Six miles on the road George stopped the car in the middle of open moorland because Mrs. Bradley thought that they would be too early, and sat on a boulder and smoked whilst his employer strolled off to take the air and admire the rolling scenery. Whilst both were thus occupied, a small car, driven fast, shot by, two wheels on the road and two on the heather, and suddenly pulled up. The driver, a stocky young woman of medium height dressed in a tweed three-piece suit and a little suède hat, got out, slammed the door, and came briskly up to George, who rose and saluted.

“In trouble?” the young woman asked, in a deepish, self-confident voice.

“No, thank you, miss.” He looked at her with respectful interest, and continued, “Just killing time, because my employer thought she might be a bit too early at the convent.”

“The convent? Oh, they’ve finished lunch, if that’s what you’re thinking of. I’ve just had mine there, so I know. I believe they’re full up, though, at the guest-house; or has your employer booked her room?”

“I couldn’t say, miss. We’re lodging, just at present, in the village.”

Mrs. Bradley came up to them.

“I hope you’ve booked your room,” said the young woman, extending a hand. “Friends of the nuns are friends of mine. I think they’re simply splendid at that convent. Marvellous people! So simple and sweet, I think. Of course, I happen to get on rather well with them, working, as I do, for half-pay.” She laughed loudly, stridently and unconvincingly.

“Interesting,” said Mrs. Bradley. “A strange life, don’t you think, though, that of a nun?”

“Shouldn’t care for it myself. But there’s no doubt some are called to it.”

“I met a man yesterday who thought the life iniquitous.”

“Men will think anything. Thank goodness I’ve no use for them.”

“Still, a man,” said Mrs. Bradley reasonably, “would have seen that a geyser was properly installed.”

“Geyser? What do you mean? Of course it was properly installed! They had the Gas Company down to look at it the very same day, as soon as they had got the child out of the bath.”

“No flue, then, I imagine.”

“But there was a flue. Look here, are you a reporter?”

“No, no. The case was in the papers and I cannot accept the suicide theory, that’s all. I suppose you were at the convent when it happened?”

“Well, I ought not to have been, but I was. Look here, I don’t in the least know who you are, but I suppose, if you’re not a reporter, it’s all right, and you’re bound to hear gossip if you’re staying in the village. We—I mean the convent—have had a lot of trouble. There are some perfectly bloody people living round about here. After all, a child who intends to commit suicide will do it wherever she is. The fact that this little idiot, poor wretch, was at a convent, makes no earthly difference.”

“So you were actually on the premises when it happened?”

“Kelsorrow School, where I do the P.T., had a day’s holiday. I hadn’t enough money to do anything decent, so I thought I might as well put in the time at the convent. That’s how it was, and a jolly good thing it was so, too, in a way.”

“What do you mean, I wonder?”

“Artificial respiration. No stone unturned. Worked over the child until the sweat streamed off me. Nobody could have done a better job. No go. Child quite finished. Been dead, the doctor said, at least three quarters of an hour—probably more—before we found her. That was accidental, too. I’d been playing netball with the orphans, and felt pretty sticky and grubby, so I asked Mother Jude for a bath. The kid was in it, of course, and a good old smell of gas. No window open. I flung open the window and we picked up the kid and took her into the nearest bedroom and there I got to work on her at once, but it wasn’t a bit of good. Nice child, too, in her way—which wasn’t mine.”

“Not good at her lessons?”

“Lord knows. Probably. No good at games or swimming. Timid as a rabbit. Just the type for suicide, of course. These quiet, mousy kids are always the ones. You never know what they’re thinking, then off they go and do it, and most people feel surprised. Not me, though. I’ve seen so much of it. Germany, now. Kids commit suicide there if they can’t get through their exams. I knew two boys—most brilliant kids—hanged themselves when the results came out. Too terrible.”

She produced a packet of cigarettes which looked as though it had been sat on, put Mrs. Bradley aside and got into Mrs. Bradley’s car, where she spread herself over the seat—“too windy to smoke in the open,” she explained—lit the cigarette by striking a match on her knee, waved the match carelessly to and fro and tossed it, still burning, on to the heather. George walked over and stamped on it. The young woman said, as an afterthought, speaking with the cigarette in her mouth:

“Hope you don’t mind my getting into your car?”

“It is a pleasure to have you,” Mrs. Bradley replied, getting in beside her and causing her to move up. “Tell me a little more exactly what you made of Ursula Doyle.”

“Oh, I don’t know. Do you know any Catholic kids? Always pick ’em out in any school. This one was Irish, though. The what-is-it kind of Irish, too. Not the devil type, but the—”

“But the—what, George?” enquired Mrs. Bradley, sticking out her head and addressing the chauffeur much as a witch might suddenly address her familiar.

“The Celtic twilight type, madam, perhaps?”

“That’s it! Deirdre!” said the cigarette-smoker, dropping ash on the cushions. “Pale and interesting. You know. Keen on poetry and afraid of a hard ball, rotten little ass. Although, of course,” she added magnaminously, with a large, sporting gesture which just escaped burning a hole in the car’s upholstery, “that sort can’t help it. That’s my experience. Calling them funks doesn’t help. They only turn sulky on you. Teaching P.T. is no joke, you know, what with them and their sickening parents.”

Mrs. Bradley sympathized.

“My name’s Bonnet, by the way. Dulcie Theodora Bonnet. May have heard of me—I don’t know. I row, you know.”

“George,” said Mrs. Bradley, again speaking out of the window, “Miss Bonnet rows.”

“Oxford or Cambridge, madam?”

“Oh, club eight, club eight,” said Miss Bonnet, answering the question herself a little testily. “Naiads.”

“I place the young lady now, madam,” said George. “She rowed at number five in the Naiad eight which took first place by four and a half lengths in the women’s European championships, inter-club, last year. Later in the season Leander offered the ladies a six-lengths’ start over three-quarters of a mile, but the ladies said they would start level or not at all.”

“And did they start level?” Mrs. Bradley enquired.

“No,” replied Miss Bonnet, annoyed. “I should have been Henleying this year,” she added moodily. She got out of the car, tossing away her cigarette which George automatically stamped on. “Well, I’ll look forward to seeing you again. That’s an intelligent man of yours,” she added, in a very much lower tone. “By the way, don’t tell them up at the convent that I’ve said a word to you against poor little Ursula Doyle. They don’t want to have the suicide theory elaborated, naturally. A thing like that hasn’t done the place any good, as you can imagine.” She got into her own car. “Still, it’s straining at a gnat to pretend that she didn’t when she did!”

Yelling the last words violently across the space between the cars, she drove off bumpily and at a tremendous rate.

“What did you make of Miss Bonnet, George?” asked Mrs. Bradley, motioning him to take his seat at the wheel.

“I think the convent must be broadminded, madam.” He climbed into the drivers’s seat, and gave an object lesson (unfortunately missed by Miss Bonnet, who had provoked it), in driving off along a bumpy moorland road. Before they had gone very far, however, a small car swept past on two wheels, screeched itself to a rocketing halt about thirty yards ahead, and then, as though as an afterthought, shot out a red warning arrow in lieu of the driver’s hand.

George pulled up, with delicate preciseness, just a yard behind, got out and walked forward slowly. Miss Bonnet, for it was she, got out of her car and met him.

“Ah, there you are,” she said. “I just came back to say don’t take too much notice of Mother Francis, that’s the headmistress, you know. She’s just the slightest bit prejudiced. Quite a dear, of course—they all are, bless their hearts!—but, well, call it prejudice. That’s the kindest way to think of it, I suppose.”

“I will inform my employer, miss, of your observations.”

Before he had a chance to do this, Mrs. Bradley herself came up to them.

“I was saying,” said Miss Bonnet, “that you don’t want to take too much notice of Mother Francis, the headmistress. Quite a darling, of course, but—well, better call it prejudice, as I said to your man.”

“But am I likely to encounter Mother Francis?” Mrs. Bradley enquired.

“You may not, of course. Oh, well, perhaps you won’t. But, remember, she doesn’t approve of me, and if she mentions me at all—I mean, I’m not touchy—”

“I understand,” said Mrs. Bradley. “You are not sensitive, but, all the same, you don’t care to be misunderstood. Nobody does, of course. It is a common human desire to be praised above one’s deserts.”

“Not that I’ve ever met the person yet who understood me,” Miss Bonnet interpolated swiftly, not pleased with Mrs. Bradley’s observation. “Take some of the parents, now. Quite bloody. Oh, well, you don’t want to hear.”

“And do you like teaching, Miss Bonnet?” Mrs. Bradley enquired with naïve, disconcerting directness.

“I—yes, of course. It’s a bit of a strain at times, but it’s necessary work, don’t you think? And that gives one a feeling of—well, being necessary, and having a little niche,” Miss Bonnet, somewhat incoherently, replied.

“Like a saint,” Mrs. Bradley suggested.

“Oh, I don’t know. I was quite a devil at school. When I think of the things we got up to, these present-day kids seem soft. Not, of course, that there was any harm in me. Just full of spirits, that’s all.”

“Interesting,” said Mrs. Bradley, in a thoroughly damping tone. Miss Bonnet looked at her watch, which was barred all across its face to preserve the glass when she was playing games, and announced that she must simply fly.

Off she tore again. Mrs. Bradley, watching the disappearing dust, smiled grimly at George and observed:

“The plot thickens, George, don’t you think?”

“Modern young ladies are usually up to snuff, madam.”

“It struck you that way, did it? As a race, George, I don’t think I like the athletic female young. I suppose she is quite as healthy and strong as she looks?”

“Not much doubt of it, madam, I should say.”

“Um, well, I hope you’re right. An oarswoman, too, you say.”

“Quite a famous young lady, madam, in her way, but hampered rather unfairly by lack of funds. It takes a good bit to grease the wheels in amateur sport to-day, madam.”

“Yes, I expect so. Back to Kelsorrow, George. I’m going to call on the Gas Company.”

George turned the car by running it on to the heather, and they crossed the moor in the wake of Miss Bonnet. The Gas Company’s showrooms in Kelsorrow were easy enough to find.

Mrs. Bradley inspected gas-cookers and then enquired for water-heaters.

“But I must have a safe one,” she observed, as she followed a courteous young man up a short flight of stairs to a showroom on the first floor of the building.

“All our appliances are fully recommended to consumers as being thoroughly safe, madam.”

“Yes, but— Oh, well, I suppose, then, you are not the people who fixed the geyser at that convent near Blacklock Tor? I read the report in the newspapers, and almost decided upon an electric heater instead of something with gas, except that one hears extraordinary stories, just the same, about those.”

“That was nothing to do with the water-heater, madam, that anything happened to the girl. I can answer for that. We fixed it ourselves, and the appliance was fully tested before it was ever used.”

“Well, the child died, anyhow, didn’t she? And I can’t take risks. I may be having young nephews and nieces to stay.”

“But, madam, there really is not the slightest danger, I can assure you. The case you are referring to was very unfortunate, but no fault of ours whatever.”

“Something must have got out of order, though, mustn’t it?”

“The little girl’s brain was out of order. That’s the truth, as, if you have read the case, you ought to know.”

“Yes, but—”

“Look here,” said the young man suddenly, “I tell you nothing was wrong at all with the apparatus. We sent our fitters the very same afternoon, as soon as we got the ’phone call from the convent, and I could show you their report. Everything was in order. We’re going to publish the report. It’s damaging when people get ideas that the apparatus must have been out of order. The only thing that could possibly have happened, unless the girl inhaled gas direct from the pilot burner, was this; supposing she’d loosened a joint, either in the gas-pipe or in the flue-pipe—anybody who could handle a pair of pliers or a fitter’s pipe-grips or a footprint wrench could manage to do that, and they learn all about these things at girls’ schools nowadays —my young sister learns it in domestic science lessons. Well, if a joint got loosened, she’d breathe enough carbon monoxide in a very short time to render her unconscious, and probably kill her. Then the inference is that somebody else got in and turned off the gas. I’ve thought a lot about this case—everybody talks about it round here—and so far as we are concerned there’s been no negligence.”

“How could anybody turn off the gas if it was not known that the joint had been loosened? I don’t follow your argument there.”

“I know. That’s just where it’s funny.”

“You can’t explain that, then?”

“No. I can’t. Well, I could. Do you know that word they use on the pictures—?”

“You mean—?” said Mrs. Bradley, looking startled.

“I’m not going to say what I mean. I thought it out for myself, and so can other people.” He returned to his first manner rather abruptly, as though he had given away secrets. “Now, madam, if you like a nice, clean-looking model which will fit any scheme of decoration in your bathroom, I would advise this number, carried out in either cream or silver. The finish—”

He took her all round the showroom, talking without cessation, and gave her various leaflets. Mrs. Bradley finished up with a gas poker as a present for Mrs. Waller, who had said that she should like one, and with a very vague undertaking to think over the question of installing a geyser in her house. She had arrived at the young man’s theory very easily, and had taxed him with it whilst she was buying the poker. He thought that the convent, hoping to get the doctor to sign a certificate so that an inquest could be avoided, had put right the joint that the child had tampered with before the gas-fitter and his mate had arrived.

“Do them a lot of harm, a girl committing suicide like that,” he added, having admitted that Mrs. Bradley’s guess was correct. “They’d sooner blame it on to us as accident. There doesn’t always have to be an inquest when that’s the case. We assume no responsibility, and they can’t bring a court case, you see.”

Mrs. Bradley gave Mrs. Waller’s name and address, so that the gas poker could be sent, and, having got back to the car, told George to hurry.

“Lunch, madam?” said George.

“Good heavens, George! I’d forgotten all about it. Are you hungry?”

“No, madam, but it is now past one o’clock. I find that the Crown and Quest is reputed a very good inn.”