St. Peter's Finger

chapter 7

headmistress

“He that hath found some fledged bird’s nest may know

At first sight if the bird be flown;

But what fair dell or grove he sings in now

That is to him unknown.”

henry vaughan: They are all gone into the world of light.

« ^ »

Sister Magdalene saw Mrs. Bradley and the nuns before they arrived at the gate, and was there to open it. The nuns passed through, but Mrs. Bradley halted.

“You don’t, of course, remember seeing Ursula Doyle go through to the guest-house?” she enquired, with what she felt to be unnecessary persistence. It was one of the major problems in need of solution, this fact that nobody appeared to have seen the child’s approach.

“I’ve been thinking things over,” the portress observed, as she shut the gate again and accompanied Mrs. Bradley a short way into the grounds. “I believe she must have come through the gate during Vespers.”

“During Vespers? At what time is that?”

“From two o’clock until half-past two. I don’t know whether the children are bound to attend, but I know that some, if not all, of those who stay to dinner, go to church then. All the choir nuns go, and all of us whose work can be so arranged, go also. It seems to me that if she had slipped away then and gone to the guest-house, no one would be the wiser.”

“A very important suggestion,” said Mrs. Bradley, too tactful to let the lay-sister know that it had already been made. “I am obliged to you, Sister Magdalene. That clears up a difficult problem. What about the orphans? Do they attend Vespers, too?”

“The youngest don’t, but they had gone for their outing. The others, if they were not in church, would be in the Orphanage, or the guest-house, I should think, and in either case would not know who came through the gate.”

“Yes, I understand. Thank you,” said Mrs. Bradley. She walked on past the laundry, and bent her steps towards the orchard and the field. It was with considerable interest that she looked forward to her first interview with the headmistress of the convent private school. She had spent some time already of the short, early spring afternoon, and it was towards the time of the afternoon break, when, having crossed the orchard in a west to east slant, she passed the school gardens kept by the children themselves, and entered by a wooden door in the high board fence of the playground. There were two entrances into the modern, one-storey building, one in the south, the other in the west wall. She chose the first, went in, knocked at a classroom door and asked for Mother Saint Francis.

Mother Francis was a grey-eyed, gracious woman with a red, sensuous mouth, white hands, and an extraordinarily lovely complexion. She was between thirty-five and forty, Mrs. Bradley supposed, and had superimposed the dignity of bearing required of her by her vocation upon natural alertness and energy.

Although her speech did not betray the fact, it was obvious that she was not an Englishwoman. She received Mrs. Bradley with warmth and great charm of manner, and, when both of them were seated, she observed:

“I am particularly anxious to have this investigation made, because the child’s stepmother is coming back in a short while to demand a further enquiry into the circumstances of the death. She has made it very hard for us.”

“Indeed?” said Mrs. Bradley. “Is she not satisfied, then, with the verdict given at the inquest?”

“By no means.” The nun, who gazed straight ahead of her as she talked—a habit in the religious which Mrs. Bradley was finding disconcerting—paused for a moment and then added: “No one is satisfied with it. I have prepared, if you would care to have it, an exact account of the circumstances, so far as I can discover them. I believe that you have already begun your investigation. Perhaps you can check these facts against any others which have been given you.”

She opened a drawer in her desk and handed out from it a typed, foolscap document. Her eyes met Mrs. Bradley’s, and rested on them for a short time as though she were trying to communicate something which was in her mind without having to use the medium of words. Apparently she was successful, for Mrs. Bradley said:

“I think you mean me to understand that you have already made up your own mind on this matter, and that you are inclined to think that I have made up mine.”

The nun bowed her head, and spoke without looking up.

“In this school,” she said, “apart from the quite little children, we have just over eighty girls. They are of all ages, from nine to nineteen. We get to know them very well indeed. In fact, I do not suppose there is anything about them that we do not know. As that is the case, as soon as anything out of the ordinary happens, it is possible for us to be able to fix, with absolute certainty, nearly every time, upon the child responsible for what has occurred. I had a very long conversation with Father Thomas before he went back to Bermondsey. He said that he knew your son, and would ask him to do his best to persuade you to take up our trouble.”

“Why me?” asked Mrs. Bradley. It was a point to which she had given some little thought.

“Because all that we can offer in support of our strong belief that the child did not bring her own life to an end—and suicide is a shocking thought to all people, and especially so to Catholics—is evidence of character, disposition and training. Mrs. Bradley, you are a psychologist; you understand the workings of human minds. We knew this child, and I declare to, you that she could not have done this thing! If ten million juries declared her guilty of this sin, I would not believe them. I could not believe them, knowing her as I did.”

“Tell me about her. I am anxious to learn all I can.”

“She came here when she was six. She was then, and has been, ever since, one of the sweetest children we have ever had in the school. She was not good at her lessons—not nearly so good as her cousin, Ulrica Doyle, who now becomes the grandfather’s heiress, and not much better than her good, stupid cousin, Mary Maslin, whom we put in the form below. But her religion was part of her life, in the most genuine sense of those words, and under no circumstances whatever can I imagine her, of her own will and wickedness, putting an end to that life. People never do things out of character. You agree?”

Mrs. Bradley, with a mental reservation (for she wondered whether her interpretation of the statement would coincide with that of Mother Francis if both defined their meaning), said that she agreed.

“Well, it was entirely out of character for Ursula Doyle to have ended her life by suicide. Her death was not of her own premeditation. She died by some terrible accident. Look! I will show you her picture.”

She opened a drawer of her writing-table. A photograph lay on top of a large portfolio. She took up the photograph, glanced at it, and passed it to Mrs. Bradley. It showed a group of six children in fancy dress, apparently at a garden fête.

“Our last school concert. Ursula is the one on the extreme left,” she said. “That comes slightly in profile. Here is another full-face. Both are extremely good likenesses.”

Mrs. Bradley studied the photographs closely. They conveyed very little to her mind. Ursula Doyle, a slender, delicate-looking, apparently fair-haired child, might have been one of a hundred or so almost identically similar children whom Mrs. Bradley had looked at in school photographs. She handed the likenesses back with a very slight shrug.

“She looks a nice little girl, but so did Constance Kent,” she observed with crude directness. Mother Francis, however, appeared not to know the name of Constance Kent, and put the photographs very carefully away without replying. Then she looked up and said:

“She was a nice little girl. Who is Constance Kent?”

Instead of replying to the question, Mrs. Bradley asked another.

“What are the possibilities of accident?” she enquired.

“Obviously, that something went wrong with the water-heater.”

“Yes, that is so. Now, apart from the fact, which you know, and which formed the basic evidence in favour of the verdict of suicide, that there was nothing wrong with the water-heater, tell me this: was Ursula Doyle the kind of child you would envisage as having done a thing which, I hear, was strictly forbidden to the children, and for which one girl has been expelled?”

Mother Francis took up a pen and tapped restlessly upon the table. She was obviously greatly agitated, and when she spoke it was in a low voice and as though the words were being dragged from her.

“I know,” she said. “She was no more the child to have acted so disobediently and wildly than she was the child to have killed herself deliberately. I don’t know what to think. I can’t bear to think. She was the heiress to a vast fortune… I was saying to you just now that we know our girls, and I say to you also that I have been the headmistress of this school for nearly ten years and never once, in investigating the little charges of naughtiness, disobedience, wilfulness which can be laid at the doors of even the sweetest children, never once have I been at fault. I say it in all humility. Where, in my own mind, I have apportioned blame, I have discovered that the facts, when I had them, invariably bore me out. I have thought long and earnestly about this dreadful occurrence. I have prayed. The result is a terrible conviction for which I can give no reason except—that I knew the child. You understand me, I think?”

Mrs. Bradley said nothing for more than a minute. When she did speak, her question seemed irrelevant.

“Tell me,” she said, “what you know about Miss Bonnet, please, Mother Saint Francis.”

The nun looked up.

“You have a quick mind,” she said. “I did not think you would ask that quite so soon. Miss Bonnet is not a Catholic. She is a fully qualified teacher of physical training, and had a very good post in the Midlands before she took up her duties at Kelsorrow High School. I do not know quite what happened, but she did not get on very well at her first school, and— well, it is only fair that you should have the facts, as you have undertaken this investigation—it appears that she stole some rather valuable pictures. She comes of quite a good family, and had a kleptomaniac aunt—a genuine case, by the way; this aunt, now dead, spent a considerable part of her later life in a private mental hospital. The school did not press the charge against Miss Bonnet, but they felt they had to dismiss her, and she was lucky, I understand, to be appointed at Kelsorrow—really a very good school. The full-time post there, however, is held by another physical training specialist and Miss Bonnet’s post is a temporary one in which she is employed by the half-day. The school has expanded considerably during the past two years, partly owing to the development of the seaside resort of Hiversand Bay, so Miss Bonnet is now employed for seven half-days a week, but is not yet counted a member of the regular staff. That is to say, she still has the position of a visiting mistress only. The other three half-days of the ordinary school week, namely, Monday morning and all day Thursday, she comes to us here, and we also employ her on Saturday mornings, when Kelsorrow High School is closed.”

“And what of the girl herself? Do you like her?”

“She is efficient.”

“How did she manage to get another post?”

“Her father has some influence with the governors of the school, I believe, or she might not have been taken on at Kelsorrow or anywhere else. But I know very little of what happened, and should not ask to be told more.”

“But you do not think her an undesirable person to have here among your children?”

“She works well, and the girls are under good supervision—our own. One of us is always on duty when she takes the physical training lessons here.”

“You do not trust her, then?”

“It is our custom to keep the girls under our own supervision when they are taught by visiting mistresses. As for Miss Bonnet, she has a good heart and is willing to give good service, but she lives in a drama, I think, of which she is not only the heroine, but in which she occupies, always, the centre of the stage. That is sometimes a little boring for the audience, and may lead the actor into trouble.”

“Would you call her a truthful person?”

“Truth, in her, is subordinated to her conception of herself.”

“You believe that she might tell lies?”

“Oh, yes,” said Mother Francis. “In fact, she does tell lies. But she is really a very good teacher, and comes here for half her usual fee.”

“So the Mother Superior told me. Now, these two cousins who also come to the school: I should like to talk to them at some time when it is convenient.”

“Whenever you like.” She glanced at the large school time-table. “Ulrica—”

“She is now the heiress?”

“Yes—is in the fourth form. She is rather an unusual kind of girl. It is a sad case. The father left the Church, and the poor child, until she came to us three years ago, had never been to church at all. Now, of course, she is anxious to do all in her power to combat the evil that has been done. We allow her more liberty than some of the children have. She is by nature solitary, loves long walks (which she is allowed to take quite often without supervision) and is an interesting child altogether. Mary Maslin, younger, of course, is in the second form. She is rather a backward girl in most school subjects, but does not lack intelligence, I believe. She will be doing elocution after break with Sister Saint Bartholomew.”

“That isn’t—?”

“Yes, Rosa Cardosa. She entered the religious life after the terrible catastrophe at the Duntrey Theatre in which she lost every penny. She wasn’t insured, you know, and, as I expect you remember, the theatre was burnt right out.”

“Poor Rosa! But I thought there was a fund?”

“Her friends agreed to support her. Hundreds of pounds were collected. She sent them all back, and said that she was going to take what she had—a little money her mother had left her, and which, for some superstitious or sentimental reason, she had never used for her theatrical enterprises—and give it to God. So she brought it along as her dowry, and has been with us now many years. She taught me when I was fifteen, at our other house.”

“And she has never wished to go back, and begin again?”

Mother Francis smiled, raised her hands in a gesture so slight as to be almost unnoticeable, and answered:

“Who can tell?”

“Her father-confessor?”

“Yes, or Reverend Mother Superior, and they will not.”

There was a pause; then Mother Francis, as though she felt that she had rebuked her visitor and wished to make some amends, said: “Tell me, ought I to send those two children home? Both are suffering from shock, and Mary from grief. Ulrica seems afraid. She is highly strung; a rather peculiar girl, although very clever.”

“As I do not know either of the girls, I cannot offer any advice,” said Mrs. Bradley. “Have you any seculars besides Miss Bonnet on the staff of the school?”

“Yes. There is Mrs. Waterhouse. She teaches all the children under six, orphans and others. We pay her forty pounds a year and she has a cottage next door to the presbytery at Hiversand Bay, which was rather a pleasant little place before the speculative builders came.”

“What are her qualifications?”

“She was an elementary schoolteacher employed by the London County Council before her marriage. She is a widow now, and lives in this district for her health. That is why we get her so cheaply. She lives rent free, and has her midday meal, and, if she wants it, her tea, with the orphans. She has no children, and lives alone.”

“Is she a Catholic?”

“I have no reason to think so.”

This, Mrs. Bradley thought, was an extraordinary reply, so she noted it. Then she asked:

“Are all the children Catholics?”

“All the orphans are Catholics. Of the private schoolchildren about nine-tenths are Catholics.”

“The dead child—?”

“Yes.”

“Mary Maslin?”

“Mary Maslin comes of a Catholic family, although her father’s present wife, I believe, is not a Catholic. In the other case, the father lapsed from the Church, as I told you just now—his father and mother were converts—and the child has been brought up without religious knowledge. It is very sad. I have hopes, however—”

Mrs. Bradley nodded.

“Do you find that the non-Catholic children tend to become Catholics in their later life?” she asked.

“We do not use any influence,” said Mother Francis sharply.

“What proportion become Catholics later on?”

“A fair number.” Her momentarily defensive attitude melted. She smiled with great sweetness. “Our Faith fights its battles,” she observed.

“It has its attractions,” said Mrs. Bradley, “in an unstable, undisciplined world. Will you arrange to have Ulrica Doyle escort me on a tour of the buildings and grounds? I should like to meet her, as it were, unofficially, as though I were an ordinary visitor to the school.”

“Certainly. The girls are accustomed to show our visitors round the gardens. I will send for her now if you would like me to do so. It is just as well that you should get to know her.”

“I should be very much obliged.”

Mother Francis pressed a bell.

“Ulrica Doyle, from Mother Saint Gregory’s music class,” she said to the girl who appeared. “That is Ethel, one of the older orphans,” she added, after the girl had gone. “They take it in turns to sit in the adjoining room doing needlework or practising shorthand, and act as messengers if I require it. I very seldom do require it, but it is convenient to have somebody there if visitors come, and quite good practice for the girls to take courteous, correctly-rendered messages.”

Ethel was not long gone. She returned with a tall, blue-eyed girl, wearing the convent black pinafore and badge, whose face told of sleeplessness, strain and acute anxiety. She curtsied to Mother Francis, and waited with exaggerated meekness to hear what she was to do. She curtsied again when she had heard it, opened the door for Mrs. Bradley and then walked sedately beside her along the whole length of the corridor as silently as a ghost. She seemed to Mrs. Bradley as quiet as a nun. The disembodied manner in which the religious suddenly appeared and retreated without sound was startling, but not uncanny. In Ulrica Doyle this silence was disquieting.

The girl took charge of her, however, without awkwardness or shyness, and showed her the grounds and the buildings. It was not until they were walking in the nuns’ garden that she mentioned her dead cousin. The fact that she did so at all surprised Mrs. Bradley and gave her occasion for thought.

“I suppose you have heard about Ursula?” Ulrica said.

“Yes, child.” Neither looked at the other. Ulrica stared at the gravel, Mrs. Bradley at the wall of the frater.

“What do you think about it? Tell me, please, what you think. I want to know.”

“I have no idea what I think about it, except that it was a very terrible thing.”

“But you’ve come to find out about it, haven’t you?”

“Yes, child. How did you know?”

“Father Thomas promised me that he would try to get you to come here. Ursula must have been killed. She would never have killed herself. I wish you would let me help you.”

“You come first on my list of suspects,” Mrs. Bradley observed, with a strangely mirthless grin.

“Because of the money, you mean? Yes, it’s a motive, I suppose. It couldn’t benefit me personally, though, because I am going to enter as soon as I am old enough.”

“Enter?”

“Join the Community. Become a nun.”

“I see. So you would get no benefit from the money?”

“All my property will come to the convent when I enter. Poverty is part of the Rule.”

“Why do you suspect that your cousin’s death was not suicide?”

“I knew Ursula very well indeed. She was a sweet child. She would never have done such a thing.”

“Have you any idea why anybody should desire her death?”

“No—I don’t think I have. At least, it isn’t definite, and I would rather be torn to pieces than put suspicion on anybody unjustly. That would be awful, wouldn’t it?”

“Do you speak literally, I wonder?”

“About what I would suffer? Saints have been torn to pieces, and what they endured, I can.”

“I see. Does your cousin, Mary, share your theories?”

“Oh, Mary’s a silly little thing. I should never dream of talking to her about Ursula. She didn’t like Ursula; I loved her.”

“That, of course, would make a good deal of difference.”

“The part I can’t understand is how anybody ever persuaded Ursula to do a naughty thing like going to a guest-house bathroom. It’s dead against the school rules, and she was such a gentle, timid little thing that I can’t imagine her letting anybody lead her astray. It must have been a grown-up person. Nobody in the school would ever have persuaded Ursula to break the rules like that.”

“Whom do you suggest?”

“I am not prepared to name anybody. And, besides, by the time you’ve taken out the nuns and Miss Bonnet and Mrs. Waterhouse, none of whom, I suppose, can very well be suspected, there isn’t anyone else except the guests, who all have an alibi; and old Jack, the hedge-trimmer and gardener, and he wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

“There are the orphans. ”

“I know. Some of the older ones are awful.”

“Motive?”

“I know. But—well, take Bessie. I can imagine her doing no end of wicked things.”

“What makes you think it was murder? Why can’t the death have been accident?”

“Because somebody must have taken her into the guest-house. She never would have gone there alone.”

“I see.”

They walked on in silence. Then, down one of the paths, they encountered a nun. Ulrica curtsied and smiled. The nun and Mrs. Bradley exchanged dignified, grave little bows.

“That’s Mother Mary-Joseph. She’s quite young and a perfect dear,” said Ulrica, when the nun had passed out of earshot.

“Yes. I have met her. She teaches English, doesn’t she?”

“Ever so well. We’re all thrilled. We’re doing Macbeth this term. It was set for Schools last year, and Mother Mary-Joseph thinks that by the time our form takes Schools it will be time for Macbeth again.”

“Macbeth?” said Mrs. Bradley. Ulrica looked at her expectantly, but Mrs. Bradley had no more to say. They turned out of the nuns’ garden and were going back towards the school when they came to a small wooden hut. Mrs. Bradley asked what it was.

“It’s the handicraft centre,” Ulrica Doyle replied. “Do you want to go inside? It isn’t particularly thrilling, but visitors usually go over it. Mother Saint Simon-Zelotes doesn’t like it if they don’t. She spends all her spare time in there, copying the chalice and the paten. We are all excited about it. They’re very old, you know.”

“Is that where they make those charming silver vases and metal ash-trays which I saw in the guesthouse, I wonder?”

“Yes, but it’s very noisy, with hammering and all the other work going on. Still, they do make some nice things. But it’s Mother Saint Simon-Zelotes’ own work that you really want to see. The nuns here haven’t many treasures, and can’t afford beautiful things, and so they make them. My grandfather wanted to buy the chalice and paten—they’re thirteenth and fourteenth century—but Reverend Mother Superior wouldn’t part with them. She said that some day the convent might have to let them go, but that that day had not yet come. We’re longing to see Mother’s work. She was an artist in metal-work—ever so famous, I believe—before she joined the Community. Do you really want to go in?”

“I particularly want to go in,” said Mrs. Bradley. “I greatly admired the art room and the laboratory.” The handicraft centre was far enough from the main building to ensure that the sound of hammering did not reach the classrooms, Ulrica went on to explain as they went inside. There were three benches, each under a window with a rack of tools above it and drawers and boxes by the side. The nun in charge was a briskly cheerful middle-aged woman with a face which looked as though it had been newly scrubbed. She had good teeth, a short, aggressive nose, and large, very fine, strong hands. Mrs. Bradley recognised her at once, and, to her pleasure, addressed her by the name she had borne in the world.

“We do not forget our artists,” she said, with a startling cackle of laughter. She paused where two girls were working.

“It should be three to a bench, but that poor child, Ursula Doyle, it is her place that is vacant,” Mother Simon-Zelotes explained. “The eight girls in this room are half the form. I have half of them, and the other half take theory of music with Sister Saint Gregory and Latin with Sister Saint Benedict. Then we change over to-morrow. Last week I did not take them. I did my own work instead.”

The girls began to put away their tools. It was the end of the first period of afternoon school. Ulrica took Mrs. Bradley back to Mother Francis.

“I wish you would give me a copy of the school timetable, and a list of the teachers’ duties and free time,” said Mrs. Bradley, when Ulrica, having curtsied to both of them separately, had gone.

“I have them ready. I anticipated that you would require them,” Mother Francis observed, as she handed them over.

Armed with these, Mrs. Bradley was escorted back to the guest-house by Ethel and handed over to Annie.

“I want you to ask Mother Saint Jude to let me have that list of the guests who were staying here last week, Annie,” Mrs. Bradley said, “and I want their home addresses. Perhaps she has put those down beside the names, but just in case she hasn’t—”

“Very good, madam. We got you a room ready, madam, as we weren’t sure whether you were going to stay here or not.”

“Is there a room to spare?”

“We’ve put Sister Bridget in the Orphanage. She won’t mind.”

“I don’t like to turn out Sister Bridget.”

“She really won’t notice, madam. She’s very biddable and harmless. She never notices nothing, except the matches, which we generally keep out of sight, and her little mouse.”

Annie went off to get the list of guests and their home addresses, and Mrs. Bradley was making notes when Bessie entered abruptly and rather rudely, and announced that she had been sent by Mother Saint Ambrose to show Mrs. Bradley her room.

“I’m glad I don’t sleep here meself,” she observed sincerely, as they passed the door of the bathroom in which the dead child had been found. “Frightened of ghosts, I am, and I bet she walks of a night.”

“I thought that Catholics didn’t believe in ghosts?”

“You got another think coming. ’Course they believe in ’em. What’s done can’t be undone. It’s only common-sense, after all.”

With this majestic retort, Bessie led the way along a landing to a door marked with a black number seven.

“You got a lucky number, anyway,” she said. “Old Sister Bridget would have this room with a seven. Young Maggie’s been give the job of painting it on the door of her cubicle over the Orphanage now, to let her think she’s at home. Seems more than a week ago that that there happened, don’t it?”

“I cannot say, Bessie,” Mrs. Bradley replied. “Is there any means of sending to Blacklock Tor for my things?”

“Father Clare would give the word at the pub, if you asked him. He’s over here now with Reverend Mother Superior. Daresay he’ll stay to supper. He often do of a Monday. Nothing much at the Presbytery, I suppose. ‘’

“Does that mean that he was here last Monday, then?”

“Course he was. What you think? Didn’t he go with our little ’uns to the pictures? No more pictures for us till after Easter, Mother Saint Ambrose’s orders. Who do you like the best? Somebody ’ighbrow, I suppose?”

“Katherine Hepburn,” said Mrs. Bradley, after a suitable pause for thought.

“Ginger Rogers for me. Oh, boy! She’s lovely! Her and Fred Astaire! See her and Hepburn act in that one about the chorus girls and that? That bit where Ginger gets lit! Oh, glory, didn’t I laugh! On the Q.T. I see that. Supposed to be hout on an ’ike. Only Annie knowed, and she wouldn’t tell. Not bad, old Annie isn’t.”

“Oh, Bessie,” said Mrs. Bradley, suddenly interrupting, “how long after Annie did you go into that bathroom?”

“Me? I never went in. You can’t pin nothing on me!”

“Why do you use that expression? The little girl committed suicide, didn’t she?”

“Did she? Let them as think so fry in their fat, I says.”

“But it was you who suggested to me how cruelly treated the children were, and how natural it was that they should be driven to dreadful deeds.”

Bessie seemed taken aback, and for once had no answer ready.

“So you didn’t go into the bathroom at all,” said Mrs. Bradley, in gentle, musing tones. Bessie glowered suspiciously.

“Suppose I said I did?”

“I should not suppose anything so improbable,” said Mrs. Bradley briefly. “Were you going to show me my room? Later on, I think. I have to go back to the private school for a bit.”