St. Peter's Finger

chapter 10

questions

“Either his slippery knots at once untie

And disentangle all his winding snare

Or shatter too with him my curious frame.”

andrew marvell: The Coronet.

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Annie was cleaning taps. She smeared on the polish very evenly, thinly and carefully, and then rubbed with such energy and goodwill that the metal seemed to burst into sunshine underneath her hand. Mrs. Bradley watched her, and the girl, unconscious of her presence, worked on, her breathing a little laboured, her cheeks brightly flushed, and a stray quiff of hair hanging loose from her neat mob cap.

“Good work, Annie,” said Mrs. Bradley pleasantly, as the girl gave up and began to screw the cap on the tin of polish. Annie, accustomed to the unheralded comings and silent going of nuns, looked round and smiled.

“Good morning, madam. Did you sleep well at the guest-house?”

“Not at the guest-house; here, in the Orphanage,” Mrs. Bradley replied, surprised that Bessie had not passed on the fact of her presence.

“Really, madam?”

“Yes. Sister Bridget decided to come home to roost. Annie, did you know she had a tame mouse?”

“Certainly, madam. Last Thursday week it nearly died, or something. She was that excited we could hardly get anything out of her. Not as it’s easy, any time, to quite make out all she says.”

“I can’t think why nobody told me about this mouse. I want to go across and have a look at the bathroom. Will you ask Kitty to come with me? And can you come as well?”

“I’ll just speak to Mother Saint Ambrose a minute, then, madam.”

She put away her cleaning things, washed her hands, and went off in search of the nun. Mrs. Bradley, who had wandered into the kitchen from the dining-room, wandered back again. The Orphanage was rather sternly be-texted, and religious pictures simpered from most of its walls, but the walls were also cheerful with yellow paint, and there were branches of hazel in vases. Mother Ambrose came in less than three minutes, and readily gave permission for Annie and Kitty to go with Mrs. Bradley to the guest-house.

The drawing-pin was still in position, and, watched by the two girls, Mrs. Bradley knelt down and scrutinised it. Kitty involuntarily giggled, but was nudged into silence by Annie. Near the drawing-pin, which marked the spot on which, according to Sister Bridget, the unconscious mouse had been found, the gas pipe connected to the geyser came up through a hole in the floor. Mrs. Bradley poked an inquisitive, long, yellow finger into the hole in the boards, but could touch nothing.

She sat back on her heels, turned her head and spoke to the girls over her shoulder.

“If I become unconscious, drag me away and open the window and door, children,” she said, with a ghastly cackle. “Shut both, and then I shall begin.”

Annie closed the window, Kitty the door. Mrs. Bradley lay full length, her face above the hole. After a full three minutes she got up.

“Do you feel all right, madam?” asked Annie. Mrs. Bradley blew her nose and nodded.

“Unfortunately, quite all right,” she said. “Kitty, why didn’t you tell anybody that you had found someone lying unconscious in the bath?”

“When, madam?” Kitty’s prominent eyes opened wide. “Sure, you wouldn’t be meaning that poor little girl?”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“Well, madam, I thought it was in the bathroom underneath this one she was found. Anyways, Miss Bonnet found her, not me. I never was after finding her. Indeed, I know nothing about it, beyond what I’m hearing from Annie.”

“But surely you should have been on duty here?”

“Sure and indeed I should have been, only, do you see, I was doing a Little Penance for coughing in Silence Time. ’Tis by way of being a privilege to work in the guest-house. We lose it if we are offensive.”

“I see,” said Mrs. Bradley. “What were you doing instead?”

“Cleaning pigs.”

“Is that a penance?”

“Not to me; I like it. But to most here it is.”

“Kitty pulled it out of the bag, madam, and Mother Saint Ambrose couldn’t change it, you see,” Annie politely explained. “Cleaning pigs, cleaning water closets, weeding gravel, killing slugs, making breadcrumbs, gutting fish, is all Little Penances, and you fish for one out of the bag if you’ve done something wrong, whether Mother Saint Ambrose knows or not; we’re on our honour, us older ones, we are.”

“What happens to all those jobs when nobody has qualified for a Little Penance?” Mrs. Bradley enquired. The two girls looked at one another.

“Sometimes some of us do one to gain merit, but that don’t happen very often,” said Annie, pensively. “There’s Bessie, for one. Always in trouble, she is. And swapped her Little Penance, once, for a Grand Penance Maggie got given her, because she liked it better.”

“What was the Grand Penance, then?”

“Not to see Reverend Mother Superior for a fortnight.”

“What did she change it for?”

“Killing slugs. You see, you can’t be found out in that, because Reverend Mother Superior don’t know who’s allowed to see her and who isn’t, and as long as you can show a fair number of slugs, nobody watches while you find them. So Bessie pulled it off, only Maggie let it out by mistake.”

“What happened then?” asked Mrs. Bradley, hoping to get more light on the character of Mother Ambrose.

“Nothing happened,” said Annie, inconclusively. “Not as we know of, anyway. But Maggie said she would never do it again.”

“I think I’d like to see Maggie. I wonder, Kitty, whether you could go back now and send her over?”

Maggie proved to be fat and fair, and, looking at her, Mrs. Bradley felt that it was incredible that she should have achieved a Grand Penance. So intrigued was she that she asked, point-blank, for an explanation,

“Oh, madam—” said Maggie. She twisted up her apron, drew in her breath with a sudden, sharp hiss, and then laughed until Mrs. Bradley was afraid she would suffocate.

“Oh, madam—” said Maggie again, with another hysterical burst. Mrs. Bradley was beginning to regret that she had embarked upon the subject when Maggie, gathering herself together, said, with a rush, so that laughter should not eclipse speech: “I told a lie, madam! I really had to. It was all through the milkman, madam. He left a rose in a carton of cream—for Kitty, we thought, only it was really for me, only neither of us didn’t like to tell Mother Saint Ambrose, it made us feel so awkward—so I told Mother Saint Ambrose we didn’t know who it was meant for, and there was poetry on it and everything, only we hadn’t seen it. It was tied round the carton under the rose, and I suppose Mother Saint Ambrose must have read it and found my name on it, and she gave me a Grand Penance for lying—only, you see, it wasn’t really a lie —and made me do my hair back tighter.”

“Well, that’s very interesting, Maggie. By the way, why didn’t you call somebody to help you when you went into the other bathroom and found the little girl dead?”

“I never went in there, madam. I never do.” Maggie looked puzzled, not scared.

“Do you mean that you never do the work in that bathroom?”

“No, madam, not in that bathroom. It’s Kitty’s and Annie’s work. All of us have our own work, though we don’t always have our own partners.”

“Have you never been inside it before?”

“Yes, madam, but only when fetched. I came into this bathroom, madam, when Sister Bridget’s mouse was found. I picked it up, madam, as nobody else fancied touching it.”

“Didn’t Sister Bridget touch it?”

“No. She spoke very blaspheemious, although nobody thought she could help it. It was just the devil taking advantage of her, being as she’s simple, madam.”

“But she didn’t pick up the mouse?”

“No, madam. Mother Saint Ambrose ordered Bessie to, but Bessie said she couldn’t, not for nobody, so Mother Saint Ambrose said: ‘Fetch Kitty.’ So Bessie said (only she muttered it, so she told me) to the effect that ‘Maggie’s the one for your money! She’s our little old slug-catcher!’ So she fetched me along, against order, but acting innocent, like she do.”

“You didn’t mind picking up the mouse?”

“What’s the use of minding? My father was a mole catcher. Help him put ’em out in rows, I have, many’s the time, and wish I could help him again.”

She began to whimper and, at a nod from Mrs. Bradley, who added: “The other two,” Annie led Maggie away. Maria, aged fifteen, and Ethel, aged fourteen and three-quarters (whom Mrs. Bradley had already seen as Mother Francis’ monitor), were as innocent as the others, it appeared, of having opened the bathroom door and found the body. This left Mrs. Bradley where she had started, except that to have eliminated the orphans led one step further from suicide or accident, and one step nearer murder, she decided, since an innocent adult person would surely have summoned assistance and made the death known.

Shaking her head, she went over to the school for Mother Gregory. She knew that the Sacristan did no teaching on Tuesday mornings, so, after a glance in at the doorway of the staff-room where the nuns, if they wished, could sit and correct exercise books without having to carry these off the school premises, she wandered across to the cloister, and heard the sound of the organ. Quietly she went into church, and knelt for a moment, as she would have covered her shoes with over-slippers if she had been entering a mosque. Then she got up and moved quietly towards the organ.

The church was almost all new, although it stood on the site and was built on the foundations of the monastic church which had commanded that high headland before the Dissolution. The Community had purchased the site very cheaply from a local Catholic landowner, and much of the labour of putting up and restoring the conventual buildings had been done by the nuns themselves. It had been an heroic task, and, later, Mrs. Bradley had the story of it from the Mother Superior, who, except for Mother Simon-Zelotes, Mother Gregory and a very old lay-sister named Catherine, was the only person who remembered those days of toil and of glory.

Mrs. Bradley walked on, found the steps leading up from the chancel to the organ, mounted them and stood at the organist’s side. Mother Gregory, spectacles on nose, dim eyes, even so, strained closely towards the copy of the music, played on, regardless of, or else indifferent to, the proximity of the listener. Then she finished; turned on the stool, faced Mrs. Bradley, smiled kindly and vaguely, as old people, well-disposed, do, and extended a fine, large hand. Mrs. Bradley helped her from her seat, made way for her, and followed her out of the church.

“Who wants me now?” Mother Gregory hoarsely enquired.

“I do.” They walked through the archway which led from an angle of the cloister into the nuns’ garden. “Can you cast your mind back to yesterday week?”

“A Monday. Yes, I can. That was the day I had a double class for music, because Sister Saint Dominic took those poor children to the dentist.”

“Is that all? Does nothing else come to your mind about that day?”

“Wait. Yes, it does. That was the day when that poor little child was found drowned.”

“Now that is what I want to talk to you about. Do you remember her going out of class? According to the school time-table, you take the third form—her class—for music at the beginning of the afternoon.”

“Nobody went out of class. Why should she?”

“I cannot say. Are you certain that nobody went out?”

“The last time that anybody went out of class in one of my lessons was when a girl called Farley—Clarice Farley—was sick after eating trout. Nonsensical,” said Mother Gregory, hoarsely. “As if trout could make anyone sick!”

“And when was that, do you remember?”

“Certainly. That was in the last week of last term— just before Christmas. I remember perfectly well saying to the poor child: ‘If you can do this with trout, what do you suppose you will do with your Christmas dinner?’ ”

“And what did she suppose she would do with her Christmas dinner?” Mrs. Bradley could not help but enquire. Mother Gregory snorted, and then observed aptly:

“La variété des viandes, si elles sont en grande quantité, charge toujours l’estomach; mais s’il est foible, elle le ruine.”

Mrs. Bradley chuckled, and the nun cocked a witty eye and added: “And that is not the best use to make of the letters of Saint François de Sales, unless—” she resumed her normal expression, “you know how to take a hint.”

Mrs. Bradley was silent for a minute or two, and they strolled on, the nun majestic in the dignity of her habit, Mrs. Bradley insignificant as a sparrow, for, in deference to her surroundings, she was dressed in drab brown with no more than a touch of yellow to enliven a withered, autumnal uniformity of colour.

“How many children are there in the third form?” she enquired, to end the pause, during which she had thought furiously hard.

“About twenty, I believe,” Mother Gregory answered. Her face was benign in repose, and had the curiously self-satisfied expression which spectacles can bestow upon some countenances.

“I suppose you would have noticed if anybody had been absent from your class? Had not shown up at all, I mean, to the lesson?”

“I might have done in the ordinary way, but as I was taking the two forms together and am, as no doubt you have observed, particularly short-sighted, it is highly probable that I should not have noticed whether any particular child was there or not. Choral singing is not quite like most other lessons. One has no direct dealing with individuals. I have already discussed all this with Sister Saint Francis.”

Mrs. Bradley, no longer surprised to learn that there were a good many facts which she was not told by the religious, merely nodded.

“And now,” she said, “forgive me for pressing the point, but it may be extraordinarily important— do you think you would have noticed if two children had been absent from that double class?”

“I don’t know that I should have noticed,” Mother Gregory admitted.

“It is possible that two children might have been absent then,” Mrs. Bradley observed. She made a note. “Do you call a register, by the way?”

“I do not. There is no need. The children like music.”

Mrs. Bradley was aware of a cocked eye again. She frowned. The nun was still hinting. She accompanied her to the further end of the garden, from which there was a short cut back to the church, saw her enter by the west door, and herself went over to the private school again. She did not seek Mother Francis immediately, but seated herself in a small, light-panelled vestibule and wrote out Mother Gregory’s quotation from La Vie Parfaite. Then she knocked at Mother Francis’ door.

“For how long beforehand,” she asked, “had it been known that Mother Saint Gregory was to have a double class on that particular day?”

“For a week,” Mother Francis replied. “Sister Saint Gregory gave out the notice herself to both forms on the previous Monday, because she wanted the words of two or three songs learned in readiness for choral singing.”

“I see,” said Mrs. Bradley slowly. “I believe you told me that Ulrica Doyle is in the fourth form, and Mary Maslin in the second?”

“Yes. Mary is six months older than poor little Ursula was, but is rather a dull child, as I think I said before.”

“Then Ulrica will be able to tell me whether Ursula was in class for the music lesson, I dare say,” Mrs. Bradley observed, “since forms three and four were taken together that Monday afternoon. Have you any objection to my questioning her about it?”

“None whatever. Please do whatever you think best. Would you like me to send for her?”

“I will talk to her during the dinner hour. It will be less formal then. This news of the double lesson is important. I wish I had known it before.”

Mother Francis lowered her eyes. It seemed to Mrs. Bradley as though she were fated always to be finding fault with one or other of the Community, and their docility in accepting rebuke unnerved her. She said, when the nun looked up again:

“Mother Saint Francis, I am going to ask a direct question, and I would like the frankest answer which you can give me.”

The nun’s grey eyes were fixed on hers. Mother Francis was summing her up. She smiled.

“What is your question?” she asked.

“What is your own belief about the circumstances of the child’s death?”

“‘I regret to say that I cannot give you any answer at all to that question.”

“You believe that she was murdered?”

The nun did not reply. Her eyes, which remained meeting Mrs. Bradley’s, lost focus, as though she were looking through the back of Mrs. Bradley’s head to the window behind her, and out of it across the school garden. Her lips moved, but no sound came from them. Mrs. Bradley read the lip-signs and followed the Latin words. She grinned. Slightly startled, and, exceptionally, betraying the fact, Mother Francis apologised. Mrs. Bradley said briskly:

“As doctor to prospective patient, I would remind you that it is early in Lent to be feeling the effects of fastings. Remember the ears of corn which the disciples plucked on the Sabbath. Your work is trying, and you are under continuous strain. There has been, and is, among all of you here who knew her, acute and painful anxiety over the death of this child. Take my advice, and do not over-estimate the powers of bodily endurance.”

“Thank you,” said Mother Francis with great composure. “I am accustomed to fast.” Snubbed, Mrs. Bradley left her and went to find Mother Benedict. The teacher of Latin, beautiful as an angel, was in the nuns’ common room, copying a page from an illuminated manuscript of the thirteenth century. She showed Mrs. Bradley her work, and they talked about it. Then Mrs. Bradley asked her about the Monday afternoon on which the child had died.

“I understand that you were not teaching until half-past three,” she said. “Where were you during the first hour of afternoon school?”

“In here, getting on with my work. This.” She touched her copy of the picture. “I do it in here, and nowhere else at all, because the psalter is one of our treasures, and I have special permission to make a copy of this page for Reverend Mother Superior on condition that I never remove the original from its case. I sit here, looking at it through the glass, and I must never touch it.”

“I see,” said Mrs. Bradley. “Did anybody come in whilst you were here?”

“Yes. Sister Saint Dominic came in at about a quarter to three to tell me that she was going into Kelsorrow with some children who had to see the dentist. She asked me whether I wanted any more colours for my work, and I gave her a list.”

“How long did that take?”

“Less than five minutes—I cannot tell exactly.”

“Did anyone else come in whilst you were here?”

“Yes. Old Sister Catherine came in to sit by the fire. She is over ninety, and does whatever she likes. She is near to God now.”

She smiled, very sweetly and tenderly.

“And how old are you?” Mrs. Bradley asked abruptly.

“I am thirty, a blessed age.”

Mrs. Bradley did not contradict the statement. Any age, she thought, as she looked with pleasure upon the lovely face, would be blessed in Mother Benedict. “Did you know the dead child?” she asked aloud.

“Yes, certainly. I take all the forms for Latin, and I had had her form, the third, that very morning. I remember the lesson vividly, I suppose because of the dreadful accident later.”

“Oh, you think it was accident, do you?”

“Why, of course,” said the beautiful nun. “It could not be that so sweet a child would kill herself. It is unthinkable. She was so excited, so pleased with life that morning, one could not help but notice her. She had learnt her work better than anyone else in the form, and shone in translation as I have never known her to do in all the time that we have had her. Sister Saint Simon-Zelotes said the same thing about her Science.”

“Was she usually bright in class?”

“Well, no. She was shy and quiet. But on that particular morning—I wanted to give evidence at the inquest, but could not get permission—she was—it was as though she was on fire with the resolve to work hard and do well. And at the end of the hour, when I pulled her back to give her a little badge—a merit badge— we give them for very good work, but never in front of the rest of the form—she caught my hand and whispered: ‘Oh, Mother Saint Benedict, it’s good to get a merit badge at last! I am so very happy!’ I kissed her when I pinned on the little badge, and pushed her out, because I knew she had to catch up the rest of the form to go into Sister Mary-Joseph’s lesson at the other end of the building, so I shall never know what it was that had happened to change her so much.”

“I shall be able to tell you, later on,” said Mrs. Bradley. Mother Benedict stood looking after her in great surprise, her painting forgotten for the moment, in her eyes the picture of the happy child, in her ears Mrs. Bradley’s grim promise.