St. Peter's Finger

chapter i

cyclist

“Then did of th’ elements’ dust Man’s body frame

A perfect microcosm, the same

He quickened with a sparkle of pneumatic flame.”

edward benlowes: Theophila.

^ »

George sat on a bit of board laid across the top of an upturned bucket, and read the Sunday paper. He was in his shirt-sleeves and was without his leggings. A slight breeze rustled the pages of the paper and stirred his hair, for his peaked cap hung on a bush. Two dogs lay near him in the sun; a faint smell of horse-manure mingled (despite their appeal to different senses) with the pleasant sound of a far-off mowing machine; and a lilac tree by the wall was bold with buds. The stable cat was watching birds near by, and the newly washed car stood gleaming at the doors of the garage.

At the end of the lane which connected Mrs. Bradley’s house with the main road through the village, three elm trees were in thick, dark-clustered flower. The elders already had their leaves, and an almond tree at the gate was in bright pink blossom. Emulating it, but not happily, since the colour made her yellow skin look dirty, was Mrs. Bradley in a pink spring suit. Her black eyes were brilliant as she listened, with a faint and sceptical grin, to the half-bullying persuasions of her son.

Ferdinand was earnest, and Mrs. Bradley, apparently contemplating not his face but the yellow-starred jasmine behind his black-clad shoulder, had given him close attention for more than twenty minutes, while they stood together at the gate, for, characteristically, he had given no hint of the object of his visit until he was ready to depart.

“So, you see, mother, it really is exceptionally interesting, and it would be a good thing for the convent if you would go and look into the matter. It may be nothing, but the Superior is a pretty shrewd old lady, and if she smells a rat there must be something that wants nailing to the mast. In any case, you need a rest after that long American tour, and the country is lovely there now.”

“So it is here, dear child.”

“Yes, but you need a change, and the air on the moors is like wine. (Yes, I know, but juries like clichés, so I practise when I get the opportunity.) Now, mother, please, do go. I half-promised Father Thomas that you would. Look here, let me drive you down.”

“I would rather be driven by George. Where is Father Thomas now?”

“He has gone back to Bermondsey. He was living in the convent guest-house to recuperate after a breakdown. That is how he came to know what had happened. I could arrange for you to meet him, but I’m sure I’ve told you everything he said. ”

“I have no doubt of it, child. Well, I will think it all over. Give my love to Juliet, and I hope you get the better of Mrs. O’Dowd.”

“Not a hope, mother. If I do, I’ll pay your consultation fee. It’s quite certain that the convent won’t be able to afford it. The guest-house and the boarding-school keep the orphanage going, and what other income the sisters have is microscopic, I believe, and in any case they’ve a mortgage round their necks like a millstone. Well, good-bye. I’ll come down in Easter week-end and see how you’re getting on. Hilary ends on the thirteenth, so, if you’re still there, I’ll come and compare impressions with you. Good-bye, good-bye.”

Mrs. Bradley watched his car swirl out of sight, and then walked alongside the house, through the kitchen garden, past the rainwater butt, and into the yard. George stamped on his cigarette and rose when he saw his employer.

“What do you know about convents, George?” she asked.

“I had a sister who changed to Catholic, madam. There’s nothing in it, really, I believe. It seems as sensible, in essence, as—pardon me, madam—your religion or mine.”

“Yours being—what, George?”

“In the army I was a Seventh Day Adventist for the reason that they had no Church Parade. Nowadays I should think perhaps you might call me a sympathetic agnostic. Religion has altered, madam, since I was a boy. It’s a far cry, now, from the time when the Creed and the Catechism carried one through. But the Catholics really do appear to have a point of view, madam, and support it very ably in argument.”

“Excellent. Get your things, George, and have the car ready for half-past three. We are going away for a day or two, unless I change my mind by the end of lunch.”

She turned to walk back to the house, but it occurred to her that here was an excellent opportunity of passing on the story as her son had told it her to a reasonably unprejudiced listener, so she went back to the chauffeur and said:

“There was once a child of ten who sneaked into the guest-house of a convent and had a bath. The hot water was supplied by a geyser, which must have given off fumes. The child became unconscious, fell back into the water, was submerged and consequently drowned. I can’t smell the rat, Ceorge. Can you?”

“I remember my sister’s little girl of ten, madam. The only water she would ever go into, without being actually ordered, was the water of the municipal swimming bath, and there she took impetigo. Not at all nice, madam, children at certain stages of development.”

“Good heavens, George! But the incident I have just related to you happened several years ago. The other day—you may have seen an account of it in the paper—a girl of thirteen did exactly the same thing, only it seems that there was nothing wrong with the gas apparatus and that the child was not drowned, but actually succumbed to carbon monoxide poisoning, although her head was under water when they found her. The coroner gave a verdict of suicide, and the convent, naturally, doesn’t like it much, and neither do the relatives, nor, on the face of it, does it appear to be a reasonable inference.”

“I saw the account, madam. The paper I’ve been reading gives the details. It all happened actually last Monday, so this is the first cut the Sunday papers have had at it. This paper states that the young lady was in trouble with the convent authorities, and was expecting terrible punishment, the nature of which is hinted at, not described. It indicates that this fact was instrumental in assisting the coroner to arrive at his conclusions.”

“Lend me the paper, George, if you’ve finished with it. Oh—that paper?”

“Yes, madam. I should say, myself, they’re skating on the edge of libel in this particular instance, but I dare say they know the type of reader they cater for, and that the nuns won’t take any action. Still, it’s a bit thick in parts, and, I should say, highly-coloured and untruthful.”

“Convents are always news, George.”

She walked away briskly, taking the paper with her, and settled down in her sunny sitting-room to read. A double page had been devoted to the story.

“Suicide or—?” it was headed; and underneath, in slightly smaller type, “Four Nuns in Court. Strong Local Feeling Over Child Found Dead at Convent School. We Want The Truth, say villagers.”

Mrs. Bradley read the two pages very carefully. It was not an ordinary report of the proceedings at the inquest, but claimed to be an eye-witness’ account. Mrs. Bradley disentangled what the coroner actually had said from what the Sunday Flag would like its readers to believe that he had said, and then gave her particular attention to a paragraph in heavy type which emphasised the fact that the gas apparatus, a water heater of the ordinary domestic kind familiarly known as a geyser, had been found by the gas company’s experts to be in perfect order.

“Untampered with by guilty hands,” the paragraph ambiguously and actionably stated, “the water heater could have poisoned nobody. What happened,” it went on to demand in italics and in the name of its readers, “in that fatal bathroom, to that young and innocent girl?”

Mrs. Bradley, almost with reverence, put the paper aside, and went to the telephone.

“Is Philip at home?” she enquired of an unseen listener.

“Yes, Beatrice. How are you? Do you want to speak to him?”

“Doesn’t his department handle all the statistics about gas suicides?”

“Don’t do it, dear. You go a horrible pink. It wouldn’t suit you.”

“It does suit me. I am completely clad in it. Ask Philip to come to the telephone, dear child.”

“Good morning, Aunt Beatrice! Gas? Oh, Lord! Are you on to that convent case already? It’s not in your line. You leave it alone. It’s going to cause a fair amount of stink. We’re still quite Gunpowder Plottish in England, you know.”

“Was it really suicide, Philip?”

“According to the coroner and the Sunday papers there’s no possible shadow of doubt. Plus the fact that the convent system of education is out of date nowadays. Did your paper give due prominence to the coroner’s rider warning all those who have charge of the young not to be too ’arsh with the innocent children?”

“Never mind the coroner. What did the gas people say?”

“Geyser all present and correct. No escape of gas. No evidence that apparatus had been tampered with. Correctly fitted flue to carry off all dangerous waste products. In fact, exit the geyser without stain!”

“Does that mean that if the verdict is correct, the child turned off the gas before she lost consciousness? It doesn’t make sense to me. And how do they know that the geyser was perfectly safe?”

“Look here, if you’re really interested, you ought to go upstairs and test your own geyser, if you’ve got one. The only thing you can actually turn on is the pilot light.”

“I’ll go and see in a minute. But, Philip, tell me your opinion of the verdict.”

“Punk.”

“Yet the child did inhale gas, apparently enough to kill her.”

“Must have done, I take it. No argument about it, and the medical evidence quite clear.”

“So what, child?”

“Oh, Lord! I don’t know. Of course, she may have turned on the pilot light and sucked in the escaping gas, but, if she did, your point holds good. She couldn’t have turned it off again before she became unconscious. Seems to me it must have been an accident. Rather tough on the family, and also the convent, if that’s a fact, although, I suppose, from their point of view, it would be a little better than having it brought in suicide. Either way the convent will be blamed.”

Mrs. Bradley rang off, and went to inspect her geyser. It looked, she thought, a fairly harmless contraption. She lit it, watched the water falling into the bath, twisted the pilot-light round and blew it out. Then she shut the window and door, stood outside on the landing and waited for five or six minutes. Then she opened the door, walked over and turned off the gas. The smell was detectable, but there did not seem to be any dangerous quantity in the air. She shut the door again, quickly, locked it and went downstairs. She picked up a book, settled herself to read, and was still reading when her maid Célestine came in to report that a relative was on the telephone, “and invites you, madame, to a holiday in the south of France until Easter, while the young nephew and niece are still away at school.”

“That settles it,” said Mrs. Bradley firmly. She went to the telephone, refused her sister-in-law’s invitation with the maximum amount of charm and urged, in her own defence, when her sister-in-law became reproachful, that she expected to be working very hard until after Easter. Then she wished her a pleasant holiday, hung up and ascended the stairs to the bathroom.

The smell of gas hung faintly upon the air. The twelve per cent of carbon monoxide present with the gas seemed negligible, judging by her own reactions. She opened the window wide to clear it away, put the key back on the inside of the door and went downstairs again.

“I’ll go down to-day and have a look at this convent and its startling geyser,” she thought.

It was Célestine who expressed horror at the summary nature of the proceedings. She then packed a suitcase in record time, and offered her husband, Mrs. Bradley’s cook, as escort on the journey.

“He has a veritable gun, and is also as good as a gangster. He is a ruffian, that one,” she observed, in hearty recommendation of her spouse. “He knows not fear, and, if madame proposes to cross the moors—oh, the stories one hears!”

“Delicious,” said Mrs. Bradley, tying a veil over her hat and underneath her chin. “Were you ever in a convent, Célestine?”

“But certainly,” replied the Frenchwoman. “Was I not taught by the good nuns everything that I know? More, too, which, alas! I have forgotten. Madame should recuperate, after the long American tour, at a convent. It is incredible, the care that is given.”

“On the contrary,” said Mrs. Bradley, “it is more than likely that I shall be gassed in my bath. Put in my heaviest walking-shoes, and I shall require a shooting-stick, golf clubs, field-glasses and a camera.”

“Madame disguises herself,” said Célestine, with a sniff. “And the walking-shoes will go by themselves, apart from the rest of the trousseau. Georges has put ready the golf clubs, and Henri is preparing food for madame to eat on the journey. There may not be good wayside food at English hotels so early in the year. In France, of course, it is different. There we are civilised people. It is curious what brutes are the English.”

Mrs. Bradley, accustomed to this criticism, did not reply. In twenty minutes she was off, and, before darkness fell, George had drawn up the car outside a village inn not far from Ferdinand’s convent. But for the reek of petrol which came from a garage near by— for the village was on a main road—they might have fancied that they could smell the sea; it was less than a mile away. The host was not surprised to hear them enquire about the convent.

“Had a mort of people,” he said, “come in their cars since Tuesday to have a look at the place. Taken the public fancy, this case has, as though it had been a murder. ’Course, there’s them as says it is a murder, and holds to it, but what I says is, if Coroner don’t know what he be at, no business to be coroner, I says; and after that holds my peace.”

“So the convent has a bad name?” said Mrs. Bradley.

“Didn’t have—no, not a murmur. More to the contrary, like, in the village before. But a few folks wagging their tongues can soon make mischief, and there’s them in the know that says charity may cover a multitude of sins, but where there’s children they ought to be very careful, and not go exposing them where there’s been temptation.”

Behind the inn was a garden, and beyond the garden the rolling common, deep woodland and misty pools of what had been a royal forest from the time of the Norman Conquest to the days of Henry III. The road through the village ran beside it, mile after mile.

Opposite the inn a spread of moorland mounted a mile-long hill to great cliffs sheer to the sea.

Mrs. Bradley washed and dined, and after dinner walked across the moor in search of the convent. The white path, wide enough for small cars, but boulder-strewn here and there and deeply rutted by cart-wheels, led to its gates, she was told.

The evening was cool, and the climb up out of the village fairly steep, but she took the slope briskly and soon was warm. It was easy to find the way. A bright half-moon lit the path, and against its light the convent church stood bold and black and solid, a landmark to pedestrians on the moor. As she drew nearer she could see, between her and the church, a huddle of lower roofs. Some part of these, she surmised, must belong to the convent guest-house, and the rest to buildings abutting on to the cloister.

Whilst she was standing still at the top of the slope before exploring further, she was aware of the approach of an elderly man with a bicycle. She noticed him first when he was still some distance away because of the headlamp of the bicycle, which appeared to bob up and down owing to the uneven surface of the stony moorland track. She did not move, and in a minute or two he came up beside her, and both of them stood gazing at the buildings.

“Death-traps,” said the man.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Yes, and death-traps is what I mean. Lures little children to their doom.”

“What does?”

“Nuns.”

“Interesting.”

“I call it ’orrible. Soon as I ’eard, I said to my old girl, ‘I’ll be off and hold an inspection of that there lazar-’ouse,’ I said. Come be road in seven hours and a quarter, less two hours’ rest and refreshment. Always give yourself a chance when you’re on your old jigger, and you’ll still be cycling at ninety.”

“You follow up sinister happenings, Mr.—?”

“Gossage. Ah, I do. ’Obby of mine this twenty-four year and seven months, ever since me and the old girl found ourselves next-door neighbours to a man what cut seven throats in the one ’ouse between ten-thirty-seven, when the other next-door was speaking to one of the corpses, engaged in putting out the cat, and six-fifteen, when the early-round milkman see the blood on the front-door step, it having run that far in the interval between the ’orrid deaths and their dramatic discovery.”

“And you suspect that a horrid death—?”

“Took place with that little girl in that sinister bathroom? Ah, that I do. And I’ll tell you for why. That inquest was in our paper. Perhaps you never see it—ah, you did, though, or else you wouldn’t be ’ere. Kept very small, at first, to the bottom bit of the page, but even then what I call suggestive, and look how it’s ’otted up now. The whole place was wrecked last night by ’furiated villagers. And the coroner’s remarks, if you noticed, were what I calls—what’s the word— muffled? No, that ain’t quite it. Now, what do you call it—?

“Vague?”

“Vague, that’s the word. Ah, vague. And the coroner’s name was ’Iggins.”

“Higgins?”

“That’s right. The only other ’Iggins I ever knowed was a absconding slate-club treasurer. Now what do you make of that?”

“Coincidence.”

“Not a bit. It was like an ’and pointing. I swallowed me breakfast, pumped up me tyres, tested me brake-blocks, told the old girl to expect me when she see me —retired last year, I did, so free to indulge me fancies —and then, to prove ’ow right I was, I find you ’ere a-gazing your fill by moonlight. I meant to ’ave a read of the Sunday paper, but mother lit the fire with it by mistake.”

“And what do you think really happened in that bathroom?”

“ ’Ad ’er ’ead ’eld under.”

“Really?”

“Not a doubt of it. Easy enough to do, and leaves no trace. That little girl was a heiress, near enough. Only one life between ’er and ’er grandfather’s money, and that was the grand-dad ’imself.”

“Are you sure of your facts?”

“They says so, down at the pub.”

“Who say so?”

“A couple of chaps I run into. Nobody round these parts is talking of anything else. Irish, that little girl was, and her grandfather went to America and made his pile in the Prohibition trade. Champagne was ’is lay, and whiskey. Done well, and cleared out. Never copped. Not even suspicioned, so far as he knew. And now collects art treasures, like any other millionaire. Very tidy placed, ’e is. It’s common talk in the village. There’s another girl at the convent, so far un’armed. Two other girls, I believe. But what will the ’arvest be?”

Mrs. Bradley could not tell him. He remained in earnest contemplation of the buildings for a minute or two and then looked at his watch, and asked her what she made the time.

“A quarter to ten,” she said, as she held out her arm to throw the light of his head-lamp on to her watch.

“Crikey! They’ll be shut,” he remarked, as he turned the bicycle about and headed in the direction of the village. “So long! And you take the advice of one what knows, and keep well away from them gates. You never know who might be lurking.”

He swung his leg over the bicycle with an ease remarkable in an elderly man, and wobbled unsteadily over the stony path. As he carried no rear lamp, but only a red reflector, she soon lost sight of him. With a little cackle, for the chance encounter had amused her, she approached the convent buildings more closely. They seemed to be surrounded on every side by a very high brick wall which rose behind the guest-house garden and the gardens of two private houses which adjoined the guest-house on the west, and completely enclosed the other buildings. The gatehouse was set some yards farther back than the gates to the houses, and was in the ancient form of a small room over an archway closed by a massive door. The window looked over the hill. A building to the left of the gatehouse, larger than any of the private houses, but again in a line with them, Mrs. Bradley later discovered to be the convent Orphanage. There were lights in several of the buildings—sure sign of untoward happenings, for the convent hour of lights-out was nine-thirty. Even the gatehouse window showed a glimmer, like that of a candle, to wayfarers coming from the village.

Doors to the convent were few. The Orphanage had its separate entrance, but evidence, supplied later on, proved what appeared, even at first glance, and at night, to be the case, that the entrance was barred up and never used. There was no entrance to the convent grounds, in fact, except by way of the gatehouse. Even the convalescents, if they wished to walk in the gardens of the convent, were obliged to come out by one of the guest-house doors and go in through the gatehouse entrance.

Seawards the breeze freshened. The church, with its high boundary wall running parallel, almost, with the coast, had its north side fronting a cliff along which ran a little path. The moon showed the path up clearly, and Mrs. Bradley followed it westwards for about a quarter of a mile, and discovered that it branched off from a coast-road which swung south of the convent and which had crossed the track by which she had mounted the hill.

The sea beneath the moon looked calm, as though the waters themselves, in meditation, induced the long thoughts which she found herself thinking as she watched them. The tide was in and came to the foot of the cliffs. Below, she supposed, there were caves. The landscape was a perfect setting for smugglers, and the hill-track by which she had come was their mule-road, she thought, across the moor.

She looked back at the convent buildings. High in the church tower burned a steady light. Saint Peter’s Finger they called it in the village. It was the warning to ships which the convent still made it a duty to show every night, although a new lighthouse, half a mile farther along the coast, had released it, in effect, from its ancient obligation to mariners. But as Saint Peter’s Finger its glow was still noted on charts, and the nuns kept watch, two by two, in the lamp-room at night. The light itself, Mrs. Bradley thought, looked friendly. The high walls and the gaunt, stark church threatened those without, yet gave an impression of guarding those within. But all dark deeds seemed possible—she had noticed it before—in tall buildings seen by moonlight. One view of the convent made it look as though it had been gutted by fire. There seemed no glass in the windows and the buildings had an empty, neglected look. She turned back and continued her tour.

Along the east wall she detected the presence of pigs, but, apart from the fact that all lights, except the beacon-lantern in the tower and the glimmer over the gate, were now put out, there was nothing else to be discovered, and she turned to walk back to the village.

She found herself thinking about her chance acquaintance, the elderly man with the bicycle. She wondered how long he was going to remain in the neighbourhood adding to his collection of horrors. She remembered that some of his information had been picked up in the bar of the pub at which she and George were staying. George, too, was adept at acquiring information in pubs. She resolved to compare the results of his researches with what the cyclist had told her. If the child were an heiress, no wonder the village was full of sinister rumours.

The way back seemed short, with the slope of the hill in her favour, but the path was rough, broken and rutted, and several times she stumbled on outcropped stones.