fetch somebody quick.’ Which were her actual words? Those, or the words you told me just now?”
Annie looked distressed.
“I didn’t think you’d want me to swear,” she said.
“Very well, Annie. Then Miss Bonnet really said, ‘My God! Go and get Mother Saint Ambrose!’ ”
“No, madam. ‘Good God! Annie, run and get someone. I’m not going to touch her! I can’t!’ That’s what she said, and I shouted to Bessie, and Bessie must have run fast.”
“Then Mother Saint Ambrose arrived. Now what did she say?”
“She sent Bessie off for Mother Saint Jude, and told me to get some towels from the airing cupboard, although as a matter of fact there was one in the bathroom already, and I suppose she beckoned Miss Bonnet in to help her, because Miss Bonnet said, ‘I can’t! I can’t!’ Very upset she seemed.”
“Now then,” said Mrs. Bradley briskly, “I want to see Bessie. Please go and fetch her, and bring her up here to this landing.”
“Very good, madam.”
She went, and as soon as she was gone, Mrs. Bradley stepped inside the bathroom, and closed the door. The little room was as bare and clean as a cell. It was tiled to a height of four feet, and above the tiling the walls were covered with washable distemper. There was a window which opened casement fashion, and beneath it was a wash-bowl. Under the bowl was a cork-topped bathroom stool, and beside the bowl, over the outlet end of the bath, was the gas water-heater. This Mrs. Bradley examined minutely. She lit it, let water run, turned it off again, examined the gas-pipes, and noticed nothing amiss except that the room had no ventilator. The geyser, however, had a correctly-fitted flue.
She heard footsteps outside and went on to the landing again. A short, dark, sullen-looking girl was standing a yard behind Annie. Mrs. Bradley sent Annie away for Mother Ambrose and Mother Jude and then turned on the second eldest orphan, summed her up, and spoke sharply:
“Now, then, Bessie,” she said. “The truth, and quickly.”
“Don’t know nothing, and don’t want to,” said Bessie with discouraging abruptness.
“I see,” said Mrs. Bradley. “No use to ask you, then, whether the bathroom window was open or shut.”
“I don’t know. I heard Annie yelling, and I run.”
“Annie, I suppose, is a very excitable girl.”
“Nothing don’t excite her. That’s why I run.”
“Did you hear quite clearly what she said?”
“No, but we always runs for Mother Saint Ambrose when anything over either house goes wrong.”
“I see. So you took it for granted that you were to fetch Mother Saint Ambrose. Where, by the way, did you find her?”
“Same place as usual.”
“And she came immediately?”
Bessie, slightly nonplussed by this calm acceptance of her uncouth behaviour, replied, still doggedly sulky but with a greater degree of animation than, so far, she had displayed:
“Most immediate she come, and when she gets there she sends me darting off for Mother Saint Jude.”
“And was Mother Saint Jude also in the same place as usual?”
“She was in the kitchen, if that’s where you mean.”
“Supervising the baking?”
“How do you know?”
“Routine.”
“She was telling off young Maggie.”
“An unusual occurrence?”
“Eh?”
“Did she often tell Maggie off?”
“Every day. So did Mother Saint Ambrose. Young Maggie don’t half muck about. Wish I had half her sauce.”
“But she stopped as soon as you burst in.”
“I never busted in. Trust me!
“How long have you been here, Bessie?”
“Best part of a year, since I left the Industrial School.”
“Are you a Catholic?”
“Me mother was. That’s why Father Thomas bunged me in here when she died. I don’t care. They’ll have to let me go when I’m eighteen, else I can have the law on them.”
“Did you see them carry the little girl out of the bathroom to the bedroom?”
