St. Peter's Finger

Bessie’s sullen face softened.

“Ah, poor little nipper,” she said. “Tell you what I reckon, but for God’s sake don’t go passing it on. I reckon the coroner was right, and she did go and do herself in, that’s what I reckon. Always scared she was, I used to notice. I had the job of laying the tables, see, for the paying kids’ lunch. Only a few are boarders, but plenty stops to lunch. And I used to see her, and my heart didn’t half used to bleed. Some horrible things can happen in these here convents, take my word for it.”

“Has anything happened to you?”

“Oh, I can take care of myself. I’m tough, I am. ’Tisn’t everyone that’s been sent incorrigible to an Industrial School for two years. You wait till I get out of here, and then you watch my smoke!”

Sorrowfully Mrs. Bradley agreed to do this.

“What happened after the child had been carried into the bedroom?” she enquired.

“I don’t know. Mother Saint Ambrose put her head out and told me to go on downstairs, and she went down to the telephone.”

“Did you go downstairs when you were told?”

“Course I went. What you think?”

“I think you did go. Where was Annie then?”

“She let the water out of the bath and cleaned up the bathroom, and shut the window up what Miss Bonnet had opened.”

“How do you know what she did if you were downstairs?”

“I heard the water running out, then there wasn’t nothing except the water running, then I heard the bang of Annie shutting the window. Here’s Mother Saint Ambrose. Better look out what you’re saying. She don’t stand for much, I can tell you.”

“Bessie,” said Mrs. Bradley, stretching out a thin yellow claw and yanking Bessie with unceremonious adroitness into the bathroom and gently closing the door, “do you dislike Miss Bonnet?”

“I got no use for any of her sort. More like a policewoman, she is, and not of the best of them.”

“You do dislike her, then?”

“I never said so.”

“You’re intelligent, though,” said Mrs. Bradley. “You tumbled to the point about the window. Miss Bonnet didn’t open it, Bessie, did she?”

“I thought as how she did. No, that’s right! Annie said she did. I never see her.”

“What class were you in at school—before you were sent to the Industrial School, I mean?”

“Class Two.”

“Not the top class, was it?”

“Next to the top.”

“Queer. I should say you had brains.”

“Nothink to do with brains. If you’re lousy they doesn’t put you up to the top class, see?”

“And were you lousy?”

“Yes, I was. Think they can get me clean, sending me to that old bitch at that bloody clinic!”

“But you’re clean here, Bessie, aren’t you?”

“Ain’t no louses, that’s why.”

“Have you ever taken an oath in a court of law?”

“Course I have. Didn’t me step-father do a seven-year stretch?”

“And are you prepared to tell me the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about what happened here?”

“About the little nipper?”

“Yes.”

“I dunno.”

“Bessie, did Miss Bonnet shut the window?”

“No, that was Annie, I tell you.”

“Miss Bonnet then, neither shut nor opened the window, as far as you yourself know? Don’t answer for Annie, please.”

“O.K. Suit yourself what she did. Don’t matter to me.”

“I will suit myself. Ask Annie to come in here.”

“I suppose you know you’re keeping Mother Saint Ambrose waiting,” said Bessie, with a last impudent fling as she went outside. Annie came almost immediately.

“Annie, was the bathroom unlocked, then, so that Miss Bonnet could walk in?”

“Why, yes, madam, certainly it was.”