chapter 7
headmistress
henry vaughan: They are all gone into the world of light.
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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
