“I should be very much obliged.”
Mother Francis pressed a bell.
“Ulrica Doyle, from Mother Saint Gregory’s music class,” she said to the girl who appeared. “That is Ethel, one of the older orphans,” she added, after the girl had gone. “They take it in turns to sit in the adjoining room doing needlework or practising shorthand, and act as messengers if I require it. I very seldom do require it, but it is convenient to have somebody there if visitors come, and quite good practice for the girls to take courteous, correctly-rendered messages.”
Ethel was not long gone. She returned with a tall, blue-eyed girl, wearing the convent black pinafore and badge, whose face told of sleeplessness, strain and acute anxiety. She curtsied to Mother Francis, and waited with exaggerated meekness to hear what she was to do. She curtsied again when she had heard it, opened the door for Mrs. Bradley and then walked sedately beside her along the whole length of the corridor as silently as a ghost. She seemed to Mrs. Bradley as quiet as a nun. The disembodied manner in which the religious suddenly appeared and retreated without sound was startling, but not uncanny. In Ulrica Doyle this silence was disquieting.
The girl took charge of her, however, without awkwardness or shyness, and showed her the grounds and the buildings. It was not until they were walking in the nuns’ garden that she mentioned her dead cousin. The fact that she did so at all surprised Mrs. Bradley and gave her occasion for thought.
“I suppose you have heard about Ursula?” Ulrica said.
“Yes, child.” Neither looked at the other. Ulrica stared at the gravel, Mrs. Bradley at the wall of the frater.
“What do you think about it? Tell me, please, what you think. I want to know.”
“I have no idea what I think about it, except that it was a very terrible thing.”
“But you’ve come to find out about it, haven’t you?”
“Yes, child. How did you know?”
“Father Thomas promised me that he would try to get you to come here. Ursula must have been killed. She would never have killed herself. I wish you would let me help you.”
“You come first on my list of suspects,” Mrs. Bradley observed, with a strangely mirthless grin.
“Because of the money, you mean? Yes, it’s a motive, I suppose. It couldn’t benefit me personally, though, because I am going to enter as soon as I am old enough.”
“Enter?”
“Join the Community. Become a nun.”
“I see. So you would get no benefit from the money?”
“All my property will come to the convent when I enter. Poverty is part of the Rule.”
“Why do you suspect that your cousin’s death was not suicide?”
“I knew Ursula very well indeed. She was a sweet child. She would never have done such a thing.”
“Have you any idea why anybody should desire her death?”
“No—I don’t think I have. At least, it isn’t definite, and I would rather be torn to pieces than put suspicion on anybody unjustly. That would be awful, wouldn’t it?”
“Do you speak literally, I wonder?”
“About what I would suffer? Saints have been torn to pieces, and what they endured, I can.”
“I see. Does your cousin, Mary, share your theories?”
“Oh, Mary’s a silly little thing. I should never dream of talking to her about Ursula. She didn’t like Ursula; I loved her.”
“That, of course, would make a good deal of difference.”
“The part I can’t understand is how anybody ever persuaded Ursula to do a naughty thing like going to a guest-house bathroom. It’s dead against the school rules, and she was such a gentle, timid little thing that I can’t imagine her letting anybody lead her astray. It must have been a grown-up person. Nobody in the school would ever have persuaded Ursula to break the rules like that.”
“Whom do you suggest?”
“I am not prepared to name anybody. And, besides, by the time you’ve taken out the nuns and Miss Bonnet and Mrs. Waterhouse, none of whom, I suppose, can very well be suspected, there isn’t anyone else except the guests, who all have an alibi; and old Jack, the hedge-trimmer and gardener, and he wouldn’t hurt a fly.”
“There are the orphans. ”
“I know. Some of the older ones are awful.”
“Motive?”
“I know. But—well, take Bessie. I can imagine her doing no end of wicked things.”
“What makes you think it was murder? Why can’t the death have been accident?”
“Because somebody
“I see.”
They walked on in silence. Then, down one of the paths, they encountered a nun. Ulrica curtsied and smiled. The nun and Mrs. Bradley exchanged dignified, grave little bows.
“That’s Mother Mary-Joseph. She’s quite young and a perfect dear,” said Ulrica, when the nun had passed out