“Katherine Hepburn,” said Mrs. Bradley, after a suitable pause for thought.
“Ginger Rogers for me. Oh, boy! She’s lovely! Her and Fred Astaire! See her and Hepburn act in that one about the chorus girls and that? That bit where Ginger gets lit! Oh, glory, didn’t I laugh! On the Q.T. I see that. Supposed to be hout on an ’ike. Only Annie knowed, and she wouldn’t tell. Not bad, old Annie isn’t.”
“Oh, Bessie,” said Mrs. Bradley, suddenly interrupting, “how long after Annie did you go into that bathroom?”
“Me? I never went in. You can’t pin nothing on me!”
“Why do you use that expression? The little girl committed suicide, didn’t she?”
“Did she? Let them as think so fry in their fat, I says.”
“But it was you who suggested to me how cruelly treated the children were, and how natural it was that they should be driven to dreadful deeds.”
Bessie seemed taken aback, and for once had no answer ready.
“So you didn’t go into the bathroom at all,” said Mrs. Bradley, in gentle, musing tones. Bessie glowered suspiciously.
“Suppose I said I did?”
“I should not suppose anything so improbable,” said Mrs. Bradley briefly. “Were you going to show me my room? Later on, I think. I have to go back to the private school for a bit.”
chapter 8
retrospect
fulke greville, lord brooke: The Nature of a True Religion.
« ^ »
It was the time of the afternoon break. Mrs. Bradley stood in the school grounds and watched the girls come out. With them came two nuns to supervise the recreation period. The girls came out with decorous quietness, but soon conversation became animated, groups formed, the see-saw and the netball posts were requisitioned, and girls linked arms to walk about. Some went up to talk to the nuns, but Mrs. Bradley decided that this was too good an opportunity to be wasted, so she, too, joined the group. The girls made way for her politely, and drifted off. The nuns bowed and smiled.
“I believe,” said Mrs. Bradley, “that when visiting mistresses take lessons, it is the custom for some of you to be in attendance.”
The nuns bowed again. Mrs. Bradley, remembering the curious silences and clipped-off conversation of Mother Ambrose and Mother Jude, proceeded:
“May I have your names, please, for my note-book?”
“I am Sister Saint Timothy,” said the elder of the two.
“I am Sister Saint Dominic,” said the slightly younger one. Mrs. Bradley wrote down the names, putting Mother, instead of Sister, as the title, a complimentary man?uvre which the nuns received with smiles, and then said briskly:
“On the afternoon that Ursula Doyle was found dead, the orphans had extra netball. Which of you supervised that game?”
The sisters lowered their eyes, and concentrated deeply on the question. Mother Timothy spoke first.
“I do not think anybody did.”
“There was no arrangement,” said Mother Dominic, “It was something quite out of the ordinary, you see, for Miss Bonnet to take the game then.”
“Do you know how long the game lasted?”
Neither of them knew that.
“Miss Bonnet will be here again on Thursday,” volunteered Mother Timothy. “She took the game. She will know.”
As soon as the break was over, the nuns, with further bows and smiles, went in, and Mrs. Bradley, watching them go, decided that the time had come to ask a few questions of the orphans with whom Miss Bonnet had taken the extra netball.
She went first to Mother Ambrose whom she discovered in the dayroom counting sheets. She asked permission to talk to the orphans. Mother Ambrose gave it readily, and offered to send for the children so that Mrs. Bradley could interview them apart from their classmates.
So the fourteen orphans who had had the extra netball practice were paraded in the Orphanage day-room, and stood in a deferential semi-circle to be questioned. Mother Ambrose remained in the room with the lay-sister who was helping to check the laundry count, but she removed herself to a courteous distance from the questioner.
“Now, children,” said Mrs. Bradley, “sit down and answer me carefully.”
They sat on the floor in silence, and fixed their eyes upon the middle button of her blouse.
“You remember last Monday dinner time when Miss Bonnet kindly took you for extra netball? At what time was that game over?”
