St. Peter's Finger

“Ah, Mother Saint Ambrose said you was here,” she pronounced, with extreme satisfaction. “That slobbering old—that Sister Bridget went and pinched your bed.”

Mrs. Bradley cackled. There was something refreshingly unregenerate about Bessie. Excellent although she believed the training of the orphans to be in some respects, she hoped that it would not have the effect of altering Bessie’s high spirits and racy language. She considered her with a bright and birdlike eye over the rim of a cup of tea, and thought of her own youth, which had been spent in a village and had been guided, so far as religious matters were concerned, by the Church of England. She could hear the vicar, with his delicate emphasis on the personal aspect of Christianity… “Wherein I was made a member of Christ, the child of God, and an inheritor of the Kingdom of Heaven!”

“By the way, Bessie,” she said, as she lowered the cup. “I suppose Miss Bonnet was the first person to find the dead child in the guest-house?”

Bessie’s uncomprehending stare was answer enough, she felt, without the characteristic reply.

“Dunno what you’re getting at. Sounds as if you might be coming round to my point of view, after all. They done ’er in; I’ll always hold to it, poor little innocent kid.”

chapter 10

questions

“Either his slippery knots at once untie

And disentangle all his winding snare

Or shatter too with him my curious frame.”

andrew marvell: The Coronet.

« ^ »

Annie was cleaning taps. She smeared on the polish very evenly, thinly and carefully, and then rubbed with such energy and goodwill that the metal seemed to burst into sunshine underneath her hand. Mrs. Bradley watched her, and the girl, unconscious of her presence, worked on, her breathing a little laboured, her cheeks brightly flushed, and a stray quiff of hair hanging loose from her neat mob cap.

“Good work, Annie,” said Mrs. Bradley pleasantly, as the girl gave up and began to screw the cap on the tin of polish. Annie, accustomed to the unheralded comings and silent going of nuns, looked round and smiled.

“Good morning, madam. Did you sleep well at the guest-house?”

“Not at the guest-house; here, in the Orphanage,” Mrs. Bradley replied, surprised that Bessie had not passed on the fact of her presence.

“Really, madam?”

“Yes. Sister Bridget decided to come home to roost. Annie, did you know she had a tame mouse?”

“Certainly, madam. Last Thursday week it nearly died, or something. She was that excited we could hardly get anything out of her. Not as it’s easy, any time, to quite make out all she says.”

“I can’t think why nobody told me about this mouse. I want to go across and have a look at the bathroom. Will you ask Kitty to come with me? And can you come as well?”

“I’ll just speak to Mother Saint Ambrose a minute, then, madam.”

She put away her cleaning things, washed her hands, and went off in search of the nun. Mrs. Bradley, who had wandered into the kitchen from the dining-room, wandered back again. The Orphanage was rather sternly be- texted, and religious pictures simpered from most of its walls, but the walls were also cheerful with yellow paint, and there were branches of hazel in vases. Mother Ambrose came in less than three minutes, and readily gave permission for Annie and Kitty to go with Mrs. Bradley to the guest-house.

The drawing-pin was still in position, and, watched by the two girls, Mrs. Bradley knelt down and scrutinised it. Kitty involuntarily giggled, but was nudged into silence by Annie. Near the drawing-pin, which marked the spot on which, according to Sister Bridget, the unconscious mouse had been found, the gas pipe connected to the geyser came up through a hole in the floor. Mrs. Bradley poked an inquisitive, long, yellow finger into the hole in the boards, but could touch nothing.

She sat back on her heels, turned her head and spoke to the girls over her shoulder.

“If I become unconscious, drag me away and open the window and door, children,” she said, with a ghastly cackle. “Shut both, and then I shall begin.”

Annie closed the window, Kitty the door. Mrs. Bradley lay full length, her face above the hole. After a full three minutes she got up.

“Do you feel all right, madam?” asked Annie. Mrs. Bradley blew her nose and nodded.

“Unfortunately, quite all right,” she said. “Kitty, why didn’t you tell anybody that you had found someone lying unconscious in the bath?”

“When, madam?” Kitty’s prominent eyes opened wide. “Sure, you wouldn’t be meaning that poor little girl?”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“Well, madam, I thought it was in the bathroom underneath this one she was found. Anyways, Miss Bonnet found her, not me. I never was after finding her. Indeed, I know nothing about it, beyond what I’m hearing from Annie.”

“But surely you should have been on duty here?”

“Sure and indeed I should have been, only, do you see, I was doing a Little Penance for coughing in Silence