St. Peter's Finger

Time. ’Tis by way of being a privilege to work in the guest-house. We lose it if we are offensive.”

“I see,” said Mrs. Bradley. “What were you doing instead?”

“Cleaning pigs.”

“Is that a penance?”

“Not to me; I like it. But to most here it is.”

“Kitty pulled it out of the bag, madam, and Mother Saint Ambrose couldn’t change it, you see,” Annie politely explained. “Cleaning pigs, cleaning water closets, weeding gravel, killing slugs, making breadcrumbs, gutting fish, is all Little Penances, and you fish for one out of the bag if you’ve done something wrong, whether Mother Saint Ambrose knows or not; we’re on our honour, us older ones, we are.”

“What happens to all those jobs when nobody has qualified for a Little Penance?” Mrs. Bradley enquired. The two girls looked at one another.

“Sometimes some of us do one to gain merit, but that don’t happen very often,” said Annie, pensively. “There’s Bessie, for one. Always in trouble, she is. And swapped her Little Penance, once, for a Grand Penance Maggie got given her, because she liked it better.”

“What was the Grand Penance, then?”

“Not to see Reverend Mother Superior for a fortnight.”

“What did she change it for?”

“Killing slugs. You see, you can’t be found out in that, because Reverend Mother Superior don’t know who’s allowed to see her and who isn’t, and as long as you can show a fair number of slugs, nobody watches while you find them. So Bessie pulled it off, only Maggie let it out by mistake.”

“What happened then?” asked Mrs. Bradley, hoping to get more light on the character of Mother Ambrose.

“Nothing happened,” said Annie, inconclusively. “Not as we know of, anyway. But Maggie said she would never do it again.”

“I think I’d like to see Maggie. I wonder, Kitty, whether you could go back now and send her over?”

Maggie proved to be fat and fair, and, looking at her, Mrs. Bradley felt that it was incredible that she should have achieved a Grand Penance. So intrigued was she that she asked, point-blank, for an explanation,

“Oh, madam—” said Maggie. She twisted up her apron, drew in her breath with a sudden, sharp hiss, and then laughed until Mrs. Bradley was afraid she would suffocate.

“Oh, madam—” said Maggie again, with another hysterical burst. Mrs. Bradley was beginning to regret that she had embarked upon the subject when Maggie, gathering herself together, said, with a rush, so that laughter should not eclipse speech: “I told a lie, madam! I really had to. It was all through the milkman, madam. He left a rose in a carton of cream—for Kitty, we thought, only it was really for me, only neither of us didn’t like to tell Mother Saint Ambrose, it made us feel so awkward—so I told Mother Saint Ambrose we didn’t know who it was meant for, and there was poetry on it and everything, only we hadn’t seen it. It was tied round the carton under the rose, and I suppose Mother Saint Ambrose must have read it and found my name on it, and she gave me a Grand Penance for lying—only, you see, it wasn’t really a lie —and made me do my hair back tighter.”

“Well, that’s very interesting, Maggie. By the way, why didn’t you call somebody to help you when you went into the other bathroom and found the little girl dead?”

“I never went in there, madam. I never do.” Maggie looked puzzled, not scared.

“Do you mean that you never do the work in that bathroom?”

“No, madam, not in that bathroom. It’s Kitty’s and Annie’s work. All of us have our own work, though we don’t always have our own partners.”

“Have you never been inside it before?”

“Yes, madam, but only when fetched. I came into this bathroom, madam, when Sister Bridget’s mouse was found. I picked it up, madam, as nobody else fancied touching it.”

“Didn’t Sister Bridget touch it?”

“No. She spoke very blaspheemious, although nobody thought she could help it. It was just the devil taking advantage of her, being as she’s simple, madam.”

“But she didn’t pick up the mouse?”

“No, madam. Mother Saint Ambrose ordered Bessie to, but Bessie said she couldn’t, not for nobody, so Mother Saint Ambrose said: ‘Fetch Kitty.’ So Bessie said (only she muttered it, so she told me) to the effect that ‘Maggie’s the one for your money! She’s our little old slug-catcher!’ So she fetched me along, against order, but acting innocent, like she do.”

“You didn’t mind picking up the mouse?”

“What’s the use of minding? My father was a mole catcher. Help him put ’em out in rows, I have, many’s the time, and wish I could help him again.”

She began to whimper and, at a nod from Mrs. Bradley, who added: “The other two,” Annie led Maggie away. Maria, aged fifteen, and Ethel, aged fourteen and three-quarters (whom Mrs. Bradley had already seen as Mother Francis’ monitor), were as innocent as the others, it appeared, of having opened the bathroom door and found the body. This left Mrs. Bradley where she had started, except that to have eliminated the orphans led one step further from suicide or accident, and one step nearer murder, she decided, since an innocent adult person would surely have summoned assistance and made the death known.

Shaking her head, she went over to the school for Mother Gregory. She knew that the Sacristan did no teaching on Tuesday mornings, so, after a glance in at the doorway of the staff-room where the nuns, if they wished, could sit and correct exercise books without having to carry these off the school premises, she wandered across to the cloister, and heard the sound of the organ. Quietly she went into church, and knelt for a moment, as she would have covered her shoes with over-slippers if she had been entering a mosque. Then she got up and moved quietly towards the organ.