The smell of gas hung faintly upon the air. The twelve per cent of carbon monoxide present with the gas seemed negligible, judging by her own reactions. She opened the window wide to clear it away, put the key back on the inside of the door and went downstairs again.
“I’ll go down to-day and have a look at this convent and its startling geyser,” she thought.
It was Celestine who expressed horror at the summary nature of the proceedings. She then packed a suitcase in record time, and offered her husband, Mrs. Bradley’s cook, as escort on the journey.
“He has a veritable gun, and is also as good as a gangster. He is a ruffian, that one,” she observed, in hearty recommendation of her spouse. “He knows not fear, and, if madame proposes to cross the moors—oh, the stories one hears!”
“Delicious,” said Mrs. Bradley, tying a veil over her hat and underneath her chin. “Were you ever in a convent, Celestine?”
“But certainly,” replied the Frenchwoman. “Was I not taught by the good nuns everything that I know? More, too, which, alas! I have forgotten. Madame should recuperate, after the long American tour, at a convent. It is incredible, the care that is given.”
“On the contrary,” said Mrs. Bradley, “it is more than likely that I shall be gassed in my bath. Put in my heaviest walking-shoes, and I shall require a shooting-stick, golf clubs, field-glasses and a camera.”
“Madame disguises herself,” said Celestine, with a sniff. “And the walking-shoes will go by themselves, apart from the rest of the trousseau. Georges has put ready the golf clubs, and Henri is preparing food for madame to eat on the journey. There may not be good wayside food at English hotels so early in the year. In France, of course, it is different. There we are civilised people. It is curious what brutes are the English.”
Mrs. Bradley, accustomed to this criticism, did not reply. In twenty minutes she was off, and, before darkness fell, George had drawn up the car outside a village inn not far from Ferdinand’s convent. But for the reek of petrol which came from a garage near by— for the village was on a main road—they might have fancied that they could smell the sea; it was less than a mile away. The host was not surprised to hear them enquire about the convent.
“Had a mort of people,” he said, “come in their cars since Tuesday to have a look at the place. Taken the public fancy, this case has, as though it had been a murder. ’Course, there’s them as says it
“So the convent has a bad name?” said Mrs. Bradley.
“
Behind the inn was a garden, and beyond the garden the rolling common, deep woodland and misty pools of what had been a royal forest from the time of the Norman Conquest to the days of Henry III. The road through the village ran beside it, mile after mile.
Opposite the inn a spread of moorland mounted a mile-long hill to great cliffs sheer to the sea.
Mrs. Bradley washed and dined, and after dinner walked across the moor in search of the convent. The white path, wide enough for small cars, but boulder-strewn here and there and deeply rutted by cart-wheels, led to its gates, she was told.
The evening was cool, and the climb up out of the village fairly steep, but she took the slope briskly and soon was warm. It was easy to find the way. A bright half-moon lit the path, and against its light the convent church stood bold and black and solid, a landmark to pedestrians on the moor. As she drew nearer she could see, between her and the church, a huddle of lower roofs. Some part of these, she surmised, must belong to the convent guest- house, and the rest to buildings abutting on to the cloister.
Whilst she was standing still at the top of the slope before exploring further, she was aware of the approach of an elderly man with a bicycle. She noticed him first when he was still some distance away because of the headlamp of the bicycle, which appeared to bob up and down owing to the uneven surface of the stony moorland track. She did not move, and in a minute or two he came up beside her, and both of them stood gazing at the buildings.
“Death-traps,” said the man.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Yes, and death-traps is what I mean. Lures little children to their doom.”
“What does?”
“Nuns.”
“Interesting.”
“I call it ’orrible. Soon as I ’eard, I said to my old girl, ‘I’ll be off and hold an inspection of that there lazar-’ouse,’ I said. Come be road in seven hours and a quarter, less two hours’ rest and refreshment. Always give yourself a chance when you’re on your old jigger, and you’ll still be cycling at ninety.”
“You follow up sinister happenings, Mr.—?”
“Gossage. Ah, I do. ’Obby of mine this twenty-four year and seven months, ever since me and the old girl found ourselves next-door neighbours to a man what cut seven throats in the one ’ouse between ten-thirty-seven, when the other next-door was speaking to one of the corpses, engaged in putting out the cat, and six-fifteen, when the early-round milkman see the blood on the front-door step, it having run that far in the interval between the ’orrid deaths and their dramatic discovery.”
“And you suspect that a horrid death—?”
“Took place with that little girl in that sinister bathroom? Ah, that I do. And I’ll tell you for why. That inquest was in our paper. Perhaps you never see it—ah, you did, though, or else you wouldn’t be ’ere. Kept very small, at first, to the bottom bit of the page, but even then what I call suggestive, and look how it’s ’otted up now. The whole place was wrecked last night by ’furiated villagers. And the coroner’s remarks, if you noticed, were what I calls— what’s the word— muffled? No, that ain’t quite it. Now, what do you call it—?
