“Yes. Mary is six months older than poor little Ursula was, but is rather a dull child, as I think I said before.”
“Then Ulrica will be able to tell me whether Ursula was in class for the music lesson, I dare say,” Mrs. Bradley observed, “since forms three and four were taken together that Monday afternoon. Have you any objection to my questioning her about it?”
“None whatever. Please do whatever you think best. Would you like me to send for her?”
“I will talk to her during the dinner hour. It will be less formal then. This news of the double lesson is important. I wish I had known it before.”
Mother Francis lowered her eyes. It seemed to Mrs. Bradley as though she were fated always to be finding fault with one or other of the Community, and their docility in accepting rebuke unnerved her. She said, when the nun looked up again:
“Mother Saint Francis, I am going to ask a direct question, and I would like the frankest answer which you can give me.”
The nun’s grey eyes were fixed on hers. Mother Francis was summing her up. She smiled.
“What is your question?” she asked.
“What is your own belief about the circumstances of the child’s death?”
“‘I regret to say that I cannot give you any answer at all to that question.”
“You believe that she was murdered?”
The nun did not reply. Her eyes, which remained meeting Mrs. Bradley’s, lost focus, as though she were looking through the back of Mrs. Bradley’s head to the window behind her, and out of it across the school garden. Her lips moved, but no sound came from them. Mrs. Bradley read the lip-signs and followed the Latin words. She grinned. Slightly startled, and, exceptionally, betraying the fact, Mother Francis apologised. Mrs. Bradley said briskly:
“As doctor to prospective patient, I would remind you that it is early in Lent to be feeling the effects of fastings. Remember the ears of corn which the disciples plucked on the Sabbath. Your work is trying, and you are under continuous strain. There has been, and is, among all of you here who knew her, acute and painful anxiety over the death of this child. Take my advice, and do not over-estimate the powers of bodily endurance.”
“Thank you,” said Mother Francis with great composure. “I am accustomed to fast.” Snubbed, Mrs. Bradley left her and went to find Mother Benedict. The teacher of Latin, beautiful as an angel, was in the nuns’ common room, copying a page from an illuminated manuscript of the thirteenth century. She showed Mrs. Bradley her work, and they talked about it. Then Mrs. Bradley asked her about the Monday afternoon on which the child had died.
“I understand that you were not teaching until half-past three,” she said. “Where were you during the first hour of afternoon school?”
“In here, getting on with my work. This.” She touched her copy of the picture. “I do it in here, and nowhere else at all, because the psalter is one of our treasures, and I have special permission to make a copy of this page for Reverend Mother Superior on condition that I never remove the original from its case. I sit here, looking at it through the glass, and I must never touch it.”
“I see,” said Mrs. Bradley. “Did anybody come in whilst you were here?”
“Yes. Sister Saint Dominic came in at about a quarter to three to tell me that she was going into Kelsorrow with some children who had to see the dentist. She asked me whether I wanted any more colours for my work, and I gave her a list.”
“How long did that take?”
“Less than five minutes—I cannot tell exactly.”
“Did anyone else come in whilst you were here?”
“Yes. Old Sister Catherine came in to sit by the fire. She is over ninety, and does whatever she likes. She is near to God now.”
She smiled, very sweetly and tenderly.
“And how old are
“I am thirty, a blessed age.”
Mrs. Bradley did not contradict the statement. Any age, she thought, as she looked with pleasure upon the lovely face, would be blessed in Mother Benedict. “Did you know the dead child?” she asked aloud.
“Yes, certainly. I take all the forms for Latin, and I had had her form, the third, that very morning. I remember the lesson vividly, I suppose because of the dreadful accident later.”
“Oh, you think it was accident, do you?”
“Why, of course,” said the beautiful nun. “It could not be that so sweet a child would kill herself. It is unthinkable. She was so excited, so pleased with life that morning, one could not help but notice her. She had learnt her work better than anyone else in the form, and shone in translation as I have never known her to do in all the time that we have had her. Sister Saint Simon-Zelotes said the same thing about her Science.”
“Was she usually bright in class?”
“Well, no. She was shy and quiet. But on that particular morning—I wanted to give evidence at the inquest, but could not get permission—she was—it was as though she was on fire with the resolve to work hard and do well. And at the end of the hour, when I pulled her back to give her a little badge—a merit badge— we give them for very good work, but never in front of the rest of the form—she caught my hand and whispered: ‘Oh, Mother Saint Benedict, it’s good to get a merit badge at last! I am so very happy!’ I kissed her when I pinned on the little badge, and pushed her out, because I knew she had to catch up the rest of the form to go into Sister Mary-Joseph’s lesson at the other end of the building, so I shall never know what it was that had happened to change her so much.”
“I shall be able to tell you, later on,” said Mrs. Bradley. Mother Benedict stood looking after her in great surprise, her painting forgotten for the moment, in her eyes the picture of the happy child, in her ears Mrs. Bradley’s grim promise.
