“Vague?”
“Vague, that’s the word. Ah, vague. And the coroner’s name was ’Iggins.”
“Higgins?”
“That’s right. The only other ’Iggins I ever knowed was a absconding slate-club treasurer. Now what do you make of that?”
“Coincidence.”
“Not a bit. It was like an ’and pointing. I swallowed me breakfast, pumped up me tyres, tested me brake- blocks, told the old girl to expect me when she see me —retired last year, I did, so free to indulge me fancies —and then, to prove ’ow right I was, I find you ’ere a-gazing your fill by moonlight. I meant to ’ave a read of the Sunday paper, but mother lit the fire with it by mistake.”
“And what do you think really happened in that bathroom?”
“ ’Ad ’er ’ead ’eld under.”
“Really?”
“Not a doubt of it. Easy enough to do, and leaves no trace. That little girl was a heiress, near enough. Only one life between ’er and ’er grandfather’s money, and that was the grand-dad ’imself.”
“Are you sure of your facts?”
“They says so, down at the pub.”
“Who say so?”
“A couple of chaps I run into. Nobody round these parts is talking of anything else. Irish, that little girl was, and her grandfather went to America and made his pile in the Prohibition trade. Champagne was ’is lay, and whiskey. Done well, and cleared out. Never copped. Not even suspicioned, so far as he knew. And now collects art treasures, like any other millionaire. Very tidy placed, ’e is. It’s common talk in the village. There’s another girl at the convent, so far un’armed. Two other girls, I believe. But what will the ’arvest be?”
Mrs. Bradley could not tell him. He remained in earnest contemplation of the buildings for a minute or two and then looked at his watch, and asked her what she made the time.
“A quarter to ten,” she said, as she held out her arm to throw the light of his head-lamp on to her watch.
“Crikey! They’ll be shut,” he remarked, as he turned the bicycle about and headed in the direction of the village. “So long! And you take the advice of one what knows, and keep well away from them gates. You never know who might be lurking.”
He swung his leg over the bicycle with an ease remarkable in an elderly man, and wobbled unsteadily over the stony path. As he carried no rear lamp, but only a red reflector, she soon lost sight of him. With a little cackle, for the chance encounter had amused her, she approached the convent buildings more closely. They seemed to be surrounded on every side by a very high brick wall which rose behind the guest-house garden and the gardens of two private houses which adjoined the guest-house on the west, and completely enclosed the other buildings. The gatehouse was set some yards farther back than the gates to the houses, and was in the ancient form of a small room over an archway closed by a massive door. The window looked over the hill. A building to the left of the gatehouse, larger than any of the private houses, but again in a line with them, Mrs. Bradley later discovered to be the convent Orphanage. There were lights in several of the buildings—sure sign of untoward happenings, for the convent hour of lights-out was nine-thirty. Even the gatehouse window showed a glimmer, like that of a candle, to wayfarers coming from the village.
Doors to the convent were few. The Orphanage had its separate entrance, but evidence, supplied later on, proved what appeared, even at first glance, and at night, to be the case, that the entrance was barred up and never used. There was no entrance to the convent grounds, in fact, except by way of the gatehouse. Even the convalescents, if they wished to walk in the gardens of the convent, were obliged to come out by one of the guest- house doors and go in through the gatehouse entrance.
Seawards the breeze freshened. The church, with its high boundary wall running parallel, almost, with the coast, had its north side fronting a cliff along which ran a little path. The moon showed the path up clearly, and Mrs. Bradley followed it westwards for about a quarter of a mile, and discovered that it branched off from a coast-road which swung south of the convent and which had crossed the track by which she had mounted the hill.
The sea beneath the moon looked calm, as though the waters themselves, in meditation, induced the long thoughts which she found herself thinking as she watched them. The tide was in and came to the foot of the cliffs. Below, she supposed, there were caves. The landscape was a perfect setting for smugglers, and the hill-track by which she had come was their mule-road, she thought, across the moor.
She looked back at the convent buildings. High in the church tower burned a steady light. Saint Peter’s Finger they called it in the village. It was the warning to ships which the convent still made it a duty to show every night, although a new lighthouse, half a mile farther along the coast, had released it, in effect, from its ancient obligation to mariners. But as Saint Peter’s Finger its glow was still noted on charts, and the nuns kept watch, two by two, in the lamp-room at night. The light itself, Mrs. Bradley thought, looked friendly. The high walls and the gaunt, stark church threatened those without, yet gave an impression of guarding those within. But all dark deeds seemed possible—she had noticed it before—in tall buildings seen by moonlight. One view of the convent made it look as though it had been gutted by fire. There seemed no glass in the windows and the buildings had an empty, neglected look. She turned back and continued her tour.
Along the east wall she detected the presence of pigs, but, apart from the fact that all lights, except the beacon-lantern in the tower and the glimmer over the gate, were now put out, there was nothing else to be discovered, and she turned to walk back to the village.
She found herself thinking about her chance acquaintance, the elderly man with the bicycle. She wondered how long he was going to remain in the neighbourhood adding to his collection of horrors. She remembered that some of his information had been picked up in the bar of the pub at which she and George were staying. George, too, was adept at acquiring information in pubs. She resolved to compare the results of his researches with what the cyclist had told her. If the child were an heiress, no wonder the village was full of sinister rumours.
The way back seemed short, with the slope of the hill in her favour, but the path was rough, broken and rutted, and several times she stumbled on outcropped stones.
