“The plot thickens, George,” said Mrs. Bradley, as she got into her own car again to drive back to St. Peter’s. “Can you think of any reason why Miss Bonnet should kill Ursula Doyle?”
“No, madam, but time will show. Not altogether a sympathetic character, the young lady.”
“I believe, however, that you and I are unique in that opinion. On all sides I am told how unselfish and good- hearted Miss Bonnet is.”
“At the pub, madam, in Blacklock Tor, there’s a feeling that the nuns know all about it.”
“That wouldn’t surprise me, George. They are a very reticent body, and, I’m sure, know more that they say.”
“They withhold information, madam?”
“I don’t suppose they would like that way of putting it. They don’t want a murder, George, naturally.”
“Artful, madam, some of them. Wrong-headed, too, in a way. Did you ever study the history of the Jesuits?”
“That reminds me, George,” said Mrs. Bradley. “Stop at the cinema at Hiversand Bay. I want to bounce the box-office clerk into giving me information.”
This proved a simple matter. At that time of day business in the cinema was slack. Mrs. Bradley asked the clerk whether the gloves had been picked up.
“What gloves?” the girl enquired.
“A pair of doeskin gloves, dark brown. My friend believes she must have dropped them off her lap when she rose from her seat in the cinema last Monday week. I understood she had enquired about them herself— a woman in a musquash coat over a greenish tweed costume, with a green hat to match.”
“Oh—her as walked out early? One of them as brought the little children?”
“I didn’t realise she walked out early. Ah, that accounts for it, then. She wasn’t feeling well, and came out in rather a hurry.”
“I should say, too and all, she did. Didn’t look ill, neither. Fair raced to the bottom of the road, and took Bill Gander the taxi. Does for us and the station. Walked out of here to see her go, I did. Well, no gloves haven’t been found, so far as
“Thank you so much. She must have dropped them on her way, then. They were rather expensive gloves — she’d like to find them. I wonder—I’d better ask at the police station, perhaps. Do you know when she left the cinema? I should have to tell them that, I expect, should I not?”
“Two o’clock, as near as I can remember. She hadn’t been in long, I can swear to that.”
“Oh, thank you so much. That’s helpful.” Armed with this unexpected bit of evidence that Mrs. Maslin had, as matters stood, no alibi for the time of the child’s death, she got back to the guest-house to discover that Mrs. Maslin herself had arrived the day before she was expected, and was at that moment walking histrionically up and down the guest-house dining-room, to which she had laid claim for the purpose of a private interview, waiting to see Mrs. Bradley.
Mrs. Bradley found a small, ferrety-looking woman, sharp-featured and pale, with hard grey eyes, foxy-red hair and a thickish coat of inartistic make-up, and Mrs. Maslin saw a small, black-eyed, elderly woman with a fiendish smile and an air of being able to see through to the back of Mrs. Maslin’s head.
“I hear that nothing has been done to clear up the mystery of my niece’s death,” Mrs. Maslin announced belligerently, instinct warning her that with an adversary of this calibre it would be as well to get her word in first.
“Let us sit down,” said Mrs. Bradley, taking the most comfortable chair she could see, and fishing out a mangled length of knitting from an untidy, brightly coloured bag.
Mrs. Maslin complied with this suggestion, and, as she had had no reply to her question and did not propose to repeat it, sat in what was intended for haughty silence whilst the newcomer knitted a couple of rows and carefully counted her stitches.
“And purl two,” said Mrs. Bradley, nodding slowly and agreeably. She looked up suddenly and said:
“Why didn’t you stay in the cinema all the time?” The question took Mrs. Maslin entirely by surprise.
“What cinema?” she said, hedging rather too obviously. Mrs. Bradley took up her knitting again, bent her gaze upon its intricacies, and said:
“On the afternoon when your niece was found dead, you went to the cinema with the other guests here and the younger children from the orphanage.”
“Yes, I did. And—oh, yes, I remember now. But who told you that I left early?”
“How early?” asked Mrs. Bradley, again not answering the question.
“I don’t know. It was hot. I was bored. I wanted some air. I expect, now I look back, that some instinct warned me.”
“Warned you of what?”
“Why, naturally, that something had happened to Ursula.”
“Why should it do such a thing?”
“Well, I am, I suppose, the relative—I mean, I
“Only by marriage, though, aren’t you?”
“What I want to know is—what has been done about the death? The sisters promised me that the death should be fully investigated,” said Mrs. Maslin, leaping away from the question with very suspicious celerity.
