habited, white-coifed religious took up their patching and darning and again bent their eyes upon their work. The Mother Superior leaned forward across the table, her needle between finger and thumb.
“You mean that there was no accident, but that the child was killed intentionally?” she said.
“That is what I mean,” replied. Mrs. Bradley.
“Will you tell us—” the old voice was so gentle that Mrs. Bradley, conscious of the blow which her news must be to many of those who heard her, wished heartily, not for the first time, that she could have found something different to report “—why you have come to this conclusion?”
Mrs. Bradley read all her notes aloud. She offered no comments, and, when she had finished, she felt, rather than heard, the long sigh which went up from those who accepted her findings.
There were some who did not. Mother Benedict said, when the Superior had invited the nuns to speak:
“I cannot see that you have proved your contention. Pardon me if I am stupid.”
“I will re-examine the theory of suicide, if that is the general wish,” said Mrs. Bradley, “but the theory of accident seems to me untenable.”
“I agree that it could not have been accident,” said Mother Benedict slowly, but she spoke without conviction, and as though her common sense and her intellectual acceptance of the facts were not in agreement.
“The police would not be prepared to act on this amount of evidence,” said Mrs. Bradley soothingly. “But I do suggest, for your own sakes, that you get rid of those children at once—and separately. Ulrica Doyle, as I said, must not go home with Mary and Mrs. Maslin.”
“But you are not accusing Mrs. Maslin of having killed her niece!” exclaimed Mother Simon-Zelotes. Mrs. Bradley shook her head.
“I have scarcely a shred of evidence at present against Mrs. Maslin, but, all the same, I think that Mary Maslin and Ulrica Doyle should not both go to the same house. I mention this because I believe that Mrs. Maslin has proposed it.”
“Yes, Mrs. Maslin did wish that,” said Mother Mary-Joseph, gazing, bright-eyed, at Mrs. Bradley.
“It is nearly the end of recreation time,” said the Mother Superior, almost in tones of rebuke. “We thank you for your advice, my friend,” she added. “We must think it over carefully. We will pray.”
She rose, and the nuns rose with her, and they filed out, taking their work, and left Mrs. Bradley alone. In less than a quarter of an hour, she knew, they would enter the church for night prayers. She had half an inclination to follow them, but, instead, she put out all but one candle, and by its flickering, solitary light —there was a ghostly draught somewhere that would not allow the candle flame to grow upright—she took out a little book of pictures—a British Museum copy of some of the pages of a late medieval Book of Hours.
“‘The Flight into Egypt,’ ” she read, “‘and the Massacre of the Innocents.’ ”
The draught blew more strongly. The door the nuns had carefully closed was opening. Mrs. Bradley ducked, saved by the never-sleeping instinct of self-preservation which still plays sentry even for the highly civilised. There was a loud crash. The door slammed to; the missile, whatever it was, had landed squarely and then had fallen to the floor. Mrs. Bradley stayed where she was and counted fifty. Then she got up, walked over to the door and locked it, lighted a second candle and searched for what had been thrown. It was a hammer. She had seen several like it in the metal-work hut, and had no doubt that it had come from one of the racks. It had smashed a religious picture. The glass was all over the floor.
chapter 15
attack
henry vaughan: “Stars are of mighty use.”
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Holding the hammer in her right hand, Mrs. Bradley unlocked the door with her left and descended the steps to the cloister. They were not many, but were cloaked in utter darkness. She had heard no sound of footsteps either coming or going, but she felt quite certain that whoever had thrown the hammer was far enough away by the time she herself left the Common Room. As she came out into the dimness of the cloister she could see the nuns in front of her ready to enter the church. She drew a large, thick motor-veil out of her pocket, tied it over her head (catching the hammer between her knees) and followed them into the building. She seated herself as near the entrance doorway as she could, placed the hammer noiselessly beside her, and sat back, almost hidden, in the pew.
The church was vast and high. The sound of the nuns’ chanting came as though from a very great distance, and to the fastness of God penetrated the sullen, booming crash of breakers on rocks—sure sign, they had told her, of tempest—a sound she had not heard at the convent before.
The unusual size and grandeur of the church was due to the fact that before the Dissolution, when St. Peter’s had been a house of monks, the church had been used by the villagers as well as by the Community. Lighted only by candles at its eastern end, it was a vastness of shadows, and, sitting there, she could imagine that the place was peopled by ghosts. She could hear—or was it all imagination?—the slight, fidgety rustlings of a rustic congregation, the sighs of children compelled to a pretence of devotion, even a muffled cough from somewhere away to her left on the north side of the church. She strained her ears, but a rush of wind round the north-west angle of the building, shrieking at gale force, eighty miles an hour, filled the church with its fury. When it died away the sound of the nuns’ voices was all that could be heard.
The prayers were not long. When they were over the sisters remained for a quarter of an hour’s meditation, and then filed out, and Mrs. Bradley followed closely behind. She fell in with Mother Ambrose and Mother Jude, and walked as far as the Orphanage door with them. They entered by the door which opened on to the convent grounds,
