difficult to prove it.”
“There have been no more of those demonstrations, have there?”
“You would have known as soon as we should, if there had been. They made, last time, the most dreadful howling noises for more than an hour. The orphans, poor children, were terrified, and so were some of the guests. The Spaniards said to Mother Jude that they had supposed this country to be free from terrorism. It was very dreadful for them. Their nerves are very bad. Some who were ill were set back in their convalescence.”
Mrs. Bradley said sympathetically that she supposed so, and reverted to the question of the cousins.
“I fear I did not urge you sufficiently strongly to get rid of them from the school,” she said. “I meant it most sincerely. They are a danger to themselves and to one another. I have no doubt that the grandfather’s great fortune is somehow at the root of the business, and I think you ought to act immediately. It is only because of the excitement and terror consequent upon the accident to Sister Bridget that nothing more has happened in the Doyle affair, I believe.”
“You speak of the
“I most certainly am,” said Mrs. Bradley with emphasis. The nun looked as though she were prepared to argue the point, and Mrs. Bradley was ready with an explanation of the presence of the hammer with which the aged sister had been struck. But all that Mother Francis asked her was:
“Then why did you insist upon our calling in the police?”
Mrs. Bradley replied:
“I thought it would do no harm in the village if the youths there learned that there was a point at which the police were prepared to act, and the convent to ask for protection.”
“I see,” said Mother Francis. She said no more, but Mrs. Bradley felt, not for the first time, considerable respect for the self-control of the religious. Anybody but a nun would have asked questions, she was certain. She glanced at Mother Francis, and then remarked:
‘“The blow was not intended for Sister Bridget. I am sure it was intended for me. Whoever set fire to the room did so with the intention of driving out its occupant, thinking that I still slept there. This person, whoever it was, did not know that Sister Bridget had been given her old room back again.”
She told Mother Francis then about the hammer-throwing incident in the nuns’ Common Room.
“I see,” said Mother Francis again. “I ought to remind you, however, that Sister Bridget loves playing with matches, and probably set her bed alight by accident.”
“Thank you,” Mrs. Bradley replied. “But you will agree, I think, that she did not hit herself on the head with the hammer. Further to that, although, as I said before, it does no harm to let those youths feel that we are under the protection of the police, I think it unlikely that they had anything whatever to do with the attack. But the real culprit may as well be misled into imagining that we blame the youths, I think. By the way, did Mrs. Maslin arrive by car?”
“Yes, I believe she did. In fact, of course she did. She was angry, Sister Saint Jude told me, that we have no garage at the guest-house, and grumbled at the inconvenience and expense of garaging the car in the village.”
“I see. In church, on the evening when I had sat with you all in the Common Room—you remember?— and begged you to send those children home, there was a sound like a cough. You wouldn’t have noticed it, perhaps?”
Mother Francis’ eyes narrowed a little,
“Somebody started the engine of a car. I remember perfectly well,” she said. “It was just as the storm was rising. The wind was very loud. Our singing sounded weak and thin against it, and I thought of the might of God. I was born in the West Indies. We have great winds there.”
“You are a Frenchwoman, then?”
“Creole, yes.”
“Your colouring, surely, is unusual?”
“Oh, the English!” said Mother Francis. She laughed gaily. “You are so tolerant! Always you see the black blood! Creole! It does not always mean that, you know!”
chapter 16
chessboard
henry vaughan: Sunday.
« ^ »
Mrs. bradley walked over to the guest-house for Friday tea and brooded as she walked. Her suspicions had now become certainties, and yet there seemed nothing to prove that her theories were facts. The police clues ought, she knew, to be the two hammers, but the confused nature of the prints on tools which had been handled by dozens of people, and on which, in any case, her own prints were superimposed, since, except for the police, she had been the last person to handle the hammers, made the task of using finger-prints as part of the work of detection extremely difficult. It was rendered more difficult because, short of resorting to the somewhat crude expedient of getting all the people she had ever, even remotely, suspected of the murder to grasp a postcard between finger and thumb and then comparing the prints with all those found on the hammers, it was not easy to decide whether or not the weapons had been handled by the person she suspected. Even then, if this person (as was probable) could show reason for having had legitimate possession of the hammers at some time, that piece of evidence would automatically disappear. That was the worst of communal property, she reflected, and was an objection which would apply to almost everything on or in the convent buildings.
