offenders who ever dream of breaking into the guest-house.”
“The last girl who did it was expelled.”
“Were you willing to risk expulsion?”
“Oh, I shouldn’t have minded in a way, as soon as the row was over. Of course, I wouldn’t in the ordinary way want to leave the convent, but mother has been such a beast about taking me away in any case, that it didn’t seem to matter in quite the same way. And whether I am expelled or not, I am going to be taken straight out to my grandfather in New York.”
“Why is that?”
“Mother thinks he would like me better than Ursula or Ulrica, if he saw me, because Ursula was a bit mousy, and Ulrica really is rather fascinating, and, of course, most awfully clever, but
“And as grandfather also seems a bit stupid,” said Mrs. Bradley, gently.
“Oh, yes. Mother thought he might like me a good deal better than either of them, and give me the money after all. It seems beastly to talk like this, but you do want to know it all, don’t you?”
“One moment,” said Mrs. Bradley. She wrote in her little notebook, the pencil that described her hieroglyphic shorthand flicking over the pages like a whip of silver fire.
“When did you know that your parents proposed to take you to New York to visit your grandfather!“she enquired.
“Oh, days! It was one of the first things mother mentioned when she got here.”
“And how many people have you told?”
“Oh, dozens. Simply everybody, by now.”
“And what made you sick on Friday?”
“I don’t really know.”
“Did you eat anything out of the ordinary?”
“No, but I don’t like fat, and I had an awful lot on my plate at dinner, and, of course, we have to eat everything on the plate. I rather expect it was that.”
“Why can’t you see your grandfather during the summer vacation?”
“He goes away himself. Anyway, he wouldn’t want us then. He says it’s too hot in the summer to be pestered with friends and relations.”
Mrs. Bradley could not regard this as a personal idiosyncrasy.
“I daresay he does. A good many people think the same. What does your father think about the trip to New York?”
“Daddy says while he pays school fees I’m to take advantage of them. It’s mother who’s always croaking about New York. All the same, I believe he’s just as keen as she is. He’d love me to have the money, naturally.”
“And it is your stepmother who is so much concerned about Ursula’s death?”
“Yes, of course she is. She doesn’t want anything to go wrong about the will. I don’t understand what she means by that. You could ask her about it if you liked.”
“I intend to do so. Well, did you manage to get yourself into the guest-house?”
“No.”
“No?”
“I funked it. Oh, I did! I know it sounds awful, but you don’t know
Mrs. Bradley could believe this, and came back to the previous evening’s exploit.
“Well, what about the guest-house?”
“I got an anonymous letter.”
“What?”
“You know—those letters people write and don’t put their name at the bottom. We had a poem like it, and Mother Mary-Joseph asked us why there wasn’t a name at the bottom, and Rosalie Waters—always very cheeky— she’s had three Major Penances from different people already this term—said, straight away, ‘I suppose he must be ashamed of it.’ Well, that might be true about some anonymous letters, I should think.”
“What did the letter say? Have you kept it, by any chance?”
“No. It said to destroy it, so I did. I pulled the chain on it.”
“A pity. It might, in itself, have been a clue.”
“Oh, dear. I didn’t think. It said: ‘To-night keep your eye on Bessie at the Orphanage’ and ‘Orphanage’ was spelt wrongly, I think, but I’m not too sure, because my own spelling’s rather shaky.”
“And is that what you were doing—keeping your eye on Bessie?”
“Oh, no! Do you read detective stories? We are not allowed them here, but at home I read a great many. I thought the letter was probably a blind. So I pretended to be keeping an eye on Bessie, but all the time I was trying
