St. Peter's Finger

“Yes, madam. Pardon me, madam, but don’t you think it rather a risky proceeding to let Miss Doyle go to New York?”

“I do not anticipate that Miss Doyle will murder her grandfather, George.”

“Very good, madam. May I enquire how the injured party is getting on now, madam?”

“Her head is quite hard, George. I don’t know whether mine would have been as hard.”

“So it was directed at you, madam?”

“It seems likely. Nobody would set out to murder poor Sister Bridget.”

“That’s if we’re on the right tack, madam.”

“Proceed, George. Are you sure you know the right tack?”

“I suppose the money was the motive, madam?”

“It often is, George, unfortunately.”

“There’s such things as guilty secrets, and people getting to know them.”

“Perfectly true. So what?”

“I beg your pardon, madam?”

“So what, George. Neolithic American query capable of being couched in bellicose, disgusted or pseudo-pathetic style. The last was what I intended.”

“Thank you, madam. It occurred to me that the young lady might have been in possession of somebody’s guilty secret, and have been croaked for knowing it, madam.”

“Whose guilty secret, George? Your perspicacity stuns me—and that is not meant sarcastically.”

“One of the nuns. It stands to reason, madam, that a bevy of ladies of this type must house a considerable number of secrets, one way and another.”

“Not necessarily guilty, though, George, do you think?”

“No, madam.”

But he seemed to have something on his mind. She waited, but he said no more. He stared out over the moors—they had not yet left the vicinity of the convent —and towards the lights of the village.

“You know, George,” said Mrs. Bradley, “the most mysterious thing about the whole business is that the dead child went into the bathroom at all. If I hadn’t been entirely mystified by that, I would have turned Ursula Doyle’s form inside out, schoolgirl code or not, and have found out what she was supposed to be up to that afternoon, for she certainly did not go into afternoon school. But from the beginning I was always brought up short by the problem of what on earth—or who!—persuaded a child who never broke school rules, and was sweet, gentle and timid, to do a thing which is immediately visited with expulsion.”

“It certainly is a problem, madam.”

“Think it over, George. She wasn’t forced to go there. There were no marks of violence on the body, and, what is more, she didn’t care whether she was seen to go or not. And she wasn’t the girl on the roof. So much is clear from the description given by the builder, although he’s not got a very reliable memory, and by old lay-sister Catherine. But what do you make of it all?”

“Sounds as if she was taken in there unconscious, madam. Had you considered that possibility at all?”

Mrs. Bradley looked at him with a mixture of admiration and affection. George modestly scratched his head.

“The cigar or coconut, George,” said his employer, “is yours. You have only to choose. Let us get along to the inn. Is there a room for me, I wonder?”

“They were quite delighted, madam, at the idea of seeing you again. ”

“Drive on, then. I wonder whether it’s the room I had last time? The window wouldn’t open, I remember, and I had to leave the door ajar all night.” ( 2 )

The same little chambermaid and same room, Mrs. Bradley found, were to serve her. She had supper— cold beef and pickles, slices of the last of the hostess’ Christmas puddings fried up in the pan (slightly salt), cheese, biscuits and beer. George supped with her, and the two of them sat matily in the parlour behind red curtains, and with a baize-covered parrot between them on the table, when the meal was over, George smoking, and Mrs. Bradley knitting a shapeless garment slowly and very badly. Their conversation was about Charles Dickens, upon whom they held strong and diametrically opposite opinions, George maintaining his worth as a writer, Mrs. Bradley willing to concede him a sociological significance and proclaiming him to be a humanitarian of advanced views, great public spirit and considerable courage, but consigning him, as a writer, to a peculiar limbo of her own where existed also Mrs. Felicia Hemans, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Dean Farrer, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, and other eminent Victorians not mentionable because not yet removed from our midst.

At half-past ten George had some more beer and Mrs. Bradley went to bed. At eleven o’clock the landlord locked the side door, and at half-past eleven George carried a small hard flock mattress, blankets and pillows stealthily on to the landing, and laid the lot down outside his employer’s bedroom.

At half-past twelve the stairs creaked, and George sat up. Nothing else happened, and so he lay down again. At twenty minutes to one he sat up again. A beam of light was coming up the stairs, a round spotlight, the gleam of an electric torch. The hair on George’s neck began to prick a bit. He remembered Sister Bridget and the hammer. He got up quietly and stepped in his stockinged feet to the opposite side of the passage. The light played on the walls and on the banisters. Then it lighted on the mattress and the pillows. It was switched off. There was darkness and silence. George waited where he was, knowing nothing better to do. Half an hour went by. There had been no sound, but he felt certain that the unknown prowler must have gone. He waited another ten minutes, then, feeling cold, went over to his bed again and crawled beneath the blankets.

He was wide awake, and realised that he was still straining his ears for sounds. Suddenly a horrid idea came