She telephoned the inspector, and went back, grimly smiling, to the almost frantic Mr. Maslin.
“The inspector thinks his men are well on the trail. Probably a bare-faced bit of kidnapping, he says,” she observed. “Somebody who’s heard that she’s Timothy Doyle’s granddaughter, I suppose.”
“They may kill her!”
“They won’t kill her. The police know where she is. ”
“Know where she is? Why the devil don’t they get hold of her, then?”
“All in good time,” said Mrs. Bradley. “Back to the convent, please.”
The convent had been searched from the attics in the Orphanage to the cellars beneath the frater. The nuns were in groups in the Common Room, the frater, the children’s refectory and the cloister. The guests had congregated miserably in the guest-house parlour; the orphans, under the jaundiced eye of Mother Saint Ambrose, were sitting in close rows in the Orphanage playroom, doing needlework with hands that were sticky with the sweat of excitement; the boarders, let off preparation, had been given freedom to help in the search of the school and the grounds. Mother Saint Francis was shut away in her room, because she and the Mother Superior (calm among her daughters, as behoved the head of the house) were the only members of the Community who knew that Mary Maslin was safe at Hiversand Bay, and while Mrs. Bradley knew that nobody would suspect that the benignity of the Reverend Mother Superior hid anything but an anxiety that was natural and general to everybody, she had not the same faith in the dramatic abilities of the volatile Mother Francis.
Meanwhile, the object of all the care and suffering was sitting at a small bedside table eating a four-course meal with every appearance of appetite, breaking off occasionally to observe in rapturous tones:
“I say, isn’t this a rag! I
“I should think you’ll be the one to be sick,” her cousin coldly observed. “And I refuse to go to sleep with a
It turned out to be a policeman’s wife, however, a young and cheery creature, whose husband, a large, young sergeant, was posted on the landing outside the bedroom door, with a chair, a bottle of beer, some tobacco, a tumbler, a large ash-tray, a book and a plate of cold beef, cold ham, mustard pickles and bread. He was there unofficially, having been, however, officially released from duty so that he could be “lent” to Mrs. Bradley as a watchdog.
George, whose task was done, took his leave, and at a leisurely twenty-eight miles, drove over to Blacklock Tor, and garaged the car at the inn. He had a half-pint, went out for a walk on the moor, had another half-pint before they closed, then went up to his room. He was on the second floor, and his window looked over the sloping hill-side of moor towards the convent. He went to the window and looked out, but except for the steady light of Saint Peter’s Finger which shone from the church tower lantern, there was nothing else on the landscape visible except the dark stretch of the moor.
He went to bed at a quarter to eleven, gave a last glance at his watch before he put out the light, turned his face towards the window and closed his eyes. At five minutes to eleven he went to sleep.
He did not know what woke him. No light was shining on to his face, and no sudden noise had startled him, but through the uncurtained window he could see that the sky was alight with a deep, red glow. He got out of bed very quickly, and went to look out. A minute later he was putting on his flannel trousers, a lounge jacket and his boots, and a minute later still he was running downstairs to get the car.
The garage was a lock-up, and he had a key of his own. He switched on his lights, drove carefully on to the road, and then put the car at the moorland track at such a breakneck pace that it bounded over the ruts, the heather and the boulders like a car in a comic film. ( 2 )
Of all the searchers for Mary Maslin, the most feverish, apart from the Maslins themselves, who had been into Kelsorrow to interview the police and then had scoured the country-side in the fast red sports car for clues, were Mother Benedict and Miss Bonnet. Fortunately, the useful rule of obedience could be brought into play to prevent the nun from continuing the useless search, but not even the news that the police were on the track of the missing child (brought back from Kelsorrow police-station by a greatly-relieved Mr. Maslin as additional information to that supplied by Mrs. Bradley) could abate Miss Bonnet’s ardour or allay her obvious anxiety. In the end, even she gave up, and a bed was found for her in the Orphanage on the top floor where Sister Bridget, now practically recovered, lay attended, as usual, by the Infirmarian, in the large infirmary ward.
On the floor below slept the orphans, some thirty-six of them, their ages ranging from three to seventeen or eighteen. They were in five dormitories, and in each dormitory slept a nun. Mother Ambrose and Mother Jude were always on duty, and the rest of the Community slept week by week in the Orphanage dormitories by rota, with the exception of Mother Francis, who remained in charge of the private school children in their cubicled dorters on the west side of the cloister.
Before the attack with the hammer Sister Bridget had been a heavy sleeper, but her sleep had been fitful during her sojourn in the Infirmary. Since she had recovered consciousness she had thought a good deal, in her rambling non-consequential way, about her mouse, and had mentioned it once or twice to Mrs. Bradley. Mrs. Bradley had soothed her with accounts of its well-being, and had suggested to Mother Ambrose that it should be imported into the Orphanage. Mother Ambrose, however, with courtesy and finality, had declined to have the mouse brought anywhere near the house of which she was in charge.
“It will breed,” was her last and unarguable dictum. So the mouse remained in Mrs. Bradley’s room, and she fed it and grew accustomed to its company and to finding it on her pillow, in her shoe, climbing the curtains, and almost drowned in the ewer. On the Tuesday night, when Mary Maslin was missed, the general excitement even penetrated to the Infirmary, for its guardian had joined in the search with everyone else, and had come back, tired and flushed, to sleep a good deal more soundly than usual.
Sister Bridget was wakeful and excited. She was aware of vague cravings, and these crystallised themselves, at about half-past eleven, into a violent desire for the companionship of her mouse. She knew that it was of no use to call her mouse, as she had been wont to do when she slept in her bedroom at the guest-house, for, although she was extremely vague as to where she was, she did know that she had called it, and called it in vain, a good many times just lately, so she made up her mind to go and look for it.
She had managed to steal and secrete two boxes of matches since the accident. She crept from her bed, leering happily, since, childishly, her happiness was rooted in action, not contemplation, and, opening the window, put her hand out between the bars—for all the second- and third-floor windows in the Orphanage were barred—and brought in a box of matches.
Then she waddled, bare-footed, to the door, and went to look for her mouse. She began on the bottom floor — not for any reason, but because she forgot, half-way, what it was she was going to do, and the endless stairs, from
