St. Peter's Finger

Old Mother Bartholomew, owing, Mrs. Bradley supposed, to her former profession, was a gifted raconteuse.

She began to tell the children, not stories of saints and angels, but racy tales of a pantomime that she had taken part in as a child. Mrs. Bradley looked at the group; at Mother Ambrose, justifying gloriously her military habit and address; at little Mother Jude, cherubically smiling in death’s face, as though she saw God’s face behind it, as a man may show his own expression through a mask; at Mother Benedict, who had never looked more beautiful than she did at that moment, serene, calm and courageous; at old wrinkled Mother Bartholomew, suddenly returned for inspiration to her first love, her eyes sparkling with amusement, her gestures free and occasionally vulgar, as with a flow of anecdote, reported repartee, descriptions of scenes and “business,” stories of quarrels, generosity, poverty, travel, she turned once more to take Rosa Cardosa from limbo, and exhibit, in God’s name, the former idol of five capitals and two continents.

Last Mrs. Bradley looked sideways at Miss Bonnet’s hard young face.

“Take it pretty well, don’t they? I suppose they do know there’s not an earthly?” said Miss Bonnet, meeting her glance.

“And that being so,” said Mrs. Bradley, “I suppose that you and I can take it that our short but interesting game of cat and mouse is now at an end?”

“What I can’t make out,” said Miss Bonnet, drawing away to the farthest corner of the room, so as not to interrupt the pantomime story, “is how you tumbled to it all.”

“Well, there was nobody else. I couldn’t see for a time how you stood to gain, until, of course, the business of the paten and the chalice came up. Then I remembered that the children’s grandfather had made an offer for them to the convent some time previously. It also transpired that he was an unscrupulous old man who had not the slightest objection to purchasing stolen goods as long as they were what he desired, and I heard about you and the pictures—”

“Oh, damn!” said Miss Bonnet, dismayed. “How did that come out?”

“You appear to have overlooked the fact that your reputation followed you to Kelsorrow, and from Kelsorrow to the convent.”

“But I didn’t think the nuns could know, when they let me come here and teach in the private school.”

“Well, they did know. And the next thing which occurred to me was that you had killed the child because she was the heiress, and would be certain to go to New York at some time when she would immediately identify the stolen property.”

“It’s quite true that the confounded kid had caught me measuring the beastly things once, before the copies were made. I was really sneaking them then, but she interrupted the good work. However, the rest of your suspicions—”

“I supposed,” said Mrs. Bradley, “that you had inserted a cigarette holder in the end of the gas-flex, so that the teeth marks would not show on the rubber nozzle.”

“How did you get on to that? It doesn’t act, of course, because I don’t use a holder. But I can see that it must very soon have dawned on you that all the times fitted in rather well with the days that I came to the convent, and I admit, of course, that I lobbed the hammer at your head that night you sat in the Common Room after the nuns had gone. In fact, it struck me pretty soon that you were altogether too hot. I began to feel beastly unsafe. I tried to get you, too, by firing that room in the guest-house, but only knocked out the poor old lay-sister, and I meant to lay for you on the following Thursday, and then at the pub.”

She walked over to the window and looked out. There was nothing to see except smoke. She returned to Mrs. Bradley’s side.

“It’s all right to discuss the thing, I suppose. Our chances appear to be nil. How did you think you could prove the murder on me? Or mustn’t I ask?”

“Well, you could have been the girl on the guesthouse roof. She was wearing a tunic. Then, you did not know that the children here are always bathed under a wrap. You knew where to find a guest-house towel— a thing I was pretty sure that scarcely any of my suspects would have known—for you had been offered a bath in the guest-house before! Then, you were almost the only person who insisted that the suicide verdict was the right one, so, naturally, I wondered whether you had anything to gain from it!”

“I believe,” said Mother Jude, breaking in as Mother Bartholomew came to the end of her tale, “that it might be better to move a floor higher, Mrs. Bradley.”

So the children, very difficult now to control, were marched up the next flight of stairs, those behind pushing hard against those in front, and one poor creature murmuring, “Mummy! Mummy!” in heart-breaking accents of fear.

“Not too good a move,” said Miss Bonnet quietly. “I see her point, but these rooms are so beastly cheerless, and there’s nowhere on earth to sit in these beastly attics except on the floor.”

She sat on it, and, taking no further notice of Mrs. Bradley, made the children into two concentric circles, feet to the middle, and started some sitting-down physical exercises to occupy the attention of the party.

“She is a good girl. She has a good heart,” said Mother Jude. “Is there any chance, do you think?”

Mrs. Bradley beckoned her, and the two of them, followed by Bessie’s anxious eyes, went out on to the landing. They crossed it, and entered the room on the opposite side of the house. The attic windows, being set in the slope of the roof, did not give a very good view, so they went down the next flight of stairs to the Infirmary landing, and stood at the window again, but at the one in a small room on the opposite side of the house where the smoke was not blowing. A great crowd of people, lighted by the flames that now belched luridly forth from the lower part of the Orphanage, waved to them and shouted. Mrs. Bradley waved, and scanned the crowd anxiously for George. He was not to be seen. There was a sudden movement, and then a struggle, and two of the nuns could be seen holding back another nun who was trying to rush into the building. It was too uncertain a light in which to distinguish one habited figure from another. Suddenly there was another commotion, however, and, hatless, there stood George. He cupped his hands and bellowed —for he could see his employer silhouetted against the light which she had turned on in the little room:

“O.K., madam! Hang on! I’ve been and dug out the brigade!”

“Good heavens, George!” Mrs. Bradley returned, with a sudden screech of laughter. She withdrew her head, and addressed her companion, Mother Jude.