The two men went up the drive and knocked at the front door proper, where they were admitted by Hannah Barrow in impressive array of severely starched cap and apron, a blue cotton frock also starched as stiff as cartridge paper, black shoes and stockings, and glazed collar and cuffs. She had a wrinkled old face, and her grey hair was strained back off her face. Macdonald knew that she was only sixty-two years of age, and he knew plenty of women of that age who might pass for forty-five: why was it, he wondered, that this specimen looked so much like a wizened and elderly monkey? He stated his name, rank, and business, and Nurse Barrow accepted the information without any show of interest or surprise.
“Please to walk in,” she said, and led them into the parlour, where she stood as erect as a ramrod, though Macdonald noticed she walked as the elderly walk, and guessed that her severe black shoes pained her quite a lot. He asked her to sit down, but she remained standing. (Reeves, noticing her stiff skirts, knew that Nurse Barrow had not sat down since putting on her clean frock: there wasn’t a crumple in those formidable skirts.) Macdonald began by asking questions about the late Warden’s health.
Nurse Barrow replied: “Sister had very good health. All the years I’ve known her she never took to her bed. She kept to her room sometimes, if she’d got a cold, but that was to avoid spreading infection. Sister didn’t hold with people coddling themselves. You can keep well if you’ve the will to keep well, Sister said. A wonderful powerful will Sister had got.”
“But what about this dizziness she suffered from?” enquired Macdonald. “People don’t tumble about if they’re quite well.”
“It was her eyes, poor soul,” said Hannah. “Sister wouldn’t never have them seen to. She had a pair of glasses for reading, but she got them from the market, same as I did before the National Health. That’d be it, you mark my words. ‘You can’t see them stairs like you used, Sister,’ I said. ‘We’re none of us so young as we were.’”
“Who cleaned her bedroom?” enquired Macdonald.
“I did. I always done it, ever since I come, and it was the easiest room in the house to clean, Sister being that tidy. Never a thing left about.”
“Do you know if she took any medicine? Were there any medicine bottles in her room?”
“That there were not. All the medicine in this house is kept in the medicine cupboard. If Sister took a dose at times, it wasn’t my business to dose her.”
Macdonald next asked about the routine of the house in the mornings. Nurse Barrow was first up. She rang a bell on the landing at six-fifteen sharp every morning. The maids were allowed a quarter of an hour to dress. At six-thirty one went down to lay breakfast and help cook. One came to Nurse Barrow to help wash and dress the children. Some days Sister Monica came in to assist and inspect, some days she didn’t, but breakfast was at seven-thirty, winter and summer alike, and Sister was always there to the tick to say grace.
“Did you take the Warden a cup of tea up to her bedroom?” enquired Macdonald, and Hannah Barrow repudiated the idea with scorn.
“You don’t understand about Sister,” she said loftily, her speech slipping more and more into her natural idiom. ‘Tier never had nothing we didn’t have. Tea in bed? Never. Sister’s brought me a cup of tea in bed whiles I’ve been poorly, but her never had none herself, and often enough she’d be outdoors before breakfast, a-communing on holy thoughts.”
Hannah Barrow told Macdonald the routine of the household, together with the free times of the two maids. An hour off every day they had, she said, afternoon or evening, and a free afternoon once a week: Hannah or Cook took them shopping and to church on Sundays. Hannah Barrow said proudly that she never worried about time off herself “and no more did Sister. Her work was her life, Sister said, and as for holidays, her never wanted holidays.” At night, Hannah went to bed at nine o’clock and so did Cook and so did the young maids. Sister locked up. What Sister did after the others went to bed was no business of Hannah’s, but she knew Sister often went out for a walk after dark, “after her had finished all her writing and accounts,” Hannah added. “Her did all that of an evening after supper.”
While she ran on, increasingly garrulous as she got used to the strangers, Macdonald pondered over the life she had led. For twenty-two years she had worked in this austere house, rising at six, working the clock round, apparently contented, worshipping Sister Monica. Was it as simple as that? Macdonald wondered.
“I see you came here in 1929, Miss Barrow. You were then forty years of age. Had you done work in a similar institution before?”
The thin lips suddenly shut tight and the pale eyes looked wary. “I’d been in private service,” she replied. “In Exeter ’twas, and then in Barnsford. Children’s nurse I’d been. Sister, her looked into everything, my character and that. Her took me on trial. Sister often laughed over that. ‘You’re still on trial, Hannah,’ she’d say after I’d worked for her years and years.”
“On trial.” Macdonald repeated the words slowly, watching the wrinkled face. Then he said: “I’m afraid I’ve kept you a long time. I should like to see round the house next. I think Inspector Reeves has written down the main facts you have told us. Will you read it through and sign it, if you are satisfied it is correct?”
Reeves got up and laid his notes on the table.
