Convent on Styx (Mrs. Bradley)

by Gladys Mitchell

  The dissenter from this proposal was Sister Marcellus.

  “If I am martyred in that Saturday car,” she said grandly, “it will be to the glory of God, for I shall die doing my duty in the service of you all. I shall die like a true soldier of the Church, doing my duty. All I want to know is this: is it necessary? Must I be martyred for the sake of a few groceries?”

  “Oh, Sister, don’t talk such nonsense,” said the prioress. “You will go into the town for the shopping just as you used to do, and Sister will be at the wheel. There is no question of your being murdered. We cannot continue to impose on Miss Webb’s good nature, and nothing happened when you went shopping last Tuesday.”

  “I said martyred, Sister.”

  “I know. It comes to the same thing, apparently, in your opinion, and I won’t have it expressed. You are very fortunate in having a car to take you to the shops and bring you and the shopping home, so let us hear no more about it.”

  “Sister St. Elmo tests my obedience to the limit,” said Marcellus to Sister Romuald. “Do you think they will stone the car, Sister?”

  “Oh, no, of course not. Why should they? They didn’t last Tuesday. Everyone knows that we were not to blame for the accident. Before the hearing it was thought best that we should not drive through the village on a Saturday, but that is all over now. We have been absolved publicly from blame and, now that is the case, while you are doing the shopping next time I have Sister’s permission to drive to the hospital and enquire after the poor child who was hurt.”

  There was a slight demonstration in the village on the following Saturday, but it was short lived. Five school-age boys spread out across the street opposite the post office so that the car could not pass. Sister Mary Romuald, who was driving, pulled up and got out.

  “You are obstructing me,” she said, “and that is against the law. Please go away.”

  The boys replied to this with obscenities and rude gestures, but they scattered and ran off as the village policeman advanced on the scene. He opened the door of the car for Sister Romuald to get back to her seat and saluted respectfully.

  “I had a call from your place, madam,” he said, when she thanked him. “One of the ladies said she’d had a funny kind of a letter, so she thought she’d better warn me you were coming this way, as there might be a bit of trouble. I know where two of them boys live and I’ll have a word with their parents. You won’t be troubled again, I’ll see to that.”

  “What a mercy that policeman happened to be about,” said Sister Marcellus, as the car went on its way. “Quite providential, really.”

  But although Sister Hilary, who had telephoned the village policeman, could ensure safe conduct for the convent car, and although there were no more demonstrations, the anonymous letters continued to arrive.

  “Aren’t you even troubling to find out how that poor old lady is faring since you turned her so unkindly from your door?” said the next letter addressed to the prioress. A later one went further. “How do you know that those who took away that poor old party haven’t murdered her for her money?” it asked.

  The next letter to Sister Hilary harped on the theme of the accident to the child.

  “No thanks to you and yours as a poor mite was not done to death. You never even went to see her in the horspitall nor took her no flowers nor sweets. Not for nothing is your lot called the Scarlett Women.”

  “I suppose the writers will get tired of all this in time, if we take no notice,” said Sister Hilary, having instructed Sister Wolstan to destroy the letter. “We must just put up with this persecution, I suppose, until they get tired of the game. I wish the writer knew that we were advised not to visit the child in hospital until after the court proceedings. I felt at the time that it made us seem rather heartless, but counsel was adamant. And Sister Romuald did go to the hospital as soon as things were settled, but the child had been discharged.”

  “It is a pity Sister did not think of asking for her home address,” said Sister Wolstan.

  “Yes, perhaps, but it’s rather late in the day for that to be thought of. Have you typed out that list of properties we shall need for the summer play? I must see Sister Fabian about a back-cloth for the stage in case the weather turns wet and Miss Grey can’t have the play out of doors as she wants to do.”

  “I think it’s a very chancy matter to put on an evening show out of doors in this climate. Even if it doesn’t rain, it may turn cold, and some of the children are to be dressed as fairies. They are sure to catch a chill.”

  “I’ll have a look at the sketches Sister Fabian has made for the costumes. The parents won’t want children home for the holidays with streaming colds. I’m glad you mentioned the fairies.”

  “Those letters,” said Sister Wolstan, reverting to the previous subject.

  “Yes?”

  “Have you studied the postmarks on the envelopes?”

  “Not many of them are very clear,” Sister Hilary answered. “Those I have been able to make out indicate that the letters are posted in the town, but if they come from the child’s parents they could be posted in the village, couldn’t they, and carried to the town to be marked and sorted? But why do you ask about the postmarks? Are you suggesting that, after all, we try to track down the writer? If she wanted her name known she would sign the letters. Besides, I’m sure it’s the mother. Nobody else would bother. In any case, the child’s injuries were not serious, thank God. We need not feel guilty, I’m sure.”

  “But the letters make me uneasy. The prioress gets anonymous letters, too.”

  “Yes, not about the same thing, though. Hers are all about Mrs. Wilks, who left the house behind what appears to be a veil of secrecy.”

  “Oh, perhaps that’s too strong a way of expressing it,” said Sister Wolstan. “I think she only wanted to keep her new address secret from old Miss Lipscombe. I don’t want to seem uncharitable, but Miss Lipscombe is what in my early days I should have called a nosey parker. What I was going to suggest is that we tackle the child’s parents and make mention of calling in the police if the letters don’t stop coming.”

  “I hardly think we are in a position to utter threats. The letters are not actionable.”

  “Well, no, they are not scurrilous, I suppose. All the same, they are a nuisance. Besides, I’ve been thinking things over, and I’m not sure the child’s parents are involved.”

  “Surely they are by far the most likely people to send such letters to the school?”

  “I hardly think so. Your letters and those of the prioress—she shows them to the rest of us—are written on exactly the same kind of notepaper and enclosed in the same kind of envelope. I have compared them most carefully. I took your last letter over to the convent before I obeyed your orders and destroyed it.”

  “Everybody uses the same kind of stationery nowadays,” said the headmistress. “The village shop only keeps one kind, I expect. But what are you asking me to believe?”

  “That both sets of letters are written by the same person. Oh, I know that yours are illiterate and badly spelt and that those which go to the convent are far superior in these respects, but surely it is too much of a coincidence if two anonymous letter-writers live in our neighbourhood?”

  “I see what you mean, but coincidences do occur and I can readily believe that one has occurred here.”

  “You think there are two anonymous letter-writers, then?”

  “Yes. What is more, I could name them. One is the mother or the father of the injured child, as we’ve said. The other, well, no names no packdrill, as we used to say in my unregenerate days, but there is one old busybody not so far from this room who has lost her sparring partner and greatly resents the fact. Well, now, you’ll let me have that list of properties, won’t you? Oh, and ask Miss Grey (don’t forget Sister Fabian) to come and see me as soon as she has a free period. I must see about those fairies.”

  Someone else was interested in the postman’s visits besides the Sisters, but day af
ter day went by and Miss Lipscombe received no reply to her letter to Mrs. Wilks.

  “Still, she must have got it,” said Miss Lipscombe to Mrs. Polkinghorne, “because I put the address of the convent on it and it would have come back if the post office couldn’t deliver it.”

  “But if she wish you to write, she leave you her address of her new home,” Mrs. Polkinghorne pointed out, not for the first time. “She leave you no address, so she do not wish letters. I see it like that.”

  “Well, I do not. She didn’t leave her address because, for no doubt a very good reason, she did not want those prying nuns to get hold of it. Perhaps that is why she doesn’t answer. All the letters that come here are taken straight to Sister St. Elmo and she doles them out. I haven’t the slightest doubt she has a good look and a good feel and maybe a good smell at each one before we’re allowed to have our own.”

  “Is that what you would do if the letters came to you and not to her?” asked Mrs. Polkinghorne, who liked and respected the nuns and had little liking and no respect at all for Miss Lipscombe. Miss Lipscombe gazed at her suspiciously, but the large dark Spanish eyes seemed to express nothing but gentle enquiry, so she gave a little snort of contempt and resumed her position at the window so that she could be the first to see the postman crossing the convent car-park.

  However, no letter came for her and she made up her mind to allow a couple of weeks to pass and then to try again. Meanwhile the school summer play was performed, met with its usual success, and nobody caught cold. This last was possibly accounted for in that Sister Mary Hilary, having vetted the costume designs, faced Sister Mary Fabian and Miss Petrella Grey with alternatives. If the play, floodlit by courtesy of a papa who was vaguely stated to be “in the business” was to be presented out of doors and by night, the fairies were to wear their school green pullovers and their green gymnasium knickers under their fairy frocks and put shoes on their feet; otherwise, if bare arms and feet and very light underclothing were to be the order of the day, the play was to be presented indoors.

  The producer and the wardrobe mistress were saddened by this request, which they thought unreasonable, but they knew better than to argue with Sister Mary Hilary. However, a heavy downpouring of thundery rain settled the matter to the satisfaction of all parties. The play was performed on the school stage against an arresting back-cloth designed by Sister Mary Fabian and executed dashingly by the Second Form art class, the diaphanous fairy frocks were unhampered by thick green pullovers or gymnasium shorts and a good time was had by all, including the prioress, (who attended by right of office), Sister Marcellus, (for once so good-humoured and uncritical that she applauded everything including the unrehearsed incidents inescapable in any amateur production), old Sister Ignatius, and the two elderly paying guests. Even Father MacNicol’s saturnine countenance lighted up and his musical bass lent body to those songs in which the audience was asked to participate.

  It was at the play, however, that another anonymous communication was delivered, and this time it did not come by post. Sister Mary Hilary found it tucked into her copy of the programme. There was no doubt about its being intended for her because, as headmistress, it was well known that she was always given an armchair in the exact middle of the front row.

  The prioress was always given the seat on her right, Father MacNicol the chair on her left. Old Sister Ignatius was always put at the end of the row, in case she needed to be taken out during the proceedings, and Sister Marcellus was there to attend to her. The rest of the front row was allotted to the more important of the parents. The staff, with the exception of Sister Romuald, who was at the piano, and Sister Fabian, the prompter, were behind the scenes, the women to help with costumes and make-up and to keep down the noise made by a large and excited cast, the men to manage the lights and set up the scenery.

  The note dropped out as Sister Mary Hilary opened her programme. She read it and her black brows came together ominously. When the play was over and the nuns had had a late supper, she showed it to the prioress.

  “That settles it, in my opinion,” she said. “The writer is somebody connected with the school or the house. I am inclined to believe it’s the latter.”

  “Miss Lipscombe,” said the prioress, “if you are right. What makes you so sure that it is somebody who lives here?”

  “I think it would be impossible for a person from the village to get into the school, put a letter inside the programme intended for me, and escape without being detected. Somebody did it who had a right to be in the hall. Surely it couldn’t be one of the parents, could it?”

  “I should hardly think so. You know, it reminds me just a little of that very first letter we received.”

  “The one about the woodwork centre?”

  “Yes.”

  “The sender this time has used print though, not her own printed capitals. It may not be the same person.”

  “Well, I’m determined to get to the bottom of it. If I can’t find out who sends the things, perhaps I can find some way of choking her off. We can’t go on putting up with these accusations against ourselves. Why should we? This letter is scurrilous, in my opinion.”

  “Our remedy, I suppose, is to take it to the police, but I think we might try other measures before we do that.”

  “Have you any ideas for trying other measures? I am not at all anxious to bring the police in. We don’t want that sort of publicity.”

  “I agree. Well, I do have a plan.” She told the prioress what it was and then added, “What do you think? Is it worth trying?”

  “Oh, anything is worth trying, Sister. After all, we don’t want to show the poor creature up. We merely want to put a stop to the letters.”

  “Very well, then. We’ll see what happens after the tennis tournament.”

  After the tennis tournament the secular staff always entertained the nuns and the paying guests to a sumptuous tea, and it was at this festive gathering that Sister Mary Hilary made her announcement. Ostensibly she was speaking only to Sister Wolstan and the prioress, but at the sound of her slightly raised voice the other conversations suddenly stopped, as they have a habit of doing when the head of a school begins to speak.

  “I’ve been thinking over those nuisance-letters,” she said, “and I’ve decided we ought to call in the police. The writer can’t live all that far away and the police will soon lay hands on her.”

  “I suggested that course some time ago,” said Sister Wolstan, also speaking very clearly and giving the impression that she had received a cue, as indeed she had. “The poor creature must be mentally afflicted, of course, so it should not mean a prison sentence, but there are other means of restraint which she may like even less.”

  The headmistress nodded and, after a pause, conversation became general again.

  “Anything strike you at teatime?” asked Bevis Fletcher, mathematics, of Gilbert Murphy, physics and chemistry, as they were driving away from the school that afternoon in Fletcher’s car.

  “Stuck out a mile,” said Gilbert. “The boss was getting at somebody who was among those present. Our secretary-bird had been tipped to sing the responses. Whom do you think they had in mind?”

  “The old girl with the dingle-dangle earrings, I suppose. Spanish, isn’t she? I was watching her and I saw her jaw drop.”

  “What was it all about, do you suppose?”

  “Nuisance-letters, the boss said. Anonymous muck sent through the post. Probably about that village kid who got run over. But the nuns won’t bring in the police. That was just a bit of bluff, you know, to scare the old woman into calling it a day.”

  “Anonymous letters? What? Sent to the convent?”

  “Not to the convent, I think; merely to the school. Wonder what was in them?”

  “The usual nasty insinuations, I suppose. Anonymous letter-writers always run to type, I believe.”

  “The only typewriter is in Sister Wolstan’s office,” said Bevis, grinning.

  “Well, I’m blest!�
� said Petrella Grey, dance and drama, to Nancy Webb, physical education and games. “What on earth was all that about, I wonder?”

  “I’m surprised at you. Do you usually listen to private conversations?”

  “Well, you seem to have done the same, or you wouldn’t know what I’m talking about.”

  “Did you write rude letters to the nuns, darling?”

  “No, but, seriously, Nancy, is that accident in the village having repercussions, do you think?”

  “It sounded like it. Our revered head-mum has wind-up, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Well, anonymous letters aren’t much fun. We had an outbreak of them in my former home town a year or so back, and there were two attempted suicides and one woman left her husband and children and went into hiding.”

  “The suicides were only attempted, you say, and perhaps the woman was glad of an excuse to leave home, anyway.”

  “So them’s your cynical sentiments, are they? Anyway, one thing is certain: Sister Hilary won’t call in the police. She knows where the letters come from and she was getting at somebody who was present at the tea-party.”

  “One of us, do you mean?”

  “Much more likely to have been one of those two old dears who have guest rooms in the convent.”

  “Oh, surely not? I’ll tell you who else could have heard her, and that’s Mrs. Riggs and Mrs. French. They were in and out of the staff room all the time.”

  “What! Our ultra-respectable school cleaner and the school cook? Oh, come, now!”

  “Well, you never know, do you?”

  “But they’re both married women with families. Poison-pens are always repressed spinsters with hidden yearnings.”

  “Well, I’m one of those, so what?”

  “Thank goodness that’s over for a few weeks,” said Ronald Chassett, simple woodwork, to his mother. “What with people writing stinking letters to the school and being threatened with the police—the last thing I want, when you think of father—and girls who hammer in screws and girls who think a nice strong bit of sticky tape is preferable to dove-tailing a joint, and a convent that’s always got a little job of carpentering to be done or a picture frame to be mended or a leg to be put back on to a chair, my life isn’t worth living at that place. Why, Mother, even the private jobs I do don’t come to enough to keep a wife.”