Convent on Styx (Mrs. Bradley)

by Gladys Mitchell

  “She could always have a job of her own, dear, until the babies begin to come along.”

  “Yes, and what then? And, anyway, what about you? You couldn’t live on your old age pension if I left home, could you?—or even if I brought my wife to live here.”

  “Perhaps I could go and live in the convent, like the other ladies. I taught in that school before you were born,” said his mother, “and I lived in the convent in those days because most of the staff were resident. It’s because I’m an ex-teacher there that they gave you your job. I’m sure Sister St. Elmo would take me in, if I asked her.”

  “No, no, Mother! I couldn’t have that! I couldn’t let you live in the convent!” cried her son, aghast. “There are reasons, good reasons. Promise me you won’t think of it any more.”

  “But I don’t want to be a millstone round your neck, dear.”

  “You’re not. You couldn’t be. Promise me, Mother! Please promise me on your sacred oath that you won’t go and live in that convent.”

  CHAPTER 7

  The Convent Is Haunted

  “You never heard, did you, of a real ghost at a private school?

  I thought not; nobody has that ever I came across.”

  M. R. James

  The last three days of the summer term were, as always, chaotic. Classes rioted joyously while form mistresses went to the headmistress’s study with last-minute reports to be signed and while the following term’s schedules of work were finalised; stock was collected and counted; cupboards, drawers, and desks were tidied up; the Sixth Form and the Upper Fifth held coffee parties; and the First and Second Forms, under the mild eye of Sister Honorius, squabbled and wept over who was to be given charge of rabbits and hamsters for the holidays and who would be allowed to come daily to school to feed the ducks and help Tom Quince and Sister Honorius look after the pigs and the goat.

  The Lower Fifth decided to bring picnic meals to be eaten on the field instead of taking school dinners; not to be outdone, the Upper Fourth brought record-players and organised an unauthorised dance in the gymnasium, while the Lower Fourth, claiming half the available space there, ran an equally unauthorised auction sale of the goods and chattels that they had filched from the Upper Fifth prefect who had been responsible for collecting lost property during the term. The Third Form muscled in on this and demanded a share of the proceeds and a disgraceful mêlée was broken up by the appearance of Sister Wolstan, who confiscated the cash takings, took the names of the chief combatants, and threatened to report both forms to Sister Hilary, a threat unlikely to be carried out so near the end of term.

  Breaking-up day came in time to save the more sensitive members of staff from having a nervous breakdown and Sister Hilary went to see the prioress as soon as school was dismissed.

  “I’ve got to keep the two Cartwrights for at least the first fortnight of the holidays,” she said. “There is infectious illness at their home and their mother doesn’t want them back until it’s cleared up.”

  “Oh, well,” said Sister St. Elmo, “we must put a second bed into what was Mrs. Wilks’s room, that’s all. There are the former teachers’ beds upstairs. Get Tom Quince and one of the school gardeners to bring one down for you.”

  “Just as you wish, but wouldn’t it be simpler to give the children two of the upstairs rooms?”

  “No. For one thing, the beds up there will have to be thoroughly aired before anybody can sleep in them, and it is easier to air one bed in the kitchen and then put it in Mrs. Wilks’s old room than to bring two beds down, air them and take them upstairs again. Apart from that, we are to have Father O’Regan, from Ulster, who needs a rest. He won’t want a couple of schoolgirls running about on that floor and perhaps disturbing him.”

  “I see. Very well, then, Sister. They can take their midday meal in the school dining-hall. They are quite old enough to get their own breakfasts, teas, and snack suppers and eat them in the parlour here, and Mrs. French is willing to give them their cooked dinners over at school. She has to get something for the extra school cleaners anyway, so there is no real problem if the children are only to be here for a fortnight. After that, Mrs. French goes on holiday and the extra cleaners will have finished scrubbing out and all the rest of the work, so then we may have to cope.”

  “Well, let us hope the fortnight will see us through. You will have a word with the children about being very quiet when they are in their room, won’t you? I don’t want to give Miss Lipscombe cause for complaint. She won’t like having children next door to her, in any case, so I don’t wish to give her any legitimate reason for coming and bothering me, as she is only too apt to do. By the way, what about bathrooms, and so on, for these little girls?”

  “They can use the school accommodation. There is no need for them to get in anybody’s way over here.”

  “I had better tell Sister Marcellus to let them have a chamber pot, just in case, though, don’t you think? They can’t go over to school if they need relief during the night.”

  “Well, what do you think!” said Miss Lipscombe, a couple of days later. “I have had an answer from Mrs. Wilks at last.”

  “Oh?” said Mrs. Polkinghorne. “I did not see that you had a letter. Is Mrs. Wilks in good health?”

  “I suppose so. She says she is very happy and asks me to write as often as I can.”

  “That is strange she should think of you after so much time,” said Mrs. Polkinghorne. (“You old mentirosa,” she added in her thoughts.)

  “Oh, she says she has been very busy settling in at her new home,” pursued Miss Lipscombe, continuing blithely with what Mrs. Polkinghorne knew were lies.

  “Ah, yes. You will remember me to her when you write?”

  “Oh, yes, but I can’t give you her address. She does not put it in the letter. I am to write in care of the post office.”

  “Strange, is it not?”

  “Why do you keep saying that? It is not strange at all. She says she does not want Sister St. Elmo to know where she is.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well,” said Miss Lipscombe, lowering her voice, “she left the convent because she owed them money, you know. She left under a cloud.”

  “She went off in that big car, owing money?”

  “Oh, do forget the big car!” said Miss Lipscombe testily. “What has that to do with it? I expect she hired it herself just to annoy the nuns. It would be quite like her to do something of the sort. And, talking of annoyance, I am going to complain. How dare they put two noisy, rackety children in the room next to mine?”

  “They are very good children,” protested Mrs. Polkinghorne. “I have spoken to them and they are very polite and nice.”

  “All a veneer until they get used to us. There won’t be a minute’s peace later on, you mark my words. I shall speak to Sister about it.”

  The Sister she spoke to was Marcellus, in whom she found a ready sympathiser.

  “We keep our own rooms clean and tidy,” said Marcellus, “and so do you and Mrs. Polkinghorne. The school cleaners see to the hall and the passages. Sister Leo and Sister Romuald keep the chapel clean and polished. I do the cooking and the marketing. Do I complain? No. But these children are not to clean their room and always they will open the window and let in the dust and dirt from the car-park. They will get in my way in the kitchen and make a mess and not wash up their cups and plates as they should. I know what children are like.”

  “But they will take meals over at the school,” said Mrs. Polkinghorne, who was present.

  “Not their breakfast,” said Sister Marcellus. “The school is not unlocked for the cleaners until ten o’clock, so they are to take their breakfast over here, and their tea and their supper, let me tell you, and in our parlour, too!”

  “Really!” exclaimed Miss Lipscombe. “Oh, well, if they have permission from the prioress, I suppose there is nothing we can do. I know it will get on my nerves, though, and when anything gets on my nerves I can’t sleep and my health suffe
rs.”

  “Well, I do not mind the children,” said Mrs. Polkinghorne, “so why do you not change rooms with me while they are here?”

  “Change my room again?”

  “Just as you wish. It only means changing my sheets for yours.”

  As though she were the person granting the favour, Miss Lipscombe agreed upon the exchange of rooms and moved in next door to old Sister Mary Ignatius so that the children, who were aged nine and eleven, had Mrs. Polkinghorne instead of Miss Lipscombe for neighbour.

  For the first week of their stay at the convent the little girls were happy enough. Every morning two or more of the lower school turned up to feed the animals and each afternoon Sister Mary Romuald took the Cartwrights out in the convent car, although she avoided the village, where the village children were on school summer holiday. At the beginning of the second week, however, she went on leave and as Sister Mary Raymund, although she had passed her test, was not anxious to take out two lively little girls, the afternoon outings ceased.

  The flow of animal lovers also petered out until the only faithful helper was a child of morbid imagination who said, on the Tuesday morning of the second week:

  “I should be scared to stay in the convent at nights. Aren’t you scared?”

  “Never thought about it,” said the eleven-year-old.

  “I’m not scared,” said her sister.

  “Well, I would be,” said the other child. “There’s somebody comes creeping into the convent car-park at nights and stares at people through the windows, and his face is all green and he’s got fangs, just like a wolf, and horrible bloodshot eyes. They say he’s a ghost.”

  “Who cares? The nuns wouldn’t let him get in. Besides, we always draw the curtains. Well, Sister Marcellus does, actually, after we’re in bed, and the prioress comes in and says goodnight and blesses us, so sucks to you and your silly old green-faced ghost. You were pretty green yourself when you ate too much at last year’s form party, so there!”

  Brave words spoken in the full morning light of a sunny July day, but more sombre feelings prevailed when night was nigh. Sister Marcellus, coming in, as usual, to draw the curtains, said,

  “Why, you’ve drawn your curtains yourselves! You must wait for me. You’ll bring them down if you tug at them and then what will you do? I can’t climb up and fix them!”

  “We were ever so careful,” said the older child. “We didn’t want anybody looking in.”

  “Looking in? How could there be anybody looking in?”

  “Sister, the convent isn’t haunted, is it?” asked the younger child.

  “You get into bed and don’t ask silly questions.” Sister Marcellus gave a tweak to the curtains and went out, muttering under her breath. She was not, however, as unsympathetic as might have been supposed. Long residence in the convent had not eradicated the frightening superstitions and the bogeyman threats which had been part of her peasant childhood. She went to the prioress, but without mentioning the child’s question. What she said was:

  “Is there any chance that some man or other gets in to the car-park at night and looks in at the downstairs windows before the curtains are drawn, Mother?”

  “What makes you ask that, Sister?” asked the prioress, giving her a hard stare.

  “Those two children are frightened. They have spoken to me and asked whether the house is haunted.”

  “Oh, young children are very silly.”

  “But they really are alarmed, Mother Prioress. I don’t question it for one moment. I know genuine fright when I see it.”

  “Would they be happier with a night-light? We always let Sister Ignatius have one because sometimes she has to get up in the night and use her commode. I could easily let the children have one of her small candles. I always keep a box of them in stock.”

  “I don’t like those movable bars on the window of that room, either,” went on Marcellus. “If there is a prowler, he could get in, and one hears of such dreadful things the insane will do to children; yes, and not only to children. There are the rest of us to consider, if there is an evil-minded person in the neighbourhood. I haven’t forgotten my experience in our car in the village.”

  “I don’t really see that anybody could get into the car-park at night,” objected the prioress. “Tom Quince has orders to lock the gates at sunset, and I am sure we can rely on him to do so.”

  “Well, I would be happier in my mind if I could be sure he does lock the gates. Those children are alone and unprotected and, as they are determined to leave their window open at the top at night, the same as they do at home, anybody could get in.”

  “I’ll speak to Tom about the gates, though I’m sure your fears are without foundation.”

  This was not the end of the matter. A few minutes after Sister Marcellus had gone, the prioress had another visitor. This time it was Miss Lipscombe.

  “I have no wish to complain,” she said. “We all have our cross to bear, but must we have two rackety children on our floor, dear Mother?”

  “I have not found them rackety.”

  “Ah, but your office and the Community Room are a long way off, and your other rooms are upstairs.”

  “I will speak to the children and make sure they do not disturb you.”

  “That is all very well, but they have their meals in the parlour with us and chatter all the time.”

  “About that I can do nothing, as you are well aware. I cannot and will not impose a silence rule upon young children.”

  “Oh, well, that may be so, but there is another thing about it.”

  “Really?” said the prioress, conveying disapproval and a certain degree of impatience. “And what is that?”

  “Ever since I discovered, quite by accident, that the bars to that window in Mrs. Wilks’s old room are removable, I have never thought that anybody was safe in there. I know I was glad enough to move out of it.”

  “Well, there was never any real need for you to move into it, was there?” said Sister St. Elmo mildly, but with a glint in her eye. “It was entirely by your own wish that you changed over.”

  “I did not know about the bars at that time.” Plainly dissatisfied as a result of the interview, Miss Lipscombe took herself off, but the two visits, coming one on top of the other, had slightly shaken Sister St. Elmo’s self-confidence. She reflected that the children themselves must have said something to Sister Marcellus and there was also the fact that at their own home they were accustomed to sleep upstairs and therefore might very well feel nervous on the ground floor and in a strange house.

  When she went in that evening to say goodnight and to bless them before they went to sleep, she said, “I’ve been wondering whether you would like to have two dear little rooms on the floor above this one. They are rooms that the school staff used to have when we had a boarding school. What do you think?”

  “Oh, Mother! Oh, you, Mother!” they said. “May we move up there thank tomorrow?”

  “Yes, if Sister Marcellus can find time to get your beds moved upstairs. Of course you won’t be together, you know, but the rooms will be next door to one another, and I shall be on the same floor along another corridor.”

  “Oh, Mother! It will be lovely!” they said.

  “I wonder whether they have seen or heard something which has alarmed them?” thought Sister St. Elmo; then she dismissed the idea and sent for Tom Quince.

  Appealed to, Tom convinced her that he never failed to lock the car-park gates, but added, “There’d be nothing to stop anybody sneaking in before dusk and hiding among the trees and bushes in the school garden, though, and there’s no way of shutting the school parking. I’ll take a look round tonight. But I reckon it’s only one of these tales as always goes round a school, Sister, among kids of that age. Like to frighten one another, they do. Mind you, if there is some hanky-panky going on, Sister, some of them village lads is my guess. I’m taking my ashplant with me when I does the rounds tonight, and heaven help ’em if I catches anybody—tha
t is if heaven’s interested in ’em, the little scallywags. It’s all on account of that accident in the village, I don’t doubt. Any excuse will do ’em to get into mischief on other people’s property.”

  Early next morning Quince went again to the prioress.

  “I just seen Mrs. Riggs, as cleans out Sister Hilary’s study and Sister Wolstan’s little den and the staffroom and that, and she reports as the study is turned all upside down, she never see it in such a state, and all the papers in the filing cabinet on the floor and all the drawers in Sister’s desk been rummaged through, and all like that, and the same in the seckertary’s office, which is to say Sister Wolstan’s little cubby-hole next the front door.”

  “Oh dear! Does Sister Hilary know?”

  “Not yet. Thought I’d come to you first, Sister.”

  “I had better get Sister Hilary and Sister Wolstan to go over to the school to see whether anything is missing. I suppose whoever it was was hoping to find money. I trust that you told the cleaner not to touch anything?”

  “I did, Sister. ‘This’ll be a police matter,’ I says, ‘and they’ve got to see everything exactly as it is,’ I says. ‘Fingerprints and all that,’ I says.” He looked modestly pleased with himself.

  “Good,” said Sister St. Elmo. She went to the Community Room and sent the Sisters concerned over to the school. “Don’t tidy up,” she said, “but just check to find out what is missing and what damage, if any, has been done, and then I shall call in the police.”

  The checking took some time. When their report came in, it was a strange one and, for some reason she could not have explained, Sister St. Elmo found it perturbing, for no damage had been done and nothing appeared to be missing.

  “If it was money they were after, of course they didn’t find any,” said the headmistress. “All school money was collected and banked on the last day of term. Sister Romuald will testify to that, as she took it to town in the car. So far as I can tell, except for the untidy state in which the place was left, and the nuisance it will be to get my filing-cabinet in order again, no harm has been done.” She made way for Sister Wolstan, whose report was almost, but not quite, the same. Sister Wolstan, like her headmistress, was conscientious and painstaking to a degree, as anybody who had been trained in the novitiate of the Companions of the Poor was almost bound to be. She had ferreted and probed and searched and was ready to declare that only one thing had been removed from the secretary’s little room.