Convent on Styx (Mrs. Bradley)

by Gladys Mitchell

  “Well,” said Sister Wolstan, “I have not seen those sent to the homes of the secular staff. Those that came to the convent harped mostly on the theme that most of us were failures in life and had taken refuge in the convent because we wanted to opt out (as I believe the expression is) of trying conclusions with the world. There were two only that were any more unpleasant than that. One was sent to Sister Mary Romuald, the other to the headmistress, Sister Hilary.”

  “Why was Sister Mary Romuald singled out, I wonder?”

  “You will know that when you see her.”

  “Oh, really? The headmistress, I assume, received special treatment simply because she is the headmistress.”

  “Not quite. The writer accused her of having been put in prison before she Entered and of having secured an early release because of her ‘friendship’ with the prison doctor. The word was put between inverted commas, of course.”

  “Ah, yes,” said Dame Beatrice. “Now, Sister, you and the others must be tired of answering questions, but there is one I would like to put to you personally.”

  “That sounds ominous.”

  “Not at all. It is merely this: has Quince ever said anything to you about his finding of the body? Anything he may not have mentioned to anyone else?”

  “Oh, no, I’m sure he has not.”

  There was the sound of footsteps. The headmistress had come from Assembly. A bell rang in the secretary’s tiny office. Sister Wolstan said, “I must go. Please excuse me.” Two minutes later she was back again, and said:

  “Sister Hilary’s compliments, and she wonders whether you would like to talk to her before you see the staff.”

  “It will be a pleasure,” said Dame Beatrice. Led by Sister Wolstan, she crossed the vestibule and was shown into Sister Hilary’s office. The headmistress, seated behind a large desk, smiled in welcome and offered a chair. Sister Wolstan, after an enquiring glance at the headmistress, withdrew, closing the door.

  “Well, now,” said Sister Hilary invitingly.

  “I have been to the pond.”

  “It cannot have told you very much.”

  “It is larger than I had expected. I noticed that it cannot be overlooked, from either the windows of the convent or those of the school. It would also, I think, be screened from the caretaker’s cottage.”

  “Yes, there is a belt of trees that would screen it.”

  “So that if somebody threw something into the pond . . .”

  “You are not referring to Miss Lipscombe’s death, I hope!”

  “Only very indirectly. I am referring to Miss Lipscombe’s Family Bible.”

  “Oh, I heard that it had been dragged from the pond. The inspector asked for a possible explanation. I wish now that I had not wasted people’s time and effort.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Going through all the books in the school library. The convent library was searched, too, and our own private bookshelves.”

  “Oh, I see.”

  “I am placing this room at your disposal for the rest of the morning. I thought you might like to talk to the staff in here. Do you wish me to sit in at the interviews?”

  “I can hardly turn you out of your own room.”

  “So that is the answer,” said Sister Hilary, smiling. “Very well. I can use Sister Wolstan’s room for this morning, as she is going to tidy the big stock cupboard and check the stock against our next Requisition.” She turned her full, fine eyes upon Dame Beatrice. “I know I need not ask you to handle my teachers gently,” she said. “I value them highly and, for the salaries we pay, it is not easy to obtain satisfactory replacements.”

  “I appreciate your offering to let me use your room, but I should explain that it is not my intention to question your staff individually at present. I should very much like to meet them, but en masse and in an environment where they will feel at home.”

  “Well, we have three common rooms here. The secular staff have one for the women and another for the men, and the Sisters have their own room. Quite often, however, the women invite the others in for morning coffee and afternoon cups of tea at break. But during free periods marking of books is carried on in the separate rooms so that everybody gets a measure of privacy and the men can enjoy their pipes, indulge in masculine conversation, and share the kind of stories that, in mixed company, might be in questionable taste.”

  “It sounds an admirable arrangement.”

  “I will drop a hint to Mrs. Fennell to see that everybody takes coffee this morning in the women’s staff room, then. Break is at a quarter to eleven. Again, I take it, you do not wish me to be present.”

  “I think not, if you don’t mind; neither you nor Sister Mary Wolstan, if that will not inconvenience either of you.”

  “Not at all. More often than not Sister Wolstan and I have coffee together in my room while we get on with some work.” She smiled again, her red lips parting to show strong, white teeth. “The staff—the religious and the seculars alike—often have subjects to discuss and opinions to air that are better not overheard by me, although I fancy Sister Wolstan keeps an ear pretty close to the ground.”

  “That is very sensible of her, I think.”

  “It’s very useful to me,” said Sister Hilary.

  Dame Beatrice returned to Sister Wolstan’s tiny office.

  “There is one thing,” said the nun.

  “The caretaker?”

  “Oh, yes. Probably what he said to me is of no importance, but, for what it’s worth, here goes. You know he was the person that found the body?”

  “And did his best to resuscitate it. Yes, he told me so.”

  “He described how he dragged her out of the water, I suppose? Well, he also told me that he thought someone had been there before him—someone who might have tried to pull her out of the pond, but had failed. I wonder why he or she did not summon help, if Quince is right?”

  “Possibly the would-be rescuer realised that it was a body and not a living person. Anyway, I had better see Quince and find out whether he has mentioned this to the inspector.”

  She found Tom Quince over at the pigsties. He put down a bucket of swill, wiped his hands down the seams of his trousers, and greeted her cordially.

  “Do anything for you, ma’am?”

  “Yes, Mr. Quince, if you will. I’ve just been talking with Sister Wolstan. She tells me that you deduced, when you found the body, that somebody else had tried to drag it out of the water.”

  “That’s right, ma’am. That was the conclusion I come to.”

  “You must have had some reason for thinking so.”

  “Well, it was the way she was laying, ma’am. Flat on its face, the body was, and the feet above what you might call high water mark—on the bank, as you might say. Didn’t look natural to me, neither for accident nor even supposing she done it herself, like. The bank was fair wet and trampled over, too, before I makes my hoof-marks on it.”

  “Could not that have been done by children playing there?”

  “’Tain’t allowed, without there ain’t a teacher. Besides, it was biggish shoes, not kids’ footmarks, as I seen, although kind of scuffed out, like, if you follow me.”

  “Have you told Inspector Cramond all this?”

  “Oh, I told him,” said Tom, “but whether he took notice, well, that I couldn’t say, ma’am.”

  “Did you receive an abusive letter, Quince?”

  “From that old pussy? No, I didn’t, then. I’ve never got nothing worse than a summons for speeding, and that was years ago.”

  Dame Beatrice returned to the school and to Sister Wolstan’s basket chair. The secretary made her welcome.

  “Quince had told the inspector, I suppose?” she asked. “About the position of the body, I mean.”

  “Yes, indeed, but he is not certain to what extent his information was deemed to be important.”

  CHAPTER 12

  Interrogation and Surmise

  “While some on earnest business
bent

  Their murmuring labours ply. . .

  Some bold adventures disdain

  The limits of their little reign . . .

  They hear a voice in every wind,

  And snatch a fearful joy.”

  Thomas Gray

  Dame Beatrice looked at her wristwatch. There was time to spare before she was due to meet the staff at ten forty-five. Looking up again as she left the front door of the school, she was pleased, but not surprised, to see her car on the gravel outside and her chauffeur in attendance.

  “Ah, George,” she said, as he opened the car door for her, “You anticipated that I should be taking a little trip, did you?”

  “No, madam, but it’s quite a step back to the convent, so I thought I might drive you over there.”

  “What I want is the village.”

  “The parents of the child who was injured by the convent car, madam, live at number eleven. I have the information from Mr. Quince.”

  The front door of the cottage opened directly on to the street. Such garden as it possessed was in the rear. Dame Beatrice knocked on the door and it was opened by a woman smoking a cigarette and wearing a scarlet shirt, washed-out blue jeans, and an apron upon which was depicted a lion rampant holding aloft a Union Jack.

  “Mrs. Garfish?” asked Dame Beatrice, having learnt this name from George, who had had it, as well as the address, from Tom Quince.

  “I don’t want nothing. I don’t buy nothing at the door,” said the woman defensively, not troubling to remove the cigarette from her lips.

  “You write letters, though.”

  “Letters?”

  “Nasty, threatening letters.”

  “Here!” said the woman, looking frightened. “What you mean? You call again when my ’usband is a-tome.”

  “That will be unnecessary. May I come in?”

  “I don’t want no trouble.”

  “I shall make none. I only want a word with you about a letter you wrote some time ago to the nun who is headmistress of the convent school.”

  “That’s all over and done with.”

  “How many letters did you send?”

  “What’s that to do with you? Go and do your nosey-parkering some place else.” She attempted to close the door, but Dame Beatrice’s firmly clad foot was over the threshold.

  “Look, Mrs. Garlish,” she said coaxingly, “you would rather talk to me than to the police, wouldn’t you? You don’t know it yet, but an elderly woman who lodged at the convent has died in mysterious circumstances and we are. . .”

  Before she could finish the sentence the woman moved black and opened wide the door.

  “Better you come in,” she said. “I don’t want no trouble.”

  “Of course you don’t.” The front door opened on to a small, stuffy, scrupulously clean sitting-room in which the woman unnecessarily dusted a chair with the end of her patriotic apron before inviting Dame Beatrice to sit down. “The affair is in the hands of the police and we want to get one or two things cleared up before the inquest is held.”

  “Inquest?”

  “Yes. As I told you, this woman’s death is a mystery at present.”

  “What did she die of, then?”

  “She was drowned.”

  “Done it herself, did she?”

  “Presumably.”

  “Us didn’t write no letters to no ladies, only to the school. I writ the first one and my man, he said it wasn’t strong enough put, so he writ the second one, saying as how we didn’t want no nuns killing our kids.”

  “And those were the only two letters you sent to the school?”

  “God’s truth they was. Do you mean the poor soul drowned herself because of letters? We never meant no harm to nobody and the way it was put in court seems our Marlene run straight out into the road, being chased by Willie Stegg, as she’ve been forbid to play with no more.”

  “You did not write separately to the teachers who are not nuns?”

  “Course we never. Don’t know ’em, do we?”

  “Nor to the prioress at the convent?”

  “We writ to the school, like I said.”

  “How did you address the envelopes?”

  “The Headmistress, Convent School, Little Deepening, Near Bristington. That’s how, and we only writ the two letters. Surely we won’t be blamed for that, not after all this time?”

  “No. If those are the only letters you sent, you will not be held in any way responsible for this woman’s death. Your letters were a matter which needed clearing up and that has now been done. Thank you for talking to me, Mrs. Garlish. I am sure you can put the whole thing out of your mind. How is your little girl?”

  “Oh, all right. She had a bit of a shock as well as hurting of herself, but she’s got over it. She’s in the school netball team now.”

  The school staff, gathered together for mid-morning coffee, had been apprised by Sister Wolstan of Dame Beatrice’s coming and she was warmly greeted. Sister Wolstan effected the necessary introductions, then disappeared to have her own cup of coffee with Sister Hilary, leaving Mrs. Fennell to carry on.

  The deputy headmistress supplied the visitor with coffee and a biscuit, then asked, “Do you want to chat or are you going to sit and observe us?”

  “Both,” Dame Beatrice replied. “Later on I shall be interviewing you one by one, but I thought it best to obtain a general impression first.” She glanced around her. The staff were grouped in the three sections to which they belonged. With Mrs. Fennell were the long-legged, track-suited, crop-haired Nancy Webb and the pocket-sized Venus Petrella Grey, who wore a brief tunic of Mediterranean blue and whose hair was cut to back-of-collar length with a long fringe over her forehead like that of a little boy. She was vivacious and very pretty, but nobody in the room had any pretensions to good looks compared with the outstanding, astonishing beauty of the nun who was seated opposite Dame Beatrice among the rest of her group.

  Mrs. Fennell herself was a dark-haired woman of great charm, with large, hazel eyes, a frank expression, very fine, sensitive hands, and a lovely mouth which was the key, Dame Beatrice thought, to her whole character. She was of medium height and beautifully formed. Her clothes were unobtrusive but good and her feet were soberly but expensively shod. She also looked what she was—an invaluable member of a school staff, good humoured unless she was brought face to face with injustice or rudeness. In that case, however, Dame Beatrice surmised that her eyes could flash imperious warnings of a temper kept with difficulty under control. She was, in all probability, of very considerable artistic ability, (so ran the observer’s thoughts), a musician or maybe a painter. Her whole personality was particularly pleasing, so much so that Dame Beatrice found herself thinking that the term “special advantage group” for Mrs. Fennell’s backward class was not so much of a misnomer after all.

  With Sister Romuald on the side of the room opposite to Dame Beatrice were the rest of the teacher-nuns—fat, easy-going Honorius; moon-faced, guileless Raymund; worried-looking, long-faced Leo; cheerful, careless Fabian; and tight-lipped, severe, and cold-eyed Elphege. They all sat on high-backed, armless wooden chairs, the most comfortable seats having been appropriated as of right by the three men, who formed a separate group around a small electric fire. They had risen at Dame Beatrice’s entry and the tallest and broadest of them, a fair-haired young man who had been introduced as Mr. Chassett, had made a faint attempt to offer her his chair, but Sister Wolstan had swept her onwards to where Mrs. Fennell had an armchair waiting for the visitor.

  Ronald Chassett wore a neat blue overall with his neat, blue, serge trousers. Bevis Fletcher and Gilbert Murphy were in the traditional uniform of assistant schoolmasters, shirt, woollen pullover, tweed jacket, and grey flannel trousers. Both were smoking cigarettes out of deference to their surroundings, although each would have preferred a pipe. Ronald Chassett did not smoke and neither did any of the women, though Sister Fabian had found the loss of her cigarettes the hardest of all the losses w
hich she had accepted and suffered when she Entered.

  While Dame Beatrice was summing up the various personalities and conversing with Frances Fennell about the New Forest, the break was passing all too quickly and an electric bell soon put an end to it.

  “By the way,” said Frances, as, led by the nuns, the company began to rise and make for the door, “will you all see that your classes have work to get on with for when you are called out? Your girls, Ronald, had better be turned on to the field and the woodwork shed locked up while you are talking to Dame Beatrice. They can’t be left unsupervised with a lot of tools about. It won’t be for long, because Dame Beatrice is going to leave you until last. You’re first, Nancy, so if you’ll get a game of hockey started and then go straight along to Sister Hilary’s room, we need not waste Dame Beatrice’s time.”

  “I can come straight away,” said Nancy Webb, walking out of the staff room with the visitor, her tall, athletic figure making Dame Beatrice look even thinner and smaller than usual. “Ursula Brown knows exactly what to do if I don’t show up at the beginning of a lesson. It’s the Lower Fifth, so it will be quite all right. They’re a keen lot, not like the lazy, aristocratic Sixth.”

  “Are games compulsory here?” Dame Beatrice enquired, as they walked towards the headmistress’s door.

  “I make ’em so, unless there’s a doctor’s report; otherwise some of the little beasts wouldn’t turn out at all. What are you going to grill us about?”

  “Anonymous letters.”

  “Oh, Lord! That muck!”

  “Was it?”

  “Of course. All sorts of filthy accusations.”

  “True ones?”

  “In my case, no. I don’t know about anybody else.”

  As they reached the headmistress’s door, Sister Hilary came out, smiled, and said,

  “Do go in. I’ve taken out all the papers I need for the rest of the morning. School lunch is at half-past twelve, Dame Beatrice, so the staff would like to be free by about twenty past to wash their hands and so forth, and get along to the refectory.”