Convent on Styx (Mrs. Bradley)

by Gladys Mitchell

  “Now,” said Dame Beatrice, taking out a small notebook when she and Miss Webb were seated, “this anonymous letter you received—or were there more than one?”

  “One only. You can guess what it accused me of, I expect.”

  Dame Beatrice noted the broad shoulders, the strong jaw, the long legs, and the large hands and feet of her companion and thought she could.

  “You’re wrong,” said Nancy Webb. “What it accused me of was being an unconvicted murderess, so I said in the staff room that if anybody wanted to be funny at my expense, I hoped she’d put her name at the end of her next letter, upon which it would give me great pleasure to twist her head off and so prove that she wasn’t that far out.”

  “How many people heard you say it?”

  “The whole boiling except the boss and Sister Wolstan and those nuns who stay over in the convent. Not that nuns would write that sort of letter, but I guessed that one of them would pass on my remarks, so that they registered in the proper quarter.”

  “The proper quarter being . . .?”

  “This old cat who’s drowned herself. That is, unless somebody saved her the trouble.”

  “So that is what you think?” said Dame Beatrice.

  “Oh, steady on, now I didn’t say that. I can’t see her committing suicide, that’s all. Catholics don’t, you know.”

  “Could it have been an accident?”

  “I shouldn’t think so, unless she’d been into town and got drunk and tumbled into the pond in the dark, but none of that is in the least likely.”

  “Why are you so sure of that?”

  “Because Mother—I mean Sister St. Elmo—would bung anybody out of the house in no time who carried on in that sort of way, although I believe old Mrs. Wilks used to break out after seven o’clock supper and go to bingo sessions in the village. Tom Quince told me she did.”

  “And that was condoned?”

  “Well, they’re not prisoners, are they?”

  Dame Beatrice’s next visitor was the attractive Mrs. Fennell. Her letter, she stated, had accused her of being a man-trap and of deceiving her husband.

  “Stupid really,” she said, “because I never go out without Bill except to our Catholic discussion group. I’m a convert, you see, and Bill is Church of England.”

  “What did you do with your letter?”

  “I threw it away after I’d shown it to my husband.”

  “How did he take it?”

  “The same way as I did. We both thought it was a joke until the same person—well, I assume it was the same person—sent him a letter. When he read mine he said, ‘Well, and what have you been up to?’ I said, ‘Couldn’t he read,’ and we both laughed and he put me across his knee and smacked me and—well, it was quite fun after that. It wasn’t fun at all, though, when the other letter came, this time addressed to him and couched in really offensive terms. Bill wanted to take it to the police.”

  “Do you know who else on the staff received an anonymous missive?”

  “Well, Miss Webb showed me hers and asked me what I thought she ought to do about it. This was before Bill’s filthy letter arrived, so I suggested she did the same as I’d done with mine. I didn’t tell her I thought poor old Miss Lipscombe had sent them, and I don’t think she had any suspicions of her at that point. I think she then thought it was somebody in the village. She said she would twist the writer’s head off if she ever found out who it was, and that she would be obliged if the rest of us would broadcast that statement.”

  “She was sure, then, that the writer was a woman?”

  “I suppose so. I thought the same. Men don’t write that sort of letter, do they?”

  “Did you show your letter to anybody but your husband?”

  “No. It was flattering, you see, in a peculiar kind of way, and people might have thought I was conceited!”

  “Was it the only letter of the kind which was sent to you personally?”

  “To me, yes, but a bit later on, as I said, she sent that other one to Bill, and that one wasn’t funny at all. He said that this was beginning to look like persecution and that if it went on he would have to go to the police. Naturally I didn’t want it to go so far as that. Another thing he said he did not believe that his letter and mine came from the same person.”

  “Forgive the question,” said Dame Beatrice, “but, in the case of the first letter (which, I gather, was a matter more for laughter than concern) was there any grain of truth in it at all?”

  “Well, that’s a leading question, if you like!” said Frances, laughing and blushing. “Bevis and Gilbert have both made passes at me, but, needless to say, didn’t get anywhere.”

  “But no more letters came to your house?”

  “No, thank goodness, and I’m pretty sure no more will come now that poor old Miss Lipscombe is dead.”

  “You do not agree with your husband, then, that your letter and his came from different sources?”

  “No, I don’t. I think my letter was an attempt to find out how I reacted and his letter was the real thing; and that both came from old Miss Lipscombe.”

  The next visitor was Petrella Grey.

  “Yes, I had a letter,” she said. “It was a bit of a giggle, actually. It accused me of being a shoplifter.”

  “With no truth, I take it?”

  “Well,” said Petrella, “there was a bit of a scene at the supermarket once. I’d been to the sweet shop before I collected the groceries—I live with my mother, just the two of us, and I collect the groceries on my way home from school on Fridays—and as it happened I’d pushed a big slab of nut-milk chocolate into my coat pocket so that it stuck out and showed quite clearly what it was. I went to the pay-desk with my wire basket and decanted the various groceries for the girl to check, and then she said, ‘Haven’t you forgotten something?’ I said I didn’t think so. So she said, ‘The chocolate in your coat pocket.’ Of course I explained that I hadn’t bought it there, but she called the store detective.”

  “While you were still inside the shop?”

  “Oh, yes. She knew me quite well, you see, because I always shopped there, and naturally she didn’t want a fuss if she was in the wrong. So I took out the chocolate and the store detective said, ‘That’s not our price tag,’ so the girl apologised and said she’d only been doing her duty, which was true, I suppose.”

  “So to whom did you report this occurrence?”

  “I told my mother when I got home and she said she supposed the supermarket sold the same kind of chocolate and that another time I’d better do the supermarket first and the confectioner’s later, that’s all.”

  “You told nobody but your mother about this?”

  “Nobody. But one of those beastly old convent boarders was behind me in the queue—the one who’s left—and she must have heard it all. Wilks, her name is, and I suppose she wrote the letter. It was postmarked Bristington, so I suppose that’s where she lives now.”

  “But if you had not left the shop when the incident occurred, she must have known that you would be exonerated.”

  “That wouldn’t weigh with a nasty old woman who wanted to write horrible letters, would it?”

  “She may have retailed the story to somebody else, of course.”

  “To the other old dears, you mean? I suppose she could have done,” agreed Petrella Grey reluctantly; but it was evident that she did not think so. “I expect she revelled in having something to gloat over,” she added. “Their lives must be as dull as tombs, I should imagine.”

  The three men on the staff, in very brief interviews, declared that they had received no anonymous letters. By the time Dame Beatrice had finished with them it was twenty minutes to twelve. She tapped on the secretary’s door to let Sister Hilary know that her room was free and then her chauffeur took her to the front door of the convent.

  Outside it she saw the inspector’s car and just as she reached it he got out, saw her, and came to meet her.

  “We’ve had the
full post-mortem account, ma’am,” he said. “Death was by drowning. No signs of violence. There’s no doubt what the verdict at the inquest will be, but I don’t any longer believe it was suicide, ma’am. It’s only a hunch, but I can’t help thinking she was murdered.”

  “You have nothing more to go on than a hunch, Inspector?”

  “I’ve had a word again with Mrs. Polkinghorne. There’s no doubt what she thinks, and she knew the deceased pretty intimately, having lived in the same house with her for so long.”

  “She suggests that, although most of the accusations made in the letters are either untrue or very much exaggerated, one letter contains an accusation both unexaggerated and damaging. You now believe that the person who received that particular letter is a murderer.”

  “That’s about the size of it, to my way of thinking, ma’am. What’s your own impression?”

  “I am inclined to agree with you. I have been talking to members of the school staff and three of them have given me what I regard as useful pointers.”

  “To the letter writer?”

  “No, to the validity of your argument. The letters I have had described to me—most unfortunately they have been destroyed, so what I learnt was not first-hand evidence—contain no complete truths, but the accusations in them are remarkably suggestive. The letter sent to Mrs. Fennell, for instance, suggests that she is a man-trap.”

  “I see what you mean, ma’am. So she could be, had she a mind to it, I’ll wager. She’s what I call (if you’ll pardon the phrase) a proper honey-pot. I know the family well, being that Mr. Fennell is chairman of the local Bench and, of course, I’m often called to the courts. So what was written to Mrs. Fennell could be true, except that it isn’t, and it could be damaging if her husband was the jealous sort.”

  “Especially as her husband received a letter to the same effect, but couched, apparently, in much more offensive terms.”

  “That wouldn’t affect Mr. Fennell, ma’am, so far as his feeling for his wife is concerned, but, naturally, it would make him see red about the writer and be out for her blood.”

  “Not literally, I hope, Inspector.”

  “Slip of the tongue, ma’am. I only meant he’d want to go all out to trace the writer and bring her to book. How about the other ladies?”

  “The physical education specialist was accused of having murderous tendencies. She seems to have taken the bull by the horns and announced her intention of twisting the writer’s head off. The dance and drama teacher’s letter referred to an incident in the local supermarket.”

  “Shoplifting?”

  “Yes, but she was exonerated quickly and completely before she left the premises.”

  “But there was something to go on? Yes, I can see the mischief-making at work. What about the rest of them?”

  “I have yet to question the nuns. The three men on the staff do not appear to have received anonymous letters. At least, that is what they claim.”

  At two-thirty that afternoon Dame Beatrice was again in Sister Hilary’s office. On the desk in front of her were the letters sent to the nuns. The inspector had returned them to the prioress and she had handed them on to Dame Beatrice. They made interesting reading. The letter, for instance, which had been sent to Sister Wolstan accused her of embezzling convent funds.

  “So whoever it is must know that I am the bursar here,” Sister Wolstan, already interviewed, had remarked. “It does narrow it down, Dame Beatrice, don’t you think?”

  No letters had been received by old Sister Ignatius (“so the writer has some sense of decency” had been the prioress’s remark) or by Sister Marcellus. Dame Beatrice, sorting the rest of the letters on the desk, had arranged them in some sort of order. She rang the bell which put her into communication with the secretary’s office and gave Sister Wolstan a list of names she had written down.

  “Sister Fabian first? Quite so,” said Sister Wolstan, going off to separate the art mistress from a class which, apparently, was smothering itself in poster paint. Sister Wolstan quelled it with a martial eye and said that she would remain in charge of it until Sister Fabian returned. Accustomed to the law and order of her previous shorthand classes and the rhythmic clacking of typewriters following the sounds of music played on records, Sister Wolstan was a martinet where discipline was concerned, and the school knew it.

  Sister Fabian tapped at the office door, heard the expected invitation, went in, and was offered a chair.

  “What, no couch?” she said blithely. “I thought we were going to be psycho-analysed.”

  “How much truth is there in the anonymous letter you received?” asked Dame Beatrice, picking it up from the top of the pile.

  “Some truth,” replied Fabian, sobering down. “I was expelled from school, but not for immorality, so-called. It was for starting a rather outspoken magazine—outspoken about school meals and the head sucking up to the rich girls’ parents, and all that sort of thing. True enough, actually, but not well received by the head.”

  “Deplorable,” said Dame Beatrice gravely. “What made you enter a convent, I wonder?”

  “A convent school was the only one which would take me. I liked and admired the nuns and got converted, and then I travelled pretty extensively with my widower father, then I went to art school and kicked over the traces a bit, but it didn’t satisfy me, so here I am. Of course I thought, being ignorant and young, as Yeats says somewhere, that I’d be commissioned to paint holy pictures—that kind of thing—instead of which I find myself stuck here teaching children to slap poster paint on to coloured paper and to model pigs and ducks out of soggy clay. It’s not a bad life and I have the run of the art room here to do my own work in my spare time, such as it is, and during school holidays. It’s quite good fun, on the whole, and Sister Hilary gives me a free hand. That’s one of my things on the wall over there. There’s another one in the chapel. They wanted one for the refectory, but there’s a Giacomo Palma the Elder in there, and comparisons are odious.”

  The rest of the letters were either ridiculous or contained statements it was impossible to prove one way or the other. Thus Sister Elphege was accused of having a mother who had collaborated with the Germans during the last war; Sister Leo of having an uncle who had contracted a venereal disease; poor young innocent Raymund of having attempted to kill the village child whom she had knocked down with the convent car. Perhaps the most ridiculous accusations of all had been reserved for Sister Hilary. Her first letter stated that she had served a prison sentence for joining the IRA and planting bombs; the second accused her of having given orders to the convent drivers to slaughter a child with the convent car to punish the non-Catholic village for ignoring the true Faith and added the story about the prison doctor.

  Sister Honorius was told that she was cruel to pigs and Sister Romuald was accused of using cosmetics to enhance her natural beauty. Dame Beatrice found herself quoting: “Up then spake the nut-brown bride—she spake wi’ mickle spite: ‘And where gat ye the rose-water that washes thy face so white?’ She cackled as she remembered the unanswerable and equally spiteful reply: “‘Oh, I did get my rose-water where ye will ne’er get nane, for I did get that very rose-water into my mither’s warne.’”

  “Quod erat demonstrandum,” said Dame Beatrice.

  CHAPTER 13

  Verdict

  “. . . and will, without fear or favour, affection or ill-will, a true verdict give according to the evidence . . .”

  Anon.

  There were seven jurors, six witnesses, and two solicitors at the inquest on Lilian Charlotte Lipscombe, besides a couple of journalists and a fair attendance in the public gallery. There were also present the coroner, his officials and an impassive policeman on duty at the door of the courtroom. Among the witnesses were Sister St. Elmo, Sister Marcellus, and (to the obvious surprise of these) Mrs. Wilks. Among the spectators in the public gallery was Dame Beatrice.

  The coroner opened the proceedings, after the usual swearing in of t
he jurors, with a long-winded account of the case as he saw it. In essentials it boiled down to what everybody in court already knew, so, having pompously charged the jury, to whom his remarks specifically were addressed, to base their opinion strictly upon the evidence they were about to hear and to approach the case with open minds, he called the first witness; and Tom Quince, in a clean shirt and with his hair carefully brushed, took the stand and the oath.

  After he had given his evidence, which was that he had found the body, Sister St. Elmo was called upon to identify it. Then the coroner said to her,

  “The deceased had lived at the convent for how long?”

  “For five years and a few months.”

  “What was her state of mind?”

  “She had all her faculties.”

  “No, no—although it is helpful to know that. I meant to ask whether she was happy with you.”

  “So far as I know, she was as happy as any lonely old lady can be, though I should prefer to say contented rather than happy. Resigned might be the correct word.”

  “Was she moody?”

  “Not so far as I was aware.”

  “Can you account for her having gone over to the pond from which the last witness says he dragged her?”

  “No, I cannot account for it at all.”

  “Thank you. Call Sister Marcellus. Now, Sister, when did you last see the deceased alive?”

  “Oh, dear, oh, dear!” moaned Sister Marcellus. “I felt sure you were going to ask me that. As though I have time, with all I have to do, to bother about when I saw people last. What with cooking and shopping, and cleaning and . . .”

  “Please be so good as to answer to the question, Sister. If you cannot remember when you last saw the deceased alive, you are to say so. We quite understand how busy you must be, but that applies to the rest of us, too, you know. Now, then, is there nothing that will remind you of when you last saw Miss Lipscombe?”

  “If you had asked me a sensible question in the first place I could have given you a sensible answer. Of course something reminds me. She broke a plate at supper-time.”