“The children should have said something—little donkeys!” said Mother Francis, in a pardonable burst of asperity.
Mary, moreover, had not turned up at tea, had notified nobody of what she had been doing in the meantime, but had been sick twice during the night. She had gone into Saturday school—French with Mother Dominic, English with Mother Mary-Joseph (who asked her whether she felt better), and Geography with Mother Timothy. She had appeared at lunch, but had eaten without much appetite, and then had gone off with Nancy Ryan and some others of the day-girls, to play in the junior dayroom. She had not been seen since.
Unfortunately Nancy Ryan was a day-girl, but five of the boarders were girls in Mary’s form, and the first thing Mrs. Bradley did, after having set in motion a search of the buildings and grounds—nobody to lose touch with the rest of her search party, and no search party to number fewer than four people—was to interview separately all these girls. They could tell her no more than Mother Francis had already found out. They had heard Nancy Ryan give Friday’s message to Mother Mary-Joseph, and they had not been surprised when Mary Maslin did not appear at Friday tea. They assumed that she had gone to bed because she did not feel well, and had said so to Mother Cyprian, whose duty it was that day to supervise the boarders at table.
Mother Cyprian had paid very little attention, as she readily admitted. She was not the Infirmarian, and she had supposed that the child was being properly cared for. She had gone off to church at the usual time, and the boarders had enjoyed recreation. One girl, named Cynthia Parks, had broken rules, however, by sneaking up to the dormitory and peeping into Mary Maslin’s cubicle. She came down and told the others that Mary was not there. When preparation time came, and Mother Timothy, on duty that evening, saw and commented on Mary’s empty place, they told her that Mary had not been well, and Mother Timothy had taken it for granted that the child had been ordered to bed. She actually was in bed when the others all went upstairs, and then had been sick, but not violently so, twice during the night, and had been attended to by Mother Patrick, whose turn it was on duty in that dorter.
Mrs. Bradley could understand Mother Francis’ panic-stricken insistence upon the events of the previous day, but they seemed to her to have very little bearing upon the fact of the disappearance. She tried to get further information from the children, but it was not long before it became obvious that they all knew no more than they had said. She abandoned the interrogation, divided the boarders into five groups, and ordered a further extensive search of the house and grounds.
She herself tiptoed up the stairs to the children’s sleeping quarters. These had been a couple of very large rooms, but extra windows had been made, and these, together with thin wooden partitions and curtains, had made it possible to convert them into a dozen separate cubicles, each with half of a window for light and ventilation.
“Which is Mary’s?” Mrs. Bradley enquired. The Spanish girl, Maria Gartez, who, unbidden but overlooked, had attached herself to Mrs. Bradley, stepped forward and pointed to one of the curtained archways. Mrs. Bradley went in, but the narrow bed was empty.
About a hundred and fifty different thoughts had been passing through Mrs. Bradley’s mind. Two were paramount, and demanded most of her attention. One was common to all the searchers, both nuns and children: the highly dangerous nature of the purlieus of the convent: the high, steep cliffs; the rocks below; the sea; the wild moor; the wilder forest which encroached on it; the bogs, the pits, the paths that ended nowhere, the labyrinthine tracks through gorse and down steep gullies. The second thought, which was possibly hers alone, was that in all probability Ulrica Doyle had known, before she left, of her cousin’s disappearance. True, she had been to look for her, so that she could bid her good-bye, but it seemed incredible that, missing her in her usual haunts, she had not enquired of the members of her form to know where she might be found; and if she had done this, she must have learned of her disappearance from the recreation room during the second part of the afternoon. She probably knew, too, of her cousin’s illness of the previous afternoon and night, and ought to have made some attempt to find out how she was, and whether she had gone to bed again.
She turned to Maria Gartez.
“Did Ulrica know that Mary was lost?” she demanded.
“She said that somebody told her her cousin had been ill,” said Maria. “She went to find her directly after tea.”
“Did she find her?”
“I did not ask. We played chess.”
“Yes, I know you did. What did she say when she came back?”
“I think she said: ‘You have the board ready. I will have black. Black will win.’ I do not remember anything else that she said.”
“So you settled down to play, and were still playing when I found you?”
“Yes. It was almost time to go to preparation when you came. I was very glad you came. I do not like preparation.”
“I see. You ought to have been at preparation whilst you were playing with me?”
“Yes. Ulrica had an excuse. She was to get ready to depart. I made it an excuse to play with you. Thank you very much for a very enjoyable game.” She curtsied. Her dark eyes were grave. She seemed perfectly serious.
“And she didn’t say a word about her cousin?”
“No. But about the board.”
“I see. Thank you, Maria. That is all.”
The Spanish child curtsied and, this time, went away. Meanwhile the Mother Superior had sent Sister Geneviève, the boarders’ matron, and Sister Lucia, the assistant Infirmarian, for the police. They were to walk across the moor to the village and to telephone to Kelsorrow from there. They were not to use the guesthouse telephone for fear of alarming the stepmother of the child.
Pending the arrival of the police, other search parties were formed. Reverend Mother Superior herself went into the boarders’ dormitory to do night-duty, and the older nuns and lay-sisters Catherine and Magdalene were left behind. Old Sister Catherine, they thought, could not help in any way; Sister Magdalene was to open the convent gate to the police and explain to them, more fully than could be done in a telephone call, exactly what had happened.
Then one party headed by Mother Benedict and including Mrs. Bradley, and the other headed by Mother Simon-Zelotes and including Mother Francis, set out to search the neighbourhood. Mrs. Bradley’s party carried the convent handbells, five in all, and the other party had whistles used in games periods. It was expected that enough noise would be made to keep the searchers in touch with one another and to warn the missing child of the approach of friends if she had wandered away and got lost. Mrs. Bradley had her electric torch and two spare batteries, and Mother Benedict carried a hurricane lamp. The others in their party, following two by two as long as the nature of the country allowed of this conventual method of progress, were absolutely silent. They were to explore the cliff-top and the sea-shore, and Mrs. Bradley wondered, as she led the way with Mother Benedict, whether theirs or that of the other party, who were to comb the heights and hollows of the moorland, was the more unpleasant and dangerous task.
Soon it became impracticable to continue in the close and unproductive formation of the crocodile, and so, obeying orders, the searchers spread, half of them circling round Mrs. Bradley and her torch, the rest with Mother Benedict and her lamp.
Apart from almost frightening a tramp to death, their search of the cliff-top in the direction of Hiversand Bay had no result whatever. They went back along the path until they came to a place where steps had been cut to make a descent to the beach. Here the two groups separated completely, Mrs. Bradley and her followers to go down to the shore, the others to continue the search along the cliffs and to try the opposite direction.