"You are a good man," Bridget said, comparing him with someone he knew nothing about.

"Not at all bad at it," said Murphy modestly, not understanding.

He wished he could spend the rest of the afternoon out here with Bridget. So did she, but other responsibilities beckoned. She'd have to get back to the nuns and the children soon. Children? Adolescent girls, this lot. Quivering in Murphy's presence like harp strings briskly plucked.

"You have very s.e.xy hands," she said, "but you should clean your dirty finger-nails."

He liked the compliment about his hands. Of course they were s.e.xy. He knew how to use them. As for his nails being dirty, they'd be dirtier still in a minute. One of the off-side wheels of the bus needed attention. It had better be seen to now.

He pulled on his trousers and told Bridget to give him ten minutes. She'd need that anyway to get herself tidied up.

Zanny, from her lair, watched him go. She had heard him say ten minutes. Her time was short. She crept out of the bushes, feeling cold and sick. The pain in her flesh and in her bones slowed her like sudden senility. She had to force her limbs to move. The place had to be reconnoitred for the right spot. And for the right weapon. At last she found both.

Gently, plaintively, she began to call out. "Miss O'Hare - Miss O'Hare."

Bridget, fastening the b.u.t.ton of her shorts, looked up startled. The voice seemed to be coming from over the ridge where the sound of the sea was loud. She bent over and fastened her sandals and then went to look.

The pretty one - Zanny something or other - was crouching over something in the slippery gra.s.s. She was dangerously near the edge.

"Whatever you've got there," Bridget said sharply, "leave it and come back up here." (How much had the girl seen? d.a.m.n her!) "Oh, but I can't," Zanny said plaintively, "I think it's dying."

"What is dying?"

"A dear little creature. A dear little soul." (Willie in heaven picking apples for Jesus. Evans the Bread burning up a tree.) "A what?" Despite her better judgment, Bridget went to look.

As she leaned over, Zanny brought the lump of granite down hard on the back of her neck and then gave her a shove. Half-concussed, Bridget slid several feet down the slope, scrabbled at the rough earth at the top of the cliff, and then sailed in a perfect crimson and blue arc downwards and into the evil green of the sea below.

It wasn't the most spectacular death of the three - it couldn't compare with Evans the Bread -- but for Zanny it was the most satisfying. She sat for a little while looking down into the gully while the sea creamed like dirty lace around Bridget's long dark hair.

Three.

When the bus didn't arrive until very late Mother Benedicta knew something was wrong. Her first thought was that Murphy had got drunk and crashed it. She had never seen him drunk, but she had sensed that her warning to keep away from the temptation wasn't maligning him. When the bus eventually ground up the convent drive at nearly half past nine she went to meet it.

Murphy, at the wheel, was white with suppressed rage, but there wasn't a whiff of the hard stuff near him. He had searched for Bridget for a long time. Eventually he had seen someone who had looked like Bridget - she had worn a crimson jersey and shorts - getting into a dinghy with a couple of yachtsmen. At a distance he could hear their laughter. One of the sods had his arm around her waist. That she should ditch him so blatantly for a b.l.o.o.d.y toff with a sailing boat had made his Irish ire explode. He had gone back to the nuns and the girls who were waiting anxiously and told them that he had seen her and that she could b.l.o.o.d.y walk. She could run screaming after the bus, he said, and he hoped her bleeding feet would drop off. Though he had been reasonably restrained (he could have put it much more colourfully), the nuns took it badly. And one of the girls got sick. Right there on the floor. He thought she was going to pa.s.s out, but she didn't. She was the pretty one. The s.e.xy one he'd helped over the wall. One of the nuns mopped up the mess and another one gave her a barley sugar to settle her stomach. She sat and crunched it and looked at him, her eyes wide with horror.

Most of this was told to Mother Benedicta by various members of the party. Zanny's sickness they attributed to sensitivity. They had no idea that Murphy's words had conjured up a ghoul climbing bloodily out of the gully, like Dracula out of a tomb, and shrieking vengeance as it sped after the bus on its route - its very fast route -- back to the convent. Mother Benedicta, attributing it to physical causes - too many sandwiches perhaps -- told Zanny to spend the night in the infirmary. If she were to be sick again she had better do it there.

As for Bridget O'Hare, girls of nineteen didn't behave with much sense unless they were novices or postulants - and not even then - and if she chose to have a night out then it was probably better not to advertise the fact. When she returned in the morning she would have her marching orders. It would be quite stupid, at this stage, to call the police.

She told the girls to go to bed as quietly as they could and not to wake anyone in the dormitory. They could for this once say their prayers quietly in bed. If anyone wanted milk she could help herself in the refectory -- also biscuits -- but not to linger over it.

"I hope," she said crossly, "that despite everything, you enjoyed your day."

"Oh yes, Ma Mere," they chorused, and with a degree of truth. The picnic had been memorable - quite how memorable they were yet to find out.

When Bridget hadn't returned by eleven o'clock the following morning, Mother Benedicta, with great reluctance, phoned Sergeant Thomas of the local police. She asked for him personally. He had recently dealt with a case of bicycle vandalism - the removal of pumps and pedals from four bicycles belonging to the younger, more athletic, nuns. She had liked his style. He hadn't joked about it. His subordinate had been facetious about the pedals, whereas Sergeant Thomas had taken it very seriously. He was up at the convent within the hour. His gravity, this time, was perfectly in keeping with what he had to say.

She wouldn't throw hysterics, he knew. She wouldn't scream, or shout. Even so, he had to lead in with some finesse. He couldn't throw the news at her like hurling an old boot. You didn't treat nuns like that.

The body had been found just after seven-thirty by a local resident out walking her dog along the cliffs who had happened to look down into the gully. At first she hadn't connected the splash of red with a body held about two feet under the surface of the water by a tangle of black hair. When she eventually began believing in what she was looking at, she informed her husband, the coastguards and the police, in that order. Everyone had moved with commendable speed.

The description that had been circulated fitted exactly with Mother Benedicta's description of the missing school teacher. Identification would be easy, too. If her hair hadn't trapped her -- hair like a rope, she had -- she would this moment be tossing like a cork in the Irish sea. The sea liked to play with its victims, but this time it had been baulked. There had not been enough strength in it to force her out of the rocks. No gale yesterday, nor last night. Like an old woman the sea had been, arthritic and slow.

"Well, now, Mam," he said gently, "drowning is always a possibility."

"You mean you've found her?" Though shocked, Mother Benedicta spoke incisively.

He soothed. "Maybe - maybe not. We've found a body - sounds like your gel." He read her the description on the circular and Mother Benedicta nodded.

They were both standing in the middle of the parlour and Mother Benedicta had the table behind her. The maidenhair fern -- it was always maidenhair fern -- touched her clenched hands which she held behind her back. If a fern could caress, then this fern caressed. Gently - gently -- a voice at the back of her mind seemed to say. Take it easy now. In the name of the Father, the Son . . . the thought trailed away.

"A nice cup of tea," Thomas suggested, "and lots of sugar?"

Oh no, she wouldn't pa.s.s out, this Mother of the convent, this stiff-backed lady, but right this minute she could do with a little help. He knew where the bell was and presumed to ring it. She allowed him temporarily to take charge.

Later, in complete command of herself again, she told him Murphy's story about the yachtsmen. It puzzled him, but he couldn't discredit it. According to his colleagues, the body had probably fallen down into the gully and been trapped on impact with the rocks below. n.o.body had said anything about a yachting disaster. But there hadn't been time to say much about anything. He decided to have a word or two with Murphy and asked where he might find him.

"Going about his duties," Mother Benedicta said crisply, "in the kitchen garden." She offered to accompany him, but he declined. Although he didn't know where the kitchen garden was, he wanted to see Murphy on his own.

Zanny, too, wanted to see Murphy on her own. Sister Agnes, who was a SRN and totally bored with her occasional duties with children who were mildly sick, had greeted her in the infirmary without much enthusiasm. An upset stomach was best starved. An upset psyche, though obvious in this case, she attributed to an upset stomach. Zanny went to bed supperless and the night was almost through before she slept. The rational explanation - that Murphy had seen someone else, not Bridget bloodily dead - had come to her slowly. But why had he been so angry? What had this other person who looked liked Bridget been doing? Why had he stormed back to the bus in such a rage? Had he come across the other Bridget making love? If he had come across the live Bridget making love would he have thrown her over the cliff? If so, then wasn't it a good thing that she, Zanny, had done it for him?

Wouldn't he eventually - one day - be pleased?

She imagined the two of them a long time in the future when they were both quite old - fifty at least. They were sitting on the sea-front at Monte Carlo - or was it Cannes? He had a white walking stick between his knees and he was resting his chin on it. He was blind. He had become blind when, like Rochester, he had been temporarily unfaithful to her and later, repenting, had put his lover's house on fire. Well, maybe she had got the story a bit wrong, but something like that. Anyway, he had disposed of his mistress and had become blind in the process. "My dear love," he told her, "my dear Zanny, you were always too good for me." "Oh, Murphy," she replied (what was his first name?), "oh, darling - if you only knew." At that point she would tell him about Bridget. His face would brighten with joy that she, too, had sinned. He wouldn't use the word, of course. It was pretty well obsolete in her vocabulary, too. But he would say something like: "You're so human, my love. So warm. So pa.s.sionate. So honest." But there was no point in being honest yet. She would just feel around - try to find out how he was taking it. It was conceivable that he might even have liked Bridget, though according to Dolly men did that sort of thing with women as a kind of reflex action. Dolly's knowledge of the world must have been learned from all the books she read - or else her memory went back a long time. To another age, perhaps. Dolly in the seventeenth century would have sold charm cures to victims of the plague and grown rich. A born survivor, Dolly. She had looked at her very oddly when she had been sick in the bus. It was a pity her parents were lumbered with her. They had been lumbered with her now for nearly ten years. A tenth of a century.

Zanny, at that point, had turned on her side and gone to sleep. Mathematics always had that effect on her. Bridget in the dark sea became an octopus gently fingering long green weed. Murphy, bright-eyed, cast a line into the water and tickled the probing fingers. They curled and gripped and then fell away softly one by one. Total darkness descended.

For Zanny to see Murphy on her own was about as difficult as getting an audience with the Pope - or getting out of Alcatraz. Possible, of course, all things are possible, but requiring a lot of thought.

Sergeant Thomas had no difficulty at all. Murphy was digging potatoes. The man had a lot of muscle, Thomas noticed with envy. That spade he was wielding was a good weight. The potatoes were a good weight, too. He grew Edzell Blue himself and sometimes Red Craigs Royal. These that Murphy was digging were white fleshed. "Pentland Dell?" he asked.

Murphy, who hadn't heard him approach, swung round in surprise. The names of potatoes were far from his mind and then he made the connection. He didn't know what they were called. He pushed in tubers - they grew -- he dug them out -- the lay sisters cooked them.

"I like a good turnip myself," Thomas went on conversationally, "especially Green Top Stone. .. Saw Bridget O'Hare with some yachtsmen, did you?"

Murphy put down the spade. Anxiety had been growing in his stomach during the night like a vegetable with blight on it.

Thomas wasn't in uniform, but police had their own peculiar smell. Very antiseptic. You touched them with rubber gloves. You were polite.

"Yes, sorr," he said, rolling his r's in agitation.

"She's dead," Thomas dropped the information like a n.a.z.i bomb and waited curiously to see what devastation he had caused -- if any.

Shock tends to hold one immobile, like a rag of ether over the face. Murphy's skin became pallid and then after several minutes flushed. He went and sat on the low stone wall that separated the kitchen garden from his cottage.

"What did they do," he asked, "drown her?" (They made love in the boat, maybe, and capsized it?) He dug the nail of his right thumb into the flesh of his left thumb to see if he could feel anything. He couldn't.