Page:The Strange Case of Miss Annie Spragg (1928).djvu/257

 could not ask Signora Bardelli to fetch it, for Signora Bardelli was a busy woman and had been up most of the night. The hallway and the cortile were grey blue with morning light and already out of the cell-like doors there had begun to appear figures which Sister Annunziata knew well. . . the old man who washed the streets, the blind old woman who sold flowers in the arcades of the Piazza Vittorio Emanuele, Galeazzo the lame stone cutter. They greeted her knowing that her presence in the Palazzo Gonfarini meant that there was suffering and death within its walls. She understood what it was they wanted to know. It was the stranger, she told them, who lived at the far end of the corridor. They crossed themselves and wished good health to Sister Annunziata and peace to the soul of the dead woman.

In a little while she returned bringing with her candles and a great kettle of hot water and when she had entered the room again she set about placing it in order. She went through the drawers of the cheap pine table and the pockets of the grey tweed suit but she found nothing. There were no papers and not even a lira in money. The dead woman appeared to have no possessions but the clothes she wore and the little birds.

Then Sister Annunziata went to the iron bed and lifted the sheet and for a long time she stood looking down at Miss Annie Spragg. The lines of pain had gone out of the dead face, leaving it transparent and smooth and peaceful against the masses of splendid tangled hair. Again Sister Annunziata, who had a way of talking to herself, murmured,