Death at the Opera (10 page)

Mrs. Bradley smiled in the manner of a well-disposed and kindly boa-constrictor, and poked her small interlocutor in the ribs.

“Go and ask your Headmaster,” she said. But when Moira Malley, the sixth-form girl who had taken part in the opera, stopped her outside the Headmaster's room and put the same question, Mrs. Bradley was a good deal more interested.

“What is your name?” she asked. And when the girl had told her, she said: “Why, you are one of the people I want to talk to. Can you keep a secret?”

The Irish girl smiled.

“Yes, I think I can,” she answered. She looked pale, Mrs. Bradley thought, but was an attractive creature, with a wide mouth, grey eyes and dark-brown hair.

“Wait downstairs in my form-room—you know which one?—for a quarter of an hour. If I am not with you by that time, come back here and knock for me.”

Moira descended the stairs, and Mrs. Bradley tapped at the Headmaster's door.

“Nothing to report,” she announced, “but that your opinion is shared by Miss Ferris's landlady. The landlady knew Miss Ferris for eight years, and is certain that she would never have committed suicide. One other question arises which may be important. Was Miss Ferris pregnant, do you know? Was it suggested that that might have been a reason for her suicide?”

“She was not pregnant,” replied Mr. Cliffordson. “The coroner asked the question at the inquest, and I myself heard both the question and the doctor's reply.”

“Thank you,” said Mrs. Bradley. She made an illegible note on a clean page of the notebook which, together with a small silver pencil on a chain, she drew from the capacious pocket of her skirt. “With your permission I am now going to have a talk with Moira Malley.”

“There's something worrying that girl,” said Mr. Cliffordson. “She hasn't been herself since the dress rehearsal.”

“When was that?” asked Mrs. Bradley.

“On the Tuesday. It was rather a failure, you know. Poor Moira was dreadfully nervous, and hasn't been right since. I'm sorry for that child. Her mother lives in Ireland, on nothing a year, more or less, and the girl is here on a foundation scholarship. Her books and most of her clothes come out of the grant she receives, and, for the rest, an aunt with a family of her own takes her in. Last summer holiday things were in such a bad way that the girl got herself a holiday post as nursery governess, as it was not possible for her mother to find the return fare for Moira to visit her home. She is a clever girl and a very nice girl. We're going to see whether she can win the scholarship to Girton which the governing body offers, and, if she does, I am going to give her a post here later on, if she'll take it. She is a girl of excellent character and is exceedingly popular here, both with the staff and the boys and girls.”

It was less than the specified quarter of an hour later when Mrs. Bradley walked into the form-room of the Lower Third Commercial. Moira Malley had switched on the lights and was reading. She put the book down, rose to her feet and smiled a little nervously as Mrs. Bradley came in. The little old woman shut the door and Moira drew forward a chair for her. Mrs. Bradley sat down, but the girl remained standing. Mrs. Bradley looked at the clock. It was ten minutes to five.

“What about your people?” she asked. Moira shrugged.

“Aunt doesn't mind. Often she doesn't know whether I'm in the house or not until supper-time. I get my own tea. The others have theirs earlier.”

“I see,” said Mrs. Bradley. “Well, sit down, child, and tell me what's the matter.”

“What's the matter?” the girl echoed. She flushed painfully. “I don't think there's anything—”

“Why did you ask me whether Miss Ferris had been murdered?” was Mrs. Bradley's next question.

“Well, everybody from the Third Form upwards is saying so. And you—you're not really a mistress, are you?”

“No,” said Mrs. Bradley. “I'm not. And Miss Ferris may have been murdered.”

“That's what everybody says,” said the girl. “John Lestrange said nobody would have sent for you if there hadn't been murder in the air.”

“The graceless child!” said Mrs. Bradley, laughing. “I didn't know he was at school here. He was at Rugby when last I heard from him.”

“Yes; he's only been here a term, and he's jolly sick about it,” said Moira. “His mother, Lady Selina Lestrange, thought he ought to have co-education. She'd heard a lot about it, or something, so she sent John here. His sister is an awfully nice girl, I believe, but she did not come here. Her name's Sallie.”

“My niece,” said Mrs. Bradley complacently.

“Oh, is she? Then John's your nephew—Oh, that's silly and obvious, isn't it?”

Mrs. Bradley, who had been out of England for some months previously, and so had not kept track of Lady Selina's gyrations, was wondering what her massive sister-in-law would think when she received news that a murder had been committed at the co-educational school which had commended itself to her so heartily a few months before. Mrs. Bradley could visualize a satisfied sixteen-year-old John Lestrange returning to Rugby the following term, if the authorities there would take him back. She chuckled, and Moira Malley looked surprised.

“A mental picture,” Mrs. Bradley explained. “But we must be serious. I want some help. Have you any idea when it was that you last saw Miss Ferris alive?”

The girl did not answer, and when Mrs. Bradley looked at her she saw that she was biting her bottom lip and that her hands were clenched so that the knuckles showed white.

“You need not be afraid,” said Mrs. Bradley gently. “Tell me the truth, child, and don't leave anything out.”

The girl remained silent.

“Very well,” said Mrs. Bradley. “Please yourself, my dear. Come and show me the water-lobby where the body was found.”

“No!” said the girl. “I can't go round there after dark! I can't face it!”

“Very well,” said Mrs. Bradley, as equably as before. There was a note of hysteria in the girl's voice, so the little old woman laid a skinny claw on her knee and said:

“I understand that on the night of the performance Miss Ferris cut herself and had to go into the water-lobby to staunch the bleeding. Is that right?”

Moira began to cry.

“I promised I wouldn't tell,” she said, “but as you seem to know, I suppose it doesn't matter.”

She was crying so bitterly that Mrs. Bradley had some difficulty in making out the words.

“It was Mr. Smith. He came charging round a corner and knocked into Miss Ferris and broke her glasses. A bit of broken glass dug in her cheek just under the eye. It made the tiniest little mark, but it bled a good bit and she said she would go and wash it. That's the last I saw of her. The next day Mr. Smith came round to aunt's home and said he wanted to speak to me about using our hockey pitch for a boy's match. It was Saturday”—she was regaining control over herself, and her words were becoming easier to follow—“and we hadn't a match in the afternoon. Aunt sent for me to talk to him, after he'd told her what he wanted, and when we were in the drawing-room together he told me that Miss Ferris was dead, and asked me to promise not to tell about the accident to Miss Ferris's glasses. He said he had fearful wind up when he found out that somebody had seen it happen, because it made him partly responsible for her committing suicide by putting the idea of water, that is, drowning, into her head. It seemed silly to me, but, of course, if he thought she had been
murdered
 . . .”

She broke off suddenly. Mrs. Bradley pursed up her mouth into a little beak, and decided that the girl was not being entirely frank with her. But what Moira was hiding, Time, Mrs. Bradley's experience informed her, would probably disclose.

“At what time did the accident take place?” she asked, determined at the moment not to press the girl.

“Oh, let me see. Very near the beginning of the opera, because I was just going to make my first entrance—you know—the ‘Three Little Maids from School' bit—so I couldn't stop and see to poor Miss Ferris. The other two, ‘Yum-Yum' and ‘Pitti-Sing,' were already in the wings, only they are both mistresses, so I didn't like to tack on to them too closely, so neither of them saw it happen. It was only me.”

“Was there the slightest possibility that anyone else could have witnessed the collision?” Mrs. Bradley asked.

“Anybody in the men-principals' dressing-room might have seen it, but I don't know who was there.”

“And you were about to make your first entrance?” pursued Mrs. Bradley thoughtfully. “Thank you, Moira. That's all, then. Cheer up, child.”

When the girl had gone, Mrs. Bradley switched off the lights in the form-room and made her way to the water-lobby where the death of Calma Ferris had occurred. The schoolkeeper was busy with a broom and a pail of damp sawdust, and politely stood aside to allow her to enter.

“You aren't superstitious, ma'am, I see,” he observed, noticing that Mrs. Bradley was pressing the tap which flowed into what he had now become accustomed to refer to at the Hillmaston Arms as “the fatal bowl.”

“Oh, is this
It
?” asked Mrs. Bradley, with a show of great interest.

“It is, ma'am. Took me an hour and ten minutes to get all that nasty messy clay out of the waste-pipe, too. What with that and seeing what was wrong with the electric light switch, I had a busy day Sunday, I can tell you.”

“I can imagine it,” returned Mrs. Bradley courteously. “And what
was
wrong with the electric light switch?”

“Some of them boys had been up to their mischief, I reckon. The switch 'ad worked a bit loose, you see—I was meaning to replace it—and it was easy enough to take it off and put the wiring out of action, and put the whole thing back again. Barring that it hung a bit loose, as I said before, you wouldn't notice anything wrong, but when you actually went to switch on the light nothing wouldn't happen, ma'am. See? Them boys do it just for devilment. They done it to all the school switches one Guy Fawkes's night, and the Headmaster made 'em put 'em all right again. Mr. Pritchard learns 'em all the tricks. He's real clever at electricity—got the boys in his form to make the school a wireless set—ah, and it's a beauty, too!—and any of the young devils could have put that switch out of order as easy as look at it.”

“Ah,” said Mrs. Bradley. “The switch was not out of order on the Thursday evening, then, when you did your cleaning?”

“'Course it wasn't,” replied the schoolkeeper. “I 'as to have the lights on every night at this time of the year, to do my work, you see. Ah, and I can go further, ma'am. It was all right on the
Friday
evening, when I cleared up. I didn't do more than I could help, that Friday evening, as I had to get the hall ready for the concert, but I
did
happen to come in here, because I remember for why. I does the inks in this lobby and I remembered Mr. Cliffordson asking me about a gallon jar of blue-black that had somehow got mislaid from stock, so I thought I'd just have a deck in here to see if it had got itself mixed up with the ink already in use. I knew it hadn't, but I'd got to satisfy him with what you might call an official observation and report, and it just happened to occur to me. So I know the switch was all right then, because I used it.”

“I suppose Miss Ferris herself had not tampered with it?” suggested Mrs. Bradley.

“Considering the poor lady didn't know no more about electricity than to ask me to come and look at her electric iron she used in the sitting-room at her lodgings and tell her why it wouldn't heat up, when all the time one of the wires at the plug end had come right out and she'd never noticed it—” said the schoolkeeper.

“Odd,” Mrs. Bradley reflected, as she made her way to her new lodgings without having washed her hands, “that Calma Ferris should have gone into a pitch-dark lobby to wash a cut on her face. I should imagine that she did nothing of the sort. However, we shall see.”

When she arrived at her lodgings she scrutinized the books on Miss Ferris's little book-shelf, took down the script of
The Mikado
, was immersed in it when the landlady brought in her tea, and was still immersed in it when the landlady brought in her supper. By the time the woman came in again to clear away, however, Mrs. Bradley had returned the book to the shelf and was playing Patience. She grinned in her saurian fashion at the landlady and asked after her little girl.

The woman was consumed with curiosity, for she had recognized the book which Mrs. Bradley had been studying. Dozens of times had she good-naturedly held it in her hands and prompted Miss Ferris when the latter had been learning the part of “Katisha.” The amount of time Mrs. Bradley had spent in studying the book, and the sight of Mrs. Bradley's notebook and pencil, and the undecipherable hieroglyphics with which the only page she could see, as she set the table, had been covered, made her very anxious to talk about her late lodger, in spite of the fact that she had told Mrs. Bradley she did not want to discuss Miss Ferris. She took as long as she could over clearing the supper things away, while Mrs. Bradley, black eyes intent on the small cards, appeared to be absorbed in her game and unconscious that such a person as Calma Ferris had ever existed. At last the woman could bear it no longer. Coming back with an unnecessary brush and crumb-tray, she said:

“Have you heard anything more, Mrs. Bradley?”

Mrs. Bradley looked up.

“Yes, a little,” she said. “Tell me. Did Miss Ferris always wear glasses?”

“Blind as a bat without 'em, I think,” the woman answered. “At least, she always had two pairs, and I remember once when one pair was at the optician's, she mislaid the other pair one day, and quite hurt herself walking into the edge of the chest of drawers in her room, she was that short-sighted.”