Death at the Opera (11 page)

“So that even after she had been made up for her part she would still have worn her glasses up to the moment of going on the stage?” said Mrs. Bradley.

“I doubt whether she could see to get on to the stage up the steps at the side without them,” said the woman. “She'd have handed them to someone in the wings, I shouldn't wonder, ready to put on again as she came off.”

“I see,” said Mrs. Bradley. “Yes. Thank you. I think I'll go to bed. Breakfast at nine o'clock, please.”

“Why, but that'll make you late for school, won't it?” asked the woman.

“I am not teaching at the school to-morrow,” replied Mrs. Bradley. She sighed. There was a boy in the Lower Third Commercial with, she felt certain, all the psychological peculiarities of the Emperor Caligula. She would have liked to study him.

CHAPTER V

F
OR
nearly the whole of the next morning Mrs. Bradley was closeted with the Headmaster, and the “engaged” notice was hung on the outside of his study door from nine-fifteen until just after twelve.

“It seems to me,” Mrs. Bradley remarked, “that the evidence in support of the theory that Miss Ferris was murdered in the lobby is sufficiently strong to warrant further investigation, but not sufficiently tangible to offer to the authorities. I have reason to believe”—she took out her notebook—“that, as the result of a collision in the corridor, Miss Ferris had her glasses broken and sustained a small deep cut just beneath one eye. She went into the water-lobby to bathe the cut, and I have not found out yet that anyone went with her.”

“Who collided with her?” the Headmaster demanded. “The way boys rush down these narrow corridors is most dangerous.”

“It does not seem to have been a boy,” replied Mrs. Bradley. “It was Mr. Smith.”

“Smith?” The Headmaster looked astounded. “Surely not! Why, this is serious!”

Mrs. Bradley did not ask why. She fixed her twinkling black eyes on those of the Headmaster and waited for enlightenment. After a moment or two, it came.

“You remember, perhaps,” said Mr. Cliffordson, “the clay which was effectually stopping up the waste-pipe so that Miss Ferris's head was still immersed in water when she was discovered dead?”

Mrs. Bradley looked intelligent, and nodded.

“That clay, it was established at the inquest, came from the art-room. Smith is the Senior Art Master. Furthermore, modelling clay was used, I believe, as part of his facial make-up.”

“Where is the art-room?” asked Mrs. Bradley, who had not been in the school long enough to have learned all the ramifications of its ground-floor plan.

“Almost opposite the prompt side of the stage.”

He drew a rough sketch on his blotting-pad, and Mrs. Bradley nodded.

“So that anybody who knew there was a lump of modelling clay in the art-room could have slipped in and taken enough to stop up that waste-pipe,” she said. “Cheer up, child! Mr. Smith isn't hanged yet.” She cackled. “This brings me to a particularly important point,” she went on. “How many people were in a position to go into the art-room and/or into the water-lobby that night? Who was allowed behind the scenes—that is to say, apart from those people who were taking part in the opera?”

The Headmaster began to write on a scribbling-pad which was close at hand on the desk.

“I am not going to trust entirely to my own memory,” he said. “Mrs. Boyle was in charge of everything that went on behind the scenes, so in a moment, when I have made my list, we will send for her to confirm it. Now, let me see.” He wrote, after two pauses for consideration, a list of six names and handed it to Mrs. Bradley. She took it, and read aloud, with a questioning note:

“Madame Berotti?”

“An ex-actress, very old and frail now, who comes to all our school entertainments and makes up the principal characters. A delightful person. An artist to her fingertips. She used to produce for us at one time?”

“Mrs. Boyle?”

“Senior English Mistress. The producer,” said the Headmaster. “An ex-actress, too, incidentally. Shakespeare, repertory—all the usual high-brow stuff.”

“Mr. Hampstead?”

“He is our Senior Music Master, and was the conductor of the orchestra. He was behind the scenes before the beginning of the opera and again during the interval.”

“The electrician?”

“The lighting was important, and our home-made footlights have their disadvantages, so we had the electrician in attendance. I don't know how long he stayed behind, I'm sure. I know one of the lights went wrong—apart, I mean, from the one in the water-lobby where Miss Ferris was found.”

“Who found her?” asked Mrs. Bradley.

“The girl Malley, poor child. She went to get a drink, it seems, found that the switch was out of order, groped in the darkness, and touched Miss Ferris's body.”

“No wonder she is in a highly nervous state, poor girl,” commented Mrs. Bradley. She no longer wondered at Moira's hysterical refusal to accompany her to the water-lobby on the previous evening. “The next name on the list is that of Mr. Browning,” she continued.

“Yes. Our Junior English Master. He was acting as prompter. He would have been about behind the scenes before the commencement of the opera and during the interval, unless it proves that he left his post as prompter at any time during the performance. Otherwise he would have been seated in the wings, with the script.”

“I shall have to see these people,” said Mrs. Bradley, and continued to read from the list.

“The curtain operator?”

“Otherwise the schoolkeeper,” said the Headmaster. “Yes. He was in position in the wings at just before the commencement of the performance, but I do not imagine that he stayed there during the whole of the First Act, which, at our rate of playing the opera, lasted for about an hour and twenty minutes. He is certain to have gone away during that time. I don't know where he went. Probably to the back of the hall to watch the performance. He had been well drilled at three or four rehearsals, and knew exactly when he would be wanted. He takes great interest in everything connected with the running of the school, and is even more enthusiastic and partisan than
I
am where the boys and girls are concerned. He has been with us since the opening of the school.”

“That is the last name on your list,” said Mrs. Bradley. “Can we see Mrs. Boyle now?”

“Surely.” The Headmaster touched an electric buzzer which brought his secretary from an adjoining room.

“Ask Mrs. Boyle whether she can kindly spare me a moment,” he said. He consulted the large time-table. “She is in Room K.”

In less than four minutes, Alceste Boyle appeared, and Mrs. Bradley and she exchanged glances. Mrs. Bradley saw a tall, well-made woman on the threshold of middleage, with beautifully dressed dark hair, dark-blue, wide-set eyes under arched eyebrows, a sweet mouth and a broad, noble forehead; it was a gracious and pleasing face, and Mrs Bradley smiled and nodded as her eyes met those of its owner.

Alceste Boyle saw a woman in the middle sixties, with sharp black eyes like those of a witch, an aristocratic nose, a thin mouth which pursed itself into a queer little birdlike beak as its owner summed her up, and, lying idle for the moment, for Mrs. Bradley had returned his scribbling-tablet to the Headmaster some two minutes before the entrance of Alceste Boyle, a pair of yellow, claw-like hands, the fingers of which were heavily loaded with rings. Alceste's non-committal cardigan, jumper and dark skirt—a costume which was almost the uniform of the women members of the staff—contrasted oddly with Mrs. Bradley's outrageous colour scheme of magenta, orange and blue. Notwithstanding all physical and sartorial evidence to the contrary, however, Alceste decided that the queer little old woman was attractive.

“You wanted me, Mr. Cliffordson?” she said.

“Yes. Take a seat, Mrs. Boyle. Look here.” He handed her the list of names. “All those people were behind the scenes on the night of Miss Ferris's death. Is the list complete, or can you add to it?”

Alceste scanned the list, thought for a moment, and then said:

“I had a Fourth Form girl behind with me. She acted as call-boy and general messenger. I sent her on one or two unimportant errands, I know, and she also helped in the search for Miss Ferris.”

“Who was she?” inquired the Headmaster.

“Maisie Phillips.”

“Oh, I know the girl. Nobody else?”

Alceste shook her head. “Nobody else,” she said. “I was very strict about not allowing unauthorized people behind the scenes. They only want to gossip and get in the way. I'm sure that was everybody, except the boys and girls in the chorus—and the principals, of course.”

“Thank you.” He turned to Mrs. Bradley. “Mrs. Boyle is my head assistant. I think she should be taken into our confidence.”

“If you mean that you believe Miss Ferris was murdered—why, so do I,” said Mrs. Boyle, surprisingly. “She was delighted—thrilled—to be taking part in the opera. It's true she made a hash of the dress-rehearsal, but so did several others, and we all knew it would be different on the night. Besides, at the last rehearsal, which was not a dress-rehearsal, she did ever so well. The pity is that nobody was there to see the difference. But, goodness knows, there are plenty of people who would have been pleased to see her dead! Anyway, I am certain in my mind that she was the last person to commit suicide.”

“Plenty of people would have been pleased to see her dead?” repeated the Headmaster incredulously. “But surely—she was such an extraordinarily inoffensive woman. . . .”

He halted, uncertain of what to say. That Mrs. Boyle believed what she was saying, and had foundation for her belief, he had no doubt whatever.

“I think you will have to tell us everything you know,” he said at last. Alceste folded her large, well-shaped hands in her lap, and nodded.

“Mrs. Bradley is here to investigate the circumstances of the death, of course,” she said, “and advise us how to proceed if it proves that Calma Ferris was murdered?”

The Headmaster nodded. He opened a drawer in his desk and produced a box of cigarettes.

“Excuse me one moment,” said Mrs. Boyle. “My form. I'd better set them some work.”

“Oh, let 'em rip,” said Mr. Cliffordson easily. “Who goes in to them next? Poole? Oh, that's all right. He'll blow the flames out. They won't hurt for half an hour. Do 'em good to be on the loose for a bit!”

“They'll have the roof off,” said Alceste, uneasily. She had never entirely accommodated herself to the free-and-easy methods at the school.

“My dear girl, don't worry yourself. I don't care, so why should you? Take a cigarette, and do let us hear a little more about this frightful business,” said the Headmaster, who firmly believed that a noisy child is a good child and that silence breeds sin.

“Well, Mr. Cliffordson,” Alceste said, studying the burning tip of her cigarette, “to explain myself I shall have to tell you a story, and then throw myself on your mercy. I shall also have to refuse to answer a question which you are certain to ask me.”

“Carry on,” said the Headmaster.

“When the school was first opened I applied for the post of English Mistress, and got it,” Mrs. Boyle began. “I was a childless widow, and was content. My married life, without being in the least sensational, was not an unqualified success, and when my husband, an Irish doctor, died in Limerick during an influenza epidemic there, I had no desire, I discovered, to return to the stage, so I came to England, and for some time was very happy in this school. Then I fell in love with a man who was not free to marry me. We have spent every holiday—Christmas, Easter and Summer—together, and when I say ‘together' I mean that we have lived in every sense—physical, mental, spiritual—as man and wife. This has been going on for the past eleven years. I was young, hopeful, headstrong, passionately in love when all this began. Now, at the end of eleven years of it—eleven years of treasuring it up, keeping it secret, looking forward, even in the dreariest term, to the coming holiday-time when I could be myself and fulfil myself—I discover that it has not been a secret at all. For several years Miss Ferris knew of it. When I heard that she was dead I went to her lodgings and asked to rent her rooms, because I wanted to find her diary and destroy it. I communicated with the—the man, and he tried also to rent the rooms when they were refused to me. . . .”

Mrs. Bradley had a mental audition of the landlady's voice, a trifle high-pitched and peevish, saying: “Several people have been after the rooms, but they were all these nosey-parkers who only wanted a thrill out of staying a week or so where a suicide had lived. . . .”

“. . . . but the landlady wouldn't have him either. So I never got hold of the diary.”

“Had you seen the diary previously, do you mean?” asked Mr. Cliffordson. “Had you seen it before Miss Ferris's death?”

Alceste shook her head.

“She let out by accident that she knew. It was after she had ruined Mr. Smith's clay figure on the night of the dress-rehearsal.”

“What?” exclaimed the Headmaster. “She ruined Smith's model? Not his Psyche, surely?”

Alceste Boyle nodded.

“Wasn't it dreadful?” she said. “It was absolutely an accident, of course, and I know she was terribly distressed. But the point is that she brought me in to comfort Smith—as though one
could!
—and it was then that I learned she knew the truth about me and about my affairs. Smith isn't the man, by the way, although I believe he loves me.” Her dark-blue eyes challenged the world. “Oh, and I lent him two hundred and fifty pounds to compensate for the loss of the little Psyche.”