Death at the Opera (14 page)

“I thought you were his accuser,” said Mrs. Bradley mildly.

“I've only told you what I fear. I don't actually
know
anything. Harry has never said a word! Not a single word! You mustn't think he has confessed, or anything, because he certainly has not!”

“Well, don't encourage him to do so,” said Mrs. Bradley, who had taken a sudden dislike to the Headmaster's pretty niece. She rose, and smoothed down her violet-and-primrose jumper. “Thank you for your information,” she said, in a precise, old-fashioned voice, and walked out and across the hall and up the Headmaster's staircase. Miss Cliffordson, a little startled by this sudden departure of her audience, got up and went back to her class. Her uncle, who had taken her place whilst she was conversing with Mrs. Bradley, rose from the chair he was occupying, and raised his eyebrows. Miss Cliffordson shrugged her shoulders.

“I don't think she is much farther on,” she said. “I've confessed about that wretched boy—”

“Hurstwood?”

“Yes. It
couldn't
have been Hurstwood's doing, Uncle, could it?”

The Headmaster, who had been sitting pondering the same question, looked gloomy and said it was impossible.

“I feel so horribly responsible,” Miss Cliffordson added, “if it
was
Hurstwood. Oh, but it couldn't have been! Only an utterly depraved boy would have thought of such a thing. And Harry isn't depraved.”

“No,” said the Headmaster. “He is merely highly-strung, temperamental, morbidly imaginative and sensitive. Where's Mrs. Bradley now?”

“I don't know, Uncle.”

“I'll go and have a talk with her. If it
was
Hurstwood, the ‘suicide' verdict will have to stand. One of the staff would have been bad enough, but a boy at the school, trained by us— And it would be impossible to keep you out of it, Gretta, you know.”

He walked off, looking extremely perturbed, and found Mrs. Bradley occupying a chair at the small table in his room and writing busily and indecipherably in her notebook. Beyond cackling in a terrifying manner, she would commit herself to nothing. Hurstwood had not been in the room when she returned to it after her talk with Miss Cliffordson, she said, in response to a question from the Headmaster, and in response to a second question she agreed that the said talk had been enlightening.

“But not sufficiently enlightening to please me entirely,” she added. “I must have a talk with Mr. Hampstead. May I see him privately in here?”

“You mean you do not wish me to be present?” asked Mr. Cliffordson.

“I want to talk to him about his private affairs,” replied Mrs. Bradley. The Headmaster pressed the buzzer, sent for the Senior Music Master, and then went out of the room.

II

Frederick Hampstead spoke first.

“I've just seen Mrs. Boyle,” he said.

“Ah!” Mrs. Bradley nodded pleasantly. “Sit down, Mr. Hampstead. Why are you wasting your time teaching in a school?”

“I beg your pardon?” said Hampstead, blankly.

“Come, child, don't hedge,” said Mrs. Bradley, grinning. “In the words of the last of the prophets, ‘He who can, does; he who cannot, teaches.' What about that Second Symphony?”

Hampstead laughed.

“Are you a witch?” he asked. “I haven't even told Alceste about the Second Symphony? How did you know?”

“I didn't,” confessed Mrs. Bradley. “I deduced. Do you know Maxwell Maxwell?”

“Only by his photographs in musical journals,” said Hampstead, ruefully.

“Send him your work. I'll give you a letter of introduction. Now, what about this wretched murder?”

“Do you think that, too?” Hampstead looked genuinely amazed. “Do you know, such a thing would never have occurred to me unless I had heard other people talking about it.”

“Why not?” asked Mrs. Bradley.

“Well, what had the woman to live for? No home, no intimates, no lover, no brains—nothing to work for; nothing to look forward to; no special interests. . . . I should have thought she was the very type to commit suicide, you know.”

“This is very illuminating,” said Mrs. Bradley, dryly, writing it all down. “Nevertheless, I may tell you that Miss Ferris
was
murdered, and that she was murdered before the interval. So I can cross you off my list of suspected persons, can't I?”

“But what about the police? Oughtn't they to be told?” said Hampstead doubtfully.

“It's a nice point,” Mrs. Bradley admitted. “At the moment, you see, we can offer them nothing but the evidence on which the coroner's jury brought in a unanimous verdict of suicide.”

“Yes, I see,” said Hampstead. “Well, why not leave it at that? I mean, the poor woman is dead. It can't matter now whether it was suicide or murder, can it?”

“There speaks the unregenerate musician,” said Mrs. Bradley, laughing. “The Church would tell you that it made a great deal of difference—to the woman herself, if to nobody else.”

“Yes, I suppose so. I'm a Catholic, you know,” he added; “but by tradition rather than conviction, I'm afraid.”

“Forgive an old woman's impertinent curiosity,” said Mrs. Bradley briskly, “but I suppose Mrs. Boyle is not free to marry you?”

“Other way about,” said Hampstead brusquely. “She's a widow, but I've a wife living.”

“I've attended your wife, then,” said Mrs. Bradley surprisingly. “I thought the name was familiar. In Derbyshire, isn't she?”

Hampstead nodded.

“Fieldenfare Manor,” he said.

“Yes.” Mrs. Bradley nodded in her turn.

“It happened a year after our marriage,” said Hampstead, staring into space. “Luckily the child died.” Suddenly his grim expression softened. “I couldn't stay in a place where everybody knew me, and be stared at and pitied,” he went on, “so I came here, and met Alceste.”

“And that relationship was threatened by Miss Ferris's knowledge of it?” said Mrs. Bradley softly.

Hampstead shook his head.

“Alceste thought so, but, after all, what could Miss Ferris do? She could tell the Head, but why should she bother? She didn't dislike us; she wasn't jealous of Alceste; she didn't envy us—I can't see why she should trouble to take any action. I was worried at first, I admit, but, on thinking it over, I don't believe she would have told.”

“No,” said Mrs. Bradley. “And even if she had, I don't see that the Headmaster could take official notice of it. There was never any scandal, I suppose?”

“I don't know of any,” Hampstead answered. “Mind you, we've been fools and taken risks at times—when it got unbearable, you know. But I don't think anybody knew. In public we were always very careful. I even go to see poor Marion occasionally. Why don't you people dope the poor devils out?” he asked savagely.

“I don't know,” said Mrs. Bradley truthfully. The same thought had often occurred to her. “I suppose it is partly because, as doctors, we hope to effect a cure.”

The startled expression on Hampstead's face caused her to add briskly:

“Don't worry. Mrs. Hampstead's case is hopeless.”

“Oh, heavens! I didn't mean that!” cried the man, genuinely distressed. “God knows, I pity her. But Alceste! I couldn't give up Alceste! I should die!”

“Somewhere behind that heart-felt statement,” mused Mrs. Bradley, when the Senior Music Master had departed, “is the motive for a murder. But not necessarily for the murder of Calma Ferris,” she was compelled to admit.

III

“And now,” thought Mrs. Bradley, “for Miss Camden.” She returned to the hall and passed through it to the gymnasium, where the Physical Training Mistress was taking a class. Mrs. Bradley seated herself on the edge of the platform, which held a piano, and watched the proceedings. Miss Camden, whatever her shortcomings as a human being, was an exceedingly good teacher. Mrs. Bradley noted the enthusiastic response of the girls—a form of fourteen-year-olds—the finish displayed, all the obvious results, in fact, of capable teaching over a long period—and nodded approvingly.

Miss Camden, aware, of course, that a visitor was present, carried on with a lesson cheerfully, and had not the slightest objection to showing off the prowess of the class. When the lesson was over and the form dismissed, she came up to Mrs. Bradley with a smile and said:

“Time off?”

Mrs. Bradley smiled.

“I want to talk to you, dear child. When will it be possible?”

“Can you get it over in ten minutes?” inquired Miss Camden, glancing at the clock on the wall behind the platform. “I have a netball practice before lunch.”

“Get someone else to take it,” said Mrs. Bradley briskly.

The Physical Training Mistress looked at her and smiled sardonically.

“So easy, isn't it?” she said.

“Isn't it?” said Mrs. Bradley innocently.

“Since Ferris—” Miss Camden paused. “Since Ferris's time, there's nobody will do a hand's turn for the games except young Freely, and I can't keep on asking her. There ought to be two of us in a school this size, you see, only the Headmaster won't be persuaded to take any interest in the physical work. The girls, anyway, are luckier than the boys. The boys haven't even
one
qualified person. There's a pro. comes to take cricket in the summer, but, unless we get an enthusiastic master, the football goes hang. They never play any outside matches, poor kids. I give them a bit of hockey occasionally, but I'm worked to death as it is. It's a damn' shame for the poor little devils!”

Mrs. Bradley could see that the girl was worked to death. She could hear it in the high-pitched, over-loud voice, so different from the “professional” tones in which she had given her lesson. Her eyes were dark-circled and she blinked them rapidly as she talked.

“I'll have a word with Mr. Cliffordson,” she said.

“I wish you would,” said Miss Camden. There was something about Mrs. Bradley which forced her hearer to the conclusion that if she had a word with the Headmaster something would very likely come of it. “Well, I must be off. I can hear the girls out there, and they are right underneath the Old Man's window.”

She hurried away, an athletic figure in her beautifully-cut tunic, and disappeared through swing-doors at the farther end of the gymnasium. Mrs. Bradley, baulked of her prey, wandered into the grounds.

It was a pleasant day for December, sharply cold, but filled with thin, pale golden sunshine which lay along the bare twigs, giving them significance and beauty. Fourteen girls, all dressed exactly alike in navy-blue tunics, white sweaters, long black stockings and white rubberp-soled shoes, were passing a football up and down the length of the asphalt netball court with an ease, vigour and accuracy born of frequent practice. Miss Camden, a blazer with an impressively-decorated breast-pocket distinguishing her from the players, blew occasional sharp blasts on a whistle. Mrs. Bradley, who did not understand the game, watched with considerable interest until she found herself—hatless, coatless and gloveless—becoming rather cold. She was about to re-enter the building when she saw the boy Hurstwood. He was walking towards her up the long side of the school field, kicking a large fir-cone as he walked. Mrs. Bradley waited for him.

“Ah, child,” she said. Hurstwood, who, as most young people did, had taken a liking to the queer little old lady, grinned at the nominative of address and waited for her to continue. He had himself completely in hand once more, for, upon leaving the Headmaster's study, he had not returned to his form-room, but had spent the rest of the lesson in walking round the field.

“Go up to the women's common-room and bring me”— Mrs. Bradley checked off the items on her yellow fingers—“one coat, dark green, one hat from the same peg, one silk scarf in divers colours—”

“I bet they are!” thought Hurstwood, who had imbibed sufficient sense of colour from Mr. Smith to realize that Mrs. Bradley's conception of appropriately-blended hues would be gruesome in the extreme.

“—and two gloves—heaven knows where I put those, child, but they fit exactly”—she extended a skinny claw—claw—“this hand.”

Hurstwood, realizing that she was cold, cast Sixth Form dignity to the winds and cantered off. He took the staff-room stairs three at a time, going up, and five at a time coming down, and returned in a few moments with the required garments.

“Tell me,” said Mrs. Bradley, as he helped her on with them, “do you box?”

“No,” replied Hurstwood. “Like to. Never had the chance.”

“I have a theory,” said Mrs. Bradley, “that Mr. Poole boxes.”

Hurstwood grinned.

“I don't know about boxing,” he said; “but he must be a lad in a rough-house.”

“Really?” said Mrs. Bradley, pricking up her ears. “Give time, place and circumstances, child.”

“Summer holiday, Marseilles, a row in a pub.,” replied Hurstwood, readily and intelligently. “He was telling us about it in form a week or two ago. Whenever we get a sticky bit of maths, we switch Poole on to his holidays. It always works. He and Smith sail a boat about nearly every summer holiday and seem to have a jolly good time. I expect Poole tells lies—well, embroiders, you know—but, even allowing sixty per cent. off for that, they must have done all sorts of jolly decent things in the hols.”

“When did you learn to sift evidence, young man?” demanded Mrs. Bradley.

Hurstwood grinned.

“Oh, it's only historical evidence,” he said. “I matricked with Distinction, so old Kemball rather decently gives me extra-tu., and . . . he's pretty hot,” he concluded. “I owe him the Distinction, really.”