Death at the Opera (8 page)

“Well, Headmaster, I won't say a word, of course,” said Browning, mollified by the Headmaster's attitude. “But if you imagine I'm the only one to smell a rat, I think you'll find you're wrong. Everyone has heard of Mrs. Bradley. She's news, as they say in journalistic circles, and . . .”

“Enough, my boy,” said Mr. Cliffordson. “I have your assurance, then?”

“Oh, I won't say anything about it,” said the young man. But to himself he said, as he walked back to his room: “I wonder who the devil he suspects? Smith, I expect. That clay in the waste-pipe came out of the Art Room, for a certainty, and she ruined his Psyche. But how on earth did he persuade her to go into the lobby in the first place? And the electric light! Someone had tampered with it so that she would not be found very quickly. Dirty work at the cross-roads, undoubtedly!”

He was so interested that he forbore to remark on a pitched battle that was being waged by the male members of Form Lower Four when he got back to the room they were in, and merely invited them, in magisterial tones, to get to their places and find page twenty-three. But his mind was not on his work, and at least nine boys and quite seventeen girls did their homework openly during what was left of the English period, while their teacher sat and brooded, and the rest of the form passed notes, flicked ink-soaked blotting-paper pellets or played noughts and crosses. At eleven o'clock Mr. Browning dismissed them, and at two minutes past eleven he was being asked in the men's common-room to bet on which of his colleagues were suspected of the murder. The Headmaster's ruse of passing Mrs. Bradley off as a member of the staff appeared to have failed completely.

The women's common-room did not bet on the identity of the murderer, but among some members of the staff consternation held sway. Miss Freely voiced the general view by observing with a shudder, after Mrs. Bradley's advent had been discussed by seven people, all talking at once:

“Well, there's one thing I'm quite sure of! I'm not going to stay a minute after school hours, to please anybody. I'm not going to run any risks! Have any of you heard of hoodoo? Thank goodness it's only a few weeks until the end of the term!”

At the end of a twelve-minutes' break the staff had to return to their classes, so that several interrupted conversations had to be resumed at lunch. It was the custom for at least three-quarters of the school to stay for lunch, so that every day four members of the staff, two men and two women, were on duty during the dinner-hour. Those who were not on duty lunched together in the big staff-room. Miss Cliffordson was the first person to tread on dangerous ground.

“You know, she wasn't a bit the kind of person to commit suicide,” she said, choosing this oblique method of approaching the subject chiefly because it seemed indelicate to talk of murder.

“I don't agree.” The Physical Training Mistress flushed deeply and spoke with considerable emphasis. “She was just the sort of woman you read about in the ‘Great Trials' series—you know—morbid and quiet, with all sorts of repressions and complexes. I think it's the most likely thing in the world that she knew she was going to make a fool of herself in the opera, and she couldn't face up to it.”

“I can't think she would have drowned herself,” said the deep voice of the Physics Master. “Not so easy, you know. Demands a tremendous amount of will-power to shove your head into a bowl of water and keep it there until you're dead.”

“There's something in that,” agreed the Botany Mistress. “And with a laboratory full of poisons quite handy, it seems a silly thing to attempt—drowning. No; what I think happened was that she felt faint, went for some water, found the light wouldn't switch on, and collapsed over the basin, which happened to be full of water.”

“H'm!” said Mr. Poole. “Very queer she should collapse over the one basin in twenty which was not only full of water but which had had its waste-pipe carefully plugged with clay so that the water could not possibly run away, wasn't it? And how do you account for the fact that she was sitting on a chair?”

“I can account for the chair being in the water-lobby, anyway,” said young Mr. Browning, who had, in fact, done so at the inquest. “Don't you remember, I had a boy suffer from nose-bleeding in form, and I sent him out there to lean over a basin. I sent another boy with a chair for the fellow to sit down. I can't find that the chair was ever taken back to the hall, so that accounts for the chair.”

“Well, it's a funny business, and I for one shan't be a bit surprised to hear that children are to be withdrawn from the school at the end of term because of it. I heard of one large semi-public school—it was residential, certainly, but I can't see that that makes any difference—where the Science Master cut his throat, and they lost seventy per cent of their pupils almost immediately,” said the Senior Geography Master, a mild, bald-headed man in his early forties.

“Look here, do let's drop the subject,” urged young Browning, fearful lest the Headmaster should suppose he had not kept his promise to refrain from suggesting that murder had been committed at the school. “Who's reffing senior football? Because it is now just turned one-ten.”

“I'm taking netball,” said Miss Camden crossly. Since the loss of the semi-final for the Schools Trophy, netball was a sore point with her. “And you'll have to ref. junior,” she added, turning to Miss Freely. That amiable young lady went at once to get her whistle, and Miss Camden and Mr. Hampstead followed her down the stairs.

“Look here,” said Miss Camden to Mr. Hampstead, when they reached the school hall and were walking across it to the door which led out on to the school grounds, “who
is
this Mrs. Bradley? Everybody seems to have heard of her but me. Put me wise. I do hate to be out of things.”

“She's a psycho-analyst,” replied Hampstead. He hesitated for a moment, and then went on: “I expect she has been invited to investigate the death of Miss Ferris.”

“Oh, lor! Is that her job—investigating deaths?” asked Miss Camden.

Hampstead hesitated again.

“Well, unnatural death,” he said.

“Oh, suicide you mean?” Miss Camden sounded relieved.

“No. Murder,” replied Hampstead. He did not hesitate at all this time. His companion said in a frightened voice:

“Murder? But nobody thinks . . . I mean, there can't be . . . Well, but I mean, she wasn't murdered, was she? She committed suicide. They said so.”

Hampstead laughed, a short, hard sound.

“Trust a coroner's jury to make fools of themselves,” he said. “But, whether Miss Ferris was murdered or not, the Headmaster thinks she was.”

“Why, has he said anything?” Miss Camden asked, betraying an eagerness of which she was not aware. Hampstead shook his head.

“I don't think so. Not to me, at any rate. But this Mrs. Bradley business—I don't like it. It looks—what's the word they use in novels?—sinister. That's it. It looks decidedly sinister to me.”

This conversation was but a sample of any conversation that day on the subject of Calma Ferris's death. Those of the staff—and they were very few—who did not know Mrs. Bradley by reputation were soon enlightened by the others; and by the time school was dismissed at the end of the afternoon, not only the whole staff but also most of the Sixth Form knew the reason for Mrs. Bradley's coming to the school.

Miss Cliffordson sought out her uncle, and tackled him boldly. Mr. Cliffordson, looking worried, a sufficiently unusual state of affairs to cause his niece a certain amount of anxiety, nodded in response to her remarks.

“I wanted to keep the reason of Mrs. Bradley's appointment a secret,” he said, “but murder will out, it seems.”

“Well, if it was really murder, I suppose it is only right that it should come out,” replied his niece. “But I think you might have left things to the coroner, Uncle. It won't do the school much good to have members of the staff murdered, you know. Even suicide is not as bad as that. You'll get all the nervous mothers taking Little Willie away before the murderer murders him, if you're not very careful.”

“And if I
am
very careful, too!” said Mr. Cliffordson, ruefully. “Oh, I've thought matters over, my dear, and, if my conscience would allow it, I would willingly leave matters as they are. But if that poor woman was murdered in my school, then it seems to me that I am responsible at any rate for seeing that her murderer is brought to justice.”

“But is it really justice to hang one person for drowning another, do you think?” inquired his niece. The Sixth Form had debated the question of capital punishment, the Headmaster remembered, at some time during the previous term. In spite of an able and thoughtful speech by Hurstwood, the motion “That capital punishment is an error on the part of the State” had been lost by seventeen votes to three. Besides Hurstwood himself, the people who had voted in favour of the motion were a boy whose hobby was wood-carving and another boy who collected beetles. The girls were vehemently in favour of capital punishment. The Headmaster, who was in effect, opposed to punishment of any kind, shook his head sadly.

“I'm not open to conviction. I am not even prepared to listen to argument,” he said. “The idea that that poor, inoffensive, innocent woman was done to death in my school appals me. I am not, as you know, an ignorant, a cowardly or a superstitious man, but I should live through the rest of my life haunted by my conscience, if I allowed matters to rest where they are. You are a sensible, level-headed, well-balanced girl, and so I will give you my reasons for asking Mrs. Bradley to make an inquiry into the circumstances of Miss Ferris's death. You have heard about the clay that was used to stop up the waste-pipe so that the water could not run away?”

Miss Cliffordson nodded.

“That clay, I am morally certain, came from a big piece of modelling-clay in our own Art Room. Now I am convinced that no person contemplating suicide would have thought of such an extraordinary method of killing herself. If she was determined to drown herself on the school premises, there is the swimming-bath, there are the slipper baths in the girls' and boys' changing rooms, there are several large, deep sinks in the laboratory; there is even the school aquarium. Why choose a small basin so low down that the only way of keeping the head under water a sufficient time to be certain that death will ensue is to sit on a chair? A most extraordinary proceeding!”

“Well, but some women wash their hair like that,” Miss Cliffordson pointed out.

“Do they? Oh, well, I didn't realize that. Let the chair pass, then. But you admit that the idea of stopping up the waste-pipe was fantastic on the part of a suicide, and that the swimming-bath sounds a great deal more reasonable as a means of drowning oneself, don't you?”

“No. Not in December,” said Miss Cliffordson, with a little shudder at the thought of the cold water.

“But we keep the swimming-bath open all the year round. You know we do. The water at the present moment has a temperature of something over sixty-six degrees. But further to all this, there is something else. Would she have dressed herself in the ‘Katisha' costume, and even gone to the length of having her face made up for her part, if she intended to commit suicide?”

Miss Cliffordson wrinkled her charming nose.

“No,” she said at last. “She might have put on the clothes, but—not the ‘Katisha' make-up. Nobody could possibly want to look so hideous. I don't believe any woman would risk being found dead like it.”

She thought deeply for another moment, and then said firmly:

“You've convinced me, Uncle. All women think about what they'll look like when they're dead, and there can't be a woman on earth who could bear to think of looking like ‘Katisha.' Miss Ferris didn't commit suicide. She was murdered. I haven't any further doubt about it.”

The Headmaster groaned.

“I believe I hoped that you would be able to convince me I was wrong,” he said. “But I'm not wrong. She
was
murdered, poor inoffensive woman! Unless, of course, the whole thing was an accident. She had cut her face, you know, and may have gone to bathe it.”

“Yes, but, in that case, why the clay in the waste-pipe?” argued his niece. The Headmaster shook his head hopelessly.

“Why, indeed?” he said. “Oh, you're right! You're right! Undoubtedly she was murdered. But
why
?”

CHAPTER IV

I

W
HEN
the Headmaster's letter arrived at the Stone House, Wandles Parva, Mrs. Bradley was breakfasting. Out in the garden, dimly perceived through a frosted casement window, the trees were leafless and the green grass swam nebulously between the bottom of the window and the sky.

There were three other letters by the side of Mrs. Bradley's plate, and, having concluded her meal except for the last half-cup of coffee, she picked up the envelopes in turn, scrutinized them, then laid aside the one which contained Mr. Cliffordson's urgent missive and dealt briefly with the others. The first envelope contained a publisher's catalogue of psychological and psycho-analytical treatises; the second was a begging letter; the third contained a cheque and the thanks of a grateful patient who, according to her family, had once been a candidate for a lunatic asylum, but was now, owing to Mrs. Bradley's efforts, a useful, ornamental and popular member of society.

Mrs. Bradley threw everything on the fire except the cheque, on which she stood the sugar-basin as a paperweight, and then she opened Mr. Cliffordson's envelope. She read his letter twice and then replaced it in the covering. It had been written before the inquest on Calma Ferris, and so he had not attempted to foreshadow what the verdict of the coroner's jury might be, but he stated, in a firm, pedagogic and yet scholarly hand, that he was certain the unfortunate woman was the victim of murder. He gave all his reasons for coming to this terrible conclusion; said frankly that he did not want to drag in the police unlessor until it was absolutely necessary, and promised to send Mrs. Bradley a telegram as soon as the verdict at the inquest was known.