Death at the Opera

chapter iii: death

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i

By half-past ten on the Friday morning Calma Ferris had something to think about other than school difficulties and problems. A telegram was handed in, which ran thus:

“Beware helm widower suspicious circumstances asked school.”

Several years of coping with arithmetical problems had sharpened Miss Ferris’s wits, and a message which, to less well-trained senses, might have suggested the babblings of lunacy, resolved itself for her into the following perturbing set of ideas:

“Beware of the Mr. Helm from whose table you asked to be moved at the commencement of your summer holiday at your aunt’s boarding-house. He is undoubtedly an imitator, if not an actual reincarnation, of George Joseph Smith, who was charged in the year 1915 for drowning three brides in the bath, and he has asked for the address of your school.”

The telegram bore her aunt’s surname. Miss Ferris, who had lived the narrowest, safest and most sheltered of lives, was seriously upset by the message. Advice she felt she must have, and therefore five pairs of interested and four pair of anxious eyes noted that at recess, instead of taking coffee and biscuits in the staff-room, according to the time-honoured and civilized custom of the staff, she repaired to the Headmaster’s study.

“So she’s going to split,” thought Miss Cliffordson. “Oh, well!”

She meant to say something to Hurstwood when she got the chance. She wondered whether it would be compatible with her dignity as a member of the staff to suggest to the boy that they should both deny Miss Ferris’s story, and rather reluctantly decided that it would not do. In less than three minutes, however, Miss Ferris returned to the staff-room. The Headmaster was engaged, and could not see her.

“So she’s going to, but hasn’t yet,” thought Frederick Hampstead. He shrugged. After all, what did she know? He and Alceste had always been so very careful. True, there had been those two mad evenings in the women’s common-room, but surely nobody knew anything about those! And it had been unbearable that long, long autumn term, and there had been only the short Christmas holiday together at the end of it! And even that had been cut short by his having to go and see poor Marion in that ghastly private asylum which drained his resources so thoroughly. The remembrance of those two mad evenings worried him. They had flung caution to the winds on each occasion. They had been crazy. Could anybody have found out? A school was such a peculiar institution; and the staff had to be like Caesar’s wife—above reproach. He had said to Smith on one occasion that it was a pity people did not fall into ornamental lakes when such were provided. There was an ornamental lake in the grounds of the asylum… He regretted the ironic jest immediately he had made it and sincerely hoped that Smith would not refer to it again.

At any other time Miss Ferris might have shown the telegram to Alceste Boyle instead of to Mr. Cliffordson, but at the recollection of Alceste’s words and look at the mention of Frederick Hampstead, she felt she did not dare to seek her sympathy or advice. No, she must wait until the Headmaster was less busy. During the next hour she could set a class to work some arithmetic examples, and perhaps go and see him. She felt, for the first time in her life, alone and unprotected. She had not forgotten Helm’s invasion of her room on the night the burglars came, nor his subsequent impudent proposal of marriage.

She went to Mr. Cliffordson at about a quarter to twelve, and received advice and reassurance. Nobody saw her go, and Mr. Cliffordson did not mention to anybody at that time that she had visited him. He asked for, and received, a description of Mr. Helm, and when Miss Ferris had gone he chuckled. She seemed so extremely hard-boiled a virgin to be dreading unwelcome attentions from a man of the type he judged Helm to be.

The performance of The Mikado was timed to begin at half-past seven, and soon after seven the school hall was beginning to fill up. Masters and mistresses who were not in the opera were acting as stewards, and Alceste Boyle, as senior mistress and producer, was combining the delicate duties of welcoming the guests of importance and darting behind the scenes to make certain that all was going smoothly in readiness for the rise of the curtain.

Apart from the fusing of an electric wire which caused a five-minutes’ delay in making up the women principals, nothing out of the ordinary happened until half-way through Act One. Alceste Boyle, who had decided not to add to the onerous office of producer the slighter one of call-boy, was informed by her small deputy, a child from the fourth form, that the “Katisha” was nowhere to be found. “She was dabbing her face in the water-lobby, but it’s dark in there now.” Concluding that, wherever Miss Ferris might be, the probability was that she would return to the women principals’ dressing-room before going on to the stage, Alceste sat down, and, because she was tired and because Calma Ferris’s remark of the previous day had compelled her to face a fact which, for the sake of her sanity, she managed to ignore for the greater part of each term—namely that Frederick Hampstead never would and never could be hers unless his wife died—for he was a Catholic, and even an amendment of the divorce laws would have had no significance for him—she began to brood.

Five minutes went by, and there was no sign of Calma Ferris. The child came back and reported that she was still missing. Alceste had a sudden vision of her having been taken ill. She hastened down the corridor and pushed open the doors of the various rooms as she came to them. All were in darkness. At each door she called softly but distinctly:

“Are you in here, Miss Ferris?”

There was no answer. She switched on the lights of each room on her return journey, and glanced anxiously round each one. Teacher’s desk on the rostrum, winter twigs in jam-jars on the window ledges, children’s locker desks in orderly rows, wall blackboards, stock-cupboards, all the paraphernalia of class-room activities were there, but there was no sign of Miss Ferris. Puzzled, Alceste switched off the lights.

The only other player who had not yet been on the stage, and who, as a matter of fact, was not due to make his first entrance until Act Two, was the “Mikado” himself, the Senior Art Master, Mr. Smith. It occurred to Alceste Boyle that the two might be conversing, and that Calma might even now be on the opposite side of the stage, ready to make her entrance. A short transverse corridor made it possible to get to the other side of the school without crossing in front of the stage or going out of doors, so she slipped along this, and presently came upon Mr. Smith, who was enjoying a cigarette in the corridor and was talking to the electrician. She admonished him with a smile and in a whisper, for they were very near the stage, told him he would cough when he began to sing, and then asked him whether he had seen Miss Ferris anywhere.

He had not, and so, feeling irritated and worried, Alceste found a couple of chorus-people and sent them to assist in the search, while she herself hastily made her way into the darkened hall, found Miss Camden, who should have had the part of “Katisha” had not Calma Ferris financed the production of the opera, took her into the women principals’ dressing-room and asked her to take the part.

Miss Camden declared she could not possibly go on like that at a moment’s notice, and begged to be excused. Alceste let her return to the auditorium, collared the biggest girl in the chorus, borrowed her costume, got Madame Berotti to make her up very quickly for the part of “Katisha,” and, Calma Ferris having failed to materialize, went on at the end of the First Act, and, being by that time in a state of high nervous tension, justified her Irish blood by rising magnificently to the occasion and taking the part as poor Calma Ferris might have taken it in dreams but could never have managed to take it in reality.

The curtain fell to tremendous applause. Alceste had herself made up a little more carefully during the interval, and to all Miss Cliffordson’s questioning she would only reply:

“Whatever has happened, she can’t go on now. I shall have to finish.”

“But what on earth can have happened to the woman?” Miss Cliffordson persisted. Alceste, sacrificing her own good looks with every touch of grease-paint, in order to create successfully the illusion of “Katisha’s” hideous Japanese countenance, shrugged one shapely shoulder, stood motionless while the last smears were added, and then went out to round up the chorus.

It was not only behind the scenes that Calma Ferris’s absence was causing comment. Her landlady, and Frederick Hampstead, the conductor, together with those members of the staff who were on duty as stewards, and those members of the school who were seated in a solid and appreciative phalanx at the back of the hall, wondered audibly, during the interval, why Miss Ferris was out of the cast. Various conjectures were rife, from the landlady’s “Taken bad with the excitement, poor thing,” to the school’s almost unanimous “Old Boiler blew up because the Ferret was so rotten at rehearsal, so Ferret’s gone off in a bate and left Boiler stranded,” which went to prove, if proof were needed, that children are not the infallible judges of character which sentimental persons would have us believe they are.

The Second Act was a great success. Hurstwood, who bad begun very badly in Act One, had gradually regained his self-confidence, and towards the end of the Act was singing and acting almost hysterically, as though carried along by over-mastering excitement. During the Second Act he controlled this excitement sufficiently to give a very good performance. Alceste Boyle was magnificent, and Mr. Smith, as the “Mikado,” assisted her in bringing the house down. In fact, in spite of the comparatively lifeless show put up by Moira Malley, and the fact that she was in tears at the fall of the curtain, the production of The Mikado was the most outstandingly successful production the school Musical, Operatic and Dramatic Society had ever staged.

“Thank heaven that’s over!” observed Miss Freely, wiping off make-up in the women-principals’ dressing-room. “Nothing will ever induce me to take part in a school performance again.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Miss Cliffordson, ravishingly pretty in a pale pink négligé, as she sat on a school chair and put on her stockings. “You were very good, you know.”

It was so palpably a baited hook that Miss Freely perversely decided not to rise to it. She was good-nature itself, but Miss Cliffordson was rather too certain that Miss Cliffordson was the prettiest, the best-dressed, the most interesting, the most temperamental and the most talented member of the staff.

“Donald Smith was better than usual, don’t you think?” she said.

“Oh, I always think Smith rises to the occasion,” replied Miss Cliffordson. “He’s lazy, like all real artists, and he won’t rehearse, but on the night he always comes up to scratch.”

At this point Madame Berotti, who had been gently removing the more outrageous portions of Alceste’s hideous make-up, patted her victim on the shoulder and said good night.

“She’s pleased, anyway,” remarked Miss Freely, looking after the slender, upright figure of the old ex-actress who carried her eighty years so gallantly. “She thought you were marvellous, Mrs. Boyle. And so you were,” she added. “Absolutely great! I don’t know how you do it.”

Alceste, who was tired, said ungraciously: “I wish I knew why Miss Ferris did it! I can’t imagine what’s the matter with her. It isn’t like her to have left us all in the lurch like that.”

“Must have been taken ill,” said Miss Cliffordson. “I expect she looked for you and couldn’t find you. But I think it was too mean of Miss Camden not to take the part when she was asked. Knows every word of it, too, because she did it for the Hillmaston Players last season.”

“Well, she was awfully sore, you know, when Mr. Cliffordson handed it straight to Miss Ferris like that, without a suggestion that anyone else might do it better,” said Miss Freely. “And, after all, she would have done it better—tons better. Although not a patch, even then, on Mrs. Boyle’s rendering,” she went on, glancing sidelong at Alceste’s beautiful bare shoulders, whence the strap of her petticoat had slipped as she bent to pick up her shoe. Alceste, flushed and laughing now, said happily:

“Don’t encourage me. Oh, but I loved it!”

The younger mistresses, none of whom knew why she had ever left the stage, said nothing, hoping for revelations. But none came. Instead, Alceste turned to the other occupant of the dressing-room and said:

“Well, Moira? Nearly ready? I expect the others have all gone.”

It was the thankless duty of those of the staff who had been acting as stewards to see the audience off the building, and then to go round to the dressing-rooms and chivvy the children home. Before Moira could make any reply, there came a series of light taps at the dressing-room door, and the Headmaster’s voice outside said:

“Gretta, how long?”

“Half a tic, Uncle,” replied his niece, collecting her Japanese costume preparatory to stowing it away.

“Right. I shall be in my own room when you’re ready. I’ve told some of the girls to wait for Moira.”

He went away, and the conversation died down among the three women as they hastily concluded their dressing and tidying-up. Then Alceste Boyle, ready to go, turned again to the girl in the far corner of the room, and said, a trifle sharply:

“Come along, Moira. Surely you’re ready by now!”

Moira, with a tear-stained face, came up to her, and said abruptly, because she was upset and nervous:

“Mrs. Boyle, I want to speak to you.”

“Say on,” replied Alceste shortly. The tears had irritated her.

“Not here,” said Moira. “Will you come outside a minute? I—I think I know where Miss Ferris is.”

“What?” said Alceste, while Miss Freely and Miss Cliffordson came nearer. “What do you mean, child?”

“She’s dead,” said Moira. “I found out—I found her —in the interval I went for a drink—I didn’t like to spoil the show—I—she… Oh, they’ll hang him! And he can’t die! He can’t!”

“Get out,” said Alceste to the younger mistresses. “Find Mr. Cliffordson at once. See whether it’s true.”

The two went out, and shut the door behind them. When they had gone Alceste turned to the overwrought and frightened girl.

“Listen, Moira,” she said. “Nobody is going to hang. Now don’t be silly any more. I want you to pull yourself together. Stop crying. It’s quite all right. That’s better. Now tell me exactly what you did. Sit down in that chair. Take your time.”

“I was thirsty, and I wanted a drink of water,” said the girl “so I went to the water-lobby with one of the beakers out of the laboratory to get a drink. It was dark, and I tried to switch on the light, but it didn’t come, so I thought if I was careful not to knock the beaker on the tap, I could manage in the dark. I felt carefully, and I touched her. I—she was all wet—I went away. I didn’t know whether to tell anybody or not.”

“You don’t know, then, that it was Miss Ferris,” said Alceste quietly, “and you don’t know whether she was dead. Don’t think about it any more. The others will attend to her. Go along home now. Who’s going with you?”

Moira mentioned the names of one or two of the girls who were in the chorus, and who went past the house where she lived in term-time, with her aunt. Alceste Boyle had just dismissed her when the Headmaster came in. His face was grey. He looked, for the first time in Alceste Boyle’s experience, an old man. He nodded in response to her raised eyebrows.

“I’ve sent Browning for a doctor,” he said, “but there’s no doubt of it, poor woman. I wonder what on earth was the cause!”

“But how terrible!” Alceste said. “There will have to be an inquest, I suppose?”

The words sounded banal and in rather bad taste, she thought, but the shock had been great. The Headmaster nodded.

“Bad for the school,” he said. “Well, you’ll be wanting to get home, I know. Good night. Don’t worry about it, will you? You’d better not see her. We’ve done what is necessary. Don’t worry.”

He went back to the men-principals’ dressing-room, to find Hampstead talking to Smith.

“Do you want us any longer, sir?” Smith asked. He was a dirty-white where he had removed his make-up, and looked ill.

“No. There’s nothing to be done. I shall stay until the doctor has made his examination, of course. Good night. Don’t worry. I can’t think how it happened. You’ll… I needn’t ask you—you won’t discuss it outside the school at present, will you?”

He called Hampstead back as the two masters got to the door.

“Mrs. Boyle has not gone yet,” he said. “You’ll see her home, I expect, as usual, won’t you? Impress upon her not to worry. It’s a terrible affair, but we must take it that the poor woman was either the victim of sudden illness, or else that she had trouble of which none of us knew. Good night, my dear fellow. Don’t linger, or Mrs. Boyle may be gone.”

Hampstead, who had been staring dumbly, went out like a sleep-walker, and in less than ten minutes young Mr. Browning returned with a doctor. Alceste had no intention of going, however, and as soon as she saw Hampstead she said:

“You’d better go, Fred. I must stay and see things through. After all, there ought to be a woman on the scene.”

“The Head quite expects that you will go home,” Hampstead replied. “In fact, he told me to take you. This is a frightful business, Alceste. I’ve seen her…” He paused and fidgeted with the hat he was holding. “Do you think it could be suicide? She was sitting on a chair in the water-lobby, on this side of the building, and her head was in a bowl of water.”

Alceste said:

“I don’t believe she would have committed suicide. I know my own sex thoroughly, and Miss Ferris wasn’t the type. Probably religious, too. I should think she must have fainted. The child said Miss Ferris was ‘dabbing her face.’ I never for one moment… But it’s queer. Has the doctor arrived yet, do you think?”

“I don’t know. Shall I go and see?”

“No. I’ll go. Poor woman. It will be a nuisance for the school. It’s certain to get into the papers. I don’t believe, after all, we’d better go. We shall probably be in the way.”

Together they went to the class-room which had been used as the men-principals’ dressing-room. It was empty, except for the Headmaster. The body had been taken into the laboratory, he told them, and the doctor had made a preliminary examination, sufficient to be certain that the cause of death was drowning.

“There will have to be an inquest, of course,” said Mr. Cliffordson. “The doctor is going to give orders for the body to be removed. What an awful business it is! One doesn’t want to be unfeeling, but I do wish it had happened anywhere but in school. I can’t think what possessed her, can you? Or could it have been an accident? The light has gone wrong in there, too. We had to get candles from the stock cupboard. I must communicate at once with her relatives, I suppose. Oh, well, don’t worry. As long as it isn’t one of the children, it isn’t as bad as it might be. Good night to you both. Don’t worry. Poor woman. Oh dear, oh dear!” ii

The verdict which concluded the inquest upon Calma Ferris was “Suicide while of unsound mind”: this in the face of all that the dead woman’s acquaintances could say on the subject of her apparent freedom from worry and ill-health. The Headmaster, still looking old and worn, called a staff meeting at ten o’clock on the following morning. The staff, nervously silent, guessing the subject of the meeting, came in in ones and twos, and seated themselves. When they were all present Mr. Cliffordson addressed them. His tones were dry and formal.

“I have been in consultation with the governing body of the school,” he said, “and it seemed to all of us that for the sake of the boys and girls it would be wiser to appoint immediately a successor to Miss Ferris. I have been fortunate enough to secure the services of an able and distinguished lady whose qualifications happen to be a good deal higher than those required for the post, but who is anxious to obtain a first-hand impression of a coeducational day-school of an advanced modern type. She will accordingly be appointed for the remainder of this term, while the governors and I are deciding upon a candidate for permanent appointment. I should be glad if you would all take pains to welcome the lady. She is elderly, and probably…”—he smiled, and for a moment looked himself again, the lines washed from his forehead, and his eyes candid and kind—“has pronounced views which some of you may find irritating. However, I think you’ll like her. Her name”—he consulted a paper before him on the big desk—“is Bradley. Mrs. Beatrice Adèle Lestrange Bradley. She will commence her duties on Monday at nine.”

There was a stunned silence. Then Mr. Browning said blankly:

“But—you don’t mean—not the Mrs. Bradley, Headmaster?”

“Why not?” said Mr. Cliffordson coldly. The staff, taking its cue, rose and filed out, but the Headmaster motioned Browning to remain. When the others had gone and the door was shut, Mr. Cliffordson said:

“Mrs. Bradley is coming here to make a study of the school. She is writing a psychological treatise on adolescence, and wishes to make first-hand observations in boys’, girls’, and mixed schools. You understand?”

“I understand,” said young Mr. Browning, meeting the Headmaster’s eye, “that you think Miss Ferris was murdered, and, in view of the fact that the verdict of the coroner’s jury was one of suicide, I don’t consider you are being fair to us, Headmaster, in getting Mrs. Bradley here like this. I wish to tender my resignation.”

“And I refuse to accept it,” said Mr. Cliffordson firmly. He changed his tone.

“My dear boy,” he said, “pause and consider. I do believe Miss Ferris was murdered, but I don’t want the school turned upside down. Mrs. Bradley will decide, quietly, whether I am justified in my conclusions, and then, if I am, some action must be taken. That is all. Last night I was convinced that poor Miss Ferris had drowned herself. Later, I discovered that the waste-pipe was completely stopped up with clay. That struck me as curious. I must beg of you not to communicate these tidings to your colleagues. I hope that I am wrong. Things are quite bad enough. But there are facts which cannot be ignored, and I must face them.”

“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 the 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 shcool. “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 appalls 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 Chffordson, 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?”