Death at the Opera

chapter six: disclosures

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i

I don’t like it,” said Mr. Cliffordson, shaking his head. “I don’t like it at all. To my mind, there is something extraordinarily fishy about that boy’s story. He is omitting to tell us something of vital importance.”

“Well,” said Mrs. Bradley, pausing at the top of the stairs, “I should not advise you to employ any Third Degree methods in order to coerce him. Murder will out, so let sleeping dogs lie and make hay while the sun shines.”

She ended on an unearthly screech of laughter which caused the overwrought Hurstwood to raise his head and listen intently. The sound was not repeated, so he rose and walked to the window of the Headmaster’s study.

“Meaning?” said Mr. Cliffordson, when they reached the foot of the stairs and were walking across the large hall where the opera had been staged.

“I suggest that we interview the rest of the cast in turn before coming to any definite conclusions,” said Mrs. Bradley. “I wonder whether we might speak to Miss Cliffordson next, instead of Miss Camden? I could see Miss Camden later.”

“You won’t get much out of Gretta,” said Gretta’s uncle, shaking his head.

Mrs. Bradley, who knew quite well that she would get exactly what she wanted out of Gretta, smiled amiably, like a sleepy python, and waited while the Headmaster tapped at one of the form-room doors. In a few moments Miss Cliffordson, looking fresh and pretty in a white blouse, navy skirt and the inevitable cardigan, came out into the hall, and, seeing Mrs. Bradley, walked towards her.

“You wanted to see me?” she said.

“Yes, dear child. Is there an empty room where we can talk without being disturbed?”

“I believe the music-room is empty at present,” replied Miss Cliffordson, leading the way. The only furniture which the music-room contained consisted of six pianos with their stools, so, each occupying a stool, Mrs. Bradley and the Headmaster’s niece sat down.

“Of course, I never for one moment believed that Miss Ferris committed suicide,” remarked Miss Cliffordson, “and when uncle told me that he had invited you to come down and look into the affair, I knew I was not mistaken.”

“In what?” Mrs. Bradley politely inquired.

“In thinking that poor Miss Ferris was murdered,” replied Miss Cliffordson, lowering her voice. “And, do you know, Miss Freely told me that the other girls won’t stay a second after school hours now it gets dark so early, and that, for her part, she will be thankful to goodness when the Christmas holidays arrive and she can go home. She says the school gives her the creeps since the opera, and that neither for love nor money would she go into that water-lobby after dark. I don’t know that I should care to, either, if it comes to that.”

Mrs. Bradley made noises indicative of agreement and sympathy with this feeling.

“And as for poor Moira Malley,” Miss Cliffordson continued, “I wonder the poor child didn’t go off her head, finding the body in the dark like that! Fancy her not telling anyone about it until after the performance, though!”

“I imagine that she was afraid of ruining the entertainment,” said Mrs. Bradley. “I wonder, though, that she didn’t say something to one of the other girls. Several of her form were in the women’s chorus, weren’t they? ”

“Well, I don’t really suppose she got much chance of speaking to them. She used our dressing-room, you see. The chorus had another for themselves. Of course, there was nothing to prevent her going in there during the interval if she wished.”

“Oh, yes. She was the only pupil to take a principal part, wasn’t she?” said Mrs. Bradley carelessly.

“Well, no,” replied Miss Cliffordson, rising to the delicate cast. “She was the only girl who had a principal part, but it was one of the boys who did so well. A rather talented boy called Hurstwood. Do you know him?”

“A tall, rather slight boy?” said Mrs. Bradley. “Oh, yes; I know him. He has an interesting face.”

“He’s rather clever,” said Miss Cliffordson. “And…” she paused, and then plunged, “he’s being rather difficult.”

“Ah. In love with you?” said Mrs. Bradley. Miss Cliffordson laughed, frankly enough, but with a shade of embarrassment.

“It’s very awkward,” she confessed, “and he’s so horribly sensitive that I don’t like to be quite ruthless, because I’m afraid”—she laughed again, and there was no mistaking her embarrassment this time—“he might do something serious… even make away with himself. Oh, it sounds ridiculous, I know—”

“Not to me,” said Mrs Bradley quietly.

“Well, that’s a comfort, anyhow,” confessed Miss Cliffordson, “because I know you understand these things. But, tell me, please”—she looked Mrs. Bradley full in the face—“you don’t think a boy of that age could have… would have…? I’m so terribly worried!” she ended suddenly. “I lie in bed every night and I seem to see him doing it! It was such an easy way to kill anybody— especially anybody who was sitting down. You offer to help—you lend a handkerchief—you stuff the waste-pipe up with clay and press the tap and talk—any kind of nervous, silly talk, so that no suspicion is excited; then, as the basin fills, you begin to press the woman’s head down…”

“But why should the boy think of doing it!” the little old woman asked calmly.

“Oh, of course, you don’t know that. Why, you see, after the dress-rehearsal, Harry—Hurstwood, you know— became excited and he was quite beyond control. He told me a lot of nonsense about being in love with me, and he insisted upon kissing me—he was quite beside himself and very violent—and Miss Ferris walked herself into the middle of it! That’s all.”

“I see,” said Mrs. Bradley. She pursed her mouth into a little beak. “And where is Hurstwood’s handkerchief now?” she demanded suddenly. Miss Cliffordson fumbled and produced it.

“Any proof that it is his?” asked Mrs. Bradley, noting that the handkerchief had been carefully washed and ironed and bore no name, initials or laundry-mark. Miss Cliffordson shook her head.

“I suppose I did the wrong thing,” she said, “but I unpicked the laundry-mark and an initial H from the corner.”

“Good,” said Mrs. Bradley, absently pocketing the handkerchief. “Now, as to actual proof…”

“Oh, but—” Miss Cliffordson began to look distressed.

“But?” prompted Mrs. Bradley.

“Well, I thought… I’ve only told you my suspicions so that you could—I mean, I thought you’d drop the inquiry if you knew who it was—in which way it was trending. You surely…” Her voice was rising. Soon it would be audible through the open ventilators in the two class-rooms opposite, thought Mrs Bradley—“you surely don’t intend to accuse a boy of eighteen of murder!”

“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’8 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 the 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 rubber-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— “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.”

“H’m!” said Mrs. Bradley. She looked at the boy curiously, and an idea came, quite unbidden, into her mind. Mrs. Bradley distrusted sudden flights of fancy, and, to do her extremely well-disciplined mind full justice, she was very seldom afflicted by them. She tried to dismiss this one, but it persisted. She said to Hurstwood suddenly:

“I wonder whether anyone at school could put my portable wireless set right? I suppose anyone with an elementary knowledge of electric lighting could do it, couldn’t he?”

There was a long pause. Then Hurstwood said awkwardly:

“I daresay several of the Lower Fifth Scientific could manage it. They’ve done a lot of work on electricity this term.”

“Oh, yes. Thank you, child. The Lower Fifth Scientific.” She began to walk along the cinder-track. It skirted the netball court and then wound serpent-wise round the school field. Its surface was trodden flat and hard, for it formed the school promenade except at the end of the spring term, when it was forked over by the groundsmen in preparation for Sports Day.

“I say, Mrs. Bradley,” said Hurstwood, when they had almost circumnavigated the field, “are the police going to be brought into this?”

Mrs. Bradley did not attempt to pretend that she did not understand him. She pursed her thin lips into a little beak and replied:

“Not at present, certainly. But at any moment, possibly. Again, possibly not. It depends partly on what we discover.”

“Suppose,” said Hurstwood, pursuing a train of thought which had been in his mind for some days, “a person is wrongly accused of murder?”

“Yes?” said Mrs. Bradley encouragingly.

“What chance does he stand of getting—of being acquitted?”

“Every chance in the world,” said Mrs. Bradley confidently. “But why these morbid theses, child?”

“Oh, I don’t know. My father wants me to be a barrister,” said Hurstwood.

“Does he? And what is your own choice of a career?” asked Mrs. Bradley.

“Oh, I shouldn’t mind. Young Lestrange says his uncle has got more murderers off than any other defending counsel in England.”

“Yes. A depraved nature, Ferdinand’s,” said Mrs. Bradley. “Ferdinand Lestrange is my son by my first husband,” she explained in response to the boy’s glance of inquiry.

“Oh, really? How topping,” said Hurstwood, conventionally. “Then young Lestrange is your nephew?” he added, with considerably more interest.

“He is. Younger than you, of course?”

“Yes, a good bit, I think. He’s sixteen, isn’t he? I’m eighteen in April. Only just within the age-limit for the schol., in fact.”

“The Balliol scholarship? What chance do you think you stand?”

“Pretty good, I believe,” replied the boy. “But this death business has put me off, I think.”

“These contretemps are bound to have some immediate effect on a sensitive nature,” said Mrs. Bradley. Hurstwood grinned and invited her to refrain from pulling his leg. Having walked round the field three times in all, they returned to the building, where the bell had just been rung for lunch. Miss Camden blew her whistle to indicate that netball practice was at an end, and she, Hurstwood and Mrs. Bradley walked into the hall together.

“I’m not on duty for lunch,” said Miss Camden, “so if you wanted to talk, I could finish quickly and meet you in the needlework-room in a quarter of an hour from now.” iv

The Physical Training Mistress had changed into blouse and skirt, with her blazer taking the place of the other mistresses’ cardigans, when Mrs. Bradley next saw her. They closed the door of the needlework-room and sat among sewing-machines and trestle tables, confronted by diagrams, pinned-up paper patterns, examples of the various kinds of stitchery, and all the paraphernalia of school needlework.

“Very practical,” said Mrs. Bradley, looking about her with great interest. Miss Camden, who did not know a piece of whipping from a run-and-fell seam, cautiously agreed.

“But there isn’t a lot of time,” she added, looking at her wrist-watch and comparing it with the clock on the west wall of the room. “What do you want with me?”

“I want to know whether you know who murdered Calma Ferris,” said Mrs. Bradley, with such implicit directness that Miss Camden gasped and then flushed brick-red.

“I!” she said. “Oh, no, of course I don’t! Whatever made you ask?”

“You agree, then, that she was murdered?” asked Mrs. Bradley, a little more mildly.

“Yes, I do.”

“Why do you agree, dear child?”

Miss Camden considered the question, and then answered slowly:

“Well, you’re here. That proves it. Besides, she wasn’t one to commit suicide.”

“Can we say that confidently about any person on this earth?” Mrs. Bradley inquired.

“Perhaps not. You know I had a row with her just before—just before the opera?” said Miss Camden, taking the plunge.

“I had heard some rumour of it. About a netball match, wasn’t it?” said Mrs. Bradley. “You’re the second person I’ve spoken to who was not behind the scenes at all during the performance, I think,” she added with seeming irrelevance.

“Who is the other?” asked Miss Camden, amused.

“Mr. Hampstead. Miss Ferris was killed at some point during the First Act of The Mikado, and he was conducting the orchestra.”

“And I was in the audience, as you indicated just now. Oh, I say!”—she appeared startled, as though the thought had presented itself to her for the first time—“what a jolly good thing I didn’t accept Mrs. Boyle’s invitation! It was fairly pressing, too!”

“Mrs. Boyle’s invitation?” echoed Mrs. Bradley. “Explain, child.”

“Well, when Miss Ferris couldn’t be found, Mrs. Boyle came out into the auditorium, found me, and asked me to take part. I refused, so she took it herself.”

“You didn’t feel equal to taking the part at a moment’s notice?” asked Mrs. Bradley. Miss Camden blinked more rapidly than ever.

“It wasn’t that,” she said. “The fact was—although it sounds a bit mean, perhaps—I didn’t see why I should get them out of a difficulty. I had been turned down absolutely to give Miss Ferris the part, and—well, I didn’t bear the slightest ill will, but I didn’t see, either, why they should expect to come wailing to me to carry on when they’d got themselves into a mess. Don’t you agree?”

“Within limits, yes,” said Mrs. Bradley, trying to remain strictly truthful, without this having the effect of drying up the flood of Miss Camden’s remarks. It appeared that she was successful, for the Physical Training Mistress went on, with scarcely a pause:

“Of course, I will say for Mrs. Boyle that I couldn’t have done the part any better myself. She was frightfully good. I believe my singing might have improved matters a trifle, but then I’ve been trained, you see, and she hasn’t. Before I took up teaching my idea was to go on the operatic stage, but dad wouldn’t hear of it. He’s a clergyman, you know, and he had a fit when he heard that his only daughter wanted to be an actress. I tried to show him what I could do by staging Carmen in the Village Hall one Christmas, and taking the name-part myself; but”—she laughed, a hard, grating sound—“it just finished him off entirely. So here I am—always in hot water with the Head, who doesn’t care for jerks and games, and always disapproved of at home. I’ve got a brother, but he’s in Holy Orders, chaplain to a bishop and marked for high preferment, and the apple of my parents’ eyes.”

“Poor girl! Poor child!” said Mrs. Bradley, with genuine sorrow in her beautiful voice. The young mistress looked startled.

“Heaven knows why I’ve been telling you all this,” she said blankly. “You’d better forget it, please. What’s the time? I’ve got a hockey practice at twenty past one.”

It was not quite five minutes past one, but Mrs. Bradley did not attempt to detain her as she rose and walked towards the door. When she reached it, however, Mrs. Bradley said suddenly:

“But, child, if the work here is so hard and the Headmaster so unsympathetic, what makes you stay?”

Miss Camden turned, her hand on the door-knob, and swallowed twice.

“I couldn’t get a testimonial at present,” she said. “That’s why.”

“How long have you been here?” asked Mr. Bradley.

“Five years. It’s my first job,” the girl answered.

“Come here,” said Mrs. Bradley. Miss Camden obeyed. “Explain,” said Mrs. Bradley. Miss Camden shook her head.

“You’d better ask the Old Man if you really want to know,” she said. “But it’s got nothing at all to do with this murder, I assure you.”

There was no pretext upon which Mrs. Bradley felt she could detain her further, so she let her get to the door and outside it this time. Then she drew her chair to the nearest trestle-table, sought for her notebook and pencil, and for the next ten minutes she was writing as fast as she could. There was nothing more to be done until afternoon school began, so, putting away notebook and pencil, she went up to the women’s common-room for her coat and gloves, and then sallied out to watch the hockey practice. In a far corner of the school field half a dozen biggish boys were kicking a football about, but Hurstwood was not among them.

She watched the hockey practice for about a quarter of an hour. One side were wearing red girdles, the others green. Mrs. Bradley noticed, among the red-girdled players, Moira Malley. She was a dashing player, displaying more energy than science, and for the time being she seemed to have forgotten cares and fears both, Mrs. Bradley was pleased to notice, in vigorous enjoyment of the game.

Miss Camden, too, was a different being once more. She was combining the arduous and exacting duties of referee and centre-half (on the side of the Greens), and careered down the field in the teeth of the advancing forwards, swept the ball out with magnificent long strokes to her outside left and outside right alternately, controlled the game with her screeching whistle, which, most dangerously to herself, she held gripped between her teeth the whole time, and inspired her team with her magnificent play into scoring three goals in swift succession.