Death at the Opera

chapter xi: admirer

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i

By some means or other, Helm had certainly contrived to obtain a vast amount of information about the school. He knew the names and qualifications of the whole staff, the acreage of the school playing fields; he was able to sketch for Mrs. Bradley an accurate plan of the ground floor; he described the science laboratory, the art and music-rooms, the garden, the swimming-bath, and was able to indicate the many other amenities of one of the most modern school buildings in existence. Mrs. Bradley supposed that he had obtained his information from the printed prospectus. He had certainly taken great pains to learn it off by heart if that were the case. On the other hand, if he had actually explored the school with the intention of finding out the best method of murdering Miss Ferris…

But why, Mrs. Bradley asked herself, should he have gone to the school rather than found out the address of her lodgings, if he really intended to seek her out and kill her? She fancied that the most likely explanation was that he had considered it improbable that even Miss Sooley would supply him with Miss Ferris’s private address, whereas the school address could not be so readily and plausibly withheld. But then, if Miss Sooley’s evidence could be trusted, he had known the address of the school without having asked her for it. That was a most puzzling point. She began to talk about the dead woman.

“Of course, I never knew her,” she said.

“I did,” responded Helm. It was a piece of information he could not very well refuse to give, owing to the fact that he knew Mrs. Bradley was living with Miss Ferris’s aunt, who would certainly have explained that he, too, had been a boarder there, and had met the niece.

“Oh, yes, of course! The burglars!” said Mrs. Bradley, shuddering realistically in her assumed character of silly old lady.

“Burglars my boot!” said Helm, succinctly. Mrs. Bradley conquered a genuine start of surprise, and said anxiously:

“Was it her imagination, then, poor girl?”

“It wasn’t burglars, anyhow,” said Helm. “Not a thing was taken.”

“Oh, but I understood from Miss Ferris’s aunt that the men became alarmed and fled before they actually entered the house,” Mrs. Bradley said. Mr. Helm made a noise expressive of deep contempt, and suggested that perhaps she would like some tea. Mrs. Bradley, rightly suspicious of the victuals offered by (in her opinion) an unconvicted murderer, refused charmingly and said that she would not take up any more of Mr. Helm’s valuable time. She thanked him for his kindness in procuring details of the school, apologized for having mistaken the meaning of the friend who (she thought) had told her he was the German Master there, and took her leave.

Mr. Helm watched her from the window as she walked down the pebbled path to the gate. There was an unpleasant smirk upon his face. The fact had emerged during conversation that Mrs. Bradley’s life was insured for ten thousand pounds. It was insured in her son’s interest. Mr. Helm’s smirk widened into a cheerful grin. He walked up to the galvanized iron bath and played the devil’s tattoo upon it with his knuckles.

Mrs. Bradley also wore a cheerful grin. Sheltering behind a breakwater, and with the collar of his dark grey waterproof turned up against the bitter December wind, was Noel Wells.

“Here I am, dear child,” said Mrs. Bradley. She cackled harshly and pinched his elbow. Wells looked gloomy. Tom, on the road, drove slowly away.

“I don’t like it, you know,” said Wells. “It’s playing with fire. And I’m not sure it’s honest. In any case, what good am I to you, stuck out here on the beach? He could murder you and bury the body on the other side of the bungalow, and I should be none the wiser.”

Mrs. Bradley took an orange out of her capacious skirt pocket.

“When you see an orange come hurtling through the bungalow window on this side, dear child,” she said, “come at once to my assistance.”

“But you may not always have an orange to throw,” objected Wells. “And what if it’s dark?”

“You’ll hear the crash of glass, dear child.”

“Oh, yes. Of course. But suppose you haven’t an orange?”

“I shall throw the soap out, dear child.”

“The soap?”

“The soap.”

“But what I mean is—”

Mrs. Bradley took his arm and they walked along the deserted beach towards the town. Wells waited a little while, and then concluded his sentence.

“—Won’t that blighter be looking at us now out of the window?”

“It doesn’t matter if he is,” Mrs. Bradley replied. “For one thing, you are my son, in whose favour my life is at the present moment insured for ten thousand pounds; and for another, he is at this moment in rapt contemplation of the bath I told you of. It hangs upon the wall and is to him the means of wish-fulfilment. Sand!” she suddenly exclaimed. “Sand!” She waved a skinny, black-gloved claw. “Sand, dear child. How easy to dig the grave. How impossible to locate the grave! Sand!” Wells quickened his stride.

“I heard in the town that he tried to rent one of the bungalows in that colony on the other side of Bognor,” he said, “but that they would not have him because of the trial. Rather a shame, really, as he was acquitted.” Mrs. Bradley’s only reply was to the effect that she was going home for Christmas.

“I shall write to Mr. Helm,” she added, “and when the Christmas vacation is over I shall return to the school for a bit. There are still one or two things that need clearing up from that end. As to Mr. Helm, I cannot foretell with any certainty what his reaction to my absence will be.” She chuckled ghoulishly and then demanded: “How long had you intended staying in the neighbourhood, dear child?”

Wells was not quite sure. He would let her know, he said, and they parted at the gate of Miss Lincallow’s neat front garden. Miss Lincallow, who avowed, possibly with truth, that, knowing Mrs. Bradley’s life was in danger from “that awful man,” whom, it was plain, she was now prepared to hold responsible for her niece’s death, had remained at the first-floor sitting-room window during the whole of Mrs. Bradley’s absence from the house, said that she was thankful, “oh, thankful indeed,” to see her safe home again.

Mrs. Bradley, who had not announced her intention of breaking her drive in order to call upon Helm, made no remark except to demand tea. After tea, the loquacious Miss Sooley sought her out.

“And did you really go inside?” she asked, with a shiver of delicious horror. “Do you know, when I think that we had that man here, in this house, all those weeks in the summer, and never knew, I could scream!”

“Never knew what?” asked Mrs. Bradley, wilfully dense.

“Never knew that he was a murderer,” said the obliging Miss Sooley in low tones. Her eyes grew round and hard and bright, and her mouth became a little pink rosette. Her nose twitched with excitement. “And you went inside his house with him! Just fancy you being so daring, little as you are, too!”

“And old. And frail,” said Mrs. Bradley. She gave vent to a deep chuckle, and smoothed the sleeve of a juniper which covered muscles of iron. Miss Sooley clicked her tongue and then said archly, and with the simpering smile of a sentimental old maid:

“But there! I suppose he must have his attractions, although I could never see them.”

“How do you mean?” asked Mrs. Bradley.

“Well,” said Miss Sooley, settling down with gusto to a scandalous story, “say Miss Lincallow whatever she chooses about poor Miss Ferris, but it wasn’t only Miss Ferris that couldn’t behave herself as a lady should in a house that contains gentlemen.”

“Really?” said Mrs. Bradley, afraid of saying anything which might cause the conversation to veer into a less promising channel. Miss Sooley, however, was fairly in mid-stream, and under full sail at that. She folded her hands—they ought to have been mittened, Mrs. Bradley decided—nodded her head, swallowed, drew in a deep breath and continued:

“Yes, indeed. Do you know, I really believe the only reason she warned Miss Ferris against him was because she wanted him herself. And her sixty, if she’s a day! Did you ever! When we knew him and Miss Ferris had been in the same room on the night the burglars came Miss Lincallow was that furious! And then her spreading that tale about Miss Ferris falling! ‘She wasn’t the kind to fall,’ I said. ‘Not without she was properly married. Too much good sense and nice feeling,’ I said. But would she listen to me? Not a word!

“ ‘Be that as it may, Ellen,’ she said to me, ‘and I’m not contradicting you, the fact remains that young women do fall, and there’s nobody can prevent it,’ she said. Of course, I’m not one to discuss such things, Mrs. Bradley. I don’t see the necessity for one thing, although there are quite respectable people—yes, even in a town like this— who talk of nothing else. How they get to hear as much as they do passes my comprehension. But this I do say: I know a good girl when I see one, and I’m sure Miss Ferris wouldn’t think of placing herself in an unfortunate position, and the inquest proved it, and very pleased I was, I can tell you.”

“Yes. So was I,” Mrs. Bradley hastily interpolated. “So you think Miss Lincallow was jealous of her niece?”

It was a bold plunge, but time was passing. Miss Lincallow might come in upon them at any moment, and Mrs. Bradley was interested in seeing whether her overnight suspicions were correct. It appeared that they were.

“Jealous?” said Miss Sooley. “I should say she was. And kept it all in, mind you. That’s what’s so funny to me. Nobody could be nicer to Miss Ferris’s face. Quite took the poor girl in, I can tell you. But behind her back, to me, it was a very different tale. Murderer or no murderer, she took a big fancy to him, there’s no doubt about that. And if you want to keep the peace with her, I shouldn’t visit him again if I were you. No offence, of course, Mrs. Bradley. Just a friendly warning. Here she comes.”

In spite of the friendly warning, Mrs. Bradley decided to visit Helm again before she returned to her own home and, later, to the school, but before she did so another interview took place, this time between herself and Miss Lincallow. That lady took her aside after the evening meal, saying abruptly:

“Come into my little sitting-room.” Mrs. Bradley meekly followed her.

“What has Ellen Sooley been telling you about me?” demanded Calma Ferris’s aunt when they were seated, the one upon a horsehair sofa, the other in an uncomfortable arm-chair. Mrs. Bradley grinned.

“She told me how you sat out in the car whilst she and the chauffeur went into the school-hall to hear the opera,” she said, cautiously feeling her way.

“So I did. And very cold it was. That fool of a Willis lost his way. I got so cold that I couldn’t stand it, so I got out of the car and went to the door and asked the doorkeeper to find them and bring them out. Let me warn you. Take no notice of Ellen Sooley. She’s a liar from her hair-slide to her boots, and the only things she can cook are the accounts. I’m sorry I ever took her into partnership, for she does nothing but get under my feet and make eyes at all the men who stay here. That Helm! I can’t understand the attraction from either point of view, but she was all over him until Calma came along. Then somehow he got to know that Calma was my heir, and that did it, I suppose, for I can’t conceive of any man being attracted to Calma for her looks, can you?”

“I never met her,” said Mrs. Bradley gently. The situation was becoming complicated. She resolved to try whether Helm could not straighten it out.

On the following day, therefore, having rung up Noel Wells and requested him to be at his post of vantage behind the breakwater, she walked along the sands until she came upon Helm’s bungalow. Helm was on the seaward side of his garden, if garden it could be called, engaged in planning a rockery. Mrs. Bradley was so delighted that she stood at his elbow and watched the proceedings for six minutes by her watch before he turned and caught sight of her. An unpleasant change came over his face. His eyes glinted dangerously like those of a treacherous dog, and his canines showed white, like fangs, at the corners of his mouth as his top lip drew back in a snarl which he quickly changed into a smile.

“Ah, digging a grave, I see,” said Mrs. Bradley, in the bright and fatuous manner which she had adopted for his undoing. Helm looked startled.

“A grave, dear lady?” he said, gazing at the heap of large pebbles, small boulders, and pieces of quartz and granite which lay at his feet and which he was busily arranging.

“Yes,” said Mrs. Bradley, who was enjoying herself to the full. “All murderers make a rockery over the grave of the victim. Didn’t you know? The police know it, too. Don’t you read the Sunday papers, dear child! The first task undertaken by the police in any case of suspected murder is to dig up the rockery and take up the crazy paving in the sunk-garden. After that they explore the cellars, and, if all else fails, they go through the left luggage at the nearest railway station.”

Helm managed a sickly smile.

“You came to ask for more information about the school, of course,” he said. “Come inside, will you?”

“On no account,” said Mrs. Bradley, cackling gleefully. “You terrify me! Yes, terrify me!” She so emphasized the middle word each time that it certainly sounded bloodcurdling in the extreme. She gripped his arm between her powerful thumb and skinny first finger, so that he winced with pain and tried to draw away, but she held him fast, wagged the forefinger of the other hand in his shrinking face and, dropping her voice, said in sepulchral tones: “And do you know what they are saying about you in Bognor?”

“Yes,” said Helm. Mrs. Bradley looked shocked, a histrionic effort which did her great credit, since some twenty-eight years previously she had given up being shocked at the many foibles of humanity.

“You do?” she said in tones which blended horror with incredulity. Helm nodded. He was recovering. Mrs. Bradley released his arm.

“And is it true?” she asked, in breathless accents. Helm managed a shaking laugh. Against his will, and, as he supposed, against his instinctive flair for picking out a fool, the little old woman was beginning to get on his nerves.

“It’s true that I was tried for my life,” he admitted. “But it’s a shame and a scandal that people should gossip about me.”

“And you really are the notorious Cutler?” said Mrs. Bradley. “How absolutely divinely thrilling! How I should love to have been at the trial!”

She did it well; so well that Helm’s relief showed plainly in his face. His crafty eyes resumed their expression of frank good-nature and his wolf-teeth disappeared. She was a fool, after all. He need never have been alarmed. He must be losing his nerve. She was easy. Ten thousand pounds!

“Dear lady,” he said, “what an extraordinary desire in one so gently nurtured and so extremely well-endowed with all the feminine graces!”

Mrs. Bradley, who could throw a knife into the centre of any given target at a range of thirty feet, and could break a man’s wrist with a twist of her claw-like fingers smiled amiably. Noel Wells, peering cautiously over the breakwater, saw her and Helm engaged in apparently amicable conversation, and dropped back out of sight again.

“I’ve really come to ask your advice about my son,” said Mrs. Bradley, “and now I know that you are quite a man of the world, I shall follow out your suggestions with the greater confidence. He has become entangled with a female against my wishes.”

“Disinherit him,” said Helm immediately. He had all the blind vanity and egoism of the man to whom murder is neither an art nor a necessity. It was going to be too easy, he decided. Once get this nincompoop of a son disinherited—why it was as easy as walking on the sands at low tide! He began to smile joyfully. Mrs. Bradley smiled too; hers was the thin, cruel smile of the tiger. Had Helm been one iota less full of self-conceit and villainy, he must have seen the small sharp teeth behind those thin, stretched, smiling lips.

“Disinherit him?” she said. “Well, I could threaten him with that, anyway, couldn’t I?”

“I should give him a real scare, if I were you,” said Helm. “He gets your life assurance when you die, I take it?”

“Oh, you dreadful man! Don’t talk like that, so casually, of dying!” said Mrs. Bradley, giving him a playful push. “I’m not going to die for years! A fortuneteller told me so.”

“No, no! But to scare him into doing as you wish, why not pretend to make that life assurance payable to someone else?”

“Yes, but to whom?” said Mrs. Bradley, as though she were inclined to favour the absurd suggestion.

“That’s not for me to say,” said Helm, apprehensive of going too far, and scaring the quarry. Having brought matters to this promising point, it would be a thousand pities to be too precipitate, he thought. Besides, he wasn’t in a hurry. He had other plans which were on the point of maturing. It would not hurt to let the old girl hang up for a bit, while he carried out his other schemes. Besides, the son was a bit of an obstacle. He did not want some great goop of a boy asking a lot of silly questions, and perhaps becoming violent. Mr. Helm, né Cutler, detested violence. Drowning an unsuspecting woman in a bath was one thing, but standing up to an angry young man was quite another.

“I should like to meet your son,” he said.

“I will bring him with me if I come again,” said Mrs. Bradley, feeling certain that the Reverend Noel Wells’s tall, slightly-stooping figure, vacuously cheerful expression and clerical collar would work wonders in restoring Mr Helm’s fast-ebbing nerve. “And I’ll think over what you say. You won’t introduce the subject in my son’s presence, will you? He is epileptic, and it would be most embarrassing for the poor boy to have a seizure in front of a perfect stranger. Good afternoon, then, Mr. Helm. Or do your friends call you Cutler? Such a good name for a murderer, isn’t it? Oh, I forgot, though! You aren’t really a murderer, are you? Not yet! Oh, isn’t it all thrilling! Do you know, I believe I’ll make out my assurance policy in your favour, and give my naughty boy a fright.”

She was gone before the flabbergasted Helm could make any reply. His state of mind was comic. Was she a fool? He decided, finally, that, yes, she was. He gazed earnestly at his half-finished rockery when she had gone. Disconsolately he kicked the nearest piece of stone. It had cost pounds for the materials to be transported to the bungalow. What had that funny old girl said about it? He was not sure that he wanted to remember. He walked into the tiny bungalow and drummed on the large, galvanized-iron bath. Ten thousand pounds! The first thing the police do in a case of suspected murder is to dig up the rockery!

How the devil had she guessed?… What was there to guess, anyway? She knew nothing of Susie. Nobody knew anything of Susie… yet!

But his peace of mind had been disturbed. He put on his hat and locked up the railway-carriage bungalow and went to the cinema. ii

Noel Wells escorted Mrs. Bradley to her lodgings and left her with Miss Lincallow.

“And have you been to see that man again!” Miss Lincallow exclaimed. “How can you bring yourself to associate with him?”

“Tell me,” said Mrs. Bradley, making no attempt to answer the question, “did your niece keep a diary?”

“She did, poor girl,” replied Miss Lincallow, “and you shall see it, for there’s nothing in it of any consequence.”

She went away to get it. Mrs. Bradley, a little surprised at having achieved her object so easily, was soon in her own sitting-room, the diary in her hand. She skimmed through the entries for the first half of the year, her eyes sharp to discover any references to other members of the school staff, and especially to those who might have been implicated in the murder, but apart from memoranda with regard to playing tennis with Miss Freely, going to tea with Mrs. Boyle once, and with the Headmaster twice, refereeing a match for Miss Camden and going on a school outing with some of the children and Alceste Boyle, there was no reference to any one of them.

The various entries for June and up to the date of the school entertainment, Mrs. Bradley read more slowly, but her trouble was wasted. From beginning to end of the diary there was not a scrap of information which served to throw any light upon any of the circumstances of the diarist’s death. The references to Helm, for instance, were six in number, and referred to the burglar alarm, which appeared to have been genuine, various encounters with the man, together with a summary of the conversations which had ensued and which appeared each time to have taken a particularly formal turn, guided thereto by Calma herself, Mrs. Bradley supposed, and Miss Ferris’s opinion that he was clever. On the other hand, it was possible to imagine that, like many diarists, Miss Ferris refrained from committing to paper any details which might be embarrassing if they were made public.

There were references to the various contretemps which preceded the night of the opera—the quarrel about the netball match, for instance, and the damaging of Mr. Smith’s Psyche; the discovery that Hurstwood was in love with Miss Cliffordson, and that she had allowed him to kiss her; but, of all the obvious omissions, the most noticeable, Mrs. Bradley decided, was that of the fact that Moira Malley had sat to Mr. Smith as a model for the Psyche. Calma may have decided not to include this fact of the sittings, but if she had not known that Moira had given them, the girl was automatically cleared from all suspicion of having committed the crime.

Mrs. Bradley went to the telephone and put through a trunk call. It was not yet four o’clock, so that afternoon school would not be over. It happened to be the last full day of the term. The school was due to break up on the following noon. Alceste Boyle answered the telephone.

“Find out whether Miss Ferris knew that Moira Malley sat to Mr. Smith for his Psyche, will you, my dear?” said Mrs. Bradley.

“Certainly I will. I suppose that I had better ask Donald,” said Alceste. “Hold on a minute.”

The seconds ticked away. Then Alceste’s voice came through again.

“I couldn’t get it any other way, so I had to ask the poor child. She doesn’t think anybody knew. She hopes nobody knew. I’m sending her home to Ireland for Christmas. Hurstwood is top of the Sixth, but poor little Moira is seventeenth out of a form of twenty. What do you think we can do about it? She must get her scholarship, or she can’t possibly go to college.”

“What is she worrying about?” asked Mrs. Bradley.

“Finding the body like that, I think. Horrible for her.”

Mrs. Bradley had just rung off when tea was announced, and she was finishing her second cup when Miss Lincallow came in.

“I’m ever so sorry to disturb you, Mrs. Bradley,” she said, “but there is a young man in Holy Orders on the front step. He won’t come in, but he says he must speak to you immediately with your hat and coat on.”

Noel Wells certainly had the appearance of excitement which Miss Lincallow’s style of narrative had led Mrs. Bradley to expect.

“My dear boy, what is the matter?” she asked, as they ran down the steps and on to the pavement.

“I don’t know,” said Wells, “but I don’t like it. He brought a woman home with him at half-past three, and since then he’s been carrying pailfuls of sea-water up to his beastly bungalow.”

“Round this alley into the office of my friend’s garage,” said Mrs. Bradley. Once inside, she raised her melodious voice and called: “Tom! Tom, dear child!”

Young Tom came running. He was bareheaded and in his mechanic’s overalls.

“The car, quickly, Tom!” said Mrs. Bradley.

Tom was young. He grinned and jerked his thumb.

“Out there, ma’am. Shan’t be a tick,” he said.

“Come, child,” said Mrs. Bradley to Noel Wells. She caught his hand and, running, took him round to the front entrance of the garage. Out came the car, young Tom at the wheel.

“That railway-carriage bungalow!” said Mrs. Bradley. “Never mind the police!”

“Good Lord!” said Tom, impressed. Luckily they did not meet a single policeman on the way. The car pulled up outside the gate of Helm’s residence, and all three ran up the pebbled path. It was Mrs. Bradley who thundered on the door. It was Tom who gripped a spanner purposefully in his right hand.

Helm opened the door. He was wearing a dressing-gown. His unstockinged feet were encased in carpet slippers.

“Go back to the car, Tom,” said Mrs. Bradley over her shoulder. Tom obeyed.

“So sorry, dear lady,” said Helm, with a nervous titter. “Just going to have a bath. No idea anyone would think of calling. A nice hot sea-water bath for my rheumatism. So good. So comforting.”

“I’ve brought my son,” said Mrs. Bradley. “But we certainly must not disturb you now. Come, Noel, dear.”

Wells lolled his tongue like an idiot and hoped he was not overdoing it. He was tall enough to see over Helm’s shoulder. The bungalow appeared to be empty. The steaming bath of water was in the centre of the floor. As though obeying Mrs. Bradley, he turned and walked uncertainly down the garden path.

“Dear lady, the loss is mine,” Helm was saying.

“Go in, go in! You’ll catch your death of cold,” said Mrs. Bradley. “Have your nice bath. I’ll come another day.”

She gave him a little push and pulled the door to. It slammed. Noel Wells was round on the bedroom side of the house, peering in at the window, his long nose touching the glass.

“ ‘Sister Ann, Sister Ann, do you see anyone coming?’ ” said Mrs. Bradley behind him.

“I’m sure she’s here,” said Wells. “I wish we could warn her.”

Mrs. Bradley did not hear him. She was round at the living-room window, watching Helm. He was an interesting study. He was positively dancing with rage. His hands clawed the air. Three times he kicked the bath with his slippered foot.

“Come, child,” said Mrs. Bradley to Noel Wells, as she came up behind him. Wells shook his head.

“I’m staying here until that woman comes out,” he said, “and then I’m going to tell her who Helm is. He can’t see us. It’s nearly dark out here.”

“You’ll wait too long, dear child,” said Mrs. Bradley gently. “While Helm was opening the door to us I saw her leave the bungalow by way of the bedroom window. She’s half-way to Bognor by now.”

“But she must have been undressed,” protested Wells.

“She wasn’t. She was wearing a knitted suit and a waterproof, and she is fairly young,” said Mrs. Bradley gravely. “Get into the car as quickly as you can, and we’ll follow her. Right away, Tom!”

The woman, whoever she was, had disappeared, however, for they overtook nobody answering to the given description. Mrs. Bradley clicked her tongue. The foolish girl, whoever she was, might at least have been given a friendly warning, if they could have found her.