Death at the Opera

As a matter of historical accuracy, when dawned the Friday morning, the day of the performance, there were at least six people in school more perturbed than Calma Ferris. Hurstwood thought: “I wonder if she’ll split today? She keeps looking at me. I wonder whether she’s made up her mind yet? I wonder whether the Old Man will split to the governor if she splits to him? I wonder whether Gretta would care much if I got turfed out? Suppose the Old Man won’t let me sit for the Schol.? Wish I had the guts to tackle Ferris and see what she means to do! I won’t stick this much longer. Every time I look at Gretta now, or speak to her, I shall imagine that fool of a woman is sticking round, listening and snooping.”

Miss Cliffordson thought: “Uncle will never stand it. Out I shall go, and I couldn’t stick teaching in any school but this. It’s only just bearable here, and I do it frightfully badly, anyway. I don’t believe any woman would have me on the staff for more than a fortnight. I wonder whether I’d better marry Tommy Browning and put myself out of pain? Besides, there’s poor little Harry? Oh, hell and blast! What did she want to come poking round for, anyway? I suppose she’s on the Vigilance Committee somewhere—or something!”

Mr. Smith thought: “Six months’ work! Commissioned, too! How the devil am I going to pay Atkinson now? Serves me right for pinching school time, I suppose. If I’d done the stuff at home this couldn’t have happened. Blast the woman, all the same! I couldn’t have done it at home, anyway. The girl wouldn’t have come.”

Miss Camden thought: “Just wait until I get the chance to pay you out, Ferris, my love! That’s all! And I’ve slaved over the school netball. Slaved over it.”

Frederick Hampstead thought: “I suppose the Head will give me a testimonial before he sacks me. Or won’t he? Better ask for it now, before that condemned female blows the gaff, I think. I’ll see him during first lesson, when I haven’t a class. He can’t refuse if she hasn’t said anything yet. Perhaps she’ll keep her mouth shut, but I don’t think I can stay. It’ll be so difficult now.”

Alceste Boyle thought: “Why worry? She doesn’t know anything, and, anyway, I think she’s a good sort. It will damage Fred, not me, in any case. Thank God for widowhood! But I wish she didn’t know. It makes it in a way less wonderful, now someone knows.”

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,