Death at the Opera

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“Well, it’s a funny business, and I for one shan’t be a bit surprised to hear that children are to be withdrawn from the school at the end of term because of it.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