Death at the Opera

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?”

chapter four: facts

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i

When the Headmaster’s letter arrived at the Stone House, Wandles Parva, Mrs. Bradley was breakfasting. Out in the garden, dimly perceived through a frosted casement window, the trees were leafless and the green grass swam nebulously between the bottom of the window and the sky.

There were three other letters by the side of Mrs. Bradley’s plate, and, having concluded her meal except for the last half-cup of coffee, she picked up the envelopes in turn, scrutinized them, then laid aside the one which contained Mr. Cliffordson’s urgent missive and dealt briefly with the others. The first envelope contained a publisher’s catalogue of psychological and psycho-analytical treatises; the second was a begging letter; the third contained a cheque and the thanks of a grateful patient who, according to her family, had once been a candidate for a lunatic asylum, but was now, owing to Mrs. Bradley’s efforts, a useful, ornamental and popular member of society.

Mrs. Bradley threw everything on the fire except the cheque, on which she stood the sugar-basin as a paperweight, and then she opened Mr. Cliffordson’s envelope. She read his letter twice and then replaced it in the covering. It had been written before the inquest on Calma Ferris, and so he had not attempted to foreshadow what the verdict of the coroner’s jury might be, but he stated, in a firm, pedagogic and yet scholarly hand, that he was certain the unfortunate woman was the victim of murder. He gave all his reasons for coming to this terrible conclu- sion; said frankly that he did not want to drag in the police unless or until it was absolutely necessary, and promised to send Mrs. Bradley a telegram as soon as the verdict at the inquest was known.

Mrs. Bradley seated herself in an arm-chair beside the fire, picked up a bag which contained a half-finished woollen jumper in stripes of mauve and green, and began to knit. At the end of twenty minutes she rang the bell, and her maid Celestine appeared.

“I am going away for about three weeks,” said Mrs. Bradley.

“Bien, madame.”

“Pack suitable raiment for a school-mistress.”