Death at the Opera

“I deduced it,” said Mrs. Bradley with a mirthless cackle. “I wish you’d teach Hurstwood.”

Poole grinned.

“The Head would have a fit. ‘Brutal and degrading sport,’ exalting the physical or animal nature at the expense of the spiritual or godlike—and all that sort of wash you know. But I will teach him if he likes. Do the chap good. What is he? Light-weight?”

“My dear child, how do I know?” inquired Mrs. Bradley.

“Thought you might have deduced it,” retorted the irrepressible Mathematics Master, nearly cannoning into Mr. Smith in the doorway. Smith shut the door behind his colleague and then stood in the centre of the study. He looked round nervously, as though to make sure that Mr. Poole really had gone out.

“Don’t be peevish, child,” said Mrs. Bradley briskly, “but when you cannoned into Miss Ferris and broke her glasses, were you made up ready to go on the stage?”

“Of course not,” said Smith. “The woman wanted to do me, but I said I wasn’t going to put up with that mess on my face longer than I could help, to please anybody! Have you ever been made up as the ‘Mikado’?”

“Never,” replied Mrs. Bradley, with perfect truth.

“Tons of muck!” said Smith violently. “Tons and tons of beastly sticky muck! I wasn’t going to have any. Told her I’d come back half-way through the Act. Why, even my nose had to be enlarged with modelling clay! Horrible!”

“Why were you in such a hurry that you collided with Miss Ferris without seeing her?”

“I couldn’t see her because it was dark. Didn’t you hear about one of the lights going west? That’s why, on thinking over things, I think it’s silly to attach so much importance to the fact that that light in the water-lobby had given up the ghost. Still, it’s no business of mine.”

“So you didn’t even know that Miss Ferris had cut herself?” asked Mrs. Bradley.

“No. How could I? I had no matches—nothing. And it was as black as soot along there. I apologized and went on the way I was going, and she accepted the apology, laughed and said it was all right. She said she had another pair of glasses at school, and that she wasn’t hurt, and went on the way she was going. That’s all I know.”

“I see. Thank you. Yes, that’s all,” said Mrs. Bradley. “If you’re going back to your class, I wish you’d send somebody for Hurstwood, It will save the secretary a journey.”

“Right,” said Smith; and in due course Hurstwood appeared.

“Child,” said Mrs. Bradley, “on which side of the stage were you when you encountered Miss Ferris and lent her your handkerchief to bandage her eye?”

“On the same side as the men’s and boys’ dressing-rooms,” Hurstwood answered. “You asked me that before,” he reminded her.

“Not exactly that,” said Mrs. Bradley. “Tell me, child, what would Mr. Smith want on the other side of the stage, then?”

Hurstwood grinned.

“I expect he went to potter about in his beloved art-room. That’s round the other side, you know.”

Suddenly the full significance of what he was saying seemed to dawn on the boy. His face went white.

“I say! That clay in the waste-pipe!” he said.

“Exactly,” said Mrs. Bradley. “And now tell me what on earth possessed you to tamper with the electric light in that water-lobby when you came off the stage that time?”

“Which time?” said Hurstwood, suddenly sullen and obstinate. Mrs. Bradley, who had met this boyish trick before, said gently:

“You know which time I mean. Don’t be foolish, child.”

“Well, I wanted my handkerchief back—I thought I could dry it on the hot-water pipes—so I went to the water- lobby, to which I thought Miss Ferris would have gone, to see whether I could find her and get it back. When I got to the water-lobby—well, I’ve told you all this before!” cried the boy. “I’m not going to say anything different, so what’s the use of going over it again?”

“I suggest,” said Mrs. Bradley calmly, “that you switched on the electric light, although you thought nobody could be in the lobby in the dark, and that, finding Miss Ferris’s body there, you deliberately tampered with the light so that nobody else should see what you had seen. Isn’t that right? It proves to me, also, that you believed you had discovered the identity of the murderer. What do you say, child?”

“How could I tamper with the beastly thing? I had no tools!” The boy was flushed and thoroughly belligerent now.

Mrs. Bradley sighed.

“True,” said she, as though crestfallen. “True, child. Very well. That’s all, then. Ask Mr. Kemball whether he can spare me five minutes, will you?”

Mr. Kemball was annoyed. Hurstwood’s entrance was the third interruption he had suffered during a lesson which, in any case, only lasted thirty-five instead of the customary forty-five minutes, so that he arrived on the Headmaster’s mat in a frame of mind that can best be described as thoroughly ill-tempered.

“You sent for me, Headmaster?” he began in a tone which was calculated to render Mr. Cliffordson red with the conscious guilt of having lured a painstaking teacher from the path of duty.

“Come in, Mr. Kemball,” said Mrs. Bradley, in her deepest, richest tones. Kemball, deflated, entered and stood awkwardly. He was a thin, anxious-looking individual, gawky and spasmodic in his movements, and had the scraggy look common to Methodist local preachers. He was not as well-dressed as the other masters Mrs. Bradley had already interviewed, and had the harassed appearance of all middle-aged men whose family responsibilities are still widening, but whose salaries have already reached the maximum.