out. But there was no sign of her anywhere. Time was getting short, so I went into the hall and found Miss Camden —all the staff sat together at the right-hand side of the hall as you look at the stage, so it was easy enough to spot her —got her out into the passage and tried to persuade her to take the part. She refused. I got her into the women-principals’ dressing-room to argue the point with her, but she stood firm. She said she could not undertake the part at a moment’s notice, and I didn’t blame her. She had been turned down in favour of Miss Ferris, you see, and I suppose she didn’t see why we should come moaning to her to get us out of a hole. In the end I took the part myself. It was the only solution. In case you suspect Miss Camden, I ought to say that she went back into the auditorium. I watched her enter the hall.”
“Thank you,” said Mrs. Bradley, and for the next two minutes both were busily engaged—Alceste in correcting a set of exercises and Mrs. Bradley in writing notes. At the end of the ten minutes Mrs. Bradley, having waited while Alceste finished marking a book, asked pointedly:
“Who sat on either side of Miss Camden during the First Act?”
“There was nobody on her right. She occupied the end seat in the row. She had been stewarding, you see. On the other side of her sat Mr. Pritchard, the Senior Science Master.”
“Ah!” said Mrs. Bradley, making a note of it. “And next to him?”
But this Alceste did not know, so Mrs. Bradley decided to waylay Mr. Pritchard after school was over, and ask him. She decided, too, to inquire about the electric light that had gone wrong. There were still several things in connection with Miss Ferris’s death which she did not understand. It must, she decided, have been entirely fortuitous that, owing to the failure of the light, a collision had occurred which resulted in Miss Ferris’s glasses being smashed and her face cut. Mrs. Bradley was fairly certain that Miss Ferris must have gone, not once, but at least twice to the water-lobby to bathe the cut, for it was inconceivable that the murder should have been premeditated; or rather, not so much that it could not have been premeditated, but that the murderer could have known beforehand that Miss Ferris would injure her face so that she was compelled to enter the water-lobby and so render herself liable to be done to death in the particular manner in which death had come to her.
The clay in the waste-pipe was the result of a deliberate act, and to that extent the murder was premeditated, but the murderer must have prepared for the crime between Miss Ferris’s first and second visit to the lobby. That meant, Mrs. Bradley decided, that the murderer was a person quick-witted enough to take advantage of the entirely fortuitous set of circumstances—i.e., the cut under Miss Ferris’s eye and the fact that she bathed it over a school washing-bowl—which Fate had provided, courageous enough to take the risk of being discovered in the act of murder, sufficiently determined to use the method which presented itself, cruel and barbarous though it proved to be, and—Mrs. Bradley was compelled to admit—self-possessed enough not to have been guilty of self- betrayal.
“Unless,” thought the little woman, “I haven’t met the murderer yet!”
Her thoughts returned to the electrician, whom already she was calling “Mr. Helm.”
To fill in the time at her disposal she sent for Miss Freely, who arrived looking scared.
“I don’t know anything about it, and I don’t want to,” was the burden of her song when Mrs. Bradley questioned her. Mrs. Bradley decided that she really did know nothing, for she was able to account satisfactorily for all the time she had spent off the stage by announcing that she had sneaked into the auditorium and sat on a stool next to the pianist. As this was corroborated by the pianist, who was one of the girl-prefects, Mrs. Bradley dismissed Miss Freely from her mind and sent for Mr. Pritchard.
“You repaired an electric switch during the First Act of
“Repaired nothing,” said Mr. Pritchard in a loud, cheerful voice. “I had one go at the damn’ thing before the opera started, and I was sent for again half-way through the Act. Couldn’t do anything by myself, so I fetched along the electrician fellow who was gassing with Smith, but the silly ass had no outfit with him. Sent him to borrow stuff from the caretaker, and never saw him again. Oh, Lord! that reminds me! I’ve still got the caretaker’s kit! What the thing wanted, I discovered in the end, was a new lamp, so I pinched a bulb out of one of the classrooms on the top floor.”
“Who sat next to you in the auditorium?” asked Mrs. Bradley.
“Miss Camden sat on my right, and there was an empty seat next to me, and then came some of the audience. We were really stewarding, you see, so we just took the end seats, where there were any, on that side.”
“Thank you,” said Mrs. Bradley. “You are an expert, I believe, at everything connected with electricity?”
Pritchard, a large, cheerful young man, laughed.
“Sounds like it if I deduce a fuse and it turns out to be a worn-out bulb, doesn’t it?” he said. “I’ve received a lot of undeserved applause for constructing a school wireless set, but it’s one or two of the boys who are the real star turns.”
“Hurstwood?” inquired Mrs. Bradley.
“Well, I don’t get him now. He’s gone over to Arts, you see. But in the Fifth he was rather good.”
“Did he know enough to disconnect a switch so that no light could come on?”
“Oh, Lord, yes. Anybody could do that!”
“Thank you.”
“Not at all. May one inquire—?”
“Yes,” replied Mrs. Bradley. “I am trying to find out who murdered Calma Ferris.”
“
“Yes.”
“Were you the first person to decide that she had been murdered?”
“No, young man.”
“H’m!” said Mr. Pritchard, walking to the door. Mrs. Bradley sat staring at it after he had closed it behind him. She stared at it for several minutes. When it opened to admit the Headmaster, she looked quite surprised. There was, however, a question she wanted to put to him.
