her. Helm had offered her marriage, by which ultimately he might have gained something, but, as matters stood at the time of Miss Ferris’s death, he could gain nothing whatever by that death.
Miss Camden was the most likely person to have committed murder, it seemed. She was extravagant enough, perhaps, to waste life as well as money; she was perverse, ill-dispositioned and thwarted; she had hated the dead woman and had intended to be revenged on her…
At this point Mrs. Bradley discovered that she had to change at the next station, so she stowed away notebook and pencil and sat staring out of the window on to the flying landscape. Greys and browns predominated in the colouring of vegetation and sky. It ought to have been a dispiriting reflection that winter was only just beginning, but Mrs. Bradley, who was insensible to changes in the weather, and was equally undisturbed by the climates of Greenland and Southern India—she had experienced both —did not find it so.
Instead, when the train drew up at the next station, she hopped blithely on to the platform and was greatly surprised to find a young friend of hers, the Reverend Noel Wells, seated upon the nearest bench, his long black- trousered legs uncanonically sprawling, his soft black hat tilted over his eyes, his mouth wide open and an expression of imbecile contentment on his vacuous, sleeping face. Mrs. Bradley set down her small suit-case and prodded him gently with the ferrule of her neat umbrella.
“Well, child,” she said. Wells sat up and stared.
“Well, I’m blowed,” he said. “What are
“I am chasing a murderer,” said Mrs. Bradley, concisely. “And you?”
“Doing a locum job at Bognor. At least, it’s a little village outside. I’ve got to go to Bognor and then walk or bus or something. Wouldn’t be bad if it were August, of course.”
“And Daphne?” inquired Mrs. Bradley.
“South of France. You knew we were married? I say, you know, this is a bit of luck! I suppose you’re not going to Bognor by any chance?”
“But I am, dear child,” said Mrs. Bradley. “This is splendid. Listen, child. If the circumstances warranted it would you be prepared to practise a little innocent deception?”
“Rather. What is it!” inquired the young curate.
“Pretend to be my son,” said Mrs. Bradley.
“Rather. I get you, although you might not think I could rise to it,” said Wells. “You want to persuade someone that you’re a bit of a goop, and you think that the party will take one good look at me, shake his or her head sadly, observe pensively, ‘Like mother, like son,’ and that’ll be that.”
“You know, child,” said Mrs. Bradley, in all sincerity, as she stepped back a pace to get a better look at him, “there are moments when your intelligence staggers me.”
“It’s being married to Daphne,” the young curate explained modestly. “Bucks up the intellect no end. I’m supposed to be having a pop at a bishopric, you know.”
He laughed, and they talked about matters of interest common to them both until the train came in.
“And now,” said Mrs. Bradley, when they were settled in opposite corners of the compartment, “for a little further investigation into the case of Mr. Donald Smith.” And, without taking any further notice of the Reverend Noel Wells, who proceeded to smoke his pipe and gaze peacefully out of the window, she took out her notebook and pencil, turned up the pages she had devoted to the evidence supplied by and on behalf of the Senior Art Master, and reconsidered it.
Smith worried her. He was almost as obvious a choice for the murderer as Miss Camden. Motive and opportunity here were strong, she decided, again. The whole of the First Act had been Mr. Smith’s opportunity, the damaged clay figure of the Psyche his chief motive. But there were snags. Mr. Smith was not the type to brood for two or three days over a wrong. If he had been going to kill Calma Ferris for damaging his work he would have snatched up the nearest heavy object and brought it down on the top of her head there and then, Mrs. Bradley decided. Besides, the motive in his case was not so strong at a second glance as it had seemed at first sight. He was not interested in that particular figure, it appeared, except as a money-making proposition. It had been commissioned, and he was in debt, and with the money he obtained from the sale of the commissioned work he was going to pay his debts. Well, the clay figure had been damaged past repair by Calma Ferris, but Alceste Boyle had come to the rescue, lent the money and comforted the artist.
True, Smith had been the person to cause Calma Ferris’s injury, but it was permissible to believe that the collision in the darkened corridor was accidental. It was not to be supposed that Smith imagined he could seriously injure the unfortunate woman by charging down the corridor, since he would not even have known she was there until they collided; for there was nothing to show that he had asked Calma Ferris to come that way or that he could have seized upon the exact moment of her coming. He might possibly have foreseen that she would be wearing eyeglasses with her make-up, but not that she would cut her face; nor that she would have gone to that particular water-lobby to bathe the cut, since it was not the only place on the ground-floor behind the scenes where running water was available.
Smith might have tampered with one or both of the electric lights that failed, since he had plenty of time on his hands, but it was fantastic to suppose he had done so before the murder, unless he had experimented on the corridor light that went wrong in order to make certain that he could cut out the one in the lobby when the time came.
His plea of a bad memory was suspicious, if he were the murderer, but, on the other hand, people of his peculiarly erratic, nervous type often did have bad memories.
The business of the modelling clay from the art-room which had been used to stop up the waste-pipe reacted for and against Smith, Mrs. Bradley decided. On the one hand, it was the kind of non-porous agent which would have occurred to a man who had been using it for modelling purposes a short time previously, but, on the other hand, would any murderer have been so foolish as to use something which so obviously suggested his guilt?
Mrs. Bradley, shaking her head over all the classic instances of murderers’ foolhardiness, reluctantly confessed to herself that Smith might easily have used the modelling clay to stop up the waste-pipe. One more thought presented itself in connection with the clay. Had someone else used the clay, foreseeing that its discovery in the waste-pipe might incriminate Smith?
It was an interesting question which, up to the moment, it was impossible to answer. The very proximity of the art-room to the water-lobby might in itself have suggested the clay, and the murderer might never have considered for an instant that the discovery of the clay might implicate Smith.
