Death at the Opera

been found Not Guilty of drowning his wife for her insurance money. She nodded.

“Ah, I thought you would,” said Miss Lincallow. “Well, this Helm is that Cutler, and when I heard that my Miss Sooley here had given that monster the school address where Calma was teaching, I thought the least I could do was to send the poor girl a warning. That Sooley’s a fool. He happened to mention the school, and straight away she tells him that my niece is there.”

“You are referring to the telegram you sent?” said Mrs. Bradley, returning to the warning message.

“That’s right. I sent a telegram, and then I wrote a letter. Why, when you come to think of it, if the poor girl hadn’t committed suicide she might easily have been murdered by that wretch!”

“Where is Mr. Cutler now?” asked Mrs. Bradley, not attempting to cope with the implications of the last of Miss Lincallow’s remarks.

“If you ever heard such boldness, he is in this very town. At least, he’s taken one of those railway-carriage bungalows further along the beach, just out of Bognor. I keep wondering whether the Council ought to know. What do you think?”

“Do you know the name of the bungalow?” asked Mrs. Bradley.

“ ‘Clovelly,’ ” replied Miss Lincallow without hesitation. “But don’t you go anywhere near it. I shouldn’t, really. I believe he’s dangerous.”

For the only surviving relative of the unfortunate Miss Ferris, Miss Lincallow did not appear to be unduly grief- stricken, Mrs. Bradley decided. She retired to her room after lunch, and made a note of the most enlightening points which had occurred to her as a result of the interview. She dismissed as fantastic a notion that Miss Lincallow was relieved rather than otherwise at the thought that her niece was dead, but it recurred so strongly that she sought further opportunity for enlightenment.

“Tell me,” she said to Miss Sooley, who was what might be called Miss Lincallow’s junior partner in the running of the boarding-house, “what do you suppose Miss Lincallow thought when she received the news of her niece’s suicide?”

It was the kind of idiotic question which might evoke answer false or true, or it might evoke no answer at all, Mrs. Bradley reflected, as, fixing her sharp black eyes on Miss Sooley’s round, red countenance, she waited for some kind of response. Miss Sooley looked startled, twisted the black silk apron she wore into a crumpled mess, shook her head, and said that she was sure she did not know. This was a sufficiently promising beginning, from Mrs. Bradley’s point of view, to warrant further research, so, with a basilisk grin intended to be propitiatory but having the result of causing Miss Sooley to retreat two steps and gaze wildly round at the bell-push with the indescribable feeling of one who had stepped on the crocodile in mistake for a log of wood, she continued:

“You mean you weren’t there when the Headmaster’s telegram arrived?”

“Oh, yes, I was,” returned Miss Sooley, somewhat comforted by Mrs. Bradley’s dulcet tones, which issued so unexpectedly from the beaky little mouth. “It was I who held the smelling bottle ready as she went to open the nasty thing.”

“Ah,” said Mrs. Bradley, managing to introduce a sympathetic inflection into the monosyllable.

“Oh, yes,” went on Miss Sooley. “And all she said was to ask me to tell the boy there would be no reply.”

“And then?” prompted Mrs. Bradley, after a pause.

“That’s all,” said Miss Sooley. “As sure as I’m standing here, that’s all she said. And her having been to see the poor girl only the evening before.”

“She went to see her on the evening of her death, do you mean?” said Mrs. Bradley, who found it difficult to assimilate this amazing piece of information. Miss Sooley nodded impressively.

“Didn’t Miss Ferris write and ask her auntie and me to come and see her act in the school concert?” she demanded. “Here, I’ll get the letter. It was sent to me, as a matter of fact, because Miss Ferris thought I could persuade her auntie to come, me being quite a theatre-goer in my young days. Come upstairs a minute.”

In the pure human joy of having something to impart, she appeared to have forgotten her nervousness, and ran upstairs, followed closely by Mrs. Bradley. For Miss Lincallow actually to have gone to see Miss Ferris act in The Mikado on the night of the murder, and then to have betrayed so little emotion upon the receipt of the Headmaster’s telegram announcing her death, was sufficiently extraordinary, but even more startling was the question which Mrs. Bradley put to herself as she ran up three flights of stairs. Had they managed to stay to see the whole of the performance and then had they made that maddening cross-country journey back to Bognor by train on the same night? The Headmaster would have sent off his telegram at about half-past nine on the morning after the murder. They had been back in Bognor to receive it. There was a certain amount of mystery in those statements which Mrs. Bradley wanted to have cleared up as soon as possible. Had Miss Lincallow not asked to see her niece after the performance?

The letter, produced from some hidden store of correspondence by the now thoroughly excited Miss Sooley, was short, but there was no mistaking the genuine desire of the writer for her aunt’s company at the school entertainment.

“Dear Aunt Sooley,” it began (“she always called me her aunt, the same as Miss Lincallow, but of course I’m no relation really,”) interpolated the recipient of the communication, peering short-sightedly over Mrs. Bradley’s shoulder at the even, legible, schoolmistress-careful script.

“I hope you and auntie are well. I am still feeling the great benefit derived from my very delightful holiday with you. Next week, on Friday evening, we are doing Gilbert & Sullivan’s Mikado. I enclose two tickets. You will see the time of the performance on them. I know it is a very long and tiresome journey, but I do wish you and auntie would come. I have one of the chief parts, that of ‘Katisha,’ the daughter-in- law-elect of the Mikado of Japan. It is an extremely humorous part. Do please try and persuade auntie. I could arrange with my landlady for you to stay the night at my lodgings, as it will be too late for you to get back to Bognor when the performance is over, if you would not mind a double bed just for the one night.”

It ended, “With love, Calma Ferris,” and there was a postscript: “Do come.”

“And you went?” said Mrs. Bradley. Miss Sooley nodded, glanced at the two closed doors on the landing, put one finger to her lips and then whispered:

“Miss Lincallow is resting. She’ll be in her room an hour at least. Come down to the second sitting-room.”