Death at the Opera

The second sitting-room contained a settee and two easy-chairs, all of a period sufficiently far back in history for its furniture to be obsolete, but not sufficiently removed from the present day for it to be respectable from a collector’s point of view. There was also a book-case crammed with commentaries on the New Testament, the Victorian poets in faded bindings, some light reading, but of an improving character (Sunday School prizes won by Miss Ferris between the ages of seven and thirteen, said Mrs. Bradley to herself); and the Lives of several obscure divines. In addition there were a large deal sideboard stained mahogany-colour and bearing a large, ornate, empty epergne, two pictures of rough seas at Hastings, and a depressing oleograph of a whiskered gentleman grasping the back of a chair (“Miss Ferris’s father,” thought Mrs. Bradley). A large writing- desk, a small piano, three small chairs with knobby backs and shiny leather seats, an enormous dining-table and a footstool, completed the furnishing, and made a curiously depressing ensemble.

Mrs. Bradley selected the smaller easy-chair and seated herself. Miss Sooley occupied a small chair, folded her hands in her lap, and prepared to unfold the tale.

“I didn’t have half the job persuading her I thought I should,” she began. “She said, as soon as I showed her the letter, how much she’d like to go and how Calma was coming out since she’d met Mr. Helm in the summer here. Then I said why should we not go? But she said it was too far, and too many changes on the train; and then I had a real brain-wave. I said why should we not, just for once, hire Mr. Willis’s car? He would oblige us cheaply, I said, owing to our getting him a lot of custom with the visitors in the summer, what with private hire to the station and trips round and about for those visitors that are afraid to go in motor-coaches and too proud to take the bus to places of interest in the neighbourhood—and, of course, Mrs. Bradley, Bognor is very well situated for places of interest—so that if he could not oblige us, who can?”

As the question appeared to be directed at her, Mrs. Bradley said: “Quite, quite,” in conciliatory tones, and the narrative proceeded.

“Well, we knocked him down to two pounds seventeen and sixpence, no tips, and the driver to be responsible for garaging the car at Mr. Willis’s expense, and really, you could hardly grumble at that, especially as we understood from the letter that poor Calma quite expected to pay for our lodgings herself. So at half-past ten that Friday morning we set off.”

She paused.

“Very pleased at the idea of your outing?” Mrs. Bradley suggested. The question had the desired effect. Miss Sooley’s round red face clouded and her eyes looked troubled. She shook her head.

“We weren’t on speaking terms. Very unfortunate it was. Miss Lincallow thought it would be nice to send Miss Ferris a telegram to say we were coming, and, as luck would have it, that made me say, just careless-like:

“ ‘Then she’ll have all sorts of surprises.’ Well, though perhaps it isn’t for me to say so, Miss Lincallow is a little bit nosey and suspicious. Well, you have to be if you take in visitors at a seaside resort, even a high-class one, you know, Mrs. Bradley. So she pounced on me directly for saying that, and asked me what I meant.

“ ‘I mean this,’ I said. ‘ That saucy Mr. Helm was on the promenade yesterday, and he stopped when he saw me, raised his hat, quite the gentleman, asked after you, Miss Lincallow—very correct he was—and then he turned the talk on to Miss Ferris, and really, before I realized what he was getting out of me, he was scribbling her school address on the back of an envelope he took out of his pocket, and was raising his hat and wishing me good day as cool as you please, and before I could find my breath sufficient to run after him and ask him what he wanted it for —because I could just imagine, Miss Lincallow, what you would say— he had stepped into the Chichester bus as it was starting, and off he had gone. Of course I didn’t give it him. He happened to mention the school, and I said she was there.

“My word, she was cross with me. You would scarcely credit, Mrs. Bradley, what a temper she has got when she likes! Anyhow, it all ended up with her sending the telegram to warn poor Calma against him, and when I said ought we not to let her know we were coming, she said she could not afford two telegrams, and that what could not be said for a shilling had better go unsaid, and that she wasn’t made of money, even if I was, but that she hoped she knew her duty to her niece, even if I didn’t, and then, at last, out it came. It seems she had been talking to Mr. Willis about the car, and somehow, talking of poor Calma, the conversation had got round to Mr. Helm, and Mr. Willis said surely she knew about Mr. Helm? And she said, ‘No. What?’ And he whispered it. That he was really that monster Cutler, who had drowned his wife in the bath for her insurance, and had been acquitted because there wasn’t enough evidence to hang a dog. The thing that spoilt her temper the most, though, was when she found that no way at all could she get the warning to Calma into a shilling telegram. Not that she is really mean with money, but she has her little foibles, and twopence or threepence extra on a telegram is one of them. Of course, she was a bit cross about poor Calma coming to us for her summer holiday, really. She never let on to me about it, but I guessed.

“ ‘Come here to have a holiday on the cheap! Wants the best room for the least money just because she’s my niece,’ she said to me one day. I think she thought Miss Ferris might have helped with the visitors a bit, too, but poor Calma never offered to. Still, her auntie was very nice to her face, I will say that.”

“So the fact that you went by car accounts for your having been able to return to Bognor immediately after the entertainment,” said Mrs. Bradley, who was getting far more information from Miss Sooley’s rambling discourse than she could possibly have expected.

“Well, thereby hangs a tale,” said Miss Sooley portentously. She was obviously enjoying herself to the full. “It was like this. Mr. Willis himself drove us, as Miss Lincallow wouldn’t trust herself with young Tom, and, Calma not expecting us, we had tea in the town and got Mr. Willis to drive us on to the school in nice time for the opening of the doors at seven o’clock. But the disappointment was that he lost the way, although we had been directed, and what with it being dark, and the school set in the middle of rather good-class roads, very quiet, you know, and for more than a mile and a half nobody to ask the way of, and Mr. Willis surly and Miss Lincallow what you might call annoyed to think we were paying all that for the car and not seeing the show, after all, that when we did arrive at the school gates she said she wouldn’t go in. She gave Mr. Willis her ticket, as I wouldn’t go in alone, and him and I went in nearly at the end of the first part. We hadn’t sat down hardly five minutes when down came the curtain and up went the lights, and everybody round us laughing and talking and eating sweets, and Miss Lincallow nursing her crossness out in the car, and no sign of Calma, either on the stage or off it. Well, I was ever so disappointed, but right in the very middle, just as I was having a really good laugh at that ‘Ko-Ko,’ up comes a nice little chap with a message. ‘The doorkeeper says there’s a lady outside wants you to go home now.’

“It was my lady Lincallow, of course, sick of waiting and having caught her death of cold out there at that time of the night, in December, too, and small wonder at it! Anyway, out we had to go, Mr. Willis and me, and off we drove, straight back here without seeing Calma or the opera or anything, except if it ever comes to Bognor I shall go and see it, Lincallow or no Lincallow, temper or no temper,” concluded Miss Sooley with unlooked-for spirit.

After being compelled to listen to some unimportant details relative to the drive home, Mrs. Bradley escaped to her room, and spent the time that remained before the ringing of the bell for tea in making notes. The most important points, she decided, were that Miss Lincallow had betrayed neither surprise nor agitation at the news of her niece’s death and that she had arrived at the school and had contrived to separate herself from her two companions before the interval; that was to say, before the finding of the body.