Death at the Opera

“I do believe you, dear child,” she said. “I perceive that if you had been Calma Ferris’s murderer you would have given the game away long ago.”

chapter fifteen: deduction

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i

It was Miss Sooley who made the momentous discovery. She took the newspaper to Miss Lincallow and, pointing to the photograph of the drowned girl at Lamkin, said excitedly:

“Surely that’s the maid we used to have?” It was. Miss Lincallow verified it, and, what was more, went round to the police station with the newspaper under her arm, a stout ashplant in her right hand, “in case I am set upon by that wretch in the street,” and triumph in her heart.

Names, dates and descriptions were compared and checked, the girl’s mother was interrogated afresh, and it was established beyond doubt that the girl had been in Miss Lincallow’s service at the beginning of the summer holiday.

“Dismissed for making herself too free with the gentlemen guests,” Miss Lincallow explained, “and with that Cutler in particular.”

It was a valuable clue. Following it up, it proved that the girl had been discovered tampering with property belonging to some of the visitors at the boarding-house, and particularly that of Helm, and that for this reason she had been dismissed, and had gone home to live, after she lost another situation in London for dishonesty and for having been arrested for shop-lifting. Unfortunately, although it could be proved that the dead girl and Cutler had been to some extent acquainted with one another, the police were as far as ever from being able to put their fingers on a motive substantial enough to be regarded as Helm’s reason for murdering the girl.

“H’m! What about her putting the screw on Cutler some way until he got fed up with her?” suggested Detective-Sergeant Ross to Detective-Inspector Breardon, when every scrap of information they could wangle or frighten out of Miss Sooley and Miss Lincallow had been vouchsafed them.

“Sounds all right,” said his superior. “The trouble is to prove it. Besides, I don’t see what she could put the screw on about. He didn’t harm those two funny old dames, where she was in service. I don’t see any reason for blackmailing Cutler. In any case, motive or no motive, there’s the question of tracing him to that inn on that particular Sunday, you know. That beastly fog has about done for us, I reckon. Even Spratt’s father and mother, who would do anything, up to sticking their own necks in the hangman’s noose, to get their son released, can no more explain the drowning of that girl in their bathroom than I can. They saw nobody; they heard nobody. The public bar wasn’t open, but the side entrance was unlocked as usual, for the girl to come in to have her bath. Both of them were having a lie down upstairs. We’re up against a blank wall,” said Breardon morosely. “We can fake up a charge against young Spratt all right, because, although he says he was out in the garage, there’s nobody to swear to it. But a good lawyer will make mincemeat of our case against him, especially the jealousy motive. Besides, between ourselves, I’m certain the lad didn’t do it. I reckon he was in the garage and never saw them come into the inn. We’re holding him because he had the opportunity for the crime; but, come to that, so had his father and mother. Neither of ’em liked the idea of having the girl for their daughter-in-law, you know. What about them?”

“Oh, Cutler did it, all right,” said Ross. “But we’ll not be able to fix it on him, I’m thinking, sir.”

“Well, we’ll have a jolly good try,” said Breardon, who was red-haired and very resentful of newspaper comment on the methods of the police. “I shall have another talk with that chauffeur, What’s-his-name. He used to take the girl out in his employer’s car, I’ll bet. Perhaps they met Cutler some time, and things got said. You never know, and a nod’s as good as a wink in some of these murder cases, my lad.”

Accordingly Roy was again questioned, but he was certain that on their very infrequent joy-rides they had never met anybody with whom his companion entered into conversation. He gave it as his opinion, which the police could take or leave as they chose, that if Cutler and the girl had met on the Sunday afternoon, they had met by accident and the drowning had been an unpremeditated crime. His difficulty, he said, was to imagine why Susie had ever taken the fellow into the inn with her. The inspector listened patiently, but passed no comment, and Roy was allowed to go. But when he had departed:

“Why shouldn’t he be the murderer?” inquired Breardon suddenly of the sergeant.

“Because he’s got an alibi, sir. He went back to fetch the old woman, the girl’s mother, and he did fetch her. Besides, where’s the motive?”

“Sweet on the girl, wasn’t he? Weren’t he and young Spratt rivals or something at one time?”

“Jealousy crime? Won’t do, sir. He’d more likely, to have killed the other fellow—the arrested man—than the girl.”

“Not necessarily. He could have killed her to make sure the other bloke didn’t get her. They do it in Spain, don’t they?”

“Yes, but not in England, sir. It wouldn’t be decent!”

“All right, Sergeant. You know,” said his superior, grinning. Ross, unperturbed, smiled dutifully, and then remarked:

“You know that inquest in December, sir, at Hillmaston School?”

“The teacher who committed suicide? Yes.”

“I wouldn’t mind betting that was murder, sir, if the coroner had known his job. She was the niece of that woman who told us about this girl being in her service in the summer. The niece could have met Cutler, sir. She spent her summer holiday with her aunt.”

The inspector smiled ironically and patted him on the back.