Death at the Opera

“Tell me when you feel better, my boy,” he said paternally. The sergeant said doggedly:

“I can see that’s how it would strike anybody, sir, but, all the same…” His voice tailed off, but he shook his head as one who had his own convictions and meant to abide by them. ii

Mrs. Bradley, seated in the room which had once been rented by Calma Ferris, was pitting reason against instinct, to the obstinate but ultimate defeat of the former.

“The woman was and is a liar born and bred,” she told herself, referring to the mother of Susie Cozens. “But, on the other hand, she may, just for once, have been telling the truth, and, if she was, there are solid grounds for believing in Cutler’s guilt.”

The point at issue was the story told by Mrs. Cozens of the visit of Cutler to the Manor House on the afternoon of the girl’s death. If Cutler had visited Mrs. Cozens at the Manor House instead of at her own cottage in order to inquire after Susie, there were strong reasons for assuming that he had already met Susie and learned from her where her mother was to be found. If this were so, his reason for visiting the mother could have been nothing but an attempt to create an alibi after he had murdered the girl. It was merely fortuitous that Susie and her mother had gone to the squire’s house that afternoon. Cutler could not by any possible combination of circumstances have known that they would be there unless he had encountered Susie and learned the facts from her. He could not have learned the facts from her until after about half-past three on the day of her death, and he could not have met her between that hour and the time she reached the squire’s house in the car driven by the chauffeur, Roy, unless the car had stopped somewhere on the way. The time taken to drive the distance of three- and-a-half miles between the Cozens’s cottage and the Manor House—an hour all told—was certainly long enough to have allowed for stops, but, on the other hand, the density and dangers of the fog had made it imperative that Roy should proceed at something less than a walking pace along a road unlighted except for the big outside light and the lighted windows of the “Swinging Sign.” The inn, roughly speaking, half-way between the cottage and the Manor House.

Mrs. Bradley decided to interview Roy.

“You aren’t going back to Bognor again, surely to goodness!” exclaimed the landlady, who had once been Calma Ferris’s friend. Mrs. Bradley cackled happily.

“Oh, but I am!” she said, and at lunch-time on the following day she was seated at a table in the window of Malachi Spratt’s public dining-room, placidly eating cold beef and pickles, and potatoes boiled in their jackets. She was waited on by Malachi Spratt in person, and to him she reopened the subject of the murder. Malachi was inclined to shy away from all mention of the topic, but Mrs. Bradley gradually led him back to the subject.

All that resulted, however, was his reiteration of the fact that he and his wife and son had neither seen nor heard Susie Cozens’s arrival at the inn. This was the utmost that she could get out of him, so she went to the Manor House not very much the wiser for her talk. She had informed Malachi that John would certainly be released. She was surprised, in fact, that the magistrates had committed him for trial, but she supposed that the police had pressed for it in the absence of all other suspects.

Ham Roy was off duty. He willingly described the drive in the dense fog from Susie Cozen’s home to the house of his employer, but denied emphatically that they had met anyone on the road except a man who had lost his way in the fog and had asked to be directed. Roy was unable to direct him and had not seen his face clearly enough to be able to recognize him again, for he was wearing a waterproof coat and a check cap, the one with the collar turned up and the other with the peak pulled down. He had offered the man a lift as far as the squire’s house, but this had been refused. Susie, according to Roy, had given no sign that she knew the man, but the chauffeur admitted that he had not taken much notice of Susie at the time, never for one moment imagining the possibility that Susie and the stranger might be acquainted.

There remained, then, Mrs. Bradley noted, the following possibilities:

First, that the “lost” man had been Helm (otherwise Cutler) and that his inquiry might have been a genuine one, or, more likely, in view of what had happened, he had followed up the car—not at all a difficult matter, since, in a fog so dense, he could probably manage to walk more quickly than the car could travel—from Susie’s home. This meant he knew that she was in it, but did not know where she was going. In other words, he did not know where to find her when he wanted her. At some point on the journey he must have managed to pass the car, turn about, and accost it.

The second point was in the nature of a query. Had Helm and Susie walked or driven back to the “Swinging Sign”? This would have been immaterial from the point of view of the time taken over the journey, since walking or driving would be equally slow, and, on a country road, almost equally dangerous on such a day, but it would be important if anyone had seen them together between the Manor House and the inn. It seemed certain that, as no sound had been heard by Malachi, Dora or John, the two had walked.

The chief difficulty in the way of proving Helm’s guilt was the apparent absence of motive. Blackmail by Susie on the strength of what she had learned from rummaging among his possessions at the boarding-house was not at all likely, Mrs. Bradley thought. What was required was that Susie should have discovered somebody whom he had actually done to death without having been discovered. There might be such a person, and Susie Cozens might have found out the details; but how had this been accomplished? What evidence could she have found?

Mrs. Bradley went to interview Mrs. Cozens. Nothing could shake the mother’s story that Cutler had come to her, and had asked to be allowed to speak to Susie.

“Ever so cut up he seemed when I said she had gone,” Mrs. Cozens explained. “He didn’t stop long. Said it was just his luck. All the nice girls loved a silor, or some such rubbidge, ma’am, and him a commercial if ever I set eyes on one. Handsome in a bold, pop-eyed sort of way, ma’am, if you like them like that. Well, everyone to their fancy, and if he got my Susie into trouble in Bognor or up in London, or anywhere else, she’d ask for it, that’s one thing about our Sue. Bold and daring, though I’m her mother that says it. But if it should turn out to be him, well, my picture in the papers, that I do expect, and no odds whatever to no one that I know of.”

Mrs. Bradley came away absolutely convinced in her own mind that the woman really had seen Cutler. If this could be proved, Cutler had made a terrible blunder.

There remained the extraordinary coincidence of Mrs. Hampstead’s death in the ornamental lake. Over this problem Mrs. Bradley spent hours and hours of thought. Several conclusions, but none different in essence from the rest, came to her mind, but she dismissed them as the result of softening of the brain.

“If only I could solve the mystery of Calma Ferris’s death to my own satisfaction,” she said to Alceste Boyle when next they met, “I believe the other affairs would solve themselves. No, I’m not being forgetful or tactless, dear child,” she went on, as Alceste flushed and drew back at the reference to the death of Mrs. Hampstead.

Alceste did not reply immediately, and when next she spoke she volunteered the information that, during Mrs. Bradley’s absence at Lamkin, Moira Malley had returned to school.