“Influenza,” she replied in response to Mrs. Bradley’s next inquiry. “Child looks terribly ill.”
“I want to see her,” said Mrs. Bradley. Alceste began to protest, but the little old woman cut her short with unusual abruptness.
“It is necessary. I shan’t upset her.”
“When do you wish to interview her?” said Alceste, who was angry.
“Now, at once,” said Mrs. Bradley, returning to her usual manner, which was that of a well-disposed alligator.
“I shall remain in the room,” announced Alceste.
“Very well, dear child. I would very much prefer, for your own sake, that you did not, but if you have made up your mind, that settles it.”
“Moira shall settle it,” said Alceste. To her surprise, the girl, who was looking exceedingly ill, begged her to go, and leave Mrs. Bradley to conduct the interview.
“So I’m right,” thought Mrs. Bradley. Aloud she said: “Tell me everything about it, Moira.”
The girl looked frightened.
“Do you—know?” she asked. Mrs. Bradley pursed up her thin lips into a little beak and shook her head.
“I know, in one sense,” she said. “In fact, I know, in the only sense that matters. But—”
“Will anyone be hanged?” said the girl, in a suddenly loud and very hard voice. Mrs. Bradley shrugged her shoulders, and waited patiently. At last the story came. iii
“I’m telling you in confidence,” began the girl, “because I must tell somebody, and Mrs. Boyle wouldn’t understand.”
Mrs. Bradley accepted the implied compliment with a wave of her skinny claw.
“It was on the night of the opera. Oh, well, perhaps I’d better tell you everything. Mr. Smith called me back after drawing one day—we have it last period on Thursday afternoons; it’s mad, because of the light, but Mr. Cliffordson doesn’t like the Sixth to spend time on anything except examination subjects and music—and asked me to sit to him. I have always liked Mr. Smith, and I said I’d like to, and asked what it was I had to do. He said:
“ ‘I saw you at the Swimming Gala. I want to model you. You have just the body I’ve been looking for.’
“I was embarrassed. We don’t talk about bodies in Ireland. I did not know, either, that I was to be naked, but that was what he wanted. He teased me when I didn’t want to, and told me that, anyway, I would have another girl or one of the mistresses to sit in the room. I did not want that. He tried to insist, but I said I could not bear that, but I would sit to him if he would promise not to tell anyone. He promised, and he kept his promise. I minded badly the first two times, but after that I did not mind. He told me I had a beautiful body, and I was glad that he liked me, even if it was only for something I could not alter and had not made.
“Then Miss Ferris damaged the clay model. It was almost finished, and it had to be cast in plaster later. It was no good to anyone when she had dropped it, and Mr. Smith was very angry. I heard afterwards that he had stamped on the clay in his anger, and that Miss Ferris was afraid and went for Mrs. Boyle to comfort the man.
“I was angry, too. I was terribly angry. I was afraid, too. I had become used to the shape of me growing and growing under his hands, and, although it was not my head and face that he was putting on the clay girl, I imagined that everyone who saw it would know it was my body. I thought Miss Ferris would know. Yet, how could she know? But I did not think of that. I was afraid Mr. Cliffordson would be very angry, and I was afraid that he would shame me before all the school when he was after telling them that I had sat naked before a grown man and he making the shape of me with his hands.”
Moira’s carefully-acquired schoolgirl speech was deserting her for her native idiom. Mrs. Bradley noted the change, and smiled. The girl, after a pause, continued:
“It was then she was killed. The night of the opera I found her dead in the water-lobby the first time I came off the stage. I was terrified. I could not think what to do. I told Harry Hurstwood; he has the clever head on him and will not betray secrets. He said he would disconnect the light so that she should not be found until later. I did not tell him what I thought. I thought it was Mr. Smith had done it for love of the little clay girl she had damaged. Harry believed it was someone else. He would not tell me whom.
“At the end of the opera they had not found her, and I thought to myself that it was a terrible thing indeed to leave her by herself in that empty place with her head in the cold water and herself not shriven at all.
“Then Mr. Smith came round to my aunt’s house and begged me to say nothing about the accident he had had, knocking off Miss Ferris’s glasses and cutting her face so that she had been obliged to go into the water-lobby to bathe it and had died there. When he asked me would I not mention the accident, I was quite certain that he had murdered her, and it made me ill. I have thought of nothing else, and it was her voice wailing like a lost thing round our house that made me tell you what I never thought to tell anyone, for I love him, so I do.”
She broke down and sobbed. Mrs. Bradley comforted her. Later, she let her go, and sent for Hurstwood.
“Whatever made you think Miss Cliffordson had murdered Miss Ferris, child?” asked Mrs. Bradley. The boy flushed and grinned.
“I say, please don’t tell her!” he said. “I don’t think so now. Haven’t for a long time.”
“I promise,” said Mrs. Bradley. “Have you done any boxing during the holidays?”
“Rather. Nearly every morning. Gretta—Miss Cliffordson—doesn’t like it—thinks it’s brutal; but I can’t help that. Mr. Poole is going to enter me for the Public School championship at Aldershot, I think.”
Mrs. Bradley dismissed him and sighed with relief. He and Moira, at any rate, were clear of the wretched affair. Remained—she grinned as the title came into her head— “The Adventure of the Kind Mr. Smith.”
She consulted her notebook before sending for Mr. Smith, and re-read the entry relating to Miss Sooley’s having given the school address to Helm. The entry interested her. She re-read it. The fact appeared to be that Helm had known the school address. What he had not known was that Calma Ferris was a mistress there. Mrs. Bradley re-
