Death at the Opera mb-5

by Gladys Mitchell

  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.

  “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!” h
e 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-read the entries relating to the murder of Calma Ferris from beginning to end. Two of them stood out as particularly important. The first read:

  “Smith, Donald, Senior Art Master.

  “Motive for murdering Calma Ferris:

  “Calma Ferris had damaged irretrievably a small clay figure of Psyche, the property and creation of Smith.

  “N.B.—Smith apparently expected to receive two hundred and fifty pounds for the completed plaster figure. That seems a good deal of money for a work by an unknown (?) artist. I deduce the fact from the remark Alceste Boyle volunteered when I was talking to her on the occasion of our first meeting, i.e., she said, without being asked, ‘Smith isn’t the man’ (who was her lover). ‘Oh, and I lent him two hundred and fifty pounds for the loss of the little Psyche.’

  “See Page Fifteen,” Mrs. Bradley had appended.

  Page Fifteen, when she turned it up, informed her that Donald Smith had said, when she was questioning him:

  “Yes, I was angry.” (About the statuette.) “But it was all right. Alceste lent me the money to pay Atkinson.”

  Mrs. Bradley clicked her tongue. Then she sent for Mr. Smith.

  “I have to warn you, child,” she said, when he came in, “that anything you say may be used in evidence.”

  Smith lowered himself carefully into a chair, propped his left elbow on the back of it, leaned his head on his hand and said nonchalantly:

  “I see.”

  “First,” said Mrs. Bradley, “can you tell me how much I ought to pay for a plaster statuette sixteen inches high? It is a nice little thing by a living but unknown artist.”

  “Dunno,” said Smith simply. “Anything the artist liked to ask, if you really wanted it, I suppose. Do you really want it?”

  “To the extent and limit of about thirty pounds, yes,” said Mrs. Bradley.

  “Oh? Well, I should make him the offer. Has it been exhibited yet?”

  “No. It was done to order, but something went wrong. The artist told a friend of mine that he hoped to get two hundred pounds or more for it.”

  “Humorist,” said Mr. Smith concisely.

  “You think so? But I understood that you allowed Mrs. Boyle to think that that was the value of your Psyche which was damaged by Miss Ferris.”

  Smith brushed a hand across his brow.

  “Did I? I can’t remember,” he said. “I must have been tight, mustn’t I? But my Psyche was bigger than that.”

  “You know, Donald,” said Mrs. Bradley, “you provoke my unwilling but sincere admiration over the whole of this business. I suppose it was you whom Cutler came to see on the night of the opera?”

  Smith blinked at her. He seemed about to go to sleep. Suddenly he said:

  “You can’t touch me, you know. I’ve taken legal advice. If I say to a bloke that it would be worth two hundred and fifty pounds to me to know that a certain woman was dead, and suddenly, several weeks afterwards, she dies, and the bloke claims the money and doesn’t get it, it seems that I’m untouchable.”

  “You certainly are,” said Mrs. Bradley, grinning hungrily. She began to turn over the leaves of her notebook, and, in doing so, came upon the following entry:

  “Sooley, Miss, partner to Miss Lincallow, the aunt of the dead schoolmistress. This woman may be under the influence of Helm. I suspect that he is after her savings.”

  Mrs. Bradley skipped a couple of hundred words relating to Miss Sooley’s psychological peculiarities, and then read:

  “This woman gave Helm the address of Hillmaston School. But did she? She actually said that Helm informed her he was going to Hillmaston School to see his nephew. Miss Sooley then appears to have exclaimed: ‘Why, that’s where Miss Lincallow’s niece is a teacher! You know—the one that was staying here and got so friendly with you over the burglars.’ ”

  “I suppose Cutler saw you here by appointment on the night of the opera?” said Mrs. Bradley.

  Smith shook his head.

  “Can’t remember,” he said. “Who is Cutler?”

  “The man to whom you offered the two hundred and fifty pounds if he would drown Mrs. Hampstead,” said Mrs. Bradley pleasantly.

  “Oh, is he? Well, what would you have had me do? There were those two charming people, Hampstead and Alceste, and there was that poor demented creature in a mental home which is surrounded by a hedge that a child of three could have broken through. I knew she was an inebriate. The thing was how to get her doped sufficiently. Mind, I had nothing whatever to do with the proceedings, but I think the gin did it. Cutler had no trouble. In she went, dead to the world, and he held her head down with a forked twig, or so he said. Very neat. I can’t think why they let these poor creatures out without an attendant. It gives murderers like Cutler such a lot to think about.”

  “How did you come to think of engaging Cutler for the delicate task?” inquired Mrs. Bradley, geniality itself.

  “I advertised,” said Smith, grinning. “You know the sort of thing: ‘Acquitted man wanted to earn two hundred pounds. Only ex-murderers need apply.’

  “The papers thought it was a code or a silly joke. Anyway, they inserted it in the Personal column, and it brought home the bacon in the form of Corporal Nym, otherwise Cutler.”

  “Suppose the police had made it their business to investigate the details that led to the insertion of such an advertisement in the newspapers?” said Mrs. Bradley.

  “I should have said it was a joke. The police will believe anything of a public schoolboy,” replied Smith. “I should have said it was for a bet. Besides, I chose the right papers. No low-brow rags. All the important dailies every morning, for a fortnight, printed that brightly-worded paragraph, and no questions asked.”

  “But what happened when you did not pay the man?” inquired Mrs. Bradley. “He was the electrician who came here on the night of the opera, of course?”

  “Yes. He was disguised a bit. Not enough to see through, but just enough to prevent a casual observer from recognizing him. Very clever. Alone I did it. He kicked up a fuss, I believe. I don’t quite remember. Anyway, I told him I’d fix the murder of Calma Ferris on him if he gave any trouble. He was on the premises, you see, and he admitted that he knew her.”

  “You admit, then, that Miss Ferris was murdered?” said Mrs. Bradley.

  “I admitted it at the time, if you remember,” said Smith, still speaking in the same sleepy, non-committal tone. “But I didn’t murder her, if that’s what you’re still getting at. I admit I was responsible for Mrs. Hampstead’s death, but I’m not a bit perturbed about that. How came you to know that she had been murdered, though?”

  “I deduced it from the fact that Mr. Hampstead is no longer desirous of marrying Mrs. Boyle,” said Mrs. Bradley. “I assume that he is troubled by the kind of scruples which would scarcely affect you, for instance.”

  “Oh, I know Hampstead suspects foul play. He said as much to me,” admitted Smith, with cool effrontery. “But that feeling will wear off. He and Alceste are made for one another, and why should an insane creature stand in their way? Luckily, some purblind idiot of a doctor wrote a certificate
all right, and the coroner made a quick job of the inquest. The only thing on my conscience is that I didn’t get this idea of finishing her off ten years ago.”

  “And what about that girl at Lamkin?” said Mrs. Bradley.

  “She meddled with Cutler’s correspondence. Must have been a fairly quick-witted baggage to piece out enough to hang blackmail on, mustn’t she? Of course, Cutler’s yellow. She’d got him cold. So he finished her. That’s all about that.”

  “I see,” said Mrs. Bradley. “Yes. Thank you, child.”

  Smith rose. Mrs. Bradley, absorbed in her notes, did not even watch him as he went leisurely out at the door and shut it behind him. Suddenly he opened it again.

  “And still the mystery of Calma Ferris remains unsolved,” he said. Then he went away. Mrs. Bradley pursed her thin lips into a little beak and nodded her head very slowly like a yellow Chinese mandarin. Then she took up a volume of modern poetry and began to read.

  Members of the staff came in at intervals, deposited or collected their belongings, and went out again. Mrs. Bradley, absorbed in her reading, took no notice of anybody. At last she put down the little book.

  “He had the opportunity and some sort of motive,” she said to herself. “He is responsible for the death of Mrs. Hampstead and, indirectly, for the death of Susie Cozens. But I don’t believe for one instant that he had anything whatever to do with the death of Calma Ferris, because, first, he wanted the time for that interview with Cutler, to whom he had to give the most detailed, exact and reiterated instructions, for the murder of Mrs. Hampstead; and because, secondly, the motive would not be his motive.

  “He’s a perverted philanthropist, a kind of a-moral public benefactor. In short, he’s God. Most artists are! It’s the effect of the creative instinct on undisciplined intelligences. There was no reason, from his point of view, for killing Calma Ferris. It would not benefit anybody. The destruction of his statuette angered him at the moment, but the anger passed. Besides, the point is that he wouldn’t kill for a purely personal reason like that. And if it wasn’t Mr. Smith it must have been”—she took out her notebook and scowled at the three names—“Miss Camden, Moira Malley or Hurstwood. I don’t believe it! I’ve cleared the two children—or they’ve cleared themselves. And I’ve decided that Miss Camden would have given herself away if she’d done it. Well, if the people with motives didn’t do it, the people with opportunity did. That’s clear. But, oh! how tiresome of them!”