Death at the Opera

by Gladys Mitchell

Miss Camden, too, was a different being once more. She was combining the arduous and exacting duties of referee and centre-half (on the side of the Greens), and careered down the field in the teeth of the advancing forwards, swept the ball out with magnificent long strokes to her outside left and outside right alternately, controlled the game with her screeching whistle, which, most dangerously to herself, she held gripped between her teeth the whole time, and inspired her team with her magnificent play into scoring three goals in swift succession.

  CHAPTER VII

  ELIMINATIONS

  “THE plot,” said Mrs. Bradley, “indubitably thickens.”

  The Headmaster, seated behind his massive desk, nodded and looked interested.

  “You think you are narrowing the thing down?” he asked.

  Mrs. Bradley cackled.

  “Up to the present,” she said, “I have discovered at least four persons who are temperamentally capable of the murder, and all but one had both motive and opportunity for committing it. That one had the motive, but, so far as I can discover, not the opportunity. However . . .” —she chuckled ghoulishly— “many a good alibi has ended in smoke, so we must wait and see. Besides, I haven’t quite finished. I have to interview . . .”—she brought out her copy of the programme of the opera once more—”Miss Freely, Mr. Poole, Mr. Kemball, Mr. Browning, the person who made up the players, the electrician, and the school caretaker.”

  “You’d better leave the last-named to his well-earned afternoon rest,” the Headmaster remarked dryly. “He’s a good chap, but his afternoon rest is sacred. Do you want to interview the others in here with me?”

  “Without you, if you have no objection,” said Mrs. Bradley. “I felt that you were an obstacle to the search for truth this morning.”

  The Headmaster shrugged, and smiled. “One of the penalties of a job like mine is that nobody on the staff feels really at ease in one’s presence. It can’t be helped. I appreciate that you’ll get on better without me. How’s Hurstwood?”

  “Better,” said Mrs. Bradley.

  “Good. Push that button for my secretary. She’ll get anybody you want. If you should want me, I shall be”—he consulted the time-table—”in Room B. Good-bye for the present, then.”

  Mrs. Bradley pressed the buzzer and sent for Mr. Poole. That cheerful man smiled at her and asked her jokingly whether she had the handcuffs ready.

  “Be serious, child,” said Mrs. Bradley, “and answer my questions. First, did you murder Calma Ferris?”

  “No,” said Poole, serious at once. “Has anybody said I did?”

  “No, child. Secondly, do you know anything which might indicate the manner in which she met her death?”

  “Why, she was drowned, wasn’t she?” asked Poole.

  “Thirdly, what did you do before your first entrance on to the stage?”

  “Do? Let’s see. Except for Miss Ferris and Smith, I was the last of the principals to be made up, and the curtain was rung up while the little dame who did the making up was still busy on my face. Marvellous woman! Wish she’d take a part. I’d like to see her as ‘Volumnia.’ Grand!”

  “Wait a moment,” said Mrs. Bradley. “How long did it take her, do you think, to make up each principal?”

  “Varied a bit,” replied Poole. “The longest were the last two, ‘Katisha’ and the ‘Mikado,’ I should say, but as she had nearly the whole of the First Act in which to do them— Oh, but ‘Katisha’ was made up. Oh, I dunno! Sorry!”

  Mrs. Bradley pressed the buzzer.

  “I wonder if you have the address of the ex-actress who made up the faces of the performers on the night of the opera?” she said, winningly, to the Headmaster’s secretary. The secretary disappeared, and returned almost immediately with a visiting card which bore the legend: “Madame V. Berotti, 16, Coules Road, Hillmaston.”

  Mrs. Bradley made a note of both name and address, and then asked the secretary for Mr. Smith.

  “Does that mean you’ve finished with me?” asked Poole.

  “Not quite, child. Don’t be impatient.” said Mrs. Bradley. “You haven’t finished telling me what you did before you went on to the stage.”

  “Oh, nothing, really, you know. When I was ready to go on I collected the small urchin who followed behind with the axe—I was the Lord High Executioner, you know—and we stood in the wings until our cue came. I was so interested in watching the stage that I did not think about anything else.”

  “I see. Thank you very much, child. That’s all, then,” said Mrs. Bradley. “Oh, by the way, do you box?”

  Poole looked surprised.

  “Well, I do,” he answered. “Middles, you know. Who told you?”

  “I deduced it,” said Mrs. Bradley with a mirthless cackle. “I wish you’d teach Hurstwood.”

  Poole grinned.

  “The Head would have a fit. ‘Brutal and degrading sport,’ exalting the physical or animal nature at the expense of the spiritual or godlike—and all that sort of wash you know. But I will teach him if he likes. Do the chap good. What is he? Light-weight?”

  “My dear child, how do I know?” inquired Mrs. Bradley.

  “Thought you might have deduced it,” retorted the irrepressible Mathematics Master, nearly cannoning into Mr. Smith in the doorway. Smith shut the door behind his colleague and then stood in the centre of the study. He looked round nervously, as though to make sure that Mr. Poole really had gone out.

  “Don’t be peevish, child,” said Mrs. Bradley briskly, “but when you cannoned into Miss Ferris and broke her glasses, were you made up ready to go on the stage?”

  “Of course not,” said Smith. “The woman wanted to do me, but I said I wasn’t going to put up with that mess on my face longer than I could help, to please anybody! Have you ever been made up as the ‘Mikado’?”

  “Never,” replied Mrs. Bradley, with perfect truth.

  “Tons of muck!” said Smith violently. “Tons and tons of beastly sticky muck! I wasn’t going to have any. Told her I’d come back half-way through the Act. Why, even my nose had to be enlarged with modelling clay! Horrible!”

  “Why were you in such a hurry that you collided with Miss Ferris without seeing her?”

  “I couldn’t see her because it was dark. Didn’t you hear about one of the lights going west? That’s why, on thinking over things, I think it’s silly to attach so much importance to the fact that that light in the water-lobby had given up the ghost. Still, it’s no business of mine.”

  “So you didn’t even know that Miss Ferris had cut herself?” asked Mrs. Bradley.

  “No. How could I? I had no matches—nothing. And it was as black as soot along there. I apologized and went on the way I was going, and she accepted the apology, laughed and said it was all right. She said she had another pair of glasses at school, and that she wasn’t hurt, and went on the way she was going. That’s all I know.”

  “I see. Thank you. Yes, that’s all,” said Mrs. Bradley. “If you’re going back to your class, I wish you’d send somebody for Hurstwood. It will save the secretary a journey.”

  “Right,” said Smith; and in due course Hurstwood appeared.

  “Child,” said Mrs. Bradley, “on which side of the stage were you when you encountered Miss Ferris and lent her your handkerchief to bandage her eye?”

  “On the same side as the men’s and boys’ dressing-rooms,” Hurstwood answered. “You asked me that before,” he reminded her.

  “Not exactly that,” said Mrs. Bradley. “Tell me, child, what would Mr. Smith want on the other side of the stage, then?”

  Hurstwood grinned.

  “I expect he went to potter about in his beloved art-room. That’s round the other side, you know.”

  Suddenly the full significance of what he was saying seemed to dawn on the boy. His face went white.

  “I say! That clay in the waste-pipe!” he said.

  “Exactly,” said Mrs. Bradley. “And now tell me what on earth possessed you to tamper with the ele
ctric light in that water-lobby when you came off the stage that time?”

  “Which time?” said Hurstwood, suddenly sullen and obstinate. Mrs. Bradley, who had met this boyish trick before, said gently:

  “You know which time I mean. Don’t be foolish, child.”

  “Well, I wanted my handkerchief back—I thought I could dry it on the hot-water pipes—so I went to the water-lobby, to which I thought Miss Ferris would have gone, to see whether I could find her and get it back. When I got to the water-lobby—well, I’ve told you all this before!” cried the boy. “I’m not going to say anything different, so what’s the use of going over it again?”

  “I suggest,” said Mrs. Bradley calmly, “that you switched on the electric light, although you thought nobody could be in the lobby in the dark, and that, finding Miss Ferris’s body there, you deliberately tampered with the light so that nobody else should see what you had seen. Isn’t that right? It proves to me, also, that you believed you had discovered the identity of the murderer. What do you say, child?”

  “How could I tamper with the beastly thing? I had no tools!” The boy was flushed and thoroughly belligerent now.

  Mrs. Bradley sighed.

  “True,” said she, as though crestfallen. “True, child. Very well. That’s all, then. Ask Mr. Kemball whether he can spare me five minutes, will you?”

  Mr. Kemball was annoyed. Hurstwood’s entrance was the third interruption he had suffered during a lesson which, in any case, only lasted thirty-five instead of the customary forty-five minutes, so that he arrived on the Headmaster’s mat in a frame of mind that can best be described as thoroughly ill-tempered.

  “You sent for me, Headmaster?” he began in a tone which was calculated to render Mr. Cliffordson red with the conscious guilt of having lured a painstaking teacher from the path of duty.

  “Come in, Mr. Kemball,” said Mrs. Bradley, in her deepest, richest tones. Kemball, deflated, entered and stood awkwardly. He was a thin, anxious-looking individual, gawky and spasmodic in his movements, and had the scraggy look common to Methodist local preachers. He was not as well-dressed as the other masters Mrs. Bradley had already interviewed, and had the harassed appearance of all middle-aged men whose family responsibilities are still widening, but whose salaries have already reached the maximum.

  “Sit down, if you can spare the time,” said Mrs. Bradley, winningly. She eyed him with the glance of a predatory beast for its prey, and Kemball, who would ordinarily have replied to such a suggestion with a trenchant reference to his teacherless class, sat down on the edge of the nearest chair and waited to hear what she had to say.

  “You took the part of ‘Pish-Tush,’ a Japanese nobleman, in the recent production of the opera, I think?” said Mrs. Bradley formally. She consulted the programme she held as though to indicate that if he had thought of denying the fact she had definite proof of it. Kemball meekly agreed that he had taken the part as stated.

  “A small part, but an important one, I believe?” said Mrs. Bradley. “You had a solo, for instance, and some interesting business with one or two of the chief characters?”

  Again Kemball assented. He was beginning to thaw, she observed.

  “You had some time to spend, however, when you were not actually on the stage,” pursued Mrs. Bradley.

  “Yes. Several long waits,” replied the History Master.

  “Do you know who murdered Miss Ferris?” said Mrs. Bradley suddenly.

  Kemball said blankly: “Who murdered Miss Ferris?”

  “Yes.”

  “But I understood that all the available evidence pointed to suicide. I have not studied the facts, but—”

  “All the available evidence pointed to murder,” said Mrs. Bradley, “if people had been able to use it sensibly.”

  “Well, I’m glad to hear that,” said Kemball surprisingly. “I couldn’t imagine that woman committing suicide, somehow.”

  “What is your reason for saying so?” inquired Mrs. Bradley. She had neat little lists at the back of her notebook consisting of the names of those who agreed with the suicide theory and of those who rejected it.

  “Well, consider her case: no ties, no worries, enough money, no encumbrances, no debts, free to please herself in everything—what more could any human being ask for? A person in that position doesn’t commit suicide. It’s poor devils like—” Mrs. Bradley could have added the word “me” for him with perfect correctness, and, mentally, did so, but Kemball broke off to say: “But you were asking me about her death.”

  “Yes. When did you last see her alive? Do you remember?”

  “I don’t. You see, I was one of the first people to be made up by Mrs. Berotti, and almost immediately I was called to the telephone.”

  “Ah, yes. I see. How long were you at the telephone, do you think?”

  “Rather a long time. I used the school ’phone, of course, and first of all I talked to my wife, who had rung me up, and discussed some purely domestic business with her. She’s—er—well, she’s—we’re expecting another child, you know—and I inquired after her and gave her some impression of the audience—all that sort of thing—and scarcely had I rung off when somebody else rang up. I answered the call, as I happened to be there, and found that it was important. The electrician could not come, but was sending along a man, and asked whether he could be met at the school gate, as it was dark and the back entrance is difficult to find. I replied, and went myself to the gate, as the telephone message advised me that the man was already on his way. At about five minutes before the opera was due to commence, the man arrived, and I conducted him round to the back and left him, as I had to be prepared to make my first entrance almost immediately. During my off-stage waits I sat next to Mr. Browning, who was acting as prompter, and read the proofs of my monograph on the Renaissance Popes.”

  “What about the interval?”

  “I read my proofs during the interval.”

  “You did not see Miss Ferris at all, then, during the whole of the performance?”

  “Not consciously. In fact, I don’t think I could possibly have seen her, consciously or unconsciously.”

  “Could you identify the electrician if you saw him again?”

  “Decidedly I could. He was less like a mechanic than anyone I ever saw. I should have taken him for a commercial traveller of a particularly brazen type. He insisted upon addressing me as ‘old boy,’ in a manner that was quite repulsive. The funny thing is that the electrical people sent him without being asked. The Headmaster is under the impression that Pritchard asked for someone to come and see to the footlights, but that is quite a mistake. The man came of his own accord.”

  “Thank you,” said Mrs. Bradley cordially. “I rather fancied that the electrician came into the story somehow. You must please put my name down for a dozen copies of your monograph. The Renaissance Popes,” she concluded, with magnificent mendacity, “form for me one of the most fascinating themes in history.”

  “To a psychologist,” replied Mr. Kemball, now completely restored to good-humour, “they must certainly appear interesting. A dozen copies? That is extremely kind of you.”

  “Make it fifty, dear child,” said Mrs. Bradley, waving a skinny claw as though she were scattering largesse—as, indeed, thought poor Kemball, reflecting that if he sold a hundred copies of his work he would be doing very well indeed, she was!

  The next person to throw light on the dark question of the electrician, thought Mrs. Bradley, would probably be the school caretaker, so she allowed Mr. Kemball five minutes to get back to his form, and then she descended the stairs, crossed the hall, left the school building and knocked at the door of the schoolkeeper’s house.

  The house was separated from the school building by a small gravel court-yard and the school bicycle-shed. Mrs. Bradley was admitted to the house by a small woman who was suffering from a severe cold in the head. She informed Mrs. Bradley flatly that the schoolkeeper was having his afternoon rest, and could see no one, but the
next moment, having crossed glances with the visitor, she found herself asking Mrs. Bradley to sit down. In another moment the schoolkeeper appeared.

  “I’m sorry to disturb you,” said Mrs. Bradley, “but who was the electrician who came to the school on the evening of the opera?”

  “Ah, ma’am,” said the caretaker, “don’t I wish I knowed! I’d electrician him! Been up to the firm twice, I have, and he don’t belong there. That’s all I know. And they never ’phoned the school he was coming or nothing! No wonder murders ’appen!”

  “What reason had you for visiting the firm?” asked Mrs. Bradley.

  “What reason? Lorst me watch, lorst me wallet with two pounds in it, lorst me new waterproof, lorst a spanner, a wrench, a pair o’ pliers and a screwdriver what I lent him, and everything. And no redress! No compensation! And daren’t tell the ’eadmaster, because I was where I’d no business to be when it all ’appened.”

  “And where was that?” inquired Mrs. Bradley.

  “Round at the ‘Pig and Whistle,’ all along of that same chap, too, and all. ‘’Ere, mate, you pop round and ’ave a drink,’ ’e says, same as I might say to anybody. ‘I’ll keep an eye on that there curtain,’ ’e says. ‘You won’t need to do that,’ I says, ‘because they don’t finish for near another hour and a quarter,’ I says. And off I went, getting back in half an hour from then, with the opera still going strong, you might say, but no sign of the bloke, me watch, me wallet, me waterproof, me spanner, me wrench, me pair o’ pliers, or me screwdriver.”

  “An interesting, but not unusual sequence of events,” said Mrs. Bradley briskly. “Describe the electrician.”

  “Tallish, plumpish, fatty kind of self-satisfied face, little mouth, no moustache, reddish bristly ’air, fat ’ands with ’airs on the backs, short fingers, aged about forty-three or four, grey suit, black boots, no overcoat, suéde gloves, no tools with ’im when he come; London voice—not cockney but not a gentleman’s voice neither—big ears with no lobes to ’em. That’s all I can recollect of ’im.”

  “You are a remarkably observant man,” said Mrs. Bradley.