Death at the Opera

by Gladys Mitchell

  “Well,” said the schoolkeeper, pleased at the compliment, “my boy’s a Scout, and he learned me to play the Scouts’ games. Consequently I find meself taking notice whether I want to or not. He’s a King’s Scout, my boy is.”

  “Splendid,” said Mrs. Bradley heartily. “You remember the switch in the water-lobby, don’t you? The one which was out of order on the night of Miss Ferris’s death?”

  “The one them boys tampered with, ma’am?”

  “The same. I suppose it wasn’t the electrician who tampered with it?”

  “I could believe anything of that bloke,” said the school-keeper, “except that ’e knowed enough about electricity even to put a switch out of order. You recollect one of the lights fused? ’E couldn’t do nothing whatever with it. I’ad to get Mr. Pritchard ’imself to ’elp me, me being tied up with that there blessed curtain.”

  “When did Mr. Pritchard see to it?”

  “See to it, ma’am? About ’arf-way through the First Act, I think.”

  “One more question before you return to your well-earned rest,” said Mrs. Bradley. “Apart from the electrician, was any other stranger behind the scenes on the evening of the opera?”

  “Barring the Eye-talian lady what puts the grease-paint on for ’em, nobody, ma’am.”

  “Thank you very much,” said Mrs. Bradley. “I presume that the stolen articles were taken from this house?”

  “That’s right, ma’am. I ’adn’t locked up, you see, the ’ouse being right inside the school grounds, and my wife at the back of the ’all to see the show, and my boy with ’er. But the watch and the wallet, ’e must ’ave picked me pocket for ’em, as ’e stood talking to me, ma’am, and that’s a fact.”

  “I see. It was only the waterproof coat that he took from the house?”

  “That’s right. Saved up me coupons for months to get it, and that’s what happens. Thanking you very kindly, ma’am. Much obliged, I’m sure, though I wasn’t meaning to make an ’ard-luck tale of it.”

  It occurred to Mrs. Bradley that if she could get Mr. Browning to corroborate Mr. Kemball’s story and Mr. Kemball to assert, independently, that Mr. Browning had not moved from the prompter’s stool at all during the First Act of the opera, during which the murder had been committed, she would be in a position to eliminate both of them from the list of persons who had had opportunity for the murder.

  A further point at issue was the alibi of Miss Camden, who, by reason of having been a member of the audience, was in the same solid position as Browning and Kemball if it could be proved that she had not left her seat in the auditorium until the interval. If, on the other hand, it could be shown that she had left the auditorium at any point during the First Act, she would immediately be in the same position as the other persons who had had both motive and opportunity for the crime.

  She waited until afternoon recess to tackle Browning and Kemball. Appealed to separately, each was prepared to swear that the other had been in the wings on the prompt side during the whole of the First Act, except for the times that Kemball was on the stage. Alceste Boyle, appealed to next, was prepared to state that Mr. Browning had not risen from his stool during the whole of the First Act, and Mrs. Bradley, with a sigh of relief, felt that she could safely disregard Browning and Kemball during the rest of the investigation.

  CHAPTER VIII

  THEORIES

  COULES STREET, HILLMASTON, whither she journeyed at three-fifteen to interview Mrs. Berotti, the exactress who had put on the make-up for the principal players, proved to be a short, neat, select cul-de-sac in the best residential quarter of the small town. A maid opened the door, and, in response to Mrs. Bradley’s inquiry, said that her mistress was resting, but took Mrs. Bradley’s card and asked her in.

  In a few moments she returned and asked Mrs. Bradley to follow her. In a small, comfortable, warm room at the back of the house, Mrs. Berotti was lying on a chesterfield drawn up near the fire. She greeted Mrs. Bradley charmingly and told the maid to bring tea. She was a very old lady, nearer eighty than seventy Mrs. Bradley imagined, but her dark eyes were alive with zest and amusement, and she made gestures as she talked.

  “I’ve come about the murder of Calma Ferris,” said Mrs. Bradley abruptly, after casual remarks had been exchanged.

  “Do I know her?” asked Mrs. Berotti, with a little frown of concentration. “Ah, yes, I know her. The little plump one, plain, and very anxious to do well, who dies instead of playing the part. Unprofessional.”

  Mrs. Bradley hooted with laughter, and the ex-actress wrinkled her old face into a smile which beautifully blended malice and childlike fun.

  “She could not help dying. She was murdered, I tell you,” said Mrs. Bradley firmly.

  Mrs. Berotti nodded and her expression changed to one of thoughtfulness.

  “Yes. I thought so myself,” she said. “But one could not say so. There was no evidence. Nothing.”

  “Were you present at the inquest?” Mrs. Bradley inquired.

  “I was present, yes. I was asked whether I had made her up. I replied that yes, I had made her up. Was she drunk? Imagine asking me such a question! I replied, in a manner which abashed them, I hope, that never had I been in the company of a drunken person, man or woman, all my life. Had she troubles? I was firm over this, my friend. I replied that if she had no troubles, we who understand good acting would have had troubles had she been permitted by Providence to come before an audience and play that nice part so badly!—so badly! That dress rehearsal! Never shall I forget it! It was terrible!”

  She shook her head, smiled wistfully and added: “I informed them that I, too, should have committed suicide if ever in my life I had played the part of a strong, hard, middle-aged, grasping, tormented woman so slowly, so carefully, so—so—”—she spread her hands wide apart as though to embrace the right word when it came—“so inoffensively, my friend!”

  Mrs. Bradley cackled. She had formed a very complete mental picture of Calma Ferris since the beginning of her investigation.

  “But the other—the magnificent, large, personable goddess of a woman who played it on the night!” went on Mrs. Berotti ecstatically. “Never have I seen a performance like it! She had lost her temper when she came to me in the interval to be made up. She had made herself up, well but hastily, for the end of the First Act, but she came to me in the interval.

  “‘For God’s sake keep the woman out of the way, madame, if she does turn up,’ she said. ‘I’ve got to finish now, whatever happens.”

  “My work was over when the interval ended. There are but two acts in The Mikado. So I went in front, to a little charming seat right in the middle of the third row kept for me by my good friends, and I saw and heard everything. Imagine it, my dear friend! The poor young plump one, with her unproduced voice, too high, too thin, her careful gestures, her insignificant height—all this by Providence and the grace of God withheld from us; and instead—Alceste Boyle! You did not see it? My good friend, you will go to heaven! God will compensate you because you did not see it.”

  Mrs. Bradley would like to have stayed much longer than she did, but she was anxious to get back before school ended for the afternoon. One or two questions bearing on the case she managed to get answered, however, before, at five minutes to four, she took her leave.

  “Do you know that Miss Ferris had met with a slight accident near the beginning of the First Act?” was the first of these.

  “One of the schoolgirls told me, but I was very busy.” replied Mrs. Berotti, “and I understood that somebody was helping her, and so I did not go to see. That the make-up should be put on correctly was my first concern.”

  “You had already done Miss Ferris when she cut herself?”

  “I had. I had made her up beautifully. I am an artist, me! She told me she had to go on in Act One. ‘But not until almost the end,’ I said. But she persisted, so I did her. ‘You’ll be hot and uncomfortable,’ I said. She did not mind that, she assured me. I think she w
as afraid that she and Mr. Smith, the ‘Mikado’—he was fine, that one!—would be left alone together in the make-up room. They had quarrelled, I understand. So I did her. The poor little one! So inoffensive! Such an offence herself against my beloved art!”

  There seemed to be nothing else that Mrs. Berotti could tell. She again eulogized the performance given by Alceste Boyle, informed Mrs. Bradley that the professional stage had lost a treasure when Alceste left it, and, when Mrs. Bradley very reluctantly announced that she must go, rose and escorted her to the door. She expressed delight that Mrs. Bradley had visited her, and begged her to come again.

  Mrs. Bradley walked back to the school as quickly as she could, and arrived inside the building at six minutes past four. The school closed at half-past, but the staff had been requested by Mr. Cliffordson to remain in the building until five o’clock, in case any of them were wanted. Mrs. Bradley had opposed this move, but Mr. Cliffordson insisted that since the whole staff knew the reason for her presence, they could scarcely, in fairness to themselves, refuse to submit to questioning.

  During what was left of the afternoon, therefore, Mrs. Bradley sat in the staff-room talking to Alceste Boyle.

  “First,” she said, “I want to know at what point in the proceedings you missed Calma Ferris.”

  Alceste, blue marking-pencil in hand, thought for a moment, and then said:

  “A quarter of an hour before her first entrance. Do you know the script of The Mikado?”

  “Intimately,” replied Mrs. Bradley. “It has been my bed-book ever since I came down here.”

  “Then you remember that the first entrance of ‘Katisha’ comes almost at the end of the First Act,” Alceste continued. “Well, it is my rule that people are to be ready a quarter of an hour before the time their cue comes. It means a certain amount of hanging about off-stage, but it’s worth it. I had a Fourth-former acting as call-boy, and she had orders to report to me immediately if people did not respond to their call. She found me, therefore, as soon as Miss Ferris did not appear, and I sent her to the women-principals’ dressing-room, and round and about, but no Miss Ferris was to be found. It was approximately half-past eight. I then went to the women-principals’ dressing-room myself, sat down and waited for the girl to find Miss Ferris. She couldn’t find her, so I went myself to search for her in case she had been taken ill in one of the classrooms or had locked herself in anywhere and could not get out. But there was no sign of her anywhere. Time was getting short, so I went into the hall and found Miss Camden—all the staff sat together at the right-hand side of the hall as you look at the stage, so it was easy enough to spot her—got her out into the passage and tried to persuade her to take the part. She refused. I got her into the women-principals’ dressing-room to argue the point with her, but she stood firm. She said she could not undertake the part at a moment’s notice, and I didn’t blame her. She had been turned down in favour of Miss Ferris, you see, and I suppose she didn’t see why we should come moaning to her to get us out of a hole. In the end I took the part myself. It was the only solution. In case you suspect Miss Camden, I ought to say that she went back into the auditorium. I watched her enter the hall.”

  “Thank you,” said Mrs. Bradley, and for the next two minutes both were busily engaged—Alceste in correcting a set of exercises and Mrs. Bradley in writing notes. At the end of the ten minutes Mrs. Bradley, having waited while Alceste finished marking a book, asked pointedly:

  “Who sat on either side of Miss Camden during the First Act?”

  “There was nobody on her right. She occupied the end seat in the row. She had been stewarding, you see. On the other side of her sat Mr. Pritchard, the Senior Science Master.”

  “Ah!” said Mrs. Bradley, making a note of it. “And next to him?”

  But this Alceste did not know, so Mrs. Bradley decided to waylay Mr. Pritchard after school was over, and ask him. She decided, too, to inquire about the electric light that had gone wrong. There were still several things in connection with Miss Ferris’s death which she did not understand. It must, she decided, have been entirely fortuitous that, owing to the failure of the light, a collision had occurred which resulted in Miss Ferris’s glasses being smashed and her face cut. Mrs. Bradley was fairly certain that Miss Ferris must have gone, not once, but at least twice to the water-lobby to bathe the cut, for it was inconceivable that the murder should have been premeditated; or rather, not so much that it could not have been premeditated, but that the murderer could have known beforehand that Miss Ferris would injure her face so that she was compelled to enter the water-lobby and so render herself liable to be done to death in the particular manner in which death had come to her.

  The clay in the waste-pipe was the result of a deliberate act, and to that extent the murder was premeditated, but the murderer must have prepared for the crime between Miss Ferris’s first and second visit to the lobby. That meant, Mrs. Bradley decided, that the murderer was a person quick-witted enough to take advantage of the entirely fortuitous set of circumstances—i.e., the cut under Miss Ferris’s eye and the fact that she bathed it over a school washing-bowl—which Fate had provided, courageous enough to take the risk of being discovered in the act of murder, sufficiently determined to use the method which presented itself, cruel and barbarous though it proved to be, and—Mrs. Bradley was compelled to admit—self-possessed enough not to have been guilty of self-betrayal.

  “Unless,” thought the little woman, “I haven’t met the murderer yet!”

  Her thoughts returned to the electrician, whom already she was calling “Mr. Helm.”

  To fill in the time at her disposal she sent for Miss Freely, who arrived looking scared.

  “I don’t know anything about it, and I don’t want to,” was the burden of her song when Mrs. Bradley questioned her. Mrs. Bradley decided that she really did know nothing, for she was able to account satisfactorily for all the time she had spent off the stage by announcing that she had sneaked into the auditorium and sat on a stool next to the pianist. As this was corroborated by the pianist, who was one of the girl-prefects, Mrs. Bradley dismissed Miss Freely from her mind and sent for Mr. Pritchard.

  “You repaired an electric switch during the First Act of The Mikado, didn’t you, Mr. Pritchard?” she asked without preamble, when he entered.

  “Repaired nothing,” said Mr. Pritchard in a loud, cheerful voice. “I had one go at the damn’ thing before the opera started, and I was sent for again half-way through the Act. Couldn’t do anything by myself, so I fetched along the electrician fellow who was gassing with Smith, but the silly ass had no outfit with him. Sent him to borrow stuff from the caretaker, and never saw him again. Oh, Lord! that reminds me! I’ve still got the caretaker’s kit! What the thing wanted, I discovered in the end, was a new lamp, so I pinched a bulb out of one of the classrooms on the top floor.”

  “Who sat next to you in the auditorium?” asked Mrs. Bradley.

  “Miss Camden sat on my right, and there was an empty seat next to me, and then came some of the audience. We were really stewarding, you see, so we just took the end seats, where there were any, on that side.”

  “Thank you,” said Mrs. Bradley. “You are an expert, I believe, at everything connected with electricity?”

  Pritchard, a large, cheerful young man, laughed.

  “Sounds like it if I deduce a fuse and it turns out to be a worn-out bulb, doesn’t it?” he said. “I’ve received a lot of undeserved applause for constructing a school wireless set, but it’s one or two of the boys who are the real star turns.”

  “Hurstwood?” inquired Mrs. Bradley.

  “Well, I don’t get him now. He’s gone over to Arts, you see. But in the Fifth he was rather good.”

  “Did he know enough to disconnect a switch so that no light could come on?”

  “Oh, Lord, yes. Anybody could do that!”

  “Thank you.”

  “Not at all. May one inquire—?”

  “Yes,” replied Mrs
. Bradley. “I am trying to find out who murdered Calma Ferris.”

  “Murdered her?”

  “Yes.”

  “Were you the first person to decide that she had been murdered?”

  “No, young man.”

  “H’m!” said Mr. Pritchard, walking to the door. Mrs. Bradley sat staring at it after he had closed it behind him. She stared at it for several minutes. When it opened to admit the Headmaster, she looked quite surprised. There was, however, a question she wanted to put to him.

  “Is there any reason why you should refuse to write a testimonial for Miss Camden if she wanted to apply for another post?” she asked. Mr. Cliffordson sat down at his desk, moved his pen-tray and blotting-pad, and fidgeted with a jotter and a small metal ruler, and then inquired:

  “Did she tell you I wouldn’t?”

  “Yes, dear child.”

  “Oh? I would, of course, if she asked for one. I couldn’t very well refuse. But I know what she means.” He put down the ruler and drummed on the desk with his fingers.

  “There was a funny business about some money,” he said, obviously unwilling to embark on the explanation. “Mind, I accuse nobody—except myself, for leaving my chequebook about. I had made out a cheque for nine pounds to Self, and left the leaf in the book—signed, of course—while I went down to take a class. The cheque disappeared, and was later cashed for ninety pounds, and well, it rather appeared that nobody could have had access to it except Miss Camden, who was helping me that day with my correspondence in place of my secretary, who was down with influenza. I did not accuse her then, nor do I accuse her now, and, of course, the thing went no further than the four walls of this room. I should never have mentioned the subject again had not your question prompted me to do so. I do know that the poor girl is very extravagant. I heard from one of the men that she had told the staff she even had to wire home for the money for a return journey from Monte Carlo this last summer. But I don’t believe she is dishonest. Please forget all this. The subject is very distasteful to me. I shall never be sufficiently sorry that my own carelessness tempted someone into dishonesty. But I certainly could not refuse to give Miss Camden a testimonial.”