Death at the Opera

by Gladys Mitchell

  “Simply and briefly, I shouldn’t believe you,” she said. “If he committed the murder, why should he call you in to investigate the matter, when the coroner and his people had already most obligingly called it suicide? Besides, I thought he had no opportunity.”

  “True, child, true,” said Mrs. Bradley, sighing. “The one thing above all others which is clear in my mind is that somebody very closely connected with the opera committed the murder. The time so carefully chosen, for instance, and—”

  “The clay in the waste-pipe,” said Mrs. Boyle. “I have been puzzled over that. Who, besides Donald Smith, would have been thinking about clay from the art-room? Yes, you’d like to say Moira Malley—”

  Mrs. Bradley shook her head.

  “Moira Malley wasn’t thinking about clay,” she said. “I’ll tell you something else. I don’t believe that child committed the murder, but I believe she suspects Mr. Smith, and that is what is upsetting her.”

  “Who do you think tampered with the electric-light switch?” inquired Alceste.

  “I believe it was Hurstwood. And I believe he did it because he suspects Miss Cliffordson. Aren’t they funny children? I certainly think it was he who disconnected that switch. Incidentally, Miss Cliffordson thinks that the method employed—that basin full of water—was an easy way to kill anybody.”

  Alceste shuddered.

  “I don’t,” she said. She shuddered again, and her lips twitched. Mrs. Bradley watched her closely for a moment, and then she said:

  “Ah, well. It’s all very interesting and mysterious. I don’t know that I’ve ever had a similar case.”

  “There is one comfort,” said Alceste slowly, after a pause, “no foul play can be suspected with regard to the death of Mrs. Hampstead. I can assure you that that was an accident. They didn’t think the pond was deep enough to be dangerous, but she tripped and went on her head. It stunned her, and so she was drowned.”

  “I know,” said Mrs. Bradley. “I have written to the doctor who was called upon to examine the body. I know all about it. I did nothing but remark upon the coincidence. There seems to be an epidemic of drowning lately. You know,” she added, “I wish I could imagine any reason, other than the fact of her guilt, which caused Miss Camden to refrain from confiding to me that she had been called out of the audience to attend to Miss Ferris’s injury that night.”

  Alceste shrugged.

  “Send for her and ask her,” she said. “There’s never any drill on the first day of term, so she’s sure to be free. I’ll go and find her, if you like.”

  Without waiting for an answer, off she went, and returned in about five minutes’ time with a very reluctant Physical Training Mistress.

  “Enjoyed your holiday?” asked Mrs. Boyle. Miss Camden glowered at her own black walking-shoes and said that she had not.

  “Oh? Well, you’re not going to enjoy yourself now,” Alceste continued. “Mrs. Bradley is annoyed with you.”

  “Not at all,” said Mrs. Bradley in her most soothing tones. “I am not anything but puzzled. Tell me, child, why did you hide the fact that you were called out of the audience to attend to Miss Ferris when she hurt herself on the night of the opera?”

  “But I wasn’t!” said Miss Camden, flushing and looking extremely frightened.

  “Well, I’m bothered!” said Alceste, before Mrs. Bradley could speak. “Here, wait a minute.”

  She was out of the room and half-way down the staffroom stairs before Miss Camden had a word to say. Then she ejaculated:

  “What lies have they been telling about me?”

  “I don’t know, my dear,” said Mrs. Bradley. She looked at the frightened girl shrewdly and added: “I was told that you are the person sent for whenever anybody is injured, and that, knowing this, one of the children went to fetch you when Miss Ferris cut her eye.”

  Miss Camden said nothing more until Alceste Boyle returned with the Fourth Form girl who had acted as call-boy and messenger on the night of the opera.

  “Now, Maisie,” said Mrs. Boyle, “did you ask Miss Camden to attend to Miss Ferris’s eye, or didn’t you?”

  “Oh, yes, Mrs. Boyle,” the child answered unhesitatingly. And Miss Camden came.”

  “You must be mad, Maisie!” cried Miss Camden. “You never came near me the whole evening!”

  “Please, Miss Camden, I did,” the girl reiterated. “It was dark, and Miss Galloway guided me to where you were sitting, and I began asking you, and you said: ‘Don’t bellow, you little idiot. All right. I’ll come.’ And you followed me out into the corridor and then you said: ‘Where is she?’ and I showed you where she was sitting on a chair in the water-lobby, and you said: ‘All right. Cut along. I’ll see to it.’ So I went.”

  “Oh, yes. I remember,” said Miss Camden savagely.

  “That’s all, Maisie,” said Alceste Boyle, and the girl disappeared. When she had gone Miss Camden rose to her feet. She was like a cornered animal turning on its pursuers.

  “Now take me away and hang me! Go on! Send for the police!” she screamed. She wrenched at the front of her dress and pulled out a whistle attached to a length of silk cord. “Here you are! Here, take it!” she yelled hysterically. She tore and tugged at the whistle to detach it. Alceste Boyle stepped up to her and coolly unfastened the clip which held the whistle on to the cord.

  “And now stop being ridiculous, my poor child,” said Mrs. Bradley. “Nobody is going to send for the police. Here, sit down. That’s better. Now, then. Did you murder Calma Ferris?” she went on in a conversational tone. The girl, quietened by the attitude of the two older women, shook her head defiantly.

  “What is the use of my saying anything?” she demanded. “You both know that I’m a thief and a liar. Why shouldn’t I be a murderer as well?”

  Mrs. Bradley shrugged her thin shoulders. “It would be a most unusual combination of criminal characteristics if you were,” she said, “and very interesting. So interesting that I should not dream of sending for the police. Tell us all you know, and let me see what I can make of it.”

  “There isn’t anything more,” Miss Camden said. “I was with her less than five minutes. I was afraid to tell you before. I made certain you would think I’d murdered her. Maisie came for me, as she said, and I went along with her to the water-lobby. But, upon my honour, Miss Ferris left the lobby with me, and the light was as usual, and the—the water ran away. Please believe me! Please believe me!”

  Mrs. Bradley cackled suddenly, as though she had seen a joke.

  “I do believe you, dear child,” she said. “I perceive that if you had been Calma Ferris’s murderer you would have given the game away long ago.”

  CHAPTER XV

  DEDUCTION

  I

  IT was Miss Sooley who made the momentous discovery. She took the newspaper to Miss Lincallow and, pointing to the photograph of the drowned girl at Lamkin, said excitedly:

  “Surely that’s the maid we used to have?” It was. Miss Lincallow verified it, and, what was more, went round to the police station with the newspaper under her arm, a stout ashplant in her right hand, “in case I am set upon by that wretch in the street,” and triumph in her heart.

  Names, dates and descriptions were compared and checked, the girl’s mother was interrogated afresh, and it was established beyond doubt that the girl had been in Miss Lincallow’s service at the beginning of the summer holiday.

  “Dismissed for making herself too free with the gentlemen guests,” Miss Lincallow explained, “and with that Cutler in particular.”

  It was a valuable clue. Following it up, it proved that the girl had been discovered tampering with property belonging to some of the visitors at the boarding-house, and particularly that of Helm, and that for this reason she had been dismissed, and had gone home to live, after she lost another situation in London for dishonesty and for having been arrested for shop-lifting. Unfortunately, although it could be proved that the dead girl and Cutler had been to some extent acquainte
d with one another, the police were as far as ever from being able to put their fingers on a motive substantial enough to be regarded as Helm’s reason for murdering the girl.

  “H’m! What about her putting the screw on Cutler some way until he got fed up with her?” suggested Detective-Sergeant Ross to Detective-Inspector Breardon, when every scrap of information they could wangle or frighten out of Miss Sooley and Miss Lincallow had been vouchsafed them.

  “Sounds all right,” said his superior. “The trouble is to prove it. Besides, I don’t see what she could put the screw on about. He didn’t harm those two funny old dames, where she was in service. I don’t see any reason for blackmailing Cutler. In any case, motive or no motive, there’s the question of tracing him to that inn on that particular Sunday, you know. That beastly fog has about done for us, I reckon. Even Spratt’s father and mother, who would do anything, up to sticking their own necks in the hangman’s noose, to get their son released, can no more explain the drowning of that girl in their bathroom than I can. They saw nobody; they heard nobody. The public bar wasn’t open, but the side entrance was unlocked as usual, for the girl to come in to have her bath. Both of them were having a lie down upstairs. We’re up against a blank wall,” said Breardon morosely. “We can fake up a charge against young Spratt all right, because, although he says he was out in the garage, there’s nobody to swear to it. But a good lawyer will make mincemeat of our case against him, especially the jealousy motive. Besides, between ourselves, I’m certain the lad didn’t do it. I reckon he was in the garage and never saw them come into the inn. We’re holding him because he had the opportunity for the crime; but, come to that, so had his father and mother. Neither of ’em liked the idea of having the girl for their daughter-in-law, you know. What about them?”

  “Oh, Cutler did it, all right,” said Ross. “But we’ll not be able to fix it on him, I’m thinking, sir.”

  “Well, we’ll have a jolly good try,” said Breardon, who was red-haired and very resentful of newspaper comment on the methods of the police. “I shall have another talk with that chauffeur, What’s-his-name. He used to take the girl out in his employer’s car, I’ll bet. Perhaps they met Cutler some time, and things got said. You never know, and a nod’s as good as a wink in some of these murder cases, my lad.”

  Accordingly Roy was again questioned, but he was certain that on their very infrequent joy-rides they had never met anybody with whom his companion entered into conversation. He gave it as his opinion, which the police could take or leave as they chose, that if Cutler and the girl had met on the Sunday afternoon, they had met by accident and the drowning had been an unpremeditated crime. His difficulty, he said, was to imagine why Susie had ever taken the fellow into the inn with her. The inspector listened patiently, but passed no comment, and Roy was allowed to go. But when he had departed:

  “Why shouldn’t he be the murderer?” inquired Breardon suddenly of the sergeant.

  “Because he’s got an alibi, sir. He went back to fetch the old woman, the girl’s mother, and he did fetch her. Besides, where’s the motive?”

  “Sweet on the girl, wasn’t he? Weren’t he and young Spratt rivals or something at one time?”

  “Jealousy crime? Won’t do, sir. He’d more likely to have killed the other fellow—the arrested man—than the girl.”

  “Not necessarily. He could have killed her to make sure the other bloke didn’t get her. They do it in Spain, don’t they?”

  “Yes, but not in England, sir. It wouldn’t be decent!”

  “All right, Sergeant. You know,” said his superior, grinning. Ross, unperturbed, smiled dutifully, and then remarked:

  “You know that inquest in December, sir, at Hillmaston School?”

  “The teacher who committed suicide? Yes.”

  “I wouldn’t mind betting that was murder, sir, if the coroner had known his job. She was the niece of that woman who told us about this girl being in her service in the summer. The niece could have met Cutler, sir. She spent her summer holiday with her aunt.”

  The inspector smiled ironically and patted him on the back.

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

  “I can see that’s howw 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. It 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.

  Roy Ham 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 mu
ch 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.”