Death at the Opera mb-5

by Gladys Mitchell

  Miss Camden thought: “Just wait until I get the chance to pay you out, Ferris, my love! That’s all! And I’ve slaved over the school netball. Slaved over it.”

  Frederick Hampstead thought: “I suppose the Head will give me a testimonial before he sacks me. Or won’t he? Better ask for it now, before that condemned female blows the gaff, I think. I’ll see him during first lesson, when I haven’t a class. He can’t refuse if she hasn’t said anything yet. Perhaps she’ll keep her mouth shut, but I don’t think I can stay. It’ll be so difficult now.”

  Alceste Boyle thought: “Why worry? She doesn’t know anything, and, anyway, I think she’s a good sort. It will damage Fred, not me, in any case. Thank God for widowhood! But I wish she didn’t know. It makes it in a way less wonderful, now someone knows.”

  chapter iii: death

  « ^ »

  i

  By half-past ten on the Friday morning Calma Ferris had something to think about other than school difficulties and problems. A telegram was handed in, which ran thus:

  “Beware helm widower suspicious circumstances asked school.”

  Several years of coping with arithmetical problems had sharpened Miss Ferris’s wits, and a message which, to less well-trained senses, might have suggested the babblings of lunacy, resolved itself for her into the following perturbing set of ideas:

  “Beware of the Mr. Helm from whose table you asked to be moved at the commencement of your summer holiday at your aunt’s boarding-house. He is undoubtedly an imitator, if not an actual reincarnation, of George Joseph Smith, who was charged in the year 1915 for drowning three brides in the bath, and he has asked for the address of your school.”

  The telegram bore her aunt’s surname. Miss Ferris, who had lived the narrowest, safest and most sheltered of lives, was seriously upset by the message. Advice she felt she must have, and therefore five pairs of interested and four pair of anxious eyes noted that at recess, instead of taking coffee and biscuits in the staff-room, according to the time-honoured and civilized custom of the staff, she repaired to the Headmaster’s study.

  “So she’s going to split,” thought Miss Cliffordson. “Oh, well!”

  She meant to say something to Hurstwood when she got the chance. She wondered whether it would be compatible with her dignity as a member of the staff to suggest to the boy that they should both deny Miss Ferris’s story, and rather reluctantly decided that it would not do. In less than three minutes, however, Miss Ferris returned to the staff-room. The Headmaster was engaged, and could not see her.

  “So she’s going to, but hasn’t yet,” thought Frederick Hampstead. He shrugged. After all, what did she know? He and Alceste had always been so very careful. True, there had been those two mad evenings in the women’s common-room, but surely nobody knew anything about those! And it had been unbearable that long, long autumn term, and there had been only the short Christmas holiday together at the end of it! And even that had been cut short by his having to go and see poor Marion in that ghastly private asylum which drained his resources so thoroughly. The remembrance of those two mad evenings worried him. They had flung caution to the winds on each occasion. They had been crazy. Could anybody have found out? A school was such a peculiar institution; and the staff had to be like Caesar’s wife—above reproach. He had said to Smith on one occasion that it was a pity people did not fall into ornamental lakes when such were provided. There was an ornamental lake in the grounds of the asylum… He regretted the ironic jest immediately he had made it and sincerely hoped that Smith would not refer to it again.

  At any other time Miss Ferris might have shown the telegram to Alceste Boyle instead of to Mr. Cliffordson, but at the recollection of Alceste’s words and look at the mention of Frederick Hampstead, she felt she did not dare to seek her sympathy or advice. No, she must wait until the Headmaster was less busy. During the next hour she could set a class to work some arithmetic examples, and perhaps go and see him. She felt, for the first time in her life, alone and unprotected. She had not forgotten Helm’s invasion of her room on the night the burglars came, nor his subsequent impudent proposal of marriage.

  She went to Mr. Cliffordson at about a quarter to twelve, and received advice and reassurance. Nobody saw her go, and Mr. Cliffordson did not mention to anybody at that time that she had visited him. He asked for, and received, a description of Mr. Helm, and when Miss Ferris had gone he chuckled. She seemed so extremely hard-boiled a virgin to be dreading unwelcome attentions from a man of the type he judged Helm to be.

  The performance of The Mikado was timed to begin at half-past seven, and soon after seven the school hall was beginning to fill up. Masters and mistresses who were not in the opera were acting as stewards, and Alceste Boyle, as senior mistress and producer, was combining the delicate duties of welcoming the guests of importance and darting behind the scenes to make certain that all was going smoothly in readiness for the rise of the curtain.

  Apart from the fusing of an electric wire which caused a five-minutes’ delay in making up the women principals, nothing out of the ordinary happened until half-way through Act One. Alceste Boyle, who had decided not to add to the onerous office of producer the slighter one of call-boy, was informed by her small deputy, a child from the fourth form, that the “Katisha” was nowhere to be found. “She was dabbing her face in the water-lobby, but it’s dark in there now.” Concluding that, wherever Miss Ferris might be, the probability was that she would return to the women principals’ dressing-room before going on to the stage, Alceste sat down, and, because she was tired and because Calma Ferris’s remark of the previous day had compelled her to face a fact which, for the sake of her sanity, she managed to ignore for the greater part of each term—namely that Frederick Hampstead never would and never could be hers unless his wife died—for he was a Catholic, and even an amendment of the divorce laws would have had no significance for him—she began to brood.

  Five minutes went by, and there was no sign of Calma Ferris. The child came back and reported that she was still missing. Alceste had a sudden vision of her having been taken ill. She hastened down the corridor and pushed open the doors of the various rooms as she came to them. All were in darkness. At each door she called softly but distinctly:

  “Are you in here, Miss Ferris?”

  There was no answer. She switched on the lights of each room on her return journey, and glanced anxiously round each one. Teacher’s desk on the rostrum, winter twigs in jam-jars on the window ledges, children’s locker desks in orderly rows, wall blackboards, stock-cupboards, all the paraphernalia of class-room activities were there, but there was no sign of Miss Ferris. Puzzled, Alceste switched off the lights.

  The only other player who had not yet been on the stage, and who, as a matter of fact, was not due to make his first entrance until Act Two, was the “Mikado” himself, the Senior Art Master, Mr. Smith. It occurred to Alceste Boyle that the two might be conversing, and that Calma might even now be on the opposite side of the stage, ready to make her entrance. A short transverse corridor made it possible to get to the other side of the school without crossing in front of the stage or going out of doors, so she slipped along this, and presently came upon Mr. Smith, who was enjoying a cigarette in the corridor and was talking to the electrician. She admonished him with a smile and in a whisper, for they were very near the stage, told him he would cough when he began to sing, and then asked him whether he had seen Miss Ferris anywhere.

  He had not, and so, feeling irritated and worried, Alceste found a couple of chorus-people and sent them to assist in the search, while she herself hastily made her way into the darkened hall, found Miss Camden, who should have had the part of “Katisha” had not Calma Ferris financed the production of the opera, took her into the women principals’ dressing-room and asked her to take the part.

  Miss Camden declared she could not possibly go on like that at a moment’s notice, and begged to be excused. Alceste let her return to the auditorium, collared the b
iggest girl in the chorus, borrowed her costume, got Madame Berotti to make her up very quickly for the part of “Katisha,” and, Calma Ferris having failed to materialize, went on at the end of the First Act, and, being by that time in a state of high nervous tension, justified her Irish blood by rising magnificently to the occasion and taking the part as poor Calma Ferris might have taken it in dreams but could never have managed to take it in reality.

  The curtain fell to tremendous applause. Alceste had herself made up a little more carefully during the interval, and to all Miss Cliffordson’s questioning she would only reply:

  “Whatever has happened, she can’t go on now. I shall have to finish.”

  “But what on earth can have happened to the woman?” Miss Cliffordson persisted. Alceste, sacrificing her own good looks with every touch of grease-paint, in order to create successfully the illusion of “Katisha’s” hideous Japanese countenance, shrugged one shapely shoulder, stood motionless while the last smears were added, and then went out to round up the chorus.

  It was not only behind the scenes that Calma Ferris’s absence was causing comment. Her landlady, and Frederick Hampstead, the conductor, together with those members of the staff who were on duty as stewards, and those members of the school who were seated in a solid and appreciative phalanx at the back of the hall, wondered audibly, during the interval, why Miss Ferris was out of the cast. Various conjectures were rife, from the landlady’s “Taken bad with the excitement, poor thing,” to the school’s almost unanimous “Old Boiler blew up because the Ferret was so rotten at rehearsal, so Ferret’s gone off in a bate and left Boiler stranded,” which went to prove, if proof were needed, that children are not the infallible judges of character which sentimental persons would have us believe they are.

  The Second Act was a great success. Hurstwood, who bad begun very badly in Act One, had gradually regained his self-confidence, and towards the end of the Act was singing and acting almost hysterically, as though carried along by over-mastering excitement. During the Second Act he controlled this excitement sufficiently to give a very good performance. Alceste Boyle was magnificent, and Mr. Smith, as the “Mikado,” assisted her in bringing the house down. In fact, in spite of the comparatively lifeless show put up by Moira Malley, and the fact that she was in tears at the fall of the curtain, the production of The Mikado was the most outstandingly successful production the school Musical, Operatic and Dramatic Society had ever staged.

  “Thank heaven that’s over!” observed Miss Freely, wiping off make-up in the women-principals’ dressing-room. “Nothing will ever induce me to take part in a school performance again.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” said Miss Cliffordson, ravishingly pretty in a pale pink négligé, as she sat on a school chair and put on her stockings. “You were very good, you know.”

  It was so palpably a baited hook that Miss Freely perversely decided not to rise to it. She was good-nature itself, but Miss Cliffordson was rather too certain that Miss Cliffordson was the prettiest, the best-dressed, the most interesting, the most temperamental and the most talented member of the staff.

  “Donald Smith was better than usual, don’t you think?” she said.

  “Oh, I always think Smith rises to the occasion,” replied Miss Cliffordson. “He’s lazy, like all real artists, and he won’t rehearse, but on the night he always comes up to scratch.”

  At this point Madame Berotti, who had been gently removing the more outrageous portions of Alceste’s hideous make-up, patted her victim on the shoulder and said good night.

  “She’s pleased, anyway,” remarked Miss Freely, looking after the slender, upright figure of the old ex-actress who carried her eighty years so gallantly. “She thought you were marvellous, Mrs. Boyle. And so you were,” she added. “Absolutely great! I don’t know how you do it.”

  Alceste, who was tired, said ungraciously: “I wish I knew why Miss Ferris did it! I can’t imagine what’s the matter with her. It isn’t like her to have left us all in the lurch like that.”

  “Must have been taken ill,” said Miss Cliffordson. “I expect she looked for you and couldn’t find you. But I think it was too mean of Miss Camden not to take the part when she was asked. Knows every word of it, too, because she did it for the Hillmaston Players last season.”

  “Well, she was awfully sore, you know, when Mr. Cliffordson handed it straight to Miss Ferris like that, without a suggestion that anyone else might do it better,” said Miss Freely. “And, after all, she would have done it better—tons better. Although not a patch, even then, on Mrs. Boyle’s rendering,” she went on, glancing sidelong at Alceste’s beautiful bare shoulders, whence the strap of her petticoat had slipped as she bent to pick up her shoe. Alceste, flushed and laughing now, said happily:

  “Don’t encourage me. Oh, but I loved it!”

  The younger mistresses, none of whom knew why she had ever left the stage, said nothing, hoping for revelations. But none came. Instead, Alceste turned to the other occupant of the dressing-room and said:

  “Well, Moira? Nearly ready? I expect the others have all gone.”

  It was the thankless duty of those of the staff who had been acting as stewards to see the audience off the building, and then to go round to the dressing-rooms and chivvy the children home. Before Moira could make any reply, there came a series of light taps at the dressing-room door, and the Headmaster’s voice outside said:

  “Gretta, how long?”

  “Half a tic, Uncle,” replied his niece, collecting her Japanese costume preparatory to stowing it away.

  “Right. I shall be in my own room when you’re ready. I’ve told some of the girls to wait for Moira.”

  He went away, and the conversation died down among the three women as they hastily concluded their dressing and tidying-up. Then Alceste Boyle, ready to go, turned again to the girl in the far corner of the room, and said, a trifle sharply:

  “Come along, Moira. Surely you’re ready by now!”

  Moira, with a tear-stained face, came up to her, and said abruptly, because she was upset and nervous:

  “Mrs. Boyle, I want to speak to you.”

  “Say on,” replied Alceste shortly. The tears had irritated her.

  “Not here,” said Moira. “Will you come outside a minute? I—I think I know where Miss Ferris is.”

  “What?” said Alceste, while Miss Freely and Miss Cliffordson came nearer. “What do you mean, child?”

  “She’s dead,” said Moira. “I found out—I found her —in the interval I went for a drink—I didn’t like to spoil the show—I—she… Oh, they’ll hang him! And he can’t die! He can’t!”

  “Get out,” said Alceste to the younger mistresses. “Find Mr. Cliffordson at once. See whether it’s true.”

  The two went out, and shut the door behind them. When they had gone Alceste turned to the overwrought and frightened girl.

  “Listen, Moira,” she said. “Nobody is going to hang. Now don’t be silly any more. I want you to pull yourself together. Stop crying. It’s quite all right. That’s better. Now tell me exactly what you did. Sit down in that chair. Take your time.”

  “I was thirsty, and I wanted a drink of water,” said the girl “so I went to the water-lobby with one of the beakers out of the laboratory to get a drink. It was dark, and I tried to switch on the light, but it didn’t come, so I thought if I was careful not to knock the beaker on the tap, I could manage in the dark. I felt carefully, and I touched her. I—she was all wet—I went away. I didn’t know whether to tell anybody or not.”

  “You don’t know, then, that it was Miss Ferris,” said Alceste quietly, “and you don’t know whether she was dead. Don’t think about it any more. The others will attend to her. Go along home now. Who’s going with you?”

  Moira mentioned the names of one or two of the girls who were in the chorus, and who went past the house where she lived in term-time, with her aunt. Alceste Boyle had just dismissed her when the Headmaster came in. His face was
grey. He looked, for the first time in Alceste Boyle’s experience, an old man. He nodded in response to her raised eyebrows.

  “I’ve sent Browning for a doctor,” he said, “but there’s no doubt of it, poor woman. I wonder what on earth was the cause!”

  “But how terrible!” Alceste said. “There will have to be an inquest, I suppose?”

  The words sounded banal and in rather bad taste, she thought, but the shock had been great. The Headmaster nodded.

  “Bad for the school,” he said. “Well, you’ll be wanting to get home, I know. Good night. Don’t worry about it, will you? You’d better not see her. We’ve done what is necessary. Don’t worry.”

  He went back to the men-principals’ dressing-room, to find Hampstead talking to Smith.

  “Do you want us any longer, sir?” Smith asked. He was a dirty-white where he had removed his make-up, and looked ill.

  “No. There’s nothing to be done. I shall stay until the doctor has made his examination, of course. Good night. Don’t worry. I can’t think how it happened. You’ll… I needn’t ask you—you won’t discuss it outside the school at present, will you?”

  He called Hampstead back as the two masters got to the door.

  “Mrs. Boyle has not gone yet,” he said. “You’ll see her home, I expect, as usual, won’t you? Impress upon her not to worry. It’s a terrible affair, but we must take it that the poor woman was either the victim of sudden illness, or else that she had trouble of which none of us knew. Good night, my dear fellow. Don’t linger, or Mrs. Boyle may be gone.”

  Hampstead, who had been staring dumbly, went out like a sleep-walker, and in less than ten minutes young Mr. Browning returned with a doctor. Alceste had no intention of going, however, and as soon as she saw Hampstead she said:

  “You’d better go, Fred. I must stay and see things through. After all, there ought to be a woman on the scene.”

  “The Head quite expects that you will go home,” Hampstead replied. “In fact, he told me to take you. This is a frightful business, Alceste. I’ve seen her…” He paused and fidgeted with the hat he was holding. “Do you think it could be suicide? She was sitting on a chair in the water-lobby, on this side of the building, and her head was in a bowl of water.”