Death at the Opera

by Gladys Mitchell

  “Other way about,” said Hampstead brusquely. “She’s a widow, but I’ve a wife living.”

  “I’ve attended your wife, then,” said Mrs. Bradley surprisingly. “I thought the name was familiar. In Derbyshire, isn’t she?”

  Hampstead nodded.

  “Fieldenfare Manor,” he said.

  “Yes.” Mrs. Bradley nodded in her turn.

  “It happened a year after our marriage,” said Hampstead, staring into space. “Luckily the child died.” Suddenly his grim expression softened. “I couldn’t stay in a place where everybody knew me, and be stared at and pitied,” he went on, “so I came here, and met Alceste.”

  “And that relationship was threatened by Miss Ferris’s knowledge of it?” said Mrs. Bradley softly.

  Hampstead shook his head.

  “Alceste thought so, but, after all, what could Miss Ferris do? She could tell the Head, but why should she bother? She didn’t dislike us; she wasn’t jealous of Alceste; she didn’t envy us—I can’t see why she should trouble to take any action. I was worried at first, I admit, but, on thinking it over, I don’t believe she would have told.”

  “No,” said Mrs. Bradley. “And even if she had, I don’t see that the Headmaster could take official notice of it. There was never any scandal, I suppose?”

  “I don’t know of any,” Hampstead answered. “Mind you, we’ve been fools and taken risks at times—when it got unbearable, you know. But I don’t think anybody knew. In public we were always very careful. I even go to see poor Marion occasionally. Why don’t you people dope the poor devils out?” he asked savagely.

  “I don’t know,” said Mrs. Bradley truthfully. The same thought had often occurred to her. “I suppose it is partly because, as doctors, we hope to effect a cure.”

  The startled expression on Hampstead’s face caused her to add briskly:

  “Don’t worry. Mrs. Hampstead’s case is hopeless.”

  “Oh, heavens! I didn’t mean that!” cried the man, genuinely distressed. “God knows, I pity her. But Alceste! I couldn’t give up Alceste! I should die!”

  “Somewhere behind that heart-felt statement,” mused Mrs. Bradley, when the Senior Music Master had departed, “is the motive for a murder. But not necessarily for the murder of Calma Ferris,” she was compelled to admit.

  III

  “And now,” thought Mrs. Bradley, “for Miss Camden.” She returned to the hall and passed through it to the gymnasium, where the Physical Training Mistress was taking a class. Mrs. Bradley seated herself on the edge of the platform, which held a piano, and watched the proceedings. Miss Camden, whatever her shortcomings as a human being, was an exceedingly good teacher. Mrs. Bradley noted the enthusiastic response of the girls—a form of fourteen-year-olds—the finish displayed, all the obvious results, in fact, of capable teaching over a long period—and nodded approvingly.

  Miss Camden, aware, of course, that a visitor was present, carried on with a lesson cheerfully, and had not the slightest objection to showing off the prowess of the class. When the lesson was over and the form dismissed, she came up to Mrs. Bradley with a smile and said:

  “Time off?”

  Mrs. Bradley smiled.

  “I want to talk to you, dear child. When will it be possible?”

  “Can you get it over in ten minutes?” inquired Miss Camden, glancing at the clock on the wall behind the platform. “I have a netball practice before lunch.”

  “Get someone else to take it,” said Mrs. Bradley briskly.

  The Physical Training Mistress looked at her and smiled sardonically.

  “So easy, isn’t it?” she said.

  “Isn’t it?” said Mrs. Bradley innocently.

  “Since Ferris—” Miss Camden paused. “Since Ferris’s time, there’s nobody will do a hand’s turn for the games except young Freely, and I can’t keep on asking her. There ought to be two of us in a school this size, you see, only the Headmaster won’t be persuaded to take any interest in the physical work. The girls, anyway, are luckier than the boys. The boys haven’t even one qualified person. There’s a pro. comes to take cricket in the summer, but, unless we get an enthusiastic master, the football goes hang. They never play any outside matches, poor kids. I give them a bit of hockey occasionally, but I’m worked to death as it is. It’s a damn’ shame for the poor little devils!”

  Mrs. Bradley could see that the girl was worked to death. She could hear it in the high-pitched, over-loud voice, so different from the “professional” tones in which she had given her lesson. Her eyes were dark-circled and she blinked them rapidly as she talked.

  “I’ll have a word with Mr. Cliffordson,” she said.

  “I wish you would,” said Miss Camden. There was something about Mrs. Bradley which forced her hearer to the conclusion that if she had a word with the Headmaster something would very likely come of it. “Well, I must be off. I can hear the girls out there, and they are right underneath the Old Man’s window.”

  She hurried away, an athletic figure in her beautifully-cut tunic, and disappeared through swing-doors at the farther end of the gymnasium. Mrs. Bradley, baulked of her prey, wandered into the grounds.

  It was a pleasant day for December, sharply cold, but filled with thin, pale golden sunshine which lay along the bare twigs, giving them significance and beauty. Fourteen girls, all dressed exactly alike in navy-blue tunics, white sweaters, long black stockings and white rubberp-soled shoes, were passing a football up and down the length of the asphalt netball court with an ease, vigour and accuracy born of frequent practice. Miss Camden, a blazer with an impressively-decorated breast-pocket distinguishing her from the players, blew occasional sharp blasts on a whistle. Mrs. Bradley, who did not understand the game, watched with considerable interest until she found herself—hatless, coatless and gloveless—becoming rather cold. She was about to re-enter the building when she saw the boy Hurstwood. He was walking towards her up the long side of the school field, kicking a large fir-cone as he walked. Mrs. Bradley waited for him.

  “Ah, child,” she said. Hurstwood, who, as most young people did, had taken a liking to the queer little old lady, grinned at the nominative of address and waited for her to continue. He had himself completely in hand once more, for, upon leaving the Headmaster’s study, he had not returned to his form-room, but had spent the rest of the lesson in walking round the field.

  “Go up to the women’s common-room and bring me”— Mrs. Bradley checked off the items on her yellow fingers—“one coat, dark green, one hat from the same peg, one silk scarf in divers colours—”

  “I bet they are!” thought Hurstwood, who had imbibed sufficient sense of colour from Mr. Smith to realize that Mrs. Bradley’s conception of appropriately-blended hues would be gruesome in the extreme.

  “—and two gloves—heaven knows where I put those, child, but they fit exactly”—she extended a skinny claw—claw—“this hand.”

  Hurstwood, realizing that she was cold, cast Sixth Form dignity to the winds and cantered off. He took the staff-room stairs three at a time, going up, and five at a time coming down, and returned in a few moments with the required garments.

  “Tell me,” said Mrs. Bradley, as he helped her on with them, “do you box?”

  “No,” replied Hurstwood. “Like to. Never had the chance.”

  “I have a theory,” said Mrs. Bradley, “that Mr. Poole boxes.”

  Hurstwood grinned.

  “I don’t know about boxing,” he said; “but he must be a lad in a rough-house.”

  “Really?” said Mrs. Bradley, pricking up her ears. “Give time, place and circumstances, child.”

  “Summer holiday, Marseilles, a row in a pub.,” replied Hurstwood, readily and intelligently. “He was telling us about it in form a week or two ago. Whenever we get a sticky bit of maths, we switch Poole on to his holidays. It always works. He and Smith sail a boat about nearly every summer holiday and seem to have a jolly good time. I expect Poole tells lies—well, embroid
ers, you know—but, even allowing sixty per cent. off for that, they must have done all sorts of jolly decent things in the hols.”

  “When did you learn to sift evidence, young man?” demanded Mrs. Bradley.

  Hurstwood grinned.

  “Oh, it’s only historical evidence,” he said. “I matricked with Distinction, so old Kemball rather decently gives me extra-tu., and . . . he’s pretty hot,” he concluded. “I owe him the Distinction, really.”

  “H’m!” said Mrs. Bradley. She looked at the boy curiously, and an idea came, quite unbidden, into her mind. Mrs. Bradley distrusted sudden flights of fancy, and, to do her extremely well-disciplined mind full justice, she was very seldom afflicted by them. She tried to dismiss this one, but it persisted. She said to Hurstwood suddenly:

  “I wonder whether anyone at school could put my portable wireless set right? I suppose anyone with an elementary knowledge of electric lighting could do it, couldn’t he?”

  There was a long pause. Then Hurstwood said awkwardly:

  “I daresay several of the Lower Fifth Scientific could manage it. They’ve done a lot of work on electricity this term.”

  “Oh, yes. Thank you, child. The Lower Fifth Scientific.” She began to walk along the cinder-track. It skirted the netball court and then wound serpent-wise round the school field. Its surface was trodden flat and hard, for it formed the school promenade except at the end of the spring term, when it was forked over by the groundsmen in preparation for Sports Day.

  “I say, Mrs. Bradley,” said Hurstwood, when they had almost circumnavigated the field, “are the police going to be brought into this?”

  Mrs. Bradley did not attempt to pretend that she did not understand him. She pursed her thin lips into a little beak and replied:

  “Not at present, certainly. But at any moment, possibly. Again, possibly not. It depends partly on what we discover.”

  “Suppose,” said Hurstwood, pursuing a train of thought which had been in his mind for some days, “a person is wrongly accused of murder?”

  “Yes?” said Mrs. Bradley encouragingly.

  “What chance does he stand of getting—of being acquitted?”

  “Every chance in the world,” said Mrs. Bradley confidently. “But why these morbid theses, child?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. My father wants me to be a barrister,” said Hurstwood.

  “Does he? And what is your own choice of a career?” asked Mrs. Bradley.

  “Oh, I shouldn’t mind. Young Lestrange says his uncle has got more murderers off than any other defending counsel in England.”

  “Yes. A depraved nature, Ferdinand’s,” said Mrs. Bradley. “Ferdinand Lestrange is my son by my first husband,” she explained in response to the boy’s glance of inquiry.

  “Oh, really? How topping,” said Hurstwood, conventionally. “Then young Lestrange is your nephew?” he added, with considerably more interest.

  “He is. Younger than you, of course?”

  “Yes, a good bit, I think. He’s sixteen, isn’t he? I’m eighteen in April. Only just within the age-limit for the schol., in fact.”

  “The Balliol scholarship? What chance do you think you stand?”

  “Pretty good, I believe,” replied the boy. “But this death business has put me off, I think.”

  “These contretemps are bound to have some immediate effect on a sensitive nature,” said Mrs. Bradley. Hurstwood grinned and invited her to refrain from pulling his leg. Having walked round the field three times in all, they returned to the building, where the bell had just been rung for lunch. Miss Camden blew her whistle to indicate that netball practice was at an end, and she, Hurstwood and Mrs. Bradley walked into the hall together.

  “I’m not on duty for lunch,” said Miss Camden, “so if you wanted to talk, I could finish quickly and meet you in the needlework-room in a quarter of an hour from now.”

  IV

  The Physical Training Mistress had changed into blouse and skirt, with her blazer taking the place of the other mistresses’ cardigans, when Mrs. Bradley next saw her. They closed the door of the needlework-room and sat among sewing-machines and trestle-tables, confronted by diagrams, pinned-up paper patterns, examples of the various kinds of stitchery, and all the paraphernalia of school needlework.

  “Very practical,” said Mrs. Bradley, looking about her with great interest. Miss Camden, who did not know a piece of whipping from a run-and-fell seam, cautiously agreed.

  “But there isn’t a lot of time,” she added, looking at her wrist-watch and comparing it with the clock on the west wall of the room. “What do you want with me?”

  “I want to know whether you know who murdered Calma Ferris,” said Mrs. Bradley, with such implicit directness that Miss Camden gasped and then flushed brick-red.

  “I!” she said. “Oh, no, of course I don’t! Whatever made you ask?”

  “You agree, then, that she was murdered?” asked Mrs. Bradley, a little more mildly.

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Why do you agree, dear child?”

  Miss Camden considered the question, and then answered slowly:

  “Well, you’re here. That proves it. Besides, she wasn’t one to commit suicide.”

  “Can we say that confidently about any person on this earth?” Mrs. Bradley inquired.

  “Perhaps not. You know I had a row with her just before—just before the opera?” said Miss Camden, taking the plunge.

  “I had heard some rumour of it. About a netball match, wasn’t it?” said Mrs. Bradley. “You’re the second person I’ve spoken to who was not behind the scenes at all during the performance, I think,” she added with seeming irrelevance.

  “Who is the other?” asked Miss Camden, amused.

  “Mr. Hampstead. Miss Ferris was killed at some point during the First Act of The Mikado, and he was conducting the orchestra.”

  “And I was in the audience, as you indicated just now. Oh, I say!”—she appeared startled, as though the thought had presented itself to her for the first time—“what a jolly good thing I didn’t accept Mrs. Boyle’s invitation! It was fairly pressing, too!”

  “Mrs. Boyle’s invitation?” echoed Mrs. Bradley. “Explain, child.”

  “Well, when Miss Ferris couldn’t be found, Mrs. Boyle came out into the auditorium, found me, and asked me to take part. I refused, so she took it herself.”

  “You didn’t feel equal to taking the part at a moment’s notice?” asked Mrs. Bradley. Miss Camden blinked more rapidly than ever.

  “It wasn’t that,” she said. “The fact was—although it sounds a bit mean, perhaps—I didn’t see why I should get them out of a difficulty. I had been turned down absolutely to give Miss Ferris the part, and—well, I didn’t bear the slightest ill will, but I didn’t see, either, why they should expect to come wailing to me to carry on when they’d got themselves into a mess. Don’t you agree?”

  “Within limits, yes,” said Mrs. Bradley, trying to remain strictly truthful, without this having the effect of drying up the flood of Miss Camden’s remarks. It appeared that she was successful, for the Physical Training Mistress went on, with scarcely a pause:

  “Of course, I will say for Mrs. Boyle that I couldn’t have done the part any better myself. She was frightfully good. I believe my singing might have improved matters a trifle, but then I’ve been trained, you see, and she hasn’t. Before I took up teaching my idea was to go on the operatic stage, but dad wouldn’t hear of it. He’s a clergyman, you know, and he had a fit when he heard that his only daughter wanted to be an actress. I tried to show him what I could do by staging Carmen in the Village Hall one Christmas, and taking the name-part myself; but”—she laughed, a hard, grating sound—“it just finished him off entirely. So here I am—always in hot water with the Head, who doesn’t care for jerks and games, and always disapproved of at home. I’ve got a brother, but he’s in Holy Orders, chaplain to a bishop and marked for high preferment, and the apple of my parents’ eyes.”

 
; “Poor girl! Poor child!” said Mrs. Bradley, with genuine sorrow in her beautiful voice. The young mistress looked startled.

  “Heaven knows why I’ve been telling you all this,” she said blankly. “You’d better forget it, please. What’s the time? I’ve got a hockey practice at twenty past one.”

  It was not quite five minutes past one, but Mrs. Bradley did not attempt to detain her as she rose and walked towards the door. When she reached it, however, Mrs. Bradley said suddenly:

  “But, child, if the work here is so hard and the Headmaster so unsympathetic, what makes you stay?”

  Miss Camden turned, her hand on the door-knob, and swallowed twice.

  “I couldn’t get a testimonial at present,” she said. “That’s why.”

  “How long have you been here?” asked Mrs. Bradley.

  “Five years. It’s my first job,” the girl answered.

  “Come here,” said Mrs. Bradley. Miss Camden obeyed. “Explain,” said Mrs. Bradley. Miss Camden shook her head.

  “You’d better ask the Old Man if you really want to know,” she said. “But it’s got nothing at all to do with this murder, I assure you.”

  There was no pretext upon which Mrs. Bradley felt she could detain her further, so she let her get to the door and outside it this time. Then she drew her chair to the nearest trestle-table, sought for her notebook and pencil, and for the next ten minutes she was writing as fast as she could. There was nothing more to be done until afternoon school began, so, putting away notebook and pencil, she went up to the women’s common-room for her coat and gloves, and then sallied out to watch the hockey practice. In a far corner of the school field half a dozen biggish boys were kicking a football about, but Hurstwood was not among them.

  She watched the hockey practice for about a quarter of an hour. One side were wearing red girdles, the others green. Mrs. Bradley noticed, among the red-girdled players, Moira Malley. She was a dashing player, displaying more energy than science, and for the time being she seemed to have forgotten cares and fears both, Mrs. Bradley was pleased to notice, in vigorous enjoyment of the game.