Death at the Opera (27 page)

Wells realized that her reason for tempting Helm to make a murderous attack upon her was, in itself, sound enough. She had explained to the curate her difficulties with regard to the death of Calma Ferris, and he knew that she was determined to demonstrate to the Headmaster that nobody connected with the school had been responsible for the crime. Although she had not actually said so, Wells, who was not altogether the fool people sometimes took him for, knew well enough that she had guessed the identity of Calma Ferris's assailant, that it was
not
Helm who was responsible for the murder, and that Mrs. Bradley was determined to keep secret the name of the guilty person.

Noel Wells's obstinate, masculine mind refused to accept the reasonable suggestion that Mrs. Bradley was well able to take care of herself, and his sense of chivalry urged him to put himself in her place, provoke a murderous assault from Helm, send a full description of the attack—if he was in a condition to write it!—to Mrs. Bradley, and so prevent her from risking her own life. That he would be risking his own did, of course, occur to him, but he brushed the thought aside.

He went to the garage and took young Tom into his confidence. Young Tom told his father. His father told Police Constable Alfred Reardon, who was engaged to young Tom's sister, and the plot was laid.

One grey but rainless afternoon, about ten days after Christmas, when Mrs. Bradley, comfortably at home in the Stone House, Wandles Parva, was reading an exceedingly affectionate letter from Helm—the third that had been sent on to her from Miss Lincallow's boarding-house to the school, and from the school to her home—three young men set out from Bognor Regis to walk the three miles out to Helm's railway-carriage bungalow. The grey waves, sullen after a gale which had raged for two days and a night, thundered heavily on the grey sand and seethed on to the grey pebbles. The low sky was grey. The road was deserted.

About half a mile from the bungalow the curate, his neat clerical dress exchanged (as usual on his visits to Helm in the character of Mrs. Bradley's epileptic son) for grey flannel trousers, a dark crimson pullover, a tweed jacket and a dark grey overcoat, walked on the damp sand at the margin of the water, climbing the breakwaters as he came to them and occasionally stopping to skim stones on the waves. The young policeman, off duty, walked, with the decided footsteps of the Force, along the pavement which bordered the sea-road, and young Tom, who had brought an ancient motor-cycle with him, bestrode it and rode solemnly and noisily up and down the road until his engine stopped, just about fifty yards from Helm's bungalow, and the motor-cyclist, seating himself on his own trench coat on the pavement, began to take off pieces of the antediluvian contraption and strew them about the gutter.

The curate gained the bungalow and knocked at the door. For a moment he fancied that nobody was at home, but slippered feet padded to the door and opened it. Wells experienced an uncomfortable qualm. He was certain in his own mind that this smiling, florid man had committed murder for the basest of all possible motives, that of pecuniary gain, and here was he himself, a man recently married, happy, content, secure in every worldly sense, putting his head into the jaws of death for the chivalrous but idiotic reason that, if he did not risk his life, an old woman with the outward appearance of a macaw, the mind of a psycho-analyst and the morals, so far as he knew, of a tiger-shark, would risk hers.

“Ah, it's you,” said Mr. Helm. “Come in, my dear boy. Come in. And how is She?”

The little narrow place was very dark inside. All the blinds were drawn. Wells's nebulous fears for his own bodily safety changed, for an instant, to panic terror. Every instinct shrieked to him to fly. Twenty years of subduing instinct to reason stood him in good stead, however, and, with a gulp which was histrionically inspired, he said in a quavering voice:

“Well, of course, you know, that's what I've come to talk about.”

II

The first morning of the Easter Term was not the best time to choose for a visit to the Headmaster, as Mrs. Bradley fully realized, but on the previous evening she had received so extraordinary a letter from Noel Wells that no time, she felt, must be lost in relieving Mr. Cliffordson's mind on the subject of Miss Ferris's murder.

Mrs. Bradley folded the letter and replaced it in its envelope. She laid it on the table. Then she rang the bell for Celestine.

“Madame?”

“You have heard of the legendary Sir Galahad, child?” asked Mrs. Bradley. Celestine permitted herself to smile beatifically.

“
Parfaitement, madame. ‘Sans peur et sans reproche'—n'est-ce pas?”

“Marvellous,” said Mrs. Bradley. “I have the privilege of informing you that there exists such a person in the flesh.”

“In the flesh, madame?”

“Not in any unpleasing degree,” said Mrs. Bradley. “He is young, thin, deprecating, chivalrous. Incidentally, he has risked his life for mine.”

“Ah,
c'est Monsieur le curé
,” cried Celestine, clasping her hands. “Oh, but he is the tiger of bravery, that one! Always I have understood that!”

III

When Mrs. Bradley reached the school, she sought the schoolkeeper's house before she went to interview Mr. Cliffordson.

The schoolkeeper was not on duty, and Mrs. Bradley produced a snapshot of Helm and requested him to examine it.

“Do you recognize this man?” she asked. The caretaker scrutinized it closely, but was compelled to acknowledge that he did not, “without it's the gent whose picture 'angs in the 'eadmaster's room.” Mrs. Bradley was determined not to give him a clue to the identity of the original, but took the photograph straight away to Mr. Kemball. Mr. Kemball was superintending the distribution of school stock to his form, and was in a bad temper. He had found Christmas a time of great expense; he was in possession of a brand-new daughter whom he neither liked nor wanted; her birth had cost him dear; he had had to pay a term's school fees for his other children; he had had to pay his income tax; he had received thirty-one letters all pointing out the same small error in his
Monograph on the Renaissance Popes
, the monograph of which Mrs. Bradley had purchased fifty copies; he had three new girls in his form and did not want them; and he was quite certain, he told Mrs. Bradley bitterly, that the Headmaster thought his teaching methods old-fashioned and his class-management weak.

He could not identify the man in the photograph, unless by any chance it was the original of the portrait in the Headmaster's room.

Mrs. Bradley thanked him, sighed heavily, and went in search of the Headmaster.

“Ah!” said Mr. Cliffordson when he saw her. “Any news?”

“Yes,” replied Mrs. Bradley. “You've read your newspaper lately?”

“Yes,” replied the Headmaster. Mrs. Bradley handed him Noel Wells's letter.

“Does it surprise you to hear that the Cutler who is suspected of the Lamkin murder and the Helm with whom Miss Ferris became acquainted at her aunt's boarding-house are one and the same?”

The Headmaster, having perused the letter, handed it back, and then shook Mrs. Bradley's skinny claw. He looked ten years younger.

“You think that this monster was responsible for Miss Ferris's death? That is the best news I've heard for weeks,” he said. “But why should he have wanted to kill poor Miss Ferris, I wonder?”

“That,” said Mrs. Bradley solemnly, “I'm afraid we shall never know.” She thought of the photograph of Helm which was in her handbag. It seemed impossible that the elusive electrician who had visited the school and robbed the schoolkeeper could have been Helm. He must have been a common thief, with neither interest in nor knowledge of the existence of the inoffensive Calma. But her object, that of persuading the Headmaster to let the inquiry drop, was apparently gained. Mr. Cliffordson, after clearing his throat and moving the inkstand and a couple of pens from one side of the desk to the other, said suddenly:

“I wish I could tell you what it means to me to know for certain that none of the staff, nor the boys and girls here, were involved in that dreadful affair. I shan't carry the inquiry any further. It would be impossible to prove the crime against this wretched fellow, and so I would sooner let the whole matter drop. After all, poor woman, it can't make any difference now, and perhaps it is kinder, from every point of view, to let things remain as they are.”

Mrs. Bradley agreed. Negligently she took the photograph of Helm from her handbag, tore it across and dropped the pieces on to the pleasant little fire which was burning in the Headmaster's grate. It seemed unreasonable to inform him that to the best of her knowledge Helm had been nowhere near the school on the night when Calma Ferris was murdered.

She herself, however, was determined to solve the problem to her own satisfaction. Before she had gone to Bognor Regis she had felt fairly certain of the identity of the murderer, but to psychological she was anxious to add tangible proof. To this end she suggested to Mr. Cliffordson that she should stay on at the school and give a series of talks on matters of public interest. The Headmaster, who thought that he saw in this a desire on Mrs. Bradley's part to make a study of a coeducational system, gladly assented, and a list of subjects for the talks was drawn up there and then. Mrs. Bradley, whose interests were varied, suggested a lecture on Roman sports and pastimes as the first of the series, and this drew from Mr. Cliffordson the reference to Miss Camden which she had hoped to evoke.

“That girl looks ill. I saw her for about two minutes this morning. You know more about these things than I do, but, you know, I believe she works too hard. Your suggestion regarding a lecture on sports made me think of her,” he said.

“Miss Camden?” said Mrs. Bradley. “I think she does work far too hard. But you can't prevent that. She's of the type that always works because it can't bear to sit still and think. She ought to be in a girls' school.”

“Why?” said Mr. Cliffordson, who, like most headmasters and headmistresses, held, unconsciously but tenaciously, the opinion that the assistant masters and mistresses in his school were easily the most fortunately placed teachers in the whole of the profession.

“She would be allowed full scope for her activities. She might even,” added Mrs. Bradley, eyeing the Headmaster with semi-humorous gravity, “received a little encouragement and a little praise for what she accomplished. Even the devil likes to receive his due, you know, dear child.”