“Carry on,” said the Headmaster.
“When the school was first opened I applied for the post of English Mistress, and got it,” Mrs. Boyle began. “I was a childless widow, and was content. My married life, without being in the least sensational, was not an unqualified success, and when my husband, an Irish doctor, died in Limerick during an influenza epidemic there, I had no desire, I discovered, to return to the stage, so I came to England, and for some time was very happy in this school. Then I fell in love with a man who was not free to marry me. We have spent every holiday— Christmas, Easter and Summer—together, and when I say ‘together’ I mean that we have lived in every sense— physical, mental, spiritual—as man and wife. This has been going on for the past eleven years. I was young, hopeful, headstrong, passionately in love when all this began. Now, at the end of eleven years of it—eleven years of treasuring it up, keeping it secret, looking forward, even in the dreariest term, to the coming holiday-time when I could be myself and fulfil myself—I discover that it has not been a secret at all. For several years Miss Ferris knew of it. When I heard that she was dead I went to her lodgings and asked to rent her rooms, because I wanted to find her diary and destroy it. I communicated with the —the man, and he tried also to rent the rooms when they were refused to me…”
Mrs. Bradley had a mental audition of the landlady’s voice, a trifle high-pitched and peevish, saying: “Several people have been after the rooms, but they were all these nosey-parkers who only wanted a thrill out of staying a week or so where a suicide had lived…”
“… but the landlady wouldn’t have him either. So I never got hold of the diary.”
“Had you seen the diary previously, do you mean?” asked Mr. Cliffordson. “Had you seen it before Miss Ferris’s death?”
Alceste shook her head.
“She let out by accident that she knew. It was after she had ruined Mr. Smith’s clay figure on the night of the dress-rehearsal.”
“What?” exclaimed the Headmaster. “She ruined Smith’s model? Not his Psyche, surely?”
Alceste Boyle nodded.
“Wasn’t it dreadful?” she said. “It was absolutely an accident, of course, and I know she was terribly distressed. But the point is that she brought me in to comfort Smith —as though one could!—and it was then that I learned she knew the truth about me and about my affairs. Smith isn’t the man, by the way, although I believe he loves me.” Her dark-blue eyes challenged the world. “Oh, and I lent him two hundred and fifty pounds to compensate for the loss of the little Psyche.”
“Did Miss Ferris attempt to make capital out of her knowledge of your affairs?” inquired Mrs. Bradley, interestedly.
“Not in the least. She made the most off-hand remark about them, as though she had known for ages and took it for granted that I should have a lover. She was a bit like that, you know. She was so meek and docile and colourless herself that she took it for granted that other people were different. I never had the slightest idea that she would make capital out of her knowledge, but as soon as she was dead I could not help wondering whether she had left some record of her discovery. I didn’t want my secret to be broadcast, and she was just the type to keep an elaborately written and thoroughly indiscreet diary— indiscreet in the gossiping sense, I mean. And people are not scrupulous when they are going through dead people’s belongings, are they? I was afraid of what might be said.”
Mrs. Bradley had taken out her notebook and pencil and was rapidly filling a page with her own personal shorthand signs. The Headmaster was leaning back in his chair, his pipe between his teeth, and his eyes fixed on the top row of volumes in his book-case.
“Then there was Miss Camden and the netball match,” Alceste went on. “I don’t suggest Miss Camden killed Miss Ferris. I am sure she didn’t; but she could have done, over the result of that match.”
“What match was that?” Mr. Cliffordson inquired, for the incident of Miss Ferris, Miss Camden and the girl Cartnell had entirely faded from his mind. Mrs. Boyle reminded him of the occurrence.
“Oh, that business—yes! But, my dear Mrs. Boyle, it had no real importance. A most trivial affair?”
“Not for Miss Camden,” said Alceste. “She’s a tortured, warped, ambitious sort of girl, and this is the fourth year she’s tried for the inter-school trophy. We have never got into the semi-final before, and, with the girl Cartnell in the team, she thinks we might have figured in the final, and even won it. Considering there wasn’t a netball team at all in the school when she came, I think she’s worked wonders. It was very hard luck to have a team girl kept in on the day of the match.”
“Well, I don’t believe in competitive sports,” said the Headmaster heavily; “and as long as I am in command here they will be relegated to their proper place. It’s a lot of nonsense, pitting teams of children one against the other, and fosters entirely the wrong spirit. And if it reacts like this upon the staff, well, the least said in its favour the better.”
He was evidently riding a hobby-horse, thought the sharp-eyed listener with the notebook, and made a note of the Headmaster’s prejudice against competitive sports.
“My point is this,” said Mrs. Boyle, after a short pause. “Even if Miss Ferris was inoffensive, yet she did manage to upset one or two people rather seriously. There might be others, of whom we know nothing, and who had far more reason to bear her a grudge than had Miss Camden, Mr. Smith or myself. After all, even inoffensive people have to make some contacts, and it is quite possible that the result may be that fur will fly or sparks set fire to tinder. Don’t you think so?”
Mr. Cliffordson nodded gloomily. Then he said abruptly, because he felt he was exceeding his rights as a Headmaster:
“Who is the man with whom you spend your holidays?”
Alceste Boyle stubbed out the end of her cigarette on an ash-tray and rose to her feet. She smiled. No wonder two men were in love with her, thought Mrs. Bradley sympathetically.
“I told you there would be a question I should not answer,” Alceste said. “You need not worry about him, though. He wouldn’t hurt a fly.”
As soon as she had gone the Headmaster said morbidly:
“Well, there’s the solution, I suppose. I’m not going to do anything about it. Smith’s not a murderer. He’s a temperamental fellow who flew off the handle in a fit of rage. People shouldn’t go about ruining other people’s work. The man she’s in love with is Hampstead. I’ve known that for years.”
“You think Mr. Smith was the murderer?” asked Mrs. Bradley innocently.
“What else can one think?” demanded Mr. Cliffordson.
“Well, I haven’t seen Mr. Smith yet, except at a distance of about forty-five feet, you know,” said Mrs. Bradley. “Besides, if he is as temperamental as you say, why should he wait from Tuesday until Friday to take vengeance on a Philistine? The whole trouble about temperamental people, of the kind you mean, is that they act swiftly, heedlessly, in the sudden heat and under the sudden compulsion of the moment. I should say that by Friday, Mr. Smith was getting over it. But I had better see the gentleman.”
The Headmaster pressed the buzzer again.
“Please ask for Mr. Smith. The art-room,” he said to his secretary.
The first thing Mrs. Bradley noticed about Mr. Smith was that he was obviously ill-at-ease. He looked from the Headmaster to Mrs. Bradley, and seemed inclined to turn tail and run.
“You sent for me, Headmaster?” he got out, at last.
“Ah, Smith. Yes. Come in, and shut the door, my dear fellow.” Mr. Clififordson, thoroughly embarrassed, was more genial than the occasion warranted, and the wretched Art Master, his tie askew, his lank black hair in an untidy flop over his left eye, looked more hunted and miserable than before. He did not appear to have noticed the Headmaster’s suggestion, so Mrs. Bradley said gently, in her deep, full voice: “Shut the door, dear child.”