“You’d better leave the last-named to his well-earned afternoon rest,” the Headmaster remarked dryly. “He’s a good chap, but his afternoon rest is sacred. Do you want to interview the others in here with me?”
“Without you, if you have no objection,” said Mrs. Bradley. “I felt that you were an obstacle to the search for truth this morning.”
The Headmaster shrugged, and smiled. “One of the penalties of a job like mine is that nobody on the staff feels really at ease in one’s presence. It can’t be helped. I appreciate that you’ll get on better without me. How’s Hurstwood?”
“Better,” said Mrs. Bradley.
“Good. Push that button for my secretary. She’ll get anybody you want. If you should want me, I shall be” —he consulted the time-table—“in Room B. Good-bye for the present, then.”
Mrs. Bradley pressed the buzzer and sent for Mr. Poole. That cheerful man smiled at her and asked her jokingly whether she had the handcuffs ready.
“Be serious, child,” said Mrs. Bradley, “and answer my questions. First, did you murder Calma Ferris?”
“No,” said Poole, serious at once. “Has anybody said I did?”
“No, child. Secondly, do you know anything which might indicate the manner in which she met her death?”
“Why, she was drowned, wasn’t she?” asked Poole.
“Thirdly, what did you do before your first entrance on to the stage?”
“Do? Let’s see. Except for Miss Ferris and Smith, I was the last of the principals to be made up, and the curtain was rung up while the little dame who did the making up was still busy on my face. Marvellous woman! Wish she’d take a part. I’d like to see her as ‘Volumnia.’ Grand!”
“Wait a moment,” said Mrs. Bradley. “How long did it take her, do you think, to make up each principal?”
“Varied a bit,” replied Poole. “The longest were the last two, ‘Katisha’ and the ‘Mikado,’ I should say, but as she had nearly the whole of the First Act in which to do them— Oh, but ‘Katisha’ was made up, Oh, I dunno! Sorry!”
Mrs. Bradley pressed the buzzer.
“I wonder if you have the address of the ex-actress who made up the faces of the performers on the night of the opera?” she said, winningly, to the Headmaster’s secretary. The secretary disappeared, and returned almost immediately with a visiting card which bore the legend: “Madame V. Berotti, 16, Coules Road, Hillmaston.”
Mrs. Bradley made a note of both name and address, and then asked the secretary for Mr. Smith.
“Does that mean you’ve finished with me?” asked Poole.
“Not quite, child. Don’t be impatient.” said Mrs. Bradley. “You haven’t finished telling me what you did before you went on to the stage.”
“Oh, nothing, really, you know. When I was ready to go on I collected the small urchin who followed behind with the axe—I was the Lord High Executioner, you know —and we stood in the wings until our cue came. I was so interested in watching the stage that I did not think about anything else.”
“I see. Thank you very much, child. That’s all, then,” said Mrs. Bradley. “Oh, by the way, do you box?”
Poole looked surprised.
“Well, I do,” he answered. “Middles, you know. Who told you?”
“I deduced it,” said Mrs. Bradley with a mirthless cackle. “I wish you’d teach Hurstwood.”
Poole grinned.
“The Head would have a fit. ‘Brutal and degrading sport,’ exalting the physical or animal nature at the expense of the spiritual or godlike—and all that sort of wash you know. But I will teach him if he likes. Do the chap good. What is he? Light-weight?”
“My dear child, how do I know?” inquired Mrs. Bradley.
“Thought you might have deduced it,” retorted the irrepressible Mathematics Master, nearly cannoning into Mr. Smith in the doorway. Smith shut the door behind his colleague and then stood in the centre of the study. He looked round nervously, as though to make sure that Mr. Poole really had gone out.
“Don’t be peevish, child,” said Mrs. Bradley briskly, “but when you cannoned into Miss Ferris and broke her glasses, were you made up ready to go on the stage?”
“Of course not,” said Smith. “The woman wanted to do me, but I said I wasn’t going to put up with that mess on my face longer than I could help, to please anybody! Have you ever been made up as the ‘Mikado’?”
“Never,” replied Mrs. Bradley, with perfect truth.
“Tons of muck!” said Smith violently. “Tons and tons of beastly sticky muck! I wasn’t going to have any. Told her I’d come back half-way through the Act. Why, even my nose had to be enlarged with modelling clay! Horrible!”
“Why were you in such a hurry that you collided with Miss Ferris without seeing her?”
“I couldn’t see her because it was dark. Didn’t you hear about one of the lights going west? That’s why, on thinking over things, I think it’s silly to attach so much importance to the fact that that light in the water-lobby had given up the ghost. Still, it’s no business of mine.”
“So you didn’t even know that Miss Ferris had cut herself?” asked Mrs. Bradley.
“No. How could I? I had no matches—nothing. And it was as black as soot along there. I apologized and went on the way I was going, and she accepted the apology, laughed and said it was all right. She said she had another pair of glasses at school, and that she wasn’t hurt, and went on the way she was going. That’s all I know.”
“I see. Thank you. Yes, that’s all,” said Mrs. Bradley. “If you’re going back to your class, I wish you’d send somebody for Hurstwood, It will save the secretary a journey.”
“Right,” said Smith; and in due course Hurstwood appeared.
“Child,” said Mrs. Bradley, “on which side of the stage were you when you encountered Miss Ferris and lent her your handkerchief to bandage her eye?”
“On the same side as the men’s and boys’ dressing-rooms,” Hurstwood answered. “You asked me that before,” he reminded her.
“Not exactly that,” said Mrs. Bradley. “Tell me, child, what would Mr. Smith want on the other side of the stage, then?”
Hurstwood grinned.
“I expect he went to potter about in his beloved art-room. That’s round the other side, you know.”
Suddenly the full significance of what he was saying seemed to dawn on the boy. His face went white.
“I say! That clay in the waste-pipe!” he said.
“Exactly,” said Mrs. Bradley. “And now tell me what on earth possessed you to tamper with the electric light in that water-lobby when you came off the stage that time?”
“Which time?” said Hurstwood, suddenly sullen and obstinate. Mrs. Bradley, who had met this boyish trick before, said gently:
“You know which time I mean. Don’t be foolish, child.”
“Well, I wanted my handkerchief back—I thought I could dry it on the hot-water pipes—so I went to the water-lobby, to which I thought Miss Ferris would have gone, to see whether I could find her and get it back. When I got to the water-lobby—well, I’ve told you all this before!” cried the boy. “I’m not going to say anything different, so what’s the use of going over it again?”
“I suggest,” said Mrs. Bradley calmly, “that you switched on the electric light, although you thought nobody could be in the lobby in the dark, and that, finding Miss Ferris’s body there, you deliberately tampered with the light so that nobody else should see what you had seen. Isn’t that right? It proves to me, also, that you believed you had discovered the identity of the murderer. What do you say, child?”
“How could I tamper with the beastly thing? I had no tools!” The boy was flushed and thoroughly belligerent now.