“My work was over when the interval ended. There are but two acts in The Mikado. So I went in front, to a little charming seat right in the middle of the third row kept for me by my good friends, and I saw and heard everything. Imagine it, my dear friend! The poor young plump one, with her unproduced voice, too high, too thin, her careful gestures, her insignificant height—all this by Providence and the grace of God withheld from us; and instead—Alceste Boyle! You did not see it? My good friend, you will go to heaven! God will compensate you because you did not see it.”
Mrs. Bradley would like to have stayed much longer than she did, but she was anxious to get back before school ended for the afternoon. One or two questions bearing on the case she managed to get answered, however, before, at five minutes to four, she took her leave.
“Do you know that Miss Ferris had met with a slight accident near the beginning of the First Act?” was the first of these.
“One of the schoolgirls told me, but I was very busy,” replied Mrs. Berotti, “and I understood that somebody was helping her, and so I did not go to see. That the make-up should be put on correctly was my first concern.”
“You had already done Miss Ferris when she cut herself?”
“I had. I had made her up beautifully. I am an artist, me! She told me she had to go on in Act One. ‘ But not until almost the end,’ I said. But she persisted, so I did her. ‘You’ll be hot and uncomfortable,’ I said. She did not mind that, she assured me. I think she was afraid that she and Mr. Smith, the ‘Mikado’—he was fine, that one!—would be left alone together in the make-up room. They had quarrelled, I understand. So I did her. The poor little one! So inoffensive! Such an offence herself against my beloved art!”
There seemed to be nothing else that Mrs. Berotti could tell. She again eulogized the performance given by Alceste Boyle, informed Mrs. Bradley that the professional stage had lost a treasure when Alceste left it, and, when Mrs. Bradley very reluctantly announced that she must go, rose and escorted her to the door. She expressed delight that Mrs. Bradley had visited her, and begged her to come again.
Mrs. Bradley walked back to the school as quickly as she could, and arrived inside the building at six minutes past four. The school closed at half-past, but the staff had been requested by Mr. Cliffordson to remain on the building until five o’clock, in case any of them were wanted. Mrs. Bradley had opposed this move, but Mr. Cliffordson insisted that since the whole staff knew the reason for her presence, they could scarcely, in fairness to themselves, refuse to submit to questioning.
During what was left of the afternoon, therefore, Mrs. Bradley sat in the staff-room talking to Alceste Boyle.
“First,” she said, “I want to know at what point in the proceedings you missed Calma Ferris.”
Alceste, blue marking-pencil in hand, thought for a moment, and then said:
“A quarter of an hour before her first entrance. Do you know the script of The Mikado?”
“Intimately,” replied Mrs. Bradley. “It has been my bed-book ever since I came down here.”
“Then you remember that the first entrance of ‘Katisha’ comes almost at the end of the First Act,” Alceste continued. “Well, it is my rule that people are to be ready a quarter of an hour before the time their cue comes. It means a certain amount of hanging about off-stage, but it’s worth it. I had a Fourth-former acting as call-boy, and she had orders to report to me immediately if people did not respond to their call. She found me, therefore, as soon as Miss Ferris did not appear, and I sent her to the women-principals’ dressing-room, and round and about, but no Miss Ferris was to be found. It was approximately half-past eight. I then went to the women-principals’ dressing-room myself, sat down and waited for the girl to find Miss Ferris. She couldn’t find her, so I went myself to search for her in case she had been taken ill in one of the classrooms or had locked herself in anywhere and could not get out. But there was no sign of her anywhere. Time was getting short, so I went into the hall and found Miss Camden —all the staff sat together at the right-hand side of the hall as you look at the stage, so it was easy enough to spot her —got her out into the passage and tried to persuade her to take the part. She refused. I got her into the women-principals’ dressing-room to argue the point with her, but she stood firm. She said she could not undertake the part at a moment’s notice, and I didn’t blame her. She had been turned down in favour of Miss Ferris, you see, and I suppose she didn’t see why we should come moaning to her to get us out of a hole. In the end I took the part myself. It was the only solution. In case you suspect Miss Camden, I ought to say that she went back into the auditorium. I watched her enter the hall.”
“Thank you,” said Mrs. Bradley, and for the next two minutes both were busily engaged—Alceste in correcting a set of exercises and Mrs. Bradley in writing notes. At the end of the ten minutes Mrs. Bradley, having waited while Alceste finished marking a book, asked pointedly:
“Who sat on either side of Miss Camden during the First Act?”
“There was nobody on her right. She occupied the end seat in the row. She had been stewarding, you see. On the other side of her sat Mr. Pritchard, the Senior Science Master.”
“Ah!” said Mrs. Bradley, making a note of it. “And next to him?”
But this Alceste did not know, so Mrs. Bradley decided to waylay Mr. Pritchard after school was over, and ask him. She decided, too, to inquire about the electric light that had gone wrong. There were still several things in connection with Miss Ferris’s death which she did not understand. It must, she decided, have been entirely fortuitous that, owing to the failure of the light, a collision had occurred which resulted in Miss Ferris’s glasses being smashed and her face cut. Mrs. Bradley was fairly certain that Miss Ferris must have gone, not once, but at least twice to the water-lobby to bathe the cut, for it was inconceivable that the murder should have been premeditated; or rather, not so much that it could not have been premeditated, but that the murderer could have known beforehand that Miss Ferris would injure her face so that she was compelled to enter the water-lobby and so render herself liable to be done to death in the particular manner in which death had come to her.
The clay in the waste-pipe was the result of a deliberate act, and to that extent the murder was premeditated, but the murderer must have prepared for the crime between Miss Ferris’s first and second visit to the lobby. That meant, Mrs. Bradley decided, that the murderer was a person quick-witted enough to take advantage of the entirely fortuitous set of circumstances—i.e., the cut under Miss Ferris’s eye and the fact that she bathed it over a school washing-bowl—which Fate had provided, courageous enough to take the risk of being discovered in the act of murder, sufficiently determined to use the method which presented itself, cruel and barbarous though it proved to be, and—Mrs. Bradley was compelled to admit—self-possessed enough not to have been guilty of self-betrayal.
“Unless,” thought the little woman, “I haven’t met the murderer yet!”
Her thoughts returned to the electrician, whom already she was calling “Mr. Helm.”
To fill in the time at her disposal she sent for Miss Freely, who arrived looking scared.
“I don’t know anything about it, and I don’t want to,” was the burden of her song when Mrs. Bradley questioned her. Mrs. Bradley decided that she really did know nothing, for she was able to account satisfactorily for all the time she had spent off the stage by announcing that she had sneaked into the auditorium and sat on a stool next to the pianist. As this was corroborated by the pianist, who was one of the girl-prefects, Mrs. Bradley dismissed Miss Freely from her mind and sent for Mr. Pritchard.