“Oh, I beg your pardon,” she said, when she noticed Mrs. Bradley. “I didn’t know anyone was in here.”
Mrs. Bradley smiled.
“Are you busy, dear child?” she said. Alceste lifted her right shoulder, and her mouth twisted oddly.
“Not since last Saturday fortnight,” she said. Enlightenment came to Mrs. Bradley.
“Not—?” she said. Mrs. Boyle nodded.
“She died the day before you went to Bognor,” she said. “The funeral was last Saturday fortnight. Fred hasn’t…” She fought with herself for a moment, and then continued steadily: “Fred hasn’t been near me since. I can’t… you know what it was like. We were… I mean…”
She floundered. Mrs. Bradley came to the rescue.
“The man thinks the conventions ought to be observed, child,” she said soothingly. “Men are queer people. Don’t worry. Leave him alone for a bit.”
But to herself she said: “Ho, ho! What have we here?”
“By the way,” said Alceste, changing the subject, “I ought to let Mr. Cliffordson know that Moira Malley has not turned up this morning. I don’t know whether he has received any message about her, but I haven’t heard anything. I do hope the poor child isn’t ill, because there’s the Scholarship examination in about six weeks’ time, and, according to her place in form last term, she isn’t nearly ready for it.”
“Is Hurstwood back?” asked Mrs. Bradley.
“Hurstwood? Oh, yes; he’s here. That boy ought to do well, but I wanted Moira to do well also. If I have a weak spot, it is for the girls,” confessed Alceste. “But I can’t understand Moira. She was doing no work at all during the last part of the term. Just sat there staring into space. I used to get rather angry with her.”
“She found Miss Ferris’s body,” Mrs. Bradley reminded her. Alceste nodded, and sat down.
“Oh, yes, I know. And I make all due allowance for shock and so on. But a girl of that age shouldn’t brood like this. After all, she didn’t actually see her dead. She only just touched her. I don’t mean to be callous, but I do think she might have got over it a little sooner than she did. Of course I blame Donald for the girl’s state of mind. It was very wrong of him. I don’t think he’ll ask one of the girls to sit to him again without mentioning it first to me!”
“I am glad you remonstrated with him,” said Mrs. Bradley. “He and the girl would see the thing from two very different points of view.”
“I can’t think why she ever thought of doing it, the little idiot!” said Alceste. “But I wish I knew why she hasn’t come back to school. It’s very foolish, but since Miss Ferris’s death I’m nervous about unexplained absences. Ridiculous, isn’t it?”
“Is it, child?” said Mrs. Bradley. Without a pause she added abruptly: “What was the cause of Mrs. Hampstead’s death?”
“She fell into the ornamental lake and was drowned,” replied Alceste. “Didn’t you see the announcement in the papers? She had been drinking again.”
“Curious,” said Mrs. Bradley meditatively, but the word conveyed a different meaning from the one which Alceste attached to it.
“You mean it is curious that she should have been able to obtain the drink?” said Alceste, flushing.
“No, not that. The thing I find curious is this— epidemic of drowning,” replied Mrs. Bradley quietly. “Yes, I mean it,” she added, without giving Alceste time to interpolate any remark whatever. “It is strange. First, Calma Ferris. Secondly, or rather, thirdly, that wretched girl at Lamkin, near Bognor. Thirdly, or rather secondly, Mrs. Hampstead. It’s a nightmare.” She had risen while she was speaking. Alceste rose too, and they confronted each other.
“What are you saying?” demanded Mrs. Boyle hotly. “What are you saying? You don’t mean… you can’t believe…”
“I am remarking,” replied Mrs. Bradley, her rich, deep, quiet tones in marked contrast to Alceste’s stormy voice, “on certain curious facts which are not necessarily interdependent. Sit down, dear child. Let us discuss the matter quietly.” Suddenly Alceste began to laugh.
“I beg your pardon,” she said. “I—yes, do let’s talk. Are you any nearer a solution of our mystery?”
Mrs. Bradley sighed.
“I have allowed Mr. Cliffordson to believe that I think a man named Helm drowned Miss Ferris,” she said. She told Mrs. Boyle the story of the infamous Cutler, ending with the attempt on the life of Noel Wells.
“It sounds only too likely that he killed Miss Ferris, then,” Alceste said.
“Unfortunately for the maintenance of any such convenient theory,” Mrs. Bradley pointed out, “it is not yet at all certain that Helm was within miles of the school that night. The only evidence that Helm knew Miss Ferris’s school address rests on the word of a woman whom I believe to be thoroughly untruthful. In addition to that, no stranger was seen on or about the school premises on the night of the murder except a man—the electrician, you know—who cannot be proved to have been Helm. He may have been Helm—an unreasonable belief assails me that he was Helm—but it can’t be proved.”
“How do you mean?” Alceste inquired.
“Well, I showed a recognizable newspaper photograph of Helm to the schoolkeeper and to Mr. Kemball, both of whom saw and spoke to the bogus electrician, and neither can identify the man in the photograph. As a matter of fact, I never really felt that Helm had murdered Miss Ferris. His speciality is murder in a bath-tub. He would have gone to Miss Ferris’s lodging to murder her, or else he would have met her here and persuaded her to return with him.”
“Does Mr. Cliffordson believe that Helm killed Miss Ferris?” Alceste inquired.
“I don’t know, child. He pretends to accept my suggestion that Helm was the murderer because he wants the inquiry dropped. I don’t think he believes that Helm is guilty.”
Alceste looked uncomfortable.
“I suppose, then, that you know who did it, and that it was—one of us,” she said. Mrs. Bradley took out her notebook and showed Alceste the four names she had written down. The Senior English Mistress looked distressed.
“But surely—Moira Malley! She couldn’t have done such a thing. You don’t know the child as I do. It is quite, quite impossible to suspect her of an awful crime like murder!” she said. Mrs. Bradley nodded.
“I agree! I agree! But consider the facts: The girl had opportunity. She had motive—”
“Miss Ferris may have known about the sittings, you mean? She may have warned the girl she was going to report her. Oh, but that’s nonsense. Moira knows Mr. Cliffordson well enough to realize that Donald would be blamed, not she.”
“Don’t you see,” said Mrs. Bradley, “that that may have been the motive?”
Alceste went white.
“I hadn’t thought of that,” she said. “These poor, idiotie children! There’s that ridiculous boy Hurstwood making a fool of himself over Gretta Cliffordson, who isn’t worth a second thought by anybody. I see you’ve got him down.”
“Motive and opportunity,” said Mrs. Bradley solemnly. “The same words, in all their sinister significance”—she cackled harshly—“apply equally in the case of the other suspects, Miss Camden and Mr. Smith.”
“Of course, Camden—I can imagine that,” said Alceste slowly. “Overworked, strung-up, extravagant with money and energy and bad temper—an explosive sort of person altogether. And Miss Ferris had certainly got the wrong side of her.”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Bradley, smoothing a crease out of the sleeve of her raspberry-coloured jumper. “And Mr. Smith is an artist, and therefore—according to the ideas of the ordinary citizen, who regards art as expensive, and not even as a luxury at that!—a person who does not hold human life sacred. I know, too, that Miss Ferris damaged the Psyche and generally behaved in a Philistian manner. But what of it?”