“I know, in one sense,” she said. “In fact, I know, in the only sense that matters. But—”
“Will anyone be hanged?” said the girl, in a suddenly loud and very hard voice. Mrs. Bradley shrugged her shoulders, and waited patiently. At last the story came. iii
“I’m telling you in confidence,” began the girl, “because I must tell somebody, and Mrs. Boyle wouldn’t understand.”
Mrs. Bradley accepted the implied compliment with a wave of her skinny claw.
“It was on the night of the opera. Oh, well, perhaps I’d better tell you everything. Mr. Smith called me back after drawing one day—we have it last period on Thursday afternoons; it’s mad, because of the light, but Mr. Cliffordson doesn’t like the Sixth to spend time on anything except examination subjects and music—and asked me to sit to him. I have always liked Mr. Smith, and I said I’d like to, and asked what it was I had to do. He said:
“ ‘I saw you at the Swimming Gala. I want to model you. You have just the body I’ve been looking for.’
“I was embarrassed. We don’t talk about bodies in Ireland. I did not know, either, that I was to be naked, but that was what he wanted. He teased me when I didn’t want to, and told me that, anyway, I would have another girl or one of the mistresses to sit in the room. I did not want that. He tried to insist, but I said I could not bear that, but I would sit to him if he would promise not to tell anyone. He promised, and he kept his promise. I minded badly the first two times, but after that I did not mind. He told me I had a beautiful body, and I was glad that he liked me, even if it was only for something I could not alter and had not made.
“Then Miss Ferris damaged the clay model. It was almost finished, and it had to be cast in plaster later. It was no good to anyone when she had dropped it, and Mr. Smith was very angry. I heard afterwards that he had stamped on the clay in his anger, and that Miss Ferris was afraid and went for Mrs. Boyle to comfort the man.
“I was angry, too. I was terribly angry. I was afraid, too. I had become used to the shape of me growing and growing under his hands, and, although it was not my head and face that he was putting on the clay girl, I imagined that everyone who saw it would know it was my body. I thought Miss Ferris would know. Yet, how could she know? But I did not think of that. I was afraid Mr. Cliffordson would be very angry, and I was afraid that he would shame me before all the school when he was after telling them that I had sat naked before a grown man and he making the shape of me with his hands.”
Moira’s carefully-acquired schoolgirl speech was deserting her for her native idiom. Mrs. Bradley noted the change, and smiled. The girl, after a pause, continued:
“It was then she was killed. The night of the opera I found her dead in the water-lobby the first time I came off the stage. I was terrified. I could not think what to do. I told Harry Hurstwood; he has the clever head on him and will not betray secrets. He said he would disconnect the light so that she should not be found until later. I did not tell him what I thought. I thought it was Mr. Smith had done it for love of the little clay girl she had damaged. Harry believed it was someone else. He would not tell me whom.
“At the end of the opera they had not found her, and I thought to myself that it was a terrible thing indeed to leave her by herself in that empty place with her head in the cold water and herself not shriven at all.
“Then Mr. Smith came round to my aunt’s house and begged me to say nothing about the accident he had had, knocking off Miss Ferris’s glasses and cutting her face so that she had been obliged to go into the water-lobby to bathe it and had died there. When he asked me would I not mention the accident, I was quite certain that he had murdered her, and it made me ill. I have thought of nothing else, and it was her voice wailing like a lost thing round our house that made me tell you what I never thought to tell anyone, for I love him, so I do.”
She broke down and sobbed. Mrs. Bradley comforted her. Later, she let her go, and sent for Hurstwood.
“Whatever made you think Miss Cliffordson had murdered Miss Ferris, child?” asked Mrs. Bradley. The boy flushed and grinned.
“I say, please don’t tell her!” he said. “I don’t think so now. Haven’t for a long time.”
“I promise,” said Mrs. Bradley. “Have you done any boxing during the holidays?”
“Rather. Nearly every morning. Gretta—Miss Cliffordson—doesn’t like it—thinks it’s brutal; but I can’t help that. Mr. Poole is going to enter me for the Public School championship at Aldershot, I think.”
Mrs. Bradley dismissed him and sighed with relief. He and Moira, at any rate, were clear of the wretched affair. Remained—she grinned as the title came into her head— “The Adventure of the Kind Mr. Smith.”
She consulted her notebook before sending for Mr. Smith, and re-read the entry relating to Miss Sooley’s having given the school address to Helm. The entry interested her. She re-read it. The fact appeared to be that Helm had known the school address. What he had not known was that Calma Ferris was a mistress there. Mrs. Bradley re-read the entries relating to the murder of Calma Ferris from beginning to end. Two of them stood out as particularly important. The first read:
“Smith, Donald, Senior Art Master.
“Motive for murdering Calma Ferris:
“Calma Ferris had damaged irretrievably a small clay figure of Psyche, the property and creation of Smith.
“N.B.—Smith apparently expected to receive two hundred and fifty pounds for the completed plaster figure. That seems a good deal of money for a work by an unknown (?) artist. I deduce the fact from the remark Alceste Boyle volunteered when I was talking to her on the occasion of our first meeting, i.e., she said, without being asked, ‘Smith isn’t the man’ (who was her lover). ‘Oh, and I lent him two hundred and fifty pounds for the loss of the little Psyche.’
“See Page Fifteen,” Mrs. Bradley had appended.
Page Fifteen, when she turned it up, informed her that Donald Smith had said, when she was questioning him:
“Yes, I was angry.” (About the statuette.) “But it was all right. Alceste lent me the money to pay Atkinson.”
Mrs. Bradley clicked her tongue. Then she sent for Mr. Smith.
“I have to warn you, child,” she said, when he came in, “that anything you say may be used in evidence.”
Smith lowered himself carefully into a chair, propped his left elbow on the back of it, leaned his head on his hand and said nonchalantly:
“I see.”
“First,” said Mrs. Bradley, “can you tell me how much I ought to pay for a plaster statuette sixteen inches high? It is a nice little thing by a living but unknown artist.”
“Dunno,” said Smith simply. “Anything the artist liked to ask, if you really wanted it, I suppose. Do you really want it?”
“To the extent and limit of about thirty pounds, yes,” said Mrs. Bradley.
“Oh? Well, I should make him the offer. Has it been exhibited yet?”
“No. It was done to order, but something went wrong. The artist told a friend of mine that he hoped to get two hundred pounds or more for it.”
“Humorist,” said Mr. Smith concisely.
“You think so? But I understood that you allowed Mrs. Boyle to think that that was the value of your Psyche which was damaged by Miss Ferris.”
Smith brushed a hand across his brow.
“Did I? I can’t remember,” he said. “I must have been tight, mustn’t I? But my Psyche was bigger than that.”
“You know, Donald,” said Mrs. Bradley, “you provoke my unwilling but sincere admiration over the whole of this business. I suppose it was you whom Cutler came to see on the night of the opera?”
Smith blinked at her. He seemed about to go to sleep. Suddenly he said:
“You can’t touch me, you know. I’ve taken legal advice. If I say to a bloke that it would be worth two hundred and fifty pounds to me to know that a certain woman was dead, and suddenly, several weeks afterwards, she dies, and the bloke claims the money and doesn’t get it, it seems that I’m untouchable.”