Free Death at the Opera by Gladys Mitchell

in, and merely invited them, in magisterial tones, to get to their places and find page twenty-three. But his mind was not on his work, and at least nine boys and quite seventeen girls did their homework openly during what was left of the English period, while their teacher sat and brooded, and the rest of the form passed notes, flicked ink-soaked blotting-paper pellets or played noughts and crosses. At eleven o’clock Mr. Browning dismissed them, and at two minutes past eleven he was being asked in the men’s common-room to bet on which of his colleagues were suspected of the murder. The Headmaster’s ruse of passing Mrs. Bradley off as a member of the staff appeared to have failed completely.
    The women’s common-room did not bet on the identity of the murderer, but among some members of the staff consternation held sway. Miss Freely voiced the general view by observing with a shudder, after Mrs. Bradley’s advent had been discussed by seven people, all talking at once:
    â€œWell, there’s one thing I’m quite sure of! I’m not going to stay a minute after school hours, to please anybody. I’m not going to run any risks! Have any of you heard of hoodoo? Thank goodness it’s only a few weeks until the end of the term!”
    At the end of a twelve-minutes’ break the staff had to return to their classes, so that several interrupted conversations had to be resumed at lunch. It was the custom for at least three-quarters of the school to stay for lunch, so that every day four members of the staff, two men and two women, were on duty during the dinner-hour. Those who were not on duty lunched together in the big staff-room. Miss Cliffordson was the first person to tread on dangerous ground.
    â€œYou know, she wasn’t a bit the kind of person to commit suicide,” she said, choosing this oblique method of approaching the subject chiefly because it seemed indelicate to talk of murder.
    â€œI don’t agree.” The Physical Training Mistress flushed deeply and spoke with considerable emphasis. “She was just the sort of woman you read about in the ‘Great Trials’ series—you know—morbid and quiet, with all sorts of repressions and complexes. I think it’s the most likely thing in the world that she knew she was going to make a fool of herself in the opera, and she couldn’t face up to it.”
    â€œI can’t think she would have drowned herself,” said the deep voice of the Physics Master. “Not so easy, you know. Demands a tremendous amount of will-power to shove your head into a bowl of water and keep it there until you’re dead.”
    â€œThere’s something in that,” agreed the Botany Mistress. “And with a laboratory full of poisons quite handy, it seems a silly thing to attempt—drowning. No; what I think happened was that she felt faint, went for some water, found the light wouldn’t switch on, and collapsed over the basin, which happened to be full of water.”
    â€œH’m!” said Mr. Poole. “Very queer she should collapse over the one basin in twenty which was not only full of water but which had had its waste-pipe carefully plugged with clay so that the water could not possibly run away, wasn’t it? And how do you account for the fact that she was sitting on a chair?”
    â€œI can account for the chair being in the water-lobby, anyway,” said young Mr. Browning, who had, in fact, done so at the inquest. “Don’t you remember, I had a boy suffer from nose-bleeding in form, and I sent him out there to lean over a basin. I sent another boy with a chair for the fellow to sit down. I can’t find that the chair was ever taken back to the hall, so that accounts for the chair.”
    â€œWell, it’s a funny business, and I for one shan’t be a bit surprised to hear that children are to be withdrawn from the school at the end of term because of it. I