Free Death at the Opera by Gladys Mitchell Page B

would willingly leave matters as they are. But if that poor woman was murdered in my school, then it seems to me that I am responsible at any rate for seeing that her murderer is brought to justice.”
    â€œBut is it really justice to hang one person for drowning another, do you think?” inquired his niece. The Sixth Form had debated the question of capital punishment, the Headmaster remembered, at some time during the previous term. In spite of an able and thoughtful speech by Hurstwood, the motion “That capital punishment is an error on the part of the State” had been lost by seventeen votes to three. Besides Hurstwood himself, the people who had voted in favour of the motion were a boy whose hobby was wood-carving and another boy who collected beetles. The girls were vehemently in favour of capital punishment. The Headmaster, who was in effect, opposed to punishment of any kind, shook his head sadly.
    â€œI’m not open to conviction. I am not even prepared to listen to argument,” he said. “The idea that that poor, inoffensive, innocent woman was done to death in my school appals me. I am not, as you know, an ignorant, a cowardly or a superstitious man, but I should live through the rest of my life haunted by my conscience, if I allowed matters to rest where they are. You are a sensible, level-headed, well-balanced girl, and so I will give you my reasons for asking Mrs. Bradley to make an inquiry into the circumstances of Miss Ferris’s death. You have heard about the clay that was used to stop up the waste-pipe so that the water could not run away?”
    Miss Cliffordson nodded.
    â€œThat clay, I am morally certain, came from a big piece of modelling-clay in our own Art Room. Now I am convinced that no person contemplating suicide would have thought of such an extraordinary method of killing herself. If she was determined to drown herself on the school premises, there is the swimming-bath, there are the slipper baths in the girls’ and boys’ changing rooms, there are several large, deep sinks in the laboratory; there is even the school aquarium. Why choose a small basin so low down that the only way of keeping the head under water a sufficient time to be certain that death will ensue is to sit on a chair? A most extraordinary proceeding!”
    â€œWell, but some women wash their hair like that,” Miss Cliffordson pointed out.
    â€œDo they? Oh, well, I didn’t realize that. Let the chair pass, then. But you admit that the idea of stopping up the waste-pipe was fantastic on the part of a suicide, and that the swimming-bath sounds a great deal more reasonable as a means of drowning oneself, don’t you?”
    â€œNo. Not in December,” said Miss Cliffordson, with a little shudder at the thought of the cold water.
    â€œBut we keep the swimming-bath open all the year round. You know we do. The water at the present moment has a temperature of something over sixty-six degrees. But further to all this, there is something else. Would she have dressed herself in the ‘Katisha’ costume, and even gone to the length of having her face made up for her part, if she intended to commit suicide?”
    Miss Cliffordson wrinkled her charming nose.
    â€œNo,” she said at last. “She might have put on the clothes, but—not the ‘Katisha’ make-up. Nobody could possibly want to look so hideous. I don’t believe any woman would risk being found dead like it.”
    She thought deeply for another moment, and then said firmly:
    â€œYou’ve convinced me, Uncle. All women think about what they’ll look like when they’re dead, and there can’t be a woman on earth who could bear to think of looking like ‘Katisha.’ Miss Ferris didn’t commit suicide. She was murdered. I haven’t any further doubt about it.”
    The Headmaster groaned.
    â€œI believe I hoped that you would be able to convince me I was