Overture to Death

by Ngaio Marsh

  “He’d want to be sure the Colt was the same length,” said Fox.

  “He could measure the water-pistol.”

  “And then go home and check up his Colt?”

  “Or somebody else’s Colt,” said Bailey.

  “One of the first points we have to clear up,” Alleyn said, “is the accessibility of Jernigham’s war souvenir. Roper says he thinks everybody knew about it, and apparently it was there in the study for the picking up. They’ve all been rehearsing in the study. They were there last night—Friday night, I mean. It’s Sunday now, heaven help us.”

  “If Dr. Templett recognised the Colt,” observed Fox, “he didn’t let on.”

  “No more he did.”

  The back door banged and boots resounded in the supper-room.

  “Here’s Roper,” said Fox.

  “Roper!” shouted Alleyn.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Come here.”

  Sergeant Roper stumbled up the steps and appeared on the stage.

  “Come and have a look at this.”

  “Certainly, sir.”

  Roper placed his palm on the edge of the stage and vaulted deafeningly to the floor. He approached the table with an air of efficiency and contemplated the water-pistol.

  “Know it?” asked Alleyn.

  Roper reached out his hand.

  “Don’t touch it!” said Alleyn sharply.

  “’T, ’t, ’t!” said Fox and Bailey.

  “Beg pardon, sir,” said Roper. “Seeing that trifling toy, and recognising it in a flash, I had a natural impulse, as you might say—”

  “Your natural impulses must be mortified if you want to grow up into a detective,” said Alleyn. “Whose water-pistol is this?”

  “Mind,” said Roper warningly, “there may be two of this class in the district, sir. Or more. I’m not taking my oath there aren’t. But barring that eventuality I reckon I can put an owner on it. And seeing he had the boldness to take a shot at me outside the Jernigham Arms, me being in uniform—”

  “Roper,” said Alleyn, “it is only about three hours to the dawn. Don’t let the sun rise on your parentheses. Whose water-pistol is this?”

  “George Biggins’s,” said Roper.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Further Vignettes

  AT SEVEN O’CLOCK the Yard car dropped Alleyn and Fox at the Jernigham Arms.

  The rain had stopped, but it was a dank, dreary morning, and so cloudy that only a mean thinning of the night, a grudging disclosure of vague, wet masses, gave evidence that somewhere beyond the Vale there was dawnlight.

  Bailey and Thompson drove off for London. Alleyn stared after the tail-light of the car while Fox belaboured the front door of the Jernigham Arms.

  “There’s somebody moving about in there,” he grumbled.

  “Here they come.”

  It was the pot-boy, very tousled and peepy, and accompanied by a gust of stale beer. Alleyn thought that he looked like all pot-boys at dawn throughout time and space.

  “Good-morning,” Alleyn said. “Can you give us rooms for a day or two, and breakfast in an hour? There’s a third man on his way here.”

  “I’ll aask Missus,” said the pot-boy. He gaped at them, blinked, and went off down a passage. They could hear him calling with the cracked uncertainty of adolescence:

  “Missus! ’Be detec-er-tives from Lunnon, along of Miss Campanula’s murder, likely. Mrs. Pe-e-each! Missus!”

  “The whole place buzzing with it,” said Alleyn.

  At seven o’clock Henry found himself suddenly awake. He lay still, wondering for a moment why this day would be different from any other day. Then he remembered. He saw with precision a purple heap, the top of a head, the nape of a neck laced with dark, shining streaks. He saw a sheet of music, crumpled, pinned to the keys of a piano by the head. The picture was framed in aspidistras like a nightmarish valentine and across the lower margin was the top of a piano.

  “I have looked down at a murdered woman.” And for a time his thoughts would not move beyond this sharp memory, so that he found himself anxiously retracing the pattern of the head, the neck, the white sheet of music, and the fatuous green leaves. Then the memory of Dinah’s cold fingers crept into his hands. He closed his hands on the memory, clenching them as he lay in bed, and the whole idea of Dinah came into his mind.

  “If it had been Eleanor, there would have been an end to our troubles.”

  He pushed this thought away from him, telling himself it was horrible, but it returned repeatedly, and at last he said, “It is stupid to pretend otherwise. I do wish it had been Eleanor.” He began to think of all that happened after Idris Campanula died; of how his father went aside with Superintendent Blandish, and of the solemn, ridiculous look on his father’s face. He remembered Dr. Templett’s explanations and Miss Prentice’s moans which had irritated them all very much. He remembered that when he looked at Mr. Copeland he saw that his lips were moving, and realised, with embarrassment, that the rector was at prayer. He remembered Mrs. Ross’s almost complete silence and the way she and Templett had not spoken to each other. And again his thoughts returned to Dinah. He had walked to the rectory with Dinah and her father, and on the threshold he had kissed her openly, the rector seeming scarcely aware of it. On the way home to Pen Cuckoo, the squire had not forgotten that, in the absence of Sir George Dillington, he was Chief Constable, and had discoursed solemnly on the crime, saying again and again that Henry was to treat everything he heard as confidential, and relating how, with Blandish, he had come to a decision to call in Scotland Yard. When they were indoors at last, Eleanor Prentice had fainted, and the squire had forced brandy down her throat with such an uncertain hand that he had half-asphyxiated her. They helped her to her room and Jocelyn, nervously assiduous, had knocked the bandaged finger so that she screamed with pain. Henry and his father had a solemn drink together in the dining-room, Jocelyn still discoursing on his responsibilities.

  Henry went cold all over, his heart dropped like a plummet, and he faced the worst memory of all, the one that he had been pushing away ever since he woke.

  It was when Jocelyn told him how, strong in his position of Acting Chief Constable, he had peered through the hole in the tucked silk front, and had seen the glimmer of a firearm.

  “A revolver,” Jocelyn had said, “or else an automatic.”

  At that moment the picture of the box in the study had risen in Henry’s imagination. He had hurried his father to bed, but when he was alone had been afraid to go into the study and lift the lid of the box. Now he knew that he must do it. Quickly, before the servants were up. He leapt out of bed, threw on his dressing-gown, and crept downstairs through the dark house. There was an electric torch in the hall. He found it and made his way to the study.

  The box was empty. The notice “LOADED” in block capitals lay at the bottom.

  Henry turned away with panic in his heart, and a minute later he was knocking at his father’s door.

  Selia Ross had been awake for a very long time. She was wondering when she could telephone to Dr. Templett or whether it would be altogether too unsafe to get into touch with him. She knew the telephone rang at his bedside until eight o’clock in the morning, and that he slept far enough away from his wife’s room for it not to disturb her. Mrs. Ross wanted to ask him what he had done with the anonymous letter. She knew that he had put it in his wallet, and that he kept the wallet in his breast pocket. She remembered that after the catastrophe he had not changed back into his ordinary suit, and she was hideously afraid that the letter might still be in his coat at the hall. He was very forgetful and careless about such things, and had once left one of her letters, open, on his dressing-table, only remembering it later on in the day.

  She had no knowledge of what the police would do. She had a sort of an idea she had read in a criminal novel that they were not allowed to search through private houses without a permit of some kind. But did that apply to a public hall? And surely if the body o
f a murdered person was there, in the hall, they would hunt everywhere. What would they think if they found that letter? She wanted to warn Dr. Templett to be ready with an answer.

  But he himself was an official.

  But he had almost certainly remembered the letter.

  Would it be better to say he knew the author to be someone else—his wife, even? Any one but one of those two women.

  Her thoughts, needle-sharp, darted in and out of the fabric of her terror.

  Perhaps if he went down early…

  Perhaps she should have telephoned an hour ago. She switched on her bedside lamp and looked at her clock. It was five minutes to eight.

  Perhaps she was too late.

  In a panic she reached for the telephone and dialled his number.

  Miss Prentice’s finger had kept her awake, but it is doubtful if she would have slept even if it had not throbbed all night. Her thoughts were too hurried and busy, weaving backwards and forwards between the rector, herself and Idris Campanula, who was murdered. She thought of all sorts of things of how when she first came to Pen Cuckoo she and Idris had been such friends, confiding the secrets of their bosoms to each other like schoolgirls. She remembered all the delicious talks they had had together, talks full of exciting conjectures about the behaviour of other people in the village and the county. There would be nobody now who would speak her language and discuss things and people in that way. They had been so intimate until Idris grew jealous. That was the form Miss Prentice gave to their differences: Idris grew jealous of her friend’s rising influence in the village and in church affairs.

  She would not think yet of Mr. Copeland. The memory of things he had said to her at confession must be thrust down into oblivion, and that other memory, that other frightful revelation of Idris’s perfidy.

  No. Better to remember the old friendly days and to think of Idris’s will. It had been a very simple will. A lot for Mr. Copeland, a little for the distant nephew, and seven thousand for Eleanor herself. Idris had said she’d never had a real friend until Eleanor came, and that if she died first she would be happy in the thought that she had been able to do this. Eleanor even then rather resented her friend’s air of patronage.

  But it was true that if she had this money she would no longer be so dependent on Jocelyn.

  Mr. Copeland would be very well off indeed, for Idris was an extremely rich woman.

  Dinah would be an heiress.

  She had not thought of that before. There would be no worldly reason now why Dinah and Henry should not marry.

  If she were to withdraw her opposition quickly, before the will was known—would not that seem generous and kind? If she could only stifle the recollection of that scene on Friday afternoon. Dinah limp in Henry’s arms, lost in rapture. It had nearly driven Eleanor mad. How could she unsay all that she had said before she turned away and stumbled up the lane, escaping from so much agony? But with Dinah married to Henry, then her father would be lonely. A rich lonely man, fifty years old, and too dignified to look for a young wife. Surely, then!

  Then! Then!

  The first bell, calling the people to eight o’clock service, roused her from her golden plans. She rose, dressed and went out into the dark morning.

  The rector was astir at seven. It was Sunday, and he would be in church in an hour. He dressed hurriedly, unable to lie thinking any longer of the events of the night that was past. All sorts of recollections flocked into his thoughts, and in all of them the murdered woman was present, turning them into nightmares. He felt as if he was dyed in guilt, as if he would never rid himself of his dreadful memories. His thoughts were chaotic and quite uncontrollable.

  Long before the warning bell sounded for early celebration, he stole out of the house and walked, as he had done every Sunday for twenty years, down the drive, through the nut walk and over the stile into the churchyard.

  When he was alone inside the dark church he fell on his knees and tried to pray.

  Somewhere, a long way off, somebody was knocking at a door. Bang, bang, bang. Must be old Idris pounding away at that damned lugubrious tune. Blandish needn’t have locked Eleanor up inside the piano. As Deputy Chief Constable, I object to that sort of thing; it isn’t cricket. Let her out! If she knocks much louder she’ll blow the place up, and then we’ll have to get in the Yard. Bang, bang—

  The squire woke with a sickening leap of his nerves.

  “Wha-a-a?”

  “Father, it’s me! Henry! I want to speak to you.”

  When Dinah heard her father go downstairs long before his usual hour, she knew that he hadn’t slept, that he was miserable, and that he would go into church and pray. She hoped that he had remembered to wear a woollen cardigan under his cassock, because he seemed to catch cold more easily in church than anywhere else. She knew last night that she was in for a difficult time with him. For some extraordinary reason, he had already begun to blame himself for the tragedy, saying that he had been weak and vacillating, not zealous enough in his duties as a parish priest.

  Dinah was unable to follow her father’s reasoning, and with a sinking heart she had asked him if he suspected any one as the murderer of Idris Campanula. That was when they got home last night and she was fortified by Henry’s kiss.

  “Daddy, do you think you know?”

  “No, darling, no. But I haven’t helped them as I should. And when I did try, it was too late.”

  “But what do you mean?”

  “You mustn’t ask me, darling.”

  And then she had realised that he was thinking of the confessional. What on earth had Idris Campanula told him on Friday? What had Eleanor Prentice told him? Something that had upset him very much, Dinah was sure. Well, one of them was gone and wouldn’t make mischief any more. It was no good trying to be sorry. She wasn’t sorry, she was only frightened and filled with horror whenever she thought of the dead body. It was the first dead body Dinah had ever seen.

  Of course it was obvious to everybody that the trap had been set for Eleanor Prentice. Her father must realise that. Who, then, had a motive to kill Eleanor Prentice?

  Dinah sat up in bed, cold with terror. She remembered the meeting in the lane on Friday afternoon, the things Eleanor Prentice had said in a breathless whisper, and the answer Henry had made.

  “If she tells them what he said,” thought Dinah, “they’ll say Henry had a motive.”

  And with her whole soul she tried to send out a warning message to Henry.

  But Henry, at that moment, was pounding his father’s bedroom door, and into his startled mind there came no warning message from Dinah. There was no need for one, for already he was afraid.

  Dr. Templett was dreamlessly and peacefully asleep when the telephone rang at his bedside. At once, and with the accuracy born of long practice, he reached out in the half-light for the receiver.

  “Dr. Templett here,” he said, as he always did when the telephone rang at an ungodly hour. He remembered that young Mrs. Cartwright might be now in labour.

  But it was Selia Ross.

  “Billy? Billy, have you got that letter?”

  “What!”

  He lay there quite still, holding the receiver to his ear and listening to his own thumping heart.

  “Billy! Are you there?”

  “Yes,” he said, “yes. It’s all right. There’s nothing to worry about. I’ll look in some time to-day.”

  “Do, for God’s sake.”

  “All right. Good-bye.”

  He hung up the receiver and lay staring at the ceiling. What had he done with that letter?

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Sunday Morning

  ALLEYN AND FOX were at breakfast and Nigel was still asleep when Superintendent Blandish walked in. He was blue about the chin and his eyes and nose were watery.

  “You must wonder if there is anybody except that jabbering chap Roper in the Great Chipping Constabulary,” he said as he shook hands. “I’m sorry to have neglected you like this; but we’re
in for a picnic, and no mistake, with this case up at Moorton Park.”

  “Damn’ bad luck, the two cases cropping up at the same time,” said Alleyn. “Of course, you’d have liked to handle our business yourself. Have you had breakfast?”

  “Haven’t taken a look at food since six o’clock yesterday.”

  Alleyn went to the hatch and shouted:

  “Mrs. Peach! Another lot of eggs and bacon, if you can manage it.”

  “Well, I won’t say no,” said Blandish, and sat down. “And I won’t say I wouldn’t have liked to try my hand at this business. But there you are: never rains but it pours, does it?”

  “That’s right,” agreed Fox. “We get the same thing at the Yard. Though lately it’s been quietish—hasn’t it, Mr. Alleyn?”

  Blandish chuckled. “Maybe that’s why we’ve been honoured with the top-notchers,” he said. “Well, Mr. Alleyn, it will be quite an experience for us to see you working. Needless to say, we’ll give you all the help we can.”

  “Thank you,” said Alleyn. “We’ll need it. This is a remarkably rum business. You were in the audience, weren’t you?”