Overture to Death

by Ngaio Marsh

  “Miss Prentice. Please look at me.”

  Her glance wavered. Her pale eyes travelled reluctantly to his. Deliberately silent until he felt he had got her whole attention, he held her gaze with his own. Then he spoke. “I may not try to force information from you. You are a free agent. But think for a moment of the position. You have escaped death by an accident. If you had persisted in playing last night you would have been shot dead. I am going to repeat a list of names to you. If there is anything between any one of these persons and yourself which, if I knew of it, might help me to see light, ask yourself if you should not tell me of it. These are the names:

  “Mr. Jocelyn Jernigham?”

  “His son, Henry Jernigham?”

  “The rector, Mr. Copeland?”

  “No!” she cried, “no! Never! Never!”

  “His daughter, Dinah?”

  “Mrs. Ross?”

  He saw the pale eyes narrow a little.

  “Dr. Templett?”

  She stared at him like a mesmerised rabbit.

  “Well, Miss Prentice, what of Mrs. Ross and Dr. Templett?”

  “I can accuse nobody. Please let me go.”

  “Have you ever had a difference with Mrs. Ross?”

  “I hardly speak to Mrs. Ross.”

  “Or with Dr. Templett?”

  “I prefer not to discuss Dr. Templett,” she said breathlessly.

  “At least,” said Alleyn, “he saved your life. He dissuaded you from playing.”

  “I believe God saw fit to use him as an unworthy instrument.”

  Alleyn opened his mouth to speak and thought better of it. At last he said, “In your own interest, tell me this. Has Mrs. Ross cause to regard you as her enemy?”

  She wetted her lips and answered him with astounding vigour:

  “I have thought only as every decent creature who sees her must think. Before she could silence the voice of reproach she would have to murder a dozen Christian souls.”

  “Of whom Miss Campanula was one?”

  She stared at him vacantly and then he saw she had understood him.

  “That’s why he wouldn’t let me play,” she whispered.

  On his way back, Alleyn turned off the Vale road and drove up past the church to the hall. Seven cars were drawn up outside St. Giles and he noticed a stream of villagers turning in at the lych-gate.

  “Full house, this morning,” thought Alleyn grimly. And suddenly he pulled up by the hall, got out, and walked back to the church.

  “The devil takes a holiday,” he thought, and joined in with the stream.

  He managed to elude the solicitations of a sidesman and slip into a seat facing the aisle in the back row where he sat with his long hands clasped round his knee. His head looked remotely austere in the cold light from the open doors.

  Winton St. Giles is a beautiful church and Alleyn, overcoming that first depression inseparable from the ecclesiastical smell, and the sight of so many people with decorous faces, found pleasure in the tranquil solidity of stone shaped into the expression of devotion. The single bell stopped. The organ rumbled vaguely for three minutes, the congregation stood, and Mr. Copeland followed his choir into church.

  Like everybody else who saw him for the first time, Alleyn was startled by the rector’s looks. The service was a choral Eucharist and he wore a cope, a magnificent vestment that shone like a blazon in the candle light. His silver hair, the incredible perfection of his features, his extreme pallor, and great height, made Alleyn think of an actor admirably suited for the performance of priestly parts. But when the time came for the short sermon, he found evidence of a simple and unaffected mind with no great originality. It was an unpretentious sermon touched with sincerity. The rector spoke of prayers for the dead and told his listeners that there was nothing in the teaching of their church that forbade such prayers. He invited them to petition God for the peace of all souls departed in haste or by violence, and he commended meditation and a searching of their own hearts lest they should harbour anger or resentment.

  As the service went on, Alleyn, looking down the aisle, saw a dark girl with so strong a resemblance to the rector that he knew she must be Dinah Copeland. Her eyes were fixed on her father and in them Alleyn read anxiety and affection.

  Miss Prentice was easily found, for she sat next the aisle in the front row. She rose and fell like a ping-pong ball on a water jet, sinking in solitary genuflexions and crossing herself like a sort of minor soloist. The squire sat beside her. The back of his neck wore an expression of indignation and discomfort, being both scarlet and rigid. Much nearer to Alleyn, and also next the aisle, sat a woman whom he recognised as probably the most fashionable figure in the congregation. Detectives are trained to know about clothes and Alleyn knew hers were impeccable. She wore them like a Frenchwoman. He could only see the thin curve of her cheek and an immaculate wing of straw-coloured hair, but presently, as if aware of his gaze, she turned her head and he saw her face. It was thinnish and alert, beautifully made-up, hard, but with a look of amused composure. The pale eyes looked into his and widened. She paused with unmistakable deliberation for a split second, and then turned away. Her luxuriously gloved hand went to her hair.

  “That was once known as the glad eye,” thought Alleyn.

  Under cover of a hymn he slipped out of church.

  He crossed the lane to the hall. Sergeant Roper was on duty at the gate and came smartly to attention.

  “Well, Roper, how long have you been here?”

  “I relieved Constable Fife an hour ago, sir. The super sent him along soon after you left. About seven-thirty, sir.”

  “Anybody been about?”

  “Boys,” said Roper, “hanging round like wasps and as bold as brass with that young Biggins talking that uppish you’d have thought he was as good as the murderer, letting on as he was as full of inside knowledge as the Lord Himself, not meaning it in the way of blasphemy. I subdued him, however, and his mother bore him off to church. Mr. Bathgate took a photograph of the building, and asked me to say, sir, that he’d look back in a minute or two in case you were here.”

  “I dare say,” grunted Alleyn.

  “And the doctor came along, too, in a proper taking on. Seems he left one of his knives for slashing open the body in the hall last night, and he wanted to fetch her out for to lay bare the youngest Cain’s toe. I went in with the doctor but she was nowhere to be found, no not even in the pockets of his suit, which seemed a strange casual spot for a naked blade, no doubt so deadly sharp as would penetrate the very guts of a man in a flash. Doctor was proper put about by the loss and made off without another word.”

  “I see. Any one else?”

  “Not a living soul,” said Roper. “I reckon rector will have brought this matter up in his sermon, sir. The man couldn’t well avoid it, seeing it’s his job to put a holy construction on the face of disaster.”

  “He did just touch on it,” Alleyn admitted.

  “A ticklish affair and you may be sure one that he didn’t greatly relish, being a timid sort of chap.”

  “I think I’ll have a look round the outside of the hall, Roper.”

  “Very good, sir.”

  Alleyn wandered round the hall on the lane side, his eyes on the gravelled path. Roper looked after him wistfully until he disappeared at the back. He came to the rear door, saw nothing of interest, and turned to the outhouses. Here, in a narrow gap between two walls, he found a nail where he supposed the key had hung yesterday. He continued his search round the far side of the building and came at last to a window, where he stopped.

  He remembered that they had shut this window last night before they left the hall. It was evidently the only one that was ever opened. The others were firmly sealed in accumulated grime. Alleyn looked at the wall underneath it. The surface of the weathered stone was grazed in many places, and on the ground he discovered freshly detached chips. Between the gravelled path and the side of the building was a narrow strip of grass. This bo
re a rectangular impress that the night’s heavy rain had softened but not obliterated. Within the margin of the impress he found traces of several large footprints and two smaller ones. Alleyn returned to a sort of lumbershed at the back and fetched an old box. The edges at the open end bore traces of damp earth. He took it to the impression and found that it fitted exactly. It also covered the lower grazes on the wall. He examined the box minutely, peering into the joints and cracks in the rough wood. Presently he began to whistle. He took a pair of tweezers from his pocket, and along the edge, from a crack where the wood had split, he pulled out a minute red scrap of some spongy substance. He found two more shreds caught in the rough surface of the wood, and on a projecting nail. He put them in an envelope and sealed it. Then he replaced the box. He measured the height from the box to the window-sill.

  “Good-morning,” said a voice behind him. “You must be a detective.”

  Alleyn glanced up and saw Nigel Bathgate leaning over the stone fence that separated the parish hall grounds from a path on the far side.

  “What a fascinating life yours must be,” continued Nigel.

  Alleyn did not reply. Inadvertently he released the catch on the steel tape. It flew back into the container.

  “Pop goes the weasel,” said Nigel.

  “Hold your tongue,” said Alleyn, mildly, “and come here.”

  Nigel vaulted over the wall.

  “Take this tape for me. Don’t touch the box if you can help it.”

  “It would be pleasant to know why.”

  “Five-foot-three from the box to the sill,” said Alleyn. “Too far for Georgie, and in any case we know he didn’t. That’s funny.”

  “Screamingly.”

  “Go to the next window, Bathgate, and raise yourself by the sill. If you can.”

  “Only if you tell me why.”

  “I will in a minute. Please be quick. I want to get this over before the hosts of the godly are upon us. Can you do it?”

  “Listen, Chief. This is your lucky day. Look at these biceps. Three months ago I was puny like you. By taking my self-raising course—”

  Nigel reached up to the window sill, gave a prodigious heave, and cracked the crown of his head smartly on the sill.

  “Great strength rings the bell,” said Alleyn. “Now try and get a foothold.”

  “Blast and damn you!” said Nigel, scraping at the wall with his shoes.

  “That will do. I’m going into the hall. When I call out, I want you to repeat this performance. You needn’t crack your head again.”

  Alleyn went into the hall, forced open the second window two inches, and went over to the piano. “Now!”

  The shape of Nigel’s head and shoulders rose up behind the clouded glass. His collar and tie appeared in the gap. Alleyn had a fleeting impression of his face.

  “All right.”

  Nigel disappeared and Alleyn rejoined him.

  “Are we playing Peep Bo or what?” asked Nigel sourly.

  “Something of the sort. I saw you all right. Yes,” continued Alleyn, examining the wall. “The lady used the box. We will preserve the box. Dear me.”

  “At least you might say I can come down.”

  “I’m so sorry. Of course. And your head?”

  “Bloody.”

  “But unbowed, I feel sure. Now I’ll explain.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The Top Lane Incident

  ALLEYN GAVE NIGEL his explanation as they walked up Top Lane by the route Dinah had taken on Friday afternoon. They walked briskly, their heads bent, and a look of solemn absorption on their faces. In a few minutes they crossed a rough bridge and reached a sharp turn in the lane.

  “It was here,” said Alleyn, “that Henry Jernigham met Dinah Copeland on Friday afternoon. It was here that Eleanor Prentice found them on her return from the confessional. I admit that I am curious about their encounters, Bathgate. Miss Prentice came upon them at three, yet she left the church at half-past two. Young Jernigham says he was away two hours. He left home at two-thirty. It can take little more than five minutes to come down here from Pen Cuckoo. They must have been together almost half an hour before Miss Prentice arrived.”

  “Perhaps they are in love.”

  “Perhaps they are. But there is something that neither Miss Prentice nor Master Henry cares to remember when one speaks of this meeting. They turn pale. Henry becomes sardonic and Miss Prentice sends out waves of sanctimonious disapproval in the manner of a polecat.”

  “What can you mean?”

  “It doesn’t matter. She left the church at three. She only spent five minutes here with the others and yet she did not reach Pen Cuckoo till after four. There seems to be a lot of time to spare. Henry struck up this path to the hill-top. Miss Copeland returned by the way we have come, Miss Prentice went on to Pen Cuckoo. I have a picture of three specks of humanity running together, exploding, and flying apart.”

  “There are a hundred explanations.”

  “For their manner of meeting and parting? Yes, I dare say there are, but not so many explanations for their agitation when the meeting is discussed. Say that she surprised them in an embrace, Master Henry might feel foolish at the recollection, but why should Miss Prentice go white and trembly?”

  “She’s an old maid, isn’t she? Perhaps it shocked her.”

  “It may have given her a shock.”

  Alleyn was searching the wet lane.

  “The rain last night was the devil. This great bough must have been blown down quite recently. Master Henry told me that their telephone was dumb on Friday night. He said it was broken by a falling bough in Top Lane. There are the wires and it almost follows as the night the day that this is the bough. It’s protected the ground. Wait; I believe we’ve struck a little luck.”

  They moved the still unwithered bough.

  “Yes. See here, Bathgate, here is where they stood. How much more dramatic footprints can be than the prints of hands. Look, here are Dinah Copeland’s, if indeed they are hers, coming round the bend into the protection of the bank. The ground was soft but not too wet. Coming downhill we pick his prints up, as they march out of the sodden lane into the lee of the bank and overlapping trees. Surface water has seeped into them but there they are. And here, where the bough afterwards fell, they met.”

  “And what a meeting!” ejaculated Nigel, looking at the heavy impressions of overlapping prints.

  “A long meeting. Yes, and a lover’s meeting. She looks a nice girl. I hope Master Henry—”

  He broke off.

  “Here we are, by George. Don’t come too far. Eleanor Prentice must have rounded the corner, taken two steps or so, and stopped dead. There are both feet planted side by side. She stood for some time in this one place, facing the others and then—what happened? Ordinary conversation? No, I don’t think so. I’ll have to try and get it from the young ones. She won’t tell me. Yes, there are her shoes, no doubt of it. Black-calf with pointed toes and low heels. Church hen’s shoes. She was wearing them this morning.”

  Alleyn squatted by the two solitary prints, reached out a long finger and touched the damp earth. Then he looked up at Nigel.

  “Well, it’s proved one thing,” he said.

  “What?”

  “If these are Eleanor Prentice’s prints, and I think they are, it wasn’t Eleanor Prentice who tried to see in at the window of the parish hall. Wait here, will you, Bathgate? I’ll going down to the car for my stuff. We’ll have a cast of these prints.”

  At half-past twelve Alleyn and Nigel arrived at the Red House, Chipping. An elderly parlourmaid told them that Mr. Fox was still there, and showed them into a Victorian drawing-room which, in the language of brassware and modernish silk Japanese panels, spoke unhappily of the late General Campanula’s service in the East. It was an ugly room, over-furnished and unfriendly. Fox was seated at a writing desk in the window and before him were many neat stacks of papers. He rose and looked placidly at them over the tops of his glasses.
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br />   “Hullo, Brer Fox,” said Alleyn. “How the hell are you getting on?”

  “Fairly comfortably, thank you, sir. Good-morning, Mr. Bathgate.”

  “Good-morning, inspector.”

  “What have you got there?” asked

  “A number of letters, sir, none of them very helpful.”

  “What about that ominous wad of foolscap, you old devil? Come on, now; it’s the will, isn’t it?”

  “Well, it is,” said Fox.

  He handed it to Alleyn and waited placidly while he read it.

  “This was a wealthy woman,” said Alleyn.

  “How wealthy?” demanded Nigel, “and what has she done with it?”

  “Nothing that’s for publication.”

  “All right, all right.”

  “She’s left fifty thousand. Thirty of them go to the Reverend Walter Copeland of Winton St. Giles in recognition of his work as a parish priest and in deep gratitude for his spiritual guidance and unfailing wisdom. Lummy! He is to use this money as he thinks best but she hopes that he will not give it all away to other people. Fifteen thousand to her dear friend, Eleanor Jernigham Prentice, four thousand to Eric Campanula, son of William Campanula, and second cousin to the testatrix. Last heard of in Nairobi, Kenya. A stipulation that the said four thousand be invested by Miss Campanula’s lawyers, Messrs. Waterworth, Waterworth and Biggs, and the beneficiary to receive the interest at their hands. The testatrix adds the hope that the beneficiary will not spend the said interest on alcoholic beverages, or women, and will think of her and mend his ways. One thousand to be divided among the servants. Dated May 21st, 1938.”

  “There was a note enclosed dated May 21st of this year,” said Fox. “Here it is, sir.”

  Alleyn read aloud with one eyebrow raised:

  “To all whom it may concern. This is my last Will and Testament so there’s no need for anybody to go poking about among my papers for another. I should like to say that the views expressed in reference to the principal beneficiary are the views I hold at the moment. If I could add anything to this appreciation of his character to make it more emphatic, I would do so. There have been disappointments, and friends who have failed me, but I am a lonely woman and see no reason to alter my Will. Idris Campanula.”