Overture to Death

by Ngaio Marsh

  “That’s right, sir.”

  “They were ringing and ringing at the telephone,” interjected Miss Wright, “all the time us girls was there.”

  “And you say, Miss Wright, that none of the performers came into the front of the hall.”

  “Not one. Truly.”

  “Sure?”

  “Yass. Certain sure. We would have seen them. Soon after that the doors were open and people started to come in.”

  “Where did you stand?”

  “Up top by the stage, ushering the two shillingses.”

  “So if anybody had come down to the piano from the stage you would have seen them?”

  “Nobody came down. Not ever. I’d take another Bible oath on that,” said Miss Wright, with considerable emphasis.

  “Thank you,” said Alleyn. “That’s splendid. One other question. You were at the Reading Circle meeting at the rectory on Friday night. Did you go home by the gate into the wood. The gate that squeaks?”

  “Oo no! None of us girls goes that way at night.” Miss Wright giggled, extensively. “It’s too spooky. Oo, I wouldn’t go that way for anything. The others, they all went together, and my young gentleman, he took me home by lane.”

  “So you’re sure nobody used the gate?”

  “Yass, for sure. They’d all gone,” said Miss Wright, turning scarlet, “before us. And we used lane.”

  “You passed the hall, then. Were there any lights in the hall?”

  “Not in front.”

  “You couldn’t see the back windows, of course. Thank you so much, Miss Wright. We’ll get you to sign a transcript of everything you have told us. Read it through carefully, first. If you wouldn’t mind waiting in the outer office I think I can arrange for you to be driven home.”

  “Oo well, thanks ever so,” said Miss Wright, and went out.

  Alleyn looked at Templett.

  “I ought to apologise,” he said, “I’ve given you a damned bad hour.”

  “I don’t know why you didn’t arrest me,” said Templett with a shaky laugh. “Ever since I realised I’d left that bloody note in the dressing-room I’ve been trying to think how I could prove I hadn’t rigged the automatic. There seemed to be no possible proof. Even now I don’t see—Oh, well, it doesn’t matter. Nothing much matters. If you don’t mind, I’ll wait outside in the car. I’d like a breath of fresh air.”

  “Certainly.”

  Dr. Templett nodded to Blandish and went out.

  “Will I shadow the man?” asked Roper, earnestly.

  Blandish’s reply was unprintable.

  “You might ask Mr. Bathgate to drive your witness home, Roper,” said Alleyn. “Let her sign her statement first. Tell Mr. Bathgate I’m returning with Dr. Templett. And Roper, as tactfully as you can, just see how Dr. Templett’s getting on. He’s had a shock.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Roper went out.

  “He’s got about as much tact as a cow,” said Blandish.

  “I know, but at least he’ll keep an eye on Templett.”

  “The lady let him down, did she?”

  “With a thump that shook the crockery.”

  “S-s-s-s!” said Blandish appreciatively. “Is that a fact?”

  “He’s had two narrow escapes,” said Fox, “and that’s a fact. The lady’s let him down with a jerk and he’s lucky the hangman won’t follow suit.”

  “Fox,” said Alleyn, “you have the wit of a Tyburn broad-sheet, but there’s matter in it.”

  “I don’t know where I am,” said Blandish. “Are we any nearer to an arrest?”

  “A good step,” said Alleyn. “The pattern emerges.”

  “What does that mean, Mr. Alleyn?”

  “Well,” said Alleyn, apologetically, “I mean all these mad little things like the box, and the broken telephone, and the creaking gate—I’m not so sure of the onion—”

  “The onion!” cried Fox, triumphantly. “I know all about the onion, Mr. Alleyn. Georgie Biggins is responsible for that, the young limb. I saw him this afternoon and asked him, as well as every other youngster in the village, about the box. He’s going round as pleased as punch, letting on he’s working at the case with the Yard. Answers me as cool as you please, and when I’m going he says, ‘Did you find an onion in the teapot, mister?’ Well, it seems that they had a tea-party on the stage, with Miss Prentice and Miss Campanula quarrelling about which should pour out. If the young devil didn’t go and put an onion in the pot. It seems they each had to take the lid off and look in the pot and this was another of George’s bright ideas. I suppose someone found it in time and threw it into the box on the floor, where you picked it up.”

  “Dear little Georgie,” said Alleyn. “Dear little boy! We’ve had red herrings before now, Fox, but never a Spanish onion. Well, as I was saying, all these mad little things begin to bear some sort of relationship.”

  “That’s nice, Mr. Alleyn,” said Fox, woodenly. “You’re going to tell us you know who did it, I suppose?”

  “Oh, yes,” said Alleyn looking at him in genuine surprise. “I do now, Brer Fox. Don’t you?”

  When a man learns that his mistress, faced with putting herself in a compromising position, will quite literally see him hanged first, he is not inclined for conversation. Templett drove slowly back towards Chipping and was completely silent until the first cottage came into view. Then he said, “I don’t see how any one could have done it. The piano was safe at six-thirty. The girl used the soft pedal. It was safe.”

  “Yes,” agreed Alleyn.

  “I suppose, putting the pedal down softly, the pressure wasn’t enough to pull the trigger?”

  “It’s a remarkably light pull,” said Alleyn. “I’ve tried.”

  Templett brushed his hand across his eyes. “I suppose my brain won’t work.”

  “Give the thing a rest.”

  “But how could anybody fix that contraption inside the piano after half-past six when those girls were skylarking about in the front of the house? It’s impossible.”

  “If you come down to the hall to-morrow night, I’ll show you.”

  “All right. Here’s your pub. What time’s the inquest? I’ve forgotten. I’m all to pieces.” He pulled up the car.

  “Eleven o’clock to-morrow.”

  Alleyn and Fox got out. It was a cold windy evening. The fine weather had broken again and it had begun to rain. Alleyn stood with the door open and looked at Templett. He leaned heavily on the wheel and stared with blank eyes at the windscreen.

  “The process of convalescence,” said Alleyn, “should follow the initial shock. Take heart of grace, you will recover.”

  “I’ll go home,” said Templett. “Good-night.”

  “Good-night.”

  He drove away.

  They went upstairs to their rooms.

  “Let’s swap stories, Brer Fox,” said Alleyn. “I’ll lay my case, for what it’s worth, on the dressing-table. I want a shave. You can open your little heart while I’m having it. I don’t think we’ll unburden ourselves to Bathgate just yet.”

  They brought each other up-to-date before they went downstairs again in search of a drink.

  They found Nigel alone in the bar parlour.

  “I’m not going to pay for so much as half a drink and I intend to drink a very great deal. I’ve had the dullest afternoon of my life and all for your benefit. Miss Wright smells. When I took her to her blasted cottage she made me go in to tea with her brother who turns out to be the village idiot. Yes, and on the way back from Duck Cottage, your lovely car sprang a puncture. Furthermore—”

  “Joe!” shouted Alleyn. “Three whiskies-and-sodas.”

  “I should damn well think so. What are you ordering for yourselves?”

  Nigel calmed down presently and listened to Alleyn’s account of the afternoon. Mrs. Peach, a large flowing woman, told them she had proper juicy steak for their dinner and there was a fine fire in the back parlour. They moved in, taking their drinks with th
em. It was pleasant, when the curtains were drawn and the red-shaded oil lamp was lit, to hear the rain driving against the leaded windows and to listen to the sound of grilling steak beyond the kitchen slide.

  “Not so many places left like this,” said Fox. “Cosy, isn’t it? I haven’t seen one of those paraffin lamps for many a long day. Mrs. Peach says old Mr. Peach, her father-in-law, you know, won’t have electricity in the house. He’s given in as far as the tap-room’s concerned but nowhere else. Listen to the rain! It’ll be a wild night again.”

  “Yes,” said Alleyn. “It’s strange, isn’t it, to think of the actors in this silly far-fetched crime, all sitting over their fires, as we are now, six of them wondering what the answer is, and the seventh nursing it secretly in what used to be known as a guilty heart.”

  “Oo-er,” said Nigel.

  Mrs. Peach’s daughter brought in the steak.

  “Are you going out again?” asked Nigel after an interval.

  “I’ve got a report to write,” answered Alleyn. “When that’s done I think I might go up to the hall.”

  “Whatever for?”

  “Practical demonstration of the booby-trap.”

  “I might come,” said Nigel. “I can ring up the office from there.”

  “You’ll have to square up with the Copelands if you do. The hall telephone is on an extension from the rectory. Great hopping fleas!” shouted Alleyn, “why the devil didn’t I think of that before!”

  “What!”

  “The telephone.”

  “Excuse him,” said Nigel to Fox.

  “We’ll take half an hour’s respite,” said Alleyn, when the cloth had been drawn and a bottle of port, recommended by old Mr. Peach, had been set before them. “Let’s go over the salient features.”

  “Why not?” agreed Nigel, comfortably.

  Alleyn tried the port, raised an eyebrow, and lit a cigarette.

  “It’s respectable,” he said. “An honest wine and all that. Well, as I see it, the salient features are these. Georgie Biggins rigged his booby-trap between two and three on Friday afternoon. Miss Campanula rattled on the door just before two-thirty. Georgie was in the hall, but must have hidden, because when Gibson looked through the window, the top of the piano was open and Georgie nowhere to be seen. Miss Campanula didn’t know that the key was hung up behind the outhouse. The rest of the company were told but they are vague about it. Now Georgie didn’t test his booby-trap because, as he says, ‘somebody came’ I think this refers to Miss Campanula’s onslaught on the door. I’m afraid Miss Campanula is a nightmare to Georgie. He won’t discuss her. I’ll have to try again. Anyway, he didn’t test his booby-trap. But somebody did, because the silk round the hole made by the bullet was still damp last night. That means something was on the rack, possibly Miss Prentice’s ‘Venetian Suite’ which seems to have been down in the hall for the last week. It has a stain on the back which suggests that the jet of water hit it and splayed out, wetting the silk. Now, Georgie left the hall soon after the interruption, because he finished up by playing “Chopsticks” with the loud pedal on, and Miss Campanula overheard this final performance. The next eighteen hours or so are still wrapped in mystery but, as far as we know, any of the company may have gone into the hall. Miss Prentice passed it on her way home from confession, the Copelands live within two minutes of the place. Master Henry says that after his meeting with Dinah Copeland he roamed the hills most of that unpleasantly damp afternoon. He may have come down to the hall. Jernigham senior seems to have hunted all day and so does Templett, but either of them may have come down in the evening. Miss Prentice says that she spent the evening praying in her room, Master Henry says he tinkered with a light plug in his room, the squire says he was alone in the study. It takes about eight minutes to walk down Top Lane to the hall and perhaps fifteen to return. On Friday night the rector had an agonising encounter in his own study. I’ll tell you about it.”

  Alleyn told them about it.

  “Now the remarkable thing about this is that I believe he spoke the truth, but his story is made so much nonsense if Dinah Copeland was right in thinking there was a third person present. Miss C. would hardly make passionate advances and hang herself round the rector’s neck, with a Friendly Helper to watch the fun. Dinah Copeland bases her theory on the fact that she heard the gate opposite the study window squeak, as if somebody had gone out that way. She tells us it couldn’t have been Miss Prentice because Miss Prentice rang up a few minutes later to say she wasn’t coming down. We know Miss Prentice was upset when she left confession that afternoon. The rector had ticked her off and given her a penance or something and he thinks that’s why she didn’t come. It wasn’t any of the readers. Who the devil was it?”

  “The rector himself,” said Nigel promptly, “taking a short cut to the hall.”

  “He says that after Miss C. left him he remained a wreck by his fireside.”

  “That may not be true.”

  “It may be as false as hell,” agreed Alleyn. “There are one or two points about this business. I’ll describe the lay-out again and repeat the rector’s story.”

  When he had done this he looked at Fox.

  “Yes,” said Fox. “Yes, I think I get you there, Mr. Alleyn.”

  “Obviously, I’m right,” said Nigel, flippantly. “It’s the reverend.”

  “Mr. Copeland’s refusing the money, Mr. Bathgate,” said Fox. “I was telling the chief, just now. I got that bit of information this afternoon. Mr. Henry told the squire in front of the servants and it’s all round the village.”

  “Well, to finish Friday,” said Alleyn. “Dr. Templett spent the best part of the night on a case. That can be checked. Mrs. Ross says she was at home. To-morrow, Foxkin, I’ll get you to use your glamour on Mrs. Ross’s maid.”

  “Very good, sir.”

  “Now then. Some time before noon yesterday, the water-pistol disappeared, because at noon Miss P. strummed with her right hand and used the soft pedal. Nothing happened.”

  “Perhaps George’s plan didn’t work,” suggested Nigel.

  “We are going to see presently if Georgie’s plan works. Whether it works or not, the fact remains that somebody found the water-pistol, removed and hid it, and substituted the Colt.”

  “That must have been later still,” said Nigel.

  “I agree with you, but not, I imagine, for the same reason. Dr. Templett’s story seems to prove that the box was placed outside the window while he and Mrs. Ross were in the hall. He got the impression that someone dodged down behind the sill. Now this eavesdropper was not Miss Campanula because the servants agree that she didn’t go out yesterday afternoon. Miss Prentice, the squire, Dinah Copeland and her father were all in their respective houses, but any of them could have slipped out for an hour. Master Henry was again roving the countryside. None of them owns to the box outside the window. Fox has asked every soul in the place and not a soul professes to know anything about the box.”

  “That’s right,” said Fox. “I reckon the murderer was hanging about with the Colt and had a look in to see who was there. He’d see the cars in the lane but he’d want to find out if the occupants were in the hall or had gone that way into the vicarage. On the far side of the hall he’d have been out of sight, and he’d have plenty of time to dodge if they sounded as if they were coming round that way. But they never would, of course, seeing it’s the far side. He’d be safe enough. Or she,” added Fox with a bland glance at Nigel.

  “That’s how I read it,” agreed Alleyn. “Now, look here.”

  He took an envelope from his pocket, opened it, and, using tweezers, took out four minute reddish brown scraps, which he laid on a sheet of paper.

  “Salvage from the box,” he said.

  Nigel prodded at them with the tweezers.

  “Rubber,” said Nigel.

  “Convey anything?”

  “Somebody wearing goloshes. Miss Prentice, by gosh. I bet she wears goloshes. Or Miss C. herself. Good Lord,
” said Nigel, “perhaps the rector’s right. Perhaps it is a case of suicide.”

  “These bits of rubber were caught on a projecting nail and some rough bits of wood inside the box.”

  “Well, she might have trodden inside the box before she picked it up.”

  “You have your moments,” said Alleyn. “I suppose she might.”

  “Goloshes!” said Fox and chuckled deeply.

  “Here!” said Nigel, angrily. “Have you got a case?’

  “The makings of one,” said Alleyn. “We’re not going to tell you just yet, because we don’t want to lower our prestige.”

  “We like to watch your struggles, Mr. Bathgate,” said Fox.

  “We are, as it might be,” said Alleyn, “two experts on a watch-tower in the middle of a maze. ‘Look at the poor wretch,’ we say as we nudge each other, ‘there he goes into the same old blind alley. Jolly comical,’ we say, and then we laugh like anything. Don’t we, Fox?”

  “So we do,” agreed Fox. “But never you mind, Mr. Bathgate, you’re doing very nicely.”

  “Well, to hell with you anyway,” said Nigel. “And moreover what about Gladys Wright putting her splay foot on the soft pedal an hour and a half before the tragedy?”

  “Perhaps she wore goloshes,” said Fox, and for the first time in these records he broke into a loud laugh.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  According to Mr. Saul Tranter

  ALLEYN FINISHED HIS report by nine o’clock. At a quarter-past nine they were back in the Biggins’s Ford, driving through pelting rain to the hall.

  “I’ll have to go up to the Yard before this case is many hours older,” said Alleyn. “I telephoned the A.C. this morning but I think I ought to see him and there are a lot of odd things to be cleared up. Perhaps tomorrow night. I’d like to get to the bottom of that meeting between Master Henry, Dinah Copeland and Miss Prentice. I rather think Master Henry wishes to unburden himself and Miss Dinah won’t let him. Here we are.”

  Once more they crunched up the gravel path to the front door. The shutters had been closed and they and the windows were all locked. P.C. Fife was on duty. He let them in and being an incurious fellow retired thankfully when Alleyn said he would not be wanted for two hours.