Overture to Death

by Ngaio Marsh

  “Say first that you’re as happy as I am.”

  “I couldn’t be happier.”

  “I love you, Dinah.”

  “I love you, Henry.”

  “The world is ours,” said Henry. “Let us go down and take it.”

  They followed the shoulder of the hill by a path that led down to the rectory garden. Dinah went in front, and their conversation led to repeated halts.

  “I’m afraid,” Dinah began, “that I don’t much care for your Cousin Eleanor.”

  “You astonish me, darling,” said Henry. “For myself, I regard her as a prize bitch.”

  “That’s all right, then. I couldn’t mention this before you’d declared yourself, because it’s all about us.”

  “You mean the day before yesterday when she lurked outside your drawing-room door? Dinah, if she hadn’t been there, what would you have done?”

  This led to a prolonged halt.

  “The thing is,” said Dinah presently, “she must have told your father.”

  “So she did.”

  “He’s spoken to you?”

  “He has.”

  “Oh, Henry!”

  “That sounds as if you were settling a quotation. Yes, we had a grand interview. ‘What is this I hear, sir, of your attentions to Miss. Dinah Copeland?’ ‘Forgive me, sir, but I refuse to answer you.’ ‘Do you defy me, Henry?’ ‘With all respect, sir, I do!’ That sort of thing.”

  “He doesn’t want it?”

  “Eleanor has told him he doesn’t, blast her goggling eyes!”

  “Why? Because I’m the poor parson’s daughter, or because I’m on the stage, or just because he hates the sight of me?”

  “I don’t think he hates the sight of you.”

  “I suppose he wants you to marry a proud heiress.”

  “I suppose he does. It doesn’t matter a tuppenny button, my sweet Dinah, what he wants.”

  “But it does. You haven’t heard. Miss Prentice came to see Daddy last night.”

  Henry stopped dead and stared at her.

  “She said—she said—”

  “Go on.”

  “She told him we were meeting, and that you were keeping it from your father, but he’d found out and was terribly upset and felt we’d both been very underhand and—oh, she must have been absolutely foul! She must have sort of hinted that we were—” Dinah boggled at this and fell silent.

  “That we were living in roaring sin?” Henry suggested.

  “Yes.”

  “My God, the minds of these women! Surely the rector didn’t pay any attention.”

  “She’s so loathesomely plausible. Do you remember the autumn day, weeks ago, soon after I came back, when you drove me to Moorton Bridge and we picnicked and didn’t come back till the evening?”

  “Every second of it.”

  “She’d found out about that. There was no reason why the whole world shouldn’t know, but I hadn’t told Daddy about it. It had been such a glowing, marvellous day that I didn’t want to talk about it.”

  “Me, too.”

  “Well, now, you see, it looks all fishy and dubious, and Daddy feels I have been behaving in an underhand manner. When Miss Prentice had gone he took me into his study. He was wearing his beretta, a sure sign that he’s feeling his responsibilities. He spoke more in sorrow than in anger, which is always rather toxic, and the worst of it is, he really was upset. He got more and more feudal and said we’d always been—I forget what—almost fiefs or vassals of this-man’s-man of the Jernighams, and had never done anything disloyal, and here was I behaving like a housemaid having clandestine assignations with you. On and on and on; and Henry, my dear darling, ridiculous though it sounds, I began to feel shabby and common.”

  “He didn’t believe—”

  “No, of course he didn’t believe that. But, all the same, you know he’s frightfully muddled about sex.”

  “They all are,” said Henry, with youthful gloom. “And with Eleanor and Idris hurling their inhibitions in his teeth—”

  “I know. Well, anyway, the upshot was, he forbade me to see you alone. I said I wouldn’t promise. It was the first really deadly row we’ve ever had. I fancy he prayed about it for hours after I’d gone to bed. It’s very vexing to lie in bed knowing somebody in the room below is praying away like mad about you. And, you see, I adore the man. At one moment I thought I would say my own prayers, but the only thing I could think of was the old Commination Service. You know: ‘Cursed is he that smiteth his neighbour secretly. Amen.’”

  “One for Eleanor,” said Henry appreciatively.

  “That’s what I thought, but I didn’t say it. But what I’ve been trying to come to is this: I can’t bear to upset Daddy permanently, and I’m afraid that’s just what would happen. No, please wait, Henry. You see, I’m only nineteen, and he can forbid the bans—and, what’s more, he’d do it.”

  “But why?” said Henry. “Why? Why? Why?”

  “Because he thinks that we shouldn’t oppose your father and because, secretly, he’s got a social inferiority complex. He’s a snob, poor sweet. He thinks if he smiled on us it would look as if he was all agog to make a grand match for me, and was going behind the squire’s back to do it.”

  “Absolutely drivelling bilge!”

  “I know, but that’s how it goes. It’s just one of those things. And it’s all due to Miss Prentice. Honestly, Henry, I think she’s positively evil. Why should she mind about us?”

  “Jealousy,” said Henry. “She’s starved and twisted and a bit dotty. I dare say it’s physiological as well as psychological. I imagine she thinks you’ll sort of dethrone her when you’re my wife. And, as likely as not, she’s jealous of your father’s affection for you.”

  They shook their heads wisely.

  “Daddy’s terrified of her,” said Dinah, “and of Miss Campanula. They will ask him to hear their confessions, and when they go away he’s a perfect wreck.”

  “I’m not surprised, if they tell the truth. I expect what they really do is to try to inform against the rest of the district. Listen to me, Dinah. I refuse to have our love for each other messed up by Eleanor. You’re mine. I’ll tell your father I’ve asked you to marry me, and I’ll tell mine. I’ll make them see reason; and if Eleanor comes creeping in—my God, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll—”

  “Henry,” said Dinah, “how magnificent!”

  Henry grinned.

  “It’d be more magnificent,” he said, “if she wasn’t just an unhappy, warped, middle-aged spinster.”

  “It must be awful to be like that,” agreed Dinah. “I hope it never happens to me.”

  “You!”

  There was another halt.

  “Henry,” said Dinah suddenly. “Let’s ask them to call an armistice until after the play.”

  “But we must see each other like this. Alone.”

  “I shall die if we can’t; but all the same I feel, somehow, if we said we’d wait until then, that Daddy might sort of begin to understand. We’ll meet at rehearsals, and we won’t pretend we’re not in love, but I’ll promise him I won’t meet you alone. It’ll be—it’ll be kind of dignified. Henry, do you see?”

  “I suppose so,” said Henry unwillingly.

  “It’d stop those hateful old women talking.”

  “My dear, nothing would stop them talking.”

  “Please, darling Henry.”

  “Oh, Dinah.”

  “Please.”

  “All right. It’s insufferable, though, that Eleanor should be able to spoil a really miraculous thing like us.”

  “Insufferable.”

  “She’s so completely insignificant.”

  Dinah shook her head.

  “All the same,” she said, “she’s a bad enemy. She creeps and creeps, and she’s simply brimful of poison. She’ll drop some of it into our cup of happiness if she can.”

  “Not if I know it,” said Henry.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Rehearsal

 
THE REHEARSALS WERE not going any too well. For all Dinah’s efforts, she hadn’t been able to get very much concerted work out of her company. For one thing, with the exception of Selia Ross and Henry, they would not learn their lines. Dr. Templett even took a sort of pride in it. He was forever talking about his experiences in amateur productions when he was a medical student.

  “I never knew what I was going to say,” he said cheerfully. “I’m capable of saying almost anything. It was always all right on the night. A bit of cheek goes a long way. One can bluff it out with a gag or two. The great thing is not to be nervous.”

  He himself was not at all nervous. He uttered such lines of the French Ambassador’s as he remembered, in a high-pitched voice, made a great many grimaces, waved his hands in a foreign manner, and was never still for an instant.

  “I leave it to the spur of the moment,” he told them. “It’s wonderful what a difference it makes when you’re all made-up, with funny clothes on. I never know where I ought to be. You can’t do it in cold blood.”

  “But, Dr. Templett, you’ve got to,” Dinah lamented. “How can we get the timing right or the positions, if at one rehearsal you’re on the prompt and at the next on the o.p.?”

  “Don’t you worry,” said Dr. Templett. “We’ll be all right. Eet vill be—’ow you say?—so, so charmante.”

  Off-stage he continually spoke his lamentable broken English, and when he dried up, as he did incessantly, he interpolated his: “’ow you say?”

  “If I forget,” he said to the rector, who was prompting, “I’ll just walk over your side and say, ‘’ow you say?’ like that, and then you’ll know.”

  Selia Ross and he had an irritating trick of turning up late for rehearsals. Apparently the youngest Cain’s big toe still needed Dr. Templett’s attention, and he explained that he picked up Mrs. Ross and brought her to rehearsal on his way back from Cloudyfold. They would walk in with singularly complacent smiles, half an hour late, while Dinah was reading both their parts and trying to play her own. Sometimes she got her father to read their bits, but the rector intoned them so carefully and slowly that everybody else was thrown into a state of deadly confusion.

  Miss Campanula, in a different way, was equally troublesome. She refused to give up her typewritten part. She carried it about with her and read each of her speeches in an undertone during the preceding dialogue, so that whenever she was on the stage the others spoke through a distressing mutter. When her cue came she seldom failed to say, “Oh. Now it’s me,” before she began. She would often rattle off her lines without any inflexion, and apparently without the slightest regard for their meaning. She was forever telling Dinah that she was open to correction, but she received all suggestions in huffy grandeur, and they made not the smallest difference to her performance. Worse than all these peculiarities were Miss Campanula’s attempts at characterization. She made all sorts of clumsy and ineffective movements over which she herself seemed to have little control. She continually shifted her weight from one large foot to the other, rather in the manner of a penguin. She wandered about the stage and she made embarrassing grimaces. In addition to all this, she had developed a frightful cold in her nose, and rehearsals were made hideous by her catarrhal difficulties.

  Jocelyn was the type of amateur performer who learns his lines from the prompter. Unlike Miss Campanula, he did not hold his part in his hand. Indeed, he had lost it irrevocably immediately after the first rehearsal. He said that it did not matter, as he had already memorized his lines. This was a lie. He merely had a vague idea of their sense. His performance reminded Dinah of divine service, as he was obliged to repeat all his lines, like responses, after the rector. However, in spite of this defect, the squire had an instinctive sense of theatre. He did not fidget or gesticulate. With Dr. Templett tearing about the stage like a wasp, this was particularly refreshing.

  Miss Prentice did not know her part either, but she was a cunning bluffer. She had a long scene in which she held a newspaper open in her hands. Dinah discovered that Miss Prentice had pinned several of her sides to the sheets of the Times. Others were left in handy places about the stage. When, in spite of these manoeuvres, she dried up, Miss Prentice stared in a gently reproachful manner at the person who spoke after her, so that everybody thought it was her vis-à-vis who was at fault.

  Mrs. Ross had learnt her part. Her clear, hard voice had plenty of edge. Once there, she worked, tried to follow Dinah’s suggestions, and was very good-humoured and obliging. If ever anything was wanted, Mrs. Ross would get it. She brought down to the Parish Hall her cushions, her cocktail glasses and her bridge table. Dinah found herself depending more and more on Mrs. Ross for “hand props” and odds and ends of furniture. But, for all that, she did not like Mrs. Ross, whose peals of laughter at all Dr. Templett’s regrettable antics were extremely irritating. The determined rudeness with which Miss Prentice and Miss Campanula met all Mrs. Ross’s advances forced Dinah into making friendly gestures which she continually regretted. She saw, with something like horror, that her father had innocently succumbed to Mrs. Ross’s charm, and to her sudden interest in his church. This, more than anything else she did, inflamed Miss Campanula and Eleanor Prentice against Selia Rosa. Dinah felt that her rehearsals were shot through and through with a mass of ugly suppressions. To complete her discomfort, the squire’s attitude towards Mrs. Ross, being ripe with Edwardian naughtiness, obviously irritated Henry and the two ladies almost to breaking point.

  Henry had learnt his part and shaped well. He and Dinah were the only members of the cast who gave any evidence of team work. The others scarcely even so much as looked at each other, and treated their speeches as it they were a string of interrupted recitations.

  The battle of the music had raged for three weeks. Miss Prentice and Miss Campanula, together and alternately, had pretended to altruistic motives, accused each other of selfishness, sulked, denied all desire to perform on the piano, given up their parts, relented, and offered their services anew. In the end Dinah, with her father’s moral support behind her, seized upon a moment when Miss Campanula had said she’d no wish to play on an instrument with five dumb notes in the treble and six in the bass.

  “All right, Miss Campanula,” said Dinah, “we’ll have it like that. Miss Prentice has kindly volunteered, and I shall appoint her as pianist. As you’ve got the additional responsibility of the Y.P.F.C. girls in the front of the house, it really does seem the best idea.”

  After that Miss Campanula was barely civil to anybody but the rector and the squire.

  Five days before the performance, Eleanor Prentice developed a condition which Miss Campanula called “a Place” on the index finger of the left hand. Everybody noticed it. Miss Campanula did not fail to point out that it would probably be much worse on the night of the performance.

  “You’d better take care of that Place on your finger, Eleanor,” she said. “It’s gathering, and to me it looks very nasty. Your blood must be out of order.”

  Miss Prentice denied this with an air of martyrdom, but there was no doubt that the Place grew increasingly ugly. Three days before the performance it was hidden by an obviously professional bandage, and everybody knew that she had consulted Dr. Templett. A rumour sprang up that Miss Campanula had begun to practise her Prelude every morning after breakfast.

  Dinah had a private conversation with Dr. Templett.

  “What about Miss Prentice’s finger? Will she be able to play the piano?”

  “I’ve told her she’d better give up all idea of it,” he said. “There’s a good deal of inflammation, and it’s very painful. It’ll hurt like the devil if she attempts to use it, and it’s not at all advisable that she should.”

  “What did she say?”

  Dr. Templett grinned.

  “She said she wouldn’t disappoint her audience, and that she could rearrange the fingering of her piece. It’s the ‘Venetian Suite,’ as usual, of course?”

  “It is,” said Dinah grimly. “�
�Dawn’ and ‘On the Canal’ for the overture, and the ‘Nocturne’ for the entr’acte. She’ll never give way.”

  “Selia says she wouldn’t mind betting old Idris has put poison in her girl friend’s gloves like the Borgias,” said Dr. Templett, and added: “Good Lord, I oughtn’t to have repeated that! It’s the sort of thing that’s quoted against you in a place like this.”

  “I won’t repeat it,” said Dinah.

  She asked Miss Prentice if she would rather not appear at the piano.

  “How thoughtful of you, Dinah, my dear,” rejoined Miss Prentice, with her holiest smile. “But I shall do my little best. You may depend upon me.”

  “But, Miss Prentice, your finger!”

  “Ever so much better,” said Eleanor in a voice that somehow suggested that there was something slightly improper in mentioning her finger.

  “They are waiting to print the programmes. Your name—”

  “Please don’t worry, dear. My name may appear in safety. Shall we just not say any more about it, but consider it settled?”

  “Very well,” said Dinah uneasily. “It’s very heroic of you.”

  “Silly child!” said Eleanor playfully.

  And now, on Thursday, November the 25th, two nights before the performance, Dinah stood beside the paraffin heater in the aisle of the parish hall, and with dismay in her heart prepared to watch the opening scenes in which she herself did not appear. There was to be no music at the dress rehearsal.

  “Just to give my silly old finger time to get quite well,” said Miss Prentice.

  But Henry had told Dinah that both he and his father had seen Eleanor turn so white after knocking her finger against a chair that they thought she was going to faint.

  “You won’t stop her,” said Henry. “If she has to play the bass with her feet, she’ll do it.”

  Dinah gloomily agreed.

  She had made them up for the dress rehearsal and had attempted to create a professional atmosphere in a building that reeked of parochial endeavour. Even now her father’s unmistakably clerical voice could be heard beyond the green serge curtain, crying obediently: