Overture to Death

by Ngaio Marsh

  “That’s no way to talk,” said Roper severely, “you, with a month’s hard hanging round your neck.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not, Charley Roper.” He squinted up at Alleyn. “Being I has my story to tell which will fix the guilt of this spring-gun on him as set it, I reckon the hand of the law did ought to be light on my ancient shoulders.”

  “If your information is any use,” said Alleyn, “we might put in a word for you. I can’t promise. You never know. I’ll have to hear it first.”

  “Tain’t good enough, mister. Promise first, story afterwards, is my motter.”

  “Then it’s not ours,” said Alleyn coolly. “It looks as though you’ve nothing to tell, Tranter.”

  “Is threats nothing? Is blasting words nothing? Is a young chap caught red-handed same as me, with as pretty a bird as ever flewed into a trap, nothing?”

  “Well?”

  Fox came down into the hall, joined the group round the heater and stared with a practised eye at Tranter. Nigel arrived and took off his streaming mackintosh. Tranter turned his head restlessly and looked sideways from one face to another. A trickle of brown saliva appeared at the corner of his mouth.

  “Well?” Alleyn repeated.

  “Sour, tight-fisted men be the Jernighams,” said Tranter. “What’s a bird or two to them! I’m up against all damned misers, and so be all my side. Tyrants they be, and narrow as the grave, father and son.”

  “You’d better take him back, Roper.”

  “Nay, then, I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you. And if you don’t give me my dues, dang it, if I don’t fling it in the faces of the J.P.s. Where be your pencils and papers, souls? This did oughter go down in writing.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Letter to Troy

  “ON FRIDAY AFTERNOON,” said Mr. Tranter, “I were up to Cloudyfold. Never mind way. I come down by my own ways, and proper, foxy ways they be, so quiet as moonshine. I makes downhill to Top Lane. Never mind why.”

  “I don’t in the least mind,” said Alleyn. “Do go on.” Mr. Tranter shot a doubtful glance at him and sucked in his breath.

  “A’most down to Top Lane, I wuz, when I heard voices. A feymell voice and a man’s voice, and raised in anger. ‘Ah,’ thinks I. ‘There’s somebody down there kicking up Bob’s-a-dying in the lane and, that being the case, the lane’s no place for me, with never-mind-what under my arm and never-mind-what in my pockets, neither.’ So I worms my way closer, till at last I’m nigh on bank above lane. There’s a great ancient beech tree a-growing theer, and I lays down and creeps forward, so cunning as a serpent, till I looks down atwixt the green stuff into the lane. Yass. And what do I see?”

  “What do you see?”

  “Ah! I sees young Henry Jernigham, as proud as death and with the devil himself in his face, and rector’s wench in his arms.”

  “That’s no way to talk,” admonished Roper. “Choose your words.”

  “So I will, and mind your own business, Charley Roper. And who do I see standing down in lane a-facing of they two with her face so sickly as cheese and her eyes like raging fires and her limbs trimbling like a trapped rabbit. Who do I see?”

  “Miss Eleanor Prentice,” said Alleyn.

  Mr. Tranter, who was now steaming like a geyser and smelling like a polecat, choked and blinked his eyes.

  “She’s never told ’ee?”

  “No. Go on.”

  “Trimbling as if to take a fit, she was, and screeching feeble, but uncommon venomous. Threating ’em with rector, she was, and threating ’em with squire. She says she caught ’em red-handed in vice and she’d see every decent critter in parish heard of their goings-on. And more besides. You’d never believe that old maiden had the knowledge of sinful youth in her, like she do seem to have. Nobbut what she don’t tipple.”

  “Really?” Alleyn ejaculated.

  “Aye. One of them hasty secret drinkers, she is. She’d sloshed her tipple down her bosom, as I clearly saw. No doubt that’s what’d inflamed the old wench and caused her to rage and storm at ’em. She give it ’em proper hot and sizzling, did Miss Prentice. And when she was at the full blast of her fury, what does t’ young spark do but round on ’er. Aye, t’ young toad! Grabs her by shoulders and hisses in ’er face. If she don’t let ’em be, ’e says, and if she tries to blacken young maid’s name in eyes of the world, he says, he’ll stop her wicked tongue for good an’ all. He were in a proper rage, more furious than her. Terrible. And rector’s maid, she says, ‘Doan’t, Henry, doan’t!’ But young Jernigham ’e take no heed of the wench, but hammer-and-tongs he goes to it, so white as a sheet and blazing like a furnace. Aye, they’ve all got murderous, wrathy, passionate tempers, they Jernighams, as is well known hereabouts; I’ve heard the manner of this bloody killing, and I reckon there’s little doubt he set his spring-gun for t’one old hen and catched t’other. Now!”

  “Damn!” said Alleyn, when Mr. Tranter had been removed. “What a bloody business this is.”

  “Is it what you expected?” asked Nigel.

  “Oh, I half expected it, yes. It was obvious that something pretty dramatic had happened on Friday afternoon. Miss Prentice and Henry Jernigham showed the whites of their eyes whenever it was mentioned, and the rector told me that he and the squire and Miss Prentice had all been opposed to this match. Why, the Lord alone knows. She seems a perfectly agreeable girl, rather a nice girl, blast it. And look at the way Master Henry responded to inquiry! Fox, did you ever know such a case? One cranky spinster is enough, heaven knows; and here we have two, each a sort of Freudian prize packet, and one a corpse on our hands.”

  “The whole thing seems very unlikely sort of stuff to me, Mr. Alleyn, and yet there it is. She was murdered. If that kid had never read his comic paper, and if he hadn’t had his Twiddletoy outfit, it wouldn’t have happened.”

  “I believe you’re right there, Brer Fox.”

  “I suppose, sir, that was what Miss Prentice wanted to see the rector about on Friday evening. The meeting in Top Lane, I mean.”

  “Yes. I dare say it was. Oh, hell, we’ll have to tackle Miss Prentice in the morning. What did Dinah Copeland say about the face-powder?”

  “She brought it down with her last night. Georgie Biggins wasn’t behind the scenes at all last night. He made such a nuisance of himself that they gave him the sack. He was call-boy at the dress rehearsal, but the tables and dressing-rooms have all been scrubbed out since then. That powder must have been spilt after half-past six last evening. And another thing: Miss Dinah Copeland never heard about the onion—or says she didn’t.”

  “That makes sense, anyway!”

  “Does it?” said Nigel bitterly. “I don’t mind owning that I fail to see the faintest significance in anything you’ve been saying. Why this chat about an onion?”

  “Why, indeed,” sighed Alleyn. “Come on. We’ll pack up and go home. Even a policeman must sleep.”

  But before Alleyn went to sleep that night he wrote to his love:

  The Jernigham Arms,

  November 29th.

  My Darling Troy,

  What a chancey sort of lover you’ve got. A fly-by-night who speaks to you at nine o’clock on Saturday evening, and soon after midnight is down in Dorset looking at lethal pianos. Shall you mind this sort of thing when we are married? You say not, and I suppose and hope not. You’ll turn that dark head of yours and find your husband gone from your side. “Off again, I see,” you’ll say, and fall to thinking of the picture you are to paint next day. My dear and my darling Troy, you shall disappear, too, when you choose, into the austerity of your work, and never, never, never shall I look sideways, or disagreeably, or in the manner of the martyred spouse. Not as easy a promise as you might think, but I make it.

  This is a disagreeable and unlikely affair. You will see the papers before my letter reaches you, but in case you’d like to know the official version, I enclose a very short account written in Yard language, and kept as colourless as possible. Fox and I have c
ome to a conclusion, but are hanging off and on, hoping for a bit more evidence to turn up before we make an arrest. You told me once that your only method in detection would be based on character: and a very sound method, too, as long as you’ve got a flair for it. Now, here are our seven characters for you. What do you make of them?

  First, the squire, Jocelyn Jernigham of Pen Cuckoo, and Acting Chief Constable to make it more difficult. He’s a reddish, baldish man, with a look of perpetual surprise in his rather prominent light eyes. A bit pomposo. You would always know from the tone of his voice whether he spoke to a man or a woman. I think he would bore you and I think you would frighten him. The ladies, you see, should be gay and flirtatious and winsome. You are not at all winsome, darling, are you? They should make a man feel he’s a bit of a dog. He’s not altogether a fool, though, and, I should think, has a temper of his own. I think his cousin, Eleanor Prentice, frightens him, but he’s full of family pride, and possibly considers that even half a Jernigham can’t be altogether wrong.

  Miss Eleanor Prentice is half a Jernigham. She’s about forty-nine or fifty, and I think rather a horrid woman. She’s quite colourless and she’s got buck teeth. She disseminates an odour of sanctity. She smiles a great deal, but with an air of forbearance as if hardly anything was really quite nice. I think she’s a religious fanatic, heavily focused on the rector. This morning when I interviewed her she was thrown into a perfect fever by the sound of the church bells. She could scarcely listen to the simplest question, much less return a reasonable answer, so ardent and impatient was her longing to go to church. Now, in your true religious that’s understandable enough. If you believe in the God Christ preached, you must be overwhelmed by your faith, and in time of trouble turn, with a heart of grace, to prayer. But I don’t think Eleanor Prentice is that sort of religious. God knows I’m no psycho-analyst, but I imagine she’d be meat and drink to any one who was. Does one talk about a sex-fixation? Probably not. Anyway, she’s gone the way modern psychology seems to consider axiomatic with women of her age and condition. This opinion is based partly on the statements of Henry Jernigham and Dinah Copeland and partly on my own impression of the woman.

  Henry Jernigham is a good-looking young man. He’s dark, with a jaw, grey eyes and an impressive head. He adopts the conversational manner of the moment, ironic and amusing, and gives the impression that he says whatever comes into his head. But I don’t believe any one has ever done that. How deep are our layers of thought, Troy. So deep that the thought of thought is terrifying to most of us. After many years, or perhaps only a few years, you and I may sometimes guess at each other’s thoughts before they are spoken; and how strange that will seem to us. ‘A proof of our love!’ we shall cry.

  This young Jernigham is in love with Dinah Copeland. Why didn’t we meet when I was his age and you were a solemn child? Should I have loved you when you were fourteen and I was twenty-three? In those days I seem to remember I had a passion for full-blown blondes. But, without doubt, I would have loved and you would have never noticed it. Well, Henry loves Dinah, who is a nice, intelligent child and vaguely on the stage, as almost all of them seem to be nowadays. I long to drivel on about the damage that magnificent chap Irving did to his profession when he made it respectable. No art should be fashionable, Troy, should it? But Dinah is evidently a serious young actress and probably quite a good one. She adores Master Henry.

  Dr. Templett, as you will see, looks very dubious. He could have taken the automatic. He could have fixed it in position, he has a motive, and he used all his authority to bring about the change of pianists. But he didn’t get down to the hall until the audience had arrived, and he was never alone from the time he arrived until the time of the murder. To meet, he’s a common-place enough fellow. Under ordinary circumstances, I think he’d be tiresomely facetious. There is no doubt that he was infected with a passion for Mrs. Selia Ross, and woe betide the man who loves a thin straw-coloured woman with an eye to the main chance. If she doesn’t love him she’ll let him down, and if she does love him she’ll suck away his character like a leech. He’ll develop anemia of the personality. Mrs. Ross, as you will have gathered, is a thin, straw-coloured woman, with the sort of sex appeal that changes men’s faces when they speak of her. Their eyes turn bright and at the same time guarded, and the muscle from the nostril to the corner of the mouth becomes accentuated. Do you think that a very humourless observation? It’s very true, my girl, and if you ever want to draw a sensualist, draw him like that. Trust a policeman: old Darwin found it out in spite of those whiskers. Mrs. Ross could have nipped out of the car and dodged through the french window into the squire’s study while Templett was handing his hat and coat to the butler. Had you thought of that? But she came down to the hall with Templett for the evening performance.

  The rector, Walter Copeland, B.A. Oxon.: The first thing you think of is his head. He’s an amazingly fine-looking fellow. Everything the photographer or the producer ordered for a magnificent cleric. Silver hair, dark eyebrows, saintly profile. It’s like a head on a coin or a statue, and much too much like any magazine illustration of “A Handsome Man.” He seems to be less startling than his looks, and appears, in fact, to be a conscientious priest, rather disinclined for difficult jobs. But capable, suddenly, of digging in his toes. He is High Church, and I am sure very sincerely so. I should say that, if his belief came into question, he could be obstinate and even ruthless, but the general impression is of gentle vagueness.

  The murdered woman seems to have been an arrogant, lonely, hysterical spinster. She and Miss Prentice might be taken as the positive and negative poles of parochial fanaticism with the rector as the needle. Not a true analogy. The general opinion is that she was a tartar.

  It’s midnight. I didn’t get to bed last night, so I must leave you now. Troy, shall we have a holiday cottage in Dorset? A small house with a stern grey front, not too picturesque, but high up in the world so that you could paint the curves of the hills and the solemn changing cloud shadows that hurry over Dorset? Shall we have one? I’m going to marry you next April, and I love you with all my heart.

  Good-night,

  R.

  Alleyn laid down his pen and stretched his cramped fingers.

  He was, he supposed, the only waking being in the inn, and the silence of a country dwelling at night flowed in upon his mind. The wind had dropped again, and he realised that for some time there had been no sound of rain. The fire had fallen into a glow. The timbers of the inn cracked abruptly and startled him. He was suddenly weary. His body was a stranger to his mind and he looked at it in wonder. He stood as if in a trance, alarmed at meeting himself as a stranger, yet aware of this experience which was not new to him. As always, some part of his mind tried to step across the threshold of the unknown, but was unable to give purpose to his whole thought. He returned to himself and, rousing, lit his candle, turned out the lamp, and climbed the stairs to his room.

  His window looked up the Vale. High above him he could see a light. “They are late at bed at Pen Cuckoo,” he thought, and opened the window. The sound of water dripping from the eaves came into the room and the smell of wet grass and earth. “Perhaps it will be fine to-morrow,” he thought, and went happily to bed.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Frightened Lady

  “LET ME REMIND you, gentlemen,” said the coroner, looking severely at Mr. Prosser, “that you are not concerned with theories. It is your duty to decide how this unfortunate lady met with her death. If you find you are able to do so, you must then make up your minds whether you are to return a verdict of accident, suicide or murder. If you are unable to arrive at this second decision, you must say so. Now, there is no difficulty in describing the manner of death. On Friday afternoon a small boy, after the manner of small boys, set an ingenious booby-trap. At some time before Saturday night, someone interfered with this comparatively harmless piece of mechanism. A Colt automatic was substituted for a water-pistol. You have heard that this
automatic, the property of Mr. Jocelyn Jernigham, was in a room which is accessible from outside all day and every day. You have heard that it was common knowledge that the weapon was kept loaded in this room. You realise, I am sure, that on Saturday it would have been possible for anybody to enter the room through the french window and take the automatic. You have listened to a lucid description of the mechanism of this death-trap. You have examined the Colt automatic. You have been told that at 6.30 Miss Gladys Wright used the left-hand pedal of the piano, and that nothing untoward occurred. You have heard her say that from 6.30 until the moment of the catastrophe the front of the hall was occupied by herself, her fellow-helpers and, as they arrived, the audience. You have been shown photographs of the piano as it was at 6.30. The open top was covered in bunting which was secured to the sides by drawing-pins. On top of the piano and standing on the bunting, which stretched over the turned-back lid, were six pot plants. You realise that up to within fifteen minutes of the tragedy, every member of the company of performers, and every person in the audience, believed that it was Miss Prentice who was to play the overture. You may therefore have formed the opinion that Miss Prentice, and not Miss Campanula, was the intended victim. This need not affect your decision and, as a coroner’s jury, does not actually concern you. If you agree that at eight o’clock Miss Campanula pressed the left-hand or soft pedal and was killed by a charge from the automatic and that somebody had put the automatic in the piano with felonious intent—in short with intent to murder, and if you consider there is no evidence to show who this person was—why, then, gentlemen, you may return a verdict to this effect.”

  “O upright beak!” said Alleyn as Mr. Prosser and the jury retired. “O admirable and economic coroner! Slap, bang, and away they go. Slap, bang, and here they are again.”