Ngaio Marsh - Overture to Death

This afternoon, Jocelyn was hunting. Miss Prentice would come back from church before three, and Henry could not face the prospect of tea alone with his cousin. She had refused a car, and would return tired and martyred. Although Jocelyn had taught her to drive, it was her infuriating custom to refuse a car. She would walk to church after dark, on pouring wet nights, and give herself maddening colds in the head. To-day, however, was fine with glints of watery sunlight. He took a stick and went out.

Henry walked through the trees into a lane that came out near the church. Perhaps there would be a job of work to be done at the hall. If Dinah was there she would be surrounded by helpers, so that would be all right.

But about half-way down he walked round a sharp bend in the lane and found himself face to face and alone with Dinah.

For a moment they stood and stared at each other. Then Henry said, “I thought I might be able to help in the hall.”

“We finished for to-day at two o̵clock.”

“Where are you going?”

“Just for a walk. I didn’t know you’d — I thought you’d be — ”

“I didn’t know, either. It was bound to happen sooner or later.”

“Yes, I suppose so.”

“Your face is white,” said Henry, and his voice shook. “Are you all right?”

“Yes. It’s only the shock. Yours is white, too.”

“Dinah!”

“No, no. Not till to-morrow. We promised.”

As if moved by some compulsion outside themselves, they moved like automatons into each other’s arms.

When Miss Prentice, dry-eyed but still raging, came round the bend in the lane, Henry was kissing Dinah’s throat. iv

“I can’t see,” said Selia Ross, “that it matters what a couple of shocking, nasty old church-hens choose to say.”

“But it does,” answered Dr. Templett. He kicked a log on the fire. “Mine is one of the few jobs where your private life affects your practice. Why it should be so, the Lord alone knows. And I can’t afford to lose my practice, Selia. My brother went through most of what was left when my father died. I don’t want to sell Chippingwood, but it takes me all my time to keep it up. It’s a beastly situation, I know. Other things being equal, I still couldn’t ask Freda to divorce me. Lying there from one year’s end to another! Spinal paralysis isn’t much fun and — she’s still fond of me.”

“My poor darling,” said Mrs. Ross softly. Templett’s back was towards her. She looked at him speculatively. Perhaps she wondered if she should go to him. If so, she decided against it and remained, exquisitely neat and expensive, in a high-backed chair.

“Only just now,” muttered Templett, “old Mrs. Cain said something about seeing my car outside. I’ve noticed things. They’re beginning to talk, damn their eyes. And with the new fellow over at Penmoor I can’t afford to take chances. It’s all due to those two women. Nobody would have thought anything about it if they hadn’t got their claws into me. The other day, when I fixed up old Prentice’s finger, she asked after Freda, and in almost the same breath she began to talk about you. My God, I wish she’d get gangrene! And now this!”

“I’m sorry I told you.”

“No, it was much better you should. I’d better see the damn’ thing.”

Mrs. Ross went to her writing-desk and unlocked a drawer. She took out a sheet of note-paper and gave it to him. He stared at six lines of black capitals.

“YOU ARE GIVEN NOTICE TO LEAVE THIS DISTRICT. IF YOU DISREGARD THIS WARNING YOUR LOVER SHALL SUFFER.”

“When did it come?”

“This morning. The postmark was Chipping.”

“What makes you think it’s her?”

“Smell it.”

“Eucalyptus, my God!”

“She’s drenched in it.”

“She probably carried it in her bag?”

“That’s it. You’d better burn it, Billy.”

Dr. Templett dropped the paper on the smouldering log and then snatched it up again.

“No,” he said. “I’ve got a note from her at home. I’ll compare the paper.”

“Surely hers has a printed address.”

“This might be a plain sheet for the following on. It’s good paper.”

“She’d never be such a fool.”

“The woman’s pathological, my dear. She might do anything. Anyway, I’ll see.”

He put the paper in his pocket.

“In my opinion,” said Selia Ross, “she’s green with jealousy because I’ve rather got off with the parson and the squire.”

“So am I.”

“Darling,” said Mrs. Ross, “you can’t think how pure I am with them.”

Templett suddenly burst out laughing.

i

At ten minutes to eight on the night of Saturday, November 27th, the parish hall at Winton St. Giles smelt of evergreens, wet mackintoshes, and humanity. Members of the Young People’s Friendly Circle, harried and dragooned by Miss Campanula, had sold all the tickets in advance, so, in spite of the appalling weather, every seat was occupied. Even the Moorton Park people had come over with their house-party, and sat in the front row of less uncomfortable chairs at two shillings a head. Behind them were ranged the church workers including Mr. Prosser, chemist of Chipping, and Mr. Blandish, the police superintendent, both churchwardens. The Women’s Institute was there with its husband and children. Farther back, in a giggling phalanx, were those girls of the Friendly Circle who were not acting as ushers, and behind them, on the back benches, the young men of the farms and villages, smelling of hair-grease and animal warmth. In the entrance, Miss Campanula had posted Sergeant Roper, of the Chipping Constabularly, and sidesman of St. Giles. His duties were to collect tickets and subdue the backbenchers, who were inclined to guffaw and throw paper pellets at their girls. At the end of the fourth row from the front, on the left of the centre aisle, sat Georgie Biggins with his parents. He seemed strangely untroubled by his dethronement from the position of call-boy. His hair was plastered down with water on his bullet-shaped head, his face shone rosily, and there was an unholy light in his black boot-button eyes, which were fixed on the piano.

The piano, soon to achieve a world-wide notoriety, stood beneath the stage and facing the centre aisle. One of the innumerable photographs that appeared in the newspapers on Monday, November 29th, shows a museum piece, a cottage pianoforte of the nineties, with a tucked silk panel, badly torn, in the front. It has a hard-bitten look. It would not be too fanciful to compare it to a spinster, dressed in dilapidated moth-eaten finery, still retaining an air of shabby gentility, but given over to some very dubious employment. This air is enhanced by the presence of five aspidistras, placed in a row on the top of the bunting, which has been stretched across the top, over the opening and the turned-back lid, tightly fixed to the edges with drawing pins, and allowed to fall in artistic festoons down the sides and in a sort of valance-like effect across the front. At ten to eight on the night of the concert, there on the fretwork rack under the valance of bunting was Miss Prentice’s “Venetian Suite,” rather the worse for wear, but ready for her attention.

There was a notice in the programmes about the object of the performance, a short history of the old piano, a word of thanks to Jocelyn Jernigham, Esq., of Pen Cuckoo, for his generous offer to make up the sum of money needed for a new instrument. The old piano came in for a lot of attention that evening.

At eight o’clock Dinah, sick with apprehension in the prompt corner, turned on the stage lights. Sergeant Roper, observing this signal, leant across the row of boys on the back bench and switched off the house lights. The audience made noises of pleasurable anticipation.