Ngaio Marsh - Overture to Death

“Reckon I’d like to give a hand if it’s agreeable to you.”

“Certainly. Fox, you and Thompson make sure we’ve missed nothing in the dressing-rooms and supper-room. Bailey, you can take Roper with you on the stage. Go over every inch of it. I’ll tackle the hall and join you if I finish first.”

“Are you looking for anything in particular?” asked Nigel.

“The usual unconsidered trifles. Spare bits of Twiddletoy, for instance. Even a water-pistol.”

“Not forgetting any kid’s annuals that happen to be lying round,” added Fox.

“Poor things!” said Nigel. “Back to childhood’s day, I see. Is there a telephone here?”

“In a dressing-room,” said Alleyn. “But it’s only an extension.”

“I’ll ring up the office from a pub, then. In the meantime, I may as well write up a pretty story.”

He took out his pad and settled himself at a table on the stage.

Police investigation is for the most part a dull business. Nothing could be more tedious than searching for things. Half a detective’s life is spent in turning over dreary objects, finding nothing, and replacing them. Alleyn started in the entrance porch of the parish hall and began a meticulous crawl over dusty surfaces. He moved like a snail, across and across, between the rows of benches. He felt cold and dirty and he smelt nothing but dust. He could not allow his thoughts to dwell pleasantly on his own affairs, his coming marriage, and the happiness that kept him company nowadays; because it is when his thoughts are abstracted from the business in hand that the detective misses the one small sign events have set in his path. Sometimes the men on the stage heard a thin whistling down in the hall. Sergeant Roper’s voice droned interminably. At intervals the church clock sweetly recorded the journey of the hours. Miss Campanula lay stealthily stiffening behind a red baize screen, and Nigel Bathgate recorded her departure in efficient journalese.

Alleyn had passed the benches and chairs and was grovelling about in the corner with an electric torch. Presently he uttered a soft exclamation. Nigel looked up from his writing and Bailey, who had the loose seat of a chair in his hands, shaded his eyes and peered down into the corner.

Alleyn stood by the stage, on the audience’s left. He held a small shining object between finger and thumb.

His hand was gloved. One of his eyebrows was raised and his lips were pursed in a soundless whistle.

“Struck a patch, sir?” asked Bailey.

“Yes, I rather think so, Bailey.”

He walked over to the piano.

“Look.”

Bailey and Nigel came to the footlights.

The shining object Alleyn held in his hands was a boy’s water-pistol.

ii

“As you said yourself, Bathgate, back to childhood days.”

“What’s the idea, sir?” asked Bailey.

“It seems to be a recurrent idea,” said Alleyn. “I found this thing stuffed away in a sort of locker under the stage over there. It was poked in a dark corner, but there’s little or no dust on it. The rest of the stuff in the locker’s smothered in dirt. Look at the butt, Bailey. Do you see that shiny scratch? It’s rather a super sort of water pistol, isn’t it? None of your rubber bulbs that you squeeze — but a proper trigger action. Fox!”

Fox and Thompson appeared from the direction of the supper-room.

Alleyn went to the small table where Bailey had placed the rest of the exhibits, lifted the covering cloth and laid his find beside the Colt automatic.

“The length is the same to within a fraction of an inch,” he said; “and there’s a mark on the butt of the Colt very much like the mark on the butt of the water-pistol. That, I believe, is where it was rammed in the piano, between the steel pegs where the strings are fastened.”

“But what the devil,” asked Nigel, “is the explanation?”

Alleyn pulled off his gloves and fished in his pockets for his ciearette-case.

“Where’s Roper?”

“Out at the back, sir,” said Bailey. “He’ll be back shortly with a new set of reminiscences. His super ought to issue a gag to that chap.”

“This is a rum go,” said Fox profoundly.

“ ‘Jones Minor’ all over it,” said Alleyn. “You were right, Bailey, I believe, when you suggested the deathtrap in the piano was too elaborate to be true. It is only in books that murder is quite as fancy as all this. The whole thing carries the hall-mark of the booby-trap and the signature of the practical joker. It is somehow difficult to believe that a man or woman would, as Bailey has said, think up murder on these lines. But what if a man with murder in his heart came upon this booby-trap, this water-pistol aimed through a hole in the torn silk bib? What if this potential murderer thought of substituting a Colt for the water-pistol? It becomes less farfetched, then, doesn’t it? What’s more, there are certain advantages. The murderer can separate himself from his victim and from the corpus delicti . The spade-work has been done. All the murderer has to do is remove the water-pistol, jam in the Colt and tie the loose end of twine round the butt. It’s not his idea, it’s Jones Minor’s.”

“He’d want to be sure the Colt was the same length,” said Fox.

“He could measure the water-pistol.”

“And then go home and check up his Colt?”

“Or somebody else’s Colt,” said Bailey.

“One of the first points we have to clear up,” Alleyn said, “is the accessibility of Jernigham’s war souvenir. Roper says he thinks everybody knew about it, and apparently it was there in the study for the picking up. They’ve all been rehearsing in the study. They were there last night — Friday night, I mean. It’s Sunday now, heaven help us.”

“If Dr. Templett recognised the Colt,” observed Fox, “he didn’t let on.”

“No more he did.”

The back door banged and boots resounded in the supper-room.

“Here’s Roper,” said Fox.

“Roper!” shouted Alleyn.

“Yes, sir?”

“Come here.”

Sergeant Roper stumbled up the steps and appeared on the stage.

“Come and have a look at this.”

“Certainly, sir.”

Roper placed his palm on the edge of the stage and vaulted deafeningly to the floor. He approached the table with an air of efficiency and contemplated the water-pistol.

“Know it?” asked Alleyn.

Roper reached out his hand.

“Don’t touch it!” said Alleyn sharply.

“ ’T, ’t, ’t!” said Fox and Bailey.

“Beg pardon, sir,” said Roper. “Seeing that trifling toy, and recognising it in a flash, I had a natural impulse, as you might say — ”

“Your natural impulses must be mortified if you want to grow up into a detective,” said Alleyn. “Whose water-pistol is this?”

“Mind,” said Roper warningly, “there may be two of this class in the district, sir. Or more. I’m not taking my oath there aren’t. But barring that eventuality I reckon I can put an owner on it. And seeing he had the boldness to take a shot at me outside the Jernigham Arms, me being in uniform — ”

“Roper,” said Alleyn, “it is only about three hours to the dawn. Don’t let the sun rise on your parentheses. Whose water-pistol is this?”

“George Biggins’s,” said Roper.

i

At seven o’clock the Yard car dropped Alleyn and Fox at the Jernigham Arms.

The rain had stopped, but it was a dank, dreary morning, and so cloudy that only a mean thinning of the night, a grudging disclosure of vague, wet masses, gave evidence that somewhere beyond the Vale there was dawnlight.

Bailey and Thompson drove off for London. Alleyn stared after the tail-light of the car while Fox belaboured the front door of the Jernigham Arms.