Ngaio Marsh - Overture to Death

“Now!” she said. “That’s enough and more, for sure. What’s the meanings of these goings-on? You wait till your Dad comes home. I never see!”

She advanced to the door, bringing her son with her by the scruff of the neck.

“I’m sure I’m sorry to keep you waiting,” she said.

Alleyn asked about the car and was told he could have it. Mrs. Biggins examined both of them with frank curiosity and led the way round the house to a dilapidated shed where they found a Ford car, six years old, but, as Alleyn cheerfully remarked, none the worse for that. He paid a week’s rental in advance. Mrs. Biggins kept a firm but absent-minded grip on her son’s shirt-collar.

“I’ll get you a receipt,” she said. “Likely you’re here on account of this terrible affair.”

“That’s it,” said Alleyn.

“Are you from Scotland Yard, then?”

“Yes, Mrs. Biggins, that’s us.” Alleyn looked good-naturedly at Master Biggins. “Is this Georgie?” he asked.

The next second, Master Biggins had left the best part of his Sunday collar in his mother’s hand and had bolted like a rabbit, only to find himself held as if in a vice by the terrible man in the mackintosh and bowler.

“Now, now, now,” said Fox. “What’s all this?”

The very words he had so often heard on the screen.

“Georgie!” screamed Mrs. Biggins in a maternal fury. Then she looked at her son’s face and at the hands that held him.

“Here, you!” she stormed at Fox. “What are you at, laying your hands on my boy?”

“There’s nothing to worry about, Mrs. Biggins,” said Alleyn. “Georgie may be able to help us, that’s all. Now, look here, wouldn’t it be better if we went indoors out of sight and sound of your neighbours?”

The shot went home.

“Mighty me!” said Mrs. Biggins, still almost as white as her child, but rallying. “Mighty me, it’s true enough they spend most of the Lord’s Day minding other folks’ business and clacking their tongues. Georgie Biggins, if you don’t hold your noise I’ll have the skin off you. Do us go in, then.”

iii

In a cold but stuffy parlour, Alleyn did his best with mother and son. Georgie was now howling steadily. Mrs. Biggins’s work-reddened hands pleated and re-pleated the folds of her dress. But she listened in silence.

“It’s just this,” said Alleyn. “Georgie is in no danger, but we believe he is in a position to give us extremely important information.”

Georgie checked a lamentable roar and listened.

Alleyn took the water-pistol from his pocket and. handed it to Mrs. Biggins.

“Do you recognise it?”

“For sure,” she said slowly. “It’s his’en.”

George burst out again.

“Young Biggins,” said Alleyn, “is this your idea of being a detective? Come here.”

Georgie came.

“See here, now. How would you like to help the police bring a murderer to justice? How would you like to work with us? We’re from Scotland Yard, you know. It’s not often you’ll get the chance to work with the Yard, is it?”

The black eyes fastened on Alleyn’s and brightened.

“What are the other chaps going to think if you, if you”—Alleyn hunted for the right phrase—“if you solve the problem that has baffled the greatest sleuths of all time?” He glanced at his colleague. Fox, looking remarkably bland, closed one eye.

“If you come in with us,” Alleyn continued, “you’ll be doing a man’s job. How about it?”

A faintly hard-boiled expression crept over Georgie Biggins’s undistinguished face.

“Okay,” he said in a treble voice still fuddled with tears.

“Good enough.” Alleyn took the water-pistol from Mrs. Biggins. “This is your gun, isn’t it?”

“Yaas,” said Georgie; and, remembering James Cagney the week before last at Great Chipping Plaza, he added with a strong Dorset accent: “Sure it’s my gat.”

“You fixed that water-pistol in the piano in the hall, didn’t you?”

“So what?” said Georgie.

This was a little too much for Alleyn. He contemplated the child for a moment and then said:

“Look here, Georgie, never you mind about the pictures. This is real. There’s somebody about who ought to be locked up. You’re an Englishman, a man of Dorset, and you want to see right done, don’t you? You thought it would be rather fun if Miss Prentice got a squirt of water in the eye when she put her foot on the soft pedal. I’m afraid I agree. It would have been funny.”

Georgie grinned.

“But how about the music? You’d forgotten about that, hadn’t you?”

“Nah, I had not. My pistol’s proper strong pistol. ’Twould have bowled over the music, for certain, sure.”

“You may be right,” said Alleyn. “Did you try it after you had fixed it up?”

“Nah.”

“Why not?”

“ ’Cause something happened.”

“What happened?”

“Nuthin! Somebody made a noise. I went away.”

“Where did you get the idea?” said Alleyn after a pause. “Come on, now.”

“I’ll be bound I know, the bad boy,” interrupted his mother. “If our Georgie’s been up to such-like capers, it’s out of one of the clap-trappy tales he’s always at. Ay, only last week he tied an alarm clock under faather’s chair and set ’un for seven o’clock when he takes his nap, and there was the picture in this rubbish to give him away.”

“Was it out of a book, Georgie?”

“Yaas. Kind of.”

“I see. And partly out of your Twiddletoy model, wasn’t it?”

Georgie nodded.

“When did you do it?”

“Froiday.”

“What time?”

“Aafternoon. Two o’clock, about.”

“How did you get Into the hall?”

“Was there with them girls and I stayed behind.”

“Tell me about it. You must have been pretty smart for them not to see what you were up to.”

Georgie, it seemed, had slipped into a dark corner as the Friendly Young People left at about a quarter-past two. His idea had been to shoot at them with his water-pistol as they passed; but at the last moment a more amusing notion occurred to him. He remembered the diverting tale of a piano booby-trap which he had read with the greatest enjoyment in the last number of Bingo Bink’s Weekly . He had some odds and ends of Twiddletoy in his pockets, and as soon as the front door slammed he got to work. First he silently examined the piano and made himself familiar with the action of the pedals. At this juncture his mother told Alleyn that Georgie was of a markedly mechanical turn of mind and had made many astonishing models from Twiddletoy all of which could be made to revolve or even propel. Georgie had gone solidly to work. Stimulated by Alleyn’s ardent attention, he described his handiwork. When it was finished he played a triumphant stanza or two of chop-sticks, taking care to use the loud pedal only.

“And nobody came?”

The devilish child turned white again.

“Nobody saw,” he muttered. “They never saw nuthun. Only banged at door and shouted.”

“And you didn’t answer? I see. Know who it was?”

“I never seen ’em.”

“All right. How did you leave?”

“By front door. I shut ’un behind me.”

There was a brief silence. Georgie’s face suddenly twisted into a painful grimace, his lip trembled again, and he looked piteously at Alleyn.

“I never meant no harm,” he said. “I never meant it to kill her.”

“That’s all right,” said Alleyn. He reached out a hand and took the child by the shoulder.

“It’s nothing to do with you, young Biggins,” said Alleyn.

But over the boy’s head he saw the mother’s stricken face and knew he could not help her so easily.