Ngaio Marsh - Overture to Death

“I don’t think so. Why? Good Lord, you don’t suppose he took my Colt, do you?”

“We’ve got to explore the possibilities, sir,” said Alleyn.

“My God,” said Jocelyn, “I suppose they’re all under suspicion! What?”

“Including us,” said Henry. “You know,” he added, “theoretically one wouldn’t put it past Templett. Eleanor’s been poisonous about his alleged — notice how I protect myself, Mr. Alleyn — his alleged affair with Selia Ross.”

“Good God!” shouted Jocelyn angrily, “haven’t you got more sense than to talk like that, Henry? This is a damn’ serious business, let me tell you, and you go blackening Mr. — Mr. Alleyn’s mind against a man who — ”

“I spoke theoretically, remember,” said Henry. “I don’t really suppose Templett is a murderer, and as for Mr. Alleyn’s mind — ”

“It doesn’t blacken very readily,” said Alleyn.

“And after all,” Henry continued, “you might make out just as bad a case against me. If I thought I could murder Cousin Eleanor in safety I dare say I should undertake it. And I should think Mr. Copeland would feel sorely tempted after the way she’s — ”

“ Henry! ”

“But, my dear Father, Mr. Alleyn is going to hear all the local gossip if he hasn’t done so already. Of course, Mr. Alleyn will suspect each of us in turn. Even dear Cousin Eleanor herself is not above suspicion. She may have infected her finger in the approved manner with a not too deadly toxin. Or made it up to look septic. Why not? There were the grease paints. True, she overdid it a bit, but that may have been pure artistry.”

“Damn’ dangerous twaddle,” shouted Jocelyn. “It was hurting her like hell. I’ve known Eleanor since we were children, and I’ve never seen her cry before. She’s a Jernigham.”

“A good deal of it was straight-out annoyance at not being able to perform the ‘Venetian Suite,’ if you ask me. Tears of anger, they were, and the only sort you’ll ever wring from Eleanor’s eyes. Did she cry when they yawked out her gall-bladder? No. She’s a Jernigham.”

“Be quiet, sir,” stormed Jocelyn.

“As far as I can see, the only one of us who could not have set the trap is poor old Idris Campanula. Oh, God!”

Alleyn, watching Henry, saw him turn very white before he moved away to the window.

“All right,” Henry said to the landscape. “One’s got to do something about it. Can’t go on all day thinking of an old maid with her brains blown out. Might as well be funny in our hard, decadent modern way.”

“I remember getting the same reaction in the war,” said Alleyn vaguely. “As they say in vaudeville, ‘I had to laugh.’ It’s not an uncommon rebound from shock.”

“I don’t suppose I was being anything but excessively commonplace,” said Henry tartly. iv

“Then you don’t know if anybody came while you were out yesterday morning?” asked Alleyn, after some considerable time spent in collecting the attention of the two Jernighams.

“I’ll ask the servants,” said Jocelyn importantly, and rang for Taylor.

As Alleyn expected, the evidence of the servants was completely inconclusive. Nobody had actually rung the door bells, but on the other hand anybody might have walked into the study and done anything. They corroborated Jocelyn and Henry’s statements about their own movements and Taylor remembered seeing Miss Prentice come in at four on Friday afternoon. When the last maid had gone Alleyn asked if they had all been at Pen Cuckoo for some time.

“Lord, yes,” said the squire. “Out of the question they should have anything to do with this affair. No motive, no opportunity.”

“And not nearly enough sense,” added Henry.

“In addition to which,” said Alleyn, “they have provided each other with alibis for the whole day until they all went down in a solid body to the church hall at seven-thirty.”

“I understand the entertainment provided,” said Henry, “caused cook to vomit three times on the way home, and this morning, Father, I am told, the boot-boy heaved everything he had into the tops of your hunting boots.”

“Well, that’s a nice thing!” began Jocelyn crossly.

Alleyn said, “You told me it is out of the question that the automatic could have been substituted for the water-pistol during yesterday morning.”

“Unless it was done under the noses of a bevy of Friendly Young People and most of the company,” said Henry.

“How about the afternoon?”

“It was locked up then and the key, instead of being at the rectory as usual, was hidden, fancifully enough, behind the outside lavatory,” said Henry. “Dinah invented the place of concealment, and announced it at rehearsal. Cousin Eleanor was too put-out to object. Nobody but the members of the cast knew about it. As far as I know, only Templett and Mrs. Ross called in during the afternoon.”

“What did you do?” asked Alleyn.

“I went for a walk on Cloudyfold. I met nobody,” said Henry, “and I can’t prove I was there.”

“Thank you,” said Alleyn mildly. “What about you, sir?”

“I went round the stables with Rumbold, my agent,” said Jocelyn, “and then I came in and went to sleep in the library. I was waked by my cousin at five. We had a sort of high tea at half-past six and went down to the hall at a quarter to seven.”

“All three of you?”

“Yes.”

“And now, if you please,” said Alleyn, “I should like to see Miss Prentice.”

i

Miss Prentice came in looking, as Henry afterwards told Dinah, as much like an early Christian martyr as her clothes permitted. Alleyn, who had never been able to conquer his proclivity for first impressions, took an instant dislike to her.

The squire’s manner became nervously proprietary.

“Well, Eleanor,” he said, “here you are. We’re sorry to bring you down. May I introduce Mr. Alleyn? He’s looking into this business for us.”

Miss Prentice gave Alleyn a forbearing smile and a hand like a fish. She sat on the only uncomfortable chair in the room.

“I shall try not to bother you too long,” Alleyn began.

“It’s only,” said Miss Prentice, in a voice that suggested the presence of Miss Campanula’s body in the room, “it’s only that I hope to go to church at eleven.”

“It’s a few minutes after ten. I think you’ll have plenty of time.”

“I’ll drive you down,” said Henry.

“Thank you, dear, I think I should like to walk.”

“I’m going, anyway,” said Jocelyn.

Miss Prentice smiled at him. It was an approving, understanding sort of smile, and Alleyn thought it would have kept him away from church for the rest of his life.

“Well, Miss Prentice,” he said, “we are trying to see daylight through a mass of strange circumstances. There is no reason why you shouldn’t be told that Miss Campanula was shot by the automatic that is kept in a box in this room.”

“Oh, Jocelyn!” said Miss Prentice, “how terrible! You know, dear, we have said it wasn’t really quite advisable, haven’t we?”

“You needn’t go rubbing it in, Eleanor.”

“Why wasn’t it advisable,” asked Henry. “Had you foreseen, Cousin Eleanor, that somebody might pinch the Colt and rig it up in a piano as a lethal booby-trap?”

“Henry dear, please! We just said sometimes that perhaps it wasn’t very wise.”

“Are you employing the editorial or the real ‘we’?”

Alleyn said, “One minute, please. Before we go any further I think, as a matter of pure police routine, I would like to see your finger, Miss Prentice.”