Overture to Death

“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.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Further Vignettes

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 thi

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.

“There’s somebody moving about in there,” he grumbled.

“Here they come.”

It was the pot-boy, very tousled and peepy, and accompanied by a gust of stale beer. Alleyn thought that he looked like all pot-boys at dawn throughout time and space.

“Good-morning,” Alleyn said. “Can you give us rooms for a day or two, and breakfast in an hour? There’s a third man on his way here.”

“I’ll aask Missus,” said the pot-boy. He gaped at them, blinked, and went off down a passage. They could hear him calling with the cracked uncertainty of adolescence:

“Missus! Be detec-er-tives from Lu

“The whole place buzzing with it,” said Alleyn.

ii

At seven o’clock Henry found himself suddenly awake. He lay still, wondering for a moment why this day would be different from any other day. Then he remembered. He saw with precision a purple heap, the top of a head, the nape of a neck laced with dark, shining streaks. He saw a sheet of music, crumpled, pi

“I have looked down at a murdered woman.” And for a time his thoughts would not move beyond this sharp memory, so that he found himself anxiously retracing the pattern of the head, the neck, the white sheet of music, and the fatuous green leaves. Then the memory of Dinah’s cold fingers crept into his hands. He closed his hands on the memory, clenching them as he lay in bed, and the whole idea of Dinah came into his mind.

“If it had been Eleanor, there would have been an end to our troubles.”

He pushed this thought away from him, telling himself it was horrible, but it returned repeatedly, and at last he said, “It is stupid to pretend otherwise. I do wish it had been Eleanor.” He began to think of all that happened after Idris Campanula died; of how his father went aside with Superintendent Blandish, and of the solemn, ridiculous look on his father’s face. He remembered Dr. Templett’s explanations and Miss Prentice’s moans which had irritated them all very much. He remembered that when he looked at Mr. Copeland he saw that his lips were moving, and realised, with embarrassment, that the rector was at prayer. He remembered Mrs. Ross’s almost complete silence and the way she and Templett had not spoken to each other. And again his thoughts returned to Dinah. He had walked to the rectory with Dinah and her father, and on the threshold he had kissed her openly, the rector seeming scarcely aware of it. On the way home to Pen Cuckoo, the squire had not forgotten that, in the absence of Sir George Dillington, he was Chief Constable, and had discoursed solemnly on the crime, saying again and again that Henry was to treat everything he heard as confidential, and relating how, with Blandish, he had come to a decision to call in Scotland Yard. When they were indoors at last, Eleanor Prentice had fainted, and the squire had forced brandy down her throat with such an uncertain hand that he had half-asphyxiated her. They helped her to her room and Jocelyn, nervously assiduous, had knocked the bandaged finger so that she screamed with pain. Henry and his father had a solemn drink together in the dining-room, Jocelyn still discoursing on his responsibilities.

Henry went cold all over, his heart dropped like a plummet, and he faced the worst memory of all, the one that he had been pushing away ever since he woke.

It was when Jocelyn told him how, strong in his position of Acting Chief Constable, he had peered through the hole in the tucked silk front, and had seen the glimmer of a firearm.

“A revolver,” Jocelyn had said, “or else an automatic.”

At that moment the picture of the box in the study had risen in Henry’s imagination. He had hurried his father to bed, but when he was alone had been afraid to go into the study and lift the lid of the box. Now he knew that he must do it. Quickly, before the servants were up. He leapt out of bed, threw on his dressing-gown, and crept downstairs through the dark house. There was an electric torch in the hall. He found it and made his way to the study.

The box was empty. The notice “LOADED” in block capitals lay at the bottom.

Henry turned away with panic in his heart, and a minute later he was knocking at his father’s door.

iii

Selia Ross had been awake for a very long time. She was wondering when she could telephone to Dr. Templett or whether it would be altogether too unsafe to get into touch with him. She knew the telephone rang at his bedside until eight o’clock in the morning, and that he slept far enough away from his wife’s room for it not to disturb her. Mrs. Ross wanted to ask him what he had done with the anonymous letter. She knew that he had put it in his wallet, and that he kept the wallet in his breast pocket. She remembered that after the catastrophe he had not changed back into his ordinary suit, and she was hideously afraid that the letter might still be in his coat at the hall. He was very forgetful and careless about such things, and had once left one of her letters, open, on his dressing-table, only remembering it later on in the day.