Overture to Death

She had no knowledge of what the police would do. She had a sort of an idea she had read in a criminal novel that they were not allowed to search through private houses without a permit of some kind. But did that apply to a public hall? And surely if the body of a murdered person was there, in the hall, they would hunt everywhere. What would they think if they found that letter? She wanted to warn Dr. Templett to be ready with an answer.

But he himself was an official.

But he had almost certainly remembered the letter.

Would it be better to say he knew the author to be someone else — his wife, even? Any one but one of those two women.

Her thoughts, needle-sharp, darted in and out of the fabric of her terror.

Perhaps if he went down early…

Perhaps she should have telephoned an hour ago.

She switched on her bedside lamp and looked at her clock. It was five minutes to eight.

Perhaps she was too late.

In a panic she reached for the telephone and dialled his number.

iv

Miss Prentice’s finger had kept her awake, but it is doubtful if she would have slept even if it had not throbbed all night. Her thoughts were too hurried and busy, weaving backwards and forwards between the rector, herself and Idris Campanula, who was murdered. She thought of all sorts of things: of how when she first came to Pen Cuckoo she and Idris had been such friends, confiding the secrets of their bosoms to each other like schoolgirls. She remembered all the delicious talks they had had together, talks full of exciting conjectures about the behaviour of other people in the village and the county. There would be nobody now who would speak her language and discuss things and people in that way. They had been so intimate until Idris grew jealous. That was the form Miss Prentice gave to their differences: Idris grew jealous of her friend’s rising influence in the village and in church affairs.

She would not think yet of Mr. Copeland. The memory of things he had said to her at confession must be thrust down into oblivion, and that other memory, that other frightful revelation of Idris’s perfidy.

No. Better to remember the old friendly days and to think of Idris’s will. It had been a very simple will. A lot for Mr. Copeland, a little for the distant nephew, and seven thousand for Eleanor herself. Idris had said she’d never had a real friend until Eleanor came, and that if she died first she would be happy in the thought that she had been able to do this. Eleanor even then rather resented her friend’s air of patronage.

But it was true that if she had this money she would no longer be so dependent on Jocelyn.

Mr. Copeland would be very well off indeed, for Idris was an extremely rich woman.

Dinah would be an heiress.

She had not thought of that before. There would be no worldly reason now why Dinah and Henry should not marry.

If she were to withdraw her opposition quickly, before the will was known — would not that seem generous and kind? If she could only stifle the recollection of that scene on Friday afternoon. Dinah limp in Henry’s arms, lost in rapture. It had nearly driven Eleanor mad. How could she unsay all that she had said before she turned away and stumbled up the lane, escaping from so much agony? But with Dinah married to Henry, then her father would be lonely. A rich lonely man, fifty years old, and too dignified to look for a young wife. Surely, then!

Then! Then!

The first bell, calling the people to eight o’clock service, roused her from her golden plans. She rose, dressed and went out into the dark morning.

v

The rector was astir at seven. It was Sunday, and he would be in church in an hour. He dressed hurriedly, unable to lie thinking any longer of the events of the night that was past. All sorts of recollections flocked into his thoughts, and in all of them the murdered woman was present, turning them into nightmares. He felt as if he was dyed in guilt, as if he would never rid himself of his dreadful memories. His thoughts were chaotic and quite uncontrollable.

Long before the warning bell sounded for early celebration, he stole out of the house and walked, as he had done every Sunday for twenty years, down the drive, through the nut walk and over the stile into the churchyard.

When he was alone inside the dark church he fell on his knees and tried to pray.

vi

Somewhere, a long way off, somebody was knocking at a door. Bang, bang, bang. Must be old Idris pounding away at that damned lugubrious tune. Blandish needn’t have locked Eleanor up inside the piano. As Deputy Chief Constable, I object to that sort of thing; it isn’t cricket. Let her out! If she knocks much louder she’ll blow the place up, and then we’ll have to get in the Yard. Bang, bang—

The squire woke with a sickening leap of his nerves.

“Wha-a-a?”

“Father, it’s me! Henry! I want to speak to you.”

vii

When Dinah heard her father go downstairs long before his usual hour, she knew that he hadn’t slept, that he was miserable, and that he would go into church and pray. She hoped that he had remembered to wear a woollen cardigan under his cassock, because he seemed to catch cold more easily in church than anywhere else. She knew last night that she was in for a difficult time with him. For some extraordinary reason, he had already begun to blame himself for the tragedy, saying that he had been weak and vacillating, not zealous enough in his duties as a parish priest.

Dinah was unable to follow her father’s reasoning, and with a sinking heart she had asked him if he suspected any one as the murderer of Idris Campanula. That was when they got home last night and she was fortified by Henry’s kiss.

“Daddy, do you think you know?”

“No, darling, no. But I haven’t helped them as I should. And when I did try, it was too late.”

“But what do you mean?”

“You mustn’t ask me, darling.”

And then she had realised that he was thinking of the confessional. What on earth had Idris Campanula told him on Friday? What had Eleanor Prentice told him? Something that had upset him very much, Dinah was sure. Well, one of them was gone and wouldn’t make mischief any more. It was no good trying to be sorry. She wasn’t sorry, she was only frightened and filled with horror whenever she thought of the dead body. It was the first dead body Dinah had ever seen.

Of course it was obvious to everybody that the trap had been set for Eleanor Prentice. Her father must realise that. Who, then, had a motive to kill Eleanor Prentice?

Dinah sat up in bed, cold with terror. She remembered the meeting in the lane on Friday afternoon, the things Eleanor Prentice had said in a breathless whisper, and the answer Henry had made.

“If she tells them what he said,” thought Dinah, “they’ll say Henry had a motive.”

And with her whole soul she tried to send out a warning message to Henry.

But Henry, at that moment, was pounding his father’s bedroom door, and into his startled mind there came no warning message from Dinah. There was no need for one, for already he was afraid.

viii

Dr. Templett was dreamlessly and peacefully asleep when the telephone rang at his bedside. At once, and with the accuracy born of long practice, he reached out in the half-light for the receiver.

“Dr. Templett here,” he said, as he always did when the telephone rang at an ungodly hour. He remembered that young Mrs. Cartwright might be now in labour.

But it was Selia Ross.

“Billy? Billy, have you got that letter?”

“What!”

He lay there quite still, holding the receiver to his ear and listening to his own thumping heart.