Overture to Death

“Dr. Templett?”

She stared at him like a mesmerised rabbit.

“Well, Miss Prentice, what of Mrs. Ross and Dr. Templett?”

“I can accuse nobody. Please let me go.”

“Have you ever had a difference with Mrs. Ross?”

“I hardly speak to Mrs. Ross.”

“Or with Dr. Templett?”

“I prefer not to discuss Dr. Templett,” she said breathlessly.

“At least,” said Alleyn, “he saved your life. He dissuaded you from playing.”

“I believe God saw fit to use him as an unworthy instrument.”

Alleyn opened his mouth to speak and thought better of it. At last he said, “In your own interest, tell me this. Has Mrs. Ross cause to regard you as her enemy?”

She wetted her lips and answered him with astounding vigour:

“I have thought only as every decent creature who sees her must think. Before she could silence the voice of reproach she would have to murder a dozen Christian souls.”

“Of whom Miss Campanula was one?”

She stared at him vacantly and then he saw she had understood him.

“That’s why he wouldn’t let me play,” she whispered.

iv

On his way back, Alleyn turned off the Vale road and drove up past the church to the hall. Seven cars were drawn up outside St. Giles and he noticed a stream of villagers turning in at the lych-gate.

“Full house, this morning,” thought Alleyn grimly. And suddenly he pulled up by the hall, got out, and walked back to the church.

“The devil takes a holiday,” he thought, and joined in with the stream.

He managed to elude the solicitations of a sidesman and slip into a seat facing the aisle in the back row where he sat with his long hands clasped round his knee. His head looked remotely austere in the cold light from the open doors.

Winton St. Giles is a beautiful church and Alleyn, overcoming that first depression inseparable from the ecclesiastical smell, and the sight of so many people with decorous faces, found pleasure in the tranquil solidity of stone shaped into the expression of devotion. The single bell stopped. The organ rumbled vaguely for three minutes, the congregation stood, and Mr. Copeland followed his choir into church.

Like everybody else who saw him for the first time, Alleyn was startled by the rector’s looks. The service was a choral Eucharist and he wore a cope, a magnificent vestment that shone like a blazon in the candle light. His silver hair, the incredible perfection of his features, his extreme pallor, and great height, made Alleyn think of an actor admirably suited for the performance of priestly parts. But when the time came for the short sermon, he found evidence of a simple and unaffected mind with no great originality. It was an unpretentious sermon touched with sincerity. The rector spoke of prayers for the dead and told his listeners that there was nothing in the teaching of their church that forbade such prayers. He invited them to petition God for the peace of all souls departed in haste or by violence, and he commended meditation and a searching of their own hearts lest they should harbour anger or resentment.

As the service went on, Alleyn, looking down the aisle, saw a dark girl with so strong a resemblance to the rector that he knew she must be Dinah Copeland. Her eyes were fixed on her father and in them Alleyn read anxiety and affection.

Miss Prentice was easily found, for she sat next the aisle in the front row. She rose and fell like a ping-pong ball on a water jet, sinking in solitary genuflexions and crossing herself like a sort of minor soloist. The squire sat beside her. The back of his neck wore an expression of indignation and discomfort, being both scarlet and rigid. Much nearer to Alleyn, and also next the aisle, sat a woman whom he recognised as probably the most fashionable figure in the congregation. Detectives are trained to know about clothes and Alleyn knew hers were impeccable. She wore them like a Frenchwoman. He could only see the thin curve of her cheek and an immaculate wing of straw-coloured hair, but presently, as if aware of his gaze, she turned her head and he saw her face. It was thi

“That was once known as the glad eye,” thought Alleyn.

Under cover of a hymn he slipped out of church.

v

He crossed the lane to the hall. Sergeant Roper was on duty at the gate and came smartly to attention.

“Well, Roper, how long have you been here?”

“I relieved Constable Fife an hour ago, sir. The super sent him along soon after you left. About seven-thirty, sir.”

“Anybody been about?”

“Boys,” said Roper, “hanging round like wasps and as bold as brass with that young Biggins talking that uppish you’d have thought he was as good as the murderer, letting on as he was as full of inside knowledge as the Lord Himself, not meaning it in the way of blasphemy. I subdued him, however, and his mother bore him off to church. Mr. Bathgate took a photograph of the building, and asked me to say, sir, that he’d look back in a minute or two in case you were here.”

“I dare say,” granted Alleyn.

“And the doctor came along, too, in a proper taking on. Seems he left one of his knives for slashing open the body in the hall last night, and he wanted to fetch her out for to lay bare the youngest Cain’s toe. I went in with the doctor but she was nowhere to be found, no not even in the pockets of his suit which seemed a strange casual spot for a naked blade, no doubt so deadly sharp as ’twould penetrate the very guts of a man in a flash. Doctor was proper put about by the loss and made off without another word.”

“I see. Any one else?”

“Not a living soul,” said Roper. “I reckon rector will have brought this matter up in his sermon, sir. The man couldn’t well avoid it, seeing it’s his job to put a holy construction on the face of disaster.”

“He did just touch on it,” Alleyn admitted.

“A ticklish affair and you may be sure one that he didn’t greatly relish, being a timid sort of chap.”

“I think I’ll have a look round the outside of the hall, Roper.”

“Very good, sir.”

Alleyn wandered round the hall on the lane side, his eyes on the gravelled path. Roper looked after him wistfully until he disappeared at the back. He came to the rear door, saw nothing of interest, and turned to the outhouses. Here, in a narrow gap between two walls, he found a nail where he supposed the key had hung yesterday. He continued his search round the far side of the building and came at last to a window, where he stopped.

He remembered that they had shut this window last night before they left the hall. It was evidently the only one that was ever opened. The others were firmly sealed in accumulated grime. Alleyn looked at the wall underneath it. The surface of the weathered stone was grazed in many places, and on the ground he discovered freshly detached chips. Between the gravelled path and the side of the building was a narrow strip of grass. This bore a rectangular impress that the night’s heavy rain had softened but not obliterated. Within the margin of the impress he found traces of several large footprints and two smaller ones. Alleyn returned to a sort of lumbershed at the back and fetched an old box. The edges at the open end bore traces of damp earth. He took it to the impression and found that it fitted exactly. It also covered the lower grazes on the wall. He examined the box minutely, peering into the joints and cracks in the rough wood. Presently he began to whistle. He took a pair of tweezers from his pocket, and along the edge, from a crack where the. wood had split, he pulled out a minute red scrap of some spongy substance. He found two more shreds caught in the rough surface of the wood, and on a projecting nail. He put them in an envelope and sealed it. Then he replaced the box. He measured the height from the box to the window-sill.