Overture to Death

“All right. Why?”

“I keep thinking of those two. If they hadn’t been jealous I don’t believe this would have happened.”

“Good heavens, Dinah, you don’t think Eleanor…”

“No. But I sort of feel as if the whole thing was saturated in their jealousy. I mean, it was only jealousy that made them so beastly to each other and to us and to that shifty beast, Mrs. Ross.”

“Why do you call her a shifty beast?”

“Because I know in my bones she is,” said Dinah.

“I must say I wish my papa would restrain his middle-aged ardours when he encounters her. His antics are so damn’ silly.”

“Daddy’s completely diddled by her conversion to his ways. She’s put her name down for the retreat in Advent.”

“That’s not so bad as my parent’s archness. I could wish she didn’t respond in kind, I must say. Apart from that, I don’t mind the lady.”

“You’re a man.”

“Oh, nonsense,” said Henry, answering the implication.

“I wouldn’t trust her,” said Dinah, “as far as I could toss a grand piano.”

“Why bring pianos into it?”

“Well, I wouldn’t. She’s the sort that’s always called a man’s woman.”

“It’s rather a stupid sort of phrase,” said Henry.

“It simply means,” said Dinah, “that she’s nice to men and would let a woman down as soon as look at her!”

“I should have thought it just meant that she was too attractive to be popular with her own sex.”

“Darling, that’s simply a masculine cliché,” said Dinah. “I don’t think so.”

“There are tons of devastating women who are enormously popular with their own sex.”

Henry smiled.

“Do you think she’s attractive?” asked Dinah casually.

“Yes, very. I dare say she’s rather a little bitch, but she is pleasing. For one thing, her clothes fit her.”

“Yes, they do,” said Dinah sombrely. “They must cost the earth.”

Henry kissed her.

“I’m a low swine,” he muttered. “I was being tiresome. You’re my dear darling and I’m no more fit to love you than a sweep, but I do love you so much.”

“We must never be jealous,” whispered Dinah.

“Dinah!” called the rector in the hall below.

“Yes, Daddy?”

“Where are you?”

“In the schoolroom.”

“May I go up, do you think?” asked a deep voice.

“That’s Alleyn,” said Henry.

“Come up here, Mr. Alleyn,” called Dinah.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Mysterious Lady

i

Sit down, Mr. Alleyn,” said Dinah. “The chairs are all rather rickety in this room, I’m afraid. You know Henry, don’t you?”

“Yes, rather,” said Alleyn. “I’ll have this, if I may.”

He squatted on a stuffed footstool in front of the fire.

“I told Henry how rude I’d been,” said Dinah.

“I was horrified,” said Henry. “She’s very young, poor girl.”

“You couldn’t by any chance just settle down and spin us some yarns about crime?” suggested Dinah.

“I’m afraid not. It would be delightful to settle down, but you see we’re not allowed to get familiar when we’re on duty. It looks impertinent. I’ve got a monstrous lot of things to do before to-night.”

“Do you just collect stray bits of evidence,” asked Henry, “and hope they’ll make sense?”

“More or less. You scavenge and then you arrange everything and try and see the pattern.”

“Suppose there’s no pattern?”

“There must be. It’s a question of clearing away the rubbish.”

“Any sign of it so far?” asked Dinah.

“Not a great many signs.”

“Do you suspect either of us?”

“Not particularly.”

“Well, we didn’t do, it,” said Dinah.

“Good.”

“Cases of homicide,” said Henry, “must be different from any other kind. Especially cases that occur in these sorts of surroundings. You’re not dealing with the ordinary criminal classes.”

“True enough,” said Alleyn. “I’m dealing with people like yourselves who will be devastatingly frank up to a certain point — far franker than the practical criminal, who lies to the police from sheer force of habit— but who will probably bring a good deal more savoir faire to the business of withholding essentials. For instance, I know jolly well there’s something more to that meeting you both had with Miss Prentice on Friday afternoon; but it’s no good saying to you, as I would to Posh Jimmy: ‘Come on, now. It’s not you I’m after. Tell me what I want to know and perhaps we’ll forget all about that little job over at Moorton.’ Unfortunately, I’ve nothing against you.”

“That’s exactly what I mean,” said Henry. “Still, you can always go for my Cousin Eleanor.”

“Yes. That’s what I’ll have to do,” agreed Alleyn.

“Well, I hope you don’t believe everything she tells you,” said Dinah, “or you will get in a muddle. Where we’re concerned she’s as sour as a quince.”

“And, anyway, she’s practically certifiable,” added Henry. “It’s a question which was dottiest: Eleanor or Miss C.”

“Lamentable,” said Alleyn vaguely. “Mr. Jernigham, did you put a box outside one of the hall windows after 2.30 on Friday?”

“No.”

“What is this about a box?” asked Dinah.

“Nothing much. About the piano. When did those aspidistras make their appearance?”

“They were there on Saturday morning, anyway,” said Dinah. “I meant to have them taken away. They must have masked the stage from the audience. I think the girls put them there after I left on Friday.”

“In which case Georgie moved them off to rig his pistol.”

“And the murderer,” Henry pointed out, “must have moved them again.”

“Yes.”

“I wonder when,” said Henry.

“So do we. Miss Copeland, did you see Miss Campanula on Friday nighf?”

“Friday night? Oh, I saw her at the Reading Circle meeting in the dining-room.”

“Not afterwards?”

“No. As soon as I got out of the dining-room I came up here. She went into the study to see Daddy. I could just hear her voice scolding away as usual, I should think, poor thing.”

“The study is beneath this room, isn’t it?”

“Yes. I wanted to have a word with Daddy, but I waited until I heard her and the other person go.”

Alleyn only paused for a second before he said:

“The other person?”

“There was somebody else in the study with Miss C. I can’t help calling her ‘Miss C.’ We all did.”

“How do you know there was someone else there?”

“Well, because they left after Miss C,” said Dinah impatiently. “It wasn’t Miss Prentice, because she rang up from Pen Cuckoo just about that time. Mary called me to the telephone, so I suppose it must have been Gladys Wright. She’s leader of the Reading Circled She lives up the lane. She must have gone out by the window in the study, because I heard the lane gate give a squeak. That’s how I knew she’d been here.”

Alleyn walked over to the window. It looked down on a gravelled path, a lawn, and a smaller earthen path that led to a rickety gate and evidently ran on beyond it through a small plantation to the lane.

“I suppose you always go that way to the hall?” asked Alleyn.

“Oh, yes. It’s much shorter than going round the house from the front door.”

“Yes,” said Alleyn, “it would be.”

He looked thoughtfully at Dinah and said, “Did you hear this other person’s voice?”

“Hi!” said Dinah. “What is all this? No, I didn’t. Ask Daddy. He’ll tell you who it was.”

“Stupid of me,” said Alleyn. “Of course he will.”

ii

He didn’t ask the rector, but before he left he crunched boldly round the gravel path and walked across the lawn to the gate. It certainly creaked very loudly. It was one of those old-fashioned gates that has a post stile beside it. The path was evidently used very often. There was no hope of finding anything useful on its hard but greasy surface. There had been too much rain since Friday night. “Much too much rain,” sighed Alleyn. But just inside the gate he found two softened but unmistakable depressions. Horseshoe-shaped holes about two inches in diameter that had held water. “Heels,” he thought, “but not a hope of saying whose. Female. Stood there a long time facing the house.” He could see the rector crouched over the study fire. “Oh, well,” he said, and plunged into the little wood. “Nothing at all that’s to the purpose. Nothing.”