Overture to Death

“Or flour?”

“No. Oh, you’re thinking of the flour on the onion.”

“I’ll just get the onion.”

Alleyn fetched the onion. He had put it in one of his wide-necked specimen bottles.

“We haven’t had time to deal with this as yet,” he said. “Look at it, Fox, it’s pinkish. That’s powder, not flour.”

“Perhaps young Biggins fooled round with it in one of the dressing-rooms.”

“Let’s look at the dressing-rooms.”

They found that on each dressing-table there was a large box of theatrical powder. They were all new, and it looked as if Dinah had provided them. The men’s boxes contained a yellowish powder, the women’s a pinkish cream. Mrs. Ross, alone, had brought her own in an expensive-looking French box. In the dressing-room used by Miss Prentice and Miss Campanula, some of their powder had been spilled across the table. Alleyn stooped and sniffed at it.

“That’s it,” he said. “Reeks of onion.” He opened the box. “But this doesn’t. Fox, ring up Miss Copeland and ask when the powder was brought into these rooms. It’s an extension telephone. You just turn the handle.”

Fox plodded away. Alleyn, in a sort of trance, stared at the top of the dressing-table, shook his head thoughtfully and returned to the stage. He heard a motor-horn, and in a minute the door opened. Roper and Fife came in shepherding between them a pigmy of a man who looked as if he had been plunged in a water-butt.

Mr. Saul Tranter was an old man with a very bad face. His eyes were no bigger than a pig’s and they squinted, wickedly close together, on either side of his mean little nose. His mouth was loose and leered uncertainly, and his few teeth were objects of horror. He smelt very strongly indeed of dirty old man, dead birds and whisky. Roper thrust him forward as if he was some fabulous orchid, culled at great risk.

“Here he be, sir,” said Roper. “This is Saul Tranter, sure enough, with all his wickedness hot in his body, having been taken in the act with two of squire’s cock-pheasants and his gun smoking in his hands. Two years you’ve dodged us, haven’t you, Tranter, you old fox? I thought I’d come along with Fife, sir, seeing I’ve got the hang of this case, having brought my mind to bear on it.”

“Very good of you, Roper.”

“Now then, Tranter,” said Roper, “speak up to the chief inspector and let him have the truth — if so be it lies in you to tell it.”

“Heh, my so

And he pointed an unspeakably dirty hand at the piano.

“Never you mind that,” ordered Roper. “That’s not for your low attention.”

“What have you got to tell us, Tranter?” asked Alleyn. “Good Lord, man, you’re as wet as a water-rat!”

“Wuz up to Cloudyfold when they cotched me,” admitted Mr. Tranter. He drew a little closer to the heater and began stealthily to steam.

“Ay, they cotched me,” he said. “Reckon it do have to happen so soon or so late. Squire’ll sit on me at court and show what a mighty man he be, no doubt, seeing it’s his woods I done trapped and shot these twenty year. ’Od rabbit the man, he’d change his silly, puffed-up ways if he knew what I had up my sleeve for ’un.”

“That’s no way to talk,” said Roper severely, “you, with a month’s hard hanging round your neck.”

“Maybe. Maybe not, Charley Roper.” He squinted up at Alleyn. “Being I has my story to tell which will fix the guilt of this spring-gun on him as set it, I reckon the hand of the law did ought to be light on my ancient shoulders.”

“If your information is any use,” said Alleyn, “we might put in a word for you. I can’t promise. You never know. I’ll have to hear it first.”

“ ’Tain’t good enough, mister. Promise first, story afterwards, is my motter.”

“Then it’s not ours,” said Alleyn coolly. “It looks as though you’ve nothing to tell, Tranter.”

“Is threats nothing? Is blasting words nothing? Is a young chap caught red-handed same as me, with as pretty a bird as ever flewed into a trap, nothing?”

“Well?”

Fox came down into the hall, joined the group round the heater and stared with a practised eye at Tranter. Nigel arrived and took off his streaming mackintosh. Tranter turned his head restlessly and looked sideways from one face to another. A trickle of brown saliva appeared at the corner of his mouth.

“Well?” Alleyn repeated.

“Sour, tight-fisted men be the Jernighams,” said Tranter. “What’s a bird or two to them! I’m up against all damned misers, and so be all my side. Tyrants they be, and narrow as the grave, father and son.”

“You’d better take him back, Roper.”

“Nay, then, I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you. And if you don’t give me my dues, dang it, if I don’t fling it in the faces of the J.P.s. Where be your pencils and papers, souls? This did oughter go down in writing.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Letter to Troy

i

On Friday afternoon,” said Mr. Tranter, “I were up to Cloudyfold. Never mind way. I come down by my own ways, and proper foxy ways they be, so quiet as moonshine. I makes downhill to Top Lane. Never mind why.”

“I don’t in the least mind,” said Alleyn. “Do go on.”

Mr. Tranter shot a doubtful glance at him and sucked in his breath.

“A’most down to Top Lane, I wuz, when I heard voices. A feymell voice and a man’s voice, and raised in anger. ‘Ah,’ thinks I. ‘There’s somebody down there kicking up Bob’s-a-dying in the lane and, that being the case, the lane’s no place for me, with never-mind-what under my arm and, never-mind-what in my pockets, neither.’ So I worms my way closer, till at last I’m nigh on bank above lane. There’s a great ancient beech tree a-growing theer, and I lays down and creeps forward, so cu

“What do you see?”

“Ah! I sees young Henry Jernigham, as proud as death and with the devil himself in his face, and rector’s wench in his arms.”

“That’s no way to talk,” admonished Roper. “Choose your words.”

“So I will, and mind your own business, Charley Roper. And who do I see standing down in lane a-facing of they two with her face so sickly as cheese and her eyes like raging fires and her limbs trimbling like a trapped rabbit. Who do I see?”

“Miss Eleanor Prentice,” said Alleyn.

Mr. Tranter, who was now steaming like a geyser and smelling like a polecat, choked and blinked his eyes.

“She’s never told ’ee?”

“No. Go on.”

“Trimbling as if to take a fit, she was, and screeching feeble, but uncommon venomous. Threating ’em with rector, she was, and threating ’em with squire. She says she caught ’em red-handed in vice and she’d see every decent critter in parish heard of their goings-on. And more besides. You’d never believe that old maiden had the knowledge of sinful youth in her, like she do seem to have. Nobbut what she don’t tipple.”

“Really?” Alleyn ejaculated.

“Aye. One of them hasty secret drinkers, she is. She’d sloshed her tipple down her bosom, as I clearly saw. No doubt that’s what’d inflamed the old wench and caused her to rage and storm at ’em. She give it ’em proper hot and sizzling, did Miss Prentice. And when she was at the full blast of her fury, what does t’ young spark do but round on ’er. Aye, t’ young toad! Grabs her by shoulders and hisses in ’er face. If she don’t let ’em be, ’e says, and if she tries to blacken young maid’s name in eyes of the world, he says, he’ll stop her wicked tongue for good an’ all. He were in a proper rage, more furious than her. Terrible. And rector’s maid, she says, ‘Doan’t, Henry, doan’t!’ But young Jernigham ’e take no heed of the wench, but hammer-and-tongs he goes to it, so white as a sheet and blazing like a furnace. Aye, they’ve all got murderous, wrathy, passionate tempers, they Jernighams, as is well known hereabouts; I’ve heard the ma