Overture to Death

“In the teapot?”

“I’ll explain them in a minute.”

They reached the top of Great Chipping Rise, and the lights of the town swam brokenly beyond the rain.

“There’s not much more,” said Alleyn. “The prosecution will make the most of this last point. The only time the stage was deserted, after they arrived in the evening, was when all the others stood round the telephone trying to get through to Mrs. Ross and Dr. Templett. Only Miss Prentice was absent. She appeared for a moment, saw the squire in his under-pants, scuttled off to the stage and did her stunt with the safety-catch. Our case really rests on this. We can check and double-check the movements of every one of them from half-past six onwards. The rector sat on the stage, and will swear nobody touched the piano from that side. Gladys Wright and her helpers were in the hall and will swear nobody touched it from that side. The only time the catch could have been moved was when they were all round the telephone, and Miss P. was absent. She is literally the only person who could have moved the catch.”

“By George,” said Nigel, “she must be a coldblooded creature! What a nerve!”

“It’s given way a little since the event,” said Alleyn grimly. “I think she found she wasn’t as steady as she expected to be, so she allowed her hysteria to mount into the semblance of insanity. Her nerve had gone at the shock of her dear friend’s death, you see. Now she’s going to work the demented stunt for all it’s worth. I wonder when she first began to be afraid of me. I wonder if it was when I put the finger-stall in my pocket. Or was it at the first tender mention of the onion?”

“The onion!” shouted Nigel. “Where the devil does the onion come in?”

“Georgie Biggins put the onion in the teapot. We found it in a cardboard box in the corner of the supper-room. It had pinkish powder on it. There was pinkish powder on the table in Miss P.’s dressing-room. It smelt of onion. The dressing-rooms were locked while Georgie was in the hall, so he didn’t drop the onion in Miss P.’s powder. My theory is that Miss P. found the onion in the teapot, which she had to use, took it to her dressing-room and put it down on the table amongst the spilt powder. The teapot has her prints on the inside, and hers and Georgie’s on the outside.”

“But what the suffering cats did she want with an onion? She wasn’t going to make Irish stew.”

“Haven’t you heard that she has never been known to shed tears until Saturday night, when floods were induced by sheer pain and disappointment because she couldn’t play the piano? She took a good sniff at the onion, opened her dressing-room door, swayed to and fro, moaned and wept and wept and wept until Dr. Templett heard her and behaved exactly as she knew he would behave. Later on she chucked the onion into the débris in the supper-room. She ought to have returned it to the teapot.”

“I boggle at the onion.”

“Boggle away, my boy. If it was an i

“The whole thing sounds a bit like Pooh Bah.”

“It’s a beastly business. I detest it. She’s a horrible woman, not a generous thought in her make-up; but that doesn’t make much odds. If Georgie Biggins hadn’t set his trap she’d have gone on to the end of her days, most likely, hating Miss C, scheming, scratching, adoring. Everybody will talk psychiatry and nonsense. Her idée fixe will be pitchforked about the studios of the intelligentsia. That old fool Jernigham, who’s a nice old fool, and his son, who’s no fool at all, will go through hell. The rector, who supplied the idée fixe, will blame himself; and God knows he’s not to blame. Templett will hover on the brink of professional odium, but he’ll be cured of Mrs. Ross.”

“What of Mrs. Ross?”

“At least she’s scored a miss in the Vale of Pen Cuckoo. No hope now of blackmailing old Jernigham into matrimony, or out of hard cash. We’ll catch the Rosen sooner or later, please heaven, for she’s a nasty bit of work, and that’s a fact. She would have seen Templett in the dock before she’d have risked an eyelash to clear him, and yet I imagine she’s very much attracted by Templett. As soon as she knew we thought him i

Nigel pulled up outside the police station.

“May I come in with you?” he asked.

“If you like, certainly.”

Fox met Alleyn in the door.

“She’s locked up,” said Fox. “Making a great old rumpus. The doctor’s gone for a strait-jacket. Here’s a letter for you, Mr. Alleyn. It came this afternoon.”

Alleyn looked at the letter and took it quickly. The firm small writing of the woman he loved brought the idea of her into his mind.

“It’s from Troy,” he said.

And before he went into the lighted building he looked at Nigel.

“If one could send every grand passion to the laboratory, do you suppose, in each resulting formula, we should find something of Dinah and Henry’s young idyll, something of Templett’s infatuation, something of Miss P.‘s madness, and even something of old Jernigham’s foolishness?”

“Who knows?” said Nigel.

“Not I,” said Alleyn.

The End