Overture to Death

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.”

He saw that the hall was only a little way up on the other side from where this path came out on the lane. He returned, circled the rectory, perfectly aware that Dinah and Henry had watched him from the schoolroom window. As he got into the car Henry opened the window and leaned out.

“I say,” he shouted.

“Shut up,” said Dinah’s voice behind him. “Don’t, Henry.”

“What is it?” called Alleyn, squinting up through his driving-window.

“It’s nothing,” said Dinah. “He’s gone ravers, that’s all. Good-bye.”

Henry’s head shot out of sight and the window slammed.

“Now I wonder,” thought Alleyn, “if Master Henry has got the same idea as I have.”

He drove away.

At the Jernigham Arms he found Nigel, but no Fox.

“Where are you going?” Nigel demanded when Alleyn returned to the car.

“To call on a lady.”

“Let me come.”

“Why the devil?”

“I won’t go in with you if you’d rather not.”

“Naturally. All right. I can do with some comic relief.”

“Oh, God, your only jig-maker,” said Nigel and got in. “Now, who’s the lady?” he said. “Speak up, dearie.”

“Mrs. Ross.”

“The mysterious stranger.”

“Why do you call her that?”

“It’s the part she played in their show. I’ve got a programme.”

“So it is,” said Alleyn.

He turned the car up the Vale Road and presently he began to talk. He went over the history of the case from midday on Friday. As far as he could, he traced the movements of the murdered woman and each of her seven companions. He correlated their movements and gave Nigel a time-table he had jotted down in his note-book.

“I hate these damn’ things,” Nigel grumbled. “They shatter my interest; they remind me of a Bradshaw, and they are therefore completely unintelligible.”

“It’s a pity about you,” said Alleyn dryly. “Look at the list at the bottom.”

Nigel looked and read:

“Thank you,” said Nigel. “Now, of course, I see the whole thing in a blinding flash. It’s as clear as the mud in your eye. The onion is particularly obvious, and as for the drawing-pins— It’s ludicrous that I didn’t spot the exquisite reason of the drawing-pins.”

He returned the paper to Alleyn.

“Go on,” he continued acidly. “Say it. ‘You have the facts, Bathgate. You know my methods, Bathgate. What of the little grey cells, Bathgate?’ Sling in a quotation; add: ‘Oh, my dear chap,’ and vanish in a fog of composite fiction.”

“This is Cloudyfold,” said Alleyn. “Cold, isn’t it? They had twelve degrees of frost on the pub thermometer last night.”

“Oh, Mr. Mercury, how you did startle me!”

“That must be Mrs. Ross’s cottage down there.”

“Can’t I come in as your stenographer?”

“Very well. I may send you out on an errand into the village.”

Duck Cottage stands in a bend of the road before it actually reaches Cloudyfold Village. It is a typical Dorset cottage, plain fronted, well proportioned, cold-grey and weather-worn. Mrs. Ross had smartened it up. The window sashes and sills and the front door were painted vermilion, and a vermilion tub with a Noah’s Ark tree stood on each side of the entrance which led straight off the road.

Alleyn gave a double rap on the shiny brass knocker.

The door was opened by a maid, all cherry-red and muslin. Mrs. Ross was at home. The maid took Alleyn’s card away with her and returned to usher them in.

Alleyn had to stoop his head under the low doorway, and the ceilings were not much higher. They walked through a tiny ante-room, down some uneven steps and into Mrs. Ross’s parlour. She was not there. It was a charming parlour looking out on a small formal garden. There were old prints on the walls, one or two respectable pieces of furniture, a deep carpet, some very comfortable chairs, and a general air of chintz, sparkle and femininity. It was a delicate little room. Alleyn looked at a bookcase filled with modern novels. He noticed one or two works by authors whose sole distinction had been conferred by the censor, and at three popular collections of famous criminal cases. They all had startling wrappers and photographic illustrations. Within their covers one would find the cases of Brown and Kennedy, Bywaters, Seddon, and Stinie Morrison. Their style would be characterized by a certain arch taciturnity. Alleyn grinned to himself and took one of them from the shelf. He let it fall open in his hands and a discourse on dactylography faced him. The groove between the pages was filled with cigarette ash. A photograph of prints developed and enlarged from a letter illustrated the written matter. A woman’s voice sounded. Alleyn returned the book to its place. The door opened and Mrs. Ross came in.

She was the lady Alleyn had noticed in church. This did not surprise him much, but it made him feel wary. She greeted him with a sensible good-humoured air, shook hands and them gave him a slanting smile.

“This is Mr. Bathgate,” said Alleyn. He noticed that Nigel’s fingers had flown to his tie.

She settled them by the fire with the prettiest air in the world, and he saw her glance at the little cupid clock on the mantlepiece.

“I do think all this is too ghastly,” she said. “That poor wretched old creature! How anybody could!”

“It’s a bad business,” said Alleyn.

She offered them cigarettes. Alleyn refused and Nigel, rather unwillingly, followed suit. Mrs. Ross took one and leaned towards Alleyn for a light.

“Chanel, Numéro Cinq,” thought Alleyn.

“I’ve never been ‘investigated’ before,” said Mrs. Ross. “Dear me, that sounds rather peculiar, doesn’t it? I don’t mean what you mean.”

She chuckled. Nigel uttered rather a flirtatious laugh, caught Alleyn’s eye and was silent.

Alleyn said, “I shan’t bother you for long, I hope. We’ve got to try and find out where everybody was from about midday on Friday up to the moment of the disaster.”

“Heavens!” said Mrs. Ross. “I’ll never be able to remember that; and if I do, it’s sure to sound too incriminating for words.”

“I hope not,” said Alleyn sedately. “We’ve got a certain amount of it already. On Friday you went to a short five o’clock rehearsal at Pen Cuckoo, didn’t you?”

“Yes. Apart from that, I was at home all day.”

“And Friday evening?”

“Still at home. We aren’t very gay in Cloudyfold, Mr. Alleyn. I think I’ve dined out twice since I came here. The county is simply rushing me, as you see.”

“On Saturday evening I suppose you joined the others at the hall?”

“Yes. I carted down one or two things they wanted for the stage. We towed them in a trailer behind Dr. Templett’s Morris.”

“Did you go straight to the hall?”

“No. We called at Pen Cuckoo. I’d quite forgotten that. I didn’t get out of the car.”

“Dr. Templett went into the study?”

“He went into the house,” she said lightly. “I don’t know which room.”

“He didn’t return by the french window?”

“I don’t remember.” She paused and then added: “The squire, Mr. Jernigham, came and talked to me. I didn’t notice Dr. Templett until he was actually at the car window.”

“Ah, yes. You came back here for lunch?”

“Yes.”

“And in the afternoon?”

“Saturday afternoon. That’s only yesterday, isn’t it? Heavens, it seems a lifetime! Oh, I took the supper down to the hall.”

“At what time?”

“I think it was about half-past three when I got there.”

“Was the hall empty?”

“Yes. No, it wasn’t. Dr. Templett was there. He arrived just after I did. He’d brought down his clothes.”

“How long did you stay there, Mrs. Ross?”

“I don’t know. Not long. It might have been half an hour.”

“And Dr. Templett?”

“He left before I did. I was putting out sandwiches.”

“And cutting up onions?”

“Onions! Good Lord, why should I do that? No, thank you. I’m sick at the sight of one, and I have got some respect for my hands.”

They were luxurious little hands. She held them to the fire.

“I’m sorry,” said Alleyn. “There was an onion in the supper-room.”

“I don’t know how it got there. The supper-room was all scrubbed out on Friday.”

“It’s no matter. Did you look at the piano on Saturday afternoon?”

“No, I don’t think so. The curtain was down, so I suppose if anything had been out of order I shouldn’t have noticed. I didn’t go to the front of the hall. The one key opens both doors.”

“And only Dr. Templett came in?”

“Yes.”

“Could any one have come unnoticed into the front of the hall while you were in the supper-room?”

“I suppose they might have. No. No, of course they couldn’t. We had the key and the front door was locked.”

“Did Dr. Templett go into the auditorium at all?”

“Only to shut the window.”

“Which window was open?”

“It’s rather odd,” she said quickly. “I’m sure I shut it in the morning.”

iii

“It’s the window on the side away from the lane, nearest the front,” continued Mrs. Ross after a pause. “I remember that, just as we were leaving, I pulled it down in case the rain blew in. That was at midday.”

“Were you the last to leave at noon?”

“No. Well, we all left together; but I think Dr. Templett and I actually walked out first. The Copelands always leave by the back door.”

“So presumably someone reopened the window?”

“Presumably.”

“Were you on the stage when Dr. Templett shut the window?”

“Yes.”

“What were you doing there?”

“We — I tidied it up and arranged one or two ornaments I’d brought.”

“Dr. Templett helped you?”

“He — well, he looked on.”

“And all this time the window was open?”

“Yes, I suppose so. Yes, of course it was.”

“Did you tell him you thought you had shut it?”

“Yes.”

“You don’t think somebody pushed it open from outside?”

“No,” she said positively. “We were certain they didn’t. The curtain was up. We’d have seen.”

“I thought you said the curtain was down.”

“Oh, how stupid of me. It was up when we got there, but we let it down. It was supposed to be down. I wanted to try the effect of a lamp I’d taken.”

“Did you lower the curtain before or after you noticed the window?”

“I don’t remember. Oh. Yes, please, I think it was afterwards.”

She leaned forward and looked at Nigel, who had been making notes.

“It’s simply petrifying to see all this going down,” she said to him. “Do I read it over and sign it?”

“It would have to go into long-hand first,” said Nigel.

“Do let me see.”

He gave her his notes.

“They look exactly like journalists’ copy,” said Mrs. Ross.

“That’s our cunning,” said Nigel boldly, but rather red in the face.

She laughed and gave them back to him.

“Mr. Alleyn thinks we’re terribly flippant, I can see,” she said. “Don’t you, inspector?”

“No,” said Alleyn. “I regard Bathgate as a zealous and serious-minded young officer.”

Nigel tried to look zealous and serious-minded. He was a little shaken.

“You mustn’t forget that telegram, Bathgate,” added Alleyn. “I think you’d better go into Cloudyfold and send it. You can pick me up on the way back. Mrs. Ross will excuse you.”

“Very good, sir,” said Nigel and left.

“What a very charming young man,” said Mrs. Ross, with her air of casual intimacy. “Are all your officers as Eton and Oxford as that?”

“Not quite all,” rejoined Alleyn.

What a curious trick she had of widening her eyes! The pupils actually seemed to dilate. It was as if she was aware of something, recognised it, and gave just that one brief sign. Alleyn read into it a kind of polite wantonness. “She proclaims herself,” he thought, “by that trick. She is a woman with a strong, determined appetite.” He knew very well that, for all her impersonal manner, she had made small practised signals to him, and he wondered if he should let her see he had recognized these signals.

He leaned forward in his chair and looked deliberately into her eyes.

“There are two more questions,” he said.

“Two more? Well?”

“Do you know whose automatic it was that shot Miss Campanula between the eyes and through the brain?”

She sat quite still. The corners of her thin mouth drooped a little. Her short blackened lashes veiled her light eyes.

“It was Jocelyn Jernigham’s, wasn’t it?” she said.

“Yes. The same Colt that Mr. Henry Jernigham showed you on Friday evening.”

“That’s awful,” she said and looked squarely at him. “Does it mean that you suspect one of us?”

“By itself, it doesn’t amount to so much. But it was his automatic that killed her.”

“He’d never do it,” she said contemptuously.

“Did you put a box outside one of the hall windows at any time after 2.30 on Friday?” asked Alleyn.

“No. Why?”

“It’s of no importance.”

Alleyn put his hand in the breast pocket of his coat and took out his note-book.

“Heavens!” said Selia Ross. “What next?”

His long fingers drew out a folded paper. That trick with her eyes must after all be unconscious. She looked slantways at the paper and the lines of block capitals, painstakingly executed by Inspector Fox. She took it from Alleyn, raising her eyebrows, and handed it back.

“Can you tell me anything about this?” asked Alleyn.

“No.”

“I think perhaps I should tell you we regard it as an important piece of evidence.”

“I’ve never seen it before. Where did you find it?”

“It just cropped up,” said Alleyn.

Somebody had come into the adjoining room. There came the sound of stumbling feet on the uneven steps. The door burst open. Alleyn thought, “Blast Bathgate!” and glanced up furiously.

It was Dr. Templett.