“Does it?” said Nigel bitterly. “I don’t mind owning that I fail to see the faintest significance in anything you’ve been saying. Why this chat about an onion?”
“Why, indeed,” sighed Alleyn. “Come on. We’ll pack up and go home. Even a policeman must sleep.”
iii
But before Alleyn went to sleep that night he wrote to his love:
The Jernigham Arms,
November 29th.
My Darling Troy,
What a chancey sort of lover you’ve got. A fly-by-night who speaks to you at nine o’clock on Saturday evening, and soon after midnight is down in Dorset looking at lethal pianos. Shall you mind this sort of thing when we are married? You say not, and I suppose and hope not. You’ll turn that dark head of yours and find your husband gone from your side. “Off again, I see,” you’ll say, and fall to thinking of the picture you are to paint next day. My dear and my darling Troy, you shall disappear, too, when you choose, into the austerity of your work, and never, never, never shall I look sideways, or disagreeably, or in the manner of the martyred spouse. Not as easy a promise as you might think, but I make it.
This is a disagreeable and unlikely affair. You will see the papers before my letter reaches you, but in case you’d like to know the official version, I enclose a very short account written in Yard language, and kept as colourless as possible. Fox and I have come to a conclusion, but are hanging off and on, hoping for a bit more evidence to turn up before we make an arrest. You told me once that your only method in detection would be based on character: and a very sound method, too, as long as you’ve got a flair for it. Now, here are our seven characters for you. What do you make of them?
First, the squire, Jocelyn Jernigham of Pen Cuckoo, and Acting Chief Constable to make it more difficult. He’s a reddish, baldish man, with a look of perpetual surprise in his rather prominent light eyes. A bit pomposo. You would always know from the tone of his voice whether he spoke to a man or a woman. I think he would bore you and I think you would frighten him. The ladies, you see, should be gay and flirtatious and winsome. You are not at all winsome, darling, are you? They should make a man feel he’s a bit of a dog. He’s not altogether a fool, though, and, I should think, has a temper of his own. I think his cousin, Eleanor Prentice, frightens him, but he’s full of family pride, and probably considers that even half a Jernigham can’t be altogether wrong.
Miss Eleanor Prentice is half a Jernigham. She’s about forty-nine or fifty, and I think rather a horrid woman. She’s quite colourless and she’s got buck teeth. She disseminates an odour of sanctity. She smiles a great deal, but with an air of forbearance as if hardly anything was really quite nice. I think she’s a religious fanatic, heavily focused on the rector. This morning when I interviewed her she was thrown into a perfect fever by the sound of the church bells. She could scarcely listen to the simplest question, much less return a reasonable answer, so ardent and impatient was her longing to go to church. Now, in your true religious that’s understandable enough. If you believe in the God Christ preached, you must be overwhelmed by your faith, and in time of trouble turn, with a heart of grace, to prayer. But I don’t think Eleanor Prentice is that sort of religious. God knows I’m no psycho-analyst, but I imagine she’d be meat and drink to any one who was. Does one talk about a sex-fixation? Probably not. Anyway, she’s gone the way modern psychology seems to consider axiomatic with women of her age and condition. This opinion is based partly on the statements of Henry Jernigham and Dinah Copeland and partly on my own impression of the woman.
Henry Jernigham is a good-looking young man. He’s dark, with a jaw, grey eyes and an impressive head. He adopts the conversational manner of the moment, ironic and amusing, and gives the impression that he says whatever comes… into his head. But I don’t believe any one has ever done that. How deep are our layers of thought, Troy. So deep that the thought of thought is terrifying to most of us. After many years, or perhaps only a few years, you and I may sometimes guess at each other’s thoughts before they are spoken; and how strange that will seem to us. ‘A proof of our love!’ we shall cry.
This young Jernigham is in love with Dinah Copeland. Why didn’t we meet when I was his age and you were a solemn child? Should I have loved you when you were fourteen and I was twenty-three? In those days I seem to remember I had a passion for full-blown blondes. But, without doubt, I would have loved and you would have never noticed it. Well, Henry loves Dinah, who is a nice, intelligent child and vaguely on the stage, as almost all of them seem to be nowadays. I long to drivel on about the damage that magnificent chap Irvine did to his profession when he made it respectable. No art should be fashionable, Troy, should it? But Dinah is evidently a serious young actress and probably quite a good one. She adores Master Henry.
Dr. Templett, as you will see, looks very dubious. He could have taken the automatic, he could have fixed it in position, he has a motive, and he used all his authority to bring about the change of pianists. But he didn’t get down to the hall until the audience had arrived, and he was never alone from the time he arrived until the time of the murder. To meet, he’s a commonplace enough fellow. Under ordinary circumstances, I think he’d be tiresomely facetious. There is no doubt that he was infected with a passion for Mrs. Selia Ross, and woe betide the man who loves a thin straw-coloured woman with an eye to the main chance. If she doesn’t love him she’ll let him down, and if she does love him she’ll suck away his character like a leech. He’ll develop anæmia of the personality. Mrs. Ross, as you will have gathered, is a thin, straw-coloured woman, with the sort of sex appeal that changes men’s faces when they speak of her. Their eyes turn bright and at the same time guarded, and the muscle from the nostril to the corner of the mouth becomes accentuated. Do you think that a very humourless observation? It’s very true, my girl, and if you ever want to draw a sensualist, draw him like that. Trust a policeman: old Darwin found it out in spite of those whiskers. Mrs. Ross could have nipped out of the car and dodged through the french window into the squire’s study while Templett was handing his hat and coat to the butler. Had you thought of that? But she came down to the hall with Templett for the evening performance.
The rector, Walter Copeland, B.A. Oxon.: The first thing you think of is his head. He’s an amazingly fine-looking fellow. Everything the photographer or the producer ordered for a magnificent cleric. Silver hair, dark eyebrows, saintly profile. It’s like a head on a coin or a statue, and much too much like any magazine illustration of “A Handsome Man.” He seems to be less startling than his looks, and appears, in fact, to be a conscientious priest, rather disinclined for difficult jobs, but capable, suddenly, of digging in his toes. He is High Church, and I am sure very sincerely so. I should say that, if his belief came into question, he could be obstinate and even ruthless, but the general impression is of gentle vagueness.
The murdered woman seems to have been an arrogant, lonely, hysterical spinster. She and Miss Prentice might be taken as the positive and negative poles of parochial fanaticism with the rector as the needle. Not a true analogy. The general opinion is that she was a tartar.
It’s midnight. I didn’t get to bed last night, so I must leave you now. Troy, shall we have a holiday cottage in Dorset? A small house with a stern grey front, not too picturesque, but high up in the world so that you could paint the curves of the hills and the solemn changing cloud shadows that hurry over Dorset? Shall we have one? I’m going to marry you next April, and I love you with all my heart