Overture to Death - Ngaio Marsh

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piano-fund and the balance of the sum needed will be made up most generously by Mr Jocelyn Jernigham. The Committee and members of the YPFC will organize the sale of tickets and will make themselves responsible for the – what is the correct expression, Dinah?’

      ‘The front of the house, Daddy.’

      ‘For the front of the house, yes. Do you think we can leave these affairs to your young folks, Miss Campanula? I know you can answer for them.’

      ‘My dear man,’ said Miss Campanula, ‘I can’t answer for the behaviour of thirty village louts and maidens, but they usually do what I tell them to. Ha!’

      Everybody laughed sycophantically.

      ‘My friend,’ added Miss Campanula, with a ghastly smile, ‘my friend Miss Prentice is president. No doubt, if they pay no attention to me, they will do anything in the world for her.’

      ‘Dear Idris!’ murmured Miss Prentice.

      ‘Who’s going to produce the play?’ asked Henry. ‘I think Dinah ought. She’s a professional.’

      ‘Hear, hear!’ said Dr Templett, Selia Ross and the squire. Miss Prentice added rather a tepid little, ‘Of course, yes.’ Miss Campanula said nothing. Dinah grinned shyly and looked into her lap. She was elected producer. Dinah had not passed the early stages of theatrical experience when the tyro lards his conversation with professional phrases. She accepted her honours with an air of great seriousness and called her first rehearsal for Tuesday night, November 9th.

      ‘I’ll get all your sides typed by then,’ she explained. ‘I’m sure Gladys Wright will do them, because she’s learning and wants experience. I’ll give her a proper part so that she gets the cues right. We’ll have a reading and if there’s time I’ll set positions for the first act.’

      ‘Dear me,’ said Miss Prentice, ‘sounds very alarming. I’m afraid, Dinah dear, that you will find us all very amateurish.’

      ‘Oh, no!’ cried Dinah gaily. ‘I know it’s going to be marvellous.’ She looked uncertainly at her father and added, ‘I should like to say, thank you all very much for asking me to produce. I do hope I’ll manage it all right.’

      ‘Well, you know a dashed sight more about it than any of us,’ said Selia Ross bluntly.

      But somehow Dinah didn’t quite want Mrs Ross so frankly on her side. She was aware in herself of a strong antagonism to Mrs Ross and this discovery surprised and confused her, because she believed herself to be a rebel. As a rebel, she should have applauded Selia Ross. To Dinah, Miss Prentice and Miss Campanula were the hated symbols of all that was mean, stupid, and antediluvian. Selia Ross had deliberately given battle to these two ladies and had won the first round. Why, then, could Dinah not welcome her as an ally after her own heart? She supposed it was because, in her own heart, she mistrusted and disliked Mrs Ross. This feeling was entirely instinctive and it upset and bewildered her. It was as if some dictator in her blood refused an allegiance that she should have welcomed. She could not reply with the correct comradely smile. She felt her face turning pink with embarrassment and she said hurriedly:

      ‘What about music? We’ll want an overture and an entr’acte.’

      And with those words Dinah unconsciously rang up the curtain on a theme that was to engulf Pen Cuckoo and turn Shop Windows from polite comedy into outlandish, shameless melodrama.

       CHAPTER 4 Cue for Music

      As soon as Dinah had spoken those fatal words everybody round the table in the study at Pen Cuckoo thought of ‘Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in C sharp Minor,’ and with the exception of Miss Campanula, everybody’s heart sank into his or her boots. For the Prelude was Miss Campanula’s speciality. In Pen Cuckoo she had the sole rights in this composition. She played it at all church concerts, she played it on her own piano after her own dinner parties, and, unless her hostess was particularly courageous, she played it after other people’s dinner parties, too. Whenever there was any question of music sounding at Pen Cuckoo, Miss Campanula offered her services, and the three pretentious chords would boom out once again: ‘Pom, Pom, POM.’ And then down would go Miss Campanula’s foot on the left pedal and the next passage would follow in a series of woolly but determined jerks. She even played it as a voluntary when Mr Withers, the organist, went on his holidays and Miss Campanula took his place. She had had her photograph taken, seated at the instrument, with the Prelude on the rack. Each of her friends had received a copy at Christmas. The rector’s was framed, and he had not known quite what to do with it. Until three years ago when Eleanor Prentice had come to live at Pen Cuckoo, Idris Campanula and her Prelude had had it all their own way. But Miss Prentice also belonged to a generation when girls learnt the pianoforte from their governesses, and she, too, liked to be expected to perform. Her pièce de résistance was Ethelbert Nevin’s ‘Venetian Suite’, which she rendered with muffled insecurity, the chords of the accompaniment never quite synchronizing with the saccharine notes of the melody. Between the two ladies the battle had raged at parish entertainments, Sunday School services, and private parties. They only united in deploring the radio and in falsely pretending that music was a bond between them.

      So that when Dinah in her flurry asked, ‘What about music?’ Miss Campanula and Miss Prentice both became alert.

      Miss Prentice said, ‘Yes, of course. Now, couldn’t we manage that amongst ourselves somehow? It’s so much pleasanter, isn’t it, if we keep to our own small circle?’

      ‘I’m afraid my poor wits are rather confused,’ began Miss Campanula. ‘Everything seems to have been decided out of hand. You must correct me if I’m wrong, but it appears that several of the characters in this delightful comedy – by the way, is it a comedy?’

      ‘Yes,’ said Henry.

      ‘Thank you. It appears that some of the characters do not appear until somewhere in the second act. I don’t know which of the characters, naturally, as I have not yet looked between the covers.’

      With hasty mumbled apologies they handed the play to Miss Campanula. She said:

      ‘Oh thank you. Don’t let me be selfish. I’m a patient body.’

      When Idris Campanula alluded to herself jocularly as a ‘body’ it usually meant that she was in a temper. They all said, ‘No, no! Please have it.’ She drew her pince-nez out from her bosom by a patent extension and slung them across her nose. She opened the play and amidst dead silence she began to inspect it. First she read the cast of characters. She checked each one with a large bony forefinger, and paused to look round the table until she found the person who had been cast for it. Her expression, which was forbidding, did not change. She then applied herself to the first page of the dialogue. Still everybody waited. The silence was broken only by the sound of Miss Campanula turning a page. Henry began to feel desperate. It seemed almost as if they would continue to sit dumbly round the table until Miss Campanula reached the end of the play. He gave Dinah a cigarette and lit one himself. Miss Campanula raised her eyes and watched them until the match was blown out, and then returned to her reading. She had reached the fourth page of the first act. Mrs Ross looked up at Dr Templett who had bent his head and whispered. Again Miss Campanula raised her eyes and stared at the offenders. The squire cleared his throat and said:

      ‘Read the middle bit of Act II. Page forty-eight, it begins. Funniest thing I’ve come across for ages. It’ll make you laugh like anything.’

      Miss Campanula did not reply, but she turned to Act II. Dinah, Henry, Dr Templett, and Jocelyn waited with anxious smiles for her to give some evidence of amusement, but her lips remained firmly pursed, her brows raised, and her eyes fishy. Presently she looked up.

      ‘I’ve reached the end of the scene,’ she said. ‘Was that the funny one?’

      ‘Don’t you think

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