Overture to Death by Ngaio Marsh Read Free Book Online

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 FOUR
Cue For Music
    i
    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 resistance
was Ethelbert Nevin’s Venetian Suite, which she rendered with muffled insecurity, the chords of the accompaniment never quite synchronising 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 am 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