Overture to Death by Ngaio Marsh Page B

rocks, bushes and posts, expectant of the day. The clamour of far-away cock-crows rose vaguely from the valley like the overlapping echoes of dreams, and with this sound came the human smell of woodsmoke.
    Henry reached the top of Cloudyfold and looked down the vale of Pen Cuckoo. His breath made a small cold mist in front of his face, his fingers were cold and his eyes watered, but he felt like a god as he surveyed his own little world. Half-way down, and almost sheer beneath him, was the house he had left. He looked down into the chimney-tops, already wreathed in thin drifts of blue. The servants were up and about. Farther down, and still drenched in shadow, were the roofs of Winton. Henry wondered if they really leaked badly and if he and Dinah could ever afford to repair them.
    Beyond Winton his father’s land spread out into low hills and came to an end at Selwood Brook. Here, half-screened by trees, he could see the stone façade of Chippingwood which Dr. Templett had inherited from his elder brother who had died in the Great War. And separated from Chippingwood by the hamlet of Chipping was Miss Campanula’s Georgian mansion, on the skirts of the village but not of it. Farther away, and only just visible over the downlands that separated it from the Vale, was Great Chipping, the largest town in that part of Dorset. Half-way up the slope, below Winton and Pen Cuckoo, was the church, Winton St. Giles, with the rectory hidden behind it. Dinah would strike straight through their home copse and come up the ridge of Cloudyfold. If she came! Please God, make it happen, said Henry’s thoughts as they used to do when he was a little boy. He crossed the brow of the hill. Below him, on the far side, was Moorton Park Road and Cloudyfold Village, and there, tucked into a bend in the road, Duck Cottage, with its scarlet door and window frames, newly done up by Mrs. Ross. Henry wondered why Selia Ross had decided to live in a place like Cloudyfold. She seemed to him so thoroughly urban. For a minute or two he thought of her, still snugly asleep in her renovated cottage, dreaming perhaps of Dr. Templett. Farther away over the brow of a hill was the Cain’s farm, where Dr. Templett must drive to minister to the youngest Cain’s big toe.
    “They’re all down there,” thought Henry, “tucked up in their warm houses, fast asleep; and none of them knows I’m up here in the cold dawn waiting for Dinah Copeland.”
    He felt a faint warmth on the back of his neck. The stivered grass was washed with colour, and before him his own attenuated shadow appeared. He turned- to the east and saw the sun. Quite near at hand he heard his name called, and there, coming over the brow of Cloudyfold, was Dinah, dressed in blue with a scarlet handkerchief round her neck.
    Henry could make no answering call. His voice stuck in his throat. He raised his arm, and the shadow before him sent a long blue pointer over the grass. Dinah made an answering gesture. Because he could not stand dumbly and smile until she came up with him, he lit a cigarette, making a long business of it, his hands cupped over his face. He could hear her footsteps on the frozen hill, and his own heart thumped with them. When he looked up she was beside him.
    “Good-morning,” said Henry.
    “I’ve no breath left,” said Dinah; “but good-morning to you, Henry. Your cigarette smells like heaven.”
    He gave her one.
    “It’s grand up here,” said Dinah. “I’m glad I came. You wouldn’t believe you could be hot, would you? But I am. My hands and face are icy and the rest of me’s like a hot-cross bun.”
    “I’m glad you came, too,” said Henry. There was a short silence. Henry set the Jernigham jaw, fixed his gaze on Miss Campanula’s chimneys, and said, “Do you feel at all shy?”
    “Yes,” said Dinah. “If I start talking I shall go on and on talking, rather badly. That’s a sure sign I’m shy.”
    “It takes me differently. I can hardly speak. I expect