Death and the Chaste Apprentice by Robert Barnard Page A

Mallory. “Win’s announcement was a real Act One curtain, I can tell you.”
    â€œDarling, don’t tor ment me! I would so have enjoyed it. Because the fact that he’s been murdered—I take it, with all those police, murder is in question?—”
    â€œApparently,” said Jason.
    â€œâ€”the fact that he’s been murdered does seem a singularly apt retribution for his grubby little interference into my private life.”
    â€œDon’t say that to the police,” said Carston, sighing. “They might scent a whiff of megalomania. Or paranoia. It takes an odd kind of mind to find death an appropriate punishment for rummaging around in someone’s drawers.”
    â€œCarston, of course I am not so stupid as to talk like that to the dear policemen. Naturally I shall tell them what an in teresting little man he was, with his homely medical advice and his en tranc ing accent and his fas cinating memories of the last days of the Raj. I shall say that in the short time we have been here I had come to number him amongst my dear est friends.”
    â€œDon’t overdo it the other way either, Clarissa,” said Jason in a tired voice. “The police are trained to smell rats.” He added, rather insultingly: “And the last thing I need at this stage is to lose one of my leads.”
    â€œFortunately I’ve always found the police to be charming and most respectful,” said Clarissa, hardly hearing. “I’ve always got on famously with them.”
    â€œDon’t I remember,” said Carston.
    â€œThis is all getting way off the point,” said Gillian. “When you came, we were trying to establish when he’d been murdered. We rather think it must have been before Interval.”
    â€œBefore about eight-thirty, then?” asked Carston.
    â€œThat’s it. Or a few minutes after. We were running ever so slightly late.”
    â€œAnd it must have been after—oh—seven-ten, seven-fifteen,” contributed Carston.
    â€œOh?”
    â€œBecause he was standing at the back during the first scene and into my bit in the second scene. I’ve got good long sight, and there’s a moment when I peer into the audience, trying to see Sir Pecunius arriving from the Palace of Westminster. I saw him at the back then, and I saw him leave, which almost put me off my stride. So it was after that.”
    â€œBrilliant!” said Ronnie, rubbing his hands. “So we have a terminus post quem and a terminus ante quem. And they let all the actors out entirely. Because we’d have had to go through the kitchens, which had a card game going on in them, then through the dining room, which had most of the staff there, judging from their faces at the windows, then through the Shakespeare into the foyer. No way anyone could do that and then murder Des without being seen. Anyway, we were all behind the stage when we were not on it.”
    His words fell on an embarrassed silence. Gillian looked down at her hands and then dared to look up at PeterFortnum. She found that Jason and Connie were looking at him too, and Natalya was looking at them and frowning in puzzlement.
    â€œWell, not quite all the time,” said Peter, brazening it out.
    â€œCome along, let’s go to bed,” said Connie briskly. “They’re going to want to question us in the morning. Let’s leave the question of my gin till then. We’ll go to bed and think things through.”
    And that was exactly what they did. Some of them had a great many things to think through.
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    While the actors and musicians had been chewing over things in the alcove, Superintendent Dundy had been sweating his way through some preliminary questioning of Mrs. Capper in the little manager’s office behind the reception desk.
    No, Mrs. Capper had said, she didn’t mind talking. Would rather, really. Would rather go to bed knowing