“Amazing, ain’t it?” Les seemed admiring of this ghastly performance. “You’d never think they loathed each other – and that they hate old Greta even more.”
“I thought you said they were her lovers.”
“She blackmailed them into starting this game by saying she’d tell their wives. She’s a sexy old thing is Greta, and her husband’s useless. Now she won’t let them leave.”
“They’ve got minds of their own, haven’t they?”
“If they had once, Greta brainwashed them with dreams of fame and fortune in Hollywood, and by pointing out how upset their wives would be to miss out on the Oscars and the Tony. And how much their wives wouldn’t like to hear their housekeeping cash comes from other women screaming at their husbands’ pride and joys. Someone will do the old bag in one day,” he added casually.
“Murder? You’re not serious, Les?”
A harsh jangle rang out from the piano, as Greta’s fingers slipped from the keys, her face convulsed. Her body first slumped, then took the stool with it as it crashed to the floor.
It was his knowledge of first aid that sent Nick unwillingly to the Greta’s side. It was one thing to fantasize on poisoned darts, quite another to face a possibly dead body. Her husband was hobbling around in shock waving his stick at all and sundry, but that was a fat lot of use.
First aid looked redundant, and if Nick’s suspicions about its being some sort of cyanide poisoning were right, he had to act quickly. She might not be dead, and if she were, there might be evidence lying around. Poisoned darts? Standing tall to every one of his 5 foot 4 inches, he croaked to the club owner: “Call the police as well as the ambulance, and keep the audience here. No one should touch anything. Not even-” he yelled, seeing Paul halfway into his thong, “that”.
“Listen, mate,” Paul said viciously, “I ain’t proposing to stand here like a limp chili pod waiting for the fuzz just because old Greta’s had a drop too much.’
Nick summoned up his courage. “She may have been murdered.”
That stopped all three Berties, thongs or no thongs, and a red-faced Tony Hobbs came charging onto the stage, yelling, “It was one of you, wasn’t it? You bastards, you murdered my wife. Which one of you did it?”
“I said may,” Nick shouted. “But I can’t see how. It would have been impossible, except by a poisoned dart – unless -”
“Impossible’s enough for me,” Paul interrupted. “I’m putting my thong on. Want to make anything of it, nipper?”
Nick didn’t, and the other two Berties quickly followed Paul’s lead.
“Aren’t we the little hero, then?” Les was torn between his usual sneer and reluctant admiration. “The club won’t be offering you any medals for inviting the fuzz, though, they come all too often without asking.”
“Tough.” Nick still felt shaky at his own daring.
The ambulance arrived at the same time as the patrol car, and it became clear that Nick’s diagnosis of unnatural death might be correct.
“How do you know so much about it, anyway?” Les averted his eyes from his cousin’s corpse, lying by the piano by itself, awaiting the arrival of higher police authority. It looked lonely, and Nick felt protective of the late Greta Hobbs.
“She smelt like your Turkish Salsa gone wrong, that’s why. And she’d blue lips and thrown up.” It didn’t seem right talking about it.
“Maybe that was the chicken,” Les said uneasily. He’d sent some food to the group before the show began.
Sherlock Holmes used to be treated with more respect, Nick reflected bitterly, as he retired to a corner with Les. He was an aficionado of crime fiction from Poe through Conan Doyle, Dorothy Sayers, Christie, right up to Peter and Phil Lovesey, Chaz Brenchley and anything he could lay his hands on. He was addicted, whether it be hard-boiled realism or soft-boiled cosy, and irrespective of whether great-grandad used to dabble with a magnifying glass in deepest Muckshire. Tonight Nick’s nose had twitched just as it had in protest at Les putting dried parsley in the prawns. Something hadn’t been right.
When higher police authority arrived, Nick had visions of Jack Frost clapping him on the back, or Inspector Morse reluctantly congratulating him. Unfortunately Detective Superintendent Bishop wasn’t like either of them. His amiable smile gave him the look of everybody’s ideal family doctor. While the police doctor was examining the corpse and most of the audience were filing out under the guidance of a sergeant, he was ambling around the taped-off areas of stage and auditorium like a lazy trout, but Nick couldn’t help noticing his eyes darted everywhere like a particularly hungry piranha fish. They fell on Nick and Les.
“Who might you be? Two more strippers?”
“Catering staff,” Les growled. “We done the supper.”
Nick nudged him, seeing pitfalls ahead, but the piranha spotted him.
“I don’t wonder you’re worried, sir,” he said soothingly to Nick. “We won’t know for sure this is poison till the PM’s done, but you’ll have a few questions to answer if it is. You won’t mind that, I’m sure.”
“I was the one who said you should be called in,” Nick yelped.
Bishop shook his head sadly. “The last fellow who tried that double bluff on me is doing life.”
“If it was cyanide,” Nick said desperately, “it must have been on a poisoned dart unless-” An eyebrow was raised, and he continued hastily, “Our dinner was over by nine o’clock and she didn’t die till ten-twenty.” Too late, he realized poisoned darts were out, for he wouldn’t have smelled almonds then.
“Fancy you knowing what poison it might have been, sir. Washed everything up, have you?”
“Yes,” Les answered bleakly.
“Don’t worry about a thing, sir. We’ll find something,” Bishop assured him cheerily. “If there’s anything to find,” he added as a throwaway.
“Did any of the glasses on the piano smell of almonds?” Nick asked hopefully.
Bishop’s smile became even more genial. “Why? Didn’t drop anything in, did you?”
“No.” It came out as a bleat.
“Just joking, lad. You’ll get used to my merry sense of humour. Why do you think the poison was in a glass?”
“I don’t, because although she had just drunk from one-”
“Who filled it?”
“I don’t know, but she couldn’t have died that way.” Nick could wait no longer to produce his ace. “She’d drunk from it earlier without ill-effect, and the Berties had all drunk from the other three glasses on the piano. Suicide is out because she couldn’t have added anything to the glass between the two toasts. So unless the poison was added intentionally by someone on stage, murder would be impossible.”
A silence, then Bishop said: “Impossible isn’t a word I like.” He beckoned to the three Berties, still sitting miserably on stage in their thongs, resentful of the scene of crime’s photographers’ ill-concealed smirks.
Bishop saw Nick’s struggles to control an insane desire to laugh. “Shock, lad. Seen many corpses, have you?”
“No.”
“I have, and thank God I never get over it. When you do, that’s the time to quit.”
Tony Hobbs was sitting in the first row of seats outside the tape, declaring at intervals that he was used to shock, making it sound as if his wife got murdered every day. He was ashen-faced, though, and in Nick’s opinion looked about to pass out as the Berties joined him.
“Our street clothes are over there,” Hamish told Bishop hopefully, pointing to the “wings” – an all-purpose room at the side of the stage where the lighting and curtain controls were.