Free Set the Stage for Murder by Brent Peterson

depicted St. Agnes just before she was beheaded. In the background stood Procop, the wealthy governor’s son who had so desired Agnes and whose lustful attention had brought her to this tragic end. Either through some trick of the sunlight or the glass artist’s skill, his eyes seemed to shine brighter than any other part of the panel as he watched his evil triumph over her goodness. Dear God , she prayed, protect Julie from all the evil that surrounds her .

 
    Chapter 7
     
    As the Wednesday matinee crowd of blue-haired ladies sat in darkened Broadway theaters noisily unwrapping unnecessary small candies much to some irate actor’s dismay, Sir Anthony Dupree sat in a hole-in-the-wall bar on a not yet trendy block of Tenth Avenue wrapping up a very necessary whiskey and soda. It was, in fact, his second necessary whiskey and soda, not that anyone was counting. Which was exactly why he had picked this bar on this block. It wouldn’t do for someone Tony knew to see him getting royally pissed at 2:15 in the afternoon. He bloody well didn’t need to be the subject of another blind item in some snide gossip column. No, what he bloody well needed was a third whiskey and soda.
    The bartender’s eyes never left the television set mounted in the corner of room as he took the glass, refilled it, and placed it back in front of Tony. Yes, this was definitely the right establishment. What had he been thinking the other night? Why had he allowed Rosamund to get him into such trouble? Overture was such a damned public spot. He knew better, really he did. It was just that she was still so beautiful and young and, damnit, she still knew how to push his buttons. Of course being apart from her for several years had helped matters along. Apparently absence does make the heart grow fonder. He was again in the first-blush phase with Rosamund, forgetting the hair-pulling, vase-throwing reality that made up the largest part of their relationship.
    It had started just a couple of weeks ago with those bloody e-mails, really. She got his address from Juliet and wrote to him with the intent of “making nice before they started working together again,” and suddenly he was behaving like a schoolboy, checking the computer several times a day, reading her messages, and quickly deleting them before Cary could discover the correspondence. It was exhilarating, and it made him feel vital. By the time he had arrived back in New York, he was like a randy dog straining at the leash. He saw Rosamund Saturday night after her show and the rest of the story had appeared on Page Six of the newspaper in not-so-coded language:
    “ Royal Ruckus : Which Knight of the British Empire was making Overtures to the Queen of Broadway, when his current Great Dame walked in (complete with ladies-in-waiting) and caught them? ”
    One would have to be a bloody idiot not to figure it out. Cary was furious. She might put up with his occasional dalliance but not if it made it to the papers and certainly not if it were with his ex-wife, Rosamund
Whiting. She was also livid that the item had referred to Walter Boscobel and Kirby Felder as “ladies-in-waiting.” Tony had found that particular reference the only entertaining part of the whole thing. Still, it wasn’t worth the fight he and Cary had that night. The two of them were certainly no strangers to arguing. In fact, it was something of a sport with them, and they did it well. And as luck would have it, fighting turned out to be an aphrodisiac for the Duprees, a fact the couple had discovered early in their acquaintance. Tony had first met Caroline Evans fifteen years ago when he was cast opposite her in Macbeth at the Royal Shakespeare Company. During rehearsals, a terrific quarrel had led to the two of them furiously coupling in her dressing room just moments later. To say he found her physically repulsive would be exaggerating only ever so slightly. She had made a career on the British stage playing stern, dour women