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both.’
    ‘Poor Dizzy!’ said Morgana.
    ‘Poor old Barrymore!’ said Dr. Muriel.
    ‘Poor Precious,’ said Emily.
    ‘I feel very ashamed that I didn’t realise Dizzy had acting aspirations,’ said Victoria. ‘You know he’s the one who chased down Seema and held onto her until the police arrived? He’d do anything for this place – he doesn’t always do it very well, of course. But he does it with a true heart and a great deal of enthusiasm. I’ve put in a good word at our old drama school. He’s auditioning for a summer school for mature students. David Devereux is going to coach him for his audition speech before he gets on the plane to Hollywood.’
    ‘Why did David try to enrol his daughter at Showstoppers if he knew he might be going to LA?’ asked Emily.
    Victoria laughed, slightly bitterly. ‘If every actor who had ever got the call from Hollywood – or been told they were down to the last two for a part in a movie or a starring role in the theatre – if every one of those actors just put their life on hold and waited to hear if it would happen, then they’d never get married; their children would never get an education; their bills would never get paid. You have to assume it will never happen and go about your business accordingly and get your car taxed and pay your TV licence and enrol your children for music lessons and stage school and state school. If it happens, as least you can cancel. If it doesn’t, well… at least you’re covered for the basics, and you can work towards the next audition and hope it will happen for you next time.’
    ‘Victoria’s still up for Desdemona in Branagh’s Othello ,’ said Morgana.
    ‘Technically,’ said Victoria. ‘Though that was nearly twenty years ago, and the film has been made and shown in cinemas and is now available on DVD. I think if they cast me in that part now I’d be inclined to sit up in bed and punch his lights out if Othello tried to stifle me.’
    ‘Punch whose lights out?’ asked Emily, impressed. ‘Othello’s or Kenneth Branagh’s?’
    ‘Emily and I have tried to piece together Seema’s movements,’ said Dr. Muriel, making an effort to get the conversation back to the events of that afternoon. ‘The memory of a glimpse of her white trousers every now and then has worked like a very low-tech tracking device.’ She chortled at the idea of it. ‘She disappeared just before your Wizard of Oz number – we think she was under the stage with a screwdriver – and reappeared again to watch the results of her handiwork.’
    ‘I wonder if Seema thought it would kill me,’ said Victoria. ‘Or if she just wanted to give me a shock.’
    They heard the sound of the key in the lock, then Piers’ voice calling out as he came through the door after a day at work. ‘Victoria?’
    They heard Piers hang up his coat, find a place for his laptop computer, wash his hands in the sink in the downstairs bathroom.
    Morgana said to Victoria, ‘With your last-minute change of plan, all those children in tap shoes with metal plates on the bottom for the finale, in a big snaky line, joined together with damp hands and sweaty feet…’ She shuddered. ‘What might have happened just doesn’t bear thinking about.’
    Victoria called out to her husband, ‘In here, darling!’
    ‘Thank God you’re home,’ he said as he walked into the kitchen. ‘You won’t believe the day I’ve had.’
     
    0o0o0

Invitation to Die Excerpt
    Cerys Pugh was getting her roots done at home in Cardiff, south Wales, in the United Kingdom. She was fortunate enough to know a hairdresser who would come to her house with all the equipment necessary, and charge a very reasonable price. Cerys was a writer and she worked hard at her job, and she liked to spend as little time as possible on distractions during the day. Even while Pam, the hairdresser, was attending to the dark pathways of Cerys’s elegant silver-blonde bob, Cerys had her fancy phone in her hand,