Free Ha'penny by Jo Walton Page A

cuttings, some faded and others quite new.
    “Some of these go right back to the twenties,” Royston said, examining one of the posters.
    “Even before that, sergeant,” Carmichael said, looking at a cutting. “This review of Mary Rose is dated 1917. She was a great hit in it, apparently.”
    “Strange, in a way, isn’t it, sir?”
    “What’s strange?” Carmichael turned to look at Royston, who was examining a photograph of a young Lauria Gilmore as Desdemona, looking as if she was about to dance the Charleston, complete with feathers and shingled hair.
    “There’s nothing more dead than an old play.” Royston gestured to the picture. “There must be people alive who saw that thing, and other people who acted in it, and at the time it must have seemed exciting and important, maybe people queued for seats, but now it looks silly and dated and it’s gone completely leaving nothing behind, except for what people remember. Strange, and a bit sad, when you come to think of it.”
    Carmichael sighed. “That isn’t getting us anywhere, sergeant. Let’s search the desk.”
    “Yes, sir,” Royston said, immediately, but before he moved to the desk he straightened the Desdemona picture.
    Carmichael hit pay dirt almost at once. Under a note from someone signing himself Antony inviting her to lunch at the Venezia in Covent Garden on the previous Friday, he found a small floral appointment diary. He turned to June and found each page bordered in climbing roses.
    Her handwriting was small and precise, not at all like the extravagant signature on the photograph Inspector Jacobson had given him. Carmichael read it aloud to Royston. “Friday June sixteenth, AB, Venezia 1 P.M . Dinner, 7 P.M . Dinner is underlined. Saturday June seventeenth, PM 10 A.M ., GM 8 P.M .”
    “PM,” Royston repeated. “Someone must have reported a PM as missing.”
    Carmichael flipped through the book. He looked ahead first, at the appointments she had made and would not keep. The rehearsals and first night of Hamlet were marked off decisively, on pages bordered with sunflowers. The first night, Friday, July 1, was underlined twice, as was the time, 8:30 P.M . Apart from that she had one more meeting with PM, on June 30, again at 10 A.M ., the day of the final dress rehearsal. There were other dinner appointments, and a few lunch appointments, decisively crossed out. The Hamlet dates, the crossings out, the emphatic dinner, and the PM appointment were in blue ink. The others were in black.
    Looking backwards, he saw evidence of a busy social life, with many friends, all initialized. PM cropped up irregularly, generally for lunch or dinner. Carmichael flipped back further. May was daisies, and April daffodils. The only appointments she had other than for lunch and dinner were theatrical. This early morning appointment had been unusual. He read back. February was snowdrops and January winter jasmine. The ink colors changed regularly, between blue and black. It probably didn’t mean much. He turned back to June. “Lunch AB” was in black. He picked up the letter from Antony and noted the address. He would have to find out who this Antony B. was, as well as PM. Judging by the infrequent appearances of “MK,” Kinnerson had probably been telling the truth about how often he saw his mother.
    “Bingo,” Royston said suddenly. Carmichael looked up. Royston had been going through the other things on the desk. “Address book.” The cover showed a languishing Pre-Raphaelite maiden with too much hair. Royston flicked through it. “Sadie Moorhead, Peter Marshall, Mary Marsden, Daniel Miniver, Pat McKnight, Frank Moston, C. Mitchell, Margaret MacDonald.”
    “Pat McKnight or Peter Marshall,” Carmichael said. “Good work, sergeant.”
    “Unless one of the others is nicknamed P,” Royston warned. “Margaret MacDonald could be Peggy.”
    “Even so, it’ll be much faster to contact them all than to check every missing person in the country,”