Free Death Of A Hollow Man by Caroline Graham

distracted by something being shifted around in the adjacent scene dock. “Ah,” he murmured, “seems we’re not the only ones here early.”
    “I’d like to have it cut”—Kitty reskewered the pins forcefully—“but Esslyn’d go mad. He doesn’t think a woman’s truly feminine unless she’s got long hair.”
    “I wonder who it is.”
    “Who what is?”
    “In the workshop.”
    “Colin, I suppose. He was moaning the other night about how much he had to do.”
    “Par for the course.”
    “Mmm. Nico …” Kitty put down her brush and turned to face him. “You won’t… well … go to pieces on the first night, will you, darling? I should be absolutely frantic.”
    “Of course I won’t,” Nicholas cried indignantly. This insult managed to damp his ardor in a way that all the earlier rationalizations had failed to do. Silly cow. “You should know me better than that.”
    “Only you’ve so many lines—”
    “No more than in Night Must Fall.”
    “—and Esslyn said … with your experience … you’d probably just dry up and leave me stranded. …”
    “Esslyn can get stuffed.”
    “Oohh!” Neat foxiness beamed. Then she cocked her head on one side conspiratorially. “Don’t worry. I shan’t pass it on.”
    “You can pass it on as much as you like, as far as I’m concerned.”
    Nicholas went out slamming the door. Patronizing bastard. “It won’t be me who goes to pieces on the first night, mate,” he muttered. In the men’s dressing room he slung his coat and sword, glanced at his watch, and discovered that, incredibly, barely twenty minutes had passed since he had entered the theater. He decided to pop along and have a look at the scene dock.
    A man was there putting the finishing touches to a small gilt chair. He stood back as Nicholas entered, studying the tight hoop of the chairback, his brush dripping glittering gold tears onto an already multicolored floor. It was not the man Nicholas expected to see, but he experienced an immediate warmth, almost a feeling of kinship, toward the figure who was regarding his handiwork so seriously. Anyone who could make a cuckold out of Carmichael, thought Nicholas, was a man after his own heart.
    “Hullo,” he said. “The boss not in yet?”
    David Smy turned, his handsome, bovine face breaking into a slow smile. “No, just me. And you, of course. Oh”—his brush described a wide arc, and Nicholas, not wishing to be gilded, jumped briskly aside—“and the furniture.”
    “R-i-g-h-t.” Nicholas nodded. “Got it.” Then he performed the classic roguish gesture seen frequently in bad costume dramas but rarely in real life. He laid his finger to the side of his nose, tapped it, and winked. “Just you and me and the furniture it is then, Dave,” he replied, and went back to the stage for some more practice.
    After fifteen minutes or so sitting down at and getting up from the piano and striding about getting used to his sword, Nicholas went up to the clubroom to see who else had arrived. Tim and Avery sat at a table, their heads close. They stopped talking the moment Nicholas entered, and Tim smiled. “Don’t worry,” he said. “We weren’t talking about you.”
    “I didn’t expect you were.”
    “Didn’t you really?” asked Avery, who always thought that everyone was talking about him the second his back was turned, and never very kindly. “I would have.”
    “Oh, not your childhood insecurities, Avery,” said Tim. “Not on an empty stomach.”
    “And whose fault’s that? If you hadn’t been so long at the post office—”
    “Nico …” Tim indicated a slender bottle on the table. “Some De Bortoli?”
    “Afterwards, thanks.”
    “There won’t be any afterwards, dear boy.”
    “What were you whispering about, anyway?”
    “We were having a row,” said Avery.
    “In whispers?”
    “One has one’s pride.”
    “More of a discussion,” said Tim. “I’m sorry I can’t tell you what it’s about.”
    “We’re