Free Mrs. Jeffries Takes the Stage by Emily Brightwell Page A

performances?” the inspector asked. “I mean, had he ever reviewed you in another play?” He’d no idea why he was asking the question, but it seemed to him that perhaps the victim’s being a critic might have been important to his murder.
    Remington lifted his chin. “I am rather well known, Inspector,” he said stiffly. “Hinchley had reviewed me a number of times.”
    “Good reviews, sir?” Barnes asked.
    Remington lifted his chin a notch higher. “Some were quite good, others weren’t. He was a failed actor himself, you know. When he couldn’t make it on the boards, he turned to writing reviews. And not writing them very well, I might add. Just read a few of his reviews and you’ll see why there won’t be many tears at his funeral.”
    “So you didn’t know he was out in front until after the play was over,” Witherspoon mused. He tried to remember exactly what it was that Swinton had told him. Surely the man had said that Remington and Parks had peeked out the curtain before the play. “What time did Mr. Parks tell you about seeing Mr. Hinchley in the audience?”
    “It was quite late,” Remington said. “Around eleven, I think, right before I left the theatre.”
    “Did you go straight home?” Barnes asked. They might as well start checking alibis.
    “As a matter of fact, I did. Opening nights are always exhausting.”
    “Where do you live, sir?” Barnes continued.
    “I’ve taken rooms in Sidwell Lane. I went straight there right after I left here.”
    “Did anyone see you?” Barnes persisted.
    “No, I live alone.”
    “What about your servants?” Witherspoon asked.
    Remington sighed loudly. “Really, Inspector, this is most tiresome. I don’t have a house full of servants and if I did, I wouldn’t keep them up that late to wait on me. My landlady doesn’t keep late hours so she was already asleep when I got home. I saw no one and no one saw me.”
    “If the landlady was asleep,” Barnes asked, “how did you get in?”
    “She rents rooms to many in my profession. She gave me a key.” He got up and began to pace the room. “This is most intolerable. I didn’t even know Hinchley was back from America until late Saturday night and now I’m being questioned in the man’s murder. It’s absurd. Why would I want to kill him?”
    “No one’s accusing you of anything,” Witherspoon said soothingly. “We’re merely trying to eliminate as many people as possible. By the way, are you absolutely certain you didn’t know that Hinchley was in the audience until Mr. Parks mentioned it?” He didn’t know why that point seemed important, but it did.
    “Of course I’m sure. Why do you ask?”
    “Because you were seen looking out at the audience before the play began,” Witherspoon said. “And I wondered if perhaps you’d spotted Hinchley. He was right in the third row center. I believe he would have been difficult to miss.”
    “I didn’t see him,” Remington snapped. “I may have glanced out but I didn’t see Ogden Hinchley.”
    Witherspoon decided to try a different tactic. “Did Hinchley have any enemies that you know about?”
    “He had dozens of them,” Remington cried. “Virtually every actor in England hated him, and I dare say, by now most of the ones in New York loathed him as well. But egads, Inspector, if actors murdered every critic that had ever given them a bad review, there wouldn’t be any left on either side of the ocean.”

    Smythe leaned against the doorjamb and watched Betsy put the teapot back in its proper place on the sideboard. She moved with the grace of a dancer and he sighed inwardly, wondering if he’d ever have the nerve to tell her his true feelings.
    She turned and gasped, startled by his presence. “I wish you’d stop doing that,” she snapped.
    “Doin’ what?” he asked innocently, knowing he shouldn’t irritate her now that he was wanting to make peace. “I was just standin’ ’ere.”
    “You come sneakin’ up on a body