Free Murder in the Limelight by Amy Myers Page B

thought. He would never forget. How cruel women were.
    Edward Hargreaves was too preoccupied with his presentfalling out with Percy to cast his mind back to Christine Walters. He took little notice of the show and chorus girls, except when they got in his way. They were a series of numbers, in his mind, to be arranged, rearranged, reprimanded, moved about to complement the perfection of his music. Music was the only reality, the only integrity. You could trust nothing else. No one else. He stole a glance at Percy, whom he had thought he knew through and through. But Percy had not come home last night. The fear went through his mind that he might have gone back to his old life, picked up someone . . .
    ‘The police will be calling. Coming to talk to you all – just about Miss Walters, movements again and so forth,’ Archibald added hastily. ‘And in the case of the gentlemen’ – he looked uncomfortable – ‘about their own movements. Just routine.’ He stared at his staff unhappily, little knowing what effect his words had on his audience.
    Florence was looking at Thomas and wondering; Herbert blenched at the thought of having to think about Christine Walters, particularly after last night; Percy studiously avoided Edward’s eye, and Thomas looked straight ahead.
    It was left to Edward, as Archibald seemed inclined to dismiss them, to raise that other important matter: ‘Ah, Mr Archibald, the song. Um – tonight—’
    ‘The song. Ah, yes.’ The carefully rehearsed sentences and subtle approaches he had planned on the way to the theatre seemed to have deserted him. But inspiration took over.
    ‘I’ve decided,’ he said (two seconds before if truth be told), ‘I think it would be effective if verse one were slow, as Miss Lytton desires. Then we speed up a little, and for the last verse, as Mr Sykes joins in, we are at Mr Hargreaves’s tempo.’ There was a note of finality in his voice as he beamed at them. There was nothing like compromise. And after all, the Galaxy had always been a unified happy theatre. The unpalatable thought that this might well be athing of the past briefly crossed his mind – and was firmly dismissed.
    ‘Ah, Monsieur Sykes,
bonjour
.’
    Herbert watched Auguste in the midst of puréeing peaches for a
vol au vent à la pêche
. Herbert liked his food.
    Auguste had always had a soft spot for the comedian who made no close friends, though the girls treated him like a cross between an elderly uncle and a eunuch in a harem, with his inoffensive soft ways. But even Auguste did not quite understand what went on behind those mild eyes. He had the impression sometimes that Herbert was using his wit as a defence against something quite different. ‘You look like a souffle that has failed to rise,
mon brave.
What has happened?’
    ‘Murder has happened, Mr Didier, murder.’
    ‘Murder.’ Auguste blinked. ‘
Ma foi
. Over a song?’
    Herbert giggled. ‘No, Mr Didier. But that poor chorus girl, the one that disappeared, seems she disappeared right into the Thames. Strangled,’ he said, almost with relish, picking up the strainer and neglected masher from where Auguste in his horror had let them fall. ‘Here, let me do some. I’ve always enjoyed a bit of kitchen work.’ After a moment, ‘Strangled,’ he repeated, his large, strong hands grinding down the fruit. ‘Not pretty, but quick. Like your mixing machine, eh? And there’s something funny about it, too. Mr Archibald says it’s to do with the theatre, but wouldn’t explain why. Myself, I think it has something to do with those dolls. That was nasty, don’t you think? Poor Miss Lytton,’ he added rather belatedly.
    Auguste looked at him sharply. Something strange there. Herbert’s head was cocked to one side, a gleam in his eye – an expression, Auguste suddenly recollected, he put on on stage when he had, as he put it, done something ‘a little naughty’.
    So Maisie was right, and murder had entered the life ofAuguste