Free The Journeying Boy by Michael Innes

to see how it was with the seats where the thing had happened. The row immediately in front was full. But the dead man’s seat was, of course, still empty, and so was one seat on his right and three on his left. So I ordered the whole five to be roped off and guarded. Then your men arrived and my responsibility ended. Lights go up again in five minutes. Of course, if you want the theatre cleared and closed, I will have it done. Only you might put me through to your Assistant Commissioner first. I have to consider my directors, you know.’
    Cadover made no reply. He turned to the sergeant. ‘Well?’
    ‘We arrived while they were still showing the short that follows Plutonium Blonde . There seemed no point in sealing the place. People had been pouring out and in during the previous interval – the one during which the discovery of the body was made. But, of course, there was the question of people nearby when the thing occurred who might still be in the theatre. There was that, and there was what the usherettes might know, and there was clearing a space round the spot where the thing had happened, and searching it in the interval after the short. Inspector Morton is on that now, sir, with half a dozen men from the district. But I understand they’ve come on nothing yet. The crime appears to have passed unnoticed.’
    ‘Unnoticed? But this man was shot. You can’t shoot a man in a public place without–’
    The remainder of Cadover’s sentence was drowned in a sudden crashing explosion which made Dürer’s engraving rattle on the wall. The manager sighed resignedly. ‘Disgraceful,’ he murmured. ‘Do you know that between the auditorium and this room there are two supposedly soundproof walls? We shall have people calling quacks from Harley Street to swear that they’ve been deafened, and we shall have to pay thousands of pounds. And, of course, it’s indecent too. Much more indecent than rows of ghastly little trollops waggling their photogenic haunches. The Lord Chamberlain should intervene. When I was a young man I had idealism, Inspector, I assure you. I saw Film as a great new aesthetic form. Those were the days of the early Clairs, and of Potemkin and Storm over Asia . And to think that it should all come to this…! Would you care for a cigar?’
    The slinky young man, looking awed, produced a box of Coronas from a drawer. Cadover petrified him with a scowl. ‘Was that meant to be an exploding bomb?’ he asked.
    The manager nodded. ‘An atomic one. The biggest noise in the entire noisesome history of the screen. Sound’s greatest triumph. The explosion kills seventy-five thousand supers hired at five dollars a head. It also blows the clothes off a gaggle of girls in a cabaret. It’s all very disheartening to people like ourselves. To say nothing of being an invitation to murder. For plainly the shot was fired just as the sound-track triumphantly broke the record. Ingenious, come to think of it. The poor fellow must have been lured in expressly to be shot under cover of that hideous row. And then he was robbed.’
    ‘Robbed?’ Cadover turned sharply on the sergeant.
    ‘I don’t think it should be called that, sir. Everything – or nearly everything – was certainly lifted from the body. But there was more to it than that. Bits of the clothing were cut away.’
    ‘Bits of the clothing.’
    ‘Yes, sir. You know there are three places where a good tailor usually sews in a tab with a name – an inner jacket pocket, a waistcoat pocket, and the inside of the trouser-tops at the back. Well, all these places have been cut out.’
    There was a silence while Cadover verified this. ‘I can understand the shooting,’ he said. ‘With a smokeless powder, and when the audience was stunned and distracted by that uproar, the thing would be possible enough. But that anyone should then be able to tumble the body about–’
    The slinky young man giggled. ‘It was in the back row, Inspector, and you must