“Edmund seems a bit sniffly this morning,” said Laura. “He may have picked up one of these summer colds.”
“Cook says stuff a cold and starve a fever,” said Rosamund.
“She is full of these old saws. An old saw,” added Laura quickly, “is a saying handed down from generation to generation and probably quite as sensible as anything the doctors tell you.”
“Will Edmund have the doctor?”
“I don’t know until I’ve taken his temperature.”
“I think Cook and Carrie always have colds.”
“Oh? What makes you think so?”
“They are always eating. Mummy says they eat twice as much as the rest of us put together.”
“Compensatory, perhaps. That means it may be their way of expressing dissatisfaction with something else in their lives.”
“Mr Rinkley was eating some nasty things out of a jar. They had kind of orange-coloured bits on them.”
“When was this?”
“At the play. Auntie Deb had dressed Edmund and me and Ganymede and Lucien in our fairy clothes, so while she went into the bedroom to get herself and Uncle Jon ready, I thought I would go into the hall and see whether Signora had got Peasblossom ready, because that was going to be my part until I was given a much better one. I thought I would tell her she might get a bouquet if she did nicely the third time.”
“You think of everything.”
“Yes, you have to, with Edmund, because he is so naughty. Are boys always naughtier than girls?”
“I think they have to be. The onus is on them in so many ways, biologically and otherwise.”
“What’s an onus?”
“According to the dictionary, it’s a duty, a responsibility.”
“Is this year a leap year?”
“Why?”
“Cook says if every year was a leap year there would be a lot more happy marriages and not so many divorces.”
“She may have got something there.”
“Why?”
“Because in leap year women do the proposing.”
“I am going to marry Peter when I grow up. Peter said to Mr Rinkley was he really going to eat that muck just before the show and Mr Rinkley said the orange-looking things had a lot of eye-deen in them. Mummy put eyedeen on a nasty deep cut Daddy made on his hand with a chisel and Daddy danced about and swore.”
“Iodine. Yes, I daresay he did. Did Mr Rinkley eat the whole of the contents of the jar?”
“Oh, yes, with a long pickle-fork Cook lent him. I watched him, but he didn’t see me. He ate the whole jar.”
“No wonder he made himself sick.”
“Ganymede showed me how to make myself sick with two fingers down my throat, but it looked horrid, so I didn’t try it.”
“Did Ganymede try it?”
“Oh, yes, he had to when he showed me, but Auntie Deb didn’t know, because it was right at the end of the garden, so nobody saw Ganymede being sick. He said if you were poisoned it was a good thing to know. Ganymede is going to be a doctor when he grows up, like his mummy and daddy.”
“So, for what it’s worth, if anything,” said Laura to Dame Beatrice over the telephone that evening, “it looks as though Rinkley provided the mussels himself and ate them at an unusual time. Edmund? Oh, he’s all right, lively as a cricket tonight. No, no temperature. Not to worry. Rosamund has been prancing about in a white frock, on to which I sewed a red cross, and I made her a nurse’s cap out of one of Gavin’s handkerchiefs. Yes, he’s been here and is most interested in the murder. No, he doesn’t call it that, but he says it might be as well to get you to look into it and he has got in touch with the Chief Constable down there and suggested that they get you involved.”
“I am involved already. A number of Mr Yorke’s actors—perhaps I should say actresses, since all but one are women—have asked for interviews. The rumours and the newspaper reports are making Mr Bourton’s death into a local cause célèbre and murder with malice aforethought is a theme on everybody’s tongue.”
“Shall you see them?”
“Oh, yes. Mr Lynn wanted to employ me, so I refused the commission, but there is no reason why I should not amuse myself.”
Chapter 12
Six Characters in Search of a Psychiatrist
“Helen, to you our minds we will unfold.”
« ^ »
The first visitor Dame Beatrice received was Barbara Bourton. Her big show, she said, opened in the autumn. Meanwhile there was all this wretched business about Donald.
“I am mobbed, Dame Beatrice, positively mobbed. One might as well be Royalty or the Pope. Everybody wants my opinion as to what happened. As though I should know any more than anybody else! Usually I court publicity because of my art, but this is more like persecution than publicity.”
“Could you leave the neighbourhood for a few weeks? This kind of excitement soon dies down when there is nothing for it to feed on.”
“There are reasons why I can’t go into hiding. There has been a great deal of speculation about my married life and I don’t want to look as though I’m running away from gossipping tongues. Then there is the adjourned inquest. Goodness knows when the police will want to resume it and goodness knows why they wanted it adjourned, but I suppose they know their own business. When it is resumed I suppose I shall be wanted. Another thing is that there is a lot of business to be cleared up in connection with Donald’s turf interests and, of course, his will has to be proved and probate granted.”
“I am interested to hear that you saw no need for the inquest to be adjourned.”
“I was amazed when the police stepped in like that. I am sure the coroner was only too ready to give a verdict of accidental death, because that is all it was.”
“How, then, do you account for the changeover of the daggers?”
“Donald was hasty and careless. It seems to me obvious what happened. The theatrical dagger fell out of the belt when the props were dumped on the trestle tables before the show started and it got kicked under the table when people came milling around to pick up their bits for that last scene. When Donald had to change out of Oberon’s things and get into the white tunic and armour as Pyramus, I suppose he realised there was no dagger in the belt. He saw this extra one on the table and concluded it was the retractable dagger. It wouldn’t occur to him to test it, of course. He always did take things for granted.”
“But there is no evidence that this extra dagger was among the properties. Mr Lynn has declared that it formed no part of his collection.”
“Oh, of course Marcus Lynn will say that now, but at the dress rehearsal he had a whole armoury on show. Why shouldn’t one or two of the things have been gathered up with the rest of the props?”
“Mr Yorke helped to carry the things down from the house to the wings, you know. Would not he or Marcus Lynn have noticed an extra dagger?”
“Oh, Brian Yorke would back up anything Marcus said. He was in the seventh heaven over the money Marcus spilt out on the production, although the play was only meant as a vehicle for poor Emma, the very last woman to want to be in the public eye.”
“Did you feel surprise at being offered the less attractive part of Helena?”
“Oh, that soon put itself right, anyway. No, I didn’t mind accepting Helena. When Marcus first offered it I said that, as a professional, I would have to be paid. He told me to name my own price, which I did, never thinking he would meet it, but he agreed without a quiver. I’d have done him Puss in Boots or the Hunchback of Notre Dame for even half the money, if he’d asked me.”
“I wonder he took the risk of offering you a part which was bound to put his wife in the shade.”
“Oh, I expect he has the most inflated ideas of poor Emma’s capabilities. Dame Beatrice, we are only skating round the reason I asked to come and see you.”