Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 150, Nos. 5 & 6. Whole Nos. 914 & 915, November/December 2017
- Автор: Фузилли Джим, Харрис Шарлин
- Год: 2017
- Язык: английский
- Год: Dell Magazines
- ISBN: 0013-6328
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 150, Nos. 5 & 6. Whole Nos. 914 & 915, November/December 2017». Краткое содержание книги:
“Here, I’ve got a lighter,” Howard said. “Jo, do you have a candle handy?”
“I brought a couple upstairs to try in the holders. They’re backstage.”
“Then let me come and light your way.”
Howard came across the stage with his lighter held out in front of him.
They found the candles that she had left on a table and lit both.
“Do you think the lights are out all over the village?” Jo said.
“I’ll go have a look.”
Jo watched him go down the back steps and through the door leading to the rest of the building. She should go check on Mildred down in the basement storage room they had commandeered for props and costumes. But she didn’t want to leave the others in the dark.
She went back out on stage and set her candle down on the middle table.
“The crew should never have left,” Barton said.
“They had families to get home to,” Jo said. “We worked everything out during last Monday’s run-through. We’ll go through it again tomorrow afternoon, with script in hand.”
“Just make sure they know what they’re doing tomorrow evening.”
Jo threw him a snappy salute. “Yes, sir. Understood, sir.”
Charlotte said, “Really, Jo. I’m sure Barton wishes you would take his concerns seriously. You are the stage manager.”
Regretting her salute — Barton had no sense of humor — which might explain the problems with his play — Jo said, “Yes, I am, and I’m sorry, Barton. Everything on the crew’s side will be fine. There’s nothing to worry about.”
She hoped.
Five minutes later, Howard appeared from behind the heavy velvet stage curtains. “Looks like the lights are out all over the village. Or, at least, as far as I could see from upstairs. We may as well settle in for the duration.”
Jo said, “I’m going to go bring Mildred up here with the rest of us. I’ll bring back more candles too.”
Thunder rumbled in the distance. Howard gave a sinister laugh. “Be careful, my sweet. Who knows what lurks in the dark.”
“Stop it, Howard,” Charlotte said. “You’re frightening our little English visitor.”
“Thank you, Charlotte,” Sarah said. “But I can speak for myself, and I’m not a visitor.”
“That depends on whether you decide to stay.”
“I intend to stay. I like it here.”
Jo kept moving, not waiting to hear Charlotte’s response to that.
Of course, Will was not helping matters by acting like a besotted idiot.
Shaking her head, Jo focused her attention on getting down the basement stairs without tripping or dropping her candle. She had forgotten how much melodrama went on in a quiet village.
Jo cupped a hand around her flickering candle. Why hadn’t she thought to bring in some flashlights?
Thunder rumbled again. The storm seemed to be coming back for a second round. It could be hours before the electricity was back on.
Not that this was the first time she’d stumbled around in the dark. At least they didn’t have a couple of dozen wounded soldiers lined up on litters.
Jo pushed open the door to the storage room. “Mildred? Don’t tell me you had candles but no matches.”
“Mildred? Are you back there?”
Avoiding the extra rattan chairs and a pink flamingo, Jo made it to the other side of the room. When she got to the bamboo screen they were going to take upstairs tomorrow evening, she stopped to listen. Mildred’s table fan was off because of the electricity, but there was no other sound in the room.
Lightning flickered in the mirror that the actors used when they were trying on their costumes for Mildred’s fittings. For an instant, Jo saw her own reflection, dark eyes in pale face.
Maybe Mildred had left when she saw how bad the storm was going to be. Hadn’t wanted to interrupt the rehearsal to say she was going.
Jo stepped around the screen. She looked down, uncertain what she was seeing.
Not a bundle of clothing. Mildred sprawled on her back, her plump little feet in their black-laced shoes pointing toes up.
The ice pick that Mildred had found but they’d decided not to place in the hands of the high-school senior who was playing the bartender, and that Mildred had brought back down to the prop room, was now sticking out of Mildred’s chest.
Jo dropped to her knees, putting the candle down beside her. She pushed back the collar of Mildred’s blouse, searching for a pulse. But she had seen death peering up from half-closed eyelids often enough to recognize it.
She stumbled to her feet and held her candle high, glancing around the room.
Howard’s white dinner jacket on a hanger on the clothing rack. A crumpled rag beside Mildred’s sewing machine on the work table. Was that blood on the rag?
An ice pick. Most of the bleeding would have been internal. But the killer might have had a smear of blood on his hands.
Jo swallowed hard, taking deep breaths to slow the pounding of her heart.
When she was back outside in the hallway, she felt in her dress pocket for the set of keys she’d been given. She locked the prop-room door.
The others were first disbelieving, then ready to rush downstairs. Or, at least, the men were. Jo said no and kept saying it. She had the key and she was not going to give it to them.
Barton mumbled a curse. Howard reminded her that he was a reporter. Jo told him that was all the more reason not to let him go poking around. Will said he was a pharmacist, and might be able to help. When Charlotte said, “You have a pill for a dead woman?” he stammered an apology and sat back down in his chair opposite Sarah. Sarah was simply sitting there, hands clasped tight in her lap. Vivian was quiet too, looking from one of them to the other.
The thing was, Jo thought, Howard had gone to see if the lights were off in the village. But there had been a couple of times that evening when any of them could have slipped down to the basement. Before rehearsal started, Barton was in the parlor marking up his script. Will was hanging around in the hall waiting while Sarah was making a call home to her housekeeper. Howard was flipping through an old almanac he’d found. Charlotte and Vivian had been chatting in the living room. People had been visiting the restrooms on the first floor and upstairs.
That was probably what Vivian was thinking about as she looked from one of them to the other. Anyone could have slipped down to the basement during that ten or fifteen minutes. Or later when, in the midst of botched lines and fraying tempers, Barton had decided to rewrite one of the scenes. Howard had thrown up his hands, called Barton an idiot, and gone for a smoke. The others had scattered about. At least another ten minutes.
Ample time, Jo thought.
Barton was saying, “Maybe she opened the basement door for some reason. Stepped outside and someone followed her back in.”
“Sure,” Howard said. “Someone was just hanging around out there in the storm.”
“But it must have been something like that,” Vivian said. “If none of us killed her, then it must have been an intruder.”
“And if she screamed,” Sarah said, “the storm was so loud we wouldn’t have heard.”
Barton pushed up his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “This is a disaster. An unmitigated disaster.”
Howard said, “I guess the play’s off tomorrow night. Good thing Founder’s Day is three weeks away.”
“How can you think about that now?” Vivian said.
“Rather than ponder the fact that I’m suspect number one, because I left the auditorium when the lights went out?”
“No one will think that,” Sarah said.
“It may help that I didn’t have a motive,” Howard said. “In answer to your question, Vivian, as your late husband would have pointed out, the annual Founder’s Day festivities are good for the local economy. Tourists come for the fireworks over the lake. The merchants on Main Street get money in their cash registers.”