The Mammoth Book of Locked-Room Mysteries And Impossible Crimes

produce his ace. “She’d drunk from it earlier without ill-effect, and the Berties had all drunk from the other three glasses on the piano. Suicide is out because she couldn’t have added anything to the glass between the two toasts. So unless the poison was added intentionally by someone on stage, murder would be impossible.”

A silence, then Bishop said: “Impossible isn’t a word I like.” He beckoned to the three Berties, still sitting miserably on stage in their thongs, resentful of the scene of crime’s photographers’ ill- concealed smirks.

Bishop saw Nick’s struggles to control an insane desire to laugh. “Shock, lad. Seen many corpses, have you?”

“No.”

“I have, and thank God I never get over it. When you do, that’s the time to quit.”

Tony Hobbs was sitting in the first row of seats outside the tape, declaring at intervals that he was used to shock, making it sound as if his wife got murdered every day. He was ashen-faced, though, and in Nick’s opinion looked about to pass out as the Berties joined him.

“Our street clothes are over there,” Hamish told Bishop hopefully, pointing to the “wings” – an all-purpose room at the side of the stage where the lighting and curtain controls were.

“Now bagged up and the temporary property of Her Majesty’s Police Force, sir.”

A stunned silence. “You expect us to bloody well go home like this?” Justin screeched.

“No, we’ll need those thongs too.”

Hamish began to weep, and Bishop relented. “The sergeant will organize something. Can’t have you frightening the horses. Now, gentlemen, I want you to repeat exactly what you did this evening. And you,” he jabbed a finger at Nick, “keep out of it.”

Tony Hobbs elected to fill Bishop in on the background. “These three gentlemen worked to my wife’s choreography. At the beginning six glasses were put on the bar, two each for the men, and a seventh on the piano for my wife, and just before the show Greta filled them all herself. Any poison would have had to be added after that, I suppose,” he added forlornly, “since everyone drank from the same bottle.”

“Who,” Bishop enquired, “put the glasses in position before the show?”

“Hamish,” said his two colleagues gleefully.

“But we all drank from them earlier,” Hamish reminded Bishop anxiously as they began the routine, miming the striptease, and using seven glasses from the kitchen. “Murder’s impossible, just like the kid said.”

“Where did you get the glasses from?” Bishop asked.

“We bring them with us,” Hamish replied miserably. “I got them out of their case.”

Hamish couldn’t have doctored one beforehand, Nick realized happily; he was right. The poison could only have been added on stage.

As Hamish took his glass to the piano to begin the final stages of the striptease, Bishop interrupted. “Is that exactly where you placed your glass tonight?”

“I can’t remember.”

“Try,” Bishop suggested in his best family doctor manner.

Hamish slowly inched it somewhat nearer to the one representing Greta’s, which was on far stage left of the piano top, to be accessible for her right hand. When his turn came, Paul placed his just to the right of Hamish’s, leaving the three glasses in a row.

“It wasn’t there, mate,” Justin pointed out. “Yours was dead behind Greta’s, as it usually is. I saw you put it down, both times, and I put mine behind Hamish’s.”

“Maybe. I’ve other things on my mind,” Paul said sullenly.

“She told me Paul was going to be her blue-eyed boy tonight,” Les whispered to Nick.

“What did her husband think of that?”

“Doubt if he thought much of it, but he was used to it. Anyway, he thought she was the greatest thing since whisky.”

It seemed strange to Nick, but then what made one marriage work and another not was a mystery anyway. What he did know was that husbands were the natural suspect in the case of a murdered wife.

As if on cue, Tony returned to the attack. “I repeat, which one of you bastards did it?” he asked quietly. “It had to be one of you three and you all hated her. None of you appreciated her.”

“Tell me more,” Bishop suggested politely, as the trio remained silent.

It was Hamish who threw the first stone. “Why couldn’t someone have crept up from behind her? They could have added the poison, when Greta was watching us. She wouldn’t have noticed.”

“How about you, Tony?” Paul chimed in viciously. “You were nearest.”

Justin leapt on this convenient bandwagon. “Find out Paul was still hard at it, did you, Tony?”

Tony stared at them reproachfully. “Even if,” he said heavily, “I had any reason to wish harm to Greta, gentlemen, I was a good three feet away from the piano, I am a tall man, and I would have been visible in the light of the spot above her had I moved to poison my poor wife’s drink.” He sat down again, shaking with emotion. It looked genuine enough to Nick, and the facts were on Tony’s side.

“I would have seen you for a start,” Nick volunteered.

“You don’t think,” Bishop suggested mildly, “one of the two hundred ladies in the audience would have noticed too? Not one of them did.”

“Perhaps it was at the psychological moment.” Nick was suddenly inspired.

“What the hell’s that?” Paul grunted.

“When we showed our willies.” Hamish displayed his intellect. “Everyone’s eyes were riveted on us then. They wouldn’t have noticed anything else.”

“Ever taken an eye test?” Bishop smiled regretfully. “Most people have a field of vision that would be aware of some movement to the right or left, no matter what was going on. No murderer could take the risk of showing himself, spotlight or not. I fear the evidence so far suggests Mr Didier is right, that suicide is ruled out, and the poison could only have been added on stage.”

“Cheers, Nick,” Les said gratefully but prematurely.

“However,” Bishop beamed, “there is something none of you gentlemen seem to have considered, even you, Mr Didier.” Nick waited for the jaws to snap. “Poison isn’t a murderer’s manna, descending from the heavens. It has to come in something, whether it be a bottle for liquid or as in the case of cyanide, some form of box or wrapping for crystals.” Bishop sighed as he saw the blank faces around him.

“May I point out,” he continued softly, “that all three of you on stage ended up mother naked at the piano? Just how did one of you manage to both carry the poison there, and dispose of the container?”

A stunned silence, and then a united howl of relief from the Berties: “We didn’t!”

Nick thought this through. Be blowed if he was going to be eaten alive by Bishop. “They could have poisoned their own glass after they’d drunk from it the first time, taken it to the piano and then switched glasses with Greta’s.”

“Very good, lad,” Bishop said briskly. “But they’d still need to secrete the wrapping somewhere.” He turned to the Berties. “Did any of you gentlemen notice anything unusual about the placing of the glasses?”

No one had. The relative positions had been as normal. Although, in the haste of