Maskerade

got mothers?”

Granny rolled her eyes. Damn, damn and blast. She was a good witch. That was her role in life. That was the burden she had to bear. Good and Evil were quite superfluous when you'd grown up with a highly developed sense of Right and Wrong. She hoped, oh she hoped, that young though these were, they were dyed?in?the?wool criminals.

“I 'ad a mother once,” said the nearest thief. “Only I think I must of et 'er…”

Ah. Top marks. Granny raised both hands to her hat to draw out two long hatpins…

A tile slid off the roof, and splashed into a puddle.

They looked up.

A caped figure was visible for a moment against the moonlight. It thrust out a sword at arm's length. Then it dropped, landing lightly in front of one astonished man.

The sword whirled.

The first thief spun and thrust at the shadowy shape in front of him, which turned out to be another thief, whose arm jerked up and dragged its own knife along the ribcage of the thief beside him.

The masked figure danced among the gang, his sword almost leaving trails in the air. It occurred to Granny later that it never actually made contact, but then, it never needed to — when six are against one in a melee in the shadows, and especially if those six aren't used to a target that is harder to hit than a wasp, and even more so if they got all their ideas of knifefighting from other amateurs, then there's six chances in seven that they'll stab a crony and about one chance in twelve that they'll nick their own earlobe.

The two that remained uninjured after ten seconds looked at one another, turned, and ran.

And then it was over.

The surviving vertical figure bowed low in front of Granny Weatherwax. “Ah. Bella Donna!”

There was a swirl of black cloak and red silk, and it too was gone. For a moment soft footsteps could be heard skimming over the cobbles.

Granny's hand was still halfway to her hat.

“Well I never!” she said.

She looked down. Various bodies were groaning or making soft bubbling noises.

“Deary deary me,” she said. Then she pulled herself together.

“I reckon we're going to need some nice hot water and some bits of bandage, and a good sharp needle for the stitching, Mrs Plinge,” she said. “We can't let these poor men bleed to death now, can we, even if they do try to rob old ladies…”

Mrs Plinge looked horrified.

“We've got to be charitable, Mrs Plinge,” Granny insisted.

“I'll pump up the fire and tear up a sheet,” said Mrs Plinge. “Don't know if I can find a needle…”

“Oh, I 'spect I've got a needle,” said Granny, extracting one' from the brim of her hat.

She knelt down by a fallen thief. “It's rather rusty and blunt,” she added, “but we shall have to do the best we can.”

The needle gleamed in the moonlight. His round, frightened eyes focused on it, and then on Granny's face. He whimpered. His shoulderblades tried to dig him into the cobbles.

It was perhaps as well that no one else could see Granny's face in the shadows.

“Let's do some good,” she said.

Salzella threw his hands in the air. “Supposing he'd come down in the middle of the act?” he said.

“All right, all right,” said Bucket, who was sitting behind his desk as a man might hide behind a bunker. “I agree. After the show we call in the Watch. No two ways about it. We shall just have to ask them to be discreet.”

“Discreet? Have you ever met a Watchman?” said Salzella.

“Not that they'll find anything. He'll have been over the rooftops and away, you may depend upon it. Whoever he is. Poor Dr Undershaft. He was always so highly strung.”

“Never more so than tonight,” said Salzella.

“That was tasteless!”

Salzella leaned over the desk. “Tasteless or not, the company are theatre people. Superstitious. One little thing like someone being murdered on stage and they go all to pieces.”

“He wasn't murdered on stage, he was murdered off stage. And we can't be sure it was murder! He'd been very… depressed, lately.”

Agnes had been shocked, but it hadn't been shock at Dr Undershaft's death. She'd been astonished at her own reaction. It had been startling and unpleasant to see the man, but even worse to see herself actually being interested in what was happening — in the way people reacted, in the way they moved, in the things they said. It had been as if she'd stood outside herself, watching the whole thing.

Christine, on the other hand, had just folded up. So had Dame Timpani. Far more people had fussed over Christine than around the prima donna, despite the fact that Dame Timpani had come around and fainted again quite pointedly several times and had eventually been forced to go for hysterics. No one had assumed for a minute that Agnes couldn't cope.

Christine had been carried into Salzella's backstage office and put on a couch. Agnes had fetched a bowl of water and a cloth and was wiping her forehead, for there are some people who are destined to be carried to comfortable couches and some people whose only fate is fetching a bowl of cold water.

“Curtain goes up again in two minutes,” said Salzella. “I'd better go and round up the orchestra. They'll all be in the Stab In The Back over the road. The swine can get through half a pint before the applause has died away.”

“Are they capable of playing?”

“They never have been, so I don't see why they should start now,” said Salzella. “They're musicians, Bucket. The only way a dead body would upset them is if it fell in their beer, and even then they'd play if you offered them Dead Body Money.”

Bucket walked over to the recumbent Christine. “How is she?”

“She keeps mumbling a bit—” Agnes began.

“Cup of tea? Tea? Cup of tea, anyone? Nothing nicer than a cup of tea, well, I tell a lie, but I see the couch is occupied, just my little joke, no offence meant, anyone for a nice cup of tea?”

Agnes looked around in horror.

“Well, I could certainly do with one,” said Bucket, with false joviality.

“How about you, miss?” Nanny winked at Agnes.

“Er…no, thank you… do you work here?” said Agnes.

“I'm just helping out for Mrs Plinge, who has been taken poorly,” said Nanny, giving her another wink. “I'm Mrs Ogg. Don't mind me.”

This seemed to satisfy Bucket, if only because random tea distributors represented the most minor of threats at this point.

“It's more like Grand Guignol than opera out there tonight,” said Nanny. She nudged Bucket. “'S foreign for ‘blood all over the stage’,” she said helpfully.

“Really.”

“Yep. It means… Big Gignol.”

Music started in the distance.

“That's the overture to Act Two,” said Bucket. “Well, if Christine is still unwell, then…” He looked desperately at Agnes. Well, at a time like this people would understand.

Agnes's chest swelled further with pride. “Yes, Mr Bucket?”

“Perhaps we could find you a white—”

Christine, her eyes still shut, raised her wrist to her forehead and groaned.

“Oh, dear, what happened?”

Bucket knelt down instantly. “Are you all right? You had a nasty shock! Do you think you could go on for the