behind. Every path she took resulted in a dead end. Mick Docker had been telling the truth when he said he spent the evening at the Fox and Hounds. But had he stayed there all night, as he’d proclaimed? It seemed she would have yet another conversation with the slippery roofer.
She had to wonder how much more patience the man would have with her before he refused to answer any more of her questions. Or worse, decided that she was becoming a nuisance, and needed to do something drastic to shut her up.
CHAPTER 14
Phoebe stood in the wings at the back of the ballroom glowing with pride. The pantomime was almost over, and for once there had been no major disaster. True, the dancers had stumbled on occasion, but they had managed to finish their numbers without knocking down any of the scenery, which was a major victory for her.
There might have been one or two occasions when she’d had to hiss cues at the Ugly Sisters. Unfortunately, the Fairy Godmother had caught her wand up in her net skirts and had to be untangled, but considering past disasters, these were all minor concerns.
Only a few more minutes to go and she could chalk up a successful event for once. The triumph of that moment would be well worth all the hard work and constant irritations she’d been forced to endure during the six weeks of rehearsal.
As always, she was concluding the performance with a pyramid-something the audience anticipated with noticeable glee. The fact that a good many of the male onlookers were expecting to see the young ladies topple to the floor, thus revealing more of their appendages than was seemly, was something Phoebe preferred to ignore.
After all, men would be men, and she lived in hope of her dance troupe holding the pose at least until the curtains were drawn. Something that didn’t happen too often.
The orchestra, or rather the string quartet she’d bullied into attending, did their best to rise to a crescendo as Cinderella accepted the prince’s proposal and the dancers gathered onstage for the final presentation.
Phoebe crossed her fingers and waited.
One by one the dancers lined up, linking arms to provide the bottom rung of the pyramid. Slowly they bent their knees, allowing three of the remaining women to climb up on their shoulders.
Phoebe held her breath. Only one more to go. She had picked Deirdre, the lightest and skinniest of the young women, to climb to the top of the pyramid. Deirdre was a little dense at times, but she enjoyed the attention, and was willing to risk life and limb to get it.
Not that Phoebe expected anything disastrous to happen to her. At the very most, if she fell, there were plenty of women there to catch her, and it really wasn’t that far to the floor. Besides, Deirdre was quite nimble and supple. She had learned how to fall-completely relaxed, with head and knees tucked in ready to roll.
Nevertheless, Phoebe gritted her teeth as Deirdre ran lightly over to the group and began to climb over knees and shoulders to the top. Some of the dancers muttered an “Ouch” or two, but at last, Deirdre wobbled to a full stance. Straightening her back, she stretched out her arms and threw her head back in triumph.
A burst of applause greeted this remarkable feat. Bursting with excitement and relief, Phoebe rushed out onto the stage to take her bow. As she did so, an ear-splitting scream rent the air. Then from somewhere in the audience, another voice joined in, howling as only a baby can.
Crying, “No, no,
The audience groaned in unison, until someone in the back sent up a cheer, and once more applause rocked the roof. Phoebe directed her fiercest glare at the front row, then dashed over to see if Deirdre had survived the calamity.
She found the young girl sitting on the floor, making a dreadful noise with her wailing. “Where are you hurt?” Phoebe demanded, trying to draw the girl’s skirt down to cover her knees.
Deirdre only shook her head and cried louder. The rest of the dancers picked themselves up and gathered around, offering words of advice.
“She’s hysterical,” Dora explained. “Here, I’ll slap her face. That’ll bring her out of it.” She stepped forward, her hand raised.
Phoebe lifted her own hand and knocked Dora’s arm away. “If there’s any slapping to be done, I’ll do it.” She looked back at the sobbing girl. “Deirdre, dear, you must tell me where you are hurting.”
Again Deirdre shook her head, then waved her hand in the air.
“Who the heck’s she waving at?” one of the dancers wanted to know.
“Dunno,” someone else answered.
“I told you she was hysterical,” Dora declared. “You’ll have to slap her face.”
Aware of the fascinated audience out front, murmuring and speculating among themselves while the baby continued to screech, Phoebe turned on Dora. This was to have been a rare performance, free of disaster. Once more at the last moment she had been foiled by yet another calamity. Consequently, she was not in the best of moods.
“Since you refuse to keep your silly mouth shut,” she snapped, “if I slap anyone’s face at all, believe me, it will be yours.”
The audience applauded, and someone cheered again.
Deirdre wailed louder, and pointed up over her head.
Phoebe followed the gesture, looking straight up into the rafters. Then she clutched her throat and let out an unearthly shriek, far louder and shriller than Deirdre’s howls.
In fact, startled by the noise, Deirdre stopped crying and clutched the skirt of the dancer standing closest to her.
The murmurs of the audience intensified, and the baby howled again, but Phoebe was now past caring. Her shocked gaze was locked on the slowly swinging figure of the woman hanging from the rafters.
Cecily wasn’t quite sure when she realized something was seriously wrong. She was seated a few rows from the stage, with Baxter on her right, and Madeline on her left. Kevin had charge of the baby next to his wife.
Angelina had been sleeping peacefully throughout most of the performance until the screaming began. The baby awoke and began screeching at the top of her lungs, so loud it actually brought pain to Cecily’s ears.
Both Madeline and Kevin tried in vain to calm her, while Cecily looked up anxiously at the stage, wondering if she should go up there to see if anyone was hurt. The sight of the dancers sprawled all over the stage was a familiar one. Phoebe rarely put on an event without something disastrous happening, but it seemed the young woman in the center of the attention was in some kind of distress.
Making up her mind, Cecily leaned toward Baxter, who sat with a pained expression on his face, his shoulders hunched against the noise Angelina was making.
“I’d better go to see if I can do anything,” she said, and he immediately rose to his feet.
“I’ll go with you.”
They had barely reached the end of the aisle when Phoebe’s scream echoed throughout the ballroom followed by another bellow of fright from Angelina.
Even then, Cecily thought that Phoebe was simply expressing her outrage. Her friend could be quite vocal when seriously upset. She hurried through the wings with Baxter on her heels, and signaled to the footman in charge of the curtains to bring them down.
He was clinging to the ropes, and looking at her with an odd expression, rather as if he were in a trance. She paused for a moment, puzzled by his attitude. “Bring the curtains down, please,” she ordered. “At once.”
“Begging your pardon, m’m, but I can’t.” He glanced back at the stage then turned to her, his movements all in slow motion. “They won’t come down.”
“What the devil do you mean?” Baxter demanded. “Here, I’ll do it.”
“You can’t.” The footman stubbornly held on to the rope. “There’s a dead body hanging on the other end.”
Cecily felt as if she had just swallowed a large glass of icy water. She heard Baxter utter a curse as he strode
