Fault in the Structure

be back promptly at six-thirty on Monday evening. The rest of the cast groaned.

‘Well,’ said Laura, having, in the car on the way back to the Stone House, voiced her opinion of the company’s efforts, ‘if it goes anything like that on the night, people will be fighting round the box office demanding their money back. As for that wretched hangman’s cart which the students are so proud of, if you ask me it’s going to be far more nuisance than it’s worth and anyway it isn’t in the text. The opera ends in the condemned hold.’

‘I thought the piece of apparatus was very effective. As for Mr Crashaw with the noose around his neck, he seemed to me a right and proper candidate for the gallows. I recognised him, of course, in spite of the beard,’ said Dame Beatrice.

‘Recognised him? You mean he really is…?’

‘Yes, indeed. You were absent, if you remember, when he called on me two or three years ago, so you did not see him when he was known as Thaddeus E. Lawrence, but you did tell me of the man who is down in the programme as Rodney Crashaw. That, in my opinion, settles it.’

‘Why? – apart from your recognising him, I mean.’

‘Come, come! Is this the student who harassed her junior English lecturer with enquiries regarding the minor early seventeenth-century poets?’

‘Richard Crashaw, 1613 (perhaps) to 1649? R. Crashaw! So you do mean it’s Lawrence up to his old game of changing his name!’

‘Well, one cannot blame him for not wishing to go down to posterity as a jail-bird.’

‘Then our sumptuous blonde could be as we thought.’

‘If you mean the young woman who was greeted on stage as Molly Brazen, yes, that is the first Mrs Lawrence whom I met in Blackpool as Coralie St Malo.’

‘So, that’s settled, too, is it? Very interesting. Well, it seems that she and Lawrence, alias Crashaw, have teamed up again. I wonder why?’

‘It gives one furiously to think, does it not?’

‘It gives me a headache. Do you think they spotted you at the rehearsal?’

‘I have little doubt of that, but what of it? The truth is obvious.’

‘Coralie murdered the second Mrs Lawrence and Lawrence buried the body. Consequently they now have to keep the tabs on each other. That would account for their getting together again.’

‘This perspicacity is uncanny!’

‘But if they know you’ve seen them not only together but so obviously part of the same set-up, aren’t they going to ask themselves a few questions?’

‘Again, I say, what of it?’ The car slowed down to turn into the gateway of the drive up to the Stone House as she added, ‘ “He whom the gods love dies young.” I used to think that this referred only to one’s numerical age. I know better now, so let us cast care aside and repair to our beds “weary and content and undishonoured”.’

The car pulled up outside the front door and George saw his passengers out.

‘We shan’t need the car in the morning, George,’ said his employer, ‘so have your full quota of sleep. I am sorry to have kept you up so late.’ She and Laura passed on into the house where they were greeted by a clucking Celestine in her dressing-gown.

‘Henri has placed sandwiches and some wine in the dining-room, madame, and I am to make coffee.’

‘No, no,’ said Dame Beatrice peremptorily, for Celestine was known to be obstinate. ‘You go to bed. As for Mrs Gavin and myself, we shall probably make a night of it.’

Celestine made disapproving Gallic noises and took herself off to join her slumbering spouse. Dame Beatrice and Laura went into the dining-room, where Dame Beatrice took one sandwich and a glass of sherry and Laura drank whisky and wolfed the rest of the provender.

‘One thing,’ she said, ‘I suppose you’re right and that, after all this time, nobody, least of all Lawrence and Coralie, is going to rake up the past.’

‘I have an uneasy feeling,’ said her employer, ‘that the past is going to rake itself up.’

‘What makes you say that? I’m the one who gets these premonitions, not you – and I’m very often, although not always, wrong.’

‘This is not merely a premonition. I am uneasy on account of William Caxton.’

‘Good heavens, why?’

‘You told me that he came to one of the rehearsals with Mrs Blaine.’

‘What of it? – as you would say. It was like her cheek to turn up, considering that she’s done everything she can to sabotage our show.’

‘Do you remember that, some time ago, I queried the name William Caxton?’

‘Yes, but you gave me best over that, when I pointed out that it could be a common enough name.’

‘The murdered Mrs Lawrence had a brother named Bill.’

Laura, a sandwich poised halfway to her mouth, lowered it and stared wide-eyed at her employer.

‘You aren’t suggesting—?’ she said.

‘Mrs Lawrence’s maiden name was Caret,’ Dame Beatrice pointed out.

‘A bit unusual, perhaps, but that’s all.’