Lovers Make Moan

“Barbara? Has she been here?” asked Rinkley.

“Yesterday and stayed to tea, but not until the two of them had had a prolonged tete-a- tete.”

“Good heavens! I wonder what it was about? I haven’t been to see Barbara. Didn’t like to butt in. I expect she’s pretty sore with me because I suppose that if I hadn’t eaten those damned mussels she would still have a husband.”

“Ah, yes, the mussels,” said Deborah. “Do you usually eat them between meals?”

Rinkley, who was about to raise his glass, lowered it again.

“Eat them between meals?” he said.

“I was told that you speared those mussels out of a jar with a pickle-fork while you were waiting to go on stage.”

“Oh, that! As a matter of fact, I was advised to eat the damn things. I caught some kind of throat infection and on Saturday morning I was so thick in the clear, as my old nanny used to call it, that I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to take the stage. Well, I went for a gargle to my local and confided in the landlord. He told me I needed either half-a-dozen raw eggs or some oysters just before the performance. I couldn’t face the raw eggs, and I couldn’t locate any oysters, so I stopped at the delicatessen counter in the supermarket and settled for the mussels, with the dire results we all know.”

“Ah, here is Aunt Adela,” said Deborah, on her way to the door just as it opened and Dame Beatrice came in.

“Mr Rinkley, Aunt Adela,” said Jonathan. “Aunt, dear, ‘this man is Pyramus, if you would know’.”

“Whereas this far from beauteous lady is certainly not Thisbe,” said Dame Beatrice, leering hideously at the visitor. “So am I to hear of more anonymous letters?”

Rinkley, who had risen at her entrance, took advantage of the example she set and seated himself as Jonathan and Deborah left them alone together.

“Anonymous letters?” he said. “How did you know I had them?”

“I expect most of the cast have had them by now,” she replied. “It would be the normal thing to expect under the circumstances. Of what do yours accuse you?”

“Well, not of anything in particular.”

“You mean they consist of what the aspiring journalist told the editor that he was good at?”

“Sorry. I don’t get you.”

“I have contracted a bad habit from my secretary, who is apt to quote from readings sacred, profane, popular and esoteric, and I have caught the virus. The journalist told the editor that he was good at what he called ‘general invective’. I wondered whether ‘general invective’ would describe the contents of the anonymous letters you have received.”

“Oh, well, actually, no. I mean, so far as the wording is concerned, there’s nothing I couldn’t show my maiden aunt.”

“Oh, have you a maiden aunt? I thought they went out of fashion in about the year 1947. Well, if the wording of the letters was not objectionable in itself, of what did the letters complain?”

“They didn’t. They simply asked a lot of impertinent questions. Now, Dame Beatrice, I don’t claim to be a saint—”

“I doubt whether you could sustain the role if you did make such a claim. Did you owe money to Mr Bourton?”

“Oh, look here, now! I came in the hope that with my knowing Jon and the lovely Deborah and all that, you would grant me a serious interview. I didn’t owe Bourton anything. I didn’t even know he was to be my understudy. Look here, now, if I sent you the letters, could you trace the writer? It must be somebody who knows me pretty well, and that means I probably know her pretty well. I could give you a list of possible people.”

“Give it to the police. It is not my province to trace the writers of anonymous letters.”

“Oh, well, that’s that, then. One thing everybody knows is that I had nothing against Bourton or anyone else. I haven’t spoken to any of the cast since I came out of hospital, so I know nothing about the inquest except what I read in the papers. Were you present?”

“I was.”

“Do you know why the police asked to have it adjourned?”

“For the usual reasons, I suppose.”

“You mean—you don’t mean they think there was something fishy about Bourton’s death?”

“The fact that the cast are beginning to receive anonymous letters indicates that the police are not the only people who think that a more detailed enquiry into the death is called for—more detailed, I mean, than has been the case so far.”

“But surely what happened to Bourton must have been the sheerest accident? Nobody could have foreseen that there would be that mix-up of daggers.”

“And, of course, Mr Bourton could not have foreseen that you would be taken ill and that he would be called upon to take over your part. You are being disingenuous, Mr Rinkley. Do you or do you not believe that Mr Bourton’s death was deliberately planned?”

Rinkley stood up.

“If it was, it must have been planned for me, not him,” he said. “Well, Dame Beatrice, I am sorry to have