But when he showed them the handkerchief, they got more interested. After about an hour they agreed to go up to the common with him to look at the bonfire. A plain-clothes man and a uniformed constable.
They didn’t talk much. They inspected the scene and started assessing times and distances. Charles didn’t push his luck by saying anything.
Eventually the plain-clothes man spoke. ‘Well, it’s just possible. Of course, we won’t really know until we get this handkerchief looked at by forensic. But I think we’ll go and talk to Mr Winter, get his version of events. Where did you say he lived?’
‘He won’t be there at the moment. He’s rehearsing a show for the Breckton Backstagers.’
The rehearsal was in full swing when they arrived. The cast were doing the awakening of the statue of Hermione.
The queen stood frozen centre stage, with Geoffrey as Leontes on one side of her and Mary Hobbs as Paulina on the other. Vee, as Perdita, knelt behind her husband. By her side stood Clive Steele as Florizel.
As Charles and the policemen entered at the back of the rehearsal room, Geoffrey was declaiming. They stood in silence while he continued.
‘O! thus she stood,
Even with such life of majesty, — warm life,
As now it coldly stands, — when first I woo’d her.
I am asham’d: does the stone rebuke me
For being more stone than it? Oh — ’
As he acted, Geoffrey took them in. Charles could see the pale grey eyes flicker from him to the uniformed policeman, then to the plain-clothes man and finally come to rest on the soiled handkerchief which the detective was still holding gingerly in front of him.
When Geoffrey saw the handkerchief, his voice wavered. There was a little gasp like the beginning of a giggle.
The supposed statue of Hermione let out the snort of a suppressed laugh. Then Mary Hobbs went off into uncontrollable giggles. Vee and Clive started laughing too.
None of them knew what the joke was, but soon all the Backstagers in the room were roaring their heads off. It was one of those moments that often happen at rehearsal, when suddenly a tense scene breaks down into the ridiculous. A mass ‘corpse’.
Gradually, one by one, the actors stopped, slowing down to gasping breaths, and wiping tears from their eyes. Then they turned to look, with growing concern, at Geoffrey Winter.
But he just kept on laughing.
