Missing Susan

CHAPTER 8

EXETER

THE MURDER PARTY pronounced Torre Abbey’s cream tea with fresh scones and clotted cream infinitely superior to its exhibits. They dawdled for nearly an hour in the cheery cafe next to the abbey kitchen, wolfing down their allotment of homemade pastry and discussing the weekend’s entertainment at the hotel in Exeter. The hotel had scheduled a murder mystery event, wherein an acting troupe stages a participatory drama, killing off several cast members during the course of the weekend. The guests play bit parts in the charade while they attempt to solve the murders, trying to make sense of the very Christie-like clues put before them. All is revealed on Sunday morning after breakfast, and prizes are awarded to the correct guessers.

“And you’re sure you won’t be able to stay for it?” Elizabeth MacPherson said to the guide. “Considering all that you and I know about real murders, we’d be sure to solve it.”

Rowan Rover disguised his relief with a sorrowful countenance. “Alas, no. The tour company does not wish to pay for my services over the weekend, when all of you will be otherwise occupied. So Bernard and I will go to our respective homes, and we shall rejoin you on Sunday afternoon. I’m afraid you will have to solve the case without me.”

Privately he pitied the troupe of actors who were staging the murder mystery weekend at the hotel, blissfully ignorant of the fact that they were about to be descended upon by ten well-read amateur sleuths and one relentless forensic anthropologist. He had heard of the zeal that possessed amateurs in such puzzle games-and he had resolved to avoid them. A friend of his who attended a similar event reported that one lady guest actually got so carried away that she began searching the handbags of her fellow guests. To one who made a profession of the study of murder, the entire charade sounded very dismal indeed. Besides, it would be an uncomfortable reminder of his own little drama, which would have to be staged within the coming week. He intended to devote his free weekend to meticulously planning the most perfect of all murders: one that would not be recognized as a murder at all.

The journey out of Torquay was uneventful, except that Martha Tabram spotted a hotel bearing the name Fawlty Towers, and several tour members pleaded to be allowed to stop and photograph it. Bernard told them that neither their schedule nor the traffic would permit such a scheme, so they contented themselves with a lengthy discussion over whether the television sitcom of the same name had been inspired by the Torquay hotel, or whether it was the other way round.

An hour later they arrived in Exeter. Rowan Rover bade them a hasty goodbye at the train station, promising to reappear at one on Sunday. “You won’t be seeing me for the next day and a half,” he reminded them for the third time. “Is there anything you want to know before I leave? Anything you want me to investigate while I’m at home with my reference books?”

Elizabeth MacPherson raised her hand. “Could you find out if we’ll be going near Constance Kent’s house? I’m intrigued by her, and I’d like to see it.”

“Who’s Constance Kent?” asked Susan. “What did she write?”

“I’ll check on it,” Rowan promised. “And as to who she was-we will discuss that on some future evening. Just now, I’ve a train to catch.”

Bernard drove them to their lodgings and parked the bus at the far end of the hotel parking lot. He then proceeded to his own home in Kensington.

Elizabeth, who had been reveling in anticipation of all the wonderful old castles they would stay in, was chagrined to find that she had sweaters older than the Exeter Trusthouse Forte. She had to admit, though, that a luxurious room with a private bath and a view of the old city wall and the spires of the cathedral beyond it went a long way toward compensating for a lack of Olde World Charm.

In her room was an invitation to a cocktail party and dinner, beginning at seven that evening. According to the typewritten note, the purpose of the party was to enable her to meet some filmmakers who were scouting for extras for a Dracula movie. Since the note was dated September 7, 1928 and signed by someone named Binky, Elizabeth was fairly certain that this was the opening gambit in the murder weekend. As a concession to Roaring Twenties, she tied a silvery scarf around her forehead, put on her red cocktail dress, and made her way downstairs to the designated party room.

The cocktail party was held in a modest-sized banquet room with red carpeting and a dazzling chandelier. A dozen tables had been set for dinner. White-coated waiters glided among the guests, offering champagne and white wine. About fifty people were congregated in the room, some of them in period costumes, chatting rather uneasily with other strangers. It was impossible at this stage to tell who the actors would turn out to be. Elizabeth found Charles Warren there, decked out in a suit and tie and looking like a bank president. Nancy Warren was equally resplendent, but the change was not so startling in her case.

“Erik Broadaxe dresses pretty good,” she said, smiling at them.

In a few minutes of casual circulating, Elizabeth managed to locate all the members of her party, and some not-too-difficult eavesdropping enabled her to identify several of the players in the murder drama. They were wearing the best costumes, and they seemed to think it was 1928.

“Isn’t this fun?” whispered Alice MacKenzie, whose lime-green pantsuit made no concession to the Twenties-or the Nineties, for that matter. “I brought my little notebook, in case we need to keep track of clues.”

“Let’s sit at different tables and compare notes afterward,” said Susan Cohen. She was wearing a black silk sheath that contrasted poorly with her blonde coloring and pale skin, making her look more like the corpse than the sleuth. “We have an acting company in Minneapolis that stages murder weekends, and I-”

“Shh!” hissed Elizabeth. “They’re arguing!”

They turned to stare at a monocled man in a tuxedo, who had been introduced to them as the baron, director of the vampire film. He was berating a mousy old woman in rimless glasses and a shapeless brown dress. Apparently the woman was the company secretary, and the baron had caught her going through his desk. Alice MacKenzie dutifully made notes of the accusations. In a few minutes the scene was over and a horse-faced woman in a tweed suit approached them, shaking her head. “Those two will bear watching,” she said.

“She’s a plant,” muttered Susan Cohen, when the woman was out of earshot. “Too Miss Marple to be real. She’s probably going to be the troupe’s detective.”

“What about that tall blond man by the door?” asked Maud Marsh, looking elegant in a short dress of white satin. “He looks rather theatrical.”

“I heard him talking to the secretary,” said Nancy Warren. “He says he’s playing the leading man in the film.”

Martha Tabram, coolly elegant in a two-piece outfit of green silk, sipped her wine and eyed the door. “Do you suppose they’ll try to keep us in the hotel all weekend with this foolishness?” she asked. “I want to see Exeter again.”

“I checked my schedule,” Elizabeth told her. “It says that after this we’re free until one o’clock tomorrow, when the baron is rehearsing a scene with his actors. Tomorrow morning our group is supposed to have a tour of the city at ten with one of Exeter’s volunteer guides.”

“Good,” smiled Martha. “I may not return for the rehearsal.”

“You might miss a murder,” Nancy warned her. “But it is tempting to shop, isn’t it?”

“It certainly is,” said Elizabeth. “Now that we haven’t got Rowan Rover barking at our heels every time we stop at a postcard rack.”

The escape plans were interrupted by a stir in the crowd near the punch bowl. The buzz of voices suddenly fell silent. People began to back away from the baron’s mousy little secretary, who was coughing violently into her handkerchief. Thirty seconds later she dropped her wineglass and crumpled gracefully to the floor, unconscious. Kate Conway, her nurse’s instincts aroused, rushed to the body, but the baron waved her back. On cue, her fellow actors flocked around her. She was carried from the room, while the baron and his leading lady expressed their shock and dismay to the rest of the party.

The Snoop Sister in the tweed suit reappeared. Her eyes sparkled with interest. “I am Miss Eylesbarrow,” she told them. “And I must say I find this very suspicious indeed! Did any of you see anyone tampering with that lady’s drink?”

The mystery group members admitted that they hadn’t been paying attention.

“Oh, but you must watch everyone very carefully!” the woman chided them. “You can’t trust anyone, you know!”

“I hope she did it,” muttered Elizabeth, as the woman walked away.

“Not a hope,” said Susan Cohen. “When it’s time to reveal the killer, she’ll run the confrontation scene. But she’s much too brash. They need somebody who’s gracious and charming to be the amateur sleuth.”

“Like Angela Lansbury on Murder She Wrote?” asked Kate.

Susan shook her head. “I was thinking more of Charlotte MacLeod.”

Maud Marsh was ready to try her hand at solving the case. “What do you suppose she was killed with?” she asked the others. “Poison in the drink?”

“So they would have us believe,” said Elizabeth. “We mustn’t forget that it’s 1928.”

“This has been done in a lot of books,” said Susan, with the air of one beginning a lecture. “There’s The Mirror Cracked, and Murder in Three Acts. Of course, both those murders were done the same way…”

Nancy Warren pretended to hear her husband calling and wandered away, followed by Martha Tabram, stifling a yawn.

“Well, I guess the evening’s drama is over,” said Alice. “People are beginning to sit down to dinner. Let’s go and sit by the baron, shall we? He looks suspicious.”

“As long as we don’t have to sit with Miss Eylesbarrow,” muttered Elizabeth. “I wish Rowan were here. We’d show him detective work!”

Despite the watchful anticipation of the mystery weekend guests, no one pitched forward into his soup during the dinner. The members of the acting troupe stayed perfectly in character and chatted with the guests. The older leading man, Sir Herbert, seemed quite taken with pretty Kate Conway and he spent much of the meal urging her to go into film work, while she giggled prettily in response. Susan Cohen and Elizabeth MacPherson sat beside the actor playing the baron. In a German accent that was on the horizon of plausible, the movie mogul talked amiably with the young women, inquiring where they were from and what they planned to see on their tour of England.

“You should come and see Minneapolis,” Susan Cohen told him. “It’s the most beautiful city. Very clean and crime-free.”

“I have never had any interest in visiting the United States,” said the baron at his most Teutonic. “I have always wanted to go and see… Russia!”

Elizabeth, remembering that it was supposed to be 1928, quipped, “Oh, I expect you will! Give it ten years or so.”

The baron caught this reference to the Russian front and managed to stifle a laugh just in time to stay in character. He hastily changed the subject, telling them about the film company and the new talkie they were making, about his investments, and all the problems that he was having with his actors; but Elizabeth was having too much fun pretending that it was 1928 to pay much attention to any clues he might have offered. When he mentioned that he was contemplating buying a country house, she advised him to purchase a place called High Grove.

“You will profit enormously from selling it again in fifty years’ time,” she assured him, approximating the year that Prince Charles acquired the property. “It will sell for a bundle!” What fun it was to parade her Anglophilia!

She was pleased to note that the baron was as clever as he was talented. One fleeting expression showed that he had caught that reference, too, but he was quick to play dumb-and to resume less prophetic topics of conversation.

When the meal was almost over, Mr. Scott, the handsome young leading man, excused himself from one of the other tables, announcing that he wanted to telephone the hospital to ask after Miss Jenkins, the secretary who had been taken ill. This sparked fresh speculation about the cause of her attack, but the baron refused to be drawn by Susan’s declaration that the woman had been poisoned.

“I expect it was something she ate for lunch that didn’t agree with her,” he said.

Alice MacKenzie made a note of his remark in her book.

Ten minutes later Mr. Scott reappeared in the doorway looking properly, if not convincingly, stricken. “I’ve just had word from the hospital that poor Miss Jenkins is dead,” he lamented. “The doctors say that she was poisoned with arsenic!”

A shocked silence fell over the assembly, broken two seconds later by Elizabeth MacPherson, who proclaimed, “She certainly was not.” This bit of unscheduled improvisation on a carefully rehearsed scenario left all the actors speechless.

“I am a doctor of forensic anthropology,” said Elizabeth, more pompously than usual. “And I assure you that we can rule out arsenic as a cause of death.”

“Why?” gasped the baron in spite of himself.

“Because she just fell quietly to the floor and passed out,” Elizabeth informed him. “That is not what you do if you have been poisoned with arsenic. To begin with, she should have been puking her guts out-”

Kate Conway nodded vigorously. “From both ends,” she said with medical authority.

“Not before my dinner,” murmured Martha Tabram.

Elizabeth continued. “She should have been having tonic and clonic convulsions, dizzy spells, and she would have been in incredible pain from the cramping of the stomach muscles. Also, death would not occur so quickly. If you look at the Maybrick case…” Elizabeth was thinking how pleased Rowan Rover would have been at this evidence of her detecting ability.

The actors were thinking that a little arsenic in the wineglass of Miss MacPherson wouldn’t be amiss. Too bad they only had sugar cubes for poison.

“This is such fun!” said Frances Coles happily. “I wonder what Rowan is doing this weekend without us?”

In a picturesque village in Cornwall, the last pirate of Penzance was plotting his perfect crime. At eight o’clock Friday evening Rowan Rover had got off the train at Penzance and returned to his nonaquatic residence, the family home a few miles from the city.

After an omelet supper, washed down with liberal quantities of Scotch, he had retired to his study to read his mail. There was the usual assortment of politely worded threats from his creditors, and a dutiful scrawl from his offspring Sebastian which managed to impart no information whatsoever, except a weather report for the vicinity of his school, which Sebastian always included in lieu of any information about his grades, his interests, or his most recent misdemeanors. The air mail letter bearing a Sri Lankan stamp began with the salutation Dear Insect. A salvo from a former wife. He tossed that one in the pile with the Inland Revenue forms and the Stop Smoking pamphlets he received regularly from meddling friends. A royalty statement from one of his publishers, written as usual in Sanskrit, contained a check for the beggarly sum of seven pounds, forty-three pence. You could hardly call it a royalty statement. Why couldn’t those buggers manage to sell the foreign rights to the bloodthirsty Americans, or sell the movie rights for a fat fee, so that he could make a living off crime without having to practice it!

He resigned himself to the prospect at hand. Now that he had actually gotten to know the murder group, he could refine the general plans he had sketched out in London. He settled down in his leather chair and surrounded himself with piles of guidebooks and volumes on true crime.

He decided that one good plan would not suffice. Since he was an amateur, he should not rely upon success on the first venture. Accidents were tricky. People often survived the most lethal situations, while others succumbed to a fall over a footstool. The more accidents he could arrange, the better his chances for eliminating… the victim. Now that she was a real person to him, he hesitated to think of her as Susan when planning her demise. A study of the itinerary suggested several possibilities to the hopeful murderer. Beginning on Sunday, when he would rejoin the group in Exeter, he hoped to schedule one potential accident per day.

If that failed, there was always poison. But which one? Thallium was too slow and not completely reliable. Even the most doddering G.P. ought to be able to spot arsenic these days. Using lethal germs was out. He wasn’t such a fool as to risk contaminating himself. And the rest of the party, naturally, he amended, somewhat belatedly.

The real question, of course, was what could he get unobtrusively. Most of the Victorian murderesses got into trouble when their names appeared on a chemist’s poison register. He wouldn’t make that mistake. An inventory of the medicine chest might prove helpful.

He was mulling over the toxic possibilities of soaked cigarette butts (nicotine poisoning) when the telephone rang. He answered it at once, wondering what trouble the group had managed to get into on their own.

“Is that you, Rover?” said a familiar Yorkshire voice. “Not playing nursemaid this weekend?”

Rowan groaned to disguise the fact that he was moderately glad to hear from his fellow crime writer Kenneth O’Connor. Although O’Connor could be a nuisance-always coming unexpectedly to London and wanting to stay on the boat, when Rowan was planning to use it to entertain more nubile companions-he did have the virtue of being the only other crime expert of Rowan’s acquaintance who did not earn his living as a policeman. All the other crime historians had nasty suspicious minds which came of dealing with an unsavory element of society day after day in their police work. If Rowan asked them about a poison and then someone on his tour went and died of it, they might jump to the most uncomplimentary conclusions about his own character and motives. Even a perfectly executed accident after such a conversation with them might arouse suspicion. O’Connor, though, was usually too wrapped up in book deadlines and new projects to care who poisoned whom socially. Rowan decided that he could use a second opinion and Kenneth O’Connor was the ideal person to provide it.

“Good evening, Kenneth,” he said pleasantly. “I’ve just had a nice royalty statement on my third book. How are things with you?”

“Chaotic, as usual. I wanted to know if you’re going to be using your boat this week. I have to go to London to meet with those maniacs at the film studio-”

“And you infinitely prefer my hospitality to paying hotel rates?”

“I particularly enjoy your hospitality when you’re not there to dispense it in person, Rowan.”

“Well, as long as you’ve called, I have one or two questions for you.”

“I take it that this means I get the boat?”

“Yes, but if you put any more cigarette burns in the seat cushions, I’ll be using you for an anchor in future. Now-first question: do you know where Constance Kent lived?”

“Rode,” said Kenneth O’Connor without a moment’s pause. “Do I win a prize?”

“A box of chocolates from Christiana Edmunds,” snapped Rowan. A laugh from the other end of the phone told him that Kenneth recognized the name of nineteenth-century Brighton’s lovelorn lady poisoner. “Everybody knows Constance Kent lived near Rode, Kenneth. We want to know if the house is still standing. Can it be seen from the road? One of my tourists wants to go there.”

“I’ll see if I can find out for you. When will you be home again?”

“Monday night. There’s one other matter.”

“Yes?”

“One of the group fancies she’s a mystery novelist,” he lied. “Can you recommend a good poison?”

The next morning dawned sunny and warm, a fact observed by the mystery tour members at varying times between six and nine o’clock, when they either stumbled groggily or sprinted happily into the hotel dining room for breakfast. By ten o’clock everyone was fed and armed with sweaters, comfortable walking shoes, and credit cards, ready for an enlightening tour of Exeter.

Alice MacKenzie observed that for the first time on the tour, Elizabeth MacPherson was also carrying a pen and notebook. “Are you especially interested in Exeter?” she asked.

“It is Saturday morning,” said Elizabeth cryptically. “And Rowan is not within a hundred miles of here.”

A tiny and earnest-looking woman wearing a red blazer met them in the hotel foyer and introduced herself as Mrs. Lacey, their city guide. She captured Elizabeth’s attention at once by explaining that the hotel parking lot had been built on top of an old city plague pit. Elizabeth was still staring down wistfully at an immovable expanse of asphalt when the less ghoulish members of the party moved along toward the remains of the old city wall, just behind the hotel. As yet, she had written nothing in her notebook.

As they walked down the narrow lane that ended beside the cathedral green, Mrs. Lacey pointed out the well-preserved medieval houses, still in use, and began her recital of city history, beginning with the Roman occupation in 55 A.D.

“We will end our tour with the cathedral,” she explained as she led them past the West Front, with its beautiful carved Image Screen of saints. “It is within sight of your hotel and I am sure that you can all find your way back from there. Just now we will go to another quaint old street, where the BBC filmed some scenes in one of its Dickens dramatizations.”

This television reference set Susan off on a litany of her favorite British imports, and it took them another block and a half to shut her up.

As they walked through the bustling streets, Mrs. Lacey pointed out historic buildings, mentioning that the city was home to Sir Walter Raleigh, and that Queen Henrietta, wife of Charles I, had been sent here for safety during the Civil War. (Susan’s response in kind left the guide silently wondering who Hubert Humphrey was.)

“There was once a statue of Henry VII, but it was destroyed in the bombing in World War II. The statue was in honor of Henry’s entry into Exeter in 1497, after the city had withstood a siege by the pretender Perkin Warbeck.”

“The statue was never restored?” asked Martha Tabram, who probably chaired similar civic committees in Vancouver.

“Well, there is another statue of Henry,” said Mrs. Lacey. “I wouldn’t call it a restoration.” With some misgivings she pointed to a fiberglass image of a knight in armor on the façade of a department store.

Susan Cohen spoke up. “In Minneapolis we have an outdoor sculpture garden that has an enormous red cherry poised on the end of a giant spoon. It’s called the Spoonbridge, and it’s about twenty feet tall!”

Gravely the guide looked up at the fiberglass likeness of the first Tudor monarch. “Well,” she conceded, “I suppose it could be worse at that.”

They continued their walk through the crowded streets past the ruins of a church destroyed by Luftwaffe bombing and into a newer-looking part of the city, all built on the sites of the historic ones lost in the war. Finally they came to Princess Elizabeth Square, an open promenade lined with shops, newly constructed after World War II to replace the buildings destroyed by enemy bombing. “The present queen-Princess Elizabeth she was then-came down and dedicated the square as the first step toward the rebuilding of Exeter.”

During this part of the tour, Susan Cohen had little to contribute by way of comparison with her hometown, since Minneapolis had never been bombed by enemy forces. (Though certain members of the party were beginning to wish that it had.)

Elizabeth was scribbling furiously in her notebook, adding diagrams and arrows to her text. Alice leaned over to catch a glimpse of the writing, but she was unable to decipher it. The tour proceeded at a brisk pace, without shopping breaks, and without backtracking. Mrs. Lacey was a wealth of information on historic buildings, medieval celebrities, and dates. She said very little about the mercantile aspects of the city, past or present.

Nearly an hour later the group stood once again at the west front of Exeter Cathedral, arriving there by a circular route that did not involve the retracing of their previous paths. Elizabeth’s note-taking had been steady throughout the latter part of the excursion, although Alice had been unable to determine any correlation between the guide’s remarks and the fervor of Elizabeth’s note-taking.

“What are you doing?” she whispered.

“Tell you later,” muttered Elizabeth.

Compared to Winchester, the only other cathedral they had seen, Exeter looked rather wide and squat. It lacked the tall spires and the sprawling length of Winchester, but the exterior decoration was much more ornate. The entire west front of the cathedral was decorated with a pantheon of life-sized figures. Jesus and his apostles had pride of place above the central doorway, above more figures of kings, confessors, and prophets. The lowest row of statues depicted angels.

“Why are the statues damaged?” asked Frances Coles, pointing to a crowned figure who was missing several facial parts.

“Not the Blitz?” asked Alice. She had about decided that the Germans and the French deserved each other.

“No,” said Mrs. Lacey sadly. “The damage goes back to medieval times, I’m afraid. In those days people were very superstitious about the miraculous healing powers of saints. People used to chip off bits of the statues in hopes that the blessed stone would effect a cure for themselves or a loved one. Some of the statues have been replaced over the years. That king on the right is a new one. Now let’s go inside.”

Susan Cohen whispered to Elizabeth, “Since the statues are already so damaged, they probably wouldn’t notice if I broke off another little piece as a souvenir.”

“Try it and I’ll break your arm,” Elizabeth whispered back.

Elizabeth took no notes at all during the cathedral tour. She followed along in an abstracted way, while the rest of the party admired the rib vaulting of the ceiling (“finest decorated Gothic vault in existence”), and she came out of her reverie briefly to examine the carvings beneath the choir seats. The undersides of the seats were fashioned with a small shelf so that weary choir members might slump against these supports and still remain in a standing position. Mrs. Lacey explained that because the choir members were going to rest their posteriors on the misereres, the builders considered it inappropriate to decorate them with images of saints or other divine symbols around them. Instead, they carved a variety of secular items in the choir seats, so that the wood could be decorated without impropriety.

“This is meant to be the image of an elephant,” she told them, pointing to an object with tusks and hooves, carved under stall 44. “We think the artist did it from hearsay.”

“Well, it isn’t too bad,” said Frances Coles, who had seen her second-graders do worse after an eyewitness encounter with the beast.

Charles Warren carefully photographed the elephant seat, with and without the tour members grouped around it. Emma asked a number of technical questions about cathedral restoration, and Maud Marsh made a note of the times services were held.

“I may come back for Evensong,” she told the guide.

“I’ll come with you,” said Alice.

At 11:55 Mrs. Lacey finished the whirlwind tour at the west front of the cathedral and wished them a pleasant stay in Exeter. Most of the group started back for the hotel, where lunch was being served, and Susan was complaining that her feet hurt because Italians didn’t know how to make shoes. When Kate, Alice, and Frances declared themselves ready for more walking, Elizabeth looked at her watch. “We have fifty-five minutes until the baron wants us for rehearsal,” she announced.

“We could go shopping,” said Kate Conway wistfully. “But it would mean missing lunch.”

“I’d rather shop than eat,” said Elizabeth.

Frances Coles burrowed into her cavernous purse. “I saved some rolls from breakfast if anyone else would like one.”

Alice MacKenzie looked longingly at the maze of streets leading away from the cathedral. “I just wish we could find our way back to some of those shops we passed on the tour.”

“We can,” said Elizabeth, holding up her notebook. “I mapped the entire route, and made a note of all the best shops. But we only have an hour. Run!”

Two woolshops, five clothing stores, and eight curio vendors later, the weary shoppers returned to the hotel, laden with packages and too late for lunch, but triumphant in their success at having achieved an entire hour for a guide-free rampage in an English city.

“Rowan would be very disappointed in us,” said Frances Coles. “We should have been visiting museums or something.”

“Consider it a contribution to the local economy,” Elizabeth advised her.

After depositing the packages in their respective rooms, they hurried downstairs to the lower level, where the 1928 movie company was rehearsing its screen melodrama in the room that had been a banquet hall the night before. Now it was dark and the tables were gone. In their place stood a wooden coffin on sawhorses, illuminated by a brace of candles. The spectators lined the walls watching Sir Herbert the actor (Dracula) embrace a beautiful young victim.

“Did we miss much?” asked Elizabeth, who managed to recognize Martha Tabram in the semidarkness. Alice, Frances, and Kate crowded around to hear her whispered reply.

“They’re casting stand-ins for the actors. Sir Herbert was particularly asking for you, Kate.”

Kate blushed and hurried over to join the actors. Soon she was decked out in a white nightgown, ready to be the bride of Dracula.

Martha Tabram turned back to the shoppers. “Oh, before we began, the baron announced that Miss Jenkins had died of arsenic poisoning.” She laughed. “He read a list of symptoms that she displayed at the hospital. They tallied exactly with the ones you mentioned last night, Elizabeth.”

“Nice save on their part,” muttered Elizabeth grudgingly.

“Wouldn’t it be funny if she really were dead,” mused Frances.

“If so, I think you’ll find that she has been reincarnated,” said Martha. “Look at that woman standing beside the coffin.”

“The blonde?” asked Frances, squinting into the darkness. “She looks very young and beautiful to me.”

“So she does,” Martha agreed. “But if you put her in a frumpy gray wig and a shapeless dress, she could appear considerably older. It’s the same actress. Very clever of them. There wouldn’t be much point in having a member of the company out of commission after the first hour of the weekend.”

“Then it isn’t a clue,” said Alice, disappointed.

“No,” said Martha. “I just wanted to set Frances’ mind at rest. The secretary may be dead, but the actress who played her is very much alive.”

The cleverness of the acting company was further exhibited later that same afternoon. On the hotel terrace a sword-fight was staged between their two principal actors, with all the mystery guests watching from the sidelines. As they thrust and parried, the young blond Mr. Scott was cut on the arm. Ginger, the leading lady vampire, hurried him away to have it bandaged. This time Kate did not offer her nursing skills.

“Well, he’s dead,” said Alice MacKenzie cheerfully.

“Oh, I don’t think so,” protested Frances. “It was only a little scratch.”

“Hamlet,” Alice replied. “A little poison on the sword and he’s done for.”

“Better still,” said Susan Cohen, “irradiated thallium! Rick Boyer used that in Moscow Metal. You get it out of nuclear power plants and put it on a pellet or knife blade in order to penetrate the skin. See, in the novel-”

“Susan… Susan!” Elizabeth MacPherson was shaking her head sadly. “It’s 1928, Susan. No irradiated thallium. No nuclear power plants.”

“Curare?” said Susan hopefully. “There’s another book…”

Several minutes later the answer to their speculations proved to be: none of the above. The actor reappeared with a bandaged arm, in good spirits again, and ready to resume rehearsal. It was only then that people noticed that another member of the cast was missing. Ten minutes of frantic searching by all concerned resulted in the discovery of his body in the hallway outside the banquet room. He was theatrically dead.

“Well,” said Maud Marsh philosophically. “They got us on that one. Did any of you see him leave?”

“No,” said Kate Conway. “I was too busy worrying about the sword wound.”

Emma Smith and her mother were comparing notes. “At least this pares down the list of suspects,” she remarked. “At this rate there won’t be many people left by tomorrow morning.”

“If we get any more clues, we’ll let you know,” said Elizabeth kindly.

After dinner that night there were more goings-on. The amateur sleuths were summoned to the leading lady’s room by a distraught Mr. Scott and a new murder victim was discovered, dead on the bathroom floor, with Mr. Scott’s scarf wound around her neck. Clues were dispensed left and right as the actors quarreled and expressed their sorrow over the loss of the grande dame. Elizabeth had been spending a quiet evening in her room, intending to write some letters, but after the dramatic interruptions, she was out of the mood for solitary correspondence. Instead she invited Kate Conway and Frances Coles back to her room for hot chocolate.

“It’s wonderful having these little electric kettles in the hotel rooms!” said Frances, as she settled in the chintz chair beside the window. She was wearing a dark green dressing gown that set off her auburn hair. “I wish American hotels would think of doing that.”

“They’re probably afraid the guests would burn the place down,” said Elizabeth. “Which they probably would.”

Kate Conway, in a white gown reminiscent of her bride of Dracula costume, sat down on the bed, nibbling on a piece of shortbread. “I still don’t know who the murderer will turn out to be. I thought it was Lady Alice, but now she’s dead. That was an exciting episode tonight, wasn’t it?”

“I’m glad they’ve taken to strangling people,” Elizabeth replied. “They weren’t sound at all on poisons.”

“Do you think they’ve killed everyone that they’re going to?” asked Frances.

“I expect so,” said Elizabeth. “It’s Saturday night. They’re running out of time.”

Kate giggled. “Too bad they can’t kill Susan Cohen.”

Frances Coles gasped. “It’s so odd that you should say that! I was thinking the same thing. And yet, she’s really a very nice person.”

Elizabeth unplugged the kettle and prepared their hot cocoa. “She’s a nice person in small doses,” she said. “But it’s the cumulative effect that’s wearing. After four days of Minneapolis travelogues and mystery fiction plot summaries, I think we’re all about ready to kill her.”

“I don’t think she’s used to interacting socially,” said Frances Coles. “Sometimes I get a second-grader who alienates the rest of the class just the way Susan does. It usually means they haven’t had much practice in getting along with people. I’ll bet she’s an only child.”

“But she’s very pretty,” Kate Conway pointed out. “It’s strange that we don’t like her. She’s so confrontational, which is strange. Pretty people usually find it very easy to socialize.”

“I can explain that,” said Elizabeth. She told them about Susan’s recent plastic surgery and her transformation from ugly duckling to swan.

“So that’s it,” said Kate, glancing at her own pretty face in the dressing table mirror. “Susan hasn’t learned how to stop acting like a wallflower. She’s only pretty on the outside; she doesn’t believe it yet.”

“Or perhaps she talks all the time to make up for all the times that she was lonely,” said Frances sadly. “It’s really awful of us to be so hard on her.”

Elizabeth raised her eyebrows. “Well, then… would you like me to invite her over for chocolate now?”

“No!” cried Kate and Frances in unison.

At breakfast the next morning Elizabeth and the other members of the mystery tour sat together, comparing notes so that they could turn in their whodunit ballots.

“Don’t forget we have to consider motive,” Susan reminded them. “You get points for guessing who did it and separate points for saying why.”

Frances Coles groaned. “Everybody has a motive. Mr. Scott could be Sir Herbert’s long-lost son, and Jackie and Ginger may be sisters, and what about the diamond smuggling clue?”

“I think the baron did it,” said Alice MacKenzie.

“The baron? Why?”

“Because it’s 1928,” said Alice darkly. “And he’s German.” After a moment of stunned silence, Susan burst out laughing. “Don’t be ridiculous! It’s one of the women. The baron is so obvious that only an idiot would fall for it. Now is it Jackie or Ginger? Or maybe Gladys was only pretending to be dead…”

“Detecting is very difficult in 1928,” Elizabeth complained. “I wish I could get hold of some decent forensic evidence.”

“We’d better huny and mark our ballots,” said Kate Con-way. “That Eylesbarrow woman is herding everybody toward the banquet room for the final confrontation. Who shall we put? Jackie or Ginger?”

“I’ll vote for whoever you pick, Alice,” said Frances Coles loyally.

“Let’s split our votes,” Alice suggested, glaring at Susan. “Then at least one of us will win.”

At ten minutes until one the members of the murder tour assembled with their bags in the hotel lobby, still rehashing the murder mystery weekend and chatting with two of the actors, who were now out of character. Rowan Rover appeared a few minutes later, with his canvas bag slung over his shoulders, and sporting freshly laundered khaki trousers.

“Good afternoon, everybody! I see that Bernard has returned and is pulling the coach up out front. Did you enjoy the murder weekend?”

“It was quite well done,” said Kate Conway with her usual look of big-eyed sincerity.

“It could have been anybody,” Susan Cohen declared, scowling.

“And did you solve the crime?”

“We did!” cried Miriam Angel, holding up the bottle of wine that was their trophy. “Emma and I were the only ones who guessed who did it!”

“And who did it?” asked Rowan indulgently.

“Why the baron, of course!” said Miriam.