The Mammoth Book of Locked-Room Mysteries And Impossible Crimes

MURDER STRIPS OFF by Amy Myers

I should have expected it! When I first contacted authors in the hope they’d be interested in contributing to this anthology I was delighted with the diversity and originality of ideas that were suggested. And yes, I should have expected it. After all, what could be more impossible than a murder committed in full view of an audience when the only possible suspects are the strippers on the stage! And it’s very clear that they had no weapons to hand! Amy Myers(b.1938)is the author of the popular series featuring August Didier, the Victorian/Edwardian chef/detective. The following story delightfully introduces Nick Didier, following in his great-grandfather’s footsteps.

“Never again.” Hamish Scott scrabbled into his clothes for dear life. “Those hyenas are going to tear it off one of these days. Count me out.”

“If I had a prick like yours, mate,” Paul Duncan sniggered, eyeing the weedy former schoolteacher from top to toe, “I’d feel the same.” He squared his footballer’s shoulders, and admired himself in the cracked mirror of the scruffy room allotted to them at the pub.

“I’m with you, Hamish.” Jason Knight saw where his best interests lay, but the redundant salesman in him sought to smooth things over. “None of us can quit, can we, Greta?” They couldn’t – she’d made sure of that.

“Glad you remembered which side your privates are buttered.” Tony Hobbs (ex-colonel) heaved himself up ostentatiously with the aid of his stick, banged it on the floor to emphasize his authority, and limped to the piano to place an affectionate hand on his wife’s shoulder. “I’ve worked my ass off managing you lot, and so’s Greta.”

The three men kept silent as they bitterly recalled just how darling Greta had worked her ass off on their account.

“If only my boys would try to get along better,” Greta purred reproachfully, but the small black eyes in the solid face flickered malevolently. “You all dance to my tunes so admirably it seems a pity to break the trio up. Perhaps I’ll try a new routine. How would that be?”

Even Tony danced to Greta’s tune, but tonight Hamish had reached breaking point. “I won’t do it. I won’t even do Wednesday.” His voice rose to a shriek. “I want out now!”

“Oh, you will mate,” Paul said viciously. Wednesday meant serious money, even the vastly reduced amount that dribbled down to them, and no replacement could learn the routines in two days. “Face it, Hamish. She’s got us by the short and curlies.”

“Sweet of you, my great big cuddly teddy bear. Tonight’s teddy bear?” Greta suggested lightly, while her husband listened impassively.

Paul fell suddenly silent, and Justin saw his chance.

“Come on, Hamish. One more show won’t kill you.”

“All right, but Wednesday’s the last.” Hamish hurled his defiance at their trainer, pianist and de facto boss.

Greta grinned. “Over my dead body.”

How did he land up in this hole? It was Nick Didier’s philosophy that a job was a job and even the most repellent had something to offer if you could stand back a few paces and think of something worse. Spider-catching in Antarctica, for instance. He hated the cold, he hated spiders, and compared with these horrors catering for Women’s Only Night at a steamy club looked tolerable, even if they were gathered to watch male strippers. This trio, The Bubbling Berties, hardly lived up to their name – they looked dead miserable.

“Fancy ’em, do you?.

Les leered over Nick’s shoulder, as he watched the trio from the doorway of the kitchen at the side of the hall. Les’s Crappy Catering Company (as Nick termed it) had finished its own role for the evening, and two hundred or so women were gearing up to scream their loudest, having drunk enough to dull their indigestion pains.

“I’d sooner fancy your food, mate,” Nick replied amiably.

Les only laughed. His only concession to haute cuisine was the names he gave the muck. Turkish Salsa, Thai Salad of Minty Prawns, and Cajun Chicken à l’Orange turned out to be yoghurt flavoured with almond essence, pink slop prawn cocktail (with a parsley leaf as garnish if it wasn’t too expensive) capped by your old friend fried chicken with a tired orange segment. With the right names the ladies would love roasted cowpats, Les maintained, only he didn’t call them cowpats.

Four weeks in the food trade had convinced Nick this career was not for him. Apparently his great-grandfather had been a master chef. Good luck to the old codger. Then Dad had changed his mind and said he was a detective. Yeah, great, Nick had thought jealously. The Case of the Stolen Spotted Dick maybe. Detection was his thing, he didn’t want to tread in family footprints.

Les seemed to have a point about the cowpats, judging by the approving noise level as dinner was served. And now it was being raised even higher, as the Bubbling Berties, seated at a bar across the rear of the stage with their backs to the audience, went into action:

“Oh, what a bubbling gent I am...”

The three top-hatted, tuxedo-clad men burst into song as they whizzed round on their barstools, raising glasses of something that sparkled, whether champagne or not. The glasses were twirled, and raised again as the Berties simultaneously (or almost) drank a toast to the audience.

Directly in front of Nick, an upright piano on floor level by the low stage was being pounded by a middle-aged woman in a tight black evening dress she’d outgrown several sizes earlier. That must be Greta Hobbs, he decided. She was some sort of cousin of Les’s, and apparently it was she who had persuaded the misguided owner of the club into making use of Les’s services. Greta picked up a glass standing on the piano top, to swig champagne in a toast to her troupe, and as the bubbles in it sparkled in the brightness of the spotlight above her, the Berties awarded her a toast in return.

Nick’s mind began to fantasize. Suppose inside that piano there was a gun rigged up ready to shoot the pianist, as in Ngaio Marsh’s novel? Or even a poisoned dart? That way suspicion would fall on someone on stage, but because everyone was watching, no one could possibly have done it. It would be the impossible murder. Yes! He liked it.

Somewhat reluctantly, it seemed to him, the Berties were launching themselves into an inefficient dance routine, as various items of outer clothing and then shirts were discarded, and the audience began to rehearse their war whoops. The top hats, however, remained firmly on the Berties’ heads.

On retiring to their stools, a skinny individual who didn’t look as if he gained much work satisfaction wove his way in a double shuffle, glass once more in hand, to the corner where the piano top provided a convenient resting place for it as he proceeded to remove his trousers. He tossed them into the wings, crooning his solo verse:

“I bubble every evening and I bubble every day...”

Nick decided the loud roars of enthusiasm could only be anticipation for future revelations when the scarlet bikini briefs disappeared. The elderly gent sitting at the end of the front row behind her was already waving his stick in excitement.

“What’s that old geezer doing amongst all these women?” he asked Les.

“That old geezer, son, is Colonel Tony Hobbs, retired, Greta’s ever-adoring husband and the Bubbling Berties’ manager.” Les cast a scornful look at the Bertie currently bubbling in the limelight. “And that’s Hamish Scott. Greta took pity on him when he cracked up -” Les was a fair man, so he added, “- if you can call it that. She fancied a bit of intellect, she said, even though he’s not much better than Tony in the how’s your father department.’

With obvious relief, and abandoning his glass, Hamish wriggled his way back to the bar to join his colleagues for the next chorus. The solo routine was then repeated, first by the beefy white-briefed Bertie (“Paul Duncan”, Les sniggered. “All three of them are her ex-lovers, but in Paul’s case not so much of the ‘ex’.”) and then by the younger one sporting natty bright blue bikini briefs. Les obliged again. “Jason Knight, replaced at work by a computer. Greta offered him the job no computer can do.”

All three Bubbling Berties were back at the bar for the last chorus, displaying their patriotically-clad lower limbs. Their three glasses remained with Greta’s on the piano-top, but still they hung on to their top hats. It gave a remarkably seedy, almost obscene effect, and those hats began to exert a fascination over Nick. When – if ever – would they come off?

Not yet. The removal of the briefs was discreetly managed behind the stools, and as the music changed to the traditional stripper music the audience was treated to the sight of three G-stringed Berties standing at the bar, first Paul on stage left, then Hamish in the middle, then Justin, and drinking from a second set of champagne-filled glasses. Smoke and audience noise reached a crescendo, as the be-thonged trio, hands on hips, legs apart, faced their increasingly appreciative audience.

Nick gulped. The whole affair was repulsive. Perhaps women viewed it differently, although none of his girlfriends had ever been into this kind of thing. It occurred to him uneasily they were hardly likely to tell him, even if they were.

The music crashed out towards its finale, with all eyes glued to the thongs. At last they were whipped away and the Bubbling Berties displayed all their glory to a now hysterical audience. (Nick must have been the only spectator looking at those terrible top hats.) Some women were climbing on their seats, others seemed ready to rush the stage.

In a crowning act of bravado the Berties marched to the piano, and reclaimed their abandoned glasses. At long last the hats were discarded, tossed to a waiting hand from the wings, as they toasted their pianist once again. Greta rose to her feet, toasted them, and resumed her seat to continue the triumphant musical finale.

“Amazing, ain’t it?” Les seemed admiring of this ghastly performance. “You’d never think they loathed each other – and that they hate old Greta even more.”

“I thought you said they were her lovers.”

“She blackmailed them into starting this game by saying she’d tell their wives. She’s a sexy old thing is Greta, and her husband’s useless. Now she won’t let them leave.”

“They’ve got minds of their own, haven’t they?”

“If they had once, Greta brainwashed them with dreams of fame and fortune in Hollywood, and by pointing out how upset their wives would be to miss out on the Oscars and the Tony. And how much their wives wouldn’t like to hear their housekeeping cash comes from other women screaming at their husbands’ pride and joys. Someone will do the old bag in one day,” he added casually.

“Murder? You’re not serious, Les?”

A harsh jangle rang out from the piano, as Greta’s fingers slipped from the keys, her face convulsed. Her body first slumped, then took the stool with it as it crashed to the floor.

It was his knowledge of first aid that sent Nick unwillingly to the Greta’s side. It was one thing to fantasize on poisoned darts, quite another to face a possibly dead body. Her husband was hobbling around in shock waving his stick at all and sundry, but that was a fat lot of use.

First aid looked redundant, and if Nick’s suspicions about its being some sort of cyanide poisoning were right, he had to act quickly. She might not be dead, and if she were, there might be evidence lying around. Poisoned darts? Standing tall to every one of his 5 foot 4 inches, he croaked to the club owner: “Call the police as well as the ambulance, and keep the audience here. No one should touch anything. Not even-” he yelled, seeing Paul halfway into his thong, “that”.

“Listen, mate,” Paul said viciously, “I ain’t proposing to stand here like a limp chili pod waiting for the fuzz just because old Greta’s had a drop too much.’

Nick summoned up his courage. “She may have been murdered.”

That stopped all three Berties, thongs or no thongs, and a red-faced Tony Hobbs came charging onto the stage, yelling, “It was one of you, wasn’t it? You bastards, you murdered my wife. Which one of you did it?”

“I said may,” Nick shouted. “But I can’t see how. It would have been impossible, except by a poisoned dart – unless -”

“Impossible’s enough for me,” Paul interrupted. “I’m putting my thong on. Want to make anything of it, nipper?”

Nick didn’t, and the other two Berties quickly followed Paul’s lead.

“Aren’t we the little hero, then?” Les was torn between his usual sneer and reluctant admiration. “The club won’t be offering you any medals for inviting the fuzz, though, they come all too often without asking.”

“Tough.” Nick still felt shaky at his own daring.

The ambulance arrived at the same time as the patrol car, and it became clear that Nick’s diagnosis of unnatural death might be correct.

“How do you know so much about it, anyway?” Les averted his eyes from his cousin’s corpse, lying by the piano by itself, awaiting the arrival of higher police authority. It looked lonely, and Nick felt protective of the late Greta Hobbs.

“She smelt like your Turkish Salsa gone wrong, that’s why. And she’d blue lips and thrown up.” It didn’t seem right talking about it.

“Maybe that was the chicken,” Les said uneasily. He’d sent some food to the group before the show began.

Sherlock Holmes used to be treated with more respect, Nick reflected bitterly, as he retired to a corner with Les. He was an aficionado of crime fiction from Poe through Conan Doyle, Dorothy Sayers, Christie, right up to Peter and Phil Lovesey, Chaz Brenchley and anything he could lay his hands on. He was addicted, whether it be hard-boiled realism or soft-boiled cosy, and irrespective of whether great-grandad used to dabble with a magnifying glass in deepest Muckshire. Tonight Nick’s nose had twitched just as it had in protest at Les putting dried parsley in the prawns. Something hadn’t been right.

When higher police authority arrived, Nick had visions of Jack Frost clapping him on the back, or Inspector Morse reluctantly congratulating him. Unfortunately Detective Superintendent Bishop wasn’t like either of them. His amiable smile gave him the look of everybody’s ideal family doctor. While the police doctor was examining the corpse and most of the audience were filing out under the guidance of a sergeant, he was ambling around the taped-off areas of stage and auditorium like a lazy trout, but Nick couldn’t help noticing his eyes darted everywhere like a particularly hungry piranha fish. They fell on Nick and Les.

“Who might you be? Two more strippers?”

“Catering staff,” Les growled. “We done the supper.”

Nick nudged him, seeing pitfalls ahead, but the piranha spotted him.

“I don’t wonder you’re worried, sir,” he said soothingly to Nick. “We won’t know for sure this is poison till the PM’s done, but you’ll have a few questions to answer if it is. You won’t mind that, I’m sure.”

“I was the one who said you should be called in,” Nick yelped.

Bishop shook his head sadly. “The last fellow who tried that double bluff on me is doing life.”

“If it was cyanide,” Nick said desperately, “it must have been on a poisoned dart unless-” An eyebrow was raised, and he continued hastily, “Our dinner was over by nine o’clock and she didn’t die till ten-twenty.” Too late, he realized poisoned darts were out, for he wouldn’t have smelled almonds then.

“Fancy you knowing what poison it might have been, sir. Washed everything up, have you?”

“Yes,” Les answered bleakly.

“Don’t worry about a thing, sir. We’ll find something,” Bishop assured him cheerily. “If there’s anything to find,” he added as a throwaway.

“Did any of the glasses on the piano smell of almonds?” Nick asked hopefully.

Bishop’s smile became even more genial. “Why? Didn’t drop anything in, did you?”

“No.” It came out as a bleat.

“Just joking, lad. You’ll get used to my merry sense of humour. Why do you think the poison was in a glass?”

“I don’t, because although she had just drunk from one-”

“Who filled it?”

“I don’t know, but she couldn’t have died that way.” Nick could wait no longer to produce his ace. “She’d drunk from it earlier without ill-effect, and the Berties had all drunk from the other three glasses on the piano. Suicide is out because she couldn’t have added anything to the glass between the two toasts. So unless the poison was added intentionally by someone on stage, murder would be impossible.”

A silence, then Bishop said: “Impossible isn’t a word I like.” He beckoned to the three Berties, still sitting miserably on stage in their thongs, resentful of the scene of crime’s photographers’ ill-concealed smirks.

Bishop saw Nick’s struggles to control an insane desire to laugh. “Shock, lad. Seen many corpses, have you?”

“No.”

“I have, and thank God I never get over it. When you do, that’s the time to quit.”

Tony Hobbs was sitting in the first row of seats outside the tape, declaring at intervals that he was used to shock, making it sound as if his wife got murdered every day. He was ashen-faced, though, and in Nick’s opinion looked about to pass out as the Berties joined him.

“Our street clothes are over there,” Hamish told Bishop hopefully, pointing to the “wings” – an all-purpose room at the side of the stage where the lighting and curtain controls were.

“Now bagged up and the temporary property of Her Majesty’s Police Force, sir.”

A stunned silence. “You expect us to bloody well go home like this?” Justin screeched.

“No, we’ll need those thongs too.”

Hamish began to weep, and Bishop relented. “The sergeant will organize something. Can’t have you frightening the horses. Now, gentlemen, I want you to repeat exactly what you did this evening. And you,” he jabbed a finger at Nick, “keep out of it.”

Tony Hobbs elected to fill Bishop in on the background. “These three gentlemen worked to my wife’s choreography. At the beginning six glasses were put on the bar, two each for the men, and a seventh on the piano for my wife, and just before the show Greta filled them all herself. Any poison would have had to be added after that, I suppose,” he added forlornly, “since everyone drank from the same bottle.”

“Who,” Bishop enquired, “put the glasses in position before the show?”

“Hamish,” said his two colleagues gleefully.

“But we all drank from them earlier,” Hamish reminded Bishop anxiously as they began the routine, miming the striptease, and using seven glasses from the kitchen. “Murder’s impossible, just like the kid said.”

“Where did you get the glasses from?” Bishop asked.

“We bring them with us,” Hamish replied miserably. “I got them out of their case.”

Hamish couldn’t have doctored one beforehand, Nick realized happily; he was right. The poison could only have been added on stage.

As Hamish took his glass to the piano to begin the final stages of the striptease, Bishop interrupted. “Is that exactly where you placed your glass tonight?”

“I can’t remember.”

“Try,” Bishop suggested in his best family doctor manner.

Hamish slowly inched it somewhat nearer to the one representing Greta’s, which was on far stage left of the piano top, to be accessible for her right hand. When his turn came, Paul placed his just to the right of Hamish’s, leaving the three glasses in a row.

“It wasn’t there, mate,” Justin pointed out. “Yours was dead behind Greta’s, as it usually is. I saw you put it down, both times, and I put mine behind Hamish’s.”

“Maybe. I’ve other things on my mind,” Paul said sullenly.

“She told me Paul was going to be her blue-eyed boy tonight,” Les whispered to Nick.

“What did her husband think of that?”

“Doubt if he thought much of it, but he was used to it. Anyway, he thought she was the greatest thing since whisky.”

It seemed strange to Nick, but then what made one marriage work and another not was a mystery anyway. What he did know was that husbands were the natural suspect in the case of a murdered wife.

As if on cue, Tony returned to the attack. “I repeat, which one of you bastards did it?” he asked quietly. “It had to be one of you three and you all hated her. None of you appreciated her.”

“Tell me more,” Bishop suggested politely, as the trio remained silent.

It was Hamish who threw the first stone. “Why couldn’t someone have crept up from behind her? They could have added the poison, when Greta was watching us. She wouldn’t have noticed.”

“How about you, Tony?” Paul chimed in viciously. “You were nearest.”

Justin leapt on this convenient bandwagon. “Find out Paul was still hard at it, did you, Tony?”

Tony stared at them reproachfully. “Even if,” he said heavily, “I had any reason to wish harm to Greta, gentlemen, I was a good three feet away from the piano, I am a tall man, and I would have been visible in the light of the spot above her had I moved to poison my poor wife’s drink.” He sat down again, shaking with emotion. It looked genuine enough to Nick, and the facts were on Tony’s side.

“I would have seen you for a start,” Nick volunteered.

“You don’t think,” Bishop suggested mildly, “one of the two hundred ladies in the audience would have noticed too? Not one of them did.”

“Perhaps it was at the psychological moment.” Nick was suddenly inspired.

“What the hell’s that?” Paul grunted.

“When we showed our willies.” Hamish displayed his intellect. “Everyone’s eyes were riveted on us then. They wouldn’t have noticed anything else.”

“Ever taken an eye test?” Bishop smiled regretfully. “Most people have a field of vision that would be aware of some movement to the right or left, no matter what was going on. No murderer could take the risk of showing himself, spotlight or not. I fear the evidence so far suggests Mr Didier is right, that suicide is ruled out, and the poison could only have been added on stage.”

“Cheers, Nick,” Les said gratefully but prematurely.

“However,” Bishop beamed, “there is something none of you gentlemen seem to have considered, even you, Mr Didier.” Nick waited for the jaws to snap. “Poison isn’t a murderer’s manna, descending from the heavens. It has to come in something, whether it be a bottle for liquid or as in the case of cyanide, some form of box or wrapping for crystals.” Bishop sighed as he saw the blank faces around him.

“May I point out,” he continued softly, “that all three of you on stage ended up mother naked at the piano? Just how did one of you manage to both carry the poison there, and dispose of the container?”

A stunned silence, and then a united howl of relief from the Berties: “We didn’t!”

Nick thought this through. Be blowed if he was going to be eaten alive by Bishop. “They could have poisoned their own glass after they’d drunk from it the first time, taken it to the piano and then switched glasses with Greta’s.”

“Very good, lad,” Bishop said briskly. “But they’d still need to secrete the wrapping somewhere.” He turned to the Berties. “Did any of you gentlemen notice anything unusual about the placing of the glasses?”

No one had. The relative positions had been as normal. Although, in the haste of the routine, the spacing between each glass changed, the order of the four did not.

“And you, Mr Duncan – you were on stage left in the line-up by the bar, and at the piano finale, did you sense or see any movement to the rear of the piano? No dark-cloaked villains?”

Paul reluctantly shook his head.

“Well, then, gentlemen, it seems you’re in the clear.” A pause. “Unless your full body searches reveal anything.”

“You’re not bloody serious, are you?” Paul moaned.

“Oh, I am, Mr Duncan, believe me. The sergeant here is very gentle though – usually.”

Gentle or not, the sergeant found nothing.

“Wouldn’t body cavities be a dangerous place to conceal cyanide?” Nick had become absorbed in the problem.

“Remarkable the way you cooks know so much about poison,” Bishop said admiringly. “We’re taking samples from all your food and kitchen utensils, of course.”

Les howled. “How am I supposed to make a living?”

“It’s what made a death we’re here to find out. Every scrap of paper, clothing, food and glasses will be bagged up for forensics to check, and every millimetre of stage and kitchen will be searched.”

“The hats!” Nick cried desperately. “They kept them on almost to the end. The poison must have been concealed in one of them.”

“Who is that bloody little squirt?” Paul cast his eyes up to an unmerciful heaven.

“If so, we’ll find traces,” Bishop assured him. “The way we’re going at the moment, however, it looks as if we can rule out Greta Hobbs’ death by murder. Much as I dislike the word, it does look impossible.” He grinned at the now visibly rejoicing Berties. “Mind you, you’d be surprised how often we think that at this stage.”

The sight of a huge mobile caravan drawn up in the side street next to the club, obviously, from Nick’s careful study, an incident room, was unnerving and confirmation enough that it had been murder. That made his summons back here with Les all the more daunting. Curiosity fought with fear of the “fix it on anyone” approach so beloved by the police in his reading material. Even spider-catching in Antarctica suddenly seemed preferable.

“Ah, our young detective.” Bishop greeted him from one corner of the kitchen made available for a table and chairs. “You’ll be pleased to hear you can go.”

“But that’s a scene of crimes’ van outside, isn’t it?” Nick was taken aback.

“Must be the CIA.”

Nick lingered as Les hastily cleared up and left. “You mean she wasn’t poisoned?” He tried not to sound disappointed.

“She was, but we’ve cleared your food.”

“So it was the drink?”

“It was. Forensic had a sleepless night. Nothing in the bottle, nothing in any of the glasses – save the one nearest to the lady, which was bung full of cyanide. And before you say suicide, forensic have found no traces of crystals in her clothing or handbag.”

Nick bade a silent last farewell to poisoned darts. “Suppose one of the strippers poisoned one of the extra three glasses on the bar and took that with him over to the piano, instead of the one he’d first drunk from?”

“Ashamed of you, lad. Where did he keep the crystals? And there’d be a fifth glass on the piano.”

“The hat?” Nick asked without much hope.

“Forget about hats. They were clean, too. What is it every self-respecting amateur detective pounces on?”

Nick didn’t like being mocked. “Fingerprints.”

“Right. And that’s why Mr Paul Duncan is at the station helping with enquiries.”

“All the glasses would have Hamish Scott’s prints on.” Nick was thinking it through. “So if he were the murderer he wouldn’t need to worry about his prints being on Greta’s glass, but the others would.”

“Greta’s glass had Duncan’s prints on it as well as her own and Scott’s. If we could find how he transported the poison, we could wrap this up. Now, you’ve quite a name at Scotland Yard, so you think about it.”

“I’ve never even had a caution.” What the hell was this?

“I went there to the Black Museum a while ago. Back in the dark ages there was an Auguste Didier who helped Rose of the Yard in a few cases, generally those with fancy touches in them. Any relation?”

“Great-grandfather,” Nick muttered reluctantly. Too much eagerness to claim kinship might not go down too well, and in any case he wasn’t sure the news was welcome. True, an amateur detective in deepest Muckshire as a rival was way outclassed by one working with Scotland Yard. Maybe he’d check into it sometime.

“Just in case you have plans to follow in great-grandad’s footsteps, I solve my own cases. Plain and fancy. Right?”

“Right,” Nick hastily agreed.

“I don’t see how Paul Duncan can be guilty,” Nick proclaimed. Thinking of the impossible murder took his mind off his surroundings. Les’s kitchen in the rented industrial unit lurched its way through every food inspection, surviving more by luck of timing than merit.

“I told you to make that with huss.” Les peered peevishly at Nick’s work.

“For a monkfish kebab?”

“Who’s going to notice? It all gets charred to a cinder on the barbi.”

“All the Berties hated her, but they all stayed.”

“Ah, well, it was a living of some sort, even if Greta and good old Tony kept sixty per cent of it, and went on deluding them that they were building up a fund so that they could finance a launch into the big time. Not nice of Greta. It’s cheating,” Les added virtuously. He removed a chunk of fish from the end of each kebab. “Give ’em room to breathe,” he explained casually.

“No one came up from the rear, but what about from that side room on stage? The owner and his lighting chap were there. Of course, they still had to get the poison onto the stage.”

Les decided to be helpful. “You said it had to have been added between the two guzzling bouts. How about just stretching out from the wings?”

“Someone would have noticed a five-foot arm,” Nick retorted scathingly.

Les expired with a final shot. “Maybe it dropped from the ceiling. Now, could you condescend to earn some of that fortune I pay you?”

Nick did not reply. Les had set off a train of thought. He remembered Sherlock Holmes and the snake gliding down the bellrope; he remembered Dorothy Sayers, and an ingenious contraption; he even remembered poisoned darts…

“You again? Solved it yet?”

“I wondered if you’d checked the wings,” Nick blurted out, none too sure of his ground once faced with Bishop.

An amiable, if sardonic, smile. “Be my guest. Check ’em yourself. Let me know if I’ve missed anything. And let me tell you, Commander Bond, we’ve checked the spotlights and curtains half a dozen times. No cyanide crystals were showered down by guided missile, and no curtain rods left their moorings to deposit any either. Nor did anyone shoot a dart at her and poison the glass as a blind, or paint cyanide onto the piano keys so it would get absorbed into her fingers – but you didn’t think of that one.”

“No,” Nick admitted. “But the hats-”

Bishop smote his forehead. “Of course!” he cried. “Whyever didn’t you mention hats before?”

Nick ploughed doggedly on. “When the Berties stood at the piano nude, the last thing to go was the hats. Suppose the poison was held inside the brim and the murderer simply waved the hat low over the glass, released the poison somehow, then threw the hat offstage where it was switched for an identical unadulterated one.”

“Collusion? The owner will be pleased. You go and practise releasing cyanide crystals from a secret compartment on your head, as you jig up and down starkers. When you’ve succeeded, I’ll take you seriously.”

Nick subsided, crestfallen.

“If you can tell me how Paul Duncan did it – and I’m sure he did – I’ll stick a testimonial to you in the Black Museum,” Bishop said more kindly, “next to your ancestor. Remember, all these weird and wonderful ways you’ve doubtless read about in fiction didn’t have to pass the scrutiny of a couple of hundred screaming women – not to mention Mr Nick Didier’s. However glued they were to the attractions of the Berties’ persons, someone was going to see if poison shot down from the spotlights, just as they’d have noticed if any of the trio went fishing around in their fancy togs for a few cyanide crystals. Paul Duncan claims that he picked up Greta’s glass by accident; if he’s right, how did the poison get into his glass? I may be eating my own words, but perhaps this really is an impossible murder.”

“And I’ll eat my hat if it is,” Nick vowed silently.

If you eliminate the impossible, the improbable must be true, Nick told himself. It was an old-established principle in detective fiction. Only what was the improbable? If it was impossible for anyone on the stage to have carried out the murder, and the wings and ceiling had been ruled out, that left the audience – which had also been ruled out. Anyone walking up to her would have been noticed, and her husband who was closest was devoted to her. Even if that were a sham, Nick would undoubtedly have seen him, even at the critical moment of the strip, since he was tall enough for the full spotlight on the piano to pick him up if he approached his wife, and surely the women next to him and behind him would have noticed if he’d moved, even in the darkness.

So it was back to the Bubbling Berties, who had motive and opportunity, if not means of transporting the poison. Nick stared gloomily at Les’s Baked Alaska, composed more like traditional concrete than traditional meringue and ice-cream. Les’s inadequacies had driven Nick to look up a cookery book last night to see how these dishes should be made. There were critical moments in cooking a Baked Alaska. Extreme heat applied to extreme cold. Alaska was as cold as Antarctica, and cooking the baked version was as risky as spider-catching…

“If this is a wild goose chase, friend Didier, you’ll find you’ve cooked your own,” Bishop had threatened genially. But it wasn’t, and geniality had vanished by the time Bishop called him in again three days later. Bishop glared at him. “Are you expecting me to say I was wrong and you were right?”

“No, sir, I’m not expecting that.”

Bishop eyed him sharply. “And I don’t take to being mocked.” A pause. “What gave you the idea, incidentally?”

“My spider-catcher, sir,” Nick confessed shamefacedly. “It’s a handy gadget with a wire running from the handle; when it’s pulled, the trap at the end opens up. I thought something similar might suit our murderer’s purpose. A walking stick with a wire cut into it, and a removable tip to release the poison, would work very well, if he kept it at shoulder height to avoid the full spotlight on his wife, and chose his moment. I didn’t imagine he would keep the stick afterwards, of course, but I reasoned a blackmailer might make it his business to get hold of it. I doubt if your evidence bagging would go so far as to deprive a disabled man of his stick.”

“We did find it, and it was where you’d said it would be. Tony Hobbs is still denying he killed his wife, but you’ve helped me prove it,” Bishop generously admitted.

“No, I didn’t, sir. I don’t believe Tony did murder his wife. I don’t know whether or not he loved her, but he didn’t like her carrying on with other men, which she enjoyed flaunting. She underestimated his resentment, particularly when he found it was still going on. I think he knew he’d get nowhere by an outright challenge, so he chose this method. Unfortunately his intended victim, prancing around at the back of the stage as the Berties whipped off their thongs, spotted Tony doctoring his glass which was placed as usual behind Greta’s. He probably couldn’t believe his luck, when he cottoned on to what might be happening. If it was innocent, no problem. If it wasn’t, he could choose between denouncing Tony or seizing his own opportunity for a double hit: ridding himself of Greta and milking Tony dry.

“He chose, all right. When he returned to the piano, he picked up Greta’s glass, not his own, to drink from, probably using his left hand, and masking the extra stretch with his right arm from the other two. Then he replaced Greta’s glass behind his own, making sure the others did see him do so, and stole the stick at the first opportunity so that he could blackmail Tony into giving back all the money he’d pinched from them. He needed the stick because he couldn’t come forward later and suddenly claim to remember seeing Tony doctoring the glass, but he could ‘find’ the stick and allow it to ‘jog his memory’. And so it was Paul Duncan deliberately murdered Greta, not the Colonel.”

Nick grinned, as he added: “There was no reason for me to mock you. Two murders at half-cock don’t add up to one full monty. The murder of Greta Hobbs by Paul Duncan was impossible – just as you thought, sir.”