Murder on Stage: An utterly addictive historical cozy mystery (An Edie York Mystery Book 3) by F.L. Everett

Author:F.L. Everett [Everett, F.L.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bookouture
Published: 2024-06-18T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWELVE

Marie was awake when I arrived – and if she hadn’t been, Marple’s fusillade of barking would have woken King Arthur himself from centuries of slumber.

She opened the door now without the cheap wig, her dark hair sticking up in tufts. She was wearing a very expensive-looking cream satin dressing gown, and her feet were bare.

‘Edie!’ Marie cried, her voice cracked. ‘I thought you’d be at work. Have you seen my brother yet? Has he told you everything? Honestly, I think I should get a job as a spy, it was terribly thrilling⁠—’

‘Marie,’ I said, a sudden image of the dagger in Guy’s back almost making me sick with the horror of it. ‘May I come in? I have some upsetting news.’

‘Oh God.’ Her hand flew to her neck. ‘Not the children?’

‘Oh! No, no, nothing to do with them,’ I said, cursing myself for my insensitivity. Not having any myself, I had forgotten that mothers immediately assume all potential bad news relates to their offspring.

‘What is it, then? Oh Lord, have they found Ginny?’

She led me through to a small morning room painted in primrose-yellow distemper, followed obediently by Marple, who in the master’s absence seemed to have transferred his affections to his human aunt.

‘No,’ I said, ‘you might want to sit down, though.’ She slid into a wooden chair beside a plate of half-eaten toast and marmalade, her eyes fixed on me. I sat opposite, overlooking a pleasant little back garden, where chaffinches hopped on a bird table, and a magpie stabbed the lawn by the Anderson shelter with its razor-like beak.

‘Marie, Guy’s been killed.’

‘What?’ Her shout was so sudden, Marple jumped and banged his head on the table. I reached down to rub it for him.

‘I – we – found him, barely an hour ago. In his dressing room. Oh Marie, it was awful.’

I shook my head to try and block out the image, but I suspected it would be forever fixed, like a photograph floating in a developing tray. Guy’s strange posture, the gleam of the blade, the dark stain on his white shirt.

‘How?’ she asked, a hand over her mouth.

‘Stabbed,’ I told her, ‘with the Little Yellow God dagger. I’d assumed it was just a prop, but it seems it was real.’

‘Do they – does Lou know who…?’

‘Not a clue,’ I said. ‘He’s bringing Stanley Kerridge in for questioning. But I need to warn you, they may want you to give a statement. You were the last person to see him before he arrived at the theatre and Wallis Middleton let him in.’

Marie groaned. ‘Laurentine Cadieux was the last person to see him. A bespectacled, French theatre reviewer with a blonde wig that cost two and nine from a fancy dress shop. I suppose I’ll have to come clean with the police, and insist Lou didn’t know a thing about it. Oh Edie, I feel such a fool.’

‘It’s entirely my fault,’ I said. ‘Look, you get dressed while I take Marple into the garden, and then I suggest you tell me what you discovered last night.

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