Funeral of Figaro by Ellis Peters

Author:Ellis Peters
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781480444553
Publisher: MysteriousPress.com/Open Road

Chapter Five

Musgrave came and went by the stage-door these days, like a member of the company who had rights there; yet most unlike, for wherever he passed a slight chill followed, a stillness and a hush. Hands froze on what they were doing, voices dried up for a moment in contracted throats, heads turned stealthily, stiffly, trying not to be caught at it. He was like walking bad luck, the evil eye on two legs. Mateo, who was Maltese and not quite canny himself, actually marked a thumb-sign surreptitiously on his thigh as the alien went by.

Playing solo in Sam’s box during their lunch hour, they felt him enter, and the cards hung suspended over the table until he had passed. Hero, sitting in with a hand while Stoker Bates shopped for his missus, looked up with the ace poised in her hand, and could not put it down until he had gone past the glass hatch and vanished. It was wrong, it was cruel; he wasn’t even a bad fellow, and yet they all felt leagued against him, drawn into a solid phalanx of enmity as soon as he appeared. Why? Did they really believe one of their own people had killed Chatrier?

Yes, they did. They really believed it. She felt that intensely as she played her card and made her solo. Did they also have clearly conceived ideas about who the murderer could be? When she came to consider it, she was sure that they had; but they were hiding them even from themselves, and no two of them had quite the same theory.

Stoker Bates, by his more than usually protective attitude, favoured herself. She had never thought of it in that light before, and it caused a shudder of mingled horror and gratitude to run down her spine. They would love her even if she’d killed a man! They would close in round her more formidably than ever. Then was that why Sam was following Johnny about so faithfully, more than ever like a devoted guard-dog?

The shadow had withdrawn from them, and the silence went with him. Only Codger, who experienced their fears and forebodings dimly as a tremor of dread shaking his flesh, sat uncomprehending and mute knitting away industriously at Hans Selverer’s blue-grey sweater, his large, confiding and yet unfathomable eyes fixed upon her. She was Johnny’s; in the absence of Johnny himself she represented him, and Codger watched her jealously and lovingly, the sum and symbol of faithfulness.

‘I thought we might be shut of him,’ said Mateo, dark eyes following the sound of Musgrave’s feet along the corridor while his head never turned, ‘once the inquest was over.’

‘He hasn’t found his bit o’ ribbon yet,’ said Sam, shuffling the cards. ‘Likely he never will, and we shall have him running round grey-headed, give him time, like Lord Lovell looking for his bride. That isn’t the way I like the ghost to walk. Your call, Chippy.’

‘Is the inquest over?’ asked Hero, sorting her cards between her fingers with expert speed.

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