Murder Offstage Read Online Free PDF

describe her to you,
either, as I’ve never seen her before. But she was stunningly beautiful,
apparently. I’m sorry if I’m wasting your time.’
    Dolly eyed her keenly. ‘No, no. You’re not.’
    Dolly was down on her knees, tipping the contents of the
manila file over the floor. There were perhaps twenty stage photos of girls
posing for the camera. Posie thought they all looked the same. Dolly grouped
them together, and running her hands through her cropped bleached hair she
stared at them all for a minute.
    ‘This one!’ she declared triumphantly, and flipped the photo
over on its reverse, as if performing a clever magic trick, finding the right
card in the pack. She looked up at Posie, grinning.
    ‘Knew the one you meant straightaway. I get to know all the
girls here, bein’ the Wardrobe Mistress. She was a tiny girl, like me. Slippery
as a fish, but a rare beauty all right. Called herself Georgie. Gone now.’
    Posie studied the photo quickly, and nodded. Dolly was
right, the girl in the snap had a wide-eyed childish beauty about her and
perhaps the loveliest face Posie had ever seen. No wonder poor old Rufus had
been taken in. She tucked the photo inside her bag.
    ‘Anything else in that folder you think will help me? An
address, a reference, even?’
    Dolly was searching frantically again, but with no luck this
time. A loud bang in the corridor outside reminded them they shouldn’t be
snooping around in someone else’s office. Dolly thrust the file back in the
cabinet and they slipped out. The noise of the orchestra was less out there.
Dolly lit up another black cigarette.
    ‘Some sort of trouble she’s in, is she? Georgie?’
    Posie shook her head apologetically. ‘I’m sorry. I can’t
tell you anymore just yet.’ She checked her wristwatch. ‘I’ve got to catch the
Manager just now, and then I’m off elsewhere. I’m on quite a tight schedule.’
    ‘Of course you are.’
    Posie caught a flash of disappointment in the girl’s face as
she nodded her understanding.
    ‘But tell you what,’ Posie said earnestly, ‘meet me tomorrow.
How about eleven at Lyons Cornerhouse on the Strand? I’ll tell you more then.’
    Dolly nodded eagerly. ‘Okay. Thanks. Now take these stairs
to the bar upstairs. Up two floors. Don’t expect to get any sense out of him
though.’
    ****
    A nervous-looking barman was wiping glasses busily at
one end of the bar, keeping himself well out of the way. At the other end a
squat, angry-looking man in his early thirties in a velvet smoking jacket was
keeping a bottle of bourbon company.
    Posie observed the man picking at his teeth with a small
wooden tooth-pick, and then replacing it, dirty, into the communal cut-glass
holder on the bar. She suppressed a shudder and walked forwards.
    ‘Mr Blake, I presume?’ Posie advanced at a confident, brisk
pace. Uninvited, she sat down quickly at the bar stool next to the Theatre
Manager. Experience told her there was no point in dragging out niceties with
men such as these.
    ‘Who the hell are you?’ Mr Blake asked rudely, looking at
Posie from small piggy eyes in a greasy, tired face. ‘You’re too old to
audition as a show-girl, I don’t take anyone over twenty-five. You’re too plain
too.’ The fumes of drink came off him strongly. Posie held her breath and
waited.
    ‘And you’re too fancily dressed to be looking for any other
work. So wad-daya want?’
    Posie felt the stolen photograph burning a hole in her bag.
    ‘Well, that was certainly a memorable introduction, thank
you. But no, I’m not after work in your lovely establishment. I’m looking for
someone. Someone who’s disappeared.’
    ‘Lionel? Lionel Le Merle?’ asked Mr Blake suddenly, eagerly,
thrusting his face further forwards. ‘Related, are you? You missing him too?’
    ‘Sorry? I don’t know who you…’ But in a blink Posie
remembered the missing First Violin Dolly had spoken of. ‘…Ah, no. No. I can’t
help you there, I’m afraid.’
    She