‘Why, are you suggesting she was murdered?’ ‘I’m not suggesting anything, Mr Paris. Merely trying to ascertain some facts, which will provide a background to the circumstances of her death.’ Detective Inspector Shelley’s manner was as formal as his language. It was impossible to know what he was thinking. He would have made a good poker player. Nor did the face of his sidekick, the female Detective Constable whose name Charles hadn’t caught, give much away either. It was the same evening, the Thursday. They were in Charles’s communal dressing room, but the other actors had been sent home. The second half of Hamlet had been abandoned ‘due to an accident to one of the cast’, as the House Manager had told the audience with intriguing imprecision. The theatregoers had all gone home in a state of high curiosity. But the news of Katrina Selsey’s death couldn’t remain a secret for long. Actors thrive on gossip and have a very efficient grapevine for distributing it. In spite of Tony Copeland’s strictures, Charles felt certain that some of the younger actors wouldn’t have been able to restrain themselves from tweeting the news.
