Read Online Dread Murder by Gwendoline Butler - Free Book Online

night so you could not have killed Dol.’
    â€˜Don’t say things like that,’ he hissed back under his breath, a strange light in his eyes.
    â€˜But then we don’t know when she was strangled, do we? You could have done it before coming on stage.’
    â€˜Henry, Henry!’ A middle-aged, beautifully dressed woman bustled forward to Thornton.
    â€˜What’s going on?’
    â€˜Oh, my love,’ Thornton greeted his wife. ‘A death, a murder!’
    â€˜Dear me, dear me, that will send profits down and we are on a knife’s edge.’ Then she brightened: ‘But not for long; we shall make it up.’
    â€˜Murder,’ he reminded her dolefully. ‘Murder, my dear. You cannot overlook murder.’

    â€˜Who is it?’ She started to push her way towards the body. Thornton held her back.
    â€˜Don’t look, dear.’
    She hesitated. ‘Someone we know?’
    â€˜Only by sight,’ he said hastily, nervously.
    Rightly suspicious, and knowing her husband, she managed to get through for a look. Then she turned back to him. ‘Dol,’ she said. ‘By sight, eh?’ and she shook her head. Mrs Thornton, who always performed in their productions, whether there was a suitable part or not, had cleared her face of make-up and removed her cloak. She had been playing one of the witches.
    â€˜Tidy your face,’ she said to her husband. He had been another of the witches while fully dressed in his usual trousers and jacket under the witch’s robes. Whether this was from absence of mind or for warmth was not clear. These cloaks did service from Macbeth to Othello to Mrs Thrufts Heiress — a very popular comedy in Windsor. So the robes were well known to all the regulars at the Theatre and had caused no surprise to Denny and the Major, who had also recognised Mr Thornton as the First Witch – a good part for him as he never learnt any lines but always made up his own.
    Thornton passed his hand over his face, dragging brown powder down onto his collar and making his wife cluck in anger. ‘Grubby, grubby …no way to meet the dead.’
    â€˜She’s right about the dirt,’ said Denny to Mearns.
    â€˜He’s probably had that on him since he last played Othello.’

    The crowd of onlookers was slowly moving away under the directions of Felix, now assisted by another of his Unit. The chanting from those still penned in their seats, waiting for the performance to go on again, was getting louder. The custom was for a farce to follow the main play and, murder or not, they wanted the farce.
    Dol lay where she had fallen, but a sheet had been dropped over the body. Denny drew the Major’s attention to a short but elegantly dressed man pushing his way through the crowd. People drew back with respect as he was recognised.
    â€˜There’s Old Pompey,’ said Denny. This was the nickname of Sir Robert Porteous.
    Sir Robert, well informed and not a foolish man, bent his head politely towards the Major. He knew that Mearns was, in his way, an important figure in the Castle establishment.
    He also knew what many did not – that Sergeant Denny was the Major’s ears and eyes in the Castle. He knew that he was sometimes called Old Pompey, and sometimes Old Pompous, and that the origin of these names was from Denny. He was biding his time on that one and would one day get his revenge.
    One of the town constables had arrived and he was talking to Felix Ferguson. Relations between the Constables and the Crowners’ Unit, as with the Coroner and the Magistrate for that matter, were guarded and cautious.
    Felix had been a good soldier – as the Major, who had
made enquiries, had to admit – but he had not fought in any battles with the Major and Denny, which made a gap between them. And they judged that, if you hadn’t had the touch of the whip from Napoleon, then you didn’t know what a fight was.
    Denny