Читать книгу Mystery Lady - Paul Magrs - Страница 19

Timothy had been taken off by the security guards to wait for the police, and we were being shepherded out of the studios into the main foyer, where we were given mugs of strong, sweet tea to fortify our nerves.

I lost track of Cassandra. It was only as I was sipping my tea and scowling at the lollygagging hordes that she drifted up to me again.

‘It wasn’t Timothy,’ she whispered.

‘Well, of course it wasn’t,’ I snapped.

‘What I mean is, I’ve had word from the horse’s mouth.’

‘Whatever are you talking about, Cassie?’ said I, impatiently.

‘I don’t know how or why it happened, but I have talked with the dead girl just now. I think… I think I must have a very special gift.’

Right at that moment I didn’t quite feel like discussing Cassandra’s special gift. ‘We’ve got to get Timothy out of here. We can’t have him getting embroiled as a murder suspect. We’ve got work to do. This is too inconvenient.’

We took advantage of the milling crowd and the chaotic scenes around us, and we crept back into the deserted studio complex. It was astonishing that nobody stopped us. I’ve always believed that if you walk about confidently, as if you actually belong in a place, then no one will bother you, and so it was that we found our way to Timothy’s dressing room. A burly guard called Derek was guarding the door. He was a bit dim and bought my story that I was Tim’s solicitor.

‘And I’m her assistant,’ put in Cassie.

We found Tim with his head in his hands, still wearing his stage costume. ‘Oh, Dodie it was terrible. That poor girl. I witnessed her final few seconds. And now… now they think I’m responsible!’

‘We’re going to get to the bottom of this,’ I told him firmly. ‘We know you didn’t do it, of course. But what happened in there, inside that cabinet?’

‘Well, it was all a bit of a blur, what with the music and dry ice and everything going round and round. There was a false door inside the box, and she was hiding behind that…’

I was listening intently and staring at him as he spoke. Cassie said, ‘What’s that long hair on his jacket collar?’

I stared. She was right. There was a long auburn hair. Clearly not one of his. The dead girl’s hair was black. I carefully picked it off him and held it to the light.

‘Synthetic,’ I mused. ‘Nylon. Now, who do you know wears a long ginger wig?’

Timothy had no idea.

But my clever assistant did. ‘Carswell Hobbs has hideous, fake orange hair,’ she burst out.

‘The dead girl’s husband!’ I gasped.

‘What?’ frowned Tim. ‘But he wasn’t here tonight. He’s ill at home. That’s why I ended up having to do the stupid trick in the first place.’

‘I think you’ve been framed, on live TV,’ I told him.

‘What can we do?’ asked Cassie. Then she said: ‘Check the box. That’s what Doris said.’

‘We need to get a look inside that magic box,’ I decided.

Next thing, we were back on the studio floor where the stage hands had left the magic box exactly where it was. It was a murder scene and nothing had been altered since the terrible moment that door had flown open.

A detective inspector in a grubby raincoat had arrived to grill my friend.

‘I have a strange suspicion,’ I announced, holding aloft the ginger filament I had found on Timothy’s collar.

‘Bit of an amateur sleuth as well as a lawyer are we?’ sneered the Detective Inspector.

‘Excuse me,’ I said, and stepped inside the magic box.

‘You can’t do that,’ cried the detective. ‘We haven’t looked at it yet…’

‘Then come and look at it now,’ I said. He followed reluctantly, and found me fiddling with the catch of the false door.

‘So this is how they do the disappearing act, is it?’ the detective said. ‘A concealed door.’

‘This is where poor dead Doris was supposed to hide herself away,’ I said. ‘But she found rather more than she bargained for. I believe that she found something – or rather, someone – that she truly didn’t expect to be lurking back here.’

With that, I threw open the concealed door to reveal a disheveled figure in a ginger wig. He looked absolutely furious.

‘Carswell Hobbs!’ cried Tim. ‘But you’re not meant to be here!’

‘He was here the whole time, of course,’ I said. ‘He secreted himself inside his own magic box and made a plan to strangle his wife, whom I presume he despised..?’

Carswell glowered at me. ‘I loathed her,’ he snarled. ‘Worst magician’s assistant in the business. I don’t know what I ever saw in her.’

‘She was lovely!’ Cassandra cried out. ‘You didn’t deserve her!’

‘He was hoping to bump her off, pin the blame on Timothy Bold, and lay low inside this box and sneak out when no one was looking,’ I explained.

‘That’s a ridiculous plan,’ gasped the Detective Inspector, staring at the magician.

I shrugged. ‘He’s a homicidal maniac. And a very poor magician. What more do you expect?’

The detective got his men to haul Carswell out of his hiding place. He wriggled and shrieked and cackled. He said he was glad that Doris was dead.

‘Oh, that poor girl,’ sniffed Cassie. ‘She was so puzzled by what had happened to her. I was glad Lucrezia was there to help her over to the other side…’

I didn’t have a clue what Cassandra was talking about, but in the meantime we had to get away from Television Centre and back on the road. We had a mystery of our own to investigate.

‘Detective Inspector,’ I turned to the man in the grubby mac. ‘Are we free to go now, my friends and I?’

He frowned. ‘Mr Bold will still have to stay and make a full report. Even though we’ve got what amounts to a confession from Mr Hobbs, there’s still a great deal of paperwork to sort out down the station.’

I pulled a face. ‘Really? You see, we’re involved in a very important and hush-hush investigation of our own. It involves murder and imposters and a strange vendetta, and also, if I’m not mistaken, it has a certain somewhat supernatural element to it. Really, we can’t afford to waste any further time on cases that I’ve already sorted out for you.’

The detective gave me a very dark look. ‘Mr Timothy Bold is coming with me to the Shepherd’s Bush nick, Miss. There’s forms to fill in, and suchlike.’

Timothy gave me a hopeless glance.

Cassandra whispered in my ear, ‘Let’s break him out. Let’s get him away.’

I shook my head. ‘We can’t go round behaving like common criminals, Cassandra.’

I watched them lead Timothy away. He looked very doleful.

‘We’ll follow you to the station in the Mini,’ I promised.

And so we did.