Hunting for Silence (Storm and Silence 5)

Slamming her feathery hat into Mr Ambrose’s face, she marched off stage, muttering under her breath.

With two fingers, Mr Ambrose picked the offending object off his stony visage.

‘Well?’ he enquired, staring at the wide-eyed remaining staff. ‘I am waiting for an explanation.’

Instinctively, everyone took a step back. Not one of them said a word.

Stepping closer, I pushed them aside to look at the unfortunate victim—and sucked in a breath. ‘Mr Ambrose, you need to come and look at this!’

Instantly, he was by my side. There was a moment of silence, then… ‘Hm. I see what you mean, Mr Linton.’

‘He must have been dead for a while. Look at his face!’

‘Definitely not well-preserved.’ He sniffed. ‘To judge by the smell, the flies have been at him.’

One of the remaining ladies gave a dramatic sigh and collapsed into a well-practiced decorative faint with no risk of injury. This was the opera, after all.

I frowned down at the red stain spreading on the stage. ‘But if the corpse is that old, why is he still bleeding?’

Instead of answering my question, Mr Ambrose bent and, with the careless attitude of a man who’d lived off dead rats and dry bread crusts for several years of his life, dipped a finger into the red liquid and tasted it.

‘Tomato juice,’ he stated.

Another lady fainted in a decorative manner.

‘Tomato juice?’ Claudette, who had been silently watching so far, strode forward, pushing through the other onlookers. ‘Moi, I do not understand sis! What kind of maniac would use a tomato juice to make a fake corpse bleed?’

‘Se prop master?’ suggested someone.

‘Except for him, you idiot!’

Mr Ambrose’s eyes met with mine, and silent agreement travelled between us.

‘I don’t think this corpse was the work of the prop master,’ I told the assembled singers.

‘No indeed.’ Mr Ambrose looked grim. ‘This was the work of someone who wanted to cause a scandal with minimal danger to themselves. Nobody could convict someone of murder for leaving a body that had been killed weeks ago, and probably dug up from a vagrant graveyard.’

‘But for the opera house…’ I continued his thought, and he nodded.

‘For the opera house, it would have been another matter entirely. A dead body on the stage? That’s the stuff that scandals are made of. Scandals the like of which could break this place.’

‘Kind of like a deadly snake in the prima donna’s changing room?’

‘Exactly like that.’

‘But w’o?’ Claudette demanded. ‘W’o could want to ruin sis entire opera house? We shust sing ‘ere! We are no danger to anyone!’

‘Hm…’ I stroked my chin, pretending to think. ‘Who do we know that would love to ruin each and every business venture of Mr Rikkard Ambrose…let me think…do we know such a person?’

‘I told you, it’s not Dalgliesh.’ Mr Ambrose gave an aggravated headshake. ‘He wouldn’t concern himself with a little matter like a single opera house, unless—’

Suddenly, he cut off.

‘Guizot!’ he hissed.

‘Whatever kind of curse that is,’ I told him, ‘I’m sure it’s not fit for ladies’ ears. What does it mean?’

‘It’s not a curse, Mr Linton. It’s a man.’